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The problem of legitimacy in governance and the Ogwugwu Okija saga (3) Christianity and its erosion of the indigenous bases of authority in Africa CHRISTIANITY came to black Africa before modern European colonialism to explore and prepare the ground for it, as some would say. But, while it preceded colonialism in time, it had then only a small, feeble presence, with hardly any appreciable effect on the lives of the natives. It was the establishment of colonial rule that boosted Christianity's presence in Africa by conferring upon it the status of an officially recognised religion and by throwing behind it the power and backing of government. Christianity may thus be said to be part and parcel of modern European colonialism in Africa. The role of Christianity in the civilising of black Africa is a matter of disputation among Africans according as their outlook is conservative, moderate or radical. The dispute is not about whether Christianity, in itself, is good or bad. All seem to be agreed that there is much (not everything of course) that is good and worthy of emulation in the principles and values of Christianity. Such, for instance, is the Christian ethic of peace, order and justice, of the universal brotherhood of men and the basic equality of all men as being endowed by Nature with a common humanity, respect for the dignity of the human person, self-discipline, obedience, piety, love, tolerance, kindliness, humanness, mercy, tenderness, purity and chastity. Nor can it be denied that these principles and values, if faithfully applied, would be a beneficial influence in instilling a greater moral sense and social stability in the people of Africa and, to quote Chinua Achebe's phrase, in bringing "light to the heart of darkness, to tribal head-hunters performing weird ceremonies and unspeakable rites". These principles of Christianity are not in themselves factors of civilisation. Yet, the practice of Christianity is bound up, willy nilly, with civilisation, for it requires, among other things, ability to read the Bible and to imbibe the habits and mode of living of a modern Christian in terms not so much of material comforts as of pure, simple modernity. Christianity has therefore, played a distinctly civilising role in Africa in stopping obnoxious practices like human sacrifice, slave dealing, the throwing away of twins, sorcery, witchcraft and superstition, trial by ordeal and other obnoxious observances under native law and custom; and more importantly, in spreading education and literacy by building schools, printing and publishing books, translating the Bible into African languages, initiating the study of African languages, and in improving health by building hospitals, health centres, maternities, etc. It is equally undeniable that the Christian ethic of tolerance has not characterised the attitude of Christianity, or rather of Christian missionaries, towards Africans, the pagan religion and pagan cultures. In Africa, to adopt Frantz Fanon's metaphor, Christianity made itself a willing and ready tool in the hands of European colonialism to "wage war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn," just as one uses DDT to "destroy parasites, the bearers of diseases". Christianity readily undertook this role because, even more than colonialism itself, it regarded paganism and pagan cultures in Africa with implacable intolerance and hostility as barbaric and as a clog in the wheel of progress. The European Christian missionaries in Africa simply failed to appreciate the nature of the African pagan religion as something transcending mere personal beliefs and forms of worship, as a whole social system encompassing the entire life and culture of the people; they saw in it "no more than fetishes, idolatry and juju". They abhorred, not just particular obnoxious customs, but the whole traditional way of life, which they therefore wanted extirpated to make way for the Whiteman's. While "the need for some adaptation was often referred to, rarely was anything found that could be adopted without making concession to heathenism" neither African indigenous names, art, fables, nor even dress. All customary rites of whatever kind were strictly forbidden to converts. Polygamy was condemned as being, which therefore made it "incapable of amelioration". Some missionaries went so far as to set up the Mission House above the authority of the traditional rulers, and encouraged their converts to sever allegiance to their communities in matters of civil government, so as not to be seen as obeying an "ungodly" civil authority. Converts in the early days of Christianity in Africa were formed into a separate community, thus creating a dichotomy in society. African indigenous music and dances, however unconnected with the worship of juju and idols, came under strong condemnation as fetish, and the suggestion that Christian hymns sung to African music might entertain and enliven church service was scorned off, because the outcome would be to cover heathenism with the "cloak of Christianity". Shocked