Borrowed Faith, Borrowed Belonging: African Christianity and the Diaspora Illusion

The Experiment That Failed: African Christianity and the Diaspora Illusion 

A Molue-Style Rant On African Christianity, 

Diaspora Identity, Colonial Faith,
And Why Africans Must Return Home

To Recover Belonging And Soul.

To be clear, this is not a quote by Mandela 

The Experiment That Failed

As I worked through a few old essays the other night, dusty thoughts and stubborn sentences resurfacing, a thought crept into my mind.

This whole experiment has gone horribly wrong.

Which experiment?
I am not entirely sure which one I mean.
Colonial Christianity?
Borrowed faith?
Borrowed accents?
Borrowed approval?

Pick one.

But I am increasingly convinced of this much. It is long past time for African Christians to recognise a hard truth. There is no real place for us within European Christianity.

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There Is No Place for Us There

Let me say it plainly, since Molue has no patience for euphemisms.
There is no place for African Christians in European Christianity.

None.

Not spiritually.
Not culturally.
Not existentially.

At best, you are tolerated.
At worst, you are decoration, a diversity footnote in someone else’s creed.

That may be the biggest mind shackle of them all.

Because the tragedy is not that they do not want you.
The tragedy is that you keep trying to be wanted.

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A Voice From a Younger Me

Here is an excerpt from Of Gods and Negroes, written by a much younger me, just before the turn of the century.

How long does it take to build new gods or refurbish tattered ones? What should my people have done when they realised that the albino with the floating houses like a beautiful work of art had no soul, and that everything he did he did for money. That even the ‘goodness’ he practised was tainted by his love for filthy lucre.

He was mean hearted, had a forked tongue, poor hygiene, and appeared frozen in his purpose, which seemed to be to perform acts of extreme and mindless cruelty, even in anticipation of threats which did not yet exist.

And so, there was a retracing of steps back to the discarded values of traditional African society. Call it the second Diaspora. You did not hear the rhythm of my excited heart as I returned to the Africa within me, now smoothed, beautified, and tempered by all that I learned from the West.

I returned because I realised that the magician, like Etsu the West African god of mischief, had tricked my people into abandoning their purposeful march up destiny’s ladder, replacing it with one in which their sense of worth was determined by their consumption index.

One in which they are condemned to be nothing, not just in the eyes of others, but in their own eyes as well. Because even they know it. They have precious little to consume, nothing to show off with, and it will always be that way.

I did not know then how clearly I was describing this present moment.

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Diaspora, Let Us Stop Lying to Ourselves

And while we are here, Africans in the diaspora, gather round.
Yes, even you.
Yes, even Kemi Badenoch 🤣

Let us stop lying to ourselves.

There is no permanent home for us outside Africa.

You can rent comfort.
You can lease safety.
You can mortgage success.

But you cannot belong.

You will always be “from somewhere else.”
Even when you carry the passport.
Even when you defend their systems harder than they do.

Especially then.

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You Must Return

Nobody is romanticising suffering here.

You do not have to move back permanently.
But if you do not return, regularly, deliberately, bodily, Africa will become an idea, and you will become an orphan.

Even if it is four weeks a year.
Even if it is one dusty December.

You must return.

To reset your spine.
To remember your name.
To hear your mother tongue insult you properly.

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Faith Cannot Survive Away From Home

A faith that cannot live at home will never survive abroad.

And a people who outsource their belonging will eventually outsource their soul.

As the conductor shouts, “LAST BUS STOP!”

I sat down.

That's my case - and I rest it!

Don Kenobi

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