The Alienation of Christ in African Revisionism of Christianity

Abstract

Arguably, there is a form of revisionism of the image of the Biblical Christ, his teachings and the Bible going on by certain African scholars within what can be understood as the quest for race retrieval and explications. This is based on the assumption that Christianity is a Western religion and a way of life from which Africans need to explicate themselves. Furthermore, there is the argument for the socio-religio-cultural and traditional identity reconstruction that present Jesus Christ as mythical, a creation of the West to keep the minds of Africans in a perpetual state of neo-colonization. This paper argues that Christ is a Jew, and not a Caucasian, and the birthplace of Christianity is Eastern not Western. It further contends that revisionism as a quest to Africanize Christianity is not different from the Europeanization of the Christian faith, claiming that the Christian faith that was brought to Africa by the Missionaries has essentially disputably lost its apostolic fervour. The paper presents its argument within the episteme of the dialectical arguments of deconstruction. It concludes that revisionism of the Christian faith by Africans can only distort its Biblical reality; it cannot really alter it as it will need to equally alter its Biblical account, and thus it is an effort in futility. It recommends that Africans should retrieve their indigenous religions and faiths without revising Christianity.