God Is Not a Christian

Faith and the accident of birthplace

In his plea entitled God Is Not a Christian, Desmond Tutu recalls an obvious fact that is too often set aside: in most cases, an individual’s faith is a matter of birthplace. Had we been born in Lahore, we would very probably be Muslims; in Calcutta, Hindus; in Tokyo, Shintoists; and in Rome, Catholics.

The absolute cannot belong to one religion

Consequently, no tradition can claim absolute truth in divine matters. The absolute, Tutu maintains, cannot be confined to a single religion, for God transcends every religious denomination: ‘There is no Christian God. There is no Jewish God. There is no Muslim God. There is only one God.’

Tutu and Spinoza

This inclusive position is nourished by a mystical reading of Scripture and by political experience of interfaith dialogue. In many respects, it recalls Spinoza’s theology, which conceived of God as immanent in nature, present in every being and beyond every denomination. In the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza states that ‘God is the immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things’; he rejects the idea of an interventionist God and insists upon the universality of the natural order.

Yet where Spinoza dissolves religions into an ethics of reason, Tutu seeks to reconcile them within a theology of divine hospitality and human fraternity.

Religion and the political order

Another blind spot in Desmond Tutu’s theology lies in treating religion as independent of the political order. The idea that religion arises spontaneously recalls Rousseau’s notion of natural religion. For Rousseau, natural religion is linked to the state of nature and marked by an immediate awareness of the divine within the order of the world. He nevertheless explains that, with the advent of civil society and technical progress, the state of nature gives way to the political State, thereby turning natural religion into a State religion.

Desmond Tutu seems to adopt a similar pattern without ever making it explicit, as though avoiding the essential question: at precisely what moment do we pass from one kind of religion to another? Surely at a point of rupture between the natural and the political.

The African rupture

The grey area between natural spirituality and imposed faith is particularly stark in the case of Africans. Their conversion to Christianity did not result from an internal development of traditional religions, but from a brutal rupture brought about by conquest.

The missing African religions

Desmond Tutu’s generous theology makes no mention of traditional African religions. His concept of ‘religious determinism’ considers only the major globalised religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism. It passes over African cosmologies, ancestral cults and oral theologies founded on memory, rhythm, speech, relations with the dead and the land.

On this account, religion would obey proportions: it would depend on the size of States or empires—that is, on their demographic weight. One might therefore infer that small communities dispersed here and there, such as the Pygmies, would in his eyes have no access to the absolute. This is undoubtedly a blind spot in his theology, one that may occasionally recall the theses advanced by the very theorists of racism he opposes.

The religions of victors and of the vanquished

By claiming that every individual’s faith is dictated by geography, Desmond Tutu embraces the idea that every religion arises naturally while evading what Rousseau had recognised: this ‘nature’ is always already caught within a political architecture. Just as the great globalised religions are the religions of victors, the religions of the vanquished are those that have been fought, prohibited and obliterated. The revealed religions in Africa—especially in Desmond Tutu’s South Africa—are the result of extraordinary political violence, for which religion served as a symbolic relay.

Conquest, missions and symbolic violence

Neither Christianity nor Islam established itself spontaneously in Africa. They did not grow there naturally. They were imposed through colonial conquest, missionary schools, military force, cultural contempt and strategies of indirect rule. One may cite the methodical work of Anglican missions at the Cape, Pallottine missionary congregations in Cameroon, the White Fathers and Jesuits in the Congo, or the gradual Islamisation of the Sahel through mercantile and confraternal networks. Africa received its dominant religions through an accident of history, political coercion and symbolic violence.

Tutu’s intimate paradox

The paradox of Desmond Tutu’s inclusive vision of God also conceals a more intimate side: Tutu never explains how he, an African, became a Christian. He treats Christianity as a fact connatural with his biography without returning to the reality that his own faith is the fruit of missionary conquest.

Religion understood as ‘geographical determinism’ and religion understood as a colonial consequence raise different theological questions. The tension between them cannot be resolved by the same appeal to the inclusiveness of the world’s religions. The vanquished must first be restored to their native religion. The political question must therefore precede every other undertaking. Tutu cannot turn an ‘accident’ into an essence without weakening his quest for inclusiveness.

A liberation theology’s historical fragility

In conclusion, making an imposed religion—in this case Christianity—an instrument of liberation remains theologically fragile. By refusing to examine the historical genesis of his faith, Desmond Tutu reconstructs a retrospective determinism: he naturalises a process of domination.

A genuine theology of tolerance should begin with a confession such as: ‘I believe, but I was not born a believer in this faith. I received it from a history imposed upon me, one that completely transformed my environment.’ Far from invalidating Desmond Tutu’s thesis, this critical presentation invites the reader to extend his thinking by removing its blind spots. Every religion contains politics.

The absolute exceeds every religion

We nevertheless retain as established the thesis that the absolute exceeds all religions. Desmond Tutu is right to say that God was already there before the Christians—in the texts of the Jewish prophets and in Moses’ burning bush. We must then add: in African cosmologies, rites of passage and ancestor worship; in the Vodun sanctuaries of Dahomey; in the sacred forests of the Akan peoples; in the founding narratives of the Dogon; in the invocations of the Mijikenda of the Kenyan coast; and in the water spirits of the ancient Kongo kingdom.

For a decolonised theology

A decolonised theology must therefore do more than widen the circle of God’s hospitality. It must also restore human memory: the memory that makes it possible to invoke erased gods and spirits, breathe life back into condemned rituals and restore meaning to forgotten names, so that the beings and things within one’s environment may once again be named.

Reintegrated into theological reflection, this memory would make it possible to refound an African spirituality that is open yet rooted, hospitable yet sovereign. It would finally offer Africans the possibility of believing in an unprecedented dimension of God that other religions—especially globalised religions such as Christianity and Islam—may possess, without forgetting who Africans once were. Only on this condition could Desmond Tutu’s call for religious inclusiveness acquire effective meaning for Black Africa.

Postscript: asking again who God is

This text was written as the Catholic cardinals in Rome were preparing to elect a new Pontiff from among candidates who included several Africans. What a fine opportunity to ask ourselves once again: ‘What—or who—is God?’, particularly for us Africans.

My article shows that the answer to this question is not without precedent. It takes up the answer outlined by Desmond Tutu, simply removing what I believe to be its blind spots. In short, this article is both a tribute to the great man he was and an invitation to carry forward the reflection he opened.