Black female writers' perspective on religion: Alice Walker and Calixthe Beyala

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2002 by Mainimo, Wirba Ibrahim

Finally, the African male poet, John P. Clark, presents a typical male African attitude toward religious issues. His collection of poems, A Decade Of Tongues published in 1981, unveils the imperial mission of Christianity in Africa. Ernest Bradford has observed that, "Christianity, which for ages had been used as a vehicle for proclaiming salvation, was now being employed by the colonialists as a tool for subverting the tradition and promoting selfish socio-political and economic paradigms."11 In much the same line of thought, most colonial and post-colonial African writers view religion, especially the Christian religion, solely as an arm of Western imperial politics in Africa. lvbie, a poem by J. P Clark, states inter alia that:

At the office desk, we clapped/Ourselves on the back; / So well-fed on sweet quotations and Wine/Were we, with pride we said:/Forget O forget...to forgive is divine.12

And Ilater asks that,

For does not the Holy Writ/Loud peddled abroad/To approve imperial flaws and fraud/Does it not say true:P'Knock it shall be opened unto you"?13

Christianity, therefore, is simply an acolyte of the imperialists, for the church educated its constituencies in thought and action to better hail the advent of imperialism. Faced with this political propagandist mission of the Christian church, most writers began advocating for a return to the traditional religions of the African societies. Most of these religions differ remarkably from the Judeo-- Christian religions of the West. E. P. Skinner characterizes them as follows:

In Africa much religious attention is focused upon the earth, whose fructifying powers are of greater moment to man. Indeed she has her own cult, whereas the supreme god does not have one. Most of Man's needs are met by the lesser gods, and his morality is supervised by the lineage ancestors.14

Summarily, the black male writers rebel against religious institutions insofar as they suspect them of complicity with racism, colonialism, falsehood and oppression.

WHITE FEMINIST WRITERS' PERSPECTIVE ON RELIGION

One of the most radical and weighted attacks on the religious institution has come from white feminists. They point to the institutionalized sexism that has prevailed in religious institutions since time immemorial and usually coded in religious myths. The church, historically, has upheld an entrenched tradition of patriarchal inflexibility and misogyny. In her attempt to chart a historical background to the church's phallocentrism, Linda Gordon in her insightful research work, states that:

The idea of human equality was systematically distorted to exclude women. The Christians, soon after Jesus' death, claimed the Jewish tradition of excluding women entirely from the religious community. The council of Carthage in 391 prohibited women from taking the catechism, being baptized or studying. The medieval church castrated boys to create eunuchs for its choirs rather than use women. As late as the fifteenth century, English law made it illegal for women to read the New Testatment.15