NO ONE TEACHES A CHILD ABOUT GOD

By Nana Yaw Aidoo

 In 1882, Johannes G. Christaller, a Basel missionary and scholar of Akan culture, stated in the introduction to a collection of Twi proverbs he had compiled that “an entire negro-theology might be derived from these proverbs, which would not bear the slightest resemblance to what is commonly called fetishism” (Grant 193). The truth of this statement is reflected in the proverb that forms the title of this note (Twi: obi nkyerɛ akwadaa Nyame – "no one teaches a child about God").

 The prevailing assumption about sub-Saharan African religion prior to the advent of Christianity is that the concept of God was introduced by foreign missionaries. However, this claim was not accepted by some of the more discerning missionaries themselves.

 When the Basel missionaries encountered Akan religion, they discovered that Akan traditionalists already believed in a high God, whom they called Onyame (also known as Onyankopɔn). However, the Akans seemed to conceive of this high God as so distant that He was effectively uninvolved in human affairs. This is illustrated in the well-known myth about fufu pounding, which supposedly led to Onyankopɔn’s withdrawal from the world. In effect, Akan traditionalists held a “deist” view of this high God. With Onyankopɔn perceived as removed, the focus of religious life shifted to the pantheon of lesser deities subordinate to Him.

 Consider the testimony of Willem Bosman, who studied West African traditional religion in 1705:

 It is certain that his (sic) Country-Men have a faint Idea of the True God, and ascribe to him the Attributes of Almighty and Omnipresent; they believe he created the Universe, and therefore vastly preferr (sic) him before their Idol-Gods: But yet they do not pray to him, or offer any Sacrifices to him (as cited in Grant 194).

 Given this background, Grant observes that “Christaller’s conviction [was] that God was already known in part [by the Akans].” He adds that “Christaller was following Basel Mission ideology in this regard” (Grant 193). After careful observation of Akan religion, the Basel missionaries concluded rightly that their African interlocutors were not entirely ignorant of God.

 This understanding guided the Basel Mission, led by Christaller, when it undertook the translation of the Bible into Akan (a project that began in 1859 and concluded in 1871). They “identified the supreme deity of the Bible, euphemistically approached in Hebrew as the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), with the markedly similar Akan high god Onyame (also called Onyankopɔn, creator god), who was already known to the Akan” (Grant 194). Accordingly, the title they gave to the translated Bible was Anyamesɛm, meaning “Onyame’s words” (Grant 195). As Grant puts it, all Christaller and his team did was to “redefine a god already recognized” (Grant 195).

 In my view, the more accurate conclusion is not that Western missionaries introduced the concept of God to sub-Saharan Africans. Rather, Africans already had a concept of God, and traditional religion represented a sincere (though wrong) attempt to connect with Him. What the missionaries did was to teach sub-Saharan Africans the way of God more perfectly, that God has spoken (something our ancestors came to understand fully only when the Bible was translated into indigenous languages), and that He is to be approached through His Son, Jesus Christ.

 Reference:

Grant, Paul Glen. Healing and Power in Ghana: Early Indigenous Expressions of Christianity. Baylor University Press, 2020.