The Forgotten African History of Christianity (Dr. Trevor O'Reggio)

[Music] and so when we look at the actual development of the early church we see this was primarily an African / Asian religion the greatest center of early Christianity was an afro-asiatic city which is Alexandria and this is where are the great early theologians the church were centered men like athenaeus and Alexander and Tertullian and Origen even all the scene himself considered the father of medieval theology almost all of them are African welcome back to add that next a theological podcasts for curious faith discussions this week's recommended reading for our podcast as a book by Thomas Oden entitled how Africa shaped the Christian mind rediscovering the African seed bed of Western Christianity our guest today is dr. Trevor o Reggio chair of the church history department at Andrews University and a specialist on Reformation history today we are discussing the non Western African history of Christianity as well as the contributions of African intellectualism to our modern understanding of Christianity we'll also be discussing the Western experience for African slaves who became Christians during the span of slavery in the u.s. it's an incredibly enriching topic that you don't want to miss if you'd like to listen to some of our other podcast you can find us on Spotify iTunes or Apple podcast at Advent next or follow us on Instagram Facebook or YouTube at the handle at Advent next my co-host today is Michelle odenma seminary student and legendary singer songwriter you can follow her at Michelle odenma music and as always I'm your host Kendra Arsenal and this is add that next you taught a very interesting course a couple years back what was the title in that course again history of african-american religion yeah yeah and I thought it was very interesting you sent me the outline and I was like I really want to do a podcast on this topic because if I feel like it's so relevant you know going to kind of a secular University a lot of the rhetoric is that the the Bible was written from a Western perspective and it was used solely as a tool of oppression it's a fabricated account and even though there's no question the Bible has been used as a tool of oppression people have justified slavery through it and I want to just kind of get a little bit of the non Western history of Christianity is is the Bible really a Western fabrication or what is the true non-western history of Christianity and I've heard this notion being bandied about for a while that Christianity is a Western religion you know I've heard a lot of Muslims saying it's the white man's religion you know it's a way of oppressing us blacks but in order for us to understand Christianity we have to go back to its roots and just think about the place from which Christianity emerged you know Palestine so we could look first at the geography geographically Palestine is connected with Africa and with Asia it sits right there as a kind of and the centerpiece between the two content in fact some historians identified Palestine at that time as North East Africa Christianity is embedded right there in the context of Africa now we can go back beyond Christianity and consider Abraham who's considered the father of the Jews who spend time in Africa Joseph spent time in Africa and the people of Israel spent 430 years in Africa now when we come to the New Testament we know that the first non-jewish convert was an Ethiopian it was an African yeah the first non-jewish convert to the early church was an after who then takes the religion back into Africa and so when we look at the actual development of the early church we see this was primarily an African / Asian religion the greatest center of early Christianity was an afro-asiatic city which is Alexandria yeah although it was named Alexandria but it was in Egypt but it was an African city and this is where the great early theologians the church were centered and when you look at the names of the early church fathers you know starting with men like athenaeus and Alexander and Tertullian and origin even Augustine himself considered the father of medieval theology almost all of them are African so the the first 300 years of Christianity had its its roots its foundation in the continent of Africa itself Wow well so with that since it I guess a lot of people don't know that I didn't know that before okay you know taking your course in the seminary how did African intellectualism and early development of Christianity within Africa kind of contribute to our Western understanding of Christianity so that's that's a good question I want to refer you to a book written by Thomas Oden called how Africa shaped the Christian mind rediscovering the African seedbed for Western Christianity and in that in that particular book by the way Alden is a white scholar he lays out actually seven areas where Africa is actually shaping Western Christianity so what we need to understand is that the movement of Christianity is a seven movement to another movement all of the the intellectual platform of the religion is being established in Africa and it's moving west and north the birth of what we call the universe system was already established in Africa and eventually it moved towards Europe so that's one thing a second the great African thinkers of the early church as I said I've identified a few of them are all from Africa and I think we talked about this a little bit before but like you know we're looking at the foundations of Christianity that the Trinity even was something that was really formulated in Africa you have a Phoenicians one of the most fiercest proponents of what we understand today as the Trinity the divinity of Jesus yeah yeah yeah and I think that that's it's a fantastic you know it's a fantastic contribution that we don't necessarily hear when we're understanding the history of Christianity so so we know that like through Egypt and you know Abraham and Joseph like you mentioned earlier we see the African connection there