in which one man single-handedly dissects the Church in Ghana...

Well my cyber buddy Ian has been at it again - this time he's written a highly charged, controversial (and long but well worth the read), take on the whole church-culture in Ghana. I've quoted many sections of the article, originally posted on Modern Ghana, below. Comments, thoughts? I'm sure there will be many!

"I clearly remember my very first church experience in Ghana. I had only been in the country for two weeks, still chewed my fufu, hadn't perfected the foot-shuffling, buttock-protruding, handkerchief-waving church dance, and couldn't yet understand Twi (which the whole service was held in). Nobody was translating for me, so there I sat for four hours in a bewildering new environment, lost in a sea of vernacular. The telling moment came when the collection pot came around. Only then did the announcer see fit to switch to English. They were happy to let God's words slip by untranslated, but made sure I knew when it was time to put my hand in my pocket. I left there with the question I still ask myself: do these churches exist for religious purposes, or financial purposes?


One of my white brothers recently told me a similar, yet far more shocking story. A certain pastor fooled his flock by telling them to bring out their cash so that he could sanctify it for them and make it magically multiply in the future. His killer business strategy was revealed when he convinced the people to leave all their money in his blessing plate. After all, it had now been blessed and would return to them a hundredfold, so they shouldn't worry. Open any newspaper and you'll be reminded of how close to Lucifer some of our Christian pastors are. Last time I read the Bible, it didn't say anything about impregnating your own daughter, defiling the choirgirls and buying BMWs with church funds. From what I see, our Christian churches here are little more than dens of depravity and delusion. At least the churches I see in Europe and America offer some succour to the afflicted, by opening free 'soup kitchens' and offering a place for the homeless to lay their heads. These massive Ghanaian churches, meanwhile, stay empty and padlocked while the vulnerable kayayo girls and mental patients sleep on the pavements with the mosquitoes, rainstorms and rapists.

Anyway, how can a Ghanaian ask an Englishman if he goes to church? It's like an Englishman asking a Ghanaian if he knows how to eat fufu. Isn't it my people who brought the Bible and Africa's first Christian churches to your people while they were still worshipping rocks and rivers, performing human sacrifices, wearing magical amulets and praying to gods with a small g? It's only through the perspiration and malaria-fuelled deaths of generations of dedicated European missionaries that Christianity has been able to penetrate the Dark Continent. These were the first foreigners who, after over 400 years of European pillage and plunder, wanted to provide something for you, not take something from you.

Before the “White Fathers” came along, your country had no churches, schools, clinics, written language, or bicycles. Or do you think that the Methodist, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches, with their attached schools, are African inventions? Anyone who has graduated from Akropong, Amedzopfe or Aburi Training Colleges owes a debt of gratitude to the missionaries for building these mountaintop establishments. Any Ghanaian who has sworn on the Bible, celebrated Christmas, or hung a cross in their homes couldn't have been able to do so if these 19th century missionaries had stayed in Europe. We brought the churches and Bible; you added the noise pollution and the falling on the floor.

But when we brought the Bible, were we doing you a service or a disservice?



Study their history, and you will find that these Christian missionaries were definitely not the angels they made themselves out to be, and that their supposed philanthropic intentions deserve to be questioned.

It's currently being revealed that the Catholic Church is little more than a worldwide paedophile club- I bet their Fathers have loved coming here over the centuries and seeing all the naked, obliging African children running about. Like most Europeans, these people came here for colonisation, exploitation and fornication. They must have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect being able to exchange a few Bibles, crosses and candles for so many diamonds, gold nuggets, slaves, sex slaves and shiploads of prime timber.

They seem to have forgotten what the Bible says as soon as they brought it here. But, despite all this wickedness and deceit, their churches have proliferated in Ghana, with very little of the old beliefs surviving. Was the Bible accepted here because, just like mirrors, beads and metal pots, it was something new and shiny from 'aborokyire' (abroad), and because your people have been brainwashed to believe that everything from overseas is always more desirable than anything available locally?

