One of the most interesting things I've heard about this world Cup, has been the role of evangelical/protestant faiths in changing people's societies/cultures almost in irreversible ways.
This whole discussion came from Brazil. Brazil has been a legendary country in football matters until this century if I'm not wrong. They were a powerhouse in world cups. Until matches like the 2014 match against Germany that saw Germany score 7 goals. Something that would have been extraordinary had it not been THE Brazil that was at the receiving end of it.
And so people have really tried to figure out where the rain started beating Brazil.
Some people ( from outside Brazil) are claiming that it's because the kids are not coming from the favelas anymore. The brilliant football kids that turn into world sensations. But that has been disproven as most Brazilian footballers were not from the favelas even in the 20th century when Brazil was at the top of World Football.
And so the most interesting explanation has been the rise of evangelism.
Now what has fascinated me about this theory is that regardless of how much it applies to Brazilian football or not, it definitely makes so much sense for other countries that saw the evangelical movement of the 80s going on forward.
And the theory is this, countries like Brazil, were mostly catholics. But their Catholicism did not erase their culture. In fact, to some extent, it integrated it. For those familiar with occult or witchcraft rituals, you know that the Brazilians and some Latin countries have witchcraft rituals that feel very Catholic. Like they are calling for Catholic saints as others call for ancestors or spirits in the same rituals.
In simple terms, you could be fully into your culture, complete with talking to ancestors, having your rights of passage just like your forefathers, having your superstitions, while being a good Catholic. Your religion did not take away from your culture. They co-existed.
And Brazilians say that that then allowed for the "Latino spirit" of passion and community to seep into everything. From songs, to their soap operas to football.
I'm not a football person, so I can't bring out how they've explained how that "passion and community sense" seeped into how Brazilians played football. Almost like a dance. It's what made their matches interesting in the 20th century. That they went beyond the usual European formation that has currently dominated the game. That watching them was like watching a body made of different parts that complement each other. Like a beautiful soul dance where you let the music move you even as you observe the rules.
But Brazilian evangelism came a bit later than African countries evangelism. So while African countries were ditching stiff churches for dancing churches..Brazil got there this century.
But what does religion have to do with football?
Whereas the Catholic religion in Brazil had been made to exist alongside people's cultures and other beliefs, protestantism forces people to abandon their cultures. You can't be lighting candles to ancestors and still going to church. You have to choose one.
And so this has seen people become stiff. The community spirit is being replaced by individualism. The passion is being replaced by " God's will".
So for example, Brazilians are saying that in the 20th century, both the team and country took excelling at football to heart. You could touch the national pressure on their team to represent them well. That fiery passion we talked about earlier.
But right now, in the streets, that passion has been replaced by " God's will". If the team wins, then Praise God. If it doesn't, it was God's plan. That spirit of passion is gone.
And football is just where the rest of us can observe the effects of that evangelical shift.
But it's zombifying effects are in every country that got the evangelism gospel. People start praying for things they should be voting for. They start excusing bad leaders with " God's plan".
There is a barreenness that comes with that very specific evangelism spirit from the West.
Remember this isn't about Christianity alone. Muslim people have their own shift that occurred a bit later than the evangelism shift.
Where if you read of Somalia before the war, or even Western and Northern Africa, Islam of before radicalisation co-existed with African cultures. There was no choice to make. You could exist as a person fully immersed in your community, and still be Muslim. Most African Muslim women did not even wear the Hijab by the way. They wore the same dresses their Christian counterparts wore. Somali may even apparently be the one that gave us the very famous Deras in Kenyan households.
Till the radicalisation came. With it came women now wearing black mostly and wearing Hijabs. Now governments have to watch out because any time soon a young Muslim man could be blowing up random people to get to their heaven. From Somalia to Nigeria. Same Islam radicalisation.
So the problem isn't religion. It's these particular waves of intense religions that have spread in the last 40 or so years that are worrying. Remember some people in Western Kenya, during colonisation, actually used Christianity to start a sect that opposed colonisation.
Yet somehow, the radicalisation of today's religion, does not ever lead to people standing up for oppression. Instead, it co-exists with government oppression, and even goes ahead and makes people better individualised zombies that can be oppressed while asking God for help but not doing anything materially to revolt.
Is it any wonder, that this seems like a deliberate plot from the CIA to destabilise people, right from their very souls?
Source: Mwende Kyalo
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