Jomo Kenyatta once said “When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.” Despite growing the fastest on the continent, Christianity’s relationship with Africa is complex. The same religion that was manipulated to subjugate African people and justify their enslavement was as well at the core of emancipation movements and cherished by some independence leaders. Nonetheless, at times being an African and a Christian can at times leave me feeling torn. But this article is an attempt to nevertheless reconcile the two.
Christianity today is used to justify the abuse and exploitation of African people. Anyone on the continent has heard about mega churches that preach what is known as the prosperity gospel- promising earthly riches in return for their congregation giving tithe, and often extra. This is a promise that was never in the Bible. In Matthew 6:19-21 Jesus said that people should store up their treasures in heaven, not on earth where it can easily perish. There was once a Ugandan pastor who sold 1kg rice to his congregation for 50,000 UGX (for reference, currently 1kg of long grain rice is 5,700 UGX) claiming that when eaten, blessings such as a visa, cars and others would follow. The majority of his congregation were of modest financial standing and some unfortunately believed this blatant lie. This is obviously a misinterpretation of scripture and a mere advertising campaign by a shrewd businessman-cum-pastor. The abuse of religious authority and scripture tarnishes its image but should not change its substance. Besides, there are many churches that support and empower individuals and communities as opposed to extorting them for money, such as Watoto which has built villages which are safe spaces for 3000 children.
An important point to note is that the church should not be conflated with the Bible. Read correctly, a lot of the ills that happen in and because of the church are in actual fact be condemned by the Bible. Jesus, a Jew, drank water from a Samaritan woman (the equivalent of a white man asking a black woman ,who was not his servant, for water in 1930s America) , hung out with social outcasts and didn’t strictly follow religion by healing people on a Sunday- acts that were condemned by religious leaders during his day. Looking at the story of the Bible and the life of Jesus- espousing love, peace and fairness- it is unclear how this can be incompatible with any culture.
Christianity may also be perceived to be a white man's religion because of the church's opposition to a progressive society. In 2013 the Marriage and Divorce Bill was being tabled in the Ugandan Parliament. It would have made asset sharing on divorce compulsory and given cohabiting partners greater property rights. The churches main opposition to it was that it compromised the institution of marriage by giving legal protection to cohabiting spouses. A slight legal tangent- activists and human rights lawyers such as Godiva Akullo in her paper How Long Should We Wait? An analysis of the Marriage and Divorce Bill 2009 note that while the Bill has room for improvement, it is a good starting point to better protect the property rights of women. It was especially overdue given that the current Act governing marriage in Uganda was passed in 1902. Unfortunately the Bill did not pass, in part due to the opposition of the Uganda Joint Christian Council to it. From this, prima facie, it can be deduced that the church was in opposition to an improvement on the property rights of African women. The former Archbishop of Uganda, Rev. Stanley Ntagali, said that ‘’we acknowledge that it seeks to champion for the rights of women, but compromises the rights of men and children.” Regardless, in effect the church's opposition to the Marriage and Divorce Bill 2013 supported the maintenance of traditional African culture and inheritance laws by upholding the status quo.
From taking advantage of the poor to propagating racial injustice, there’s no question that Christianity has been used to the detriment of Africans and people of African descent. However, human beings are fallible, but it does not necessarily follow that Christianity as a belief system is incompatible with an African identity and, as has been shown, the church at times promotes traditional African customs. Perhaps the only exception to this would be that it is not possible to serve two gods, and a big part of traditional African culture was religious belief. However, this is an issue that I will save for another article. If the Bible is to be properly read, one would find that many churches that have propagated harm and hate have been incredibly hypocritical. Jesus’ greatest command is to love thy neighbour- not enslave or extort them. Nonetheless the church has as well contributed to building peace and emancipation over centuries. To dismiss Christianity simply because it has been wrongly used as a tool for oppression would be equivalent to forcing the baby, along with the bath water, down the drain.
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