ABSTRACT
HAD he so desired James Johnson could have been consecrated Assistant Bishop of Western Equatorial Africa in 1893. His rejection of the post, which Oluwole and Phillips accepted with alacrity and eternal gratitude to the white man, revealed a particular characteristic of his nature, which prevented him from realising what was possible. It hardly ever occurred to him that in the affairs of men, as individuals or as communities, there is perpetual contlict between the actual and the ideal, between the attainable and the vision. Official after official in the Colonial Office was kept amused by his memoranda on the social and the political welfare of the peoples of West Africa which showed how little could this African agitator perceive the distinction between the desirable and the feasible. 1 For, James Johnson, more than most men, lived in the realm of dogmas. Obsession with dogmas in tum blurred his perception of the realities of a situation. Thus in 1893 the dogma of Africa for the Africans which should see an independent African Bishop succeed Samuel Ajayi Crowther was of greater weight with him than the fact that Lambeth Palace had announced unequivocally that Africans should not expect anything higher than a subordinate position; the Christian dogma that God is no respector
of race or colour appealed to him more than the realities of the Scramble era that accorded paramountcy to human and racial considerations in the directorship of Church and State.
