ZULU RELIGION. After nearly 150 years of missionary activity the majority of the some 5.5 million Zulu-speaking South Africans are Christians. For many, however, the amadlozi (ancestors or shades of dead kin) who once dominated Zulu religion are still a force to be reckoned with and propitiated. The acceptance of the power of the amadlozi to intervene in the lives of their descendants and to help them is manifested in the beliefs and rituals of most of the African independent churches to which, indeed, over a quarter of all Zulu Christians belong. The basic concerns of traditional Zulu religion—the pursuit of health, fertility, and a balance between man and man and between man and nature—are as relevant today as ever. Since these are the very areas in which the ancestors are thought to be most powerful, offerings to the amadlozi occur in many contexts both traditional...