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Study guide · Race, Faith & Identity

Did Kemeticism, Not Christianity, Bow to White Colonialism?

Reviewed by Jude 3 Project·2 min read

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A standalone study on which faith assimilated to empire, and which resisted it.

The big question

The charge is common: Christianity is the colonizer’s religion, while traditional African religion is the authentic one. Dr. Vince Bantu, a scholar of African Christianity, turns the question over. Who actually accommodated the colonizers, and who refused? This study walks through a surprising history in which the African church resisted empire, even at great cost.

Key takeaways

  • Traditional Kemetic religion absorbed the gods of its Greek and Roman colonizers.
  • Rome tolerated blended worship but persecuted Christians who would worship only Jesus.
  • The Egyptian, Nubian, and Ethiopian churches resisted the Roman church’s impositions.
  • African Christians were oppressed by European Christians, and stood firm anyway.
  • The Christianity of empire is not the same as the gospel of Christ.

Scripture to sit with

Acts 5:29. We must obey God rather than men. The refusal that got Christians persecuted.

Exodus 20:3. You shall have no other gods before me. The line Christians would not cross.

Daniel 3:16-18. Three Hebrews refuse to bow to the empire’s image. An ancient model of holy resistance.

Revelation 7:9. Every nation before the throne. The gospel was never the property of one empire.

Quotes worth discussing

Bantu says, “Egyptian Christians actually kept it real… for Egyptian culture more than the traditional religious practitioners did.”

On the African church and Rome, Bantu says plainly, “European Christians were oppressing African Christians.”

With Frederick Douglass, Bantu names “the widest possible difference” between “the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ.”

Discussion questions

  • Had you heard the claim that Christianity is the colonizer’s religion? How did you answer it?
  • What does it change to learn that the African church resisted Rome?
  • Where do you see the Christianity of this land confused with the gospel today?
  • What would it cost you to refuse to bow, the way the early Christians did?
  • How do you honor your heritage and Christ at the same time?

Go deeper

This study comes from the Jude 3 Project’s Understanding Kemeticism course with Dr. Vince Bantu. For a related conversation, see the Jude 3 work on how early and how central Christianity was in Africa.

A closing reflection

Read Daniel 3 this week, the three Hebrews before the furnace. Then sit with Bantu’s history of an African church that would not bow to empire. Ask where you are tempted to blend your faith with the powers of your day, and where you are called, instead, to stand.

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