Untangling the Legacies of Slavery: Deconstructing Mission Christianity for our Contemp... - 4 views
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The impact of Christianity on Black suffering
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lpmalapile on 25 Apr 23IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT EMPHASIZES THE IMPACT OF CHRISTIANITY ON SLAVERY AND BLACK SUFFERING.
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When you combine problematic tropes around Blackness, with White exceptionalist forms of hermeneutics, linked to White European notions of manifest destiny, you have the ingredients for a toxic residue of epistemology that sees Black people as “the problem”. 17 This ethic of White mastery over those who are deemed “the Other” becomes the basis on which the roots of a colonially inspired capitalism is at play, in which Blackness becomes the demonised other that has to be conquered, subdued and economically exploited.
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For many Diasporan Africans, the search for a positive self-esteem has been found from within the frameworks of the Christian faith. Faith in Christ has provided the conduit by which issues of identity and self-esteem have been explored. This search has been helpful at one level, as the frameworks provided by conversion and an alignment with God in Christ has confirmed a new spiritual identity on Black people, but the extent to which this new formulation of the self has affirmed the materiality of one’s Blackness is, however, open to doubt. 35
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This means that if you are a Christian slave owner, you have can faith in Christ and still own slaves, as God is only interested in your soul, which is preserved through faith in Jesus. Your actions on earth are another matter, however. For the enslaved Africans, faith in this same Jesus guaranteed salvation in heaven but not material freedom here on earth for the same reason as that given for the justification of the actions of slave masters.
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6 The effects of such biased, self-serving instruction are still being felt - the continuing tendency of Black people to internalise their feelings of inferiority, coupled with an accompanying lack of self-esteem
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When Caribbean migrants came to Britain in the post-Windrush era they brought with them this legacy of spiritual wisdom from Africa, via the Caribbean. Upon arrival in the UK and encountering the hardships of economic deprivation and systemic racism, 46 what enabled many of them to cope with their experiences of rejection was a direct sense of God being with them; this “God with them” was seen in the form of the spirit that offers alternative ways of interpreting one’s experience and dealing with the reality of marginalization and oppression. 47