Medium Article Review Part Ten (TikTok Edition)

 

The Religious Indoctrination of Black Men: When "Tradition" is a Colonial Weapon

The image captures this systemic distortion through several symbolic elements:

• The Weaponized Crown of Tradition: A Black man is shown kneeling, being "crowned" with a heavy, rusted iron halo inscribed with the word "TRADITION." This crown doubles as a set of shackles, symbolizing how cultural concepts can be repurposed for control.
• The Colonial Architect: Behind him, a shadowy figure in 19th-century colonial military attire holds a massive religious book, using it as a shield and a tool to direct the man's gaze and identity.
• The Space of Indoctrination: The setting is a hybrid of a cathedral and a colonial courtroom, illustrating the institutional forces that codify and enforce these "traditions."
• Obscured Heritage: In the background, traditional African symbols and artifacts are being covered by heavy, grey religious tapestries, representing the systematic erasure and replacement of indigenous identity.
• The Distorted Reflection: The man's reflection on the dark, polished floor shows him as a rigid, subservient soldier, highlighting the internalized impact of this indoctrination.
• Oppressive Atmosphere: The dramatic lighting, with beams of light resembling prison bars, creates a mood of inescapable systemic manipulation.

A disclaimer: Any reference to history, sociology, and psychology from this point onward is a result of my own research, tailored to suit my arguments, my objectives, and to push my own narrative. I advise you to do your own research for the sake of this conversation. Grab a pen and paper for pointers; this is crucial information you might not get anywhere else.

Today, I’m going to discuss an in-depth analysis of The Religious Indoctrination of Black Men in terms of courtship. I aim to shine a light on the limbo that most Black South African men get stuck in when pre-colonial African marital customs and colonial marital customs clash, and how men consistently pick the oppressive system.

Today’s excerpt reads as follows.:

“Dare I even add religion to the mix - the way I see it, most religious beliefs seem to want to exclude women from most activities; exemplary figures, priests, clerics, or anyone who’s an expert in matters of religion are male, those who are given most recognition anyway. How many women are acknowledged in a positive light in most religious concepts? To me, that phenomenon is by design, because there’s no way generations of women would conform to their designated roles in their respective religions, and their efforts still flat out ignored. For a system that ties women to homemaking, it sucks to be a woman in it. The whole idea of marriage is religious, and there’s a lot to be said about the doctrine men have received about the role of both genders in a marriage. I participated in a discourse about the role of a woman in a relationship/marriage according to the Christian faith/ biblical doctrine, with a man, it was stated that a woman is “supposed” to “nurture” and “support” her man because that is written in the bible, she should come complete so as not to be a burden but an asset to the relationship.”

First of all, I don’t know if you’ll accept or even acknowledge it, but this excerpt cuts to the core of how religion was weaponized to sanctify patriarchal control. And of course, I have to break it down. So here goes:

1. Religious Doctrine Integration Pre-Colonization - A Syncretic Mosaic

Syncretic Mosaic is a conceptual framework describing the organic, pre-colonial social and spiritual landscape of many African societies. It characterizes their worldview not as a single, rigid doctrine, but as a living, adaptable composite—a "mosaic"—where multiple belief systems, cultural practices, and forms of social authority coexisted, blended, and influenced one another without a single, hierarchical orthodoxy imposing absolute uniformity.

Before large-scale colonization, African religious and marital systems were largely integrated into a single, holistic worldview. The concept of a "secular" marriage separate from the spiritual did not exist in the same way. This integration meant that spirituality was not a Sunday-only affair but the very fabric that held kinship, economics, and identity together. I'm sorry but Sunday best outfits and Sunday kos "several coloured" meals weren't a concept back then - what changed over how many time spans to get there though?

Lets see:

• Spirituality was Embedded in Custom: Marriage was a sacred covenant with the living, the dead (ancestors), and the unborn. The entire process—from inquiries (lavelani haleni) to lobola to ku korhoka (handover)—was infused with ritual, prayer, and ancestral approval. The ancestors were the ultimate witnesses and guardians of the covenant.

• Female Spiritual Authority: Crucially, this spiritual framework was not exclusively male. Female ancestors (va kokwani) were deeply revered. Women held key roles as diviner-healers (vangoma) and ritual specialists, mediating between the community and the spirit world. Their authority in spiritual matters could rival or surpass that of men.

• The Christian Integration: Early missionary efforts (pre-19th century) struggled because African systems were already complete. Refusing to practice ancestral libation and veneration of any form of African spirituality is ignorance at its highest level, because the missionaries who colonized African spirituality understood how powerful it was; it’s only black people today who don’t. Integration, where it occurred, was often syncretic—people blended beliefs. A man might be Christian but still honour ancestors during marriage negotiations. The rigid, doctrinal "Christian marriage" as the only valid form was a later, colonial imposition.

