The Socio-Psychological Influence of Christianity on Africa

By: The Alexicon | TikTok

This post was transcribed from a video by @theealexicon. You can find more of her work and commentary on TikTok.

1. The Renaissance: Whiteness as Divine

Christianity was not just a way to colonise Africa, but also a way to indoctrinate Africans.

If we look back at the Renaissance period, there was this creation and plethora of beautiful art pieces—think about the "Creation of God," or the "Creation of Adam," for example. However, with all of these paintings, we see that the majority of these people—in fact, all of them—were European and white.

This tied into the idea of divinity being very tightly and closely associated with the white phenotype. Naturally, if the white phenotype is being glorified as the closest vision to God, then anything antithetical to that would be the furthest away from God.

2. The Assertion of Blackness as Unholy

This played out heavily in religious belief systems. If white Europeans are believing in God through forms of Catholicism, but the African person is believing in God through forms of spiritualism and Voodoo, it was framed as if they were the furthest from God.

This was used as another way to indoctrinate and to abolish the tribalism and spiritual beliefs of Africans on the continent at the time.

3. Hierarchy: God and Obedience

Let's look at the "Slave-Master" dynamic. In this framework, God is the Master, and humans are His slaves. Similarly, Europeans were positioned as the masters, and Africans as the slaves.

It began to teach this idea of obedience to a higher and almighty power. Especially when you are depicting that higher power in the likeness of whiteness, it results in the colonisation of the African person—psychologically as well as spiritually.

In Conclusion

The demonisation of African spiritual belief systems culminated in the belief that African people were "not civilised" and therefore did not have civilised religious or spiritual practices.

I strongly believe that Christianity was used to colonise Africa and to demolish African Traditional Religions (ATR).