The Colonisation of the Sacred Self: African Spirituality, Colonial Christianity, and the Moral Psychology of Lived Experience
Genealogy May 11, 2026 Yaw Ofosu-Asare
Colonial Christianity in Africa reshaped personhood, moral feeling, and the intelligibility of lived experience, not just religious affiliation. Missionary traditions reclassified African spiritual worlds, recoded suffering and misfortune, and disrupted intergenerational spiritual knowledge. This encounter is situated within Christianity's own history of disenchantment: Protestant and Enlightenment traditions suppressed enchanted practices they once included, so missionaries condemned African spirit mediation, ancestral veneration, and ritual healing while carrying structurally analogous traditions.