I often wonder how Christianity has taken such a massive hold in Africa, at the expense of deep-rooted and widely followed traditional religions. I'm also very interested in the practices and beliefs of traditional West African religion before the white missionaries came. Were your ancestors living like savage heathens lost in a void of Godlessness? Did they have no sense of spiritualism and awe for the natural world? Had they never considered questions like “Where am I from?”, “Who made me?” and “What is my purpose?” The answer, of course, is that the idea of a Supreme Creator God is native to Africa, and not a foreign import, and that religion was in Africans' blood for millennia before the arrival of the Bible on these shores. The early seafarers sent home stories of primitive cannibals who needed to have their souls saved through regime change, religious instruction and 'Westernisation'. They made sure that they invented a new derogatory language to describe the poor Negro “pagans” and “animists” who were practising “fetishism” and “ancestor worship”. All these were terms coined by racist and blinkered Europeans who failed to mention that religious beliefs had been extensively honed and practised in Africa prior to the Testaments even being written. Before West Africans were force-fed the Bible, local names showing a belief in and the uniqueness and supremacy of God were widespread.

I'm one of the few white men who actually takes these ancient beliefs seriously, whilst doubting the continental acceptance of a new, revealed religion which actually promotes racism, slavery and murder. I strongly believe that the ancient powers are still with us, even if most of you have forsaken them and joined the God Squad. I've been to churches in Ghana and felt no inspiration or spiritual uplifting, only a lightening of my wallet and a severe earache. I've also been sitting meditating by myself in the forests, on the mountaintops and by the riversides, and felt closer to The Creator than ever before.

Do you think I'm talking a load of bollocks? If so, then you must also claim that all the beliefs, traditions and rituals of your ancestors are a load of bollocks too, and few Ghanaians are prepared to say that. It is the ancient traditional religion, with its guiding tenets of protection of the environment, taboo practices, adherence to the law, respect for personal relationships, and peace, which seems much more attractive and conscious to me than a modern Christian religion which allows warmongering, human bondage, materialism and littering.



For the happy-clappers and Bible-bashers who refuse to admit that these ancient traditions constitute a religion, I quote the 60-year old words of Mbonu Ojike:

“If religion consists in deifying one character and crusading around the world to make him acceptable to all mankind, then the African has no religion. But if religion means doing, rather than talking, then the African has a religion.”

The ancient religions taught Africans how to live; Christianity seems to have only taught them how to make noise and pray for financial blessings. Why are you still begging for riches when He's already answered all of your prayers thousands of years ago? What more do you want Him to do for you? He's created for you a land full of foods, teeming rivers and ocean, fertile soil, 80 percent of the world's natural resources and precious minerals, a “Tree of God” with a hundred different uses, and abundant sunshine and rainfall. You lucky buggers- what more do you need? Why do you need money on top of all these blessings? And have you ever read the Bible? You don't even have to get past the first chapter before learning that He charged you to have dominion over all His creations, not sit down pleading for more while the white man comes and takes it all.

In fact, God has blessed Africa so richly that some people are blaming the slow pace of the continent's development on these very blessings. They argue that anybody who has an accessible abundance of natural resources, foods, water, building materials, medicines and alcohol in their environment will never strive to invent or develop anything more advanced, because they don't have to. Why should the African care about building concrete edifices, developing communications infrastructure, or using satellite technology, when he has everything he needs already?



If your wine comes straight from a tree, your meat is running around the compound for free, and your soil is so fertile that you just need to spit watermelon seeds onto your garden to make a watermelon farm, then why would you bother breaking into a sweat and inventing distilleries, supermarket chains and tractors?

The European, on the other hand, wasn't so blessed by God, and found himself stuck on some meagre, freezing piece of rock with no mangoes to pluck, no guinea-fowl to slaughter, and no gold to sell. He was forced to invent clothes factories, indoor heating and nitrogenous fertiliser. If not, he would still be dressing in animal skins, living in caves and eating turnip soup every day. So, the African, happy with his lot and able to obtain all life's necessities without straying too far from his hammock, had no need for material development. The obroni (white man), on the other hand, if he didn't want to die in childhood, had to force to develop his environment and invent new technologies. So ingrained are these different mentalities and attitudes towards development, that it has been suggested that if all the Americans came to live in Ghana, and all the Ghanaians went to live in America, then both countries would change irrevocably. Within twenty years, the Americans would have developed Ghana so much that they would want to make it their permanent home, and the Ghanaians would have made America so dirty and badly-maintained that the Americans would never want to go back there.