                                             The Christian Integration:

Based on historical and anthropological scholarship, the statement "Early missionary efforts (pre-19th century) struggled because African systems were already complete" can be understood through the following structured facts. The term "complete" here refers not to a state of perfection, but to functional coherence, self-sufficiency, and deep integration within their own cosmological and social frameworks.

Structured Facts with Academic References

1. Cosmological & Spiritual Completeness

• Fact: African societies possessed complex, all-encompassing cosmologies that explained the universe, the origin of life, morality, and humanity's place within the natural and spiritual world.

• Evidence & Integrated Study: The anthropological work of scholars like John M. Janzen and W.G. Mbiti is foundational. Mbiti's seminal work, African Religions and Philosophy (1969), systematically outlines how for African societies, religion was not a separate institution but a holistic worldview that permeated every aspect of life, from birth to death and beyond into the ancestral world. This cosmology provided a comprehensive and self-sufficient guide for existence. Missionary teachings, which often sought to separate the "sacred" from the "secular," appeared fragmented and alien against this deeply integrated reality, explaining the initial resistance to a competing worldview that offered no clear functional advantage to the existing, coherent system.

2. Socio-Political & Economic Integration

• Fact: Spiritual beliefs were intrinsically woven into the fabric of governance, justice, economics, and daily life.

• Evidence & Integrated Study: Historical research on pre-colonial states, such as the Kingdom of Kongo, demonstrates this integration. Anne Hilton's work, The Kingdom of Kongo (1985), details how Kongo's political structure, land tenure, and legal system were undergirded by a spiritual cosmology that vested authority in the king (mani Kongo) through connection to the ancestors. When Portuguese missionaries arrived in the 15th-16th centuries, they sought to insert Christianity into this system. The result was not a clean replacement but a complex, often contested, syncretism (e.g., Kongo nobles adopting baptism while maintaining ancestor rites), showing that the foreign faith had to contend with and adapt to a deeply entrenched socio-spiritual order. The existing system's completeness made outright displacement impossible.

3. Resilient Epistemology (Knowledge Systems)

• Fact: Communal, oral, and experiential knowledge systems created a barrier to the textual authority of missionary Christianity.

• Evidence & Integrated Study: The field of African epistemology, as explored by scholars like Kwame Gyekye in An Essay on African Philosophical Thought (1987), highlights the authority of wisdom vested in elders, ancestors, and communal consensus. Paul Landau's historical study, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (1995), provides concrete evidence. He analyzes how the Bangwato of Botswana perceived the missionary's "Book" (the Bible). Initially, it was seen not as a replacement for their knowledge system but as a powerful ritual object or a tool for accessing European material power (like guns and wagons). The struggle was epistemic: missionaries demanded acceptance of a single, written text as the ultimate authority over the lived, spoken, and ancestral wisdom that already structured society.

4. Pragmatic Syncretism & Selective Adoption

• Fact: Communities engaged in pragmatic syncretism, absorbing useful elements without accepting the core doctrine meant to displace their entire system.

• Evidence & Integrated Study: This is a well-documented pattern in mission history. Robin Horton's influential intellectualist theory, outlined in his 1971 essay "African Conversion," argues that Africans engaged with new religious ideas (Islam and Christianity) in a pragmatic, intellectual manner. He posits that they adopted these "macrocosmic" religions as their social world expanded (through trade, colonization), but often superimposed them onto their existing "microcosmic" framework of local spirits and ancestors. A specific case study is found in David Schoenbrun's work on the Great Lakes region of East Africa, where early Christian symbols and narratives were locally reinterpreted and woven into existing mythic histories, demonstrating the resilience and absorptive capacity of the "complete" indigenous system.

5. The "Frontier" Phase of Missionary Work

• Fact: Pre-19th century missions often operated without the overwhelming military-political backing of later high-colonialism, existing on the sufferance of local rulers.

• Evidence & Integrated Study: Historical analyses of early mission frontiers, such as in Southern Africa, clearly show this dynamic. Richard Elphick's work, Kraal and Castle: Khoikhoi and the Founding of White South Africa (1977), and later studies by T.R.H. Davenport detail how 17th and 18th-century Dutch Reformed missionaries at the Cape and later Moravian and London Missionary Society agents on the eastern frontier had negligible success in converting independent African politics like the Xhosa. Their influence was limited to marginal individuals (the sick, social outcasts) or was contingent on offering secular benefits. They could not compel conversion because African political and social structures remained intact and autonomous. As Davenport notes in South Africa: A Modern History (1977), mass conversion only began in earnest after military defeat, land dispossession, and social disintegration—events that broke the completeness of the indigenous systems in the 19th century.

