Mental Enslavement of African People through The Weaponization of Religion as Soft Power: How Christianity was used to enslave the African.

My grandmother was a fierce woman. Throughout my life, I would hear stories of how she was one of the few women in her village who could ride horses, and how she was generally known as a stern, staunch figure—one of those matriarchs who commanded respect. She was the keeper of the clan, and in most cases, it was she who had the final word. Sadly, my grandmother passed away a few years ago at the age of 103. As you might imagine, given the age gap between us, we didn’t spend a lot of time together.

What I do know, however, is that she remained steadfast in her Christian faith. She taught us to believe in God—the Christian God, you know, the one who sent Jesus and his 12 disciples. There was one song from her hymn book that I always felt would bring a smile to her face. I don’t remember all the lyrics, but I’ll never forget the ending: "God save our King, our noble and gracious King!"

I immediately understood that this wasn’t a prayer for our King of Lesotho, but rather a prayer for the British monarchy. It was their Kingdom we revered, their empire that we held in higher regard than our own. In fact, we had been taught to view it as the ultimate symbol of grace and safety, and this was reflected in our prayers.

Hannah Farley (2019) asserts that the British Empire viewed Africans through a "paternalistic" lens, believing that it was their responsibility to “civilize” African people. This attitude became known as the "White Man’s Burden," a belief that Africa, before the advent of European colonization, had no history, no civilization, no religion—and was thus lost in the dark until the enlightened White man could show us the way. At great cost, of course.

Joshua Dwayne Settles (1996), writing for the University of Tennessee, challenges the common narrative of Western imperialism by noting that, prior to the "Scramble for Africa," African economies were thriving, particularly in trade. Settles argues that the true motivation for European colonization wasn’t to help Africa develop, but rather to exploit its physical, human, and economic resources for the benefit of the colonizers.

What I find particularly insidious in the mechanism of colonialism isn’t necessarily its territorial expansion but the psychological and cultural divisions it created. Colonial powers didn’t just take over land; they began to divide the individual from their own identity, their own culture, and their own history. This psychological separation made it easier to control resources—both human and natural—by first eroding the native’s connection to their environment, to their very essence.

My grandmother, like many others of her time, believed wholeheartedly that God should save the British King. I believe that as a Black African woman, she had been taught—and perhaps even programmed—to believe that the White King was the answer to her problems. This wasn’t just a matter of religious faith; it was a case of ideological warfare and brainwashing at its finest. Every form of indigenous knowledge, practice, and pre-colonial spiritual construct was demonized, replaced by the image of a White God, White beliefs, and finally, a White King who needed saving.

From this, we can deduce that the deification of the "other"—in this case, the White other—was central to the mission of colonialism. This was a form of soft power, a way of ensuring that, ideologically, the Black person would lose control of their own destiny, ceding it entirely to the all-knowing White man. I doubt my grandmother ever imagined Jesus—her savior—as anything other than blonde-haired and blue-eyed. I might have seen a picture of this blonde-haired savior hanging in her house when I was growing up—go figure! You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone with those features native to Jerusalem today.

By being made to question our own stories, our identity, and our place in global history, we have been relegated to a position of second-class global citizenry. We are trapped in a perpetual mentality of inadequacy, unable to recognize ourselves in the very books meant to tell our own stories.

"God save the King." But whose King?