Deconstructing African Christianity and spirituality
I was born into church life, like many, born into a religious space with strong religious upbringing. Elements of Anglican catechism, liturgy and Pentecostal vituperations, with a good exposure to varying forms of Islamic rigidity and structure of worship. All these a means of connecting with the supreme being, the most-high… God!
God is a concept that has defied many a definition. Many have discountenanced his/her/its existence, yet with all the logic of discountenance the firm belief in the creator has not dissipated or faded away. It is slowly becoming more of a personal pursuit as society frowns on proselyting and any form of radicalism in any religious pursuit.
I have been humbled to have walked this gamut of life within the Christian circle. many things have come up as intriguing incidents in this walk over the past forty-five plus odd years or so. The culmination of all this was my journeys outside Nigeria.
Where did the first thoughts of deconstruction start for me. I believe my first deconstruction came with the issue around tithing. Back at my first serious involvement in Pentecostal Christianity in a growing ministry based in Lagos. They had a standard pattern towards tithing. Malachi 3: 8- 11 was preached and taught religiously as an obligation for all Christians.
8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.
In that practice we as members would get “tithe cards” with a unique tithe number. This card was designed like the old bank card and in it you would record your monthly tithe contribution. Every month the tithers would be called out and the pastor would pray for us. We had the understanding that once we did that, we had entered a unique covenant of protection and prosperity with God. Many of us believed and it was preached that if we didn’t pay that tenth from our income, we would have negative incidents in our life. Such that when any such things happened, we would end up saying “but I pay my tithe, God why?”
I dutifully did this for over ten years suffering guilt anytime I missed out and blaming myself for breaking the cycle anytime something bad happened.
The challenge to this came about a year after I got married. Many teachings didn’t add up, so I started to read and study the Bible on my own. Slowly I found out that the Bible had many tithes and that the tithe mentioned in Malachi was specifically to an agrarian people who had a whole tribe that didn’t work, and the only way of support was for the nation to be taxed for their maintenance. The death knell to this teaching was supplied by one of Nigeria’s top teaching pastors, Chris Okotie.
I had started working for Chris Okotie for free sometime after the birth of my first child. In my association with his ministry, I got to have many one-on-one conversations with him. Seeing I had this open door I chose rather to mine his deep knowledge of Hebrew scripture than to ask for money. So, on one glorious day I asked him about the tithe. His answer shocked me! This was a top pastor in Nigeria and his words to me cleared any doubts my discoveries had created
“Oh my, this is all because of American pastors! That scripture has nothing to do with you as a Christian. Everything in Christ is by faith. The use of this scripture was basically started by the televangelists to raise funds. Everything in the New Testament is by faith!”
It was a confirmation, but it left me in shock. Because I realised immediately that most of the other pastors would be aware of this truth and yet refused to tell this truth to their congregants. This led me into more research.
I did a study of the life of David and his unique role in the priesthood. David was one of the few kings who in the bible performed three roles. He was a king, a priest, and a prophet. In my research into their functions, I found out that the robes and instruments of divination that was used by the priests in the bible were exactly identical to the same tools used by the Ifa priests in Nigeria (the urim and the thumim).
And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the Lord: and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually. — Exodus 28:30
And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech’s son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David.
And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all. — 1Samuel 30:7–8
This discovery shook me again because when David in 1Samuel 30 returns home to Ziklag and sees the city destroyed he and his men break down into weeping. The Bible says they wept so hard that they all became weak. David then did something that was really unique for a king, especially because he had a trainee priest at hand. He took the instrument of the priesthood from the young priest and conducted divination! When reading through the Old Testament one sees this practice all over. To “divinate” simply means to seek the mind of God or seek the help of the “divine” on a matter. The same tools David used to get “God’s mind” on the attack on Ziklag is still the same tool that is being used in Ife today.
Little by little I began to see that all the characters in the Bible were African or had strong African connections. The very region today labelled as the middle east is a part of the continent of Africa and has been proven to have been inhabited by Africans before the Arab invasions. Now this discussion has a deeper dimension to it. I am in no way qualified to step into that discourse. I do not have the necessary study and qualifications to share this. Many have and are doing it so please go out there and read it for yourself, but the truth is out there.
Another revelation that hit me was the practice of circumcision. I will say this categorically, Christianity did not bring circumcision to Africa. Africans had been circumcising long before “Christianity” came here.
Prior to 300 CE, male circumcision, which is a cultural practice that is part of male initiations, is estimated to have existed in Africa for more than 9000 years. -Christine Ahmed Saidi
Many indigenous tribes in the west African region have always circumcised on the eight day while some practiced circumcision as a coming of age rite at the age of puberty for boys. How did our ancestors know about the science of it? Because there is a science to it. Circumcising before the eighth day would lead to unfavourable circumstances for the child.
This fact brings me to my greatest point, Spirituality.
