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Imagine a worldwide Council of Religion being held somewhere on Earth. The major religions of the world are represented by their priests, each bearing an image representation of their deities or the symbol of their religion. The Anglosaxon priest represents Christianity and bears with him the crucifix and an image of white Jesus. The Arab Imam has with him the image of the crescent moon and the Kaaba right under it. The Buddhist has his Buddha and the Hinduist has his Brahma. The African arrives bearing white Jesus and he is the boldest and proudest of them all. How the African is the only participant whose deity or symbol has no resemblance with and connection to him is a cause of silent ridicule among other participants but his seat is honoured nevertheless. He is a human who has only found meaning in the idea of God through the lens of another race.

The African has the White man’s God as his own. The periods of Christianity and Colonialism in Africa programmed the African’s partial or complete abandonment of his Gods for that of the White man. It was a conquest carried out in the mind of the African by his Christian friend who was also his colonizer, a psychological warfare initiated by first demonizing both the African and his Gods and then replacing them with the God of the colonizer which has been so painted with majesty and power, portrayed as impeccably white with flowing hair, attended to by winged angels none of who is Black. Heaven, as the White man’s art has depicted, is all white and the Black could only be admitted upon giving his life to the white God of his colonizer. This is not even a problem to the Black man because, as far as religious indoctrination has done its work, the White man’s God is the only true God, and the Gods of the Black man are idols and devils known for infamy.

The current social reality of the African is partly caused by identifying with a supernatural power he is alien to, one created to adore a race he is radically different from. Some people argue that the problem of the Black race has little to do with religion and more to do with the leaders and the political systems. What they fail to acknowledge is that the Gods are an aspect of the people, a symbol of their strength, their ideal of power to which they turn when in need of strength and reassurance. The Gods must look like their people to drive their power down into the psyche of the people so that they can act like their gods. The more the Gods look like the people the more real they are to them. The more real the Gods are to the people, the more connected they will feel to the powers that they envision of their Gods.

The cultural representation of the Supreme God is what is here being pointed at, not merely the Gods and Goddesses which almost all races of mankind have in a pantheon. Check the Supreme God as it is represented in the races of mankind and you will find the necessary resemblance of the God to the people of the race. Zeus is European. Buddha is Chinese. Brahma is Indian. The Christian God and Jesus are white because the development of the religion owes itself to the White man. Though White Christians propagate Christianity with the aim of bringing others to the love of the Christian God, the colouration of the Christian God and Jesus as white is, on one hand, an attempt to give the White race an elevated position amongst mankind, and, on the other hand, a cultural expression of a race of people who ought not to conceive of God any other than as they are.

It is perfectly alright for any race of mankind to conceive God in the colour of that particular race. When we agree that the Supreme Being is The Great Spirit, it is reasonable to say The Great Spirit manifests Itself to the races of mankind in the different colours of the races. As I am I see God. If I see God as I am, does that make what God look like as I am? I am Black. As I am I see God. Does that make God black? The White man sees God as White, does that make God white? Is there something that God is other than the racial lens we perceive God as? Surely, there is!

If it is alright for the races to conceive of God in their own image, what has the African done with this privilege of conceiving the Supreme Being in his own image and never having to revere God through the conception of another race? This conception should not be one in the figment of the imagination of the Black man or in stones and figurines, but a conception in art, literature, and music wherein the Black God is pictured and described as being What it is: The Supreme Being, Ageless, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Super-Intelligent, and Able to do all that is possible for the Supreme God to perform. This Black God should have His sacred book, His laws, His precepts, His messengers, His temples, and His worshippers of which the majority should be Black people themselves.

Who is the Black Supreme God? Which Black God has a major religion been founded on? Where is the temple of such God? Where is his sacred book? Are there celestial and terrestrial battles that this Black God has won? What miracles has the Black God performed? Which dead person did the Black God give life back to? Where is the Black God’s heaven or paradise located? Where is the Black God? Can the Black God be found? Yes, the Black God can be found because the Black God has been here with us since the very beginning of the Universe! We are going to find the Black God but before then, let us address what our God is not.

The Almighty Black God is not an idol and figurine. The Black God is a Being. The African has a conception of God as the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe and all that is. Cultures across the African continent all have a name for this Being Who Alone presides over all reality. To the Igbos, this God is Chukwu. To the Yoruba, Oludumare; to the Edo people, Osanobua. To the Zulus, Unkulunkulu. To the Akan people of Ghana, Nyame, and to the Bacongo people of Angola, Nzambi. The common attributes of all these cultures to the personality of the Supreme God is that God is self-existent, all-knowing, all-powerful, beyond Whom there is no other.

African cultures have a polytheistic conception of a Supreme God and many Gods and Goddesses who serve The Will of the Supreme God. Before the arrival of European colonialists and their Christian missionaries, Africans could not have conceived of The Supreme Being as White, Indian or Chinese. Africans see God as they are: Black. One of the earliest conceptions of a famous African God as black is the Egyptian conception of AUSAR, who the Greeks called OSIRIS. AUSAR is known by many titles such as Lord of the Perfect Black and Prince of Peace.

The African seems to have lost his consciousness of the Supreme God as he focuses on one or many of the subordinate deities for whom he hammered stones and wood as figurines of representation. From the figurines that Africans constructed as miniature representations of Gods and Goddesses, we see that Africans, before colonialism and the arrival of Christianity, conceived their deities in their own image. Since these figurines are themselves expressions of art, some of the craftsmen assigned to sculpt the figurine performed poorly in their art, hurriedly creating pieces of figurines that were not accurate depictions of their Gods and Goddesses and that also did badly in imaging the people.

What the African has are idols. I call them idols because many of these figurines do not have a semblance to me or other Black people. Many of them are unattractive objects soiled over and over with oil and dainties, the majority of them bearing grotesque appearances of vileness and evil as if all the Gods are always in aggressive modes. If I had a choice to choose between the crucifix of Jesus and one of the many unattractive figurines said to represent African gods, I will choose the crucifix or none at all. The art of a culture is a reflection of the subconscious mind of the people. To have scary, ugly-looking sculptures and figurines, supposed representations of deities, and call them the Gods of my father is an insult to my being. This is why the average African embraced the white God. He accepted through the preaching of his White friend that his own Gods are not worthy. He saw it justified to associate with the White man and his God. Because of a sense of who he is as a human being, the African needed to identify with the beauty, aesthetics, and elevated ideals that the God of the white man represents.

Religion is a cultural expression of a people. If the Supreme God has no semblance to the people, if God has no racial relationship with a people, such people can be said to have been conquered by the race whose God they take as theirs. The sense of pride, dignity, and power cannot be fully expressed by Black people if God does not look like them. The people will live inferior lives if the highest ideals of beauty, aesthetics, and spiritual power do not bear their racial signature. Worse is the case if they have accepted the demonization of their grand deities and are proud, fanatical supporters of the deities of the race which overwhelmed them. These types of people will seek to strangle you for trying to show them the way back home.

We need to re-present God as Black to our people and redirect their minds to an empowering philosophy. We have to religiously reveal the true God Who is Black from the beginning, that mighty, glorious, and luminous Being Who is clothed with the blackness of the Universe wielding unlimited power, by Whose Will all things emerge and in Whose Being all things exist. If no one can undertake this task, I offer myself to do that. But I will need the assistance of the Black God. If men and women rise up using art, music, and literature to re-present God as Black, I shall be counted among them in such service. I am a man of God, technically. This assignment is an important one. It is a mission. The preservation of the Black race depends so much on the perception of themselves from the idea of their God to the idea of themselves. When another Council of Religion holds, the world should see that the Black man knows his God.