According to Judith Bachmann, Cole’s position should be understood as an active intervention in the global debates on religion and science at the end of the nineteenth century. He criticized scientific materialism and reinterpreted African traditionell practices and nativ Church as “true science and true religion” in harmony with natural law(understood, for instance, though concepts such as animal magnetism within Theosophical discourse). This position did not amount to a rejection of Christianity; rather, it involved a critical distancing from what Cole perceived as a corrupted form of European missionary Christianity, combined with the claim that a true form of Christianity could be re-established on the basis of African
traditional knowledge. Bachmann situates this position in close relation to esoteric discourses associated with the Theosophical Society, which emphasized the ultimate unity of religion and science, the critique of materialism, and the recovery of true religion and true knowledge. By drawing on these premises, Cole articulated African traditional knowledge as capable of accessing universal truth claims. His case is therefore assessed as an example of how, within contexts of global entanglements, non-European intellectuals did not passively adopt modern categories such as science, religion, or secularity, but actively exercised as agency in their ongoing reconfiguration. == Herbalist ==