Christianity & Oppression in Literature: Alice Walker

From Alice Walker's novel, The Temple of My Familiar:

"My father, Samuel, was a missionary also, but by the time we returned to America he had long since lost his faith; not in the spiritual teachings of Jesus, the prophet and human being, but in Christianity as a religion of conquest and domination inflicted on other peoples … We had all begun to see, in Africa – where people worshipped many things, including the roofleaf plant, which they used to cover their houses – that “God” was not a monolith, and not the property of Moses, as we’d been led to think, and not separate from us, or absent from whatever world one inhabited. Once this channel was cleared, so to speak, much that our people had been taught about religion, much that diminished them and kept them in oppression, would naturally fall away. It was so hard for the Africans, in this new religion we brought, to ever feel “God” loved them, for instance; whereas in the traditional religions they practiced they took this more or less for granted."

Faith and riches

Some ideas about faith from an unlikely source, the classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

"Faith is a state of mind which may be induced or created by affirmation or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind through the principle of autosuggestion."

"Faith is the starting point of all accumulation of riches.*
Faith is the basis of all miracles and all mysteries which cannot be analysed by the rules of science.
Faith is the only known antidote for failure.
Faith is the element, the chemical which, when mixed with prayer gives one direct communication with infinite intelligence.**
Faith is the element which transforms the ordinary vibration of thought created by the finite mind of man into the spiritual equivalent.
Faith is the only agency through which the cosmic force of infinite intelligence can be harnessed an used by man."


* Interesting about the book is that, financial riches are twelfth (i.e. last) in the list of what the author constitutes wealth. My initial perception of the book has been thoroughly overturned as I get through it. So far it seems to be more about working on your Self, than about getting your hands on cash (with the premise that the former can facilitate the latter!)
** "infinite intelligence" – a different way to talk about the knowledge, the spiritual energy, that is God?