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Bishop Ajayi Crowther and the Yorùbá Bible (Series Part 1)

May 30, 2022 No Comments

Background

Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s contributions to African Christianity are well attested in the Christian world, especially in the Global South. In his native land, however, the Bishop is mainly seen as a villain than a hero. He is seen as an able instrument of colonialism used to undermine Yoruba metaphysics. His significant achievement, a Yoruba version of the Bible, is critically described as a courier of “Euro-Christian ideas, beliefs, and cultural logics” (Adefarakan, 45) written in the Yoruba language. Among the adherents of the traditional Yoruba religion, Bishop Crowther is a traitor who willfully allowed himself to be used in the corruption of what he once held dear.

Christianity Decolonized

Scripture and Evolution: Genesis 1-11 as Mytho-History (Series Part 5, Finale)

February 28, 2022 1 Comment

Clearly defining terms

Anyone who carefully reads the book of Genesis can quickly tell that the first eleven chapters are markedly different from the rest. Indeed, readers have noticed this feature for millennia. Genesis 12 describes the call of Abraham and the rest of the book chronicles events in the lives of Abraham’s posterity. Genesis 1-11, however, is quite different. The scope of these parts of Genesis is cosmic and global. Genesis 1-3 describes the creation of the cosmos, earth, and humans. William Craig argues that when read in light of the whole of Genesis, the Pentateuch—of which Genesis is only one part—and the ancient Near East (ANE) contexts, Genesis 1 to 11 is best understood as a myth with a keen interest in history. Genesis 1-11 functions to situate the nation of Israel within the cosmos. As Craig writes, it “is a sacred preamble to the history of Israel” (54).

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Adam Could Have Existed 6,000 Years Ago (Series Part 4)

February 11, 2022 2 Comments

Introduction

If the Copernican revolution defended by Galileo Galilei displaced humans from the center of the universe, the Darwinian revolution completed what was left by stripping humans of any sense of unique worth. Whereas people had embraced the idea of being created by some supreme being as the science of human origin, Darwinism offered a radically different narrative in which a human is no more special than a SARS-CoV-2 particle. Indeed, the former owes its existence to viruses which are her genetic ancestors. While not challenging the Gospel of Jesus, the Darwinian idea seeing 32ly invalidates the message of the first few pages of the Bible. For the theologically minded persons, those were very trying times. Theologians and skeptical scientists levied critiques against Darwinism—a not unusual development; new scientific ideas always benefit from reviews. These critiques helped refine the Darwinian thesis. Today, Darwin-inspired evolutionary science is the scientific consensus—even if substantive debates continue about various aspects of the dogma. All in all, theology yielded grounds to the unstoppable mighty Darwinian force in all of this.

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Galileo’s Trial was NOT a Case of Anti-Science Church (Series Part 3)

January 20, 2022 1 Comment

An Everlasting Myth

Every schoolchild knows something about Galileo Galilei. She may not know that the 16th-century Italian scientist studied at the University of Pisa or designed telescopes that he later used to observe mountains on the Earth’s moon. But she knows Galileo was a bold scientist who stood up against the Pope and the Catholic Church with his scientific findings and got severely punished. Indeed, even today, people continue to formulate Galileo’s friction with the Church as an archetype of science versus religion or reason versus faith. In many people’s minds, religion is just the sort of thing that hinders scientific progress, as the story of Galileo showed. This story is a myth, an untruth, as I shall show below.

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Science and Religion as Social Programs (Series Part 2)

December 17, 2021 No Comments

The Big Human Factor

It is no news that science and religion often make claims concerning the same things. Sometimes they concur in their proclamations; other times, they do not. For instance, for some 2000 years while science, under the influence of Aristotelianism, maintained that the universe was eternal even though the first page of the Bible vehemently disagrees, proclaiming that the universe had a finite past. Similarly, Galileo, a Christian and scientist, knew about the church’s teaching that the earth was the center of the universe when he proposed heliocentrism. These observations need not be surprising. Whatever else one may think about religion and science, this is true: humans play considerable roles in both endeavors and do so with their messy humanness.

Christianity Decolonized

Science and Religion: Omnipresent Eurocentrism (Series Part 1)

November 16, 2021 No Comments

Background

Eurocentricity infects every pillar of society in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Sometimes, the presence of eurocentrism is subtle and hence difficult to detect. Such is the relationship between African Pentecostal Christians and science, as this blog series will elucidate. But, first, let us sketch the history of how eurocentricity infested African Pentecostalism.

