The Weight of Monotheism

Chapter IV of The Many Faces of Being (God) series
(Following Chapter III: “The One or the Many? The Fork in Human Thought”)

One God’s Heavy Shadow

We stand at a crossroads of memory and meaning, looking back at the fork in human thought—the choice between One and Many. In the last chapter, we pondered that ancient dilemma: whether ultimate truth lives in a single, unifying One, or in the tapestry of Many. Now, we witness how that choice played out in flesh and blood, across continents and centuries. The weight of monotheism is not just a metaphor. It is a historical burden felt by peoples whose myriad ways of being and knowing were pressed under the heavy shadow of a single story of Being. This chapter carries us into the heart of that weight: how Christianity—shaped by Roman imperial ambition and European abstract thinking—imposed a totalizing view of existence, one that claimed one God, one Truth, one Way for all. Under that banner, the plural and grounded ontologies of African peoples were cast as devils to be defeated or errors to be erased.

 This is a story of loss—of ancestral voices silenced under church bells, of sacred groves cut down and consecrated to someone else’s Lord. It is also a story of unyielding resilience—of old gods wearing new masks, of forbidden drums beating quietly in the night, of an unyoked spirit that refused to die. We will journey through African cosmologies like those of the Yoruba, Igbo, Akan, and Kongo, witnessing how they either survived by syncretism or suffered erasure under the onslaught of Christian monotheism. We will listen to the critique of European thought by scholar Marimba Ani, who unmasks how the West’s supposed “universal” truth often cloaked a will to dominate. And we will place side by side two towering symbols of “One Truth”: the Church and the Hegelian system—one promising salvation, the other claiming philosophy, but both, as we shall see, serving to anchor European power.

In an awe-inspired, reflective tone befitting the sacred weight of this topic, let us proceed. As you read, feel the gravity of monotheism’s one Truth and the pull of the many truths it tried to eclipse. And ask yourself: what was lost when the Many were subsumed by the One? And can remembering those Many faces of Being help us lift that weight?

One God, One Empire: Christianity’s Imperial Crown

Monotheism gained an earthly throne through empire. Christianity, once a marginal sect of persecuted believers, was transformed by the power and logic of the Roman Empire into a vehicle for political unity and control. In 380 CE, Emperor Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica, declaring Nicene Christianity the official state religion of Rome. Almost overnight, the many gods of the empire—Jupiter, Diana, Isis, local deities of forests and springs—became illegal aliens in their own lands. By the end of that decade, Theodosius had outlawed pagan rites and closed the ancient temples, wielding the sword of the state to enforce worship of the one God. The message was clear: one empire, one emperor, one God. Diversity of worship was now treason. The cross and the throne were wed.

Under Roman rule, the Church learned the art of totalizing authority. Competing interpretations of Jesus’s message were stamped out as “heresies.” Councils backed by imperial decree crafted a universal creed—a single orthodox doctrine that all must confess. The Nicene Creed itself reads like an imperial decree about the nature of Being: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth… And in one Lord Jesus Christ… Begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father”. Abstract theological concepts (one substance, begotten not made) became law of the land, backed by the very concrete threat of exile or death. Thus Roman political logic—centralization of power, uniformity of belief, elimination of rivals—sank deep into Christian thought and practice. The diverse and localized ways people experienced the sacred were now suspect unless they fit under that single umbrella of the imperial Church.

When Rome fell, European Christendom picked up the mantle. In medieval Europe, the Church was the inheritor of Roman authority, and it continued to enforce an all-encompassing worldview. There was one authorized map of reality: a Great Chain of Being descending from the one Christian God, through angels, the pope and kings (by “divine right”), down to the serf. Education, art, law—all were in service to this singular vision. The totalizing view of Being that monotheism carried was now thoroughly entangled with power. To challenge it was to challenge God and king alike.

By the time Europe itself rose to global dominance, this unity of monotheism and empire was second nature. Spanish, Portuguese, British, French conquerors all carried crosses alongside their flags. They arrived in the Americas, Africa, Asia declaring they brought the “one true faith” to those living “in darkness.” In truth, they often brought darkness to those lands in the form of slavery and plunder, but their universalist creed gave them moral cover. As one French colonialist unabashedly proclaimed, the mission of empire was “to civilize inferior races” by imposing “our manners, our law, our religion”. Monotheism’s logic—one truth for all—became the rallying cry of conquest.

Europe’s Abstract God and the Loss of the Living World

European thought added another layer to monotheism’s weight: abstraction. The Christianity that Europe exported was not the organic, Semitic spirituality of a Jesus walking on dusty roads in Galilee, speaking in parables of seeds and harvest. It had become, over centuries, an abstract theological system, filtered through Greek philosophy and European intellectualism. The God that missionaries preached in African villages was often a heavily Europeanized deity—a High God of the philosophers, described in terms of omnipotence, omniscience, ubiquity, and other big words never found in scripture, let alone in the proverbs of African elders.

