Every year on June 3rd, the Catholic Church, Anglican Church, and Muslims in Uganda remember the Ugandan Martyrs who were executed by the Buganda Kingdom. The Catholic Church honours 22, the Anglican Church commemorates 23, and the Muslim community insists on 70 Islamic Martyrs. These individuals were executed for their faith by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the Islamic community, but to the Buganda Kingdom, they were rebels who had rebelled against their leader and their Kingdom in the name of religion.
It is anachronistic (transferring our ideas to their era) to claim that these lads were defending their faith in God because if it was God, they already had God in the current forms of worship. To assert that the conventional revelation of God was incorrect and thus the missionary revelation was correct is subject to scrutiny, and we must examine how correct the current religions are, given their theological viewpoints on many issues and their past and present reputation. We are all aware of what these religions have done throughout history and in the present.
Acculturation
The introduction of western missionaries (Catholics from France, later Protestants from Britain) and Eastern missionaries (Muslims from Arabic countries) signalled not only the beginning of a new ecclesiastical belief system but also the beginning of a new governmental structure. The missionaries discovered Africa (specifically, Uganda) with an organized sort of leadership, and the Westerners and Easterners never invented leadership here, but their contribution to the existing leadership was essentially ‘politics.’
They found us with leadership and replaced it with politics. God, on the other hand, was something these missionaries never brought or introduced to us Africans. Africa worshipped and knew there was a creator and saviour of his people long before we learned of these westerners and easterners. This knowledge of God was in its early stages, and God was appreciated through phenomenal nature (huge trees, stones, mountains, and particular water sources). We theologians refer to God’s wisdom as progressive revelation. It is something that the Bible clearly demonstrates on its pages throughout the history of the Israelites and their cult known as Judaism.
Just as ancient belief in the Bible started as polytheistic (Genesis 1:26) and later evolved into monotheism (Deuteronomy 6:4) as presented to us by the Israelites, so did all other peoples on the planet, and Africans would have gradually understood the oneness of the God they worshipped in plurality and majority symbols. Perhaps the arrival of missionaries armed with guns and literature was a necessary evil to move Africans from this stage of revelation to the next. However, we saw little difference in the missionaries simply replacing the old beliefs and practices with their versions. It was a change of guards rather than a fundamental theological shift.
These missionaries found Africans who already had a progressive revelation on the same subject of God, and all they added to it was a systematic and institutionalized final revelation known as ‘religion.’ This natural development of belief and understanding was denied to Africans, who were all subjugated to religion-ism rather than true spirituality. Our worship places (shrines) were replaced with missionary-authenticated shrines, and the beads we wore in our wastes in the name of gods were replaced with rosaries around our necks and Masbaha/Subhah for Muslims.
The mountains we visited for worship were condemned as occult, and we were directed to specific mountains such as Lubaga (Catholics), Mengo (Anglicans), Kibuli (Muslims), and Kireka (Muslims) (Seventh-day Adventists who came later). Our priests were replaced by missionary priests, and enquiries from traditional priests were regarded as heresy, whilst inquiries from a Catholic priest and a Muslim Sheikh were recognized as divine.
Missionaries overhauled and disregarded prior African revelations about God to the level of dress code, diet, and so on, and this is what sociologists refer to as Acculturation. This is a direct and indirect coerced assimilation of one culture into another dominant culture. In contrast to the previous African cultures, the missionaries were the dominant culture in the sense that they arrived with the civility of writing (written materials such as the Bible and the Quran) and, most crucially, a gun.
Because Catholics, Anglicans, and Arabic gods were literate, the condemnation of native revelation about God was successful. They not only taught people to believe, but they also taught them to read and write. These missionaries went on to build schools and training grounds where their beliefs were ingrained in the congregations. Converts to these new religions were referred to as Abasomi (readers or elites). The thrill of being distinct and knowing something others didn’t promote these religions among residents and converts multiplied.
These missionaries’ strength was not only in ink and pen, but also in the barrel of a gun, and this is how these missionaries were able to impose their influence on the people of Uganda. The monarchical authorities were fighting two battles at the same time: the politics of these missionaries and the religion of these people. The Kings of the time were now faced with the challenge of battling their Arab and Western adversaries while also fighting their own people who had become intoxicated by these missionaries’ ideologies. Following this acculturation, citizens opposed not only their belief systems but also began, directly and indirectly, opposing their original cultural worth.
When we judge the kingdom’s brutality against the martyrs, we must also consider their historical situation. I’m curious how western and eastern imperialism in Africa has evolved throughout time. Have we not lost our way in the name of globalization, modernity, and civility? I will leave that decision to all of us, not just in Africa, but around the world, because the current political and technological age promotes unchecked imperialism.
Next, I’ll explain what a martyr is and whether we need to pilgrim. And what the Bible says about it.
God bless you,
I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest M.I.T White (+256-775 822833)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
Questioning to Believe and Believing to Live
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 