(Note: This post is a lightly edited version of a paper written in 2022 for an academic program at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. References for some quotations have been left in condensed academic format. For full publication information, see the bibliography at the end.)
Introduction
During the time my wife and I have been living in Soweto, Johannesburg, since we moved here from the United States in January of 2020, it has become clear to me how strong a role the ancestors play in African community and spiritual life. Funerals here are not perfunctory affairs as they often are in the U.S. They are ongoing cultural observances that extend over weeks, months, and even years, highlighted by specific ceremonies and rituals. Recently, I was honored to attend a traditional Xhosa ceremony in Eastern Cape that took place over two decades after the person remembered in the ceremony had passed on from this world.
Rather than thinking of their deceased loved-ones as “gone,” Africans more commonly think of them as continuing their journey in another realm, while maintaining their connection with their children who are still alive.
This fascinates me. Why? Because of its striking resemblance to the recorded experiences of my church’s key theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborgians, also known as New Church people, look to Swedenborg’s writings for our understanding of the Bible and the Christian religion.
For more on the ancestors and Swedenborg, please click here to read on.
This harsh, arid desert environment is precisely where Jesus fought the first of his temptations recorded in the Gospel story. It was right after he was baptized in the cooling waters of the Jordan that the spirit led him into the desert. We read that he fasted forty days and forty nights—and the number forty, especially when it is mentioned together with fasting, corresponds to temptation. The Children of Israel wandered forty years in the desert before they could enter the Holy Land. And Moses twice fasted forty days and forty nights on Mt. Sinai when receiving the Ten Commandments and all the accompanying laws.
As the Africans surpass all others in interior judgment, I have talked with them on matters requiring rather deep consideration, and recently on God, on the Lord the Redeemer, and on the interior and exterior man; and since they derived great pleasure from that conversation, I will here mention what their perceptions were from their interior sight on these three subjects. (Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion §837)
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 