Someone exploring Kemeticism will often make two historical claims, sometimes in the same breath. The first is that Christianity is a European religion forced on Africans. The second is that its central stories were copied from ancient Egypt. Both are claims about the past, so both can be checked. The specific examples this guide examines do not survive a comparison with the primary sources. Checking them well, though, means knowing which kind of Kemetic you are talking to, separating what the evidence shows from what you would like it to show, and saying no more than you can support.
You can work through this alone in about an hour, or with a group over one or two meetings. Each section ends with a short task. The main exercise, an evidence log, works best on paper. The guide draws on a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation between Lisa Fields and Christian apologist Adam Coleman, together with the biblical text.
First, find out who you are talking to
Kemeticism takes its name from Kemet. Coleman explains that adherents regard Kemet as the indigenous name for Egypt, and many prefer it to “Egypt,” which they see as a Greek label. Broadly, the movement draws on the history, philosophy and often the spirituality of ancient Egypt. Coleman stresses that Kemetics do not all believe the same thing, and he sorts them into two groups.
Kemetic spiritualists practice the spirituality of ancient Egypt in daily life. Coleman describes their view as a form of pantheism: everything that exists is part of one divine whole, and the Egyptian deities are expressions of that one reality. Kemetic non-spiritualists draw on the same history and heritage but do not hold to the deities. Coleman says they treat the gods and goddesses as stand-ins for natural forces or principles, and that most often they say there is no God. He calls this a Kemetic-flavored atheism, and he admits that “they may take exception of this” description. That admission matters. Test your label against what a person actually says about themselves.
The sorting changes the conversation. Coleman’s moral argument, that a pantheistic god contains both the oppressed and the oppressor, is aimed at spiritualists. It does little against someone who believes in no god at all. With a non-spiritualist, the real questions are about history and about whether a godless universe can explain what we know. Lisa Fields warned against the shortcut of memorizing talking points, observing that “sometimes people think if I just get these principles down, then I’ll be able to engage them.” Her alternative was to “get to the core and then work your way out to their beliefs.”
Task: Think of one person you know who is drawn to Kemetic ideas. Write down what you actually know about whether they treat the deities as real, as symbols, or as heritage. If you do not know, that is your first question for them.
Claim one: Christianity is foreign to Africa
Decide first what would count as evidence. If Christianity were a European export, you would expect Africans to appear in the Christian story only after Europeans brought the faith. If the claim is false, you would expect Africans among the first people who heard and believed the gospel.
Read Acts 8:26-40 slowly. An official from Ethiopia, a treasurer serving Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, has traveled to Jerusalem to worship. On his chariot ride home he is reading Isaiah. Luke reports that “Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus” (Acts 8:35). The official asks to be baptized, and afterward “he went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39).
Acts is historical narrative, so it describes rather than commands. Notice what the text leaves open. The man is from the African kingdom Luke calls Ethiopia, and he already worships Israel’s God. The text does not say whether he was a Gentile drawn to Judaism, a convert to it, or a Jew living abroad, and interpreters differ. What it does show is a man from Africa coming to faith in Christ within the church’s first years, through a Jewish evangelist and a Hebrew prophet, with no European involved.
Two other passages need the same care. Acts 2:10 lists people from Egypt and from the parts of Libya around Cyrene in the Pentecost crowd, but Luke describes that crowd as Jews and converts to Judaism visiting Jerusalem, and he does not say which of them believed. Acts 13:1 names Lucius of Cyrene, a North African city, among the prophets and teachers at Antioch. The text gives his city, not his ancestry. These passages place people connected to Africa at the gospel’s start. They do not settle anyone’s ethnicity.
Now state the objection at its strongest. A thoughtful skeptic might grant all of Acts and still say it is beside the point. The Christianity most of their ancestors actually met came through slaveholders who preached obedience, and in much of Africa through missions that arrived alongside colonial power. Whatever ancient African church once existed, the skeptic argues, it is not the church that reached their family. That objection deserves a direct answer. Acts answers the question of origin: the faith did not begin as a European possession. It does not answer how most African-descended people today first met Christianity, or what that encounter cost them. Those are separate historical questions, and the abuses involved should be named as sin. Showing that Europeans misused the faith, however, is different from showing they originated it.
Jude 3 Project holds that African and African-descended believers do not have to choose between their heritage and their faith. Acts supports the starting point of that conviction. The later history of African Christianity is a larger body of evidence that this conversation does not lay out, and Coleman explicitly leaves it to other scholars. Learn that history from reliable historical work before you repeat claims about it.
Claim two: Christianity copied Egypt
Coleman says the most common version of this claim links Jesus to Horus: what the Bible says about Jesus was said earlier about Horus, so the gospel must be borrowed. His method is the part worth learning: “you want to look into primary sources to see if these claims hold up.”