It wasn't until I arrived in Africa that I came across the term “God-fearing”, heard everywhere, from the pastors' sermons and church notices to the tro-tro inscriptions and internet dating sites. Is God meant to be some frightening, fiery, fearsome fiend, ready at the drop of a hat to devour me or strike me down with furious vengeance? I thought that was the Devil. I prefer the term “God-loving”. I love God, I don't fear Him. And I know He loves me: He wouldn't have made me, given me a working brain, and sent me to live in beautiful Ghana if He didn't. If Ghanaians really do fear God, don't you also fear invoking His wrath by your misuse of His blessings? Don't you think that He might appreciate from you a little less praying and a little more doing? On top of that, I'm sure Jesus would appreciate it if you stopped painting him as a white man in all your pictures.

And there are obviously very few people left who have faith in, or fear of, the abosom. Otherwise we wouldn't be destroying their enchanted natural environments by chopping down all the trees, encouraging soil erosion, and filling the rivers with mercury. Just don't say I didn't warn you when the sea deity punishes you with an oil slick larger than the Gulf of Mexico, in return for all the shit and plastic bags you've been dumping in there. And the drilling companies only spend billions of dollars to clean it up when it affects the Americans; they won't give a fuck when Ghana's beaches become the same colour as its people.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps all these people taking time off work to go and speak in tongues and drop their pure water sachets in Achimota forest will have their souls saved when 'Atemuda” arrives, and I'll go straight to hell for writing such a blasphemous article. (I just hope it's Ghana hell, where there's no electricity for the electric chair, the nails for the bed of nails have been stolen, the gas for the eternal fires is finished, and the Ghanaian devil never turns up for work because he used to be a civil servant.)

Perhaps I should go and join the foot-stampers and fist-clenchers in the church next door to help them repeatedly shout “IN THE NAME OF JESUS!” a little bit louder, instead of reading my history books. Or maybe I just want to live a good life now and do what I can in this world, instead of waiting in the mud and dirty, potholed streets for my turn to enter paradise.

Should we spend our whole lives praying to God for salvation in Heaven, or should we look to our own amazing brains and able bodies to help us in our pursuit of happiness on Earth? Every human being needs faith and a moral code of conduct, but do we really need all-night church services and fourteen days of prayer and fasting to achieve it? Like the rest of the good people of Ghana, I follow nine of the Ten Commandments, but I don't feel the need to dress up and go and advertise it at full volume every Sunday morning. I recognise the value of life, and the duty I have in this world, rather than waiting and praying for the riches and paradise of the next world.

Let's end with someone you do take seriously, and think about what Bob meant when he sang:

“Preacher man don't tell me, heaven is under the earth. I know you don't know what life is really worth. Most people think, Great God will come from the sky, take away everything and make everybody feel high. But if you know what life is worth, you would look for yours on Earth.”

So now you see the light, are you gonna stand up for your rights?

Ian Utley is the author of
“Culture Smart! Ghana, the essential Guide to Customs and Culture”

Our Perpetual Lady of Diet Coke

After that last very 'Ghana-centric', long disturbing post that may have been overlooked by most (judging by the fact that the few comments came from the author (surprising but welcome!), and not many others... I thought I'd post this silly cartoon - as I sip my second DC of the day...

Ah, the religion of those in the know... :)



The image - thanks to Natalie Dee - the ever-talented cartoonist and post modern satirist (don't really know what that means but it sounded good).

My Lebanon - a feisty, feasting flurry of fun

My first impression of Lebanon was hatched through a cloud of smoke at the luggage carousel at Beirut’s Hariri airport.

After having our passports scrutinized for the dreaded Israeli stamp (which warrants immediate deportation), we wandered through to collect our bags and were greeted by a nightclub’s worth of exhaled smoke. Passengers and pilots all getting their fix after the long journey. But right there in the public areas of the airport? It just seemed so lawless, such an olden-days-before-the-international-ban type atmosphere…

In a way, it seemed like rebellious teenager, and my later impressions of Beirut as a city stayed true to that initial perception.

