Dear Editor,
I am not going to wait on Tacuma to respond to my last letter. This is because I am aware that he is not merely representing his own opinions. He is also representing an opinion I have been seeing expressed by some very educated persons who would consider themselves Afro-centrists. This contempt and hostility thrown at African Christians has gone unchallenged for too long.
I for one have at times had what began as a genial conversation or email exchange with an Afro-centrist turn sour simply because of my Christian persuasion. I have seen some great videos on Channel 9 but was astounded to see one in which one of the leading lights at a presentation asked the rhetorical question of how black people can embrace a book that did not include themselves. Apparently, he had never read the bible or did not know what he was reading, or for such an educated man, he had been blinded by Caucasian renderings of the images in the Bible.
And I want to point out at this stage that it was only because of great Caucasians, great white people who preserved extra-biblical records such as the historian Herodotus that we have supporting records to shed further light on what was meant by the word of Greek origin “Ethiopia” which at that time did not refer to a specific country.
Editor, it turns out that this matter of ethnic vanity is very important when it comes to religion. In pursuit of a religion that reflects your face where does truth come in? It is man’s search for truth that is reflected in his religion. Gautama Buddha rejected Hinduism to found a new religion. He was in search of what he considered truth. So he rejected a religion that reflected his face and possibly his skin colour.
The Christian apologist Vishal Mangalwadi in his book “The book that made your world” said that it was the fact that the God of the bible again and again criticized and rejected his own priests that caused him to pay attention. He said here was a God that was not telling his Jewish priests how important and good they were. Over and over he was telling them the opposite. He said for the first time he got the distinct impression that this book had the ring of truth. Note well: it had the ring of truth because it clearly did not have any respect for ethnic vanity. The Jews were transmitting the book in spite of how some parts made them feel!
The Jewish book, by the power of its contents, and yes, by the power of the sword and guile at times as well, took root in Caucasian and other countries. But it is primarily a book of the Jews. Any blue-eyed persons you see represented in the Bible are the creation of the artist – not the Jews. The representation of Jesus as blue-eyed and white is an expression of ethnic vanity and Hollywood preference. It has nothing to do with the real characters of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the new (except perhaps the Romans). Why do some people want to imitate that swindle and folly that has become exposed with the passage of time?
Tacuma may not know it, but the timing of this call to a new kind of African religion is being made at a time when Prime Minister Modi is calling diasporic Indians to “come home” to Hinduism. The timing of his call to Africans is interesting.
So I am not interested in the red herrings Tacuma began to distract me with. The questions and prescriptions he raised are bigger than himself and I. They need answers. So I will direct some questions to those who are of the same persuasion as Tacuma. If he, once having made his diagnosis and prescription, cannot or will not answer the following questions perhaps they will. The world has enough doctors who will not entertain questions from their patients – even when you are trying to tell them they are about to perform surgery on the wrong leg!
What does this new religion which diasporic Africans are to embrace have to say about origins, destiny of mankind, and how to live?
In general, what are the basic tenets of this new religion apart from having something to say about gender?
In what book are these tenets contained? Does it now exist? Or is it a work in progress as part of a religion under construction? (At least PM Modi is calling his people home to books that already exist and which are well-known.)
What price did its proponents pay for the right to hold out these precepts as truth? Christians paid a heavy price throughout the centuries beginning with the founder of the religion. The words of the real Jesus were “I am the way, the truth, and the life”. They are still paying that price-in every skin colour and gender.
Did its proponents not know that Africans are well-represented in the Jewish Bible from the very beginning – Genesis?
I am not so naïve as to expect that the hostility and contempt shown to African Christians on the part of this group will stop because of my questions. People have a way of staying with whatever they have invested their mental energies in – especially when it comes to religion. But now the reader who has had to endure these attacks and half-baked prescriptions, will be prompted to do his or her own research to refute them.
And unless I see 5 specific answers to the 5 very specific questions I have raised, I have nothing more to say on this score. Anything else will be just gaff, humbug, and obfuscation.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Collins
