Recovering African Religions as “World Religions”: The Case of the Zulu Religion

ABSTRACT Drawing from John Hick’s soteriological criterion of religious pluralism (in his notion of saintliness and morality), this essay questions the validity of the Christian putative, normative status to establish Christian-like features for other religions to be considered a “world religion”. This essay claims that with a modern understanding of the globalized world, it is no longer the norm for a non-Christian religion to meet Christian-like features to be considered a “world religion”. Instead, a universal model is gaining its reality through concrete particularizations, where no one religion can claim to serve as the clear and dominant standard for any other. In this sense, this essay attempts to re-imagine and construct African Traditional Religions, particularly the Zulu religion, its deity, uNkulunkulu, and its moral fabric, as a religious particularization of the global systems.