and then I think of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon and they have that experience was that kind of the introduction into the east of Africa Ethiopia's in the east yeah so as I mentioned to you Judaism you know preceded Christianity and Africa already had a long-standing relationship with Judaism through earlier contacts with the Queen of Sheba and as I mentioned Abraham and Joseph and the Jews the the Hebrew people spent over 400 years in Africa right and of course Jesus himself Mary and Joseph went down into Africa what we also know is that many of the what they call the Diaspora Jews were in Africa in Alexander in fact final one of the great Jewish philosophers he was in in Alexandria Egypt so that's one of the reasons why we know that Christianity developed very much in Africa because Christianity tend to follow where the dispersed Jews were and many of them were in Africa I mentioned Alexandria is an important city but there's also cartage much of not what we call northern Africa today Morocco Tunisia Algeria northern Sudan all of these countries came under African in means Christian influence long before Islam was even heard on that vain you're talking about Islam you know a lot of times we think that Christianity and its rise to power came in three hundred when Constantine came to power is that true I mean when did the Christian really become this when did Western Christianity really become the center of power and what were some of the factors that happen well it began to move towards what we call the west and the north with the Ascension of constant you know but if you recall when Constantinople took over the Roman Empire he moved from the West and he made Constantinople in Turkey a city in Turkey his new capital and he he get he tend to give preference since there were many varieties of Christianity he tend to give preference to a certain brand of Christianity which is going to emerge and essentially controlled what we now called Western Christianity and the and the the preference that he would give to this variety of Christianity would be the Christianity that was under the control of the Bishop of Rome and so over the subsequent years this branch of Christianity begins to emerge and essentially suppress all the other varieties of Christianity so by time we get to the time of Gregory the Great if you recall he's a transitional figure from the early church to the medieval church by time we get to Gregory the Great he died I think in 604 AD what we now called Western Christianity under the control of the Bishop of Rome is going to become the dominant form of Christianity especially in the West so there is a lack of knowledge about non Western Christianity where do you think that was lost how why don't we talk about more of Africa why don't we talk about all of these other places that had a big influence on Christian thought there good question a lot times and people look at an event they tend to look at it from the present perspective rather than looking at it from the origin of a particular you know religion or whatever but I think part of the reason has to do with the fact that as Christianity was taken over in the West by the Bishop of Rome there was another Christianity in the East and in the south which was thriving but with the with the rise on the emergence of Islam that Christianity which was very strong in these countries that I've identified would eventually over time be replaced by Islam so all these countries that I've named Tunisia Algeria Morocco Egypt Sudan would actually become Islamic countries all of the northern part and and of course it would begin to come down to Western Africa and eventually Eastern Africa so so over time what Islam did was they took over all of these great Christian monasteries the libraries the churches and made them into into Islamic institutions and all of the great Christian sites were lost the libraries were lost you know monasteries were shut down so that form of Christianity essentially was became little known to scholars in the West and so when people think about Christianity they don't think of the Christianity in its early form that was in Africa and in that part of Asia but they think primarily Christianity in the West which has a long history of continuity and therefore we have more records so we can learn better about them and so people think Christi of Christianity primarily in the West and not in these parts we have identified when did Christianity really become you know the strength in the West like what was it during the time of Constantine or did that happen well later during this time it began in Constantine as I said because Constantine baganz begins to favor a certain variety of Christian it took a while we would say probably in the year 1054 there was a schism between what we called Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity so around the in that first millennium it began as I said before but that the schism in 1054 Western Christianity is going to emerge and essentially become the primary voice of Christianity and all other varieties of Christianity that did not conform to this brand of Christianity would be exterminated it seems like there's such a rich history that was lost and Carthage and all of these amazing Alexandria these libraries because of the influence of Islam and then all of that got pushed into Western Rome and then that kind of shaped the narrative of what we see today and as we said earlier you know most of the great none of the great scholars came from Rome you know the early church they're all from the east or from Africa Rome was not really about scholarship and theological intellectualism as such those primary school experience Athanasius there's the Bishop of Alexander there is Tertullian there's almost in himself this origin there's a whole host of them well transitioning into you know the religious history of African Americans in here in America and Christianity within the United States what ways is the Western narrative of Christianity in