Two refusals of Christianity can sound the same and mean very different things. Dr. Vince Bantu, a scholar of early Christianity in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, draws the line clearly. Some people turn away from Christ because they do not believe who he said he was. Others never get that far, because, in Bantu’s words, “they can’t even see Jesus because he’s so covered by Western packaging.” Once you know the history, your work is with the second group. Hold that distinction in mind as you read. Everything that follows is practice in removing the packaging so a person can see Jesus clearly.
You may already have done the reading. Christians were worshiping Jesus in Egypt, Ethiopia and Nubia long before most of northern Europe had a church. The Jude 3 Project holds that the claim that Christianity is a white man’s religion is historically inaccurate, and that following Jesus is not a betrayal of Black identity. That settles the historical question. What remains is harder: how to listen to people who still believe the claim, how to handle the facts honestly, how to carry yourself when the conversation turns hostile, and how to live so that the answer is visible in you.
The stages below build on one another, and they can be worked through alone over several weeks or with a few trusted people. Any personal sharing is optional. Each stage asks you to do something, because a settled answer stays abstract until it changes how you listen, speak and live. Bantu states the purpose behind all of it. The work is not a political project or a guilt trip, he says: “It’s about the spread of the gospel.”