# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1925_S37
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

The real native religion of the African is pagan-
ism, or Fetishism, and consists largely in the wor-
ship of spirits. The native African lives in con-
tinual fear of corporeal and spiritual enemies with
which he imagines himself to be surrounded on all
sides. Anything unusual arouses his suspicion;
every strange place, he fears, may harbor a hostile
spirit. Every person who might have something to
gain by his death or misfortune is an enemy who
is trying to work him harm by means of charms,
incantations, or witchcraft. He stands in dread
fear of the spirits of the dead, who may return at
any time to do him harm. To propitiate the dead,

vile and degrading, gives us a right to call their
home the Dark Continent. Naylor, in his Daybreak
in the Dark Continent, after speaking at some
length of the African’s religion as a “religion of
darkness,” concludes thus: “Delicacy permits but
the most guarded references to the revolting bru-
tality and nauseating licentiousness which are the
legitimate offspring of pagan gods and pagan re-
ligion. To be consistent with his perverted con-
ceptions of religion, the African cannot be other
than he is. Brutality lies not in himself, but in
his religion. Even when slightly separated from
his religion and for a short time influenced by

A Zulu Village

he will kill fowls or goats and place them on their
graves. The favorite wife of the dead husband lives
in continual dread of being missed by him and
being killed by some one by his orders in order
that he may have her with him. Dreams are in-
dications that spirits are around. It is this belief
in spirits of the dead which induces wives and slaves
to be sacrificed in the graves of chiefs. And even
cannibalism with all its hideous circumstances is
to be traced to the desire to propitiate the spirits
by the sacrifice of human beings. Witchcraft is
said to take an annual toll of 4,000,000 persons,
for that stupendous number of people are annually
killed in the endeavor to find witches. Whole dis-
tricts are said to have been depopulated by witch
trials. Truly, the native religion of the Africans,

in South Africa.

Christianity, he has proved to be a model of docility,
trustworthiness, and inherent kindness. The pagan
African is what he is because of his religion.
Change his religion, and you change the African.”

CuristIAN Missions IN AFRICA.

There are nearly one hundred Protestant mis-
sionary societies at work in Africa, twenty-four of
which are American. ‘The missionary force of
Africa consists of about 5,000 foreign workers, and
in proportion to its population it is among the
best supplied of the great missionary fields. As-
suming the population to be about 130,000,000,
there is a foreign missionary laborer for every
26,000 people or an ordained foreign missionary
for every 70,000. The southern part of the con-