FORGOTTEN HISTORY...Let the white-washing begin. Part.1

In North Africa, Christianity spread more broadly and more quickly than other parts of the Roman Empire, and as one scholar noted, it was through Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world. It’s credited with nearly half of the most prominent church leaders in the first few centuries, and a fair number of them were dark in complexion.

Nubia

A little further south in Nubia, Christianity continued to grow rapidly in the region. The first non-Hebrew Christian, The Ethiopian Eunuch, who came to faith in Acts 8, was a high-ranking member of Queen Candace’s court, and represented the ancient Nubian civilization.

It continued to flourish into the 300s and 400s and became a predominately Christian nation, when it’s ruler, who practiced human sacrifices at the time, converted to Christianity in the 400s.

Nubians accepted Christianity without the sway of Roman influence and clung to it tenaciously despite organizational weakness and Islamic conquest in most of North Africa. It would eventually succumb, but it was a brilliant Christian civilization that remained largely forgotten until archaeologists discovered its remarkable accomplishments in the second half of the 21st century.

Sadly, however, the practice of whitewashing has subtly crept into Christianity. Whitewashing Christianity occurs institutionally and structurally when the contributions of the African/Hebrew Diaspora to theology, ethics, and culture are largely ignored, and the influence of people groups of European descent are accentuated.

It demonstrates the implicit cultural and historical bias within conservative Evangelical communities and bolsters the notion that people of color will remain unequal to our white counterparts, regardless of our credentialing or accomplishment.

Maybe you are curious about the whitewashing of evangelicalism or are suspicious about its existence. If so, here are three areas where we see such whitewashing in the evangelical community.

1) Conservative Evangelicals Tend to be More Informed about European Participation in the History of Christianity than Hebrew/African Involvement.

Stated plainly, the prominent distinguishing factor of African-Americans is the history of social, economic and political oppression that they have experienced based upon color discrimination.

Such oppression has lead to systemic and institutional racism, violence, and discrimination, but it has also contributed to the widespread ignorance of the black influence in this country.
It can be equally true within evangelical circles; many white brothers and sisters are largely ignorant of the Christian communities that thrived in Africa following Christianity’s inceptions.

2) Whitewashing has Crept into the Ivory Towers of Many Conservative Evangelical Seminary

Minority students in conservative evangelical seminaries have also unwittingly experienced the effects of this phenomenon. While being educated in some of our schools, minorities will study the Apostolic Fathers, The Medieval Church, Scholasticism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment Church, Modern & Post-Modern Churches, but have little to no working knowledge of Hebrew/Negro history, especially key periods and social movements in Religious History.

They have no working knowledge of the history of Christianity in Africa (i.e. North Africa, Nubia, Abyssinia, etc.), the African-American Church, the Reconstruction period, The Great Migration, the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of Black Nationalism, nor have they read any books by contemporary African-American authors. Because of this, many graduates find themselves largely unequipped to minister in minority contexts because they lack a prophetic-historical lens.

3) Whitewashing Implies that Being a Christian Means Assimilating into the Dominant Culture.

At times, many White Americans assume that “being Christian” means assuming the values and norms of the majority context, and some of the same members object when ethnic minorities seek to learn more about their own heritage and focus much of their effort on the betterment of their own people.

At times when minorities assimilate into the dominant culture and dismiss their cultural heritage, it leaves them unable to culturally connect and find solidarity with marginalized communities.
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