and outraged by this suggestion, one European missionary had declared in 1911: "Let us, for example, take one of our Hymns and wed it to the music used in these dances. Now, we say, everything objectionable has been removed, let the Christians sing and play among themselves. They come out in the moonlight, the drum begins to beat out the old melody, the old tune is sung to new words. I venture to say that before those Christians play two minutes their minds and hearts are back to their unregenerate days, it could not possibly be otherwise. Then begins the compromise with Sin and Satan that is so deadly in its effects on all Christian life, stunting the growth and impeding all further developments... I do not think the picture is overdrawn: We have the native with all his peculiar superstition ingrained in his fibre, unaccustomed to restraint of any kind, moral sense dulled from infancy, and with nothing in his surroundings to stimulate any higher instincts he may have". The singing of Christian hymns to African indigenous music, now a common feature of Christian church service in many parts of Africa, has added life, vigour and excitement to it without any of the bad consequences predicted by this early missionary. Education was the principal instrument in Christianity's effort to destroy the pagan culture in Africa. In this effort, it was aided by its dominance in education under the educational policy of the European colonial governments in Africa. As is well-known, "traditionally, organised in the Western world was Church education... The basis of education was largely the Bible, and is chief purpose inculcation of piety. To the extent that the state intervened, it used its authority to further the aims of the church". In the early beginnings of education by the Christian missionaries in Africa, "all the elementary school books are extracts from the Holy Scripture inculcating all virtues and condemning all vices, and vividly pointing out the folly and superstition of idolatrous worship". Under this policy of church education, primary education in most parts of Africa was left almost entirely in the hands of the Christian Churches and other religious groups. Secondary education too was dominated by them, supplemented by a few public secondary schools designed essentially as models. Through the medium of church education, Christianity had been able not only to inculcate in the minds of children a disdain for Africa's pagan culture but had also induced many of them to secede from it and renounce all its ways, even those with no religious association of any kind, like African dances, masquerades, wealth title societies, but are considered simply not in tune with European ways. Christianity in Africa, says Frantz Fanon, "does not call the native to God's ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor". As an early British missionary put in 1875, "Christianity divorced from the Western way of life... would wither". And the ways of the Whiteman often stultify and even nullify the letter and spirit of the word; while professing to be an application of it in practice, they distort the original idea of Christianity, as expressed and taught by Christ. In many cases those not induced to secede either become hybridised, the hybrids, as they are called, or, are torn adrift, unsure as to which of the two worlds, the pagan or the Christian/whiteman's world, they really belong. Perhaps it is not out of place to mention that it was the European Christian missionaries' intolerance of everything African and their discriminatory racial attitude towards Africans that had cost Christianity its unity among the African members of the Church. It was resentment of their denigration of the African educated members of the church as inherently inferior in intellect and ability, and as incapable of leadership and Europeans of all leadership positions in the church, that led to the break-away and the formation of the first independent African churches between 1884 and 1911, of which there were then two types: the Ethiopian (so-called from a biblical verse) which "emphasised African self-improvement, self-rule and political rights, and the millenarian or pentecostal type, which emphasised spirit possession, healing by faith and prophecy." They have since proliferated to an almost incredible extent, as regards both number of adherents (about 33 million in 1987) and number of sects, about 10,000 in 1987, distributed 3,000 in South Africa, 800 in Nigeria, 600 in Zaire, 400, in Ghana, and so forth. But the separatist churches are not just a spiritual healing or a nationalist protest movement; they are also part of the Africanisation effort to find accommodation between African spiritual values and those of Christianity, to re-evaluate and develop an African theology, and to preserve the African cosmology. By all this and more, Christianity had made itself the foremost imperialist instrument for the colonisation of the mind, culture and personality of the African. Thus, said the UNESCO General History of Africa, "decolonisation had to begin with the