While it is a well-known fact that Christianity is the most popular religion in the world, few may know that its center of gravity lies in Africa. According to recent findings, Blacks happen to be the most devout Christians. Even though Europe is the continent with the maximum number of Christians, church attendance across European countries has been falling due to growing secularism, which focuses on individual spirituality over organized worship among the youth and the affluent.
It has been largely observed that people in richer countries, such as those across Western Europe, attend church services less frequently. This qualifies the United States, with its 58 percent church attendance among self-proclaimed Christians, a little bit of an outlier.
“The odds that an individual will attend church are 15 percentage points higher in the world’s 29 most unequal countries than they are in the most equal ones,” The Economist reported. “And people on the lower rungs of their own country’s economic ladder tend to be more observant than those at the top.”
In the United States, a wealthy country with unusual levels of inequality, Latino and African-American immigrants are not only poorer than the national average but also extremely devout. While only nine percent of the 100 million people living across Africa in 1910 affiliated themselves with Christianity, as much as 55 percent of the billion individuals residing in the continent today identify as Christian, found Centre for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Out of five sub-Saharan countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, 90 percent of all self-proclaimed Christians attend church on a regular basis; which means that there could be as many as 469 million churchgoers across Africa. To bring this into perspective, 335 million people attend church regularly in Latin America, and this happens to be 60 percent more than those attending church services on a regular basis in Europe.
Some may feel the need to examine why the previously colonized, in this context, individuals of African descent, are in fact the most religious Christians. They may wonder why those who have been entrenched in poverty and suffered the most through history are the ones that thump their Bibles the hardest. Evidently, one can understand the role of social justice Christianity and liberation theology in this regard, but does anything change when individuals happen to be colonized mentally? It is widely believed that missionaries came to Africa to ‘soften up’ the local population so they would be more pliable and accepting of white supremacy as well as the exploitation of their resources and land, which is inherent in all cases of colonization. Not only were they given the least empowering narrative of God (a white man) who serves as the supreme master and advocates the idea of forgiveness, enduring suffering and blind devotion so believers can go to Heaven and not Hell once they die; they also decided to cling on to that story.
But, what about those who believe in Heaven on Earth? What about the concept of accumulating wealth in this lifetime so that one can provide a secure future for his or her children and the generations to come? Simply speaking, if our devoutness is linked with our economic subjugation and continual exploitation, then what perks are we deriving from our faith when Christians in developed nations are not being made to sacrifice their wealth for their religiosity? Ironically in most cases, this wealth belongs to those very individuals who were once colonized by the West.
Most rationalists are of the opinion that the answer to all these questions lies in the fact that Black people should be able to channelize their faith, irrespective of religion, in a way that is reflective of their values, culture and condition.
“I’m saying that you are closer to God the further you get away from organized religions than are all handmaidens of conquest,” John Henrik Clarke said. “And these belief systems that had their origins in Africa –all of them, and there is no exception– turned on African people. Everything that was brought into this continent –everything, every idea, every so called religion– was meant to dominate and to control. Every element that was put into the making of every major religion started in Africa. Why is it you are so naïve, you let people redress something you invented, send it back to you and enslave you through it?”
Photo Credits: Voice of Africa
