Tempels abandoned doctrinal manuals to seek felt Bantu understanding before re-evangelizing.

Evidence

I stopped consulting manuals, catechism and Catholic doctrine and decided to turn an astonished and intrigued glance at this machine that stubbornly refused to turn, at this man whom I had never looked at before. I had never been interested in him, in his thoughts, in his aspirations, but in the religion of which I was the propagandist. So I looked at this man and finally said to him, “What do you have? What are you missing? What kind of man are you? What do you think? What do you desire above all else? Why your magic remedies? What do they mean? How do they work?” etc. … I must say that my goal in this search for the Bantu man was now to feel “bantu” at least once. I wanted to think, to feel, to live like him, to have a Bantu soul. All this with the intention of being able to adapt myself. Once I managed to see and feel life like him, I would take back the European personality and become again the propagandist of a religion … but speaking, this time, a really adapted and understandable language. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 685

Categorization

• XREF: Plausibly connects to the methodology debates in ethnophilosophy — the tempels-style participative observation that later critics like Hountondji contested.