As we weaved our way through the streets that night I tried to soak it all in. Every sight, every building, person, smell, colour, curb… to compare what I saw to all of the stereotypes that had been built up in the collective mind of the westerner.

When I mentioned heading to Lebanon to many North American friends, the reactions were all negative or at least bemused.

“Why Lebanon??!"

“Will you be safe?”

“Interesting choice of holiday destination…”



What images came to their minds?

- Hezbollah – dangerous terrorists

- War – building rubble and wailing women

- Black veils oppressing women

- Anti Christian, anti Jewish, anti democracy-progress-development.

And the truth is that if I’d never met the amazing Lebanese people that I have in Ghana, I never would have gone.

But how wrong everyone was!

I must say though, that the streets of Beirut are not for the faint hearted when it comes to driving – and by extension, walking! There are no rules or at least no adherence to lanes, lights, right of way.. it is survival of the fittest and fastest. If you can hit the accelerator and the horn at the same time, you are on the right path.

But the more surprising feature of the roads is the actual cars. Bling bling bling… we learned quickly that it’s all about keeping up with the Khourys when it comes to your car in Beirut. The streets were full of the latest Porsche Cayenne, Ferraris, high end Audis and GMCs… Everywhere there is valet parking (including at McDonalds – no joke), and at the end of an evening at a club it’s a Hollywood scene as all the fancy cars pull up and the groups get in one by one, silently screaming “Look at us!”.

I later learned that many of these cars are on credit, but it’s all about living large in the here and now, and that general lust for life attitude carries over into all aspects of life. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much in the same period of time. We were in the hospitable hands of the greatest friends and every extended family member or friend we visited had a feast awaiting us.



Food itself is a phenomenon in Lebanon. The flavours are fresh and vibrant and indulgent. Food is not about hunger and digestion but socialization, fun, people. A good dose of Arak (Lebanon’s version of Pastis or Ouzo) also goes a long way to make a mezze meal stretch smoothly on for hours. It’s amazing to witness and take part in, even if your Arabic is limited to Inshallah, and Shukran…

As a matter of fact, most Lebanese are fluent in at least three languages. Everyone speaks French, English and Arabic, and many speak others like Italian, Spanish or even Chinese!

There is a true affection between the Lebanese and the French and it is evident everywhere. One night, as we walked along the busy, bar lined streets of Gemmayze, we came to one of our friend’s favourite places. The windows were perspiring and we could see a lively crowd within – separate tables of families and friends all joining in together to sing along with the performer, her backup piano squished in the semi circle of tables, backed onto the washrooms. We opened the door and the flood of voices hit us. They were singing French ‘classics’ and everyone knew the words. It was a vision of what Paris would be like if it’s population was Lebanese! We joined the crowd and ate, drank and tried to sing along. It was a spectacular evening, of the type it seems only the Lebanese know how to carry off so naturally.

The more time we spent in Beirut, the more I realized that due to CNN and it’s sisters, the West has a warped and uninformed idea of what Lebanon is about.



- Women in Beirut are all about glamour – eyebrows are tattooed perfectly, (if severely) nails are done, hair shines with not a lock out of place and the high heeled shoes made me unsteady on my feet just looking at them. I barely saw abayas and hijabs, let alone the niqabs that cover the whole face. I also have never seen more facial plastic surgery in my life – and I have been to Los Angeles! Dr. 90210 has nothing on this place ☺

I don't know how they feast so much and stay so fit... the gyms must be busy!

- The biggest KFC I’ve ever seen, like a a KFC Mega Mall, spanning a full city block – I saw in Beirut.

- Dunkin’ Donuts is everywhere, and police (like their American counterparts) can be found hovering with a coffee in hand.

- The sound of Christian Church bells rivals the Muslim call to prayer all around Lebanon

- Skiing is a popular winter sport in the mountains of Lebanon

- Most signboards around the city of Beirut are in English or French

- Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits is a popular fast food joint (and I thought it was too regional to come to Canada!)

