Reimer, Pula and Nxumalo

In Reginald E. Reimer's article "The Religious Dimension of the Vietnamese Cult of the Ancestors," the author examines the cult that embodies Viet Nam's traditional animism, pointing out how its beliefs about the soul both conflict with and support biblical Christianity. He is careful to clarify, in assessing the Vietnamese cult of the ancestors, that many people fall into the ditch on one side or the other, either accepting the cult for its beneficial aspects or condemning it entirely as being inconsistent with Christianity, yet both responses are wrong. Reimer points out, surprisingly, that there are some areas of commonality between the cult and Christianity, such as the fact that both profess a belief that man has a soul and there are such things as evil spirits.

There are certainly significant areas where the Vietnamese cult of the ancestors diverges widely from Christianity. One of these is what Reimer terms the "religious eclecticism" of the cult.[1] Reimer acknowledges that the Vietnamese have the ability to accept contradictory beliefs and uses the example of a conversation with an elderly Vietnamese man to make his point. Asked if the Vietnamese believe that man has a soul, the man answered that this was what their religious beliefs said, but science did not believe this. Then he added, "Science is right...(hesitation) but man has a soul."[2] The Vietnamese ability to accept conflicting points of view and regard both as valid gives rise to oth

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al ritual on her behalf to get her balimo to retract the barrenness. Moreover, "any major misfortune is attributed to witchcraft,"[8] which is believed to occur due to separation of an individual from his or her balimo, a state that exposes the individual to "all kinds of evil."[9] In much the same way that pagans worship their gods as a means of protection from evil, the Basotho worship their balimo and take care to exhibit remembrance of them so that they will be blessed. Yet they dislike being referred to as pagans; they had been converted to Christianity by missionaries and considered themselves Christian. Like the Vietnamese, however, the Basotho had combined their own religion featuring the balimo with the Christian concepts they had learned from the missionaries. The missionaries had used the "evangelization of cultures" approach to evangelizing the Basotho, convincing them that their own balimo-based religion was wrong.[10] This approach, however, did nothing to convince the Basotho that their ancestors were governing their everyday lives. Pula points out, furthermore, that Bible stories such as that of Elijah and Moses talking with Jesus at His transfiguration in Mark 9:2-13 appear to support the concept of

Category: Misc - R