“God uses his big celestial remote control to mute the prayers of black people,” the young black radical philosopher, Ncendisa Mpenymama, said as we walked into to the smiling sun after a church service last month. The comment endured an eerie silence finally broken by a nervous laughter.
There is overwhelming evidence to show that God has not been listening to black people’s prayers. The situation is so bad that often we are left with no option but to conclude that God is a white racist.
If God is omnipotent as His believers tell us, why has He allowed so much black suffering? Any black person not terrorised into silence by the idea of hellfire must have a few questions to pose to the Lord, our alleged maker.
Why did God allow blacks to be enslaved like animals? Why did He allow them to be colonised? Why did He allow apartheid? Why is God allowing our current politicians to continue making promises to us without delivery? Do the sins against black people matter in God’s eyes?
The experience of life for black people is filled with great difficulty and struggle. If God is our parent then we must accuse Him of favouritism and cruel neglect of the black side of the family.
According to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, 34,1% of South Africans lived on less than $2 a day (about R14); in 2009 the figure shot up to 42,9%.
The global situation of black people has not improved at all over the years (in fact these statistics suggest it is worse), yet every Sunday black people fill up churches all around the world to pray to a God who hasn’t been listening for a while. Chances are they are praying to have a great life in the hereafter since they must have given up on their condition ever changing on this side of hell. Or is church indeed the “opium of the masses”, as Karl Marx suggested?
God’s habits
The Pentecostal or charismatic churches have proliferated in proportion to the social devastation that followed the World Bank’s structural adjustment programmes in Africa. As soon as the state shirks its responsibility for social welfare the people are invited to look to God for hope.
It is not a coincidence that, as soon as the impact of Trevor Manuel, the former finance minister, and former president Thabo Mbeki’s Gear policies hit the people there was a massive growth of happy-clappy churches in townships, with their promises of prosperity and getting rich quickly. The more established churches held on to their dignified silence in the face of injustice.
One wonders if it’s not time to force God to listen and to reclaim the Gospel as bearing witness to the suffering of the many, as Jesus was reputed to have done. From this point of view the separation of religion from the realities of life on Earth is an affirmation of the separation of God from people, a testimony to the sad abandonment of what the majority experiences every day. Reconciling with God would mean the capacity to understand why things are the way they are and taking action to change them. To be religious is to act.
Steve Biko, talking to the black clergy in 1972, made the point that Christianity is corrupt to serve oppression by blaming the victims of oppression. He castigated the “stern-faced ministers [who] stand on pulpits every Sunday [and] heap loads of blame on black people in the townships for thieving, house-breaking, stabbing, murder, adultery. No one ever attempts to relate all these vices to poverty, unemployment, overcrowding, lack of schooling and migratory labour.”
Pastor Xola Skosana, of the Way of Life Church in Khayelitsha, has characterised our townships as hell, and Biko told us that “God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people’s problems on Earth”.
We are being called upon to change the hellish conditions of our townships and fulfil Jesus Christ’s wish to protest against injustice. This Easter seems like the perfect time to heed that call.
Andile Mngxitama is the publisher of New Frank Talk. He will join Pastor Xola Skosana in the “Welcome to Hell — South African Township” march on April 23 in Khayelitsha.
This article is part of the Mail & Guardian‘s annual Religion Issue ahead of Easter. See more here.