Church, not only to transform its structures and replace European leadership with African, but also to seek indigenisation of its form and content without losing the essence of Christian values". Happily, the indigenisation of the Christian Church has progressed well apace, at least as imported, but even here the need to Africanise it is increasingly acknowledged in the various initiatives and studies being undertaken by African Christian leaders and theologians. The European Christian missionaries' intolerant and hostile attitude towards Africans, the African pagan religion and pagan culture contrasted with the forbearance, sympathy and respect for native customs and prejudices exhibited by the Islamic religion in Africa, at any rate, as concerns social relationships as distinct from the strict religious principles of Islam, its dogma and cults. The progress of Islam in its spread in Africa has been attributed in part to the fact that it did not denigrate Africans as an inferior caste nor seek to destroy their cultures completely as unworthy of existing along side itself. The Africans' "local institutions were not destroyed by the Arab influence introduced. They only assumed new forms, and adapted themselves to the new teachings. In all thriving Mohammedan communities, in West and Central Africa, it may be noticed that the Arab superstructure has been super-imposed on a permanent indigenous substructure; so that what really took place, when the Arab met the Negro in his own home, was a healthy amalgamation, and not an absorption or an undue repression". As explained in Bosworth Smith's highly acclaimed book, Mohammed and Mohammedianism (1876), part of the reason why Christianity, after more than 500 years since its advent in black Africa in 1481, has not established itself, as Islam has done, as the religion of any of the African communities qua communities, apart from individual converts who, no doubt, are numbered in millions, is because the Arabs "receive their converts on terms of entire social equality, while Europeans, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries to the contrary, seem either unwilling or unable to treat their converts as other than inferiors". And, whilst Christianity endorsed slavery, a slave or even an outcast, once converted to Islam, became free, and was accorded equality with his former master and with the proudest nobleman. The acceptance of polygamy by Islam and its uncompromising rejection by Christianity further illustrates the contrasting attitudes of the two religions to African culture. For polygamy symbolises not just a moral attitude, but a way of life based on the family as a communal rather than an atomistic unit, a unit built upon the concept of a compound consisting of a man and several wives each with her own hut for herself and her children. The compound forms a small communal life, with the children from all the wives being fed together by each of the wives in turns. The concept of communal life runs right through from the compound life of a man, his wives and children to the extended family, the village, and thence to the entire community or village group. The traditional ruler or chief of the community has his own compound organised exactly on the same concept, indeed in many communities, it is a condition that an aspirant to the kingship or chieftainship must have a prescribed minimum number of wives varying between three and seven. Islamic prosyletisation in Africa begins by acception polygamy and the small compound community built upon it, from the traditional ruler's compound to that of the lowliest villager, and it sought to convert the entire community as a unit. On the other hand, the rejection of polygamy by the Christian missionaries and the refusal of the traditional rulers to give it up as a condition for their admission to Christian baptism may be accounted the principal reason for the failure of Christianity to convert African communities qua communities. By this rejection, "they abandoned the idea of leading the whole community as a unit gradually towards Christianity." It is thus the tolerant and accommodating attitude of Islam towards its converts in Africa that has enabled it to become the religion of millions of people, as individual converts and also, more significantly," as entire communities whole nations and tribes weaving itself into the national life and giving colour to their political and social, as well as ecclesiastical, existence." On the other hand, notwithstanding that West Africa has been in contact with Christianity for some 500 hundred years, not one single tribe, as a tribe, has yet become Christian. And until perhaps in recent times, Christianity in Africa has tended towards too much orthodoxy, dogma, and mystique, with the result that it was not able to command the sort of devotion among its converts as Islam does. "It is, "said Nnamdi Azikiwe, "because of its dogmatic nature... that Mohammed revolted in order to humanise religion. Say what you please about Mohammedanism... it is the basis of other great religious movements which aimed at