By Njuguna Mwangi
Imagine a Kikuyu couple welcoming their newborn son. After days of prayer and consultation with family, they give him a name that carries meaning. It honours a grandparent, it remembers a season of hardship, it celebrates God’s faithfulness, and it ties the child to his family, his community and his history. Years later, the same child walks into a mission church to be baptized.
The first question is not, “What does your name mean?” Instead, he is told to choose another name that is Christian i.e Peter, Ruth, John, Beatrice, Joseph, Mary, James, Agnes, Michael, etc.
No one tells him that his African name is sinful. No one opens the Bible and points to a verse commanding him to abandon it. Yet he leaves believing that becoming a Christian also means becoming a little less African. This story has been repeated across Africa for generations.
But it raises an important question. Was this really the Gospel? Or was it colonial culture wrapped in Christian language? That question is not about attacking Christianity. Far from it, it is about separating the teachings of Jesus Christ from the cultural baggage that often accompanied European colonial expansion.
Many Africans grew up believing that a European or biblical name was proof of genuine Christian faith. Others came to think that their indigenous names were somehow less respectable, less educated, or even less holy. Over time, this belief became so common that few people stopped to ask where it came from. Was it taught by Jesus? Was it commanded by the apostles? Or was it simply accepted because it had been repeated for generations? These are not small questions, they go to the very heart of identity.
Across Africa, a name has never been just a label, it carries history. It tells a family’s story. It remembers those who came before us. It expresses hope for those yet to come. A name can celebrate victory after suffering, preserve the memory of a beloved grandparent, or remind a child that he or she is part of something much bigger than themselves.
When a people lose their names, they lose more than words. They begin to lose memory, and when memory fades, identity begins to fade with it. That is why colonialism did far more than occupy African land. It reached into the minds of the people. It quietly taught many Africans to admire what was foreign while doubting what was their own. Some of its deepest wounds were not physical. They were psychological.
The great Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o challenged Africans to decolonize the mind because he understood that the longest-lasting chains are often the invisible ones. Political independence may come in a single day, but recovering confidence in who we are can take generations. The question of African names belongs to that journey.
This is not an argument against Christianity. Christianity reached Africa long before the European scramble for the continent. African believers have made enormous contributions to the history of the Church, nor is this an argument against biblical names. Many biblical names carry beautiful meanings and continue to inspire millions of Christians around the world.
The real question is different, did God ever require Africans to abandon the names He already knew? The prophet Jeremiah records God’s remarkable words: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” (Jeremiah 1:5). Think about that for a moment, God knew Jeremiah before he was born, he also knew every African child before they were born. He knew our languages, He knew our communities, He knew our cultures, He knew our names, etc. No missionary introduced Africa to God. No colonial government taught God who Africans were.
Long before the first European ship reached African shores, God already knew this continent and the people He had created (Jeremiah 1-5). If that is true, then perhaps it is time to ask another question: If God accepted our identity before birth, why did so many of us later believe we had to exchange it in order to follow His Son? This is not merely a historical question, it is a question about dignity, it is a question about identity and perhaps, above all, it is a question every African Christian deserves the freedom to ask.
Many Christians assume that becoming a follower of Christ requires adopting the culture of those who first introduced them to the Gospel, but that is not what happened in the early Church. In fact, the very first major disagreement among Christians was about culture. Around AD 48–50, the Church was growing rapidly.
Thousands of Gentiles (people of the world who were not Jews did not grow up following the 613 Gods Commandments/Moses Laws (the 10 commandments are the ones which crossed over to Christianity from Judaism) were turning to Christ. They came from different languages, customs, traditions and ways of life. Their conversion brought joy, but it also raised a difficult question. Did these new believers have to abandon their own culture before they could fully belong to the family of God? Some believers answered, “Yes.”
