Jindra, Michael. “Christianity and the Proliferation of Ancestors: Changes in Heirarchy and Mortuary Ritual in the Cameroon Grassfields.” Africa (Pre-2011) 75, no. 3 (2005): 356-377.
Abstract: During the twentieth century, the ‘death celebration’ became arguably the most important cultural event throughout much of the Western Grassfields of Cameroon. The growth of this ritual festival occurred in the context of major political, economic and religious changes in the Grassfields. This article will focus on how religious changes, particularly the growth of Christianity, contributed to the rise of this event and how it has prompted significant changes in notions and practices concerning the pollution of death, personhood, burial rites and the ancestors. In the traditional hierarchical structure of Grassfields society, only certain titled individuals and chiefs were believed to live on after death and become ancestors. This was reflected in burial rituals. Individuals who became ancestors were buried in family compounds while ‘unimportant’ people were frequently disposed of in the ‘bush’, streams or hurriedly given unmarked burials. Christianity, because of its stress on individual personhood and its message of an afterlife for everyone, became an attractive alternative to established beliefs and practices, especially for young adults, women and those without titles, who were the most disenfranchised in the traditional system. With Christianity, burial rites became standardized and were extended to virtually everyone. Christianity also caused declines in notions of death ‘pollution’ and in beliefs about ‘bad deaths’. Because of continued beliefs in the power of ancestors, the egalitarian notions of personhood stimulated by Christianity have ironically created a ‘proliferation’ of ancestors for whom delayed mortuary rites such as ‘death celebrations’ are owed.
