Mwari also known as Musikavanhu, Musiki, Tenzi and Ishe, is the Supreme Creator deity according to

Shona traditional religion. It is believed that Mwari is the author of all things and all life and all is in him.
The majority of this deity’s followers are concentrated in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Mwari is an omnipotent being, who rules over spirits and is the Supreme God of the religion. The same
deity is applied and also referred to as Inkhosi in Northern and Southern Ndebele, and it is this deity that
is worshiped in African Traditional Religion whereby people worshiped through the ancestors via Spirit
Mediums who were believed to be inspired by the spirits of truth which were believed to connect to the
deity to deliver messages and divine guidance. Since such great attributes are attributed to Mwari, It is
therefore, the quest of this paper to investigate if the Christian God the same as African Mwari.

According to Idowu, the explorer, Stanley, when he came to Africa he had given Africa the description of
“‘dark’ and ‘darkest,’ a place governed by insensible fetish” which means he under-judged the Africans
based on his traditional and cultural perception without any knowledge of the African tradition and
culture. And as a result Stanley gave Berlin journal a wrong perception about the Africans. For Idowu, the
European theological authors see a little or nothing that is of Spiritual value in African culture and
religion. Karl Barth was convinced that all other religions are ‘sin’. Making the African Mwari a god who
is lesser than the Christian God.

Sparking a thought from other scholars of Idowu-like proposition to say that if our faith is genuine in the
Bible, we would admit that in God’s self-disclosure the whole world races and each is required to have
grasped something of the primary revelation according to its native capability. For which I suggest, to
deny this, is to approach theology with a cultural bias and be traitors to truth. For this reason it should be
understood that Africans are capable in their own native tools to engage and explain their understanding
of revelation of God.

Idowu argues that any people from any ethnic group can claim God as their own as long as God can be
fitted into their ethnic group of their individual control in anyway be the same God whom Jesus Christ
came to reveal. This is essential to Christian faith who regards Him as “The Lord…the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.” Father Schmidt writes that the “High God” is found everywhere
among the primitive peoples, he claims that the belief and worship of one Supreme Deity is universal
among the primitives and that “High God” is held sufficiently prominently to make his position
unquestionable. For that reason, God and God’s knowledge is not a late development or traceable to
missionary influences. The fact that there is almost a universal urge to worship, from this point one can
deduce that God is making Himself known, and also keeping a grip on humankind. Since the Lord of
history has been dealing with humankind at all Times and in all parts of the world. We perceives that it is
because of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God that we can discern what is truly of God in our pre-
Christian heritage.

This “belief had encircled the whole earth before the individual groups had separated from one another.”
Every ethnic group that was formed during the primitive stages moved with a conception and knowledge
of one Supreme God. The Supreme Being of the primitive culture is a genuinely monotheistic Deity,
described as Father, Creator, eternal, completely generous, ethically holy, and creatively omnipotent.
Well, irrespective of the fact that there is erroneous theory of the high gods of primitive, one thing I argue
is that we cannot draw a line of the original truth about the primitive God or gods but we do agree that
nature bear witness of the self-revelation of God. Eliade continues to say that the Creator set upon the
primordial chaos and out of that chaos of non-existence brought forth orders, cohesion, meaning and life
has certainly left the mark of His creative activity upon the created order. He points out that the primary
stage of revelation is seen through nature. He further cites that a human being as God’s own created
image, is “a rational being, intelligent will and as someone addressable and responsible” as he gave Adam
order to cultivate the land and as someone to communicate His revelation through his appreciation of the
created order. However, A.C. Bouquet doubts that primitive people could develop ideas that link to the
Supreme Being as genuine monotheistic Deity unless they have contact with some group of monotheists.
Thus denying that the African Mwari is the same as the Christian God.

Nonetheless, Simba Jama reports that the monotheistic nature of both the names Allah and Mwari and
their Shemitic origins point out to early Hebrew influence in southern Arabian and southern African
cultures and beliefs. The trace leads to southern Arabia, formerly known as Sheba or Saba, a place that
Hebrew people have lived and entered Africa from since as far back as 3 000 years ago. At that time
when King Solomon of Israel existed, the Sabaeans were Hamito Cushite people. These were akin to the
Bantu who were at this time still in the Sahara region around Egypt. The likes of Makeda the queen of
Sheba and her merchant servant Tamrin were black Hamitic people. They and the Ishmaelites that lived
alongside them were the typical Arabians. These Judaic Sabaeans whose ancestry was rooted in King
Solomon and Queen Makeda, Levites and other Israelite nobles spread monotheism in Arabia and
Ethiopia. Sabaeans like Makeda stopped worshipping idols and heavenly bodies like the sun, moon and
stars. In Ethiopia they began calling God, ‘Jah’, which was derived from ‘YAH’, which was short for
‘YHWH’, the Hebrew name of God. Thus, the African Mwari could be the same Christian Mwari, that
Jesus came to reveal to the world.