This God was transcendent and absolute, often pictured as far above the sky, removed from the everyday world—which subtly devalued the immanent sacredness that African cosmologies see infused in nature and community. To European missionaries and theologians, God was something to define correctly (hence catechisms and creeds), not someone felt in the rustling trees or the ancestral drums. The European abstract approach to Being prized theory over practice, mind over matter, universal idea over local context. This was very different from most African ways of knowing, which are practical, oral, land-based, and interwoven with the cycles of life.

 As scholar Marimba Ani points out in her incisive critique Yurugu, European culture elevates idealized concepts and hides its aggressive impulses behind claims of objectivity and universality. In the realm of religion, this meant Europe’s Christian theology often presented itself as The Truth in the abstract, for all people and all times—demanding a loyalty that transcended one’s own clan, history, or environment. It wasn’t just “Believe in our God;” it was “Your gods are not real at all, your understandings of reality are backward; we bring you the universal truth.” Under this approach, local spirits, ancestral veneration, sacred forests, fertility rituals—anything grounded in a specific place or people—were dismissed as “primitive superstition”. Such things were seen as obstacles to the soul’s salvation and to the colonial project of “civilizing” the land.

 But consider what was lost in that translation. When you extract the sacred into an abstract heaven and a distant future (an afterlife or end-times salvation), you risk severing people’s ties to the sacred here and now. The earth ceases to be holy ground and becomes mere matter to be exploited (a mindset that conveniently greased the wheels of colonial extraction). Communities stop seeing truth as arising from among them—in consensual councils of elders or divinations through local oracles—and instead look to foreign books and foreign priests for capital-T Truth. The result is a profound dislocation of being: a people can become strangers in their own skin, their indigenous sense of self and cosmos supplanted by an imposed identity as “Christians” under the gaze of a foreign God.

 European abstraction in religion also meant eschatology over ecology. Missionaries spoke of end times, of a final judgment, of saving souls from hell after death. Many African traditions, by contrast, focus on maintaining balance and harmony in this life—honoring the land so the yams grow, honoring ancestors so children thrive. When the priority becomes preparing for an otherworldly heaven, the everyday arts of living in sync with nature and community can fade. As one Africana scholar noted, “European missionaries taught that the kingdom of God is not of this world; African spirituality had always taught that the sacred is all around us in this world”. That shift from grounded, embodied ontology to abstract, future-oriented ontology left a void—a loss of intimacy with the living world that we feel to this day in environmental and social disarray.

The Mask of Universality: Marimba Ani’s Critique of European Thought

Marimba Ani, an African-American anthropologist, offers a powerful lens to understand how European monotheism (and European thought in general) operated as a mask for domination. In her 1994 book Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior, Ani unveils what she sees as the core of European ideology – its asili, to use the Swahili term she appropriates (meaning the cultural “seed” or essence). Europe’s asili, she argues, is characterized by a drive to control and dominate, coupled with an ability to disguise that drive behind lofty universalist ideals.

 One of those ideals is the claim of universality – the idea that European values, beliefs, and knowledge are not European at all, but just “human” and universally applicable. Ani’s critique zeroes in on this sleight-of-hand: when Europeans say “this is true for all people”, it often means “we want to make it true for all, by any means necessary.” Whether it was Christian doctrine, Western scientific rationalism, or later concepts like democracy and human rights, Europe consistently projected its cultural particular as a universal mandate. This provided a moral justification for imperialism. After all, if you truly believe you possess the one truth that could save all mankind, wouldn’t imposing it by force be a tragic necessity, even a noble duty? European colonizers certainly thought so. They spoke of a “civilizing mission” – bringing light to the heathen, order to the chaotic, God to the godless. In reality, this was domination wearing the mask of benevolence.

 Ani dissects how European Christianity exemplified this pattern. The missionaries arriving in Africa were often convinced of their own piety and charity. They saw themselves as sacrificing comfort to save African souls. Yet they were agents of a cultural assault, intentionally or not. Churches came to demonize African spirits and practices, urging converts to burn their talismans, abandon their mother tongues in worship, and sever ties with indigenous culture. Christian conversion was frequently a soft entry point for colonial rule—the Bible and the flag sailed together. Marimba Ani might say that the rhetorical ethic of Christian love and salvation talked about universal brotherhood, even as it paved the way for European economic and political subjugation of those brothers and sisters. Christ’s message was co-opted and abstracted into a tool: European Christianity became, in Ani’s terms, an ideology of control hidden behind a smiling mask of universal love.

 Crucially, Ani contrasts this with African approaches. She notes that African spiritual systems, for all their diversity, tend not to be expansionist or claim universal supremacy. A Yoruba priest does not insist that the whole world must worship Oshun; an Igbo diviner doesn’t claim that non-Igbo must heed Ala, the earth goddess. African cosmologies are typically situated – deeply tied to a people and place, not proselytizing to the world at large. In Ani’s view, this reflects an ethos fundamentally different from Europe’s. It is live and let live spiritually, versus the West’s live as I say, or else.

 When European Christians and later secular ideologues (like Marxists, capitalists, liberal democrats) encountered Africa, they couldn’t fathom that different truths might hold in different soils. They carried what Ani calls the utamawazo (culturally structured thought) of Europe, which seeks to quantify, categorize, and control. They measured African religion against their own abstract standards and found it “false” or “inferior” by definition. It’s the old arrogance of someone who thinks their mother’s cooking is the only proper food, while everyone else’s cuisine is judged as barely edible. Europe’s thought chefs have been force-feeding the world their one recipe for reality for centuries.

