Christianity's Role in "Things Fall Apart" (:

The book, “Things Fall Apart,” Achebe describes the effect of Christian missionaries have on the Igbo tribes during the 1800s. The book depicted how the cultures of the missionaries and the tribes contrasted. When Christianity was introduced, this really shows the tension between African and Western cultures.

         When the Christian missionaries came, they caused some problems for the tribe that lead to the death of Abame. The missionaries weren’t angry about the people attacking them; they simply wanted to build a church in Umofia and just live there. So the people of the tribe decided to give them a small portion of “The Evil Forest” (149). They thought that their act of kindness would allow the evil spirits to destroy the missionaries, but instead nothing happened to them. They weren’t affected by anything; the only people that were affected were those of the tribe, their belief of the evil spirits vanished. The author lets the Christians be unharmed to show how the Christians affected the tribes.

         After the Christians built their churches, they invited the Igbo to the church, but most of them rejected the invite. Only some of the outcasts attended the services. The Christians started to build schools and soon more women and children started to join. The Christians began to become more and more powerful that the people of the Igbo tribe started to convert. The Igbo people’s religion started to vanish as Christianity became stronger. One of the people Okonkwo talked to was Obierika. Obierika said in a conversation between the two, “Christians have won our brothers and that clan could no longer act like one” (176). The author Achebe describes how Christianity affected the cultural ties of the African tribes as they gained power.

         The Christians gained power while the tribesmen were worried about the fate of their customs and traditions of their tribe. Okonkwo wanted for his tribe to go to war, but the Christians, in a way, ruined the bond of the tribe. Obierika was asking Okonkwo how they could fight “their own brothers” (176) when they have turned against them. They thought the tribe had fallen to the fate of the Christians. There was nothing they could do because their tribe was split and they weren’t secure in their own beliefs and customs. This was supposed to symbolize the drastic downfall of many African tribes because of the introduction of the religion Christianity.

         The novel “Things Fall Apart,” describes the effect of Christianity on the African tribes. The missionaries felt like it was their job to help the tribes get rid of their savage ways. The tribes were kind of hesitant because they had their own values and customs that they believed in. The author used the downfall of the Igbo tribe to show how Christianity has destroyed a lot of the African cultures just because of their different beliefs.