Traditional Religion and Christianity By Anthony I. Akubue

It is written that “For countless billions of years, before even the physical universe was created, Jesus lived as a spirit person in heaven and enjoyed intimate fellowship with His Father, Jehovah God, the Grand Creator (Proverbs 8: 22-31). In the beginning was the Word; the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1: 1). Through the miracle of incarnation, the Word became Human. Jesus Christ is the Word and God Himself. He lived and grew up in the community with His mother Mary in the house of Joseph the carpenter to accomplish His divine mission for the redemption of humanity. Because His own people would not acknowledge Him, He remarked that “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor” (Mark 6: 4).

In the end, He was crucified, died, and was buried; but rose from the dead on the third day and appeared a couple times to His disciples prior to His ascension into heaven. The apostle Thomas (Didymus), who was not present the first time Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, did not believe that Jesus resurrected and came to them while he was gone. However, Thomas was present when Jesus appeared the second time. Because of his disbelief, Jesus had him, as proof that he had truly arisen, touch and feel the nail and spear scars left from His crucifixion. After doing so, Thomas fell to his knees and proclaimed: “my Lord and my God,” ending his disbelief and believing Jesus to be the Lord and God. Jesus Christ is truly our Lord and almighty God, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.

The gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples was in fulfilment of the promise Jesus Christ made prior to His ascension to Heaven, to send the Holy Spirit whom He called the Paraclete, meaning ‘he who is called to one’s side’ or ‘counselor.’ The descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples and the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated fifty days after Easter and ten days after His ascension with the feast of Pentecost, not only in the Catholic Church but through all of Christendom.

While the disciples were in one place in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven with a loud sound akin to the blowing of a violent wind and they saw what separated like tongues of fire as they settled upon each disciple, filling them with the Holy Spirit. Whereas John the Baptist baptized with water, the disciples were with fire as they received the Holy Spirit. The receipt of the Holy Spirit—the Paraclete, the Giver of Life, the Light of Hearts—was, without precedence, symbolic, marking the inception of the Church.

Having been empowered and now filled with courage, the once timid and fearful disciples began proselytizing in tongues of different languages to the multitude of people gathered from far and near, each person among them hearing and understanding their own native language being spoken. The Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts as the personal presence of God’s love, producing fellowship with the Son and making us adopted children of the Father.

Most of those in the crowd were astonished that each of them could hear and understand their own language being spoken; some, however, made mockery of the disciples, believing that they were drunk. Then the apostle Peter stepped forward and addressed the multitude and explained vividly to the understanding of all the divine intervention that made what they were hearing possible. The converts among the multitude dispersed, returning to their various regions to practice what they heard and their new faith.

Over time converts in Europe gradually modified and modernized the original rituals associated with what they had heard, excising certain practices and introducing different appellations using nomenclature for phenomena congruent with their future endeavors, including resource, economic, and religious aspirations overseas. Bear in mind that the multitude heard the same messages and concepts when the disciples were speaking in tongues. When European missionaries arrived in the continent of Africa and elsewhere to proselytize to the people, they condemned the original mode of worship, which was once the same as in Europe, and used nouns like pagans, heathens, and adjectives like primitive and barbaric on the indigenous inhabitants in parts of Africa, including Igboland in Southeastern Nigeria. Mary Mitchell Slessor (1848-1915), the Scottish Presbyterian missionary who learned Efik, one of the numerous languages in the Southeast of Nigeria, disseminated the apocryphal notion that our ancestors murdered twins, believing it was evil or a bad omen to have twins.

