Abandoning Christianity won’t fix Africa’s problems

One of the biggest missions of postcolonial African governments has been to reduce Christianity to an oppressive European ideology. As soon as black people achieve freedom, the first institution dealt with is the church.

Thereafter, the favourite thing to do is to go back to our roots and the mantra about getting back our land, supposedly stolen by Christians. More often than not, those black people who still identify themselves as Christians are seen as white stooges who are lost and brainwashed. Though not without merit, few, if any, of the countries that abandoned Christianity and embraced their so-called roots have managed to avoid tribalism, civil war, economic decline, corruption and institutional and governance collapse.

As a matter of fact, in many instances, it took the teachings of Christianity, before independence and democracy, to mobilise black people, first as a black clergy that formed black-led churches and finally economically and politically, for freedom.

African roots and traditions never successfully combined different black groupings into a single ideology and amalgam to overpower colonialism.

Self-hate, a serial fear of and not trusting another black person, is the main reason Africans cannot collaborate and unite for self-determination and leadership of the world.

Christianity cannot be foreign to us when Jesus grew up in Africa.