the u.s. different from the African and narrative of the arrival in the US and a lot of times we see America as like oh it's a promised land that we've come to an escape from you know European persecution but that was not particularly the history of African Americans in their arrival to the United States so by time the the Christians of the American Christians came to what we call the Americas Christianity and what we call Western culture had become one Western culture essentially had co-opted Christianity so Christianity was now being interpreted primarily through the eyes of Europeans and there was a lot of perversion about it so when they brought this religion this so-called religion is Christianity essentially it was what I call a white man's religion all the creatures were why'd the Angels God is wider mean it's essentially a Eurocentric religion and just imagine you are a black slave from Africa and this religion is being put forward to you but it's a religion that essentially says to you your place as a slave has been for deigned by by the gods of christianity it this was not a religion that was receptive to African slaves because the religion essentially was reinforcing their status as slave and essentially saying that the god of the Christians was an agreement and condone the enslavement and 1/2 of Africans in the Americas so essentially the the religion became a tool to justify slavery I became a tool to try to pacify the slaves and to make them more obedient and servile to the wishes of the white masters in America so it sounds like it wasn't so that that the Bible and the and the development of Western Christianity you know was used as a tool of oppression right so so what these and these people Christians these are not on but non-believers these people who are creating this slave systems or Christian so they went back to the Bible and they they came up with a series of arguments to justify theologically justify the existence of slavery I'll give you a few examples they went back to the book of Genesis and they identified ham as the children of blacks and claimed that the children of blacks their destiny was to be servants they look at Abraham and said look at Abraham the father of faith he had slaves and God blessed him they look at the instructions given about slave in the Book of Leviticus and other books and Exodus and suggest that you know God is in total conformity with the practice of slavery and then of course they appeal to Paul the Apostle way talks about you know servants obey your master so they hope they use a whole range of theological or Eggman's to justify the existence of slavery in their minds they saw slavery as something that is actually good in fact initially when they when they brought Christianity to slavery to the slaves they wanted to convert the slaves but they were a little bit reluctant because they were afraid that the slaves would use Christianity as a way of freeing themselves they in other words the space would look for elements in the religion to liberate themselves so they're reluctant but over time they began to only selectively use parts of the Scriptures essentially to keep blacks in a servile condition and to and to give them the idea that it was their destiny it was their place to be slaves yeah on that same line so there's a slave Bible so what what was a slaves kind of introduction to Christianity what did it look like when they were introduced okay to this religion so initially when when Christianity first came to the Americas there was a standard tradition in English culture that says a Christian cannot hold a fellow believer in bondage you know so the English early English colonists in America had a dilemma they had to get around this particular tradition and so very early in I think 1667 the legislature of Virginia decided that even if even if a slave became a Christian it didn't alter his condition as a slave so very early they made it clear that if a Christian became a slave became a Christian that would he still remain a slave but of course this was not a positive thing for a lot of slaves who desired to be Christians and they were thinking maybe the slaves would use this tradition as a way of trying to get out of their condition but as I said they made it very clear very early that you know we're going to make sure that the law keeps a slave as a slave regardless of their state as a Christian but the turning point for Christians for slaves and the introduction to Christianity took place in the Great Awakening it was a great religious revival just prior to the American Revolution and for the first time Chris I mean sleighs black slaves responded in any great numbers to the Christian message revivals tend to break down barriers and whites and blacks this was actually the first context in which large groups of whites and blacks met together and in that the midst of the revival people experiencing all kinds of emotional turmoil many black slaves actually became Christians but what is important about this turning point is that the african-american slaves are actually going to reconfigure Christianity they're going to recalibrate it to fit their own situation in other words they were not going to take the form of Christianity that was being given to them by the white slave masters well I guess I'm always blown away because you know I I don't doubt maybe the sincerity of some of the early white Christian followers but I just I don't understand how they couldn't see their own hypocrisy what what wasn't that happened in the culture that they felt that you know a God who was released as people from Egypt that the that he was a God of redemption but also at the same time hold this kind of cognitive dissonance where he's enslaving people like what was it hypocrisy like what was kind of the I think we could think of it in terms of the economic necessity for example in Virginia they needed laborers too for the plantation that tobacco plantation they needed hearty strong workers and they discovered that the Native Americans