James
Location: Roosevelt Island, NY
In my conversation with James, we discussed his abstract approach to Christian themes as someone raised in a Pentecostal Christian church, both in Ghana and in the United States. In addition to these experiences, he discussed the influences of his family on his religious understanding. He confronts the colonial aspects of the Christianity he was taught, and discusses how he engages with those ideas. The following quotes were selected from this conversation.
"For me, the story of Jesus is probably a roadmap to fully realizing yourself. So when he says I am the Way, the Truth and the Light, I just like translated it to be like, Oh, I am the Way the Truth, and the Light. So my relationship to God is probably going to come through me and not through Jesus."
“One of the things I noticed distinguished me from a lot of people, whether good or bad, was just the fact that like there was discipline, most of which came from fear that was implanted in me like the church. It's like, ‘oh you're not allowed to do these things.’ So like even if like I left certain boundaries, I like I felt like I had to come back. Whether I needed to or not because of just growing up Christian…
“At some point in school, I kind of realized that the idea of a person — or the person that I was, was the idea that I was someone that was supposed to be easily managed or attained — because this was from the church.”
“So then it became, 'oh like, so where does the idea of [a Ghanaian child having to be so obedient] come from? And I realized oh, because the British Army wanted to control the population. It's like, we have to have you be as obedient as possible, and be able to conform to whatever we want you to do."
"I don't hold too much weight on the institution of the church itself, but I like the Bible a lot because it anchors me back to Earth whenever I feel lost. Thanks to my Muslim friends and family, I also get to hear new perspectives on the same topics from the Quran. I especially like how it explicitly mentions the idea of spirits or djinns in the doctrine and doesn't antagonize them like Christianity historically has."
"I've had specific experiences that felt very spiritual, that were outside of the church. And in those experiences, it felt to me the like the point of living is to just see your fellow person as yourself. Like the "I." So seeing everyone is also I and having that collective thinking and everything. Sometimes, I feel like that's probably the core of the Bible anyways."
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