GUEST BLOG PART TWO: Christianity and The African

 

This entry is a follow-up from last week.   

Given that contemporary Bahamian society contains a plurality of religious and secular views on the meaning and purpose of God in relation to humanity it seems unfortunate to push all persons in a society toward a particular religious belief.  In situations like this, a culture of conforming to the dominant group, in this case, religion is typically experienced. With this in mind, this entry is a review of how Christianity in a pre-slavery and slavery context constructed negativity surrounding Blacks.  It is clear that early Christian theologians used these contextualized studies of Race and Body Politics as a basis for making universal theological claims. This practice of a dominant group pushing their views on a powerless group is a problem. By contrast, I offer history and practical suggestions toward a better life for Blacks.

 

Rev. Jevon Neely in Ghana 2007

Throughout history, the interpretation of the Bible has played a critical role in the formation and promotion of race (racism) and sex (especially misogyny) dynamics.  The difference between the existence of Black and White, Male and Female, and the correlation of Black to evil and White to purity, were products of Christianity from very early times. 

 

In the Epistle of Barnabas (70-115 CE), the devil, the epitome of the Christian symbolism of evil is portrayed as Black in early Christian philosophy.  In his Greek Commentarium and Homilae in Canticum Canticorum, Origen presents an interpretation of the Black bride in Song of Songs 1:5-6 as representative of the Gentile (non-Jew) Church, which is said to be Black by virtue of its “illegitimate birth”, yet possessing a beauty only by forgiveness from God. 

 

Then the Church officially reinforced this predicament of beauty, carnality, and negativity about Blacks at the fifth-century Council of Toledo.  Also, Jerome’s translation of Song and Songs 1:5 as “I am black but beautiful” is rather interesting, if not interpretively suspicious.  In Hebrew the conjunction between the “black” and “beautiful” is a waw (meaning ‘and’) and even the Septuagint’s (one of the first versions of the Bible) translation uses kai (again meaning “and”).  However, Jerome translates the Hebrew waw as the Latin sed (meaning “but”), rather than et (meaning “and”), as if the fact of being beautiful is abnormal for a Black person. This language is the basis for the color prejudice that was present in Christian conversation long before the first use of term “race” in the fifteenth century.

 

The biblical “Cain” (after killing Abel) was depicted as Black in the medieval period with Negro features and the so called curse on Ham (Canaanite Curse) was also associated with Cain. From the days of St. Augustine, Christians had already linked Cain to the Jews.  However in 1146, this changed and in 1215, papal decree validated this position.

 

Based on these ideals of beauty that used skin color to support White Christianity’s fascination with the degradation of the Black Body, Enlightenment writers such as Hume and Kant assumed their racist views needed no evidence (White Privilege).

So by the time of slavery, when the first slave ship named “Jesus” landed on the shores of Africa, the Europeans viewed and treated Africans as soulless animals (not human) who lacked cerebral ability for intellect and morality. Also, Africans were deemed inferior because they were mainly Muslim or practitioners of African Traditional Religions (ATR’s).

 

With transatlantic slave-trading, Africans were fully reduced to the status of property. For those Africans who actually survived the journey across the Atlantic and social death or family displacement or decided not to commit suicide, the “new life” brought a new heave of abuses: children born into slavery, masters with the authority to murder, maim, rape, lynch, sexually and emotionally abuse, and place limits on education, religion (Islam and ATR’s) and movement.

 

As before, the Bible played a big role in the assault on the Black Body. To justify slavery’s regime, Anglican Bishop of London (1727) sanctioned slavery with his reading of 1 Corinthians 7:20-24; and many slaveholders in North America and the Caribbean appealed to the Bible as well (e.g., Gen. 9; 14:14; 14:18-20; 17:13; Exod. 12:43-45; 20:17; 21: 2-6; 21: 20-21; Lev. 25: 44-46; Deut. 23:15-16; Eph. 6:5-9). Evangelism of Blacks was not done on a large scale until the Great Awakening in the 1730’s.  Prior to that it was believed that Blacks had no soul, and with no soul (the part of the human body that will be judged in the Judgment) there was nothing to be saved by White Christianity’s “Jesus”.

 

Deconstructing the myths, however, reveals that the biblical myths are just that, myths.  They are not authentic or accurate, but are simply the duplications of views that take on the appearance of reality. These myths must be perpetuated by White Christianity (not only Whites, but persons who support, think, broadcast and continue the teachings) because the view of Blacks as emotive as oppose to intellectual, sub-human, criminal, diseased, evil and hypersexual is the basis of the . 

 

The religious concept of the wrongful Black Body is not new.  There was/is a very intentional history started by White Christianity to dehumanize Blacks. Where we cannot go wrong is blaming Jesus (the historical figure and the Christ) for the sinful efforts of the man-made social entity called "Christianity".  One cannot blame Jesus for what Christianity did. 

By detailing a historical review of the Christianity and the African Salve it is understandable that the efforts of Christianizing the Slaves were doomed before it ever started. The starting point of White Christianity in its method to the Black Body (and soul) is theologically inappropriate.  It is unavoidable and imperative that all people – professionals and paupers – investigate the value of indigenous theology and work towards their own salvation.

 

In Christ,

Rev. Jevon O. Neely