Are African Traditional Religions Salvific?: Can An African Be Saved?

This paper argues that Christianity, Catholicism especially, still needs to answer the question regarding how salvation is mediated to our African ancestors. Drawing from Karl Rahner’s theory and going beyond it, the paper suggests a heuristic: a radically-relativized version of “anonymous Christian.” The paper extrapolates from it to demonstrate that the mass movement of contemporary Africans to Christianity is not properly “conversion,” but “Christianization” made possible by the supernatural existential element in African Traditional Religions (ATRs).