His main character, Okonkwo, is a wealthy Igbo member who struggles with the missionaries’ arrival to Umuofia. The missionaries threatened the Igbo tribe to convert to Christianity, causing confusion and anger towards to the westerners for their lack of knowledge
Obi’s education in England is another aspect of the Christian influence on him. Before he left Nigeria, he had been a true Nigerian and had known only his village. But his father, Nwoye – the son of Okonkwo who converted to Christianity and rejected his father – strictly condemned the old religion and brought up his children as Christians. Obi has his own opinion of religion but is afraid of telling his parents. The confusion of Obi about the two religions is stated by Achebe as: "Father, I no longer believe in your God"? '
Adiche focuses on a lot of themes ranging from religion to the use of violence to suppress an individual to the freedom of self expression that contribute to her ideas on post-colonialism. To understand the uses of religion in explaining such concepts in this work, it is important to examine the symbolism and purpose of the characters to the story. The book has two major religious figures that shape the way Kambili approaches religion: Father Benedict and Father Amandi. There is a clear contrast between the two. Father Benedict is a white English priest that conducts everything in his church according to European tradition, so much so that he does not even allow sermons in the Igbo language.
The author brings in the social discrimination of the Igbo society into play where most of the converters are those that were tired of being discriminated in the village. They are those that were at the lowest level of the Igbo society. The author wants to share that in the Igbo society, many are discriminated to the extent where one no longer has patriotism to his/her own culture. Even Nneka converted due to his despise against his father who killed his best friend, Ikemefuna. The context of social discrimination in the Igbo community has then led to many who converted to Christianity where it is believed that everyone is equal.
After the part of the passage that explains both the Europeans and Igbo people are to blame for colonization, Obierika states, “Now he has won our brothers and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart (Achebe 176).” This is the only reference of the title throughout the entire book, and is used to represent the book as a whole because it shows that nothing goes as planned throughout Okonkwo’s life as well as the overall existence of the Igbo culture and society. In relation to the surrounding plot of this quote, Achebe uses the word ‘knife’ as a symbolic representation of the European colonization. The ‘knife’ has cause great amounts of damage to Umuofia that is beyond repair. The European have broken the Igbo society into two.
Psalm 89:26 says, “He shall cry to Me, ‘You are my Father, My God, and the rock of my salvation’” (NKJV). Many other religions acknowledge that Jesus was a good teacher, but they strip Him of His Deity. With the Word of God as our source, we can see that Jesus is just as much God as the Father and Spirit. In Phil. 2:5-11 Paul gives us a very clear picture of Jesus’ deity “Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage…” (NLT).
Amin needed Muslims as his support base because he came from a minority Kakwa tribe which could not offer him the required reinforcement against a steadily rising rebellion against him. The Ugandan Nubi are traced from migrants from southern Sudan who first served as mercenaries for the British colonial. They were recruited in the colonial army and played a key role in events that followed when for instance they allied with Selim bey in a failed attempt to reinstate a Muslim king in Buganda at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Nubian community thus lived much of the colonial and post-colonial era on the margins without much influence. However, their fortunes came when Idi Amin Dada, a kinsman took over the leadership of the country.
In Chinua Achebe’s book we see the significance of their ancestors pre-colonial times. As the missionaries arrived in their villages they believed they were better fit to rule the Umuofian people because they were better educated. This was an impudence against the village and their ancestors because the people of Umuofia have been following the path of their ancestors. In the Igbo religion, ancestors not only play a central role in their lives but are listened to and followed with respect. The Igbo culture was at a risk of declining when the missionaries began to introduce their ideology and Christianity into their village.
The European missionaries contributed in forming racial grouping between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda that led to genocide. Furthermore, from the beginning the missionaries did not unite the two races in Rwanda; in fact, Roman Catholic missionaries were seen as experts in the field of the complicated social relations of the Rwandan population. The Christians were observing everything as the Catholic churches built separate schools for Hutus and for Tutsis following the Hamitic theory of race origins, which taught that the Tutsi were a superior race. When the genocide started the church could not be set apart since some leaders of the church contributed in encouraging the Hutus to kill the Tutsis as they deliver the Tutsis who took refuge
According to Edusa-Eyison these European missionaries did not respect the people’s culture as “everything Africa was primitive, pagan, fetish, and heathen in the eyes of Europe.” Hence, Africans were told that in order to become Christians they must renounce their cultural practices and accept that of the Europeans (this was a sort of package deal). On Ndigbo axis, Nwosu affirms that “the missionaries adopted a negative attitude that was tantamount to condemnation of disproval of traditional Igbo society.” The adverse effect of this teaching is that it made people develop inferiority complexes concerning their cultural identity. This is because they now believe that in order to be a Christian, one must jettison his/her culture since they are thought to be “barbaric” and “heathen”. According to Schreiter all these “have undermined African Christians in two ways: by demeaning their own sense of worth and dignity as Africans.” The question to be asked then is whether the missionaries were really Christianizing or Westernizing the African people. One will have to say that they were Westernizing more than Christianizing and they might have done this consciously or unconsciously but the fact is that they identified European culture with Christianity.