by Pius Adesanmi
Two things annoyed me this morning.
1) I noticed that my comrade in the ideological struggle, Mwalimu Wandia Njoya, expressed frustration over her inability to persuade Christian fundamentalists in her audience that whenever the conservative Christian right in America mouths platitudes such as “Christian values” or “family values”, they are not exactly thinking about their Christian brethren in Kenya. I was angry that Wandia is on her own because I cannot help her. I cannot help her because I also have my own wahala with Nigerian Pentecostal fundamentalists at home and abroad who cling to the delusion of Christian oneness with Mike Pence and American evangelical fundamentalists.
2) Only yesterday, I decided to ignore one such infuriating Nigerian Christian who came inbox to celebrate the victory won for Christ by the Christian family on November 8. He’d been following me for a long time he says, especially the story of the Christian values of Baba and Mama Adesanmi, and was rather shocked and disappointed that I went against those values in my position on the American election.
Sometimes, you don’t even know where to start with this fundamentalist fringe of Nigerian Christians. Not content with a life spent funding the private jets and ferragamo loafers of their Daddy GOs and the Louis Vuitton handbags of their Mommy GOs; not content with inability to afford school fees in Universities built with their labour and tithes; not content with an existence which rationalizes the once-in-a-month supply of everything the state owes them – electricity, water – as a miracle, you will take torch light, go to the lunatic fringe of American far right Evangelical Christianity, and start to look for family members among white racial supremacists by fire by force.
We can’t repeat this enough: what we routinely call “Christian values” in Nigeria is not an exact equivalent of what Rush Limbaugh, Mike Pence, Jerry Falwell, Rudy Giuliani, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and their right and far right American evangelical soldiers call “Christian values.” It is not the same thing and I don’t know why you sit down in Nigeria insisting it is the same.
If an American Christian’s heart is shaped by Fox News and Breitbart, do not sit your ignorant, black, Third World ass down in Lagos and inbox me celebratory messages rejoicing with your Christian brother in America. You and the American far right are not family. When the door closes and they are alone, they have some choice epithets for you that I don’t want to repeat here.
Perhaps, it is in anticipation of these divergent and irreconcilable shades of Christianity that Jesus Christ himself said that in my father’s house are many mansions. If the heavens wanted you and racial supremacists to be family, there would have been only one mansion with open concept living areas. Find your own mansion in heaven and stop trying to beg Ann Coulter to accept you into her own mansion in heaven. She will not. Your colour precludes you from admission.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