He applies it to the best-known parallel, that both were born on December 25. On the Christian side, he points out that “there is no part of Christian doctrine, nor is it in scripture anywhere that Jesus was born on December 25th.” Christmas falls on that date by custom. You can check this yourself in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 2. On the Egyptian side, Coleman says the calendar ended with five added days celebrating the births of the gods, with Horus honored on the second, and he places those days at the end of August. That is his claim about the Egyptian calendar, and a careful reader should verify it against scholarly work on Egyptian timekeeping. His first point stands on its own: the Christian half of the parallel was never there.
The second parallel compares the Trinity to Isis, Osiris and Horus. Coleman responds that those who make it are “focusing on basically the commonality of three, but they ignore all the dissimilarities.” His main example: Horus is brought into being by the union of Isis and Osiris, so there was a time before Horus existed. In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, no person ever began to exist. A father, mother and child produced by sexual union is a family, not one God in three co-equal, co-eternal persons.
The general lesson is that a parallel counts as evidence of borrowing only when the similarity is real, specific and documented earlier. A shared number does not show that one story came from another.
Whose sources, and does it matter?
Lisa Fields raised a common objection: some people dismiss the historical case for the resurrection because the scholars who make it are white. Coleman responded that Kemeticism faces the same problem. He says what we know about ancient Egypt runs through European archaeologists and translators, and he names Wallis Budge as the translator of one of the main editions of the Book of the Dead, a text Kemetics often cite. He also traces much popular Kemetic teaching to nineteenth-century European writers he considers pseudo-scholars, including Gerald Massey. With crystals and similar practices, he argues, “a lot of that stuff is gonna derive from just new age mysticism as well.”
Treat these as Coleman’s claims until you have checked them. His deeper point does not depend on them. Of questions like whether Jesus existed or rose, he says “those are historical questions,” and the race of the person holding the evidence cannot answer them. The standard cuts both ways. No one should believe the resurrection because a scholar is white, or reject it for that reason.
The burden of proof runs both ways
Coleman says Christians too often act as if they alone must defend their beliefs. His rule is that “anybody who makes a claim, it’s upon them to defend that claim.” When someone says Kemeticism is true, a fair question is this one: “What evidence can you provide to demonstrate that your worldview is true in the sense that it aligns with reality?”
The answer he hears most is that the ancestors believed it. Even a complete record of their beliefs would tell you what they believed, but “it doesn’t answer the question of whether or not what they believe is true.” Asking for evidence is not an attack. Scripture commends the Bereans because they “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11), and Paul writes, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). A Christian who asks should expect to be asked in return. Coleman points to the historical case for the resurrection as the place where Christianity answers.
Practice: keep an evidence log
Pick three claims you have heard or expect to hear, such as that Christianity is the white man’s religion, that Jesus is a copy of Horus, or that a practice belongs to you because your ancestors practiced it. Include at least one claim Christians commonly repeat about their own faith’s history. For each claim, write down:
- The claim, worded the way its strongest defender would put it.
- What you would expect to find if it were true, and if it were false.
- The earliest source you can actually locate, and whether you read it yourself or only heard it repeated.
- What that source establishes, and what it does not.
- One sentence you could honestly say to a friend, with no more confidence than your evidence supports.
For groups: give people ten minutes to work alone before anyone shares. Then compare the fifth line on each sheet. Push gently when a sentence claims more than its source showed. Do not ask anyone to name a family member or describe a private conversation.
Questions for discussion
- When Coleman separates spiritualists from non-spiritualists, which of his arguments apply to only one group? What would a conversation with the other group need instead?
- The background of the Ethiopian official is debated. Does that uncertainty weaken what Acts 8 can show about Christianity and Africa, or leave the central point intact? Why?
- How would you answer the skeptic who grants Acts but says the faith that reached their family came through slavery and colonial missions?
- Coleman’s Christian rebuttal to the December 25 parallel needs no Egyptian evidence, while his Egyptian rebuttal does. Why does that difference matter when you repeat his argument?
- The appeal to the ancestors often carries grief over what slavery took away. How could you raise the evidence question without dismissing that loss?
- If a Kemetic friend turned the burden of proof back on you, what evidence for your faith could you explain clearly today, and what would you need to study first?
What you can responsibly say
Scripture shows people from Africa hearing and believing the gospel at the church’s beginning, before any European mission. That answers the origin question, not the question of how the faith later reached most African-descended people. The best-known copying claims fail on the Christian side alone, and you can show why with one example. Who translated or wrote a source cannot decide whether it is true. Everyone making a claim about reality owes evidence for it, including you.
Coleman ends the conversation by saying apologetics is “not just about engaging questions, it’s about engaging people.” Homework makes that possible. When you have checked your sources, you can listen first, because you are not afraid of the next question. Before your next conversation, choose one claim from your log and find its earliest source yourself.