It is religion, the churches, that should be at the frontline of teaching the black person his true God given worth, dignity and identity, writes Andrew Wutawunashe in his book Dear Africa – The Call of The African Dream that The Patriot is serialising.

“Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes” – Karl Marx, 1844.

I AM sure you are familiar with the name Karl Marx, the German Jewish socio-political thinker and his famous statement quoted above which simply means, ‘Religion is the opium of the masses’.
Although he wrote this statement in 1844, in the heat of the black people’s holocaust, I am unsure whether the plight of black people was on his mind. Nonetheless, truth tends to have universal impact, and many of this man’s ideas were adopted by leaders who fought for the freedom of black people.
There is no doubt that African people — black people all over the world have embraced religion, and largely harnessed it for good even in times when societies in Europe tend to call themselves post-Christian.
I am convinced that belief in God as Creator, Father, Law-Giver, Redeemer and final Judge ennobles all individuals and societies who choose to subscribe to it. Likewise absence of faith in God tends to debase human nature and bring out the worst in it.
One of the most progressive forces among black people is the Church.
In my travels all over Africa and other parts of the world, I have seen how by embracing the simple Biblical message of the redemption and change for good in character and quality of life which comes from the personal welcoming of Jesus Christ in the life of an individual, black people have realised both their individual and collective potential as powerful congregations have been organised, mobilising people for good.
It is from the realm of faith that liberators like Reverend Martin Luther King Junior and others have risen up.
Most leaders of African liberation will vouch to the fact that churches worldwide played a powerful and supportive role in the struggles for the liberation of African peoples.
Black people everywhere repose tremendous confidence in religion in general, and in the institution known as the church in particular.
From the days of the Slave Trade, through colonialism to the struggles of the present day, black people have always looked to the church as a ‘City of Refuge’. And so they should.
However, this situation places tremendous responsibility on all religion, and on churches, church leaders and members, teachers and theologians in particular, to revisit the teaching and practice of the church with a view to ensuring that it plays its proper role in empowering black people to survive the onslaught against blackness, and to enhance African-ness and its God intended contribution to all mankind.
This is because historically and potentially, religion and the church have been used by the predator class as one of the most devastating weapons against black people. Even a bizarre doctrine like Apartheid claimed Biblical justification.
It is for this reason that we need to take a closer look at the words of Karl Marx.
His critique of Religion went as follows:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
“It is the opium of the people.
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.
“Criticism of religion is therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
The paradoxical nature of Marx’s statement has continued to be a subject of argument among scholars.
On the one part he appears to portray the church as the powerful force that must provide heart, soul and happiness to mankind.
On the other hand he turns around and calls it a deceptive drug.
I believe that Marx, as a human being like all of us, in need of a heart and soul was actually decrying the church for not taking its proper role in bringing answers based on reality to the hearts, souls and social, economic and political lives of oppressed people.
This message is relevant to religion, to the churches today as they interact with the black people who have so passionately reposed their trust in religion.
Hardly four years after Marx’s critique, Charles Kingsley, a Canon of the Church of England, challenged religion with the following statement:
“We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable’s book, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded, a mere book to keep the poor in order.”
In this indeed lies the continuing misdirection of the churches.
I do subscribe to the necessity of teaching personal piety and spirituality — but this is only part of the God-given mission of the church.
It is religion, the churches, that should be at the frontline of teaching the black person his true God given worth, dignity and identity.
It is also the church which should clearly show the black person the damage that has been done to his psyche throughout history by peoples of other colours, and show him how to be redeemed from his case of industrial size inferiority complex. Any church which does not fulfill this ministry has failed black people and even God Himself, because God is the greatest investor in the black people.
It is common cause that much of what is being taught and practised in black people’s churches, in African churches, is simply an imitation of right wing American Evangelical preachers with their focus on limited issues of spirituality and blessing.
These teachings offer the black person absolutely nothing with which to overcome the far-reaching disadvantages historically forced upon his life.
In fact many black churches reinforce the damage and inferiority complex fostered on black people by white people — by being a training ground for whiteness — that misguided religious process in which the black person is taught that the more white he behaves and models his life and worship, the more spiritual or Godly he is.
In these churches you find nothing exalting African-ness or blackness—not the music, not the worship, not the liturgy, not the teaching.
In addition, the Christian churches have done serious harm to their mission by emphasising a religion that focuses only on the individual.
Clearly, the God of the Bible seeks to be the God of a people — the God of nations — of which He is the purposeful Creator.
The Bible goes to great lengths to chronicle His purposeful interaction with the nation of Israel.
While the Christian Church emphasises individual redemption, Biblical redemption in the Exodus was first of all a national redemption meant to be a model of God’s dealing with all nations.
The Egyptians had for 400 years frustrated God’s purpose for the contribution of the Hebrew nation to mankind by enslaving them.
God then sent Moses to lead the Hebrews into the Passover — a series of ceremonial observances in which they killed lambs, put their blood on door posts and roasted and ate together with bitter herbs the meat of the lambs, expecting to be given passage out of Egypt and slavery through Divine intervention that same night.
God’s judgement would simultaneously be visited on the Egyptians as their first born sons would die mysteriously and their pursuing army would be drowned in the Red Sea.
This national redemption in which Hebrew leaders, Moses, then Joshua were enjoined to lead the Hebrews to their own land where their identity, dignity, self-determination and economy would be re-established through sustained teaching, training and battle, is theologically agreed by Christian teaching to be the basis of the salvation which Christ the Lamb of God brings to the world.
The strange thing is that churches have totally ignored the fact that this redemption is first and foremost the redemption of a nation so that it may repossess its God given heritage in every dimension in order to fulfill God’s purpose among mankind.