According to her unverified claims, twins were cast into the evil forest. This reminds me of the story made up by Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875-March 19, 1950) made into the silent film ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ in 1918, where he talked about an American hero in the Jungles of Africa that single-handedly subdued wild animals and man-eating savages without sweat. Edgar himself, during an interview, admitted that it was all his imagination and that he had never been to Africa. So much for rugged individualism! Pardon the digression. The circumcision of female babies, once performed openly and practiced in Europe and North America when it was known simply as circumcision, was labeled “genital mutilation” by Europeans in Africa. Sacrifices and prayers offered through intermediaries to Jehovah God, the Grand Creator, were condemned as idol worshipping. However, indigenous inhabitants used intermediaries because they considered communicating directly with the Great God disrespectful. The intermediaries were a means for conveying their supplications and prayers to the awesome God. It is like asking the blessed Virgin Mother, Saints, and all the Angels who do His bidding daily to convey our supplications and prayers to her Son, our Lord, which some Christian denominations claim that Catholics worship Mary the mother of God. We don’t, we ask her to intercede for us in our attempt to reach her Son. The Almighty God, the Grand Creator, is not the invention or creation of Western Europeans. He is the Grand Creator of the earth and earthlings.

Over time, because of the assimilative effects of colonialism, the people themselves began renouncing their own mode of worship in favor of European missionaries’ indoctrination. Many of the converts began disrespecting and condemning their ancestors, including their deceased parents, grandfathers, great grandfathers, great, great grandfathers, etc., for idol worshipping and blaming them for the predicaments they are experiencing.  Consequently, many indigenous people dropped their given native names in favor of European names. However, for thousands of years before the arrival of European missionaries in Igboland, for example, parents gave their children native names in recognition of the existence of the Great God—the Grand Creator. Starting with my own native name given to me by my parents, Ikechukwu, meaning “he who is kept alive by the power of God, because of what happened to me in the womb and after I was born. “Ike” means “power,” and Chi-ukwu” means Great God. Ogechukwuka means God’s time is supreme. “Oge” means “time” and “Chukwu” means “Great God.” Ifeanyichukwu means nothing is impossible with God. Nkechinyelu means one who is a gift from God. Recently, in January 2025, the Governor of Anambra state in Southeastern Nigeria has embarked on a project to rid the state of “fake” native doctors. I just pray that he doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in the name of modernization he learned from Western institutions of higher learning. Academic sense or Western education does not obviate traditional/ cultural sense. His Eminence Cardinal Francis Arinze, an Igbo from Eziowelle in Anambra state, Nigeria never condemned Igbo traditional religion. The last time I observed him he was using our traditional chalk (Nzu) to scribble his signature or any symbol on the floor as evidence of his visit to his host’s residence. The host offers his guest or visitor native chalk out of his purity of heart as a whole hearted welcoming gesture to his guest.

Of course, early European missionaries accomplished many positive projects in these places: they built schools for the education and preparation of future leaders, they built patient and teaching hospitals, and a host of other important projects. However, the apparent ethnocentrism or the “white man’s burden” mindset of the early European missionaries’ effrontery was unmistakable. It was for similar treatment of native indigenes that Pope Francis, on what he described as a ‘penitential pilgrimage’ trip to Canada from Sunday, July 24, 2022, to July 29, 2022, apologized on Canadian soil for “the ‘evil’ done to Native peoples by Catholic missionaries.” As Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Canadian Jesuit and a top papal adviser, disclosed as the assertion by Pope Francis early in his papacy that “no single culture can claim a hold on Christianity, and that the Church cannot demand that people on other continents imitate the European way of expressing the faith.”

The ancestors of the indigenous inhabitants of Africa are not to blame for stalled progress in the continent. The blame is on European colonists, beginning with the Berlin conference, from 1884 to 1885, and the subsequent struggle for supremacy and economic recovery among Western European countries in Africa.  Labeled the “Scramble for Africa,” European powers sought financial recovery, cheap raw materials, and labor after a financially draining Seven Years’ War in the Americas, India, and Europe between France in partnership with allies and Britain in partnership with allies, from 1756-1763. Furthermore, Europeans practiced herbal medicine before their gradual transition to modern medicine. Herbals were made by herbalists who applied a combination of herbal medicine and prayer to treat and heal the sick. Our gradual development was stunted when the Europeans flooded Africa with modern medicine and other manufactured goods, the effects of which included the destruction of “infant industries and early industrial artifacts and driving early entrepreneurs out of the development process. Otherwise, Africa and other developing areas would   have developed through gradualism as the Europeans did uninterrupted.

Dr. Anthony I. Akubue wrote in from St. Cloud, MN, USA, February 7, 2025