Religion in Angola
[4] In December 1977, the bishops of Angola's three archdioceses, meeting in Lubango, drafted a pastoral letter subsequently read to all churches that claimed frequent violations of religious freedom.
[4] In addition, Jornal de Angola printed an attack on the bishops, accusing them of questioning the integrity of the Angolan revolutionary process.
[4] Toko, a Protestant from Uíge Province, fashioned the sect after the Kimbanguist movement (not to be confused with traditional kimbanda practices, which had arisen in the Belgian Congo in the 1920s).
[4] As a result, the government banned the sect, claiming that its members had used religion to attack the state and had therefore lost their legitimacy.
[4] The issue had in the meantime become less relevant, because religious communities - mostly Pentecostal (such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) - had mushroomed throughout the country, mostly in Luanda and other important towns, often under Brazilian influence.
[citation needed] The situation changed substantially when the MPLA abandoned Marxism-Leninism in 1991 and adopted a constitution that provided for multiparty democracy (albeit in a highly presidentialist version).
However, the government - still dominated by the MPLA, especially after the parliamentary elections of 2008 - maintains a certain monitoring of the religious communities, through the Instituto Nacional das Religiões.
[5] Although Catholic missions were largely staffed by non-Portuguese during the colonial era, the relevant statutes and accords provided that foreign missionaries could be admitted only with the approval of the Portuguese government and the Vatican and on condition that they be integrated with the Portuguese missionary organization.
[5] All of this was consistent with the Colonial Act of 1930, which advanced the view that Portuguese Catholic missions overseas were "instruments of civilization and national influence".
[5] In reality, Protestant missions were permitted to engage in educational activity, but without subsidy and on condition that Portuguese be the language of instruction.
[5] The important Protestant missions in place in the 1960s (or their predecessors) had arrived in Angola in the late nineteenth century and therefore had been at work before the Portuguese managed to establish control over the entire territory.
[5] Before the establishment of the New State (Estado Novo) in Portugal in 1926, the authorities kept an eye on the Protestant missions but were not particularly hostile to them.
[5] Settlers and local administrators often were hostile, however, because Protestant missionaries tended to be protective of what they considered their charges.
Catholic missionaries did not similarly emphasize the translation of the Bible and, with some exceptions, did not make a point of learning a Bantu language.
[5] This connection was brought about in part by the tendency of entire communities to turn to the variety of Protestantism offered locally.
[5] In the late 1980s, statistics on Christian preferences among ethnic groups were unavailable, but proportions calculated from the 1960 census probably had not changed significantly.
[7] Ancestral spirits, especially those of recently deceased kin, must be honored with appropriate rituals if they are expected to look favorably on the enterprises of their descendants.
[7] The spirits of the ancestors of a kin group are looked to for assistance in economic and social matters, and some misfortunes - famine, poor crops, personal losses - are ascribed to failure to have performed the appropriate rituals or to having misbehaved in some other way.
[7] It is further thought that individuals, sometimes unconsciously and without the use of material or technical means, can bring illness or other affliction to human beings.
[7] This widespread term for diviner/healer has entered into local Portuguese, and so central is the role of the kimbanda to the complex of beliefs and practices characterizing most indigenous religions that some sources, such as the Jornal de Angola, have applied the term kimbandism to indigenous systems when cataloging Angolan religions.
[7] In general, the belief in spirits (ancestral or natural), witches, and sorcerers is associated with a worldview that leaves no room for the accidental.
[7] If things go badly, the correct ritual has not been performed, or a spirit has been otherwise provoked, or malevolent individuals have succeeded in breaching whatever protective (magical) measures have been taken against them.
[7] Islam in Angola is a minority religion with 80,000-90,000 adherents, composed largely of migrants from West Africa and families of Lebanese origin.
[9] The constitution of Angola prescribes freedom of belief, however, there have been press accounts the Muslim community is especially targeted by the Angolan government.
[10] The Baháʼí Faith in Angola begins after `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote letters encouraging taking the religion to Africa in 1916.
In 2014 at the request of the local Jewish community, a Chabad center opened in Luanda, staffed by Rabbi Levi Itshak and Dvora Léa Chekly.