 Ani’s insights peel back the pious rhetoric to reveal the power dynamics underneath. Universal Truth in the mouths of European missionaries meant African truths must die. And die many did—or were driven underground. But as we shall explore next, not all succumbed. Some African ways of being proved resilient, finding cracks in the monolithic facade of Christendom to let their light shine, however dimly. Before we celebrate that resilience, however, we must understand the scale of what was suppressed.

Rejecting the Ancestors: How Christianity Demanded African Conversions

To appreciate the resilience of African cosmologies, we must first confront how thoroughly Christianity demanded their rejection. Imagine an elder in a Yoruba village in the 19th century, tending the shrine of Oshun by the river, teaching her grandchildren the sacred songs that call down the sweet, healing presence of the river-mother. Then imagine a missionary arriving, armed with the Bible and a sense of destiny. To him, that shrine is not a fount of life; it’s a stronghold of Satan. Those songs are not heritage; they are devil’s incantations. The grandmother’s loving devotions are recast as heathen idolatry in need of eradication.

 Across Africa, that scene played out countless times. Conversion to Christianity often meant a wholesale repudiation of one’s former spiritual life. Missionaries required not just acceptance of Jesus, but active renunciation of indigenous beliefs and rituals. Converts were urged (or forced) to destroy sacred objects: masks, figurines, amulets, bowls for libations – all the tangible touchstones of communion with ancestors and nature. In communities from the Igbo in Nigeria to the Kikuyu in Kenya, newly baptized Christians heaped up and burned their traditional regalia under the approving gaze of European pastors. They took Christian names, European-style clothing, and in some missions even had to cut their hair in European fashions as a sign of abandoning “savagery.” Entire ontologies – ways of understanding reality – were labeled works of the devil.

 African ways of knowing, too, were rejected. Traditional healers and diviners, who had been repositories of practical knowledge (herbal medicine, conflict resolution, weather patterns, etc.) as well as spiritual intermediaries, were painted as witch-doctors or frauds. Their epistemologies – learning through oral tradition, apprenticeship, and spiritual insight – were dismissed by missionaries who exalted Western schooling and scripture study instead. The idea that wisdom could reside in the collective memory of elders or in communion with ancestors was incompatible with Christianity’s claim that truth was revealed once and for all in the Bible. So mission schools taught children to read the European canon but discouraged them from “pagan” folk tales and folklore. In some cases, children were literally forcibly separated from their families (echoing later residential school systems elsewhere) to be raised in Christian boarding schools, ensuring they grew up severed from indigenous teachings.

 Relating to the sacred also changed drastically. African spirituality is often profoundly relational and communal: libations poured not to an abstract God but to one’s actual grandmother’s spirit; prayers offered not in isolation but in communal ceremonies with dancing, drumming, clapping—a whole-bodied expression of faith. Christianity as imposed by Europeans was often austere and individualistic by comparison: kneel, close your eyes, recite the catechism, think of your personal sins. The sense of the sacred embedded in the land—sacred forests, rivers, mountains—was condemned as animism or even devil-worship. Missionaries cut down sacred groves or built churches on them, literally paving over indigenous holy sites to claim the spiritual landscape for Christ. An infamous example is in Nigeria, where British missionaries felled the sacred ogirisi trees of the Igbo, which were believed to house spirits, and raised church buildings in their place. The physical and symbolic takeover was complete.

 Christian eschatology also undermined African temporal orientations. Instead of reverence for ancestors (the bygone generations who still live in memory and spirit), attention shifted to descendants in a Biblical sense (becoming part of the universal church destined for heaven or awaiting Christ’s return). Some converts were taught to expect the imminent end of the world, making them question the value of rituals for fertility or harvest—“Why bother if Jesus is coming soon?” This was imperial time displacing indigenous time, pulling people out of cyclical, seasonal rhythms and into a linear narrative marching toward a foreign climax (Judgment Day, the Second Coming).

 Finally, conversion often went hand-in-hand with submission to colonial rule. African priests and priestesses had often been sources of authority and anti-colonial resistance (as we’ll see in examples). By labeling them agents of Satan and stripping their influence, missionaries made it easier for colonial governments to take control. In many regions, mission stations were literally the beachheads of conquest. Historian Chinua Achebe dramatized this in his novel Things Fall Apart, where the arrival of missionaries in an Igbo clan sows division: the new converts, especially some marginalized folk, suddenly have the backing of a powerful outside force that undermines the clan’s unity. The old gods are insulted with impunity, the Oracle is disobeyed, and the social fabric rips apart. Achebe’s fiction was reality for countless communities: the fork in human thought became a fracture in human societies.

 In sum, Christianity—especially as preached and practiced under European colonial auspices—demanded a total change of being for African converts. It was not a faith you could simply add to your existing repertoire of spiritual tools; it was all or nothing. The First Commandment thundered: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” And European missionaries made sure there were no other gods after they passed through, either. Now, let us turn to the rich tapestry of African cosmologies that this totalizing faith confronted, to understand both what was at stake and what survived.

