The Minoritization of Religion: Ancestors, Religion & Erasure in Zimbabwe
Date: Monday, April 7, 2025, from 12:15-1:45pm | in-person
Location: Calder Lounge (Uris Hall 107)
Speaker: Raffaella Taylor-Seymour (Columbia University)
Learn more here and register here (registration required)
Hosted by the Columbia Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL)
“Ancestor worship” is a classic category of analysis in religious studies, one that has come to be taken for granted in both academic writing and public discourse as a minoritarian form of religious practice. This talk examines the complexities of imposing the frame of religion on ancestors by examining the relational dimensions of ancestral practices in Zimbabwe that also raise questions about kinship. Drawing on missionary, colonial, and ethnographic archives, the talk interrogates how ancestral practices came to be a minoritized form of “religion” over the past two centuries. In the precolonial world, ancestral spirits were fundamental to local knowledge systems, played a central role in everyday life, and formed the bedrock of social and political power. The talk traces how British colonists worked to demonize, marginalize and ultimately minoritize ancestors in Zimbabwe, configuring them first as “superstition” and later a kind of religion that would become a minority form of religious practice. Ultimately, the talk argues that these processes transformed ancestors into a minority “religion” while erasing their relational dimensions, a struggle that played out in many contexts and continues to limit understandings of ancestors and ancestral practices. At the same time, the talk makes the case for a relational approach to ancestral spirits by examining how people in Zimbabwe continue to imagine, resist, and rework the meanings of both ancestors and religion. This talk draws on material from Raffaella Taylor-Seymour’s book project, titled Ancestral Intimacies: Queerness, Relationality and Religion in Zimbabwe.
Important Instructions: Due to current campus access levels, all outside guests must register in advance to access Columbia's Morningside campus where the event will be held. If you do not have a Columbia University ID, please be sure to pre-register by Friday, April 4th at 3pm. Requests submitted after that time unfortunately cannot be processed in time. Thank you for your assistance with the current guest registration instructions.