Religious Imperialism on The African Continent

Edit: This post was inspired by a post I saw on a Facebook page called, "No White Saviours."

Religion goes deeper than most people recognize. It is psychological and a way of life (i.e.culture). When another people impose their religion on you, they are inculcating a foreign spirit/ideology with foreign appetites that will control you. Therefore, religion was a potent weapon in the hands of European (Christianity) and Arab (Islam) colonial invaders. They use those foreign enslaving religions as tools for mind control. Both these religions attack and demonize African culture, traditions, language and spirituality.

When we talk about religious imperialism in Africa, we must talk about Christianity AND Islam.

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Over 631 million Christians in Africa w/ Zambia having the highest %. Of the African countries missionaries frequent, most have higher % of Christians than the predominately white counties the missionaries come from. But y’all still coming to spread the gospel 👀🤔

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Christianity & Islam have both been used to erase and demonize traditional African religions since their arrival on this beautiful Continent.

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Quite frankly as plans were being drawn to invade the African continent, we Africans were busy living our best lives, worshipping our Gods of rain, harvest, fertility, war, amongst others. As Africans, we are very communal. This is not to say the individual is under-looked, we recognize and appreciate the role of the individual towards society’s development because without the individual there is no ‘we’. The reverse is also true. African traditional religion was/is an important aspect to the development of our society because of the core values imbedded such as “Ubuntu” or humanity.

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We bet y’all are wondering how the white man convinced us that our Gods and way of life were not worthy. You will be appalled & for our Christian & Muslim followers, it is so important that you remain critical of the way your religion has been used as a tool of oppression.

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In school, we learned that missionaries, “came to soften the hearts of the African people”. With their Bible & their white Jesus they came to ‘soften our hard rock hearts’. As bishop Desmond TuTu puts it “When the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘let’s pray’. We closed our eyes when we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land’.”

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Caption cont’d in comments. For the discussion today, we’d like to hear from Christian & Muslim folks (or those raised in these traditions) on what decolonising your faith has looked like? What other important knowledge can you share on this topic? If you are learning from this #DecoloniseYourMind challenge we ask that you donate what you can toward the libratory library and cafe we are opening in Uganda (Link in bio!) @ Kampala, Uganda

References:

1. No White Saviours