Ah, let it be said:Colonial Christianity(CC) has made Africans stupid! Before any Christians and Christian fundamentalists get too upset, let me add myself to the group of Africans who have been stupefied by Christianity. I think anybody who has come into contact with Christianity has had their intellectual capacity interfered with. But let us look at some examples. How has CC stupefied Africans?

1. CC is the greatest force in the weakening of African cultural infrastructure. When missionaries came to Africa, they told Africans that ALL their cultures are primitive, raw, and uncooked. That in order to get civilized, they had to abandon all their cultures completely, otherwise they would not be admitted to heaven. The result? Destruction of cultural systems, philosophies that guided African life, knowledge that helped them navigate their respective environments, and so on. A Christian believes that nothing else matters other than Jesus and the Bible. That book has destroyed Africans’ minds. In her book, ‘The Challenge for Africa’, Wangari Maathai argues that de-culturation is one of the most serious challenges in Africa, but it is not closely examined because it is overtaken by other challenges which take a political or economic angle. If you examine those closely, you will see that they are related to culture.

2. Africans are quite happy to buy into the Biblical garden of Eden creation story of origin, and to rubbish all their various stories of origin as primitive. In the garden of Eden story, the woman allegedly fed a ‘forbidden fruit’ (depicted as an apple in CC literature) to a man, who had no self-control, which then set human downfall into motion. Of course, that has been used to entrench patriarchy and subjugation of women, but let me stick with how this has made Africans stupid. How many Africans have ever eaten an apple? How many Africans grow apples? This is just like teaching children the alphabet using A for Apple. This is alienating. Many African stories of origin are packed with teachings, with philosophies that grounded human beings in their respective environments, they featured trees, water bodies, mountains, valleys, etc. So, from a young age, an African child could understand environmental complexity and reverence through these stories. Now we have garden of Eden. Where is this garden? Nobody knows. Even people who live in very arid and semi-arid environments are forced into a paradigm of thinking of lush gardens. Stupefied! I mentioned the other day that Christians in Igboland, Nigeria were destroying trees, which are said to be shrines. The continent is ravaged by climate change. And Africans are cutting trees instead of planting? This is STOOOPPPIID!

3. African cultural forms of expression such as song, dance, performance, sayings, and other forms were an integral part of their lives – before the encounter with missionaries/colonisers. When missionaries came, they said all this is sinful and the dances were lascivious. There were songs about planting, harvesting, songs for new-born children, songs for transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, wedding songs, funeral songs, etc. A rich repertoire packed with knowledge and power. Now, Africans only sing about Jesus! When they want to celebrate something, they sing about Jesus. Jesus has captured and brainwashed Africans. He has been made to be the only person worth composing songs about;Jesus and politicians are the only ones who now get songs composed about them. In many African liberation struggles, the use of song was a critical ingredient in resisting oppression. Now the power of the African mind had been diminished by only creating songs about Jesus. I once asked an elder to sing for me some songs, that they would sing at various stages in life. Her response: Oh I forgot my child, our songs were wiped out by the church! Don’t you think CC has reduced the intellectual capacity of Africans? CC makes Africans think of African culture as sinful. Everything is a sin. Singing your songs is a sin, dancing is a sin. Even children are said to have sinned and have to constantly pray for forgiveness of their sins. What sins have children committed? Stupidity galore! Infact, they have to be baptized to remove something known as “the original sin”.

4. Every religion is shaped by the environmental context from which it emerges. The Bible makes reference to cedars, palms, olives, and so on. Do olives grow in most of Africa? The first time I saw an Olive tree was in Morocco. So, why should somebody in Lesotho be forced to think about olives and to recite bible verses that make reference to them? That is stupefying!

5. Christianity is associated with so much injustice – the slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonial encirclement, extraction of resources, and so on and so forth, but Africans are the greatest defenders of Christianity. How come? Is it because it has made Africans stupid? The most intolerant people you will ever meet are Christians – especially, the ‘born again’ variety. Kenyan Christians massacred other Christians in a church during the post-election violence. During the Rwandese genocide Christians massacred other Christians in Churches. But today, churches in both contexts are packed with Africans. Why? Is it because Christianity hinders critical thought?