humanising and practicalising religion." It gave to "simple souls the simplest, the least mystical least ritualistic, of all creeds," it gave them a religion with not order of the clergy whose ambitions, both temporal and spiritual, are often let loose to excite the passions of the people or to disturb the peace of the state. It is noteworthy that, in its relation to paganism in Europe, the early Christian Church embraced, after an initial fanatical but misguided attempt at outright destruction, the same wise strategy of adaptation and assimilation. Realising that ancient rites and customs that had governed the lives of people for centuries could not be suppressed outright without a resultant social chaos, confusion and instability, the early Christian church quite wisely "condoned or accepted and transformed" them. "An intimate and trustful worship of saints replaced the cult of the pagan gods, and satisfied the congenial polytheism of simple or poetic minds." "The Christian calendar of the saints replaced the Roman fasti; ancient divinities dear to the people were allowed to revive under the names of Christian saints, the Dea Victoria of the Bases-Alpes became St. Victoire, and Castor and Pollus were reborn as Sts. Cosmas and Damian." This tolerant spirit of adaptation was perhaps best exemplified in " the sublimation of the pagan mother-goddess cults in the worship of Mary... Gradually the tenderest features of Astarte, Cybele, Artemis, Diana and Isis were gathered together in the worship of Mary. In the sixth century the Church established the Feast of Assumption of the Virgin into heaven, and assigned it to August 13, the date of ancient festivals of Isis and Artemis. Also status of Isis and Horus were renamed Mary and Jesus; the Roman Lupercalia and the feat of the purification of Isis became the feast of the Nativity; the Saturnalia were replaced by Christmas celebrations, the Floralia by Pentecost, an ancient festival of the dead by all Souls'Day, the resurrection of Attis by the resurrection of Christ." Pagan altars were rededicated to Christian heroes; "flowers, processions, and hymns which had pleased the people in older cults were domesticated and cleansed in the ritual of the Church; and the harsh slaughter of a living victim was sublimated in the spiritual sacrifice of the Mass." We read of Pope Gregory's indulgence towards the lingering paganism of England (601 A.D), and that he "permitted the custom of sacrifice oxen to the gods to be gently transformed into "killing them to the refreshing of themselves to the praise of God." The Church also "took over some religious customs and forms common in pre-Christian Rome; the stole and other vestments of pagan priests, the use of the incense and holy water in purification, the burning of candles and an everlasting light before the altar... the architecture of the basilica, the law of Rome as a basis for canon law, the title of Pontifex Maximus for the supreme Pontiff, and in the fourth century, the Latin language as the noble and enduring vehicles of Catholic ritual." Finally, pagan temples were re-consecrated to Christian use: "the Pantheon wad dedicated o the Virgin Mary and all Matyrs (609A.D.) the temples of Janus became the Church of St. Dionysius, the temple of Saturn became the Church of the saviour." Now that the leadership of the Christian religion in Africa is in the hands of Africans, these leaders should take care from the early Christian Church in Europe, and should, jointly with the traditional rulers, chiefs and elders of the various communities, find a way to marry Christian and pagan rites and customs together in a healthy amalgamation satisfying and congenial to the African personality. Otherwise Christianity will remain, as at now, "a foreign religion perched on the outside of the community. Any thought that paganism can be completely obliterated is forlorn. For, as earlier stated, paganism is more than a religion, it is a whole way of life, it impregnates the entire life and personality of the African. This is what accounts for its resilience. It can no more be completely abolished than Africa and the African can be erased from the face of the earth. It can only be modified or adapted. The amalgam would be a society rooted in traditional religion and broadened by Euro-Christian and Islamic influences. The fact is that for "many Christians and Moslems, the basis of moral values still derives more from the old cosmology than from the new beliefs; there is still respect for the ancestors as in the pouring of libations, belief in the continuing involvement of ancestors in the life of their successors, belief in the forces of good and evil which can be manipulated by direct access to the divinities through prayer and sacrifice... Even where such beliefs and practices cease to be held as matters of religion they are still observed as custom, tradition and part of the cultural heritage. Thus the solidarity of many an extended family or clan or community still revolves round some beliefs in ancestral spirits."
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