Please preach the gospel you were called to preach. But stop using the pulpit to rewrite history.
You told your congregation that England's civilization began with the message of the cross, and that America got its buildings and infrastructure from its revivals.
Here is what you left out.
England had been Christian for more than a thousand years before its industrial boom. Ethiopia was Christian centuries before England. Faith alone does not explain the wealth. One can even argue that it had little to zero role in it.
In 1860, cotton made up more than 60% of American exports. Four million enslaved people picked it. On paper, those people were worth more than all the North's railroads and factories combined.
When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, it paid £20 million in compensation. The money went to the slave owners, not the enslaved, and it was about 40% of government spending that year. Britain only finished paying off the loan in 2015.
And the revivals? In 1845, Southern Baptists broke away from northern Baptists over slavery. Their own convention apologized for it 150 years later.
12.5 million Africans were forced onto slave ships. Nearly 2 million died before they reached land. They had names. Their blood is in those buildings.
People trust you. When you get history wrong from the pulpit, they go home believing it.
Teaching the truth takes nothing away from the gospel. But you cannot stand on the graves of millions and give all the credit to revival.
Do better.
🇧🇫 Ibrahim Traoré is the leader the Western Imperialists wish Africa never had.
A young African leader openly challenging Western influence, pushing for greater economic sovereignty and demanding that Burkina Faso process and control more of its own natural resources.
Now Burkina Faso has opened its first gold refinery, with Traoré declaring that the country’s gold must be extracted, processed, controlled, valued and certified in Burkina Faso.
That is what sovereignty looks like.
Africa does not need leaders who wait for permission from former colonial powers.
It needs leaders willing to say: Our land. Our resources. Our future.
The West better not touch this one 🇧🇫
I think many people who have never left their Nigerian hinterland before need to visit Elmina Castle someday and take note of where the church is located - directly above the slave dungeon. Praying to the lord on the top floor, while Africans physically rotted to death in filth undreneath. Whenever one of the Africans died, the oyibos would leave their chapel, go into the dungeon, remove them corpse and toss it into the sea.
Then go back to praying to white Jesus for a successful upcoming auction of African human cargo.
Maybe after doing the tour, it will provide some perspective and help them think about the implication of whether the descendants of the people who built Elmina castle have somehow grown to care about your miserable African life because you are a "Christian". The Africans they spent centuries raping in industrial numbers, using their skin as leather, hanging from trees, using their hair as sofa stuffing, and sometimes even eating outright, were "Christians" too.
Being a Christian never stopped an oyibo man from being about his money and power first and foremost. Unfortunately, it sometimes feels like the wrong people were loaded onto the slave ships. They left all the dummies and weaklings behind. Still too soft in the head to grasp something that oyibo's actions have spent the past 500 years trying to teach them.
Men need an aspirational vision of masculinity. The one found in Jesus, a willingness to both pull us up to a better version of ourselves, yet vulnerably accepting death for us. To be lionhearted and lamb-like at the same time. Tender and compassionate, yet tough and courageous.