Christianity Across Time and Moving Forward
by Megan Judd
“He came quietly and peaceably with his religion… Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart).
I read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart during the spring of my senior year of high school. The book follows Okonkwo, a respected individual in the fictional village of Umuofia, and his experience as the village is influenced by Christian missionaries. At this point in my life, I had begun to fully accept my disbelief in Mormonism, the religion I was raised in. Yet, I still held a deep respect for my friends in the church and celebrated as many of them accepted mission calls. However, the message of Things Fall Apart stirred conflict in my mind. How could I knowingly support my friends on mission trips with the knowledge of the calamities Christianity caused in the colonial period?
I, coincidentally, had agreed to go on a church humanitarian trip to Mozambique the following summer. The project was to build a school in the less fortunate area of Matola. Throughout the summer, five different groups were working on the site. Fundamentally, I was uneasy about the trip and the connotations around it. Yet, I agreed that the children needed a school and on the promise that there would be no proselytizing.
I went on the second of the five trips to Mozambique. My dad and I followed the progress of the school on the Instagram page after our trip. After the last group left in August, they posted pictures of the finished project. My dad sent me the post, and upon opening it, I was struck with disappointment and guilt. Painted along the side of the school was a Book of Mormon scripture. That school would forever be marked with a piece of Christianity. Why was there the need to share Christianity in an area we deemed “less fortunate”? Would I forever feel guilt for having practiced and believed in the religion itself?
Christianity is an influential keyword in Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). Like Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, colonial Christianity was the knife that severed families, destroyed cultures, and dealt generational damage. The keyword possesses multiple meanings, fluctuating across time and places. Along the pre-colonial, colonial, and decolonization timelines, observing and dialoguing these interpretations is imperative for the future meanings of the word within the scope of NAIS.
To understand the implications of Christianity across time, it is fundamental to address the word in a pre-colonial context. More broadly, the word “religion” can be characterized as a faith in what is reasonable and consecrated. However, “faith” is intrinsically a Protestant heuristic (Jakobsen). This understanding of religion has Protestant and Christian roots and is therefore problematic. Not every religion follows the Christian model of “religion,” such as Buddhism or Daoism, yet it is grouped under this term. This understanding of religion is still prevalent today.
Additionally, Christianity can provide a means to power. In the pre-colonial period, Christianity built the basis for sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty has theological origins. It was used to describe rulers as the “sovereign,” being chosen by God as the one to have authority. These beginnings of Christianity are essential to discuss the word across time.
In the colonial period, Christian missionaries were driven by an effort to “humanize” Native peoples and the belief that their knowledge was superior. Therefore, they believed they had an endowed right to spread their beliefs. For instance, during this period, being “human” from the colonizer's point of view involved becoming a part of their culture and civilization. There was, therefore, a positive association in the colonizer’s perspective between being human and being Christian (Williams 150). Moreover, alongside this colonial position, colonizers also possessed a sense of superiority regarding their way of knowing. Dian Million describes Western epistemology as a “foundational belief in its superior way of knowing while denying other societies the human act of world creation and interpretation” (Million 339). Colonial Christianity exemplified the sense of authority and superiority discussed in the pre-colonial context of the word.
To assert Christian ideologies, colonizers resorted to methods of elimination. Those that refused to convert or conform were to be removed. To the colonizers, “barbaric” or “uncivilized” cultures must be erased, allowing European, Christian society to thrive. As a result, Native and Indigenous life was displaced, destroyed, and forever changed.
The two main methods to assert Christianity were boarding schools and missionaries. Kris Manjapra’s section “School” from Colonialism in a Global Perspective focuses on colonial boarding schools. He discusses how schooling was a method to control Native people and force them to assimilate into Western ideologies and society. These boarding schools caused extensive social disruption. They were notorious “for separating children from families, for endemic abuse, and even for murder” (Manjapra 151). Manjapra characterized the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania as an example of the destructive assimilation in the late nineteenth century. The institution followed strict Anglo-Saxon cultural norms. Those who did not conform, such as refusing to cut their hair or speaking their Native tongue, received corporal punishments (Manjapra 151). Moreover, Sundays at Carslile had mandatory sabbath school where “students were taught settler narratives of history, intended to supplant and erase the storytelling traditions of their people” (Manjapra 151). This is only a fraction of the extensive suffering of the students at these schools. Families lost information and stories about their children taken to the schools, and as such, the effects of colonial schooling rippled across generations. As missionaries and schooling operations were guided by their interpretation of Christianity – the goal to convert the “heathen” and “pagan” people – the religion caused extensive, generational trauma.
