African traditional religion was demonised by Christian missionaries and their converts. Upon conversion into Christianity, our African ancestors were required to denounce and forsake their African spirituality and religions. Our deities were renamed false gods, or idols, or demons. We replaced ancestral veneration and spirit worship of our indigenous deities with the worship of the tripartite male God who comprises the Father, his Son called Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit. We replaced our drums, rattle shakers and hand claps with pianos, organs, hymn books and choirs that sang solfa notation. We replaced our talismen, fetishes, charms, portions and other juju bits with the rosary. We replaced our selves with newly formed civilized selves. Our girls stopped exposing their succulent ripe breasts with pointed chocolate-berry nipples and instead started wearing bras, panties and long cotton dresses. Our boys gave up wrestling, herding, hunting and preparation for warfare because they had to go to sit behind desks and copy the alphabet or numbers from the blackboards in school. Our languages became shameful vernacular as we learnt to twist our fluent tongues in the colonial language. We became a better people, or so we were told. BUT alas, when we lost our ancestors religion and spirituality, what parts of ourselves did we loose? In thinking about death or heaven and hell as presented through Christianity, I find myself desperately lacking a satisfying answer. I wonder how my great-grandfather and his father dealt with the departed in their African philosophy of the time. Do the dead die, in Africa? Do the dead get judged in Africa? Do the dead resurrect into heaven or hell in Africa? Do our dead become ghosts that linger with our ancestors? Do our dead reincarnate seven times? When my grandparents embraced Christianity a century or so ago, what part of me got lost?
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 05:23:10 +0000
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