Many Faiths, One Fire: African Cosmologies Under Siege

Before colonization, Africa was home to a vast diversity of spiritual traditions—as many as there were ethnic groups, and then some. While varied, these cosmologies often shared common themes: a belief in a Creator or High God coupled with reverence for a pantheon of lesser deities or spirits; a central place for ancestors who remain part of the living community; rituals deeply tied to the land and its fertility; and a view of time and existence as a web of interconnection between people, nature, and the divine. These were plural, practical, and situated ontologies—meaning truth was understood as plural (many sacred powers, many truths coexisting), practical (focused on living well in this world), and situated (rooted in the specifics of place and community).

 Let’s visit a few of these cosmologies to see how they fared when the wave of Christian monotheism broke over the continent:

• Yoruba (West Africa – Nigeria and beyond): The Yoruba people traditionally worship a supreme being, Olodumare, who is rather distant, and a host of Orishas – deities or divine forces – who actively participate in the world. There is Shango, lord of thunder; Oshun, goddess of the river’s sweetness and fertility; Ogun, the fierce spirit of iron and war, to name just a few. Each Orisha is connected to natural elements and human endeavors. Devotees maintain personal altars, offer sacrifices, and seek guidance through divination systems like Ifá. Ancestors (Egungun) are honored and called upon for guidance. This spirituality is highly experiential: drumming, dance, spirit possession, and festivals link the community with the Orishas in tangible ways.

  When Christianity arrived in Yoruba lands (mostly in the 19th century via British missionaries and Sierra Leonean returnee Christians), it encountered a well-established, resilient cosmology. Missionaries were astounded and often frustrated by how deeply rooted Yoruba religion was. They condemned the Orisha devotion as idolatry and demonized the Orishas as devils to be feared. Early converts were few, but the pressures of colonial rule (including the advantages Christians had in education and jobs) gradually swelled conversion. Many Yoruba, however, found ways to adapt rather than completely surrender. Some interpreted the Christian God as just another aspect of Olodumare, and saints or angels as akin to Orishas. Others compartmentalized – going to church on Sunday but consulting Ifá or an Ogun priest when misfortune struck.

  The true test—and testament—of Yoruba resilience came in the diaspora of the slave trade. Enslaved Yoruba carried their Orisha devotion to the Americas. Planters forbade African religion, so the Yoruba in Cuba, Brazil, Haiti, and elsewhere responded creatively: they syncretized the Orishas with Catholic saints. For example, Chango (Shango) was associated with St. Barbara (both wield lightning/fire in their iconography), and Oshun with Our Lady of Charity (a motherly figure in Cuban Catholicism). Under the guise of praying to saints, enslaved people were in fact propitiating their Orishas. This gave birth to Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin religions like Santería (Regla de Ocha) in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil, and influenced Vodou in Haiti (which blends Dahomey, Kongo, Yoruba and Catholic elements). These syncretic faiths are living proof of plural ontology’s survival: the Many faced gods survived within the One God framework, like fire embers glowing quietly under ashes. Today, Yoruba traditional religion has even had a revival; it is openly practiced in Nigeria and has followers among African diasporas reclaiming ancestral spirituality. The weight of monotheism did not extinguish this flame.

• Igbo (West Africa – Nigeria): The Igbo people’s traditional faith, often called Odinani, centers on Chukwu or Chineke (the big creator/divine force), who is usually remote, and many smaller deities called Alusi. Ani/Ala, the Earth Mother, is among the most important, governing morality and fertility. There are deities for thunder (Amadioha), the yam (Ahiajoku), rivers, etc., each tied to aspects of life. Ancestor veneration is vital; the Ndichie (ancestors) are honored and consulted. Igbo also believe in chi, a personal spirit or destiny shard of the divine in each person. Socially, the Igbo had no kings; spiritual authority was vested in oracles (like the famous Igbo Oracle of Arochukwu) and in elders or priestesses of shrines. It was a very decentralized, community-driven cosmology.

  The Igbo encountered Christianity first through freed slaves returnees in the 19th century, then more massively via British colonization at the turn of the 20th century. The clash was dramatic and in some cases violently destructive. The Arochukwu Oracle (Ibini Ukpabi), which had been an influential religious and judicial institution in the region (also entangled with the slave trade), was physically destroyed by the British in 1902 during a military expedition. This was both a spiritual and political conquest: eliminating the Oracle undermined traditional authority and cleared the path for both colonial rule and missionary success. Christian missionaries gained many converts among the Igbo, especially after traditional socio-political structures were disrupted by colonialism and the economy shifted. By mid-20th century, the Igbo were among the most heavily Christianized ethnic groups in Africa.