Furthermore, Kwame Bediako and Masoga agree that the African Mwari was placed far above and in
control of the other deities who might belong to any particular people’s pantheon, hence its association
with the Old Testament Yahweh. For Masoga the qualities or attributes of this Supreme Deity overlap all
over the continent. He say, “They ascribe to God (Mwari) the attributes of Almighty and Omnipresent;
they believe God created the Universe.” God is known as “Creator, owner of breath and spirit, benefactor,
merciful, living, Lord of glory, silent, but active, origins cannot be determined, who “interpenetrates and
permeates all being; is Unknowable (an Enigma): source of being,”. According to the Africans, the
conception is universal throughout Africa. For Idowu this is expressed in several ways, the fact that He is
incomparable, Mwari surpasses all. God (Mwari) is distinguished in countless ways, He’s “Only Great
Shining One” or “He who alone is of the Greatest Brightness.” Kwame Bediako further expresses God’s
uniqueness that includes also the conception of His transcendence.

However, another African scholar, John Mbiti, who points out other perceptions of God’s revelation
similar, but different to Idowu. Who writes that “the assumption that many items in African traditional
(religious) life, ideas and practices can and have to be taken as a preparation for evangelism.” Therefore,
certain aspects of African times may be profitably being linked up with Christian times. According to
Mbiti, first, “The End” is lacking in African times. But in Christian times we find it centred, as it is in
Jesus Christ. And the Lord Himself declares that He is “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
ending…” (Rev 1:8). Mbiti writes that African thinking both eternal realities and a future dimension of
Time is in fact introduced. An African has times, but it has no teleology. It is in this area where Christian
times can make a radical contribution to God’s natural revelation in Africans.

Second, the “African languages seem to lack a future dimension of Time, beyond a short distance,” said
Mbiti. He further perceives African people as the ones who penetrate into spirit world through offerings,
libation and sacrifices, with the spirituals. This is also familiar to the Christological and eschatological
sacraments they are not only spiritual but also eternal, infinitely and intimately bound up with the Person
of and life of Jesus Christ. Thereafter in African thought is a natural form of immortality, but the hereafter
of Christianity is a life of a Resurrection. Mbiti further depict that this Resurrection is not natural,
inevitable form of life and etc. but it is life resurrected to Life, real Life at its source, the Life whose
nature and essential character is none other than “everlasting” and “eternal”. Fourth, in a sense of African
thoughtfulness to the spiritual world dismissal background, Mbiti portrays that the spirit world’s realities
that Jesus had encountered, is familiar to the African spirits. It is one of Jesus’ eschatological signs of His
presence and ministry, and the exorcism of the spirits that relate to the Africans. Moreover, the Westerns
placed the African’s practices on the background while promoting their culture combined in the Biblical
revelations.

Therefore, if we are to consider outside the frame works provided by the Westerner and without reading
through the colonial lenses these truths a brought to light. Including the considerations that the Greeks
came up with attributes labelled them to an object and worshipped it as God. Not forgetting that Paul once
encountered a people that were worshiping but to a God they did not know. This could have been the case
with the Africans who inherited the idea of this monotheistic God, Mwari from the ancient fathers who
may have heard of God from Solomon during the trade periods up with the Sabaeans. Evidence of this
trade appears in the biblical books of 1 Kings 10 and 2 Chronicles 10. According to Simba Jama, The
Sabaeans were called ‘vaShavi’ and were known for sailing south-east to Africa to acquire frankincense
and myrrh from Somalia and gold and hard wood from Ophir which was in Zimbabwe. The trading port
was in Mazambuko (Mozambique), but the market area was in a place closer to Zimbabwe called Sofala.
This may then explain how the African Mwari is the same Christian God. This conclusion we can only
reach by agreeing that for the reason of human beings failure to fully comprehend God without God
revealing Himself to them is inevitable and so did Jesus Christ come that through Him we may as well see
God for who He really is, without any cultural or traditional limitations imposed by differing ethnic
groups. Thus, the rituals and traditions associated with the Africa Mwari can be annihilated from the
religion itself, just as the Western God came to Africa with traditions that are also breeding grounds of
doubt for the Western God to be regarded at the Christian God. With many scholars now advocating for
the decolonization of the Scripture in pursuit of a Holy Pure God since the Westerners introduced the
Christian God to Africa in a colonial bias.
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