The critique of Gikuyu religion and culture in S.N. Ngubiah's A Curse from God
The relationship between missionary Christianity and traditional African cultures was a prominent theme in post-colonial literature during and for many years after the era of decolonisation. In contrast to the nostalgic defensiveness of many Kenyan and other post-colonial African writers, perhaps m...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of the Free State
2007-06-01
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| Series: | Acta Theologica |
| Online Access: | https://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/at/article/view/2152 |
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| Summary: | The relationship between missionary Christianity and traditional African cultures was a prominent theme in post-colonial literature during and for many years after the era of decolonisation. In contrast to the nostalgic defensiveness of many Kenyan and other post-colonial African writers, perhaps most notably Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the Gikuyu novelist S.N. Ngubiah found not salvation but a burden in certain aspects of his precolonialist indigenous culture. In his novel A curse from God (1970) Ngubiah challenges obliquely but unmistakably the long-accepted position of his fellow Gikuyu (and first national leader of independent Kenya) Jomo Kenyatta, particularly as argued in Facing Mount Kenya, that a return to tribal folkways was a precondition to economic and social upliftment. This clash between a traditionalist and a modernist exemplifies the larger predicament facing African societies as they undergo rapid religio-cultural transformation.
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| ISSN: | 1015-8758 2309-9089 |