  Yet, here too, threads of the old weave remain. Many Igbo Christians still practice certain traditional customs, sometimes reinterpreted in Christian terms. For instance, the New Yam Festival, a harvest ritual to thank the earth deity and ancestors, is still widely celebrated, often with church blessings added. Some Igbo communities have seen a revival of Odinani in recent years, as people search for a more indigenous identity after the disappointments of colonial legacy. Even during the Christian boom, aspects of Igbo cosmology survived covertly: beliefs in ogbanje (spirit children) or certain taboo observances persisted in families, though officially frowned upon by churches. And not to be overlooked is the creativity of Igbo Christians themselves in making the faith their own: they raised their own catechists and priests like the famed Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (actually Yoruba, but worked among Igbo too) who translated the Bible into indigenous languages, ensuring that even within the “one Truth” of Christianity, the local tongue and thought patterns could speak. Still, one cannot deny that Odinani was massively eroded; many younger Igbo grew up knowing more about Jerusalem than about their own village’s shrine. The fork in thought—the One or the Many—was decisively taken toward the One in Igboland, at least on the surface.

• Akan (West Africa – Ghana, Ivory Coast): The Akan comprise many subgroups (Ashanti, Fante, etc.) with a rich spiritual heritage. They traditionally revere Nyame (Onyankopon), the supreme sky God, and Asase Yaa, the earth goddess, along with a host of Abosom (deities) linked to natural forces or rivers (like Tano the river god). The Akan have a famous saying: “Nyame ne hene” – God is king – acknowledging the high God, but in practice daily rituals honor the abosom and the Nsamanfo (ancestors). The Ashanti, an Akan people, held the Golden Stool as a sacred symbol of the soul of the nation, said to house the spirit of all Ashanti people given by Nyame. The worldview was one where spiritual and political authority blended; the Ashanti kings were also high priests of the ancestral cult and custodians of shrines.

  British missionaries and colonial officials in the 19th century targeted these “idols” and symbols. One missionary recounted with satisfaction how converts in one Akan town smashed their own fetishes and talismans after embracing Christ. The British famously demanded the Golden Stool itself (not quite understanding its spiritual significance) during the colonial takeover, prompting the Ashanti to hide it and fight a war in 1900 (the War of the Golden Stool). Though the British won militarily, they never captured the stool – it was kept safe and remains a powerful cultural emblem. Christianity spread in southern Ghana through mission schools and colonial pressure, but many Akan communities blended old and new. Syncretic churches sprang up in the 20th century, like the African Independent Church movement where prophets would use Christian language but also engage in healing, drumming, and spirit possession reminiscent of African tradition. An example is the Aladura churches among the Yoruba and Akan, which combined Bible teaching with indigenous healing practices and energetic worship. Meanwhile, some educated Akan nationalists in the mid-20th century, such as Kwame Nkrumah, although Christian, drew pride from the pre-Christian heritage; Nkrumah gave speeches referencing the great Ashanti empire and its spiritual strength. In the late 20th century, a cultural revival led to groups like the Afrikania Mission in Ghana, which explicitly sought to revive traditional Akan religion shorn of Christian influence. They re-established shrines and encouraged people to take African names and reject European religious names. Though a minority movement, it represented a conscious resistance to the totalizing sway of Christian monotheism. The Akan experience illustrates both intense suppression (with colonial rule denigrating their beliefs as “fetishism”) and modern efforts at resurgence of plural ways.

• Kongo (Central Africa – Kongo Kingdom and peoples): Few stories illustrate both the collision and the fusion of Christianity and African cosmology as powerfully as that of the Kongo. The Kingdom of Kongo (in today’s Angola/DRC/Rep. of Congo) first encountered Christianity in the late 15th century. The Kongo king Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptized in 1491, taking the name João I, and his son Afonso I made Christianity the official religion of Kongo in the early 1500s. At first glance, this looks like a voluntary embrace of the One God. But the Kongo did not simply erase their old worldview overnight. They indigenized Christianity in remarkable ways. Afonso himself wrote to the Portuguese complaining about their behavior, demonstrating a fierce sense of autonomous Christian authority – he saw himself as equal to European kings under God, not subordinate. Kongo nobles fused Christian saints with ancestral clan spirits; Kongolese religious art depicted Jesus and Mary as African royalty. The crucifix was adopted, but often interpreted alongside the Kongo cosmogram (a cross-like symbol representing the cycle of life, death, and rebirth). When the Portuguese pushed too far (seeking to dominate the Kongo politically and economically via the slave trade), the Kongo partly rejected European control even as they kept Christianity. In 1704, a young Kongo woman named Beatrice Kimpa Vita claimed to receive visions from St. Anthony of Padua. She began a movement (the Antonian Movement) that said Jesus was actually born in Kongo and that Kongo was the true Holy Land. Her message blended Kongo traditional beliefs with radical Christian reinterpretation, urging unity and an end to the civil wars plaguing the kingdom. For this, she was seen as a heretic by both Kongo church authorities and the Portuguese – she was captured and burned at the stake in 1706. Yet, her legacy lived on as a prototype of African-initiated Christianity, one that refused to surrender local identity.

