Chizoba Imoka in her Hancock Lecture at the University of Toronto urges the hijacking of Christianity; ““If you want to keep Christianity you must restructure it, you must remake it to centre your culture and your history. I would want us to be that intellectually open and fearless to dare to hijack Christianity and make it work for us, not we serving Christianity.”   She claims;

Christianity was essentially the vehicle that led to the destruction that we’re speaking about on the continent. It was the missionaries that opened the door for imperialism to take strong roots.

We must be out of our minds not to think this is a problem. It’s uncomfortable, I get it. But I think it’s the intellectually upright thing to do, to have a critical reflection on it. I don’t know what the outcome should be.

Taking a moment for one critical reflection about this issue I would simply ask; “Do two wrongs make a right?”  The colonial powers and the church that served their interests hijacked Christianity in order to justify their agenda.  How can acting in the very same destructive way missionaries and imperialists did in the past change anything for the positive today? According to Chizoba Imoka,  missionaries and ‘imperialism’ facilitated the destruction of the indigenous people and their culture.  These missionaries and agents of imperialism served the more powerful, greedy European interests through the vehicle of Christianity.  European imperialism hijacked Christianity through the Church to serve their cultural interests and history.  Now, according to this intellectual, it’s time for the others, who are products themselves of  privilege,  to do the very same thing in order to redress historic wrongs – ‘hijack Christianity and make it work for us, not we serving Christianity.’

And what ‘intellectually upright’ thinking  does Chizoba Imoka have with respect to the outcome of hijacking Christianity.  How will she and her hijacking cohorts fix the past? Elsewhere Ms. Imoka lays it out as she  reflects on this year’s Canada Day:

The greatest personal conflict I face as a Catholic and civically engaged-justice searching global citizen is reconciling the violent/bloody history through which my faith has emerged, its complicity in producing the oppressive reality/social structures I am challenging, and the rhetoric of my faith that constantly invites all to seek justice, charity and generosity. So far, I have found mental sanity in affirming this rhetoric by believing that the Church (in action) has a role to play in bringing about a more just world. In my mind, this means that the church and its members have to go for “confession” and do the accompanying “penance”. Within the context of Canada, this means amongst other things, the church has to fully own up to its complicity in facilitating the evolution of a historically oppressive Canada to certain populations, to its role in breaking souls/families (in irreparable ways) of indigenous people and then actively working to act for justice and bringing its congregation to terms with this history.

Does Chizoba Imoka include herself in the collective guilt she imposes upon  the ‘church?’ And as a Catholic, is she including non-Catholic Christianity? Perhaps, in her mind, non-Catholics are not really Christians;  so as a Protestant, am I off the hook?   She doesn’t say.  But it doesn’t stop her from enjoying what Canada has to offer and engaging in ‘intellectually upright’ activities; “I will not celebrate ‘Canada day’. I rather remind myself that all that I enjoy in Canada has come at the dehumanization and erasure of many indigenous lives.” (“Happy Canada Day”, Spiritual Life & Collective Responsibility to Seek Justice)

Dear Lord, save us from the fury of ‘upright’ intellectuals.