Christ vs. Nkrumah

I became Christian again a couple of months back. Some of my closest friends have been horrified by my decision. I can actually see where they are coming from. From the outside looking in, Christianity often seems to have come a very long way away from the message of Love, empathy and compassion lived out by the Jew at the heart of it. Some of my friends see in Christianity inconsistency, weakness, and many of the more negative aspects of 1 Corinthians 13:

I am an African, created as much in God’s image and with as much worth as any other person. My becoming Christian doesn’t mean that I suddenly believe in white saviours. Depictions of Jesus as white are European attempts to see God in their own image, much as Ethiopians depicted Jesus and the disciples as Ethiopian. There is no problem with this… until it becomes a tool of oppression. Which is unfortunately exactly what has happened.

Colonialism taught Africa that it had nothing of cultural or religious value to contribute to the world. Children entering colonial schools were taught that the wisdom of their parents and ancestors was not wisdom at all, but mere superstition. Heavy emphasis was placed on the negative, fear-based aspects of our traditions, rather than those aspects of it that fostered community, empathy, balance with nature and the environment, and Love. Elsewhere in the world, pagan traditions (like Christmas) that ran too deep to be suppressed were subverted and absorbed into the Christian whole. We, on the other hand, were taught to demonize our own cultures & religions.

White: good. Black: bad.

As a general rule, we have been taught to be cultural absorbers rather than creators. Feel free to draw correlations between this and the fact that Ghanaians today import far more than we export.

The Funny Thing…

… is that I can actually see a bunch of compatibility between Christ’s message and African traditions like those of my Akan people:

• Belief in the Divine
• Belief in holistic living
• Belief in community and social justice
• Protection of the poor and others who live on social margins
  Tolerance and absorption of the Other (e.g slave, stranger) into the social fabric
• Respect for nature and the environment
• The importance of women

… all of which introduce the intriguing idea that rather than getting rid of Christianity in Africa (which is – frankly – unlikely and ultimately unnecessary), encouraging people to be more Christian could actually bring us a lot closer to what our ancestors were getting right.

When I compare Akan concepts of community and social justice to East African Harambee & Ujamaa or the South African concept of Ubuntu, I cannot help but wonder why Christianity here has to be so steeped in self. The fact of the matter is that there is no single Christianity. However, our many, many, many, many, many, many churches out here are often founded less on actual ideological differences than they are around the personality and style of the men who lead them. Just as Latin America has its liberation theology and America has its prosperity gospel of health and wealth, we do actually have a different way of life to offer.

Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise.

Sam Pascoe (former chaplain to the US Senate)

The Nkrumah Thing

I randomly stumbled upon a Kwame Anthony Appiah TED talk yesterday in which he asserted that – strictly speaking – religion doesn’t exist. He explained that religion is not a separate ‘thing’ and he used the Ashanti as an example, explaining how religion was never distinct but was rather tied in with everything else; a holistic way of life; an understanding of the balance of things, our place within nature, etc.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had an understanding of this. He once wrote that “man is regarded in Africa as a primarily spiritual being“. Recognizing that we had inherited strands of Christianity and Islam, he called for a ‘consciencist’ integration of both of these into a unified African way of living. Instead, we seem to have chosen to keep them separate and somehow try to live each one out, paying lip service to both but not really making either one work.

“Our society is not the old society, but a new society enlarged by Islamic and Euro-Christian influences. A new emergent ideology is therefore required, an ideology which can solidify in a philosophical statement, but at the same time an ideology which will not abandon the original humanist principles of Africa…”

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

Nkrumah defined these original African humanist principles as:

• An attitude towards man as a spiritual being endowed with inward dignity, integrity and value
• The acceptance of the equality of all human beings
• The affirmation of community
• Responsibility for the well-being of the individual in society
• The recognition and protection of the sacredness of nature and the environment

I humbly submit that – rather than showing contempt for the local/traditional – we should explore its above-mentioned parallels with our current faith as a means of better (and more honestly) understanding the way we are, and moving towards something more akin to the consciencist integration Nkrumah was talking about. Ultimately though, placing Jesus and the Love He requires of us back at the centre of everything (and approaching our past/present with the honesty that a commitment to Christ demands of us) could help our society in many ways:

• Continuity with the best aspects of our past instead of self-hatred, dishonest denial or distortion of it
• The return of the idea of the Commons/the Common Good
• Social empathy and respect for people’s humanity
• Deep respect for our fellow human beings as part of the Divine
• Community and social justice
• Custodianship of the environment
• Appreciation of human diversity and solidarity
• Peace and tolerance in an increasingly multicultural society
• Love

Maybe. Can’t help but try.

This is why I will be starting a new category/tag here that I will call ‘Conciencist Christian’, in which I will write about some of the above with regards to our personal and national conversations. It’s a work in progress. Please feel free to join in.

Footnote (taken from http://www.religioustolerance.org/christ.htm)

A case can be made that Christianity did not start in Palestine. According to Acts 11, the followers of Jesus first started being called ‘Christians’ in Antioch. Also, the Romans imposed the name ‘Palestine’ on the Holy Land only circa 135 CE, long after most or all of the books of the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) were written. Finally, the first followers of Yeshua of Nazareth, led by Jesus’ brother James the Just, considered themselves Jews, and as a new tradition within Judaism; not the followers of a new religion.