Religion in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone is officially a secular state, although Islam and Christianity are the two main and dominant religions in the country.
The Sierra Leone Government is constitutionally forbidden to establish a state religion, though Muslim and Christian prayers are usually held in the country at the beginning of major political occasions, including presidential inauguration.
All of Sierra Leone's Heads of State have been Christians except Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, who was a Muslim.
[12] The large majority of Sierra Leonean Christians are Protestant, of which the largest groups are the Wesleyan Methodists and Pentecostal.
[13][14][15][16][17] Other Christian Protestant denominations with significant presence in the country include Presbyterians,[18] Baptists,[19] Seventh-day Adventists[20] Anglicans,[21] Lutherans,[22][23] and Pentecostals.
The Limba are primarily found in Northern Sierra Leone, particularly in Bombali, Kambia and Koinadugu District.
Sierra Leone's first and second presidents, Siaka Stevens and Joseph Saidu Momoh, respectively, were both ethnic Limba.
Sierra Leone's current defense minister Alfred Paolo Conteh is an ethnic Limba.
Descendants of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Fula migrant settlers from the Fouta Djalon region of Guinea, they live primarily in the northeast and the western area of Sierra Leone.
They are descendants of traders from Guinea who migrated to Sierra Leone during the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.
The Krios have traditionally dominated Sierra Leone's judiciacy and Freetown's elected city council.
The Oku people, descended primarily from Yoruba Liberated Africans, are another non-native ethnic group with a Muslim majority of 99%.
The Kuranko are believed to have begun arriving in Sierra Leone from Guinea in about 1600 and settled in the north, particularly in Koinadugu District.
The Susu and their related Yalunka are traders; both groups are primarily found in the far north in Kambia and Koinadugu District close to the border with Guinea.
The much smaller Vai and Kru peoples are primarily found in Kailahun and Pujehun Districts near the border with Liberia.
The Sherbro are virtually all Christians, and their paramount chiefs had a history of intermarriage with British colonists and traders.
[39] Roman Catholics are the second largest non-Protestant Christians division in Sierra Leone at about 5% of the country's population.
[40] The Jehovah’s Witnesses,[41] Anglicans[42] and Latter-day Saints[43][44] form a small minority of the Christian population in Sierra Leone.
The constitution of Sierra Leone provides for freedom of religion and the government generally protects this right and does not tolerate its abuse.
[45] In 2017, a Sierra Leone-based radical Nigerian Pentecostal Christian pastor name Victor Ajisafe was arrested by the Sierra Leone Police and held in jail after he preached an extreme religious intolerance and a fanatical hate speech against Islam and Muslims at his church sermon in the capital Freetown.
Many Christian organizations in Sierra Leone, including the Council of Churches condemned Ajisafe's sermon against Islam and Muslims.
