Negotiating Christianity…A Lithuania case study for Africa

A Country of Cathedrals, Monasteries and Convents

The Pensive Christ...a symbol of distress, agony and injustice

Vilnius, capital of Lithuania is one place I was looking forward to visiting not because of any recommendation I read on trip advisor or as a favourite holiday destination, but simply because I found out that one of my favourite people in the world…a certain Mr Zydrunas Savickas (four times world strongest man) could be found at his gym in Vilnius and as I packed my suitcase, I prepared for a likelihood of having a workout with “Big Z” at his gym as I have been told this is possible. After Barrack Obama and Lebron James, Savickas is one person I am desperate to meet one on one, so imagine my excitement.

Getting to Lithuania however, I was amazed at the amount of massive churches, monasteries, convents and cathedrals scattered across the major cities.

 I was attending a conference on social entrepreneurship as part of an Erasmus project, but I couldn’t ignore the magnitude of these churches. Some look like they’ve been around for a long time, some probably a few hundreds of years ago and I began to wonder if Lithuania is that religious to the point that there is a massive church in every corner…a bit like Nigeria, hence my sudden interest.

However, the purpose of this blog stem from the moment I entered into one of these churches in Druskininkai built within a monastery and whilst admiring the beautiful church, I noticed a few pagan emblems and symbols side by side the Roman catholic symbols.

Above the crucifix, was the all-seeing eye which many Nigerian Christians I know interpret as the symbol of the Illuminati or something sinister. 

I for sure know that the all-seeing eye is a pagan symbol originally meant to signify the presence of God as a constant watchful caretaker. But why are pagan symbols blatantly displayed alongside modern Catholic décor I asked and this led to an history lesson from the local priest who gave a quick explanation about the syncretism of pagan worship, Eastern orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism in what has now become a hybrid Christian identity of modern Lithuania.

Syncretism at it's finest

Doing a bit of reading, I realised that in fact, Lithuania was the very last Pagan country in Europe to be converted to Christianity and it was not a walk in the park at all, as Lithuanians resisted the new religion and even after their founding fathers did accept Christianity in some form, they carried on practising their indigenous pagan worship openly side by side the new one.

It was Pope Innocent IV that declared Lithuania as a Christian state under the jurisdiction of Rome in 1251 but despite their king Mindaugas being baptised, he carried on worshiping his pagan gods and according to the study, Lithuanians stood firmly behind their ancestral religion and lost their status as officially a Christian state for a long time.

Vytatus the Great church

They would later eventually become a Roman Catholic state under Pope Urban VI in 1389 after years of hard  work by two of their founding fathers Jogaila and Vytautas and some of these churches I visited are built in the memory of these two gentlemen.

But just as Lithuanians refused to quit their ancestral practices centuries ago, it appears old habits die hard, because few kilometres to the monastery is a religious grove where adherents come to pray and make supplication to God, except this is not a church. 

It is a cyclical dome with some symbols…not Christian, but it is a prayer sanctuary and on one side you had an angel with water flowing from a tap and this water is holy water depending on your faith, but the idea is for you to pray to the angel or via the angel, then collect some water and have quiet times in the hilly picturesque grove with beautiful trees creating a perfect ambience.

It was a beautiful experience. It reminded me of Osun Osogbo sacred grove in Osun State, southwest Nigeria, with the sacred image of Osun in the background and the water which is supposed to have healing powers for those who believe, except the water from Drunskininkai is from a tap attached to the angel and seemed safer to drink in comparison to the free-flowing river of Osun where people have been known to swim in and bath in during their prayer sessions.

The figurine of Osun at the Osun grove

What I find striking in all of this, is Lithuania’s unapologetic nature of holding firm to her ancestry even though it embraced the new age religion of Christianity. I also find it fascinating that it even syncretised it to the new religion and preserved her ancient symbols whilst embracing the new one and did it all on her own terms.

 History has it that Lithuania used the promises of conversion to tease the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox brands of Christianity and used same promise to broker deals amongst these two groups and their allies before eventually choosing to go with the Catholics.

So why did Christianity come to Africa and swallow up the culture and religion? Why did the Yorubas not defend Orisa worship or syncretise Obatala, Osun and Ogun to Peter, Moses and Elijah or as arch-angels too like Gabriel and Michael.

Why did the African gods suddenly become the “fallen angels” of Lucifer? Why did Esu…the messenger of Eledumare suddenly become interpreted as Satan? Why is the narrative of Christian history in Africa overshadowed by colonisation and slavery? Why such disrespect to our own ancestral religion.

I put these two pictures below on my Facebook page and ironically my Nigerian/Yoruba friends liked the one I took in Lithuania with Jesus image but berated the one I took in Osogbo next to Sango image and some called it "Devil worship"

The statue of Jesus in Drunskininkai

The figurine of Sango in Osun grove, Nigeria

I left Lithuania with questions of why this and why that. A work out with Savickas was the last thing on my mind as I feel like Africa has been short-changed and it has become imperative to re-address the narratives surrounding African traditional religion. 

The culture of self-hate is rife in Africa when it comes to ancestral cultural practices and I feel intellectual conversation needs to be ignited immediately where we can address the history of Christianity in Africa and how it affects the heritage of Africans.

This is important to set the records straight and hopefully undo some of the harm that such negative miss-interpretation of the culture and religion of a people has done to the psyche of their generation in what is appearing to be a never-ending circle.

Vilnius Cathedral

 Vytatus the great Church in Kaunus