Of sheep, goats and evolution

Like the deluvial flood of yore, radicalism is yet upon Africa.

And while the more obvious political bellicosity and conspicuous civil iconoclasm have a still central role to play in transforming the status quo, the central thrust of change seems to be reflected in the shift of spiritual allegiances Africa’s denizens hold, in these turbulent times.

Perusing one of Uganda’s national dailies a few days past, my attention was gripped by a researched opinion intimating how the traditional religious strongholds of Catholicism and Anglicanism , despite retaining a numerical advantage, are battling grave hemorrhage, as they steadily lose ranks of devotees to their younger and less institutionalized sibling – Pentecostal Evangelicalism.

More alarmingly perhaps (to the prelates of Christianity), young Christians seem to be altogether abandoning the older offspring of Judaism for its more recent and less Europeanized cousin – Islam.

Like the contingencies that determine political loyalty or professional nomadism; the explanations for the sociological phenomenon described in that Daily Monitor article may not be as trivial or non-complex as one would expect, let alone desire. (Since we all wish to have situations come across as lucid as possible!)

Personal and scholarly experience convince me that the dynamics at play are more intricate than meets the eye; and while the article in question largely attributes these inter-denominational and cross-doctrinal exoduses to fervent proselytism – I think that even in its absence, the shift would still occur.

The relative youth of our national population (the average Ugandan is 15 years old, as per the NHPC, 2014), and Africa's state as the world's youngest continent, in and of themselves warrant the observable shifts in religious commitment.

Young people tend to be less insular in their devotion to any ideology or movement – and more willing to listen to alternative viewpoints; yet ironically too, they are more easily transformed into fanatical zealots once they are sold onto something.

And as Africa wallows about in the mire of globalism, or as some suggest, sinks deeper into her post-colonial vortex – the immediacy and urgency of Evangelicalism’s and Islam’s massage(s) can only resonate stronger with her young and disenfranchised peoples.

The volatility of Pentecostalism and Islam, with their revolutionary character, is a welcome vehicle for a divinely sanctioned shake-up of the establishment which Anglicanism and Catholicism seem to so fittingly represent and undergird.

Chronologically older Christians are generally more immune to this wave of revolutionary fervor; preferring the old and familiar, and not being up for the discomforts and social inconvenience which come with fitting into novel societal configurations.

However, among their number are a few who, despite possessing hoary heads, retain youthful hearts that are just as vulnerable as their children's, to the lures of immediate reform promised by the younger faiths.

Knowing the principle motivation for religious faith, viz. – the search for divine intervention in human affairs; it seems rather straightforward to adduce that the chief reason prompting erstwhile adherents of a given faith to abandon it for an alternative, would be that the God (or divine encounter) sought after, wasn’t as forthcoming in the former, as much as the promises of the latter tend to portend.

For instance - nothing, short of dementia, would convince a young Catholic woman who has ‘‘seen’’ and been touched by the Virgin Mother to change her spiritual allegiance. 

Not the most fire-breathing street-evangelist, nor the most impassioned of Muezzins.

The only thing that would engender such a transition would be the thitherto futile attempt to summon Mary or the endless legion of saints from their paradisiacal perches to this dusty and moth-eaten corporeal realm.

It can thus be safely concluded that since the flock of Ugandan sheep changing hands from one Christian fold to another may be nominally assumed to be of sound mind, the core reason as to why these human livestock prefer the whip-wielding goatherd of Pentecostalism and Islam, to the staff-bearing Shepherd of Angli-Catholicism, is that the latter has failed to realize that his once diffident sheep have over the fifty years of Africa’s postcolonial nightmare, evolved into bullheaded, self-willed and less tractable goats.

28^th-March-2016.

The article referenced is available at: http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Catholics-Anglicans-decline-as-Muslims--Pentecostals-rise/-/688334/3134860/-/13httvj/-/index.html