Sierra Leone is a small West African country with a Muslim majority and a substantial Christian minority, and it is regularly cited as one of the least religiously divided societies on the continent. Intermarriage is common, families frequently contain both, and the two communities share festivals to a degree that surprises visitors expecting the pattern of neighbouring states.
Islam arrived from the north and east with trade and with Mandinka and Fula settlement, and is strongest in the north and east of the country. Christianity arrived along the coast, and its distinctive local form belongs to Freetown, founded in 1792 as a settlement for freed and formerly enslaved people from Nova Scotia, London and later from ships intercepted by the anti-slavery patrol. That population produced the Krio community, a Christian and English-speaking society with its own language, its own churches and a strong tradition of education; Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, trained clergy and teachers for much of West Africa.
Beneath both runs an older layer that neither has replaced. Mende, Temne and other peoples hold a creator, Ngewo among the Mende, who is real but approached through ancestors and through spirits attached to particular places, and misfortune is diagnosed by specialists rather than accepted as chance. Membership of the initiation societies is normal among people who are also Muslim or Christian, and is not treated locally as a contradiction.