Unfortunately the amount of scholarship that has been done about the cosmology and worldview of the ancient society of the Kongo is slim to say the least; there is basically none. One must infer a lot about the society. From articles written on family and kinship, it appears that the ancient civilization of Kongo was one that valued relationships highly. Not only were relationships in general valued but relationships to one’s female relatives were of utmost importance. Religions also played a huge role in the ancient civilization, it answered many pivotal questions such as “Why are we here?” “What should we do?” “What is true and false?” and of course “What is right and wrong?”.
Christianity dominated the ancient civilization of the Kongo, the debates discussing whether or not the version of Christianity that was present in the Kongo is the “true” version that we know of or not is still debated widely today. Working in the lens of Christianity, all of the above questions would be answered. Using the Bible as literally a guide to life, the huge questions of why we are here and what are we doing is answered. Now whether or not these answers are ones that we hear from today’s Christianity are up for debate, the influence of the Bible in the Kongo is not debated though.
The willing conversion of King Nzinga Nkuwu to Christianity in 1485 was the major factor in the empire adopting Christianity, not only the baptizing of their king but invasion of the Portuguese impacted the society and its previous animism religion.
