How can you worship the God of the enslavers?

Q: When the rapper Jahaziel renounced his Christian faith, he listed a number of objections to belief, including “Christianity’s involvement in the slave trade”. He spoke about wanting to “return” to the religious traditions of his African ancestors. His story is representative of a large number of young Black people in the UK whose horror at past Christian involvement in slavery is contributing to their growing interest in alternative African spirituality. What would you say in response?

Firstly, I would want to affirm the anger that’s being expressed in Jahaziel’s objection, because we are supposed to be angry about slavery and colonisation. These things were done in tangent with warped theologies like the Curse of Ham (thought to mean ‘dark’). Christians misappropriated scripture to argue that because Noah cursed Canaan and said he would be “a servant of servants…to his brothers” (Genesis 9:24-25, ESV), Black people were therefore destined to be the slaves of white people. This view was designed to legitimise the enslavement of Africans.