Over the last years of my life there has been a happy slow stray away from the wild world of West African Baptist Christianity. Sadly for hundreds of millions of people across the world they will never get to experience this. British secularisation has allowed for the grand liberalisation of our society, aiding free choice for whoever wishes to receive it. However, there are areas where religion suffocates legislatures, terrorising all those who refuse to disobey its commands. The development of our rights is directly in conflict with religious belief. Religion tells us to put ourselves beneath the will of God, irrespective of whatever our wants and needs on this planet are.
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| The KKK adopted the burning cross image to spread their message |
The opioid of the masses
The brilliance of secularism is now abundantly clear as religious nations clamp down on individual liberty. Senegal is nation with inflation estimated to be at around 20% with pressing economic issues for the poorest in its society. Rather than dedicating the entirety of parliamentary time to the matter, the Senegalese government decided to further clamp down on gay rights with new laws declaring a maximum of 10 years in prison for homosexuals. The iconic Karl Marx quote of religion being the 'opioid of the masses' springs to mind when looking at the public response to this. Compared to protesting on income inequality or the dominance of MNCs in the economy, the Senegalese people decided to stage protests pushing for harsher punishments for the LGBT community, fuelled by a religious passion which, if applied to economic issues might result in better lives for the nations' working class. Religious driven action is almost always done with the utmost passion for their cause. These individuals believe that they have an unlocked the way to an afterlife and everyone has to join them. They weaponise their numbers to push governments through lobbying, pressure groups and the creation of a voting bloc with the sole purpose of pushing the legislature of their nation to bow down to their will.
One of the more potent examples is the case of Amy Coney Barrett and her role in the Supreme Court. Barrett is part of a sect of Catholicism called The People of Praise. This group is deeply misogynist, utilising biblical literalism to preach the subjugation of women to the will of men. So it's no surprise that when Barrett was asked to vote on the overturning of the Roe vs Wade ruling she voted to wipe the right to abortion for millions of American women. Supreme Court Justices are meant to be make decisions impartially with an explicit focus on the law and constitution. However I would like to question as to whether this position is even viable with religious believers. At the point at which you believe that an act is sin which your God might punish your nation for, there is quite literally no way justifiable way in which someone with that belief system can allow it to occur upon reaching a position of power. We now have religious believers erasing decades of legal and societal process all on the basis of a flawed religious text, hate-filled interpretations and their dominionistic agenda.
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| Protesters opposing the appointment of Coney Barrett |
My bones will rise again
Another recent focus of mine has been the religious role of the British colonialist mission through the famous case study of Rhodesia. Once Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company set their sights on the Matabele Kingdom of East Africa they utilised brutal military force as they outgunned the native tribes people to capture their territory. Alongside Rhodes' settlers were London Missionaries who travelled the world with the purpose of spreading the gospel. Despite being well-versed in biblical scripture, these missionaries sat back and watched as the Rhodesian nation developed, pushing the native Africans into arid land where hunger and illness ravaged the population. These missionaries travelled across the continent, setting up churches, erasing culture and sowing the seeds for the modern religious psychosis we see in the global south. Often conversion was done slowly and peacefully once a base was created within a colony, however this wasn't always the case. The Shona and Matabele people of Eastern Africa refused to concede to Christianity in the late 1890s. After being driven off their land, local spiritual leaders rallied up the natives to take part in an armed struggle against the settlers. The rebellion failed and two of the spiritual leaders were sentenced to death. However, blind to the irony of their religious belief, the settlers requested that the spiritual leaders convert to Christianity before they were hung to death. Mbuya Nehanda refused with the quote " my bones will rise again" being an inspiration for the fighters of the Rhodesian Bush War. These missionaries had a golden chance to show the loving nature of Christianity and its capacity to live in harmony in a multi-faith society. It failed catastrophically.
To conclude, what do I want? Ideally I want a world where religious belief exists our society and we tear apart the arbitrary division which the so-called 'sky-man' has created. However, I fear society is too far gone to achieve anything so beautiful. Perhaps the more realistic worldview is a world where secularisation is pushed by the global north. Where we utilise our position of economic superiority to reverse the harms we did through spreading religion in the first place. This should be done aggressively using our cultural influence as a springboard to wipe religion out of governments, empowering the people of the world.