Implications of Western ‘Evangelisation’ on the Wings of Violent Imperialism & Geopolitical Annihilation of African Peoples

Introduction

The purpose of this piece is to shed light on how Christian faith arrived in parts of Africa not on its own merit rather on the back of geopolitical savagery of Western Powers accompanying the Scramble. Reviewing history of Western Christian ‘evangelisation’ of many parts of the world requires deeper insight and careful analyses of dominant narratives (by the conquerors) of rescuing ‘savages’.  Gaps in the narratives have been smoothed over many generations of civilisation-stripped erstwhile savages who are caught in an existential struggle between advancing their own histories which conflicts with the fact that the Christianity their forefathers received was imposed by force in part. The so-called evangelisation is rather part of a geopolitical enterprise of capitalism expansion post-slavery which used the politico-military prowess to subjugate peoples to accept a new faith by force of arms. By so doing faith was not shared in peace and ‘signs and wonders’ did not manifest as endorsement of the High God of Jesus Christ.

Correct Label

While Christianity as a term connotes global spread of Jesus Christ existence/teachings, it is important to carefully isolate and delineate identities of its exponents and exporters at any given time. With regard to this narrative, the western Christianity exporters are the main supplicants i.e. Roman Catholic, National Church of England alias Anglican Communion and other Protestant denominations. These groups are the main players who engaged directly or indirectly with the Western Powers [Spain, Portugal, UK, France & Germany] plying their geopolitical trade to violently capture, destabilise and strip peoples of their civilisations.

Various Western religious labels have already notoriously participated in the ignominious dehumanisation of Africans in the over 3 centuries of international slave trade.  What they engaged in, or supported or identified with have nothing to do with faith in the High God of Jesus Christ rather a deliberate association with full spectrum geopolitical power unleashing savagery, unmitigated violence and total destruction of generations in God’s name. Blasphemy 101!

There are other labels of Christianity that did not participate or engage in this savagery and industrial violence on African peoples. These include the Orthodox Catholic Christians in their different national formations. In any case all these are the communion of faith centred on Constantinople sphere of influence that fell out with Rome in 1054 as a result of the Filioque controversy. Geopolitical weakness may have spread them such enterprise. On this point it is established that an absence exist in the universality of Christian labelling in its association with inter-generational dehumanisation and annihilation of peoples pretending to be executing divine project of evangelisation in the name of the High God of Jesus Christ. Where Eastern Christianity cannot be totally excluded from violent missions of civilisation around the world but their footprint is either absent or minuscule in Africa.

Agency of Dehumanisation/Suppression

Human beings do not give faith. Human beings have always produced contradictions, inconsistencies and struggles. They equally seek to use any opportunity to advance profound interest even at the expense of other human beings by invention superiority/inferiority classification. Even authorities within the body of Christ advance abhorrent theories as was the case on whether American Indians were real human beings in the debate between Bartolome de las Casas and Juan Gines de Sepulveda in 1550/1. 

Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ, since the passage of the last apostle and since the last phases of Christian persecution by Rome; the new opportunities afforded in the Edict of Rome in 312 by Emperor Constantine brought profound and unexpected change in self determination in faith & Christian living. It is inconceivable that this new profound association with imperial power will simply wash off without compromising some of the human contingencies of faithful. The lifting of persecution brought many benefits but no one could affirm that all attribution of God’s benevolence on this act is neutral and cost-free. By the way Constantine was not Christian as much as Cyrus didn't know God.

It would be spiritually incompetent and malevolent for anyone claiming faith in Jesus Christ to think that they can manage and handle competently a power that perceives the whole world as its beef, with grand geopolitical designs and possess the best military capability. By the way in an existential struggle between temporally unlimited spiritual essence and a temporally limited powerful imperial construct, in time and space blinking was inevitable. So in many ways the final outcome may allow each party to claim victory of superiority hence international division of labour between the spiritual and the temporal allowed one party to control the order for a fixed period of time while the other party compromise biding time for the long haul in the then Christendom. It was more complex than that.

