By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
It takes uncanny courage and conviction to write a book on the controversial subjects of Christianity and Colonialism. When Eme E. Egwuonwu’s Liberating the African Mind: Who We Were Before They Came landed on my table, I could not but deploy worthwhile time and rigour to undertake a thorough appreciation of the disquisition on Christianity, Colonialism, Igbo Traditional Religion, Heaven, Hell, Jesus Christ, Reincarnation, Karma, Charms, the Igbo Sacred Lore of Nso Ala, and Spirituality contained therein. The book is as polemical as they come, and one anticipates that controversies will surely rage once the book gets the large public outing that it amply deserves.
It almost amounts to a death-wish daring to challenge religious orthodoxies in books. The modern-day example is Salman Rushdie who had the death sentence of fatwa placed on his head on February 14, 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini after publishing The Satanic Verses. Holier-than-thou defenders of the faith, in Islam as in Christianity, take no prisoners. Back in 1600 AD, Giordano Bruno, author of the books On the Infinite Universe and Worlds and The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast was condemned and burned at the stake via The Inquisition in Rome by the Catholic Church.
Somehow, daredevil authors like Eme E. Egwuonwu survive and thrive by putting forward posers that ruffle religious feathers, not minding the clear and present dangers. It is my plea to church leaders to adopt this statement attributed to Voltaire, to wit: “I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The Berlin Conference that heralded the scramble for and partition of Africa was hosted by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1884-85, with not a little prodding from Belgium’s King Leopold II whose devious letter to the colonising Christian Missionaries is included in this book.
Mother Africa ought to have known that the sacred halo of Christianity had been shattered from way back in1517 in Wittenberg, Germany, when Martin Luther openly challenged the Catholic Church which was then the universal faith. Then in 1534 the touted sacredness of the church was further eroded when Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church for marital-cum-political reasons to birth the Protestant Anglican Communion of Nigeria’s colonial masters from Britain.
The use of the Christian Bible toward the enforcement of colonialism is best exemplified by the statement variously attributed to the founding President of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta or Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, or many other sources for that matter, to wit: “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said: ‘Close your eyes – let us pray.’ We closed our eyes, but when we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”
Eme E. Egwuonwu in Liberating the African Mind puts forward the argument that what Christianity undermined most was the mind of the people that conduced them to succumb to superstitions, religious dogma and mental enslavement. The wave of church indoctrination was further enlarged through the rise of Pentecostalism, that major rupture in Christianity which occurred in the American cities of Topeka and Los Angeles in 1901 and 1906 when the movement of “speaking in tongues” erupted. The pastors can magically do and undo through stage-managed miracles, flying larger-than-life super-duper private jets and generally living lavish lives of “my God is not a poor God” fettle that puts Jesus Christ’s humbleness in the shade.
The world of philandering Reverend Fathers and Sisters can hardly be condemned enough. The paralysis of the society where children speak English rather than the Mother Tongue speaks to the almost general loss of direction of the society.
New vistas of meaning are given to the Bible, such that we are informed of the connection between Prophet Elijah and John the Baptist. The missing years of Jesus Christ’s life in the Bible gets linked up with training in the spiritual life of the Oriental religions and masters.
In the end, there ought to be complementarity between the good aspects of Igbo Traditional Religion and Christianity. A deeply spiritual man, Egwuonwu makes a case for Spirituality as a third force, and viable option, between the two contending religions.
The success of countries like India, China and Japan that never bended the knee to Christianity ought to spur Nigeria, and indeed Igbo people, to put a halt to the indoctrination that has stifled the best efforts at progress over the years. It’s obviously societies that give no pride of place to superstitions that make progress. Ours ought to be a brave new scientific world shorn of dogmatic enslavement.
Africa must perforce do away with the perversions of Christianity which the society had embraced that stifles progress. The fact that colonial manipulation and domination are still the main forces hindering the progress of the land is a testament to the reality that conscientious leadership is still lacking here. The joy is that through this book, Eme E. Egwuonwu’s Liberating the African Mind: Who We Were Before They Came by Eme E. Egwuonwu, necessary questions can now be asked with neither fear nor favour.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author