‘Africa’s Single-Tiered Ontology’ – a discussion of Trevor H G Smith’s book. # 228. 19/05/2026.

Welcome, to a longer than usual blog on a challenging, intriguing and vitally important topic. I would be really grateful if African background readers, or those who have spent substantial time in Africa, could share their thoughts and experiences. The dialogue is overdue.

‘Africa’s Single-Tiered Ontology’ – a discussion of Trevor H G Smith’s book.

Manchester City had just won last Saturday’s FA Cup Final. People are milling around on the pitch celebrating. The scorer of the winning goal, Antoine Semenyo, is kneeling on the pitch, hands folded across his chest. A well wisher hugs his shoulders. Semenyo carries on praying. Eventually he stands up and joins the celebrations. Two decades ago such pieties on the Wembley pitch were unthinkable. Not anymore. Africa’s Single-Tiered Ontology has arrived.

Trevor Smith hails from North America but has been teaching theology in Ghana. His account of the distinctive world view underlying African Christianity is one of the most stimulating theological books I have read for some time. Whilst focussing particularly on Ghanaian, and more specifically Akan theologians, his book also serves as a wide-ranging guide to African theologians across ecclesiologies, nations and generations, evidenced by its extensive bibliography. (Though the lack of an index is unfortunate). In contrast to Western theology Smith identifies the African distinctive: ‘Virtually every African author, whether a professional theologian, historian, philosopher, or social scientist, made note of the unitive perspective that does not separate the visible from the invisible or the spiritual from the material’ (p 3). Thus a ‘single-tiered ontology’ stemming from the common sub-Saharan African tradition is in contrast to the two-tiered, post-Enlightenment western separation of reason from faith, of religion from everyday life.

African theologians, with Kwame Bediako as a major source, re-habilitated African tradition from accusations of animism or superstition, and sought to express it within the shape of Christian theology. Underlying this enterprise was the formative influence of Bediako’s teacher, Andrew Walls, and his recognition that the Christian faith had expressed itself within successive thought worlds and cultures. Initially beginning as a sub-set of Judaism, it developed into a faith that could be expressed in the Greco-Roman thought forms and culture of the Empire. John’s innovatory use of ‘logos’ being a strong example. Subsequently Christian faith took distinctive shape in various local cultures. (See the review of his book on ‘Christian Conversion and Mission’ at blog # 217).

Themes in African Theology.

1. Valuing Africa’s traditional religions.

There is a widespread rebuttal that African religion before the arrival of Christianity was worthless, ‘animistic’, and superstitious. Pashington Obeng, a Presbyterian sympathetic to Roman Catholicism, argues for ‘conceptual space for Africa’s traditional religions to be understood as real sources of revelation, while stopping short of assigning salvific value to that revelation’ (p 93). The argument is not for direct connection, but for ‘analogical continuity’ whereby traditional African religious concerns are illuminated by Christian understanding. Thus veneration of ancestors has connections with the communion of the saints. Smith summarises an emphasis of Mercy Odudoye: ‘The Akan reverence for the authoritative voice of the ancestors contained in folktalk prepared the way for hearing the authoritative voice of God in Scripture’ (p 158).

2. A thought world close to the Bible

As regards the development of a Christian faith growing out of the unitive African world-view, Smith writes: ‘As African Christians began to consider the world of the Bible, however, they discovered support for their worldview even if not for every detail. . . Indeed, African Christians discovered that they already possessed categories that were either suppressed or non-existent in the West. Using living categories found in both Scripture and their own religio-cultures, they began to use these categories to understand the gospel in ways that missionaries and the churches founded by missionaries could not’ (p 39). Smith uses the phrase ‘analogical continuity’ to point to the similarities of interpretive horizons. Whilst the content of faith is different what Walls refers to as the basic maps are similar.

One consequence is that as Bediako argues African theologies constitute ‘an implicit challenge to the notion that humanity can be fully defined in post-Enlightenment terms’ (p 64, quoted from ‘Jesus in Africa’). Rather they are ‘both Christian and African and, arguably, more biblical than what is even possible today in the disenchanted West’ (p 56).

