Sermon Central
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This Week I Read An Article In National ...
Contributed by Sermon Central on Jun 18, 2007 (message contributor)
This week I read an article in National Geographic about the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Africa.
Christian missionaries first went to Africa 200 years ago. One of the groups they sought to "convert" there were these bushmen of the Kalahari desert. However, this article pointed out that the bushmen of the Denui village in particular, consistently refused to become Christians. Instead they have maintained their traditional animistic religion. The reporter described what he saw …
“At night in the village there is often dancing around the fire, and sometimes this develops into a trance dance, one of the principal elements of Bushman spirituality. As the women and children sit around the fire clapping, the men shuffle around the blaze, pounding their feet into the dust, their flanks trembling under leather chaps. Little by little the rhythm of the clapping and the wordless chanting picks up. The ceremony, called the giraffe dance, is led by an old man, the resident shaman, who wears an ostrich plume in his beaded headband. As he circles the fire, he eventually falls into a trance. Within this altered state of consciousness, the Bushmen believe, they can cure the sick and communicate with dead or absent relatives.”
The village leader explained, "We are traditionalists here. We are not Christians. But we can talk to whoever the Christians talk to. It is all the same God; there are just different ways of talking to him."
(Source: National Geographic, Feb 2001; http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-5840731_ITM)
Is he right? Are all religions the same? If not, then how is Christianity different to other religions?
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