Beirut is a modern city, but it has character. It has many battle scars. It cannot completely hide the years of bombings, of invasions and civil wars, and there are many buildings, their facades pock marked with bullet wounds. It’s so difficult for an outsider to imagine what the place and the people have gone through, and so recently, when you meet the open, friendly kind-hearted masses.



I think that being through trauma makes us appreciate each day, each flower, each fruit.

We saw vibrant red poppies, sprouting up through concrete landscapes, and tasted exotic fruits like escadinia (a small oblong yellow fruit, like a plum, with shiny rich brown seeds inside), and bomali, a huge citrus fruit, somewhat like a grapefruit but larger and sweeter, and the sharp tang of fresh almonds, green and slightly fuzzy, eaten with salt.



When friends took us to the hills outside the concrete jungle of Beirut (where there is no free standing homes, just miles and miles of highrises), we came to a different world. We drove through tiny Druze villages perched atop cliffs and wound our way to a magical home, built into the side of a mountain. It took my breath away.

Artichokes and orange trees and huge fresh green beans grew all around and the house itself, like a secret cabin, peeked out, fully open to the trees and blooming flowers that sheltered it.



There was a feast there too – a luncheon where the guests poured in from the city, and the drinks and food poured out of the open kitchen just as fast.

There was an Easter egg hunt for the kids as it was Easter Sunday, and trays of baklawa for us adults. Yum.

This is the Lebanon we were embraced by – the fast and the slow, the sad and the joyous, the vibrancy that flows in the people, the places, the soul of the country.



Some great links about Lebanon:

Blogging Beirut
Lonely Planet
Lebanon.com

Today’s lesson in cultural imperialism

We have a couple of lovely visitors staying with us from the land down under. They were both raised on rural dairy farms and are quite down to earth.

I have been asking about the cultural relations between the Aboriginal population and those of European ancestry in Australia. Their perspective is quite honest and derived from personal experience as opposed to academic. They are not concerned with political correctness or viewing relations objectively. I find their candidness refreshing.

Last night I heard the following story: in the white farming community where our visitor *Pamela grew up, there was an Aboriginal grouping quite close by, living on what they called a ‘reserve’.

The story goes, that when one of the influential and well known Aboriginal chiefs died, the priest from Pamela’s village insisted that he officiate at the funeral, and ‘splashed out’ on a fancy, expensive coffin of hardwood and a plush interior for the chief.

After the funeral, the priest made a courtesy visit to the chief’s family some time later. What he found was that the body had been dug up and the children of the chief’s family were found in the coffin, splashing around in their makeshift bathtub.

Imagine the shock for the priest! I’m sure he was incredulous. To this date, the majority of whites assume that the people were simply ignorant, uncultured and ‘wild’…
_______________________________________________________________________________

So after Pamela’s narration of the story , I decided to investigate/research the beliefs and practices surrounding death and burial amongst Australia’s Aboriginal groups.

What I found cemented the notion I had about the blatant cultural/religious imposition.

Aboriginal groups have a completely different concept of what happens to body and soul after death and the traditional practices differ widely and wildly from the Christian conservatives who settled in these areas and proceeded to set up missions.

I found a highly detailed article online here (for those of you who might find this interesting), about the complicated funeral of an influential Aboriginal chief in 1997.

Basically, after a Christian funeral (to appease the ‘whitefellas’), the body is transported to a specially selected cave, removed from the coffin (which is simply a mode of carriage to the spot), and arranged on a high platform, protected from animals and exposed to drying wind.

After two years the bones are collected and ceremonially treated, and then presented to the family of the deceased in an elaborate ceremony of mourning and remembrance. Traditional belief sees the body being locked up in a box and sunk ‘six feet under’ as against the natural procession for body and soul.

Can’t blame them really…



Find here a very concise and well presented site on statistics regarding Aboriginal Australians.

*Any names of real people in this story have been changed to protect their identity.

