Can a Christian Hold On to African Traditions

Names, funerals and weddings rarely come with explanations attached. You inherit them first and ask questions later, if at all. If you now follow Christ, you do not have to keep all of them or throw all of them out. Some customs are good, and you can keep them gladly. Some are neutral and call for wisdom. A few ask for a loyalty that belongs only to Christ, and those you set down. You decide by finding out what a specific practice is actually asking of you.

The method comes from Kevin Muriithi Ndereba, founder of a ministry called Apologetics Kenya, in a conversation with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project podcast. Over the next hour you will list your own inherited practices, read Acts 17 closely, learn Ndereba’s way of sorting, work through one hard case, and then sort your list. You can do this alone. A group can do it in one long session, or in two sessions with the lists made in between.

Start with your own list

Before you read any further, write down five practices your family or community handed down to you. Keep each one concrete. Some places to look:

• How children are named, and who chooses the name.
• What happens when a baby is born or first comes home.
• How weddings are arranged, announced and attended.
• What happens after a death: who comes, how long they stay, what is said or done.
• Sayings or habits about luck, blessing, fate or the dead.

Next to each practice, write two notes. First, what physically happens. Second, what you have been told it means. If nobody has ever told you, leave the second note blank. Don’t sort anything yet. Many people find they can describe a custom in detail without knowing what it is for, and the blanks will matter later.

For groups: No one has to read a list aloud. Family practices can be private, and in some homes these questions have already caused conflict. Invite each person to share one item if they want to, and let them keep the rest to themselves.

Read Acts 17 slowly

Ndereba and Fields both point to Paul’s speech in Athens. Read Acts 17:16-31 once all the way through. Then read it again with the following in mind.

Paul begins with something the Athenians already had: “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you” (Acts 17:23). The order matters. He looks closely first, names what he saw, and then points past it.

In verse 26, Paul says God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26). The places and eras people are born into fall within God’s purposes.

Then keep reading through verses 29-31. Paul does not leave the altar standing as it was. He says God is not like an image made of gold, silver or stone, and he calls his listeners to repent. Beginning with what Athens already had did not soften his call for them to turn.

Acts 17 is narrative. It tells what Paul did on one occasion with one audience, so it is not a script for every conversation. It does show a pattern: look closely, name honestly, then call people to the God they do not yet know.

Answer these before moving on:

1. What did Paul have to do before he could mention the altar at all?
2. Mark each place in the speech where Paul affirms something and each place where he corrects something.
3. How does verse 26 change the way you think about the place and people you come from?

Three lights for sorting

Ndereba described common themes in African traditional religions: belief in a supreme being, a strong sense of a spirit world, rituals, and ties to the ancestors. He did not begin with condemnation. He said these questions call for “wisdom and discernment as we really explore these deep questions.” Then he borrowed a picture from the road: green, amber and red.

Red. Ndereba says “there are things that would conflict with Christian faith,” and he names divination, some rituals and some oaths. His reason for flagging oaths carries the whole category: “Now we have a new covenant in Christ, right?” He adds, “So when there is another oath, then that challenges this concept of covenant.” A red practice makes a binding spiritual claim on you that competes with your bond to Christ. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 forbids divination and seeking the dead for this reason.

Amber. Some practices are neutral and need careful thought. Ndereba’s example is naming. Children may be named for a grandparent, the season of their birth, or a trait of character. He asks, “should we now stop having these African names?” His answer is to think the question through, and he gives his own family as an example: “like my son is named after my father.” A name like that carries memory forward.

Green. “There are things that are excellent,” Ndereba says. His main example is community. People come to a wedding whether or not they were on an invitation list. Neighbors come to mourn with a family after a loss. Romans 12:15 asks the church for exactly this: “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.”

Lisa Fields comments on the order of sorting. She notes that when people talk about African spirituality, “it’s a lot of demonization of everything.” She describes how that sounds to the person on the receiving end: “well, do you actually know what I’m doing? And so you sound ignorant trying to win them.” Paul in Athens did something different: “He’s looking and finding something to celebrate and then pointing them to something greater.” She suggests the work goes best “when we start with green and then work our way through.” Starting with green does not make red practices smaller. It makes you look closely, and you cannot judge a practice fairly until you have looked.

