Human development through African traditional religions

From the viewpoint of human development, the diverse traditional religions in Africa tend towards a search for salvation and wholeness in this life, with its relationships and events at all levels, physical as well as spiritual. These relationships may be enhancing or diminishing, preserving or destructive, depending upon the harmony and stability in which they are experienced. The path to salvation is constantly threatened by evil, and the strength to oppose the evil arises in interrelationships, in particular within the community and in general with the whole of reality. These strengths are reinforced through ritual and rites of passage in the community environment, and assist the individual to achieve the goals of his or her life as destined by God when he or she was born. An individual who leads a full life in line with this destiny, successfully undergoing the rites of passage, may achieve the status of ancestor after death.

Ancestorhood is the embodiment of life's goal, and the living and the ancestral spirits are in daily contact, particularly in rituals of prayer and of other practices including incantation, dance, drums and the offering of food and drink. These rituals help maintain right relations with the spirits present in the natural world, as well as predisposing to health and healing.