Africans embraced Christianity along with the foremost Apostles of Jesus from the very beginning. When Europeans introduced the faith to sub-Saharan Africa, however, they mixed it with European politics. The earliest missionary attempts in sub-Sahara Africa focused on commerce and slaves than they cared to preach Jesus. By the 19th century, European missionary works in Africa were a competition between Catholicism and Protestantism. The indigenes who inherited this fragmented faith often also embodied the interdenominational rivalries which existed among their European counterparts. Reverend Anthony Erhueh writes (84):

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White Jesus and Continuing Racism in Africa (Series Part 3, Finale)

June 26, 2021 No Comments

A yet pervasive racism-aiding thinking error among Africans is the assumption that because colonizing white people no longer live in sub-Sahara African States, racism does not – some people even say cannot – exist in these spaces. It is a reasoning colonizer would like very much since it excuses them from the harmful consequences of their destructive escapades on the continent. This illogic sees racism as essentially a matter of how a white person treats non-white persons. Racism, for them, is relational. When construed in this way, racism cannot exist where white people are not present in large numbers and with colonization intent. Relational racism is, however, only a tiny slice—and a comparatively less significant slice at that—of racism. In places where white and black people share spaces, most black people would care less about relational racism as they would institutional racism. In post-colonial Africa, however, the problem takes different forms.

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White Jesus not Informed by Biblical Data (Series Part 2)

June 7, 2021 2 Comments

Having addressed the cultural background of Jesus’ time and the ubiquitous physiognomic awareness recorded in the Hebrew Bible (See Part 1), we are now ready to look into relevant New Testament data. Our minds may have been so thoroughly clogged by the image of a White Jesus that we may be shocked to learn that the Bible says nothing that may help anyone visualize what the historical Jesus might have looked like. Though New Testament writers often portray Jesus as a type of Moses, not a single writer mentions Jesus’ physical trait like Exodus does with Moses. Consider the Gospel of John, for instance. Although John explicitly links Moses and Jesus when he says, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (1:17), he says nothing about the physical form of Jesus. Instead, we get this verse: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). As Joan Taylor remarks, “this does not immediately conjure up an image of a specific person who could be described in terms of height, facial features, handsomeness, beardedness, clothing, or whatever” (2).

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Jesus, Physiognomy, and First-Century Rome (Series Part 1)

June 4, 2021 5 Comments

Background

Thanks to European imperialism manifested through colonization and slavery, one of these images is unmistakable. Indeed, the European Jesus is such a well-developed form that one could endlessly change the face of the image without affecting its recognizability. The White Jesus typically has long, straight hair with a long face instead of a rounded one. He is, of course, always white and often has blue eyes. The White Jesus never wears shorts but a robe and a mantle. As Joan Taylor observes, the image or form of the White Jesus is so distinct that “he can be recognized as miraculously appearing in clouds, on pancakes, or pieces of toast” (1). The rather interesting irony is that the juxtaposed, brown-skinned image above is closer to what the historical Jesus looked like than the universally marketed White Jesus. In first-century Palestine, Jesus would have most likely kept shorter hair as it was customary. If he had long hair, it would be due to neglect and would look nothing like White Jesus’ coiffure.

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My Encounters with the Africa Study Bible: A Review

March 13, 2021 No Comments

The message is simple: use the Africa Study Bible in your studies, for it will immensely help in exposing colonial ideals masquerading as Christian virtues and also arm you with knowledge of Africa’s colossal contributions to the faith.

Some years ago, while assisting in a Sunday School, a lady joined our class. She was a little above the age bracket that I was used to seeing, but she was calm, respectful, and teachable. I do not recall the lesson of the day, but it must have had a citation from the Pentateuch which mentioned ancient places like Cush or Put. Shortly after the reading, this lady raised a question: Why do we, black Christians in black churches, read passages having to do with Africa in such a hurry? On that occasion, her point was that we read through “Cush” or “Put” without mentioning that these terms have real referents that still exist today. We had read the passage like many Christians do the genealogy passages of the bible. After the class, I went to thank the lady for her contributions that day. It was then that I noticed she had an unusual bible with a trademark African design on its covers.