Working through a mixed practice

The obvious cases take no effort. The hard ones are ceremonies that do several things at once. Ndereba says some rituals are “okay or neutral,” and he describes others, such as libation rituals tied to connecting with the ancestors, as carrying spiritual weight. He also mentions birth customs where “there are these ceremonies that are conducted kind of to create that communal harmony.” One event can hold both kinds.

Take a funeral as a test case. Break it into its parts instead of judging the whole event.

• The gathering. Relatives and neighbors come without being asked and stay for days. This is green, and Romans 12:15 describes it.
• The shared meal. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul draws a careful line around food. Believers may eat what is sold in the market, and they may eat at an unbeliever’s table without asking questions (1 Corinthians 10:25-27). He also warns that sacrifices offered to idols are offered to demonic powers, and he writes, “I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils” (1 Corinthians 10:20). The food is not the danger. The danger is taking part in the offering as worship. A meal that feeds the mourners is ordinary hospitality. Eating that is meant as a share in an offering to the dead is a different act, even if the plate looks the same.
• The libation. Ask what the pouring is meant to do. If it addresses the dead, seeks their favor, or opens contact with them, it falls into the category Deuteronomy 18 names. Jude 3 Project draws this line plainly: honoring heritage and the dead is a legitimate desire, so memory and honor belong in the Christian life, while veneration and spiritual contact do not.
• The words spoken. Telling the story of the person’s life and giving thanks for them is memory. Asking them to protect the family is something else.

Sorting this way rarely leaves you deciding whether to attend at all. More often it shows you which part of the day you can join fully and which part you will quietly step back from.

Thoughtful Christians will still weigh some of these parts differently. Paul’s own guidance about meals depended partly on conscience and on who was watching (1 Corinthians 10:28-29). One believer may see a family libation in their community as plain remembrance, while another, knowing what it means locally, sees it as prayer to the ancestors. Local meaning matters, and so does honest disagreement. Ndereba warns against one error when he describes a Kenyan Anglican scholar who pushed back because “there was this negative view that everything traditional should be thrown out.” The opposite error treats heritage as beyond question. Ndereba speaks of culture as God’s gift, and in the same breath he names what “the gospel clarifies or cleanses.” Paul gives a single instruction that covers both errors: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). In the KJV, prove means to test.

Sort your list

Go back to your five practices and take them one at a time.

1. Look for the green first. Write one sentence about what this practice protects, honors or makes possible.
2. Break it into parts if it has more than one, the way you did with the funeral.
3. Fill in the blank meanings. Ask the relative who knows the practice best what it means and why it is done. Write down their answer as closely as you can. Notice any difference between what the practice originally meant and what your family means by it today.
4. Give each part a light and a reason. Connect the reason to the covenant test or to the line between memory and contact. A light with no reason attached is only a feeling.
5. Mark what is still unclear. A question mark after one conversation is an honest result.

For groups: Each person sorts their own list. Before anyone suggests a color, someone else should restate what the practice involves and what it asks of the person, until the person who described it says the restatement is accurate. That keeps the group from labeling a custom it has only just heard about.

Questions to talk through

1. Which practices did you expect to be red when you started? Did learning their meaning change any of them?
2. Ndereba ties the problem with oaths to the new covenant in Christ. In your own words, why is a competing oath more serious than a competing habit?
3. Where would you put a custom like naming a child after a grandparent? What would have to be added to it before you moved it to a different light?
4. In the funeral example, which part would be hardest for you to separate from the rest, and why?
5. Are you more likely to treat the unfamiliar as dangerous, or to treat your heritage as beyond question? What shaped that in you?
6. Which green practice from your background could strengthen a Christian community you belong to?

When a red practice is expected of you

Laying something down rarely happens privately. Suppose that at a burial, the family expects you, as the eldest son, to pour the libation. Others will notice if you refuse, and some may read it as rejecting your father. Plan ahead. Speak with the elder who leads the rite before the day, explain your reason in terms of your covenant with Christ, and offer a role you can take on fully, such as speaking about your father’s life, serving the meal, or staying with the mourners after others leave. Some families accept this. Others do not, and the cost is real. What you are refusing is the offering, not your people, and your actions on the day can show that.

For green and amber practices this week, keep it simple. Go to someone who is grieving or celebrating and stay longer than you would have. Have one conversation about a custom whose meaning you never learned.

Then put the list you wrote at the start next to the one you have now. Look at what moved. Some customs you were taught to be wary of may have turned green. Something you never questioned may have turned red. Which of your original assumptions came from Scripture, and which came from someone else’s view of your culture?