ABSTRACT
European missionaries in Africa during the colonial period regarded the African cultural soil as a land that never experienced any divine self-disclosure. They therefore set out to fill this “empty spiritual territory” with their own version of God’s revelation, which they wrapped in European cultural vestments. The Christian churches that resulted from missionary activity in Africa convinced themselves that there was nothing in Africa with which to dialogue and so ignored opportunities to engage in respectful and fruitful dialogue with the local spiritual heritage. Now, many generations later, the Christian churches in Africa are in African hands, but the inherited missionary attitudes continue to be alive and well. The Christian Church has not yet, as I will argue here, explored the many ways in which God was made known to our African forbears, but proceeded, and continues to operate, from the unexpressed but obvious assumption that God virtually left African cultures without a witness of the Divine Self.