3. A challenge to Western understanding.

Smith’s book is sub-titled ‘A Way Through the West’s Fact-Faith divide’. It is unquestionable that the Enlightenment beginning from the late seventeenth century – despite its Christian roots – has presented the church with severe challenges, such that from Schliermacher to Bultmann theologians have felt pressure to remove supernatural elements from their presentation of the Christian faith. But the move into increasingly abstract categories reduced its capacity to impact the life of everyday people. Consideration of the supernatural lost traction in the ordinary. Smith summarises the view of several African theologians: ‘The West is deficient in its understanding of reality, and Africa can help it broaden its onto logical horizons’ (p 47). This was seen particularly in the loss of confidence in God’s power. As regards Bediako’s theology, Smith writes: ‘He believes Africa’s contribution to the life of the global church may very well lie in reorienting the Christian life away from a focus on ideas and towards a life rooted in those sources of power emanating from God’ (p 186).

A figure that appears in Smith’s book is of the frontier between the natural and supernatural. In the West, attempts to cross the frontier are usually regarded with suspicion. For Africans the boundaries are imprecise and frequently crossed. His book, which ends with glimpses that for Europeans that boundary has not always been so clearly recognised, is a call to not simply regard the ease with which Africans make that crossing as merely primitive and superstitious but to take seriously that in a fading secular culture we become bold as well as thoughtful in making such journeys.

Challenges raised by ‘Africa’s Single-Tiered Ontology’.

1. Stretchiing Congregational Unity.

Inevitably African and western thought worlds will be in tension. Two anecdotes:

* Our church magazine had a ‘you write it, we print it’ policy. Gerry, a Ugandan Christian, wrote an article saying he would not let his children read Harry Potter. He didn’t want them involved with malevolent spiritual forces and wizardry. The local paper picked this up and said that we were killjoys. I wrote to them and said that this was not our church’s attitude and that most of us were happy for our children to be engaged in reading about Harry and his chums. So, are wizards an amusing relic from a far distant thought world? (Do any readers remember the delightful 1970s tv children’s series ‘Catweazle’?) Or are they invisible but real agents of the evil one to harm us and take us away from Christ? Not long afterwards, possibly because of our different attitude, Gerry left our church to join a Pentecostal church.

* The mother of Michael, a young Ghanaian Christian, had recently died. Could she still be in contact with him? In a small group I gave him the standard Protestant answer: the dead are dead and no longer appear in this present world (with slight discomfort over the witch of Endor). Michael seemed satisfied, but Mercy, an elderly Nigerian lady, seemed discomfited, and stopped coming to the group.

These are everyday illustrations of the problems that can arise at the congregational level. On the larger scale, the transfer of African migrants away from the historic western churches to African formed congregations has been large alarming and substantial, such that one leader has referred to continuing African Anglicans as the remnant. Dr Stephen Laird’s excellent blog (# 72) on ‘African Christian Groups at University’ describes how their separation from chaplaincies and interdenominational fellowships has stemmed not from a sense of racist rejection, but rather from their desire to fully express their own spiritual identities. Of course, there are many congregations where African Christians form part of a joyful inter-ethnic mix, nonetheless we need to be fully aware of the powerful attritional impact that ontological differences have on deeply shared involvement. When leading a very mixed church with members from African-Caribbean and several South Asian backgrounds, I noted that we struggled most with retaining or involving African members, though in an area with a relatively small African background population.

Bediako also emphasises that the vernacular’s subtlety in expressing nuances of belief in supernatural power underlines its importance for the reception and understanding of faith. Similarly, he notes the communicative power of drumming to be used ‘by Ghanian Christians who want to respond to God’s grace in the deepest way possible’ (p 78).

Such distinctives of African Christianity suggest that the challenges for intercultural fellowship and worship to happen at the deepest level are greater than are often realised.

