The Sunday Mail
Pr Paul Timothy Reynolds
ADAM and Eve weren’t white. God’s chosen people the Jews weren’t white. Jesus on Earth wasn’t white. The apostles weren’t white. The converts to Christianity during the early part of church history weren’t white. And the next swathe of converts in Africa and India were also…not white.
The unfortunate misunderstanding that Christianity is somehow a “white” religion or in conflict with an African person’s sense of identity comes from at least two areas: one is physical colonisation, and crimes against humanity by white people who called themselves Christian.
White Christian missionaries were not the problem, because the vast majority of those folks had an agenda of providing practical support to the local population and taking the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to them, sharing the hope of forgiveness and reconciliation with God. That’s not to say they didn’t make mistakes or do bad things – like any other human being, they did.
Tragically those purer waters were muddied and polluted by white colonialists who – whilst claiming to have the same God as the real missionaries – sought to remake Africans in their own image, because they had already remade God in their own image.
The Europeans saw pagan rituals and unbiblical religious practices and tarnished every unfamiliar cultural idiom as being part of the same godlessness. And that’s putting it nicely. Another perspective that’s at least as true is simply that they arrived in countries where people did things in unfamiliar ways that seemed inferior and tried to stamp it out.
The reason that’s eternally tragic is that therefore and understandably, many African people came to believe that the God of the Europeans was also merely a god for the Europeans.
Much like different areas or cities might have their own deities, so did the white people. And if those same people also carried guns then, well, you would better do what they told you and quite a lot of your cultural practices will be consigned to history. I don’t know how many people rejected Jesus, rejected God, because they felt that to do so was to be faithful to their truest identity as Africans, but they should be mourned.
Fast-forward to the present-day and remnants of that same, Christianity-isn’t-African myth remain. For example, the idea that you (especially women) need to dress in a certain way to be a good Christian is not found in the Bible. And God certainly has no interest in the straightening of hair or wearing of hats in 2017.
Underneath those lies, many of the criticisms of Christianity in Africa is something very dangerous: the idea that Christianity is a largely cultural phenomenon and can be evaluated on those terms. Part of the problem is that so many churches equate their way of doing things with God’s direct commands. From music styles to dress codes, from décor to preaching style, architecture and so on.
This is where we come to another key reason for the myth of a white Christianity: marketing. Most of the money in the Christian world comes from the US, and up to this point the bulk of the films, cartoon and footage of churches comes out of a largely white context. So even leaving aside the occasional tendency to impose American cultural idioms, it is perhaps inevitable that simply by watching television we get the impression that Christianity is white. What then do non-Christians need to know, and what do Christians need to do? Let me give you two. First, understand which methods of “doing church” are commands of God and which are preference. God says relatively little about how we should do, and rather more about what.
For example, it’s clear from the New Testament that certain elements were present in a worship service: prayer (including praising God and confessing sins), singing and preaching the Bible. Regarding “how”, all this should be done in a manner that brings honour to God rather than people, and it should be very clear to everyone that preachers and leaders in the church should be examples of godliness, and not in it for the money.
Second, focus on the message, not the messengers or the rituals. I am a pastor. Pastors are not important. We are simply messengers taking God’s Word to His people and those who are not His people, and our greatest desire in that task must be that when we are done, people leave us not thinking about us but about God and his message; not the preacher, the musicians or the choir or anything done by people during the service.
You want to know why so many non-Christians think Christianity is a culture not a message?
It’s because so many Christians and so-called Christians live like that, paying a great deal of attention to the surface and the way things look, and nowhere near enough attention to what God actually says.
Those of you who are parents understand something of this when you have children who are not just like you, who like to do things differently.
What do you do when you are confronted with that reality? Force them to always do things in the way that you enjoy most or find most comfortable?
Or do you allow yourself to sometimes give way to their preferences as a mark of love, and by so doing helping them to understand that personal preferences are not the law, family tradition is not God’s command, and the way your church does things is not the only way acceptable to God?
Christianity is not white. Nor is it brown or black or any other colour. God is not interested in that but in your relationship with him. Are you reconciled to God because Jesus has once-and-for-all forgiven your sins through his death on the cross and his resurrection and you have put your faith in him? It’s as black and white as that.
