1st place — 2024 BIPOC essay contest: Rita Nyamkimah

FFRF awarded Rita $3,500.

By Rita Nyamkimah

The roots of Christianity go deep into my family tree. My paternal great-grandfather was baptized Roman Catholic as a young boy by missionaries in Cameroon. On my mother’s side, my great-grandfather had converted to Christianity after escaping the Biafra War. The common thread in the fabric of these stories is the overarching influence of colonialism on these drastic changes to the beliefs of not just those in my family, but many other Africans whose families experienced the same.

The influence of Christianity on my parents’ home countries is nearly unavoidable and I found myself continually grappling with this reality as I grew more interested in my heritage. I have been robbed of the unadulterated experience of my own culture as a result of the harrowing legacy of colonialism. In eastern Nigeria, Catholicism became the dominant force after the war, providing solace and stability to the Igbo people in the aftermath of war and mass starvation.

Although they found comfort in Christianity, I couldn’t help but consider how this change brought the inevitable rejection of our ancestral traditions. It is the nature of colonial Christianity to alienate its subject from their origins in favor of a foreign God who will punish them for being true to themselves.

Separating my culture from Christianity became a daunting task. Christianity is such a deeply ingrained part of Igbo culture that in trying to gain a better understanding I had met a painful irony: In seeking to deepen my cultural connection, I would become further alienated from my community, as being Christian was now synonymous to being Igbo. Even though our religious practices had predated the arrival of missionaries by thousands of years, they had been dismissed to the margins of societal consciousness after a few centuries of colonization. Our native beliefs were suddenly overshadowed and now only relegated to being spoken of in hushed tones and disapproving whispers.

My own struggles with religion and culture have made me deeply committed to maintaining cultural traditions. Understanding how critical it is to preserve our indigenous customs and stories, I have actively sought to record the oral histories from my own family and of other Igbo families in my community. Having tangible records of our history is the last resort in preserving our cultural practices so they’re not lost to the sands of time.

Ultimately, my journey of self-discovery and cultural reclamation has led me to embrace a more nuanced understanding of my identity — one that acknowledges the multifaceted influences that have shaped me as a person. While the legacy of Christianity remains a part of my heritage, I have found solace in embracing a more humanist approach, as our relationships to each other as human beings hold far more weight than any duty to a great omniscient force far in the cosmos.

Rita, 18, is from Hockessin, Del., and will be attending St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where she plans to get a degree in health sciences within the pre-medical program. She writes: “I have been the student representative for my school in the Red Clay School District Superintendent Advisory Council since 2023, as well as the president of the Black Student Union of A.I DuPont High School. I’m a photographer in my leisure time, not professionally but rather for the purpose of documenting the lives of young Black people in Wilmington, Del. My ultimate goal is to be a psychiatrist in order to provide essential mental health services to underserved communities.”