For a long time in Europe, churches conducted mostly Latin services. The Priest spoke Latin, most of the church leaders studied the language in school, and the Bible that believers did not have access to and could not read for themselves was written in Latin. Conducting church services in any other language was frowned upon by the gatekeepers, considered heathenish.
A similar story played out in Africa. Natives who got converted in the Gold Coast and places now to be found in present day Nigeria were taught English and encouraged to worship the new god in the foreign tongue. Prayers communicated in English get to God faster than supplications in Hausa. For the first few decades, to worship God in the local tongue was discouraged.
Fast forward to the 21st century…
It’s way cooler getting baptized in the River Jordan than any local water body. That gets you closer to making heaven.
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What is the difference between those who sell our bodies and those who sell our minds and culture?
We will soon have a restaurant located within the premises of the national cathedral serving Jewish food to the Ghanaian public. Eating such food can make you holier.
It’s shocking how colonialism and neocolonialism have successfully taught us to hate ourselves and our culture and to worship anything from the West while looking down on our own and follow any example they set for us, no matter how bad it is, no matter how limiting it is.
Be a Christian all right, but don’t let it shut down your brain.
Many believers see religion as a place of refuge; don’t use it to guilt-trip them.
God is a universal concept. God is not the preserve of any people or tongue. The veil in the temple was rent atwain for a reason.
