By David Maillu
Published June 18, 2023

Recognition of the power of ancestral spirits is a household
subject in African homesteads. This is why white people accuse Africans of
worshipping ancestral spirits. They link ancestral spirits to witchcraft.
Africans believe when you die you transform into a spirit, which retain
interest in its physical family. There is a common belief in Africa that
ancestral spirits are superior to living people. Ancestral spirits live
with us everywhere. Those spirits can exercise their superiority in
disciplining the living. For that reason, the living fear those spirits.

When someone dies and his/her spirit begins to reappear to the living, the
living take ritual function to plead the spirit to disappear forever. But
there are others who cherish the corporation between ancestral spirits and
the living, the exercise which Christianity describes as witchcraft and
devilish. Hence, spiritualism is an evil thing to Christianity.

In traditional Africa, spiritualism falls under the docket of diviners,
whom Christians label witchdoctors. Preaching against consulting
witchdoctors is a big topic in churches. Yet, Churches and Mosques preach
in honour of ancestral spirits in Jesus, Mary, Jacob, Abraham, Mohammed,
Buddha, and so on, whose spirits they strongly believe are alive and have
interest in the living and they are superior to the living. How do
different ancestral spirits qualify to be worshipped and others not-to-be
worshipped? Is it written anywhere in the scriptures that only one
category of ancestral spirits should be worshipped? Is it ungodly for
people to worship their ancestral spirits?