Religious Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism, as an ideology of African renaissance, must begin with the auto-appreciation of the dignity of Africa. Today, years after colonization, the African mind is still enslaved in neocolonialism, even by Africans. This is the most damaging counterproductive attitude in Pan-Africanism. If this trend is not checked, the basis of Pan-Africanism will crumble all the more. This paper is a response to a deficiency in religious Pan-Africanism. Using the Bible as a point of departure, this paper examines the purported harm or otherwise that the missionaries must have inflicted on the African psyche. The tendency was to turn the Bible into a tool of colonization, whereas it could rather reveal more of her dignity as a people. Using the descriptive and analytical methods, this paper will critique the Bible as a tool of colonization and square it against its lofty references to racial Africa. The aim is to revamp a true Pan-African spirit in the Africans themselves and construct her dignity from the Bible. The findings promise to effect a viable attitudinal reorientation towards true Pan-Africanism. It would be safe, then, to conclude and recommend that Pan-Africanism must begin with auto-appreciation of the African race, primarily by Africans themselves.