2. Racial Justice needs re-defining.

At several points Smith notes African suspicion of sociology – a discipline produced by the western enlightenment with the possible effect of supernatural forces ruled out; though it is interesting that an early sociological study of race - Rex and Moore’s ‘Race Community and conflict’, 1967 - on housing in Birmingham, teetered on the brink of invoking them. At an individual level John Danso’s discovery in working with statutory bodies that his religious convictions had to be left at the door (in ‘The Ministry of Pastoral Care in Multi-Cultural Churches’, p 13 ) was a foretaste of a number of disciplinary struggles faced by African social workers in Britain.

‘Racial justice’ as understood in the churches reflects this secular albeit ethical mindset. It focusses on injustice as the consequence of individual preferences but more especially the operation of systems such that the outcomes in terms of leadership and power are unequal. The concept that injustice might be expressed through the neglect or suppression of people’s overtly supernatural framework is outside of its secularly leaning mentality. And yet, as mentioned above, in terms of inequality of outcomes and failure to honour and further peoples’ spirituality, the greater injustice is the traditional churches’ inability to cope with people confidently expressing a supernaturalist understanding. In this respect, it may be that African bishops and other leaders in British churches are at risk of allowing the vigour of their ‘single-tiered’ faith to be suppressed by accommodation to moderating English reticence.

3. ‘Reverse Mission’ is not straightforward.

If all cultures did conform to the western, post-Enlightenment ontological schism between the supernatural and the natural, then the influx of African Christians would do no more than give a much-needed increase to the number of witnessing and serving Christians, resulting in the revitalisation and expansion of Christianity amongst the white English population. Such an optimistic scenario has not worked out. If the secular western mindset is mystifying to Africans, so too the readily supernaturalist mindset of African Christians is strange to most English people, with the result that the gulf is too great for booming African churches in Britain to ever become credible homes for most white English people.

But ‘missionary’ African Christians - those who have taken steps to adjust their mindset and values to indigenous norms - can have and are having a revitalising impact on the historic churches. Further, African Christian spirituality is now breaking surface in public discourse – thus Eberechi Eze’s tv testimony to his God-promised hat-trick against Spurs a few months back. The result is a greater popular openness to Christianity and religious faith which is a likely background to the ‘quiet revival’.

4. The Increased salience of ‘catholicity’.

Bediako, an evangelical Presbyterian, is amongst other Africans who have noted the resonance of African ontology with ‘catholicity’ and sacraments: ‘material acts which evoke a spiritual reality inseparable from the material means used’ (p 34). The heightened emphasis on the communion of saints and its connection with reverence for ancestors and the reality of the ‘living dead’, the endowment of physical objects with spiritual power and the honouring of sacred sites are examples of a shared mindset. Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, from Zambia, has quoted Pope Paul VI’s Apostolic Letter, Africae Terrarum: ‘That all created realities, and in particular visible nature itself, are united with the world of invisible and spiritual realities’ (p 86). Smith draws the parallels with a section entitled ‘Ancestors and Ecclesiology: A uniquely African opportunity for shaping a global conversation on the nature of the church’ (p 180).

The increased emphasis on the ‘enchanted’ in western Christian apologetics enters ground long occupied by both Roman Catholicism and African traditional piety. Certainly, as we will see, there are dangers of both superstition and exploitation in the sort of popularised supernaturalism to be found in churches such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) – see blog # 85 on ‘Prosperity’. Nonetheless the growth of Christian life and witness in the midst jaded secularity will most likely lead to a Protestant theological re-evaluation of practices found in both Catholic tradition and emergent African Christianity.

5. Women/Men relationships.

Much of Smith’s chapter 6 on ‘What does it mean to be human’ focusses on the work of Mercy Oduyoye, described as a feminist African theologian. Oduyoye’s theology is strongly grounded in Akan tradition, giving great weight to our created and physically grounded nature which consequently recognises the fundamental differences between men and women. Whilst she recognises the strong and often damaging patriarchal element in African religio-culture, she contests this not only from a biblical, liberationist perspective but also from Akan traditions that emphasise both distinctive and complementary roles of men and women in the formation of new humans. Female/male relationships are thus not a zero-sum contest for power but are created, so she uses the phrase ‘two-winged’ to describe the relationship. It may be that the strong independent wife and partner of Proverbs 31:10 ff is found more commonly amongst African women than amongst westerners. Perhaps even including the leader of the Conservative Party.

