Decolonising the Spirit: The Faith We Forgot

For generations, Africans have lived a paradox of faith. We worship the God introduced by our colonisers with fervour yet sleep in fear of the spirits our ancestors once honoured.

Having travelled to many places in the world, I’ve come to realise that what brings cultural cohesion, a sense of identity, oneness, and peace among people is a shared belief system, rituals, practices, and stories. It knits people together. Just as important, I’ve observed that respect for culture and values is also paramount. Where people have reverence for their heritage, where traditions are honoured and not discarded, there is often a stronger sense of self and community.

And so, although it might sound controversial to say, especially as a West African, I believe that the religions imposed on Africa did some damage to our sense of self. This isn’t entirely because of the religions themselves, but because of what they demanded of us: the abandonment and demonisation of our own.

In embracing foreign religions, we branded the faith of our forebears as evil, primitive, or “demonic.” This journey of spiritual colonisation has left deep scars on our cultural identity. It raises uncomfortable questions: Why did we turn against the very beliefs that nurtured our civilisations for centuries? And what has been the psychological cost of casting our own gods as devils?

Before Europeans arrived on the continent and began forcing their religious systems upon us, we had our own ways. Our own understanding of the divine. And the dangerous part wasn’t just that new religions were introduced, it’s that in adopting them, we were made to believe that everything that came before was wicked. That the ways of our ancestors were savage and unclean. And many of us have internalised that belief so deeply that we don’t even question it anymore.

If everything about you is evil from the start: your names, your customs, your prayers, your ways of connecting to the spirit world, what kind of mental space does that leave you in? What kind of self-image can grow in that soil? That’s the dangerous territory that colonially imposed religion has left us to navigate. And to this day, in many parts of Africa, that demonisation persists. It’s frightening how effective it’s been.

When I think about other places I’ve visited, places like Japan, I see a different story. There are Christians and Muslims in Japan, and yes, their numbers are small, but they’re present. I’ve attended Pentecostal services in Japan. But alongside them, there are people who still follow the religions passed down by their ancestors: Buddhism, Shintoism, and others. And no one is going around calling them backward or evil. Christians aren’t berating Buddhists. No one is weaponising spiritual belief against others the way we often do in Africa. It simply wouldn’t be tolerated.

Why can’t Africans do the same? Why is our memory so short when it comes to our spiritual past?

The journey of decolonising my own mind has meant confronting all of this. And yes, I fully acknowledge that Christianity and Islam have brought peace and purpose to many people’s lives, and they’ve been a source of hope and transformation. But they’ve also done damage to our sense of self, to our identity, to how we relate to each other and especially to those who don’t adhere to these faiths.

You cannot embrace something that isn’t inherently who you are, while simultaneously demonising the very thing you once were. But that's exactly what's happened.

I refuse to believe that Africans didn’t know God before their colonisers arrived. Across the continent, there are words for God. In the Akan language, we referred to God pre-colonisation as Nyame, Nyankopɔn (Onyankopong), Brekyirihunuade ("Almighty"), Odomankoma ("infinite inventor"), and Ɔbɔadeɛ ("creator"). These names reflect the Akan understanding of God as the creator, omniscient, and omnipotent. Nyame means “The one who knows and sees everything”, while Nyankopɔn is often used to describe God as the “sky deity”. The one who is above all things.

The concept of a supreme God existed. That awareness was already in place. What Christianity and Islam brought were different presentations of God, but not the first.

And honestly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those presentations. That’s part of the evolution of belief, the natural progression of how humans grow. We learn, we adapt, we adopt. But in the process of adopting, how do we justify the belief that everything our ancestors held dear, everything that brought them peace and unity, was not just outdated, but evil? We don’t ask ourselves that question enough. We don’t investigate how this rejection has shaped how we see each other. How it has warped our African identity.

Growing up, I was terrified of witchcraft. Terrified that someone could curse me, hex me, or cause my downfall through some dark spiritual means. I was afraid of Ghana. Because so many of the stories I heard about my homeland revolved around people doing devious, evil things. And the only protection I was taught to seek was prayer, covering myself with the blood of Jesus. There was never any mention of justice in our native spiritual systems. No one talked about fairness, balance, consequences, or the spiritual light those systems held. Just fear. Just evil.

But when I reflect now, many of those systems had rules. If you wronged someone, and they sought justice through spiritual means, then sure, there could be consequences. But if you did no wrong, then those forces would not touch you. That’s not far off from biblical or Islamic teachings when you really sit with it. The only difference was that because it wasn’t Christianity or Islam, it had to be evil. And that breaks my heart. To grow up fearing your own culture. To grow up fearing your own people. That does something to you.

And now? Now, there’s a church on every corner in Ghana. Every single corner. There’s a congregation in every neighbourhood. Ghana might have the highest concentration of churches in the world—or at least it’s close. But wickedness? Wickedness still thrives.

Former president J.J. Rawlings, now deceased, once said something that really stuck with me. He said, and I paraphrase: Politicians don’t hesitate to swear themselves into office with the Bible. But they’ll still lie, steal, and exploit the people. They’ll still be duplicitous. But imagine, he said, if we made them swear by the gods of our ancestors, by the laws of the native priests and doctors. We would see far less corruption. Why? Because deep down, even though we’ve embraced these new religions, we still fear the power of the old. Deep down, we still believe.

So maybe, just maybe, if we moved closer to that, we’d see something shift. Maybe we’d see less violence, less bribery, less betrayal of the public good. Maybe our salvation isn’t in moving closer to a religion that was imposed upon us. Maybe our thriving is in going back.

Not to reject what we’ve adopted. But to remember and regard what we left behind.