 Can we then say that, just like the devaluation of women’s participation in subsistence farming; African spirituality performed by women has been devalued or is being devalued? Let’s see if we can draw parallels:

• Subsistence Farming: “It is performed by poor women”, “It’s an old school way of life”, “the food quality can’t be trusted because it’s not tested like the ones in the shop”, “the hard work damages hands, and that’s unattractive”...Does that sound familiar?

• African Spirituality Performed by Women: “It’s witchcraft, associated with satanism”, “the rituals or medicine is evil, can never be helpful", “the medicine is prepared by uneducated women, it can’t be trusted”, “Only male sangomas are powerful”. Does that sound familiar?

Parallels Between Subsistence Farming and African Spirituality

The Machinery of Devaluation - Five Parallels of Devaluation

Here is how the devaluation operates in lockstep across both domains:

	Mechanism of Devaluation	Applied to Subsistence Farming	Applied to African Spirituality
1	Dismissal as "Backward" vs. "Modern"	Framed as an "old school way of life," primitive compared to "modern" commercial agriculture.	Labelled as "superstition" or "satanism," backward compared to "enlightened" world religions like Christianity.
2	Attack on Epistemic Authority & Trust	The food is "untrustworthy" because it lacks the "scientific" certification of shop-bought goods.	The medicine is "evil" or "untrustworthy" because it lacks Western pharmaceutical validation and is prepared by the "uneducated."
3	Erasure of Skill & Re-framing as Drudgery	The immense skill of seed saving, soil knowledge, and seasonal cycles is ignored. The work is reduced to "hard labor that damages hands," making it unattractive and devoid of intellectual value.	The deep philosophical training, diagnostic skill, and pharmacological knowledge are erased. The practice is reduced to "witchcraft"—irrational, secretive, and socially dangerous.
4	Patriarchal Takeover & Male-Centered Value	When farming becomes a monetized, cash-crop enterprise, men often become the recognized "farmers" (aided by colonial land titles), while women's subsistence work is relegated to a "household chore."	The figure of the male sangoma or prophet is often elevated as more "powerful" or "legitimate," sidelining female spiritual authorities and channeling spiritual authority into a patriarchal structure.
5	Economic Marginalization	The economy is structured to extract value from male cash-crop labor while rendering women's subsistence production economically invisible—it feeds families but doesn't "count" as GDP.	The spiritual-psychological care, community healing, and cultural continuity provided by women are devalued as non-economic services, while male-dominated religious institutions often gain material wealth and political influence.

The Core Connection: Dismantling the Syncretic Mosaic

Ultimately, the devaluation of both is an attack on the same thing: the integrated, female-centered knowledge systems that sustained societies outside of colonial capitalist control.

• Subsistence farming represented food sovereignty and an economic system not dependent on the colonial market.

• Women's spirituality represented cultural and existential sovereignty—a framework for understanding health, ethics, and the cosmos outside colonial Christianity.

By labelling both as "backward," "untrustworthy," and "evil," the colonial patriarchy effectively cut off two primary sources of female power and community resilience. This created the dependence and vulnerability that allowed for the imposition of the "Christian marriage" model. The housewife dependent on a male wage and the congregation member dependent on a male pastor are both legacies of this same dismantling project.

This parallel is not just an observation; it is a critical diagnostic tool. It shows that the oppression in romantic relationships (Systemic Romance) is part of a much larger pattern of disempowerment that targeted every domain where black women held autonomous authority.

2. Colonial Distortion: Removing Matrilineal & Balanced Systems

Colonial powers and missionaries actively worked to dismantle existing structures, favouring rigid, Victorian-era patriarchy.

• Targeting Matrilineality: Societies like the Lobedu (Rain Queen-ship) or certain Akan groups where lineage and inheritance flowed through women were seen as "backward." Missionaries preached that male-headed households were God's order. Colonial administrators enforced laws that recognized only male heirs and leaders.

• Codifying Patriarchy: As discussed with the Black Administration Act, colonial law reinforced the male as the "customary" head. Christianity provided the moral justification for this. The biblical verse "Wives, submit to your husbands" (Ephesians 5:22) was preached out of context, stripped of the reciprocal command "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church" (Ephesians 5:25).
  This is the part where black men are in limbo regarding “African customs” and religion. As much as most of them don’t like to admit it, the remnants of true African marital customs still echo black women’s power, hence most black men consider those practices backwards and prefer religious marital customs. But we know the rest of the biblical doctrine denies black people their humanhood.
  
