Africa is an immense and complex continent with hundreds of different ethnic groups, tribes, languages and religions. Although each is unique, many exhibit patterns of similar beliefs. Although all African tribal religions are polytheistic, many include the belief in a single all-powerful creator god who is often not directly accessible to common worship. Although each tribe's beliefs are different, they often include trans-tribal cults and pilgrimage centers where many different groups worship together, providing some form of social cohesion. The most commonly worshiped divinities are nature gods who provide fertility and water to sustain life.
Ancestor veneration is also common.
Many tribes have special initiation rituals whereby young people become full adult members of tribes or members of secret religious societies such as warrior or hunting cults. Complex rituals of divination and sorcery are widespread. The horrors of the slave trade from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries not only brought millions of Africans to the Americas, but also many of their religious beliefs. While most slaves were nominally converted to Christianity, they retained many of their polytheistic beliefs, merging Catholic saints with their former African gods in much the same fashion as had occurred a thousand years earlier in Europe with Roman, Celtic, Germanic and Slavic divinities. These African versions of Christianity are widespread in the Caribbean and Brazil with millions of followers.