I enjoyed no freedom of choice as to whether I wanted to meet Ninian Smart. In the very early Seventies, when I was an undergraduate at Leeds University in Religious Studies, we had orders to assemble in a huge classroom to hear this distinguished visitor, of whom I knew nothing. Trevor Ling, whose academic and personal charisma had already led me to 'convert' to the History of Religions, regaled the work of his colleague from over the Pennines. I remember Ling's emphasising with some glee that the North of England was the location for this new discipline of religious studies and that Smart's leadership at Lancaster was instrumental in this regard. I recall thinking that it was good to be in the right place at the right time. But of Smart's person and message, I regretfully retained no memories.
That was to change over the years. I came to know Smart through his books and then, in person, through the British Association for the Study of Religion. My visits to the UK were infrequent, as I was teaching in Nigeria at the time. I was aware of Smart's public efforts to defend our academic enterprise, although, to be honest, I was more centered on exporting his six-dimensional model of religious traditions to Nigerian university classrooms.
I found this model, as have many others, to be an enormously useful foundation for teaching comparative religion. Yet, living in Nigeria, amidst a still vibrant traditional culture whose colorful masquerades and rituals were a common sight, I became increasingly bothered about where to fit art, architecture, place and symbolism into his framework. My sense of this missing dimension was to become more acute when I later began work on a book on Art and Religion in Africa (1996). Imagine my excitement when I heard rumors that a new dimension had been added! It was entitled the 'material dimension' and miraculously appeared in The World's Religions (2nd ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998). Smart characterised it as the ways in which material forms, such as buildings, works of art and other creations, rendered incarnate other dimensions of a religion. He also included those natural features of the world that believers singled out as 'being of special sacredness and meaning' (p. 21). He noted that it was not uncommon to combine 'sacred landmarks' with 'more direct human creations.' I have never understood why the material dimension was an afterthought, particularly when Ninian Smart's books were full of magnificent illustrations of sacred places and works of art. He obviously recognised the historical vaue of material culture as evidence of religious change, whether the transition from aniconic to iconic images in Buddhism or as an indication of basic conceptual differences among religions, as in the case of Islam and Hinduism. He clearly appreciated the devotional function of material representations of religious ideas and experience, as in the form of Orthodox Christian icons, even if he did not pursue the transformative potential of visual symbols, so vividly expressed in the initiatory and funerary arts of indigenous peoples. Smart had even stated that 'the material expressions of religion are more often elaborate, moving, and highly important for believers in their approach to the divine' (p.