  The Kongo experience with monotheism also traveled across the Atlantic. Enslaved Kongo people in the Americas were notable for often being already Christian (at least nominally), but their Christianity was suffused with Kongo cosmology. In Haiti, scholars have noted that Kongo influences are strong in Vodou, from certain lwa (spirits) like Simbi (a water spirit) to ritual practices like the Petro rites, and even the famous mantra “Kongo pa nou, Kongo pa nou” (meaning “Kongo is for us”) heard in some ceremonies. During the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), enslaved Africans of many nations united under Vodou ceremonies (such as the Bois Caïman ceremony in 1791) to launch their fight for freedom. This was monotheism’s nightmare: African “paganism” fueling the first successful slave revolt. Haitian Vodou today remains a potent example of how African plural spirituality not only survived but became a form of resistance and identity construction under the nose of imposed Catholic monotheism. Meanwhile, back in Central Africa, in the 20th century, figures like Simon Kimbangu in the Belgian Congo (1920s) started healing movements that were essentially Kongo-spiritual revivals within a Christian framework. Kimbangu was imprisoned by colonial authorities for inciting unrest (healing and preaching without permission), but his followers formed the Kimbanguist Church, an African Independent Church that is still active, blending the Bible with Kongo cultural elements and prophets.

In each of these cases—Yoruba, Igbo, Akan, Kongo—we see a spectrum from erosion to endurance. Some traditions were nearly wiped out in their home soil (as with the Igbo oracle and shrines), surviving mainly in memory or fragmentary custom. Others persisted by adapting (Yoruba and Kongo cases especially, where syncretism and independent churches allowed the old gods or values to live on in new form). All had to make some compromise or retreat in the face of aggressive monotheism backed by colonial might. It’s crucial to note: these African cosmologies were not naïve or without depth; they had their own theologians and philosophers, their own checks and balances for power, their own way of making meaning. But the Christian onslaught delegitimized them wholesale. That was not a gentle meeting of minds; it was a war on the soul of a continent.

Songs of Resistance: Black Theology and Syncretism Reframe the One

In the midst of this apparent triumph of Christian monotheism over African plurality, something remarkable happened: the oppressed reimagined the religion of the oppressor, turning it into a source of resistance and liberation. If the weight of monotheism was meant to crush spirits, many African and African-descended people learned instead to lift that weight with subversive strength. They took the same Bible that was used to justify enslaving and “civilizing” them, and they found in it the voice of a liberator God who heard the cry of the oppressed. They took the church, which often excluded or scorned their heritage, and made it a sanctuary of Black resilience. They took Christian symbols and suffused them with African meanings. In other words, they bent the One God to serve the many and the marginalized.

One stream of this is known as Black Liberation Theology. In the 1960s and 70s, as African nations threw off colonial rule and African Americans fought for civil rights and power, theologians like Rev. James Cone in the U.S. declared that “God is Black”. Cone didn’t mean God has a skin color, but that God identifies with the oppressed black person so completely that any theology indifferent to black suffering is false. He argued that the true message of Christianity is liberation – wasn’t Jesus a victim of empire, a poor man unjustly executed by the state? Cone and others reclaimed the Exodus story (Israel’s liberation from Pharaoh’s slavery) as a paradigm for Black people’s struggle against racist oppressors. They pointed out that white European missionaries taught slaves “servants obey your masters”, but overlooked that Moses said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” Black Theology thus reframed monotheism not as a tool of domination, but as a weapon against domination. It said: If there is only one God, He is not on the side of the Pharaohs and colonial governors; He is marching with us in the streets.

In Africa, similar re-readings occurred. Kenyan theologian John Mbiti, while not as political as Cone, insisted that Christianity in Africa must take into account African traditions and community-oriented values. Others, like Ghanaian scholar Kwame Bediako, argued that African pre-Christian past was like the Old Testament for African Christians – not something to erase, but a preparatory heritage that can enrich understanding of Christ. There was a flowering of inculturation theology, where African priests and ministers incorporated drums, local songs, and even ancestor remembrance into church services. A famous example is the Roman Catholic Zaire Use (adopted in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo), a Catholic Mass rite that includes drumming, dancing, and calling on the ancestors alongside the usual liturgy. Even the Pope approved that – a small revolution, essentially saying the One God can speak with an African voice and it’s still authentic.

Meanwhile, among laypeople and in popular religion, syncretism continued to be a mode of survival and resistance. We’ve already seen how Vodou, Santería, and others hid multiple deities behind one God’s cloak. In the United States, during slavery and after, many Black folks practiced forms of Hoodoo or root work, which is a form of folk spirituality drawing on African beliefs (Kongo charms, West African herbal magic) while often using the Bible and Christian prayers as well. A folk healer might recite a Psalm while preparing a protection tonic, or invoke the Holy Trinity while laying down mojo bags. This blending was not seen as contradictory by the practitioners – it was only contradictory if you accepted the missionary’s strict dichotomies. In the lived reality of Black spirituality, the boundary between African and Christian blurred.

Enslaved people also found hidden messages of freedom in Christian hymns and scriptures. The spirituals (religious folk songs) often doubled as coded messages – singing about “Go down, Moses” or “Chariot coming for to carry me home” was a way to express hope for liberation (even a planned escape) in a language the slave masters would accept as just religious zeal. In the Caribbean, Rastafarianism emerged in the 20th century as another fascinating twist: it took the Bible and stood it on its head, proclaiming that the God of the Bible is on the side of Black people and that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was a messianic figure. They cast colonial society as “Babylon” – the evil empire – and sought a return to Zion (Africa). Rastafari thus embraced monotheism (Jah, one God) but utterly rejected the European church establishment, seeing it as part of Babylon. It was both a return to African ethos (lion symbolism, communal life, cannabis as sacred herb like ancient rituals) and a re-reading of scripture in a very un-European way.

