A Dechristenized Concept of Molimo as an Object of Worship in Basotho IndigenousReligion.

When the first Christian missionaries arrived in Lesotho and discovered that Basotho calledthe object of their worship Molimo, they immediately identified this being with the Divinitythey had come to preach to Basotho about and so they adapted this name as a local name fortheir Christian God. This was done even though no systematic studies had been carried out tofind out more about the being called Molimo. They were so completely convinced of theuniversality of the existence of the Celestial Supreme God that they thought all they neededwas to find His name among the Basotho. No effort has since been made either by the local orforeign authors to find out how justified the missionaries’ identification of their ChristianGod with this local deity called Molimo was. Everybody seems to have assumed that themissionaries were correct and so they all today talk of Molimo as a celestial being. Thispaper’s task is to challenge this uncritical assumption. Through a critical analysis of variousBasotho cultural elements and what the early Basotho told the missionaries, the paperproceeds historically and argues that Molimo of Basotho is more of a subterranean being thana celestial being or Sky-Divinit