were not able to withstand the rigors of labor and of course we know the story of how the first blacks came to Jamestown Virginia in 1619 a Dutch ship actually brought a group of black slaves to Jamestown Virginia these slaves were actually captured from a Portuguese slave ship in other words there was actually slave trade taking place a hundred years prior to this but with the Spanish and also the Portuguese but English America they came in 1619 and they discovered that these Africans were very well a climatic to the the weather of Virginia over time and also to the rigors of labour and the slave trade essentially took off from there but it was out of the economic necessity they realized that they could make great profit if they traffic you know an inhuman slave especially black slaves so for almost the next 300 years it becomes part of the economic policy of English North America in bringing black slaves they came to the other British colonies Barbados Jamaica in great numbers so was that the point where they began to try and justify yes exactly so as slave evolved and became an institution at first the loot the rules around slaves were very loose because initially the slaves the black slaves actually work alongside indentured labourers from Ireland and there was a famous revolt is called the bacons revolt in which the the white slave owners recognized that if the indentured white laborers and these black indentured laborers and black slaves got together it could be a threat to the social order and so they made they began to make a distinction based on color it's the beginning of what we called black slavery in America we are now blackness was associated with with with slavery and so over time that philosophy is going to evolve and it will go beyond slavery so that even if you were a free black person you would still suffer the limitations that was imposed on black slaves and I look at even our culture today I mean within the body of Christianity you know there's a lot of just I would say like just a disagreement between brothers and sisters in Christ because of their political views you know some people who you know who come even from mixed families one parent who's white is wearing a mag Ahad and the child who is mixed-race feels betrayed by their parent to say how could you aside with this person and I think that that kind of those feelings and those sentiments are still happening between brothers and sisters in Christ so how in the early days like how how do they navigate what did it mean to be black and Christian it seems like there's a dual dual experience happening there well let's back up a little bit they had another problem that the earth the early slave masters had and that was what do you do with the the children of mixed heritage yeah how do we define their status most of these children that were born were born of black mothers and so they made another law colonial legislation they made another law in which they define the the any child born of a black mother would still retain the slave status of the mother because almost all the children that were born were layers on between white men and black womens all of these children born it they would not be altered if the status would not be altered based on the status of the father but was based understands off of the mother now as as slavery evolved you have to understand also that slaves began to look at America very different from just like oh you have this difference in politics right now between various family members slaves began to look at America not as Canaan land but as Babylon and Egypt these are the two historic oppressive nations of the Hebrew people Egypt and Babylon and of course most of the white settlers coming to America they see America as what Canaan land it's a land of endless opportunity and so we have this we have this kind of a parallel that has actually continued on throughout the nation we are one group because they're given certain privilege and opportunity and resources see America this great land of opportunity and another group being oppressed sees America as a land Babylon they see it as a land of oppression Egypt you know these historical enemies of the Hebrew and what the these black Christians essentially began to do they began to see themselves as the ancient Hebrews they took on the spirit they took on the the thinking of these ancient Hebrews that they are the oppressed people yeah and but just as how God delivered the ancient Hebrews they had the confidence and the assurance that ultimately God would bring them deliverance if you like today's broadcast and you'd like to find out additional information on today's topic you can read more in thomas odin's book how Africa shaped the Christian mind you can also check out numerous articles written by our guest dr. Trevor o Reggio on both the african-american religious experiences along with Reformation history on the digital Commons at Andrews University stay tuned for next week as we continue to explore the african-american religious experience as we learn from our past to make more informed decisions in art today thanks again to the Adventist learning community for making this program possible and thank you for taking the time to listen in if you have a question or comment about today's program please follow us on Instagram or YouTube at Advent next see you next week

Channel: Advent Next Theological Podcast

Views: 38,971

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Keywords: Advent Next, Adventist, Adventist podcast, Advnt nxt, African Christianity, African Church, African Church Fathers, Andrews seminary, Andrews university, Bible podcast, Bible Study, christian architecture, christian podcast, Church History, church history department, cosmic conflict, design, Desire of ages, Ellen White, Kendra Arsenault, Max Aka, podcast, sda, sda church, SDA podcast, seminary classes, Seventh-day Adventist, theology, Trevor O'Reggio

Id: fHpK134Gqf0

Length: 27min 25sec (1645 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019