CHRISTIAN SONGS IN LOCAL LANGUAGES OFFENDS SOME PEOPLE

CHRISTIAN SONGS IN LOCAL LANGUAGES OFFENDS SOME PEOPLE -Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had some thoughts on going to church & Christian songs in local languages. 

"Going to church? It was something you didn’t question.

When I go back to Nigeria it strikes me how on Sunday people will say, “Have you been to

church?” It’s expected, and they say it matter-of-factly. They’re saying it because they want to

make sure. They’ll ask, “Will you come out to dinner with us? Have you gone to church, by the

way?” Because if you haven’t gone to church then you can’t come to dinner. The option of not going to church doesn’t occur to people, and it

doesn’t matter what denomination.

As I was growing up, we went to church every Sunday. I was drawn to religion, but I was the

kid who just wouldn’t shut up. I had questions. Everybody else went to church and came home."

"Christianity includes ideas that are cultural rather than religious, and these ideas have been

absorbed into African Christianity. This is changing, of course, but even the idea of singing

Christian songs in local languages offends some people. I recently heard about a woman who was

horrified because she didn’t want Igbo carols at Christmas. Only the English ones were real

Christmas carols to her. But even so, the idea of Christianity as a triumph of colonialism might be

too simplistic..."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria . Her work has been

translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications ,

including The New Yorker , Granta , The O . Henry Prize Stories, the

Financial Times , and Zoetrope . She is the author of the novels Purple

Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers ’ Prize and the Hurston /

Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun , which won the Orange

Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist , a New York

Times Notable Book , and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best

Book of the Year ; and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck .

Her latest novel Americanah , was published around the world in 2013 ,

and has received numerous accolades , including winning the National

Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland

Prize for Fiction; and being named one of The New York Times Ten Best

Books of the Year.