The dynamics of culture change can be seen in the evolution of African languages, social structures, and aesthetics as Africans moved across the seas or came into contact with Europeans. This dynamic process also affected African religion and philosophy both in Africa and as Africans became Americans in the new Atlantic world. As with the other elements of culture, religion responded both to its internal dynamic and to the new dynamic created by culture contact and physical transfer. The result was the emergence of a new Afro-Atlantic religion that was often identified as Christian, especially in the New World, but was a type of Christianity that could satisfy both African and European understandings of religion.

This new African Christianity allowed some of the African religious knowledge and philosophy to be accommodated in a European religious system and represented a merger of great significance, similar to the creation of Chinese (or East Asian) Buddhism or the Indianization of Islam. In order to understand this remarkable transformation one must first understand the underlying dynamics of religious knowledge (itself the most fundamental branch of epistemology in this period) and from this the mechanisms for religious change, conversion, and transformation in the presence of other systems of religious knowledge. Viewed from this perspective, we can then examine the development of African Christianity, first in Africa and then in the Atlantic world.

The basis for religious knowledge

The merging of religions requires something more than simply mixing forms and ideas from one religion with those of another.