Africa’s history with Christianity has been often viewed as simply a result of European colonization, but history proves the opposite to be true. European colonization’s influence of uniformity in religion spread Christianity from small clusters in Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa to the majority of the nation. Once World War II broke out the European countries colonized in Africa set their focus towards the war, which quickly led to African independence as the costs of retaining colonization were getting to high. With their Newly developed sense of ‘Freedom’ the African people were able to establish their unique form of Christianity as they were able to express their interpretations of the Scripture with each other to form their genuine Christian faith in Africa. An interesting difference between the AIC and Western Christianity would be that in Africa they emphasize a “word o faith” style of Pentecostalism that proclaims God’s successes in freeing sinners from evil, and prosperity for those who follow Him. Jacobsen notes that roughly 35% of Christians say they are Pentecostal with an added 80% of them believing in miracles (key belief for Pentecostals) as compared to the Western world, which consists primarily of Catholics, a variety of Protestants, and other groups. Although colonization was a huge part of Africa’s history with Christianity it was not the beginning. Africans had in fact been introduced to Christianity as early as the Pentecost, where “Africans from Egypt and Libya were present on the day of Pentecost when the apostle Peter preached to a crowd gathered in Jerusalem, and they spread the message of Jesus when they returned to their native lands.” (Jacobsen 42)

As a result of their unique cultural establishment of Christianity, the African people have been able to set themselves apart from Christians of another nation. For example, the term ‘weird’ doesn’t mean the samr thing in Africa and the Western world. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, ‘WEIRD’ was given as an acronym to attribute those with the belief that they are and should be self-sufficient and independent. The African people believe in Ubuntu, “the interconnectedness of all people, and it serves simultaneously as a statement of fact and a moral ideal.” (Jacobsen 62) Because they have established this belief of interconnectedness, they believe that whatever they do will effect the rest of their community, giving both extreme value and consequence for their actions and beliefs. In addressing issues like Genocide or Apartheid, Ubuntu gives an argument to the morality of the human behind the violence in the fact that we are all interconnected in our lives. Though not everyone believes in it, I believe that we may all have a similar value that we may treat as our own Ubuntu, like the ‘Golden Rule’.

One valuable lesson that the West could learn from African Christianity would be to emphasize an idea like Ubuntu, and emphasize the values of interconnectedness through faith, not only on a community level, but to a global level. With globalization taking us to the point where we are able to find out what is going on almost anywhere in the world simply by searching it on our cell-phones, we could be attempting to send more help to countries who are unable to defend themselves from harsh circumstances like war, hunger, and poverty.