From Mojos to the WWF - a lifetime of suspicion of religion

I’ve always had an incredibly suspicious view of religion. I guess we are all products of our upbringing to an extent, and neither of my parents were religious, despite the fact my father was raised a Catholic. There was no mention of God or church in my house, and it all seemed quite fine…

My first encounter with church was a mixed experience, and it went progressively downhill from there. Somehow at five years old I had been enrolled in Sunday school with a friend. The fun part was the bus that picked us up and dropped us off. We sang silly songs (which I’m sure were geared toward familiarizing us with the Lord’s word, but was utterly lost on me), and best of all they gave us little toffees called Mojos. Looking back it seems like shameless bribery! However, at the time it seemed great. Free candies and songs…

The actual Sunday school was in the back of a church, smelled musty and looked like a dusty store room. We sat on metal fold out chairs and made crafts out of uncooked macaroni, sparkles, Elmer’s glue (always a bit too much was used so that it oozed out from under the macaroni…), and paper plates. I was unconcerned as to the significance of the guy with the beard and the cross. I was always just waiting for the ride home for more Mojos.

I promptly forgot all about it until around the age of twelve one of my friends invited me to church with her family. I asked my mom and her answer seemed strange. “If that’s what you want, by all means go and check it out”, or something along those lines.

I think it was an Anglican church. It was all very stark and somber. Everyone was white and middle class. Everyone dressed up, but not too flashy. Lots of brown and grey suits. Dull floral dresses and sensible shoes… and it was BORING! There were hymns that no one knew the words to, but opened the booklets in the pews and made a half-hearted attempt at mumbling through, along with the priest/pastor. The actual sermon was irrelevant in it’s topic and content. I wondered why anyone would consider the tribulations of people centuries ago, given that the world had changed so much.

It seemed like the longest hour of my life – akin to math class, where I always had to come up with clever ways of keeping myself awake.

I never went back.

When I had a Jamaican boyfriend in my later teens, his sister invited me to her ‘revival’ church. Wow! That was the closest thing to a pop concert that I could imagine a church to be. It was held in a huge hall and 95% of the worshippers were black, despite the fact that it was in downtown Toronto. Everyone was dressed to the nines – big hats, flashy dresses, snake skin patterned suits (it WAS the 80’s…).

There was an air of excitement as everyone made their way in, serenaded by a full gospel choir with a rock band accompaniment. When the preacher took the stage everyone cheered. He was an ex-WWF wrestler, turned born again preacher. This seemed like a major career change until I compared the both - on stage, performing.. I guess it was a good fit. He preached with vigour and might, enthusiasm and omnipotence. It all seemed so happy and lively until he started with the ‘scare tactics’. I was shocked when he brought out the old testament threats of fire and brimstone… I looked around and the people looked entranced, like docile lambs. Why would they believe this stuff? Why would they come every week to be threatened with supernatural horror movie style afterlife nightmare speeches?

And then came the ‘healings’. There is a Steve Martin movie that comes to mind. In the movie he is a ‘preacher’ who does a completely bogus ‘healing roadshow’…

One after another, people went down to the front and fell willingly to the ground when the ex-wrestler’s chubby hand touched their forehead , some in crumpled heaps, some rigid and convulsing like epileptic seizures, many in tears. I was amused but flabbergasted.

There followed obligatory dancing in the aisles and I slowly realised the insistence on everyone getting up and moving was a ploy to get each of us to pass by the collection box. Extortion!!!! And this church service lasted close to 6 hours!!!
I never went back.

In the meantime I had been learning about evolution in biology class – I found it one of the only truly interesting topics. And I couldn’t help but think how drastically these scientific theories contradicted the simple teachings of the bible – with the 7 days God created the earth, and the clay moulding of Adam with Eve as his rib…
It confirmed to me at the time that religion is a tool in society/culture; something that gives simple answers to the questions that in reality none of us can comprehend. The world and it’s creation is beyond any of us, so how preposterous for certain people to claim ‘the knowledge’. How even more preposterous to teach that there are certain rules of conduct that ‘please’ a god…. More mind control….

This was all before I headed to the mind-opening years of University, and my sojourns in Africa where I came to learn so many more things – where I saw the similarities of the Christianity practised by Afro-Canadians and the continent they ultimately came from. Where I learned about traditional religions and colonialism and power struggles and politics and the role of Christianity and Islam... but I’ll blog about them tomorrow.

Thanks Esi - for inspiring my contemplation on the topic today in your great blog post.