Despite the depth of the cultural loss and the pain caused, the colonized were able to disrupt the colonial oppression in unique ways. Christianity, for some, provided a way out of the suffering. Manjapra analyzed that it could be a tool to control and homogenize, but it could also “bring sobriety, inspiration, and clarity of vision to the oppressed, all depending on who was using its power, and to what end” (Manjapra 148). The colonial use of Christianity to eliminate and control Natives resulted in calamities, yet it also introduced a unique syncretism between Native beliefs and Christian beliefs. For example, chapter two of Michael McNally’s Ojibwe Singers: Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion found that Christian hymns translated to the Ojibwe language created an intersection between both worldviews. While hymnals were used as a colonial method of spreading Christianity, the hymn-singing practice in this early period was “decidedly a mutual affair typically involving missionaries and native people alike” (McNally 51). Ojibwe translations of Christian hymns carry Protestant theological motifs – such as salvation, grace, faith, sanctification, and life eternal. Yet, these translations contour the Christian meanings with distinctive Ojibwe theology – ambiguity in religious meanings, interdependence in the web of life, and balance. Christian motifs were suited to Ojibwe expressions, and as such, the hymns were a site of cultural negotiation. Through refusing to completely conform to Anglo-Saxon society, Indigenous cultures, such as the Ojibwe, intermingled with Christianity.
This complex, woven relationship between Christianity and Indigeneity creates debate regarding decolonization. There is no clear-cut answer as to how to heal from generational trauma from colonization in general. Some Native Evangelicals claim that the church must be abandoned altogether to achieve decolonization (Smith). However, decolonization can also be a method of reclaiming relations, “moving colonial boundaries, challenging reserve, reservation, and racialization” (Million 344). Therefore, Christianity may not need to be abandoned together to achieve decolonization.
Instead, with understanding the complexities between Christianity and indigeneity, decolonization can be a journey to redefining Christianity. Starting after the Second World War, Christianity had already been undergoing a global transformation and is “now in the midst of a stunning reversal of colonial-era migration” (Foster and Greenberg 3). This renewal of Christianity was expedited by the global revolt against European supremacy. The religion can not survive decolonization if it sticks to its Eurocentric roots. Through efforts around the globe – in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and more – Christian beliefs and methodologies can be decolonized from their role as “a long prop of Western power” (Foster and Greenberg 4).
However, this development in Christianity does not imply a smooth path towards decolonization. During the beginnings of European authoritative upheaval, fluctuating religious relations in Mozambique demonstrate differing stances regarding decolonization. Within different Christian congregations, three different models arose in addressing the concern: leaving to protest the church’s collusion with the colonial situation, staying to reform the church through decolonization, and staying to change colonialism in favor of racial integration (Morier-Genoud 160). The progress of decolonizing Christian influence in Mozambique was not and is not linear.
Mozambique is not an isolated instance. Decolonization is a worldwide phenomenon. Similar complexities exist due to the relationship between Christianity and colonization, which has created difficult grounds to propel decolonization. Yet, it may be preferred to exist in this ambiguity. As we work to redefine Christianity through a positive lens, it is important to understand what it has meant for those who have suffered from colonization. Secondly, we must work within the entanglement caused by Christianity’s colonial influence. While the knife of colonial Christianity may have catastrophized lives and severed existences, it can bring a better influence on NAIS through understanding all the implications it has had. Ignoring what the word has meant will cause more pain, yet conforming it to a single meaning for all will bring no change.
References
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Penguin Classics, 2006.
Barker, Joanne. “For Whom Sovereignty Matters.” Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination, edited by Joanne Barker, University of Nebraska Press, 2005, pp. 1–32. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1dnncqc.4. Accessed 3 May 2024.
Foster, Elizabeth A. and Greenberg, Udi. "Introduction". Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity, edited by Elizabeth A. Foster and Udi Greenberg, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023, pp. 1-11. https://doi-org.dartmouth.idm.oclc.org/10.9783/9781512824971-001
Jakobsen, Janet R. “Religion.” Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd ed., NYU Press, https://keywords.nyupress.org/american-cultural-studies/. Accessed 3 May 2024.
Manjapra, Kris. “School.” Colonialism in Global Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 144–161, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560580. Accessed 3 May 2024.
Michael D. McNally. Ojibwe Singers : Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion. Oxford University Press, 2000. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=151374&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Million, Dian, et al. “Epistemology.” Native Studies Keywords, 1st ed., The University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, Arizona, 2015, pp. 339–346. Project MUSE
Morier-Genoud, Eric. "8. A Fractured Church: Catholicism and Decolonization in Mozambique". Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity, edited by Elizabeth A. Foster and Udi Greenberg, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023, pp. 141-161. https://doi-org.dartmouth.idm.oclc.org/10.9783/9781512824971-009
Smith, Andrea. “Decolonization in Unexpected Places: Native Evangelicalism and the Rearticulation of Mission.” American Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 3, 2010, pp. 569–90. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40983420. Accessed 3 May 2024.
Williams, Raymond. “Humanity.” Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford University Press, New York, 1976, pp. 148–151.