A

Christianity was a Western religion poised

on the apex of an evolutionary process.

Western ethnography rooted indigen-

ous religions in social Darwinism and

quarried the descriptions of the religions

and ‘‘superstitions’’ of non-Western com-

munities in the accounts of sea captains,

explorers, traders, pirates, and voyagers

of fortune. The allure of the exotic in

the Romantic age and the European images of non-Europeans colored the

characterization of African religions.

Using Enlightenment worldview, the

negative perception was painted as sci-

entific.