This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Lesotho, an entirely mountainous kingdom surrounded on every side by South Africa, is one of the most thoroughly Christianized countries in Africa, close to nine in ten residents belonging to a church, the Lesotho Evangelical Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa chief among them, all three tracing their presence to nineteenth-century missionary work that arrived not long after King Moshoeshoe I united the Basotho nation in the 1820s.
A small minority continues to hold traditional Basotho beliefs, particularly ancestor veneration and practices tied to initiation and healing, often alongside rather than instead of church membership, and traditional healers, called lingaka, remain widely consulted even by otherwise devout Christians. The country's dependence on South Africa for employment has shaped its churches as much as its economy, since many Basotho working in South African mines historically carried the country's major denominations across the border and back.