Nuer Religion

The Nuer are now one of the best-known Nilotic peoples, though till recently little had been written about their religious thought and practice. E. E. Evans-Pritchard laid the foundations for the present study in two earlier books, The Nuer: a Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940), and Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (1951). This book was written, however, not only to complete a general ethnographic account, but also as a self-contained study of a primitive religion. The author is able to discern the sense of the totality of the beliefs and practices he has so acutely observed and lucidly interpreted in a volume indispensable for social anthropologists and of very great interest to Old Testament scholars and those engaged in the comparative study of religion.