6. According to Christianity, when you commit a sin, you are supposed to confess. If you are a Catholic, you whisper your sins to a priest, always a man (the Catholic church is the epicentre of patriarchy), and if you are a protestant you yell and make noise and ask for God’s forgiveness. So, a politician who has stolen public resources, impoverished the poor, made their lives a living nightmare, caused the death of some, can just ask for forgiveness, and will be forgiven – just like that. Then they will meet in heaven with the poor person he impoverished, and dance forever with the white angels in the streets of gold. I saw someone asking – where is the gold in heaven mined from? It must be from Africa. But, back to the point I wanted to make. I wanted to say that Christianity is a Zero sum game for Africans. Nobody has suffered more because of Christianity than the poor, who have to support the lavish lifestyle of the politician that I have mentioned above, and the lavish lifestyle of the clergy. Both of these two groups of people live off the sweat of the poor – one via taxes, and the other one via sadaka/offerings. It appears that the Christian God does not see the gross injustice meted to the poor and oppressed.

7. In Kenya, politicians are very happy to contribute to building more churches. We have more churches than schools and hospitals put together. I wonder if they would be as enthusiastic to contribute to building a library. Politicians are happy to contribute to churches, because the church will keep the flock so mystified and hypnotized and in utopia, that they will not have time to think about where or how their taxes are used. And the church is used as a platform to launder stolen funds. In that way, the church becomes a tool of oppression. But since you are so busy praising Jesus and God, you cannot see it. Our treasures are laid in heaven, this world is not our home, we are just passing by! Stooopid!
8.Is the Christian God deaf?? I saw somebody ask this on facebook. Missionaries depicted the Christian God as a white old man, with a big long-white-beard. This man must be deaf. Why do Christians have to make so much noise? Rasna Warah, a Kenyan writer tweeted how she could not work because of noise from a church near her home. She is not alone! Churches are everywhere – in residential areas, in the city centre, in the markets, in public transport – everywhere! And because the Christian God is deaf, they have to yell – with loud speakers and loud music systems. They do not care if people are sleeping, if people are sick, if people are working, if people just want peace and quiet – they just do not care. Jesus must be praised-day and night. A person who does not care about others is a stupid person. Again, I ask, why is Christianity associated with so much injustice?

9. I think I mentioned that the Bible has destroyed Africans’ minds, right? There is a group of Africans who we should call ‘the Bible says Africans’. Every time they want to make a point, and by point, I mean to justify oppression or to justify timidity, they will invoke some Bible verses. Why can’t Africans read other books? The Bible for Africans should be Franz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth‘ or any other book of that stature. I was speaking to an African the other day, and they were telling me that the reason why poor people are so exploited by the church is because, “they are not educated”. I do not think so. Aside: women are severely exploited and abused by the church- there are videos circulating around Facebook and other forums of pastors molesting women (touching their bodies, so that they can get children and other kinds of such-like garbage). I actually think it is the educated & elite that are the problem and not the poor. The educated and elite will walk around bragging how God has blessed them, they will attribute their financial or other success to “God and prayer”, and never mention anything about hard work, what opportunities they had, what networks they could leverage into, and many other factors outside religion. It is they that have stupefied the poor with this empty religiosity. Because, then, a poor person thinks that the only thing they have to do is pray, fast, and go to church every day and night, so that God can bless them like he has blessed the elite. This brings me to my last point.
10. A poor woman will take eggs from her house and go and give them to the pastor, but will not feed them to her children. She needs blessings, and will be willing to give all she has. Then, her children get malnutrition because of lack of protein. She has no money to take them to hospital. And since the government has bungled the healthcare system, by under-investing in it, because they leave such work to NGO’s and missionaries, and churches, she has nowhere to turn to. She turns to prayer and fasting. She also gets sick and depressed.
Christianity has made Africans stupid.
Christianity has ‘dismembered’ Africa , to borrow Ngugi wa Thiong’os word. It has torn Africa apart into pieces, until Africans do not know who they are any more.

Now, someone will say – why don’t you see all the good things the church has done like creating schools and hospitals? The short answer is this – it is not the job of the church to provide these social services. That is the responsibility of the government. The fact that NGO’s and Churches provide these services is a testament to failure of government, and as I pointed out above, the church gives the corrupt and incompetent politicians a soft landing and warm embrace. If the church was involved in helping citizens to push the government into delivering social services, I would support it. But the church cannot because it is a beneficiary of the poverty, desperation, and oppression of African peoples. Secondly, thee church has thrived(since the colonial period), through cannibalizing other forms of social organization.