I’m not sure how to feel about our African ultra-evangelical friends– the ones who sound like they are from deep bible-belt Mississippi. Their social media timelines are both entertaining and disturbing in times of political heat even about events unfolding thousands of miles. How American politics affects them emotionally is a thing of wonder.
Entertaining because they read like an African exorcism church service casting out demons of machines that swallowed votes somewhere in America. Disturbing because these are fellow Africans deeply steeped in a cultic craze that holds no value for the present or future.
I’m not talking about blacks who voted for Trump because Dems have disappointed them or because they made more money in the past 4 years or they believe the spin that this president flung open the prison gates for them when a black president couldn’t. These ones are not cultic about their vote. They know their candidate lost fair and square and they have long rejoined the forward-moving stream of democracy.
I’m talking about African ultra-evangelicals – there is such a grotesque thing – who are trapped in a ferris wheel of mental displacement, culture capture and hopeless piety.
We got took the first time during colonization but to a great extent we managed to Africanize the imperial church we were left with and use it for our own liberation. But pray tell, how did we get took again, this time by white American evangelism from the deep South that is so irrelevant to our cause? Dear friends! You dare not go there on a pilgrimage to worship at the cradle of Paula White’s birthplace or else you’ll be strung up a poplar tree before you can say chineke!