By Kettehkumuehn E. Murray (former Representative, Montserrado County)
The Cradle of Humanity and the Dawn of Spirit
If Africa is the cradle of humanity, then she is also the birthplace of the human spirit.
Long before parchment and prayer books, the first men and women on this continent looked upon the rising sun and asked the oldest of questions: Who made us—and why?
Wherever they buried their dead with care, or lifted their hands toward thunderclouds in awe and fear, worship began.
Anthropologists trace our species to the Rift Valleys of East Africa, our footsteps pressed into ancient volcanic ash. From that moment of awakening, wonder and reverence have accompanied us. If humanity began in Africa, then faith, too, took its first breath there.
The African Prototype of Religion
Before there were temples or priests, there was relationship—between God, nature, and community.
Traditional African religion embodies this living harmony through:
Reverence for the Supreme Being—creator and sustainer of all life.
Veneration of ancestors—those who bridge the visible and invisible worlds.
Respect for nature—the sacred stage upon which all life unfolds.
Far from being primitive, this vision is the prototype of human spirituality.
The African ancestor becomes the European saint.
The libation poured to honor the spirits matures into the “Eucharist.”
The shaman’s dance around the fire finds rhythm in the chant of monks or the whirling of the Sufis.
And the African High God—Nyame (Akan), Olodumare (Yoruba), Nhialic (Dinka) Kru Nyeaswah (Kru) —prefigures the monotheism later formalized in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The Continuum of the Sacred
Across continents and centuries, religion mirrors humanity’s need to belong, to make meaning, to commune with the unseen.
When a priest lifts a chalice in Rome, a monk lights a butter lamp in Tibet, or a shaman tosses cowries on African soil, each performs a gesture born of the same ancestral impulse—to reach beyond the visible toward the Eternal.
Africa’s bequest to the world, then, is not only biological life but spiritual consciousness. Every cathedral bell and temple gong echoes the first heartbeat of faith sounded beneath her skies.
Conclusion
If humanity began in Africa, then worship began in Africa.
And African spirituality—with its equilibrium of God, ancestors, and nature—remains the original template of world religion.
The story of worship is, at its root, an African story: humankind rising from the earth and lifting its eyes toward the heavens for the first time.
Serdxfc /.,mnbvcxAsè.
May it be so;
And so shall it be.
The Ancestors are wise.
