Christianising Africa: A Portrait by Two African Novelists

Abstract

One encounters the theme of religion in a good number of the novels in the African Writers’ Series (AWS), particularly Traditional African Religion, as well as Christianity or Islam, within the matrix of the African social milieu. Dwelling on the AWS novels this paper investigates the picture that is presented of Christianity. It is a comparative study of two novels, Ayi Kwei Armah’s ‘Two Thousand Seasons’ and Benjamin Kwakye’s ‘The Sun by Night’, first published in 1973 and 2006 respectively. The purpose of the study is to discover the picture of Christianity in Africa through novels written more than three decades apart. Armah portrays how Africa was Christianised by European missionaries and the African reaction it met with. He depicts some of the notions held about African religious practice, which the Christianisers sought to transform, and the effects of this transformation process. Kwakye writes as though Christianity is a normal part of African society today with the Africans themselves founding Churches and christianising their people.