At this rate, there may be no Christmas and Christianity in the future
Background
Christmas 2023 happened under a heavy cloud of contestation in Kenya as the Archbishop of Nairobi rejected the pope’s edict requiring priest to bless gay couples as the Vatican had directed on December 18th. As we await for the New Year, concerns of whether Christmas or the church will maintain its historical sense is pertinent, amidst Neoliberals’ Legitimizing Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transsexuals, and Queer (LGBTQ) movement. Similarly, the question of whether societies will continue creating people capable of reproducing, with stable sexual and religious identities, and hence a sense of purpose is also imperative. Pope Francis on 18th December 2023 advised priests to bless same-sex marriages, which will further approve LGBTQ, while the Western mainstream media was already shaming African Churches for allegedly curtailing the rights of this group, which I will get to later. The Pope’s (Vatican) edict, like an earlier one from the Church of England (London) (here) reflects turbocharged neoliberalism spreading to the church from Western European societies to reverse the message of Christian Missionaries, a century ago. These two churches, with their long historical differences, did not only come to a common doctrinal position but also arrived at it in the same year, suggesting behind-the-scene convergence. Both churches now contradict the bible they brought to Africans, including its interpretations rejecting homosexuality. Followers may wonder which between the Churches and the Bible is wrong.
Creating Hypersexual, Sterile Workers for Global Conglomerates
The LGBTQ order being forced down Africans’ throats has the capability of transforming the bulk of the society into hypersexual, yet largely infertile people through sexual mutilation disguised as transition, medication, and same-sex relationships. The resulting class is likely to be bitter with their communities and without a sense of responsibility to others. Such will be desirable workhorses for global corporations and can also avail themselves easily to neoliberal social experiments, riots, and future wars for capitalists. Think about what may happen if large sections of society were convinced to sexually ‘transition’ or commit to long-term same-sex relationships, as the Church of England and Catholic Church have been pushing. Noteworthy, statistics show that a large percentage of people in Western societies are identifying as LGBTQ after incessant campaigns (here). These people are likely to structure their lives and identities around their shaky sexual perception of themselves and commit to biologically irreversible procedures. I foresee a larger percentage turning out disoriented in identity, bitter with society, and hopeless, and this is the ‘drone’ class of people that the Neoliberal order hopes to create, including by using the Church.
Follow the Vatican and London, Not the Bible
Christianity was and continues to be presented to Africans as a superior religion for Whites and always supports Western societies. I was discussing with a catholic friend about a large Catholic Church being completed along Kenya’s Nairobi-Thika superhighway, which features murals of only white saints. I enquired why or how the church has never noted a black saint worth depicting in such murals. The trend of all-white saints is notable in nearly all large cathedrals I have been to and may suggest that no matter how devoted Africans are to Christianity, their becoming saints are still deemed to be improper as their attempt to independently interpret the Scriptures. On a lighter note, I grew up in an era where popular media depicted white Jesus and angels and black Satan and Demons. It was always interesting until I came to understand design later in life. The depiction of the church as a white liberal enterprise is not only notable in design, but contradicting edicts coming from Europe seen earlier. Importantly, the media’s shaming of Africans for failing to bless gay marriages and its amnesia that European missionaries taught Africans to the contrary is hypocritical. Associated Press, in October 2021, started pressing Africans as it published an article titled “Across Africa, major churches strongly oppose LGBTQ rights” (here). This screaming headline is erroneous as there was no church indigenous to Africa, only branches or European churches operating in Africa. Also, the media failed to note that churches in Africa are adhering to what European missionaries taught. The article also fails to show how the church infringed on LGBTQ people’s personal rights.
Another point worth clarifying is that the church has been teaching its members about traditional family values, and has not engaged in de popularizing LGBTQ campaigns. The church cannot deny this group’s rights, and such claims are outrageous. The mainstream media also started popularizing the LGBTQ debate a few decades ago, but has become militant in a manner that attacks anybody who does not join it in popularizing newly invented sexes and genders. It is now guilt-tripping those that stand aside, including African Churches. LGBTQ’s position appears absurd when peddled publically in African culture, where sex is a private issue. Kenya’s former president told Obama that LGBTQ rights were a Non-issue to Kenya’s population. Sex is not a public topic, and stories of even heterosexual sex are rare in public to protect children. People, the church, or the government do not follow others’ private lives, and LGBTQ campaigners’ screams of violation of their rights leave audiences wondering how the accused interfere with what people do in private places. The campaign progressively appears like a disingenuous and attention-seeking exercise to groom curious children.
The Churches Changes with European’s Interests?
The role of European Christian Churches in driving European colonialism in Africa is a historically dominant theme. Europeans have progressively presented the Christian religion as an elitist endeavor for the whites, explaining why the Portuguese could not convert East Africans despite remaining in East Africa for 200 years and naming their fortress after Jesus (here). Europeans only brought the religion when they needed it, in that the German and British Colonization of East Africa occurred after Christian missionaries arrived. The church and colonial institutions developed simultaneously. In one famous quote concerning the role of religion in Africa’s loss of land, the first president of Kenya stated;
“When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land, and we had the Bible.”(here)
The quote is clear that the missionaries helped the colonialists to take what they wanted from Africans. There was no distinction between both parties, as they collectively advanced the white man’s interest. In the current age where neoliberals want de develop a ‘drone’ class of servants that are sterile, free from sexual identity, and society, the church in Europe has now allowed itself to be used in the next phase of colonization. Several generations of LGBTQ shenanigans will leave very few people to defend and use African land and resources, and neoliberals will take control unopposed. The church will have collapsed, and maybe it is being warped because Europeans do not need it now. There will be no Christmas as we know it if the trend continues.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”