Pastor, Don't Teach Me Nonsense: Against Theological Violence, Part 2

The first time I realized that it was not three wise men who brought gifts to Jesus, it was just human addition, I began to wonder how many things we have added to a simple yet sophisticated gospel. The Bible never explicitly stated any figure; it just said wise men.

In the first installment of this post, I explore some of the negative, destructive content of theological violence, emphasizing how it obscures the role of environment, system, structure, and political ineptitude in the everyday reality of Nigerians.

To be clear, I am not the first to make this claim of the role and complicity of Pentecostal doctrine in current political realities across the postcolony. Ebenezer Obadare, Abimbola Adelakun, and several scholars of religion have written brilliant work that explores the role of Pentecostalism and its pastorate in public governance across Africa. My claim in this post, as in part 1, is to think with them but also slightly detour to think about theological violence in relation to it as an analytical frame for the explanation of the everyday reality of people.

Theological violence, like many knowledge systems that have governed modernity, is a pedagogical problem. Hence, we have to constantly ask, does our pedagogy serve a purpose? whose agenda is our pedagogy serving? Is it liberating, humanizing, and advancing the goal of self and collective actualization? Critical pedagogy is important in every area of life. I was re-reading “Teaching to Transgress” by bell hooks lately, and it affirmed for me why I am in this teaching and research profession. Of course I have read the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire.

Theological violence is weaponizing scripture and biblical stories to further the Christian nationalist agenda. Using God to deify gold (read as crass capitalism). This also occurs when we link God's goodness to human performance. Saying, for example, that God will not bless you unless you bring ten souls, and those ten souls in turn bring ten, perpetuates Christian multilevel marketing and evangelization. When you teach people that God will be pleased with them to the extent that they can inflict violence and discomfort upon themselves in the name of sacrifice, that's when you will be blessed. Use your entire January salary as your first fruit and go trekking to work every day, and God will bless you. This masochism.

The theological violence and those who espouse it stifle our capacity to read, think, and imagine otherwise. This kind of theology disciplines and disciples people into thinking through and along lines that reinscribe our servitude and annihilation, reinforcing and reproducing what Sylvia Wynter called “narratively condemned status.”

We have to question what we are taught, and where we see inconsistencies and violence, we must rephrase Fela’s words: Pastor, don’t teach me nonsense.