Whilst making a powerful critique of male dominance, Odudoye also stresses inherent difference between the genders so that (from a western standpoint) it can be regarded as both egalitarian and complementarian.

6. Sexual orientation.

The current big issue separating post-Enlightenment and African world views – attitudes to human sexuality - is not referred to at all in Smith’s book. Nonetheless there are pointers to the nature of the conflict found in the way that aspects of African ontology are referred to. The fundamental unity of body and being invalidates modern western attempts to create a gender identity that is disassociated from a person’s actual body. Our specific createdness is a gift to be rejoiced in not a curse to be escaped from.

Similarly, the emphasis that personhood comes from belonging to a community and a family means that breaking loose by an autonomous claim for untrammelled free sexual expression runs deeply counter to the African understanding that sexual relationships and marriage happen within the norms of a community and not in disregard of them. Sexual relationships are between families not just individuals.

These basic differences are alluded to by Martyn Percy in a chapter on the issue for the Anglican Communion (in ‘Intercultural Theology’, edited by Cartledge and Cheetham): ‘Indeed, we might be surprised at the root and branch problem: perhaps it will be the assumptions we make about choice, individualism and the nature of institutions - all of which have eroded our sense of catholicity and moral responsibility for the parts of Christ’s body we seldom see or know’ (p127).

The conflict within the Anglican communion, stemming from the 1997 Lambeth Conference, was ignited by the organisers’ western liberal assumptions that Africans simply needed to catch up with modern thinking, and would soon fall into line; failing to see, as so often, that Africans held a distinctive world view that could well stand up biblically against that of progressive westerners. I suspect that much of the intensity with which African Anglicans have since held their position (which at times has degenerated into homophobia) is generated by what is seen as the insulting and patronising assumption by western ‘liberals’ that the African mind was merely an empty vessel waiting to be filled by western knowledge.

Questions from the West.

Smith writes: ‘The West has its own powerful theological resources - of which a godly scepticism may not be the least - to contribute to the global church’s theological work’ (p 21). African theologians are often aware of the dangers stemming from their world-view that are in need of correction. What follows are some problems which can occur in practice.

1. The abuse of respect for elders/leaders.

A white minister was suspended on the basis of credible allegations that he had abused and misused his power in several serious respects. Most of the ethnically diverse congregation accepted the situation, except for several Africans who explicitly declared that as Africans ‘we support our leaders’. As Smith summarises ‘the chief’s role was never just political: consonant with a single-tiered perspective, the one who rules on earth must derive his authority from the world of the spirit’ (p 134). In Britain John Danso notes: ‘Ministers visiting sick ethnic [sic] Christians is very important aspect of their theology as it assists their speedy recovery’ (p 40).

I have heard Africans express surprise at the disrespect for political leaders that is common in the British media; an attitude now coming back to bite us with our rapid turnover of political leaders. Nonetheless the African tradition of loyalty to chiefs and elders, and then spreading out to politicians and church leaders can be argued to have more damaging consequences. The entrenched power of political leaders has had disastrous consequences for Zimbabwe, and now Uganda,and many other countries.

As regards churches, alongside exhilarating church growth there has also been the rise of superstar and corrupt pastors discrediting the Christian gospel. In her often sympathetic account of worldwide Pentecostalism, ‘Beyond Belief’, the Australian journalist Elle Hardy was scathing about its manifestations in Lagos.

2. Misleading resort to supernatural explanations.

As an example of the single-tiered ontology’s holding together of the natural and supernatural, Smith cites the anointing by Ghana Airways in 2003 of the evangelist Dr Lawrence Tetteh to heal the airline after a series of accidents. We are not told of any results, but then presumably the prayed-for outcome – no accidents – would apply to scores of other airlines that have not consciously sought spiritual protection. Increasing airline safety is one of the great successes of rational, forensic, technical scrutiny, as intensive study of accidents has generated increasingly effective rounds of safety procedures. Richard Dawkins, an evangelist the closed system of scientific rationality, has said: ‘Show me a relativist at 30,000 feet and I will show you a hypocrite’. We have evidence that the western ‘natural’ and rational approach does generate increased airline safety. We have no clear evidence that a ‘supernatural’ approach makes a difference. (Though the film of one of the most remarkable deliverances from an airline disaster was entitled ‘Miracle on the Hudson’). So Smith refers to those theologians who ‘caution against over interpretation of spiritual activity that might encourage human irresponsibility’ (p 48).

