Western Christianity on Africa
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There is a question that has been ripping through my head for years now that someone has once asked me. An Atheist once asked me “as a man of color and of christian faith and belief how do you worship a religion that was taught to your people by white slave owners and forced as the religion of choice to majority of people?” That question has made me wonder so much about the christian religion and its influences on African heritage from slaves throughout the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Between the area of the 15 and 1800s the Trans-Atlantic slave trade began in American, European, and Latin colonies. The kid-napping and dehumanizing of African people was one of the biggest forms of physical and psychological destruction the world has seen. Africans were bought and sold to become slaves to people. One amongst many reasons to justify the taking of the African people was that they were heathens and without religion. Teachings of Christianity began to be taught to the slaves which gave them sense of religion that eventually began the transformation over years to convert many “heathens” in America and in Africa.
Christianity began as a small jewish cult in the middle-east that soon spread through Greece, Italy, Turkey, and North Africa but in the 4th century it was adopted by the Roman emperor and spread around the rest of the empire and began dominating for over a thousand years by white Europeans. In 1492 Christopher Columbus reached the new world and began 500 years of colonialism and changed the life of millions from around the world.
The first colonist to arrive in Africa believed that Africa was a dark continent filled with heathens that needed to be saved from witch craft, ignorance, and evil. The fact that people of Africa had a religious system that existed for thousands of years. In my opinion this is a big tragedy of european colonialism for the simple fact that it could see no wrong in the civilizations it encountered and all it sought to do was to destroy whatever it found and replace it with its own western Christian civilization which had terrible consequences for people all over the world. while sincerely believing they were bringing Christian salvation to the people the Europeans instead brought disease, death, and destructions on a monumental scale.
When the slave trade began the slaves were given the religion of their slave masters and many years later it was taught that Christianity could be nothing but the truth and was part of an missionary effort. The lives that were taken from west Africa to the new world is estimated between 10-50 million people which is an astonishing number of people who lost their freedom and African identity. In East Africa the Christianity had already been there for thousands of years which means the Europeans was not the first Christians to bring Christianity to Africa.