he religious habits of the Zulu people. This missionary was William Clifford Holden, who later would write, The past and future of the Kaffir Races. This account of Zulu religion is recognized as one of the better mid-nineteenth-century descriptions of Zulu life and customs. Holden's work is so valuable because he clearly recognizes that some Zulus held views which, could be identified, to some degree at least, with the Christian God. Although few Zulus had some vague idea of a deity, the vast majority, he argued, had no such belief. More importantly, those who did have some indistinct beliefs which, seemed like a belief in God really should be seen as worshipping their ancestors. "One large class of persons have no conception of one Great Supreme Being; Another large class have a sort of dreamy, indistinct, indefinite idea of a Supreme Being, designated the "Great Great"(Hexham 394). This point about misunderstanding Zulu belief was developed by J.A. Farrer in, Zululand and the Zulus (1879). He saw ancestor worship as the basic Zulu religious response and added that the Zulu understanding of Unkulunkulu was essentially a belief about the ancestors of the people even though it could be said to function in a similar way to beliefs about God through the attribution of creation. Farrer also discussed the Zulu traditions concerning a 'Lord-of-the-Sky' or heaven deity. He relates how the Zulu people speak about such a being whom he sees as "inferior" to Unkulunkulu. He then adds: "It is possible that missionary teaching has somewhat modified the original conception of this 'king of heaven'"(Farrer 128). This statement is closely related to the beliefs recorded by Henry Callaway indicating an original custom which referred to the Zulu king and not to God. Thus it can be seen that adequate evidence exists to support the interpretation that before the coming of Europeans the Zulu had no traditional belief in a supreme deity. Wh...