All these movements – Black Liberation Theology, African inculturation, syncretic folk religions, Rastafarianism – share a common thread: agency. They represent colonized or formerly colonized people taking back their spiritual agency. Rather than a passive acceptance of “the master’s religion,” they actively transformed it. They made Christianity speak languages it was never intended by its European interpreters to speak – languages of resistance, of pluralism, of local identity. In their hands, monotheism became less monolithic. It made room for the ancestors, for the drumbeats, for the revolutionary cry of freedom.

Yet, this should not be overly romanticized: these transformations often happened in the margins and sometimes at great risk. And they occurred after a great deal had already been lost. Black and African theologians might re-infuse Christianity with some indigenous concepts, but generations had already grown up severed from large parts of their heritage. A Vodou priest in Haiti may serve the spirits, but he still operates in a society where many elites and outsiders call his religion devil-worship. The weight of monotheism has not vanished; it still presses on, but its hegemony is no longer unchallenged.

Hegel’s Ghost: The Philosopher of One History

So far, we have looked at religious monotheism. But the ethos of “One Truth” took a secular form in European philosophy, and no one embodies this more than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the 19th-century German philosopher. It may seem a leap from theology to Hegel, but Hegel’s system is essentially a monotheism without God – or rather, with God transformed into a concept called “Geist” (Spirit or Mind). And it became deeply entangled with European self-justifications for dominance.

Hegel proposed that all of history is the unfolding of the Absolute Spirit, which comes to know itself through a dialectical process. History, in his view, moves in a straight line (or an upward spiral) of progress, and it has a goal or endpoint – the realization of human freedom and self-consciousness, epitomized in the modern European state (which Hegel saw as Christian-influenced Prussian constitutional monarchy in his context). In Hegel’s ontology, there is ultimately one Reality (Spirit) working itself out through all events. Different peoples and cultures, to him, represent different stages of Spirit’s self-realization. And – here’s the kicker – Hegel taught that European Christian civilization is the highest stage so far. He literally relegated other parts of the world to earlier chapters of a story that climaxes in Europe.

For example, Hegel infamously wrote that Africa was “no historical part of the world.” In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, he argued that African peoples were stuck in a stage of spiritual childhood and that real World History “begins” with the Greco-Roman world, then Christianity, and reaches maturity in modern Europe. He acknowledged Islam and Eastern civilizations only insofar as they contributed to the unfolding dialectic that Europe completed. Essentially, Hegel provided a philosophical grand narrative that crowned the European (white, Christian) man as the pinnacle of history and arbiter of universal values. Sound familiar? It’s the same structure as the Christian supremacy narrative, just draped in secular language.

Why bring up Hegel here? Because Hegelian ontology shows how even as Europe began to shed some religious dogmas, it created new totalizing systems to justify the same domination. Hegel didn’t speak of saving souls or baptizing the heathen. He spoke of educating “backward” peoples, colonization as a means of bringing them into History. He coolly rationalized that Africa’s lack of “development” meant Europe had the right to colonize it for the Africans’ own eventual benefit (and for Spirit’s progress). In Hegel’s story, just as in the missionary story, there is no true coexistence of equal many – there is only one hierarchy, one ladder of progress, one father-knows-best guiding principle. The rest of us are cast as stepping stones or detours.

It’s important to note that Hegel’s philosophy was not just abstract musings; it deeply influenced European thought. His idea of historical dialectic influenced Karl Marx (who simply swapped Spirit for Material economic forces but kept a similar teleology of progress). It influenced social scientists, colonial administrators, and later even development economists – all spinning variations of a single storyline: there is one modern rational way to be (exemplified by Europe), and others must either catch up or be left out. Even today, when people talk about “developed” vs “developing” countries, or use phrases like “the First World and Third World,” they are unknowingly echoing Hegelian one-track historicism.

Hegel’s ontology was not created for spiritual salvation like Christianity was, but it similarly wasn’t a neutral pursuit of truth; it anchored European dominance by making it look like a fact of nature or logic. If you were educated in 19th-century Europe, you might truly believe that the British in India or the French in West Africa were simply agents of History’s grand plan, lifting those places out of stagnation (never mind the violence and exploitation on the ground). Under this worldview, resisting colonization wasn’t just treason to a king, it was treason to the World Spirit, a futile act against the tide of progress.

In a chilling way, Hegel’s ghost haunted even those who sought to challenge Christian theology’s supremacy. Many Western-educated African clergy or intellectuals in the early 20th century internalized the idea that their traditional religions were “primitive” – they accepted the One Truth narrative in either Christian or secular form. Some renounced their heritage thinking they were moving toward a universal civilization. Others, however, started to question it, especially as the brutality of colonialism laid bare that this “universal progress” was built on forced labor and broken bodies. By the mid-20th century, thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral were turning Hegel on his head, insisting that history was not one inevitable European story and that African perspectives could define their own paths (Fanon even playing with the Master-Slave dialectic to predict that the “slave” may redefine the future). But the fact remains: much of the world is still trying to exorcise Hegel’s ghost, to escape the notion that there is only one valid way to be a modern human.

