The issue of Christianity has continued to spark serious debates among Africans. Osofo Kofitse Ahadzie, a cultural anthropologist and an adherent of African traditional worship, claimed that Christianity had enslaved the minds of many Africans.
Osofo explained that African spirituality recognises that the African was not created as an imperial human.
“Why is it that we have abandoned the plain truth now we are following falsehood? African spirituality will guide us on a journey to know ourselves as we were in the beginning our ancestors did so that is what African spirituality will teach you know yourself,” he explained.
He added that we are living in a society where we no longer respect those that are ours but respect those who are brought from outside.
He further questioned why Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull that was a decree that told all Christians to enslave people who were not Christians perpetually. He lamented that the degree which made our ancestors slaves authorized the Portuguese to arrest and enslave people because they were not Christians.
“In the brutalization of the black race the oppression, suppression and stealing of the knowledge system from the black people were promoted by the so-called Christians. China, India, Japan are not Christians and they are developing, we are Christians but we are still poor,” he lamented.
Daniel Mwambonu, a Pan – African, said while discussions about slavery often centre on European nations’ wrongdoings, historians obscure the role of the Catholic Church.
“The Catholic Church forced their views on African and Indigenous people. There was no peaceful conversion and mending of ideological differences. Conversion by missionaries was historically violent, dehumanizing, and destabilizing for African nations. White people justified African enslavement because they did not deem non-Christians worthy of respect,” he wrote.
He mentioned that colonization is the preamble to every injustice black and indigenous people experience today through white supremacy.