“How Can the Untutored Africans Conceive God ? ” A Reassessment of Lévy-Bruhl’s Enquiry in the Light of African Lived Religion

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Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s question, “How can the untutored Africans conceive God?”, arose from early Western anthropological frameworks that closely associated authentic religious understanding with formal education and abstract reasoning. Embedded in the theory of “primitive mentality,” this enquiry cast doubt on the intellectual and theological capacity of African societies. This study revisits Lévy-Bruhl’s position by examining African lived religion as expressed through naming systems, festivals, rites of passage, childbirth, and death rituals. Adopting a qualitative, phenomenological approach, the paper argues that African life is intrinsically religious and that African conceptions of God are coherent, reflective, and grounded in lived experience. The study concludes that Lévy-Bruhl’s enquiry is methodologically and epistemologically flawed, and that African religious consciousness constitutes a valid and enduring foundation for African Christian theology.

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