Black Religious Appropriation

People of African ancestry on the continent and in the Diaspora in an effort to find an origin story that is meaningful and relevant, have gravitated mainly to the Abrahamic faiths to establish their spiritual roots. The origins stories of Jews, Christian Europeans, and Arabs are uncritically embraced while simultaneously the origin stories of indigenous Africans are consigned to the trash heap and considered as totally unworthy of serious consideration.

Convinced by missionaries that the great Creator and the Orisha, Vodun, Nkisi and Alusi of many African peoples were nothing more that demon deities, African people en masse put great distance between themselves and the spirit world embraced by their ancestors. Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora have been conditioned to view their own spiritual traditions in the same pejorative way that these African religious traditions are viewed by practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths.

Some people of African ancestry have gone a step further and have actually appropriated the history of the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths and claimed it as their own history. Hebrew Israelites and a number of other Black oriented religious groups are firmly committed to the proposition that that Negroes-not to be confused with Africans-are the people of the book.

According to this worldview, when the Hebrew people were scattered from Canaan, a new Hebrew nation was established on the West Coast of Africa which was anciently called Negroland. This new kingdom of Judah was peopled by Black Hebrews who were not Africans. The distinctions between the Black Africans and the Black Hebrews were so great that eventually the Black Africans are alleged to have connived with European and Arabs to sell the Black Hebrews into slavery.

Black people in the Diaspora are generally thought to be descendants of the Black Hebrews from the new kingdom of Judah in West Africa. Proponents of this view believe that it was mainly Black Hebrews who were sold as slaves on the slave coast in West Africa. Hebrew Israelites also believe it is still possible to identify Blacks in the Diaspora with the original twelve tribes of Israel.

The Nation of Islam, though not as detailed in its teaching on Black Hebrews as are the Hebrew Israelites, also affirms that people of African ancestry are the true people of God and that the history of the enslavement and treatment of the Black race is a fulfilment of Bible prophecy. Spokesmen and women from the Nation of Islam are adamant that Black Jesus will one day return to take vengeance of the Caucasian nations who are all instruments of the Devil.

Shifting the spiritual goalpost and making people of African ancestry the specially called-out people of God may be good for the egos of Black people but regrettably, Black people lack a few of the essential ingredients that made Jews, European Christians, and Arabs successful. The people of the Abrahamic faiths built reasonably successful civilizations upon the foundations of wars of conquest, genocide, ethnic cleansing, land theft, mass exploitation, and slavery. Ego trips without these tools of enrichment are nothing more than flights of fancy.

African people were presented with a bill of sale which said that all we had to do was embrace one of the Abrahamic faiths and our societies would begin to flourish like Jewish, European, and Arab societies. Even the most acutely visually challenged person should be able to see after hundreds of years that this claim is nothing more than a load of animal manure. Jewish, European, and Arab wealth accumulation has more to do with genocide, ethnic cleansing, land theft, slavery, and mass exploitation than with the religious traditions associated with the Abrahamic faiths.

African spirituality could certainly benefit from an updating and rebranding. There is nothing wrong with Africans embracing and incorporating new ideas in their traditional religious superstructure. The religious ethic of the Christ is certainly something that Africans should be willing to consider. Embracing the religious ethic of the Christ should not however result in the abandonment of traditional African beliefs and customs. Neither should the incorporation of the ethic of the Christ lead to Africans becoming Jews or Europeans in dress, names, customs, speech, or cultural thought.

An African embracing the ethic of the Christ should be an African to the core. Practitioners of all three of the Abrahamic faiths have historically failed to live up to the high ideals of their respective faiths. Following these failed practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths will only result in everyone eventually falling into the proverbial ditch that Jesus warned against.

A nexus between the best of African spirituality and the best of the spiritual concepts found within the Abrahamic faiths could very well prove to be the balm in Gilead needed by the war-torn, climate threatened, socially chaotic times in which we live. Africans have a contribution to make in the troublesome days ahead in our world. This African contribution will only materialize however when Africans pass the knowledge, religion, and technology of others through the mill of our unique African experience. The product of this process will be an original African product that we can then share with the rest of the world.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Rebirth of African Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again.