  It is then worth noting that in both practices, black men only choose to stick with the parts that seek to control women and reject the parts that hold them accountable for any responsibility. Which means black men don’t perform these practices for spiritual enlightenment, or personal gain, but to gain power and control over women.
  
  Which leaves this question: “what is a woman’s role in this?” Because it doesn’t empower her, that much has been established. If the purpose of the structure is not mutual empowerment, spiritual growth, or even societal sustainability, but mainly the maintenance of control over her, then her ordained “role” is not a function at all. It is a condition. Her role is to be the subject upon which this power is exercised, the terrain across which this unresolved limbo is fought. The question is not what she should do within that role. The question is whether a role defined entirely by another’s need for control can ever be called a role at all, or if it is simply the description of a prison.

• Demonizing Female Authority: The powerful figure of the isangoma was often labeled a "witch" or heathen by missionaries. This was a direct attack on a major source of female economic, social, and spiritual power, redirecting spiritual dependency to the male-led church. There's more on this in my article “The Unseen Work of Connection”; be sure to catch it on Medium.

3. Gendered Inequality in Religious Performance

South African Christianity is marked by a gendered paradox: a female-majority congregation under a male-majority leadership.

• The Congregation vs. The Pulpit: Studies show black South African churches are overwhelmingly populated by women (often 70-80%). They form the backbone of prayer unions, choirs, and fundraising. However, positions of theological authority (pastors, bishops, theologians), institutional power (church council chairs, treasurers), and public recognition are dominated by men.

• The "Spiritual Glass Ceiling": Women are celebrated for virtues of "service," "prayer," and "motherhood" but barred from the hermeneutical authority to interpret scripture or lead the church. This creates the exact exclusion noted in the excerpt: "the exemplary figures are male". As scholar Dr. Isabel Apawo Phiri notes, women are seen as "receivers" of theology, not its "producers."

And you know me, I bring the receipts. Here’s the study:

The "Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians", founded by Mercy Amba Oduyoye, was created precisely to combat the exclusion I noted in the excerpt. Their research documents how male-dominated theology fails to address women's lived experiences of violence and inequality.

4. Gendered Christian Indoctrination on Marriage

The discourse I participated in (as mentioned in the excerpt) is a textbook example of weaponized scripture.

• The Selective Doctrine: The man I spoke with cited a woman's duty to "nurture" and "support," referencing Proverbs 31 or Titus 2. This is a one-sided indoctrination, going with that thought in mind, we can clearly see that this scripture teaches different teachings for men and women:

  • For Women: Teachings emphasize submission, purity, service, and completeness ("not a burden but an asset"). She is taught her value is in supporting his destiny, a doctrine that primes her for unpaid emotional and domestic labor.

  • For Men: Teachings emphasize headship, provision, and protection, but often distort "headship" into autocratic control rather than Christ-like, self-sacrificial love. The man is rarely taught the equally biblical mandates of sacrificial love, fidelity, and emotional intimacy [Ephesians 5:25-33]. This creates a theological imbalance where her duties are commandments, while his are often framed as privileges of his position.

• The Outcome: This creates a pathological dynamic. The woman strives for an impossible, "complete" perfection to be a worthy "asset." The man, taught he is the "head," often feels entitled to this service without the corresponding duty of Christ-like nurture. This justifies inequality as divine will.

5. Supporting Studies & Scholars

• Dr. Mercy Amba Oduyoye (Ghana): A foundational figure. Her work, like "Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy," explores how biblical interpretation was used to colonize African gender relations.

• Dr. Isabel Apawo Phiri (Malawi/South Africa): Former Deputy General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Her research, such as "African Women of Faith and Gender Justice," documents the struggles of women in African church hierarchies.

• Dr. Mmatshilo Motsei (South Africa): In her book "The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court," she powerfully analyses how the church often fails women experiencing domestic violence, siding with patriarchal interpretations of submission.

• Dr. Bolanie Olawale (Nigeria/South Africa): Researches the history of missions. Her work shows how Victorian gender ideologies were embedded in missionary pedagogy and used to "civilize" African family structures.

• The "Justice for Women" Programme at the South African Council of Churches (SACC): Their reports consistently highlight the dissonance between the church's female base and its male-led structures, and how conservative theology hinders the fight against GBV.

Colonial Christianity didn't just add a new religion; it actively suppressed female-centric spiritual power, enforced a rigid patriarchal family model as "Godly," and created a theological framework that continues to sanctify gendered inequality in marriage and silence women's voices in the very institutions they sustain. This provided the moral and "eternal" justification for the legal and economic controls established by laws like the Black Administration Act. So, when a man appeals to 'religion' or 'custom,' which history is he truly upholding?