When the dust settled a Christianity devoid of internal cohesion and its leaders started piggybacking political power ever since and at times became totally dependent on it for very simple things like affirmation of faith components. With subsequent reconfiguration of politics in context and in space, Western Christianity has continued to leak independence and increasingly become subordinated to political power. In any case it is not unusual for western Christianity to be devoid of temporal power even blessing temporal power immoral enterprises, actually it is the real deal though not the final manifesto. Treaty of Westphalia is a testament of such subordination after temporal separation from (Western) Holy Roman and (Eastern) Byzantine Empires associations/control of the human component of the Body.

Colonialism Evangelisation

It will not be puritanical to question the assumed methods of mass evangelisation currently accepted after generations as normal. After all man is not just matter, but equally spirit. Therefore evangelisation is supposed to be an experiential spiritual war in essence not an intellectual/academic exercise. In any case the question can be stretched further to critic the viability of forced conversion of peoples as a secondary effect of imposition of colonialism via industrial violence and sustained dehumanisation. This has happened in different parts of the world, in the Americas, even after the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1531. The unique feature of this apparition or ‘signs and wonders’ for the faithful then and now is the clear manifestation of divine design within the ontological and cultural context of the target population. An overthrow of the erstwhile spiritual order without firing a shot! The case for inculturation was dealt a massive blow even then! Whose culture is superior to be inculturated into and whose culture is inferior to be de-culturated?

There was a clear manifestation that the High God of Jesus Christ is not a white man which fits perfectly with Pauline conclusion that in Christ there are no distinctions. The essence of the High God of Jesus Christ is manifested to peoples in their own unique circumstance and not by vicious imposition of superiority complex in the name of God. Therefore evangelisation, conversions and mass conversions are actions of the High God of Jesus Christ that cannot be imposed with industrial violence, murderous annihilation of peoples and unquestioned acceptance of errors.

The template for individual conversion can be extracted from the sacred scripture in the case of Cornelius. There is no evidence of inhibition of the Holy Spirit on his person as a result of his ethnicity, status and origins. Defying human expectations and narrow conclusion, the High God of Jesus Christ revealed himself sufficiently from His immense salvific economy for Cornelius conviction, acceptance and conversion. No gun was pointed to his head neither were his interlocutors in a hurry to cover the next territory to consolidate fresh spatial gains.

The whole of Act of the Apostles of the sacred scripture is replete with examples of post-resurrection mass conversions. What is very clear in each example is that this new faith is the spring up of devotion in a dominant geopolitical superstructure called Rome. The human agency of the new movement did not assign or ascribe to itself anything beyond testament to the High God of Jesus Christ. They were not backed up by any geopolitical power, military arsenals, and multinational corporate interests.

They saw to it that there are souls to be converted in their unique economic, political, social and environmental situations only. These conversions took place mostly if not in all case with the expression of interlocutors’ evidence through the power of the Holy Spirit manifesting in ‘signs and wonders’ of miracles which suspend & defy physical law, scientific laws and overcoming/overriding default malevolent spiritual orders. At these manifestations of divine order in miracles including projecting positive impacts on personal and collective circumstances, conviction and conversion is effected through baptism of the Holy Spirit complimenting prior baptism of water which is insufficient.

It is the contention of this article what is ignorantly portrayed as successful evangelisation of peoples or ‘savages’ on the back of geopolitical destructions and industrial violence is corrupt, decadent, immoral, regressive and innately unchristian. Imposition of new knowledge, learning methods, cultural milieu, new languages and new worldviews which may trigger abandonment of questionable sociological practices cannot be equated to Christianity or conversion. They are mere works devoid of the spirit. Most of the interlocutors who were on these evangelical missions post-international slave trade were ordinary men who were awed by foreign experience and limited knowledge of the Other.

Many of them were oblivious of the potency of the Holy Spirit, most were divorced from the reality of the sacred scriptures examples in the Acts of the Apostles. These positions were most devastating with western European secular and anti-God educational methods that dismiss the divine, the Holy Spirit and any disposition that opens the door to positive spirituals. In the name of eschewing scandal and maintain order as if God can be imprisoned in structures, evangelisation and conversion missions are reduced to routines drafted in manuals and huge texts of questionable relevance. Above all the end doesn't justify the means. There is nowhere in the sacred texts and Tradition that support annihilation of peoples because they are not Christians. All the wars of crusade, wars against heretics, wars of conquests in God’s name, all the genocides, international slave trade and colonialism if pursued in God’s name are intrinsically unchristian, false, devilish and delusional.