3. Over-spirituality.

Some years back I taught a week’s course on urban mission at a small American-run Pentecostal bible college. Of the average intake of 15-20 probably three-quarters were West African. In the prayer time at the end of one session I said I was driving off to see my mother who had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. People were very supportive. After the prayers one student said I should not be anxious, my mother would most definitely be healed. Question: should I trust in African spirituality or the rather graceless specialist who said my mother had around three months to live? I trusted in the voice of rational science. Rather than spend the months closely looking for any possible signs of healing in my mother, I chose to treasure being with her in her last few months.

The high expectation for miraculous answered prayer can generate a restless search to control the supernatural. ‘There is practically always something new being introduced: some new fast, or taboo, or right or time and manner of praying, or dress or’ system’. The search goes on’ was C G Baeta’s evaluation of the ‘Spiritual Churches’ (p 44). Particularly in the secularised West, the fall-out by disillusioned young Africans struggling with unanswered prayer can be serious.

4. The danger of ‘this worldliness’.

Smith quotes Andrew Walls: ‘Christianity has thus necessarily inherited all the old goals of religion; in particular, the association with protection and with power is undiminished’ (p 11). Bishop Cyril Okorocha’s study of Igbo Christianity in ‘The Meaning of Christian Conversion in Africa’ notes ‘Fusion of the sacred and the profane into a unified whole in the understanding of salvation. . . then mission must also be holistic with no dichotomy between the gospel and social action; or the divine and human aspects of the salvation experience’ (p 79).

The West’s spiritual/material dichotomy risks both detaching salvation from any outcome in the material world, whilst also allowing the unquestioned expansion of material consumption. By contrast the single-tiered ontology gives proper weight to the close interaction of material and spiritual so that material needs are the proper concerns of faith and prayer. Nonetheless a focus on ‘protection’ and ‘power’ can easily tip over into seeing the acquiring of this worldly benefits as the overarching focus of faith. In combination with the high status of religious leaders noted above the potential for both corrupted leadership and unspiritual materialism in the membership is significant. (See the discussion in blog # 85 on ‘Prosperity’).

In summary, Trevor Smith has done world Christianity a great service in both gathering together the emphases common amongst African theologians, and presenting them with challenging vigour in a theological arena still very largely dominated by people formed by the two tier mentality generated in the West by the Enlightenment. As Christianity both continues to grow in Africa and encounters other cultures through its diaspora, it is a conversation not just of academic concern but of intense relevance to the spirituality, life and pastoral practice of the churches.

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Related Blogs:

5 Exorcism and my ‘Inner Crowd’.

72 Black Majority Christian Groups at University (by xxxxx)

85 ‘Prosperity’.

103 Time Keeping – the Elephant in the Room.

205 Learning from Faith Transmission amongst African Migrants.

217 All I want for Christmas (features review of Andrew Walls “Christian Conversion and Mission’).

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Reflecting on Scripture - Luke 13:28-30.

²⁸ There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. ²⁹ Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. ³⁰ Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’

Inclusive or Exclusive? Christianity has swung between the two emphases. At times it has been rigid and vigilant, even harsh, in its boundary keeping. Currently, in keeping with our times, it is seeking to be open, affirming, generous.

In this passage both are expressed. Jesus has warned about those who will not be able to enter through the ‘narrow door’ of salvation (v 24); those who have mistaken familiarity for faith. Yet he is wonderfully inclusive in the diversity of those who will enjoy participation in the kingdom feast. It will be a geographically (and presumably culturally) comprehensive celebration in gathering from all points of the compass, and socially comprehensive in gathering those who in status the world regards as the least.

Praise God for the ways in which we see this happening in our own times; cry out to God to correct the ways in which that inclusiveness is still limited.