“ A fixation with evil prevented the missionaries from seeing that God had been in Africa before them (Mbiti, 1991). “
One of the things with which the early missionaries condemned Africans for was their mode of worship. It was said that we would worship the spirits and go into trances and dances which they (the missionaries) considered Demonic. So the first converts to Christianity had to denounce any dancing or trancing (my words). This was the norm in every orthodox church into the seventies and eighties. I remember growing up in the orthodox African church in Lagos city. We had to sing the hymns from a hymnal, no choruses. This stillborn mode of worship was completely alien to the African. Sometime in the late fifties in Nigeria some indigenous Christian churches started springing up. These movements were initiated by men that were mostly “il-literate” , men who claimed to have seen divine visions and visitations. Men like Apostle Jospeh Ayodele Babalola who started the Christ apostolic church, Samuel Bilewu Joseph Oshoffa who started the Celestial Church of Christ and Josiah Olunowo Oshitelu who started the Aladura church.
These churches mixed liberally the original cultural styles of worship into the normal Christian liturgy. Their preaching’s were no longer just read liturgies but messages with strong inflections of their culture. With a strong call and response style that is seen across the oceans practiced by descendants of African slaves in Pentecostal churches all over America. They reintroduced dancing and the use of their own local instruments. This came with many incidences of trances and lots of dancing. This move also culminated with the Azusa Street revival which happened in America in 1906 and was led by another African clergyman William J Seymour all the way in the United States of America.
Even in studying the history of Christianity amongst the stolen African generations you see the same inculcation of their African culture into the modes of worship…singing dancing and trances. The mix is more visceral with the Christian sects in Brazil, Cuba and Haiti where you have a concrete mix of both hoodoo and Christianity in equal portions creating a unique spirituality found only in that region which till date is very potent in its beliefs. Professor James Small has said in one of his speeches that, “the wonder is that Africans took a religion that was not credible (in-credible) and made it credible.”
The whole wave of Pentecostalism which has spread through the world started in a small home in Azusa with 15 African Americans. Today the largest ministries in the world all claim to be Pentecostal, a movement started by Africans on both sides of the Atlantic.
So, what is unique about the African and spirituality? I will quote from Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
“African spirituality simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane. African spirituality is truly holistic.”
I have worked as a musician in churches for over twenty years. In that time, I have seen a gradual change in our style of worship. In the early eighties most modern Pentecostal churches like the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Church of God mission and the Redeemed Evangelical Mission (all started in Nigeria) basically copied word for word, line for line, songs that were written and created by either American praise and worship singers like the maranatha singers and later Hosannah integrity and sang this in church. It was a sign of being “modern” or more western. Over time our local song writers have started creating songs and hymns that reflect our cultural identity in the words being used and the names and descriptions of God for God.
Today it is widespread to see African worship songs that completely omit the name of Jesus and focus on the local name of the almighty, Eledumare, Ubangiji, Ayiba, Olorun, Chineke. Unconsciously we have slowly, all over the continent of Africa, brought in practices like the Oriki, which is a cultural practice of the Yoruba people defined as a praise poem. My point in all this is to show that as “Christians” we have from the 1900s slowly but unconsciously been reclaiming our spirituality by transforming the classical Christian culture to reflect our cultural identity. To do this we have brought in many aspects of our cultural and ethnic spiritual practices. In essence we are acknowledging, albeit unconsciously again, that our spiritual practices were never really evil as described to us by the missionaries.
Somehow our African spirituality has blended two supposedly opposed practices and unified them into one, albeit unconsciously. This process is ongoing and somewhere in the journey many will realise the truth that there was nothing wrong with any of our indigenous practices in the first place, nothing was wrong with our spiritual nature and understanding of the supreme being. The European needed to suppress our vibrant nature and culture and he used the one tool he felt would execute that… religion through Christianity and Islam. The holistic approach to spirituality is the reason-detre why no matter how theological any western church is, the depth of worship they experience can never be compared to what any African church or place of worship would exhibit. Think about it, it took fifteen African Americans to birth what is now known as Pentecostalism! And that Pentecostalism has spread all over the world today.
Pentecostalism in its deepest representation is the desire for the nominal person to seek out deeper spiritual experiences beyond the liturgy that the classic Roman catholic, Anglican, Hebraic or Islamic worship mode presents.
Spirituality is the main reason that Africans have over the past 100 years and more have slowly recolonised Christianity and terraformed it to look like their original spiritual beliefs. Our singing chanting and preaching style are all rooted in our ancient spirituality. Even amongst the African American Muslims you see the same style of preaching.
Recently a well-known Nigerian praise minstrel has been accused of being an ifa worshipper because she used specific words to describe God.
In Yoruba God is known as OLODUMARE . In worshipping him there are many names he is called. Some of those names have nearly no meaning in the English language, the language is so weak it cannot express the fullness of these words. Praise singers are digging deep into their original spirituality and using these names and titles because in truth those are the real names of God in their own tongue.
This phenomenon will increase over the next years until we can clearly see that our original worship of our ancestors will be no different from the current Christian speak because we would have completely converted the religion till it becomes totally African.
We may argue or disagree with these assertions but every day we see new examples of it happening. Slowly we will all come to understand that our spirituality as Africans was never wrong. We were told a lie. But we still held on to that lie. Slowly we are exposing the lie and reverting to look and feel free in our own image and our likeness. Some day we will shed the lie and embrace our truth completely converting Christianity into full blown African spirituality.
- Tare Raine writes from his location in Adelaide, South Australia.