The One and the Many Revisited: A Question of Restoration

We have traveled a long road in this chapter. From the halls of Roman emperors to the villages of West Africa; from the pages of Marimba Ani’s critical theory to the rituals under a full moon in Haiti; from the fiery sermons of Black liberation preachers to the cool abstractions of Hegel. Through it all runs a common thread: the tension between the One and the Many. The One Truth of monotheism – especially as weaponized by European empire and intellect – sought to overwhelm the Many. And the Many – the many gods, many cultures, many ways of being – fought back, sometimes overtly, sometimes in disguise, sometimes in the very heart of the One (like a Trojan horse of spirit).

Now we arrive at your heart, dear reader, with a question: What might we regain by embracing the Many once more? In other words, can a return to plural, grounded, embodied ontologies restore something vital that was taken from us in the name of “One Truth”?

This is not about throwing away monotheism or declaring war on Christianity or any faith. It’s about healing from an imposed either/or that perhaps humanity was never meant to live under so uniformly. It’s about considering that maybe truth is not a zero-sum game, where if my God is real, yours must be false; where if science explains something, indigenous wisdom must be superstition; where if one culture is “modern,” another must be “backward.” What if, as our ancestors across the globe once believed, reality is expansive enough to hold many truths? What if Being is not a pyramid with one pinnacle, but a vast network, a forest where oaks and baobabs and cedars all grow strong in their own soil?

Think of what was lost: Languages, rituals, a sense of belonging in the cosmos, a respect for the living earth, a connection to ancestors, a comfort with ambiguity and diversity. When European monotheism and its secular shadow (call it modernity, if you will) spread, it didn’t only persecute people; it persecuted possibilities. It said there is only one correct way to know the divine, one valid way to organize society, one path of progress. In that narrowing, the world grew spiritually and culturally poorer. We all inherited that poverty, even the descendants of the conquerors, because a worldview that must constantly deny and destroy others is itself impoverished. We see the results: environmental crises born of a worldview that treats nature as “other” and inert; existential dread in societies that lost community bonds and mythic imagination; racism and intolerance rooted in the inability to value different expressions of life.

But throughout this dark tale, the light of the Many never went out. In Africa and the diaspora, it persisted in the rhythms of song, in the syncretic altars with both crucifix and cowrie shells, in the stories whispered when the master stepped out. And today there is a renaissance of interest in indigenous wisdom the world over – not to reject all that is European, but to de-center it and let it exist alongside others. African Americans seek out Yoruba babalawos (priests) for guidance; white Americans practice yoga and meditate with Buddhist teachings; Nigerians blend proverbs of their grandfathers with the Psalms of David in everyday speech. The Many are creeping back into consciousness.

The weight of monotheism has been heavy – it brought us some gifts (a sense of global brotherhood and sisterhood, powerful ethical visions, grand intellectual architectures), but it also exacted a heavy toll in the coin of human experience and culture. To lighten that weight, we do not necessarily drop the One, but we widen our circle to let the Many sing again. This could mean supporting efforts to preserve and revive indigenous languages and rituals. It could mean teaching our children that multiple creation stories from around the world are beautiful and insightful, not silly myths compared to one “scientific” story – why not hold them all as facets of a truth too big for one lens? It could mean simply humbling ourselves to listen when someone says, “My people see the sacred this way…,” even if it’s utterly different from what we were taught.

In returning to plural, embodied ontologies, we might rediscover a reverence for the earth as truly sacred, not just as “creation” under dominion. We might restore a sense that our bodies and cultures are not obstacles to holiness, but vehicles of it – dance and drum might become prayer again, not just recitation of approved texts. We might also find a more peaceful world, where conquering in the name of the One Truth no longer makes sense, because we’ve embraced that no single human system has all the answers.

The Many Faces of Being – the title of this series – suggests that the divine, the ultimate reality, wears many faces. Perhaps the One is in the Many and the Many in the One, in ways our ancestors understood intuitively but our modern certainties obscured. As we close this chapter, I invite you to feel that possibility. Imagine the weight lifting: the weight that pressed so many down, lightening as we allow ourselves to wonder again, to respect again, to be astonished by all the faces of God, of Truth, of Being that exist.

Ask yourself: Has the time come to set aside the finality of “One Truth” when it is used to harm, and instead to open a space for truths to dialogue? Can embracing the Many restore to us the fullness of life that was taken? The answers are not easy, but the questions are necessary. The ancestors, I think, are listening, hoping we will choose a path of balance and respect. The fork in human thought lies ever before us – not a one-time choice made long ago, but a daily choice in how we treat others and the world. Unity or plurality? Perhaps, in a profound sense, unity in plurality. The journey continues, and the next chapter awaits.

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42. Ibid., on Africa and history.

43. Ibid., on colonization as progress.

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45. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Grove Press, 1952.