Abandoned Leftovers

The main objective of evangelisation is not to bring soul to God, rather to enable the High God of Jesus Christ to reveal himself to each soul. The enabling process include availability of free space, free time and unfettered awareness to allow for uncompromised exchange, processing of information, examination of issues/contradictions, presentation of evidence (‘signs and wonders’) and making informed decision based on freewill.  This is not an ideal that should be dismissed under careless ruse of false philosophical and regressive theological development. It is a spiritual investment for an individual, for a family and for communities. Conversion based on baptism of water and Holy Spirit frees the converted from among other things the erstwhile dominant (malevolent) spiritual order.

One of the outcomes of the colonialism backed evangelisation is its clear incompleteness. Of course it was invested and rolled out to buttress geopolitical and geoeconomic objectives in space and time, the preciousness of time meant that standard of true conversion was eliminated. In a conflict of huge human annihilation, lives are protected if one/communities converted under duress. It is called self-determination. Change of disposition for apparent material consolation is enough to maintain a façade of faithfulness, avoid apparent social ostracisation and accelerate social mobility in a new system. Big church buildings and huge turnover of attendees do not signify successful evangelisation and true conversion. Since the spiritual order was untouched and the deities remained in place, the façade of evangelisation was and remains a farce.

Positive change in material possession is not the true sign of conversion to the High God of Jesus Christ. The near dormancy of invoking the Holy Spirit forcefully to clear the path, the vibrancy of dependency on human intellect, the full adoption of human methods/structure and near ignorance of humility versus arrogance becomes cogs in the wheel of true conversion. Those who pretended conversion to save their lives continued to serve various deities until they deceased without clear transfer to their subsequent generations. Then the first receptor received baptism of water on their death bed like Emperor Constantine if they are lucky. Now for most pretenders, only the same baptism of water suffice ignoring and defy that of the Holy Spirit. The children devoid of baptism of the Holy Spirit have been brainwashed in the new educational/learning/knowledge systems to disregard their historicity and ontology to the point of leading malevolent attacks on their own now perceived inferior and devilish origins.

A number of processes evolved and emerged in this outcome. The powerful deities left unpropitiated and devoid of devotees & supplicants reacted and continue to react in various ways. Profoundly their reactions always triggered as temporal reflex or by living human agent are malevolent displayed through various wicked projections, manipulations and negative outcomes. Untimely deaths, unprecedented loss of fortune/greatness, division in families/extended families, confusion among erstwhile united communities, massive fear of the unknown, serious illnesses defying medical knowledge that rather gouge huge resources, marital problems, business misfortune and many other negative & distressing situations are examples of malevolent spiritual reaction.

These experiences manifest regardless of status, level of attainment, wealth, education, location or distance from origin and authority. Malevolence of negative spiritual forces is not respecter of persons. Malevolent spirits/deities are not specific to Africa, they are a global phenomenon in case any fool dismiss them from the so-called developed world. For examples what motivates abortion? A murderous condemnation of the unborn in industrial scale as solution for the problems of the living!

Most of these issues are dismissed as nonsense, inventions, psychological, emotional and improbable by the so-called learned and educated ‘Christians’. The so-called educated mind/victim is caught in an existential struggle to explain and dismiss real experience simultaneously. Sadly he/she is already exposed on 2 fronts; an imposter of his ontology and origin unable to understand and defend oneself from raging onslaught, and a nominal Christian who is uninitiated into the power of the Holy Spirit to enable him/her to understand and successfully defeat the malevolent forces and their agents. Their efforts to engage their priests and pastors for help collapse on the fact that these priests/pastors are not only ignorant but are trained to be ignorant and doubtful. Yes, doubtful of the true power and essence of the High God of Jesus Christ by those perceived as first soldiers in the front line.

Conclusion

The whole presentation or narrative that colonialism was accompanied by successful evangelisation and conversion of peoples especially in Africa needs to be revisited from the true Christological and Holy Spirit perspectives using Act of the Apostles are reference. As ignorance abound, misery will continue to pile on the innocent and the misled.