They argued that Gentile converts should adopt Jewish customs before they could be accepted as true followers of Jesus. To them, faith in Christ was not enough. They believed the Gospel had to be wrapped in Jewish culture. The disagreement became so serious that the apostles and elders met in Jerusalem to settle the matter once and for all. This meeting became known as the Council of Jerusalem. Their decision would shape Christianity forever.
After listening carefully to the evidence, including the testimony of Peter, Paul and Barnabas about what God was doing among the Gentiles, James the Just addressed the gathering. His conclusion was both simple and revolutionary. The apostles decided not to place unnecessary cultural burdens on Gentile believers. Instead, they asked them to observe only four practices so that Jewish and Gentile Christians could live in fellowship together:
- Abstain from food sacrificed to idols.
- Abstain from consuming blood.
- Abstain from meat from strangled animals.
- Abstain from sexual immorality.
That was all.
Nothing was said about changing their names, nothing was said about abandoning their language, nothing was said about adopting Jewish dress, nothing was said about taking Hebrew names, and nothing was said about replacing their culture with another culture. The apostles understood something that every generation of Christians must remember. The Gospel is unchanging, but it is not imprisoned within one culture.
Jesus came to redeem people, not to erase the identity of every nation He created. That is why the decision recorded in Acts 15:20 is so important. It protected the Church from confusing God’s truth with human culture. Imagine what would have happened if the apostles had ruled differently.
Imagine if they had declared that every Gentile must first become Jewish before becoming Christian. Christianity would likely have remained a small religious movement confined to one culture. Instead, the Gospel crossed borders without demanding cultural surrender. It entered Greece without making Greeks become Jews. It reached Rome without making Romans become Jews. It spread into Ethiopia without requiring Ethiopians to abandon their identity.
The message remained the same, but it took root in different cultures. This raises an honest question for us today. If the apostles did not require Greeks, Romans, Syrians or Ethiopians to change their names, why were so many Africans later expected to exchange theirs?
Where in Scripture did that instruction come from?
Many sincere Christians accepted this practice without ever asking whether it was biblical, they trusted those who taught them. Their desire was to follow Christ faithfully, and that desire should be respected. But respecting their faith does not prevent us from asking whether every missionary practice reflected the teaching of Jesus.
History shows that missionaries often carried two things with them. One was the Gospel and the other was European culture. Sometimes the two walked hand in hand. Sometimes they became so closely intertwined that people could no longer distinguish between them. That is where many misunderstandings began.
Following Christ and adopting European customs gradually came to be seen as one and the same. Yet the Council of Jerusalem points us in a different direction. The apostles refused to confuse the Kingdom of God with the customs of a single people. They chose unity without demanding uniformity. That decision remains one of the most liberating moments in Christian history. It reminds us that Christ welcomes every nation without requiring it to stop being itself.
Perhaps that is a lesson Africa is still rediscovering.
As the Kenyan scholar and author Njuguna Mwangi argues, the question is not whether Africans should follow Christ. The question is whether Africans were ever required by Scripture to surrender their God-given cultural identity in order to do so. The record of
Acts 15:20 invites every believer to search the Scriptures carefully before assuming that every inherited missionary practice was a biblical command.
Imagine standing on a mountain in Galilee and Jesus has risen from the dead. His disciples know they are hearing His final instructions before He returns to the Father. Every word matters. He says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19).
Notice something remarkable, Jesus tells His disciples to go to all nations. He does not tell them to make all nations look the same, He does not tell Greeks to become Jews, neither does he tell Romans to become Galileans, nor does he tell Ethiopians to become Hebrews. His command is to make disciples, not cultural copies. That distinction changes everything.
The Gospel was never meant to erase the beautiful diversity of humanity. It was meant to redeem it. God Himself created the nations, He created different languages, He created different cultures and He created different histories. The Bible never teaches that one culture is holier than another simply because it was the vehicle through which the Gospel first arrived.
When Christianity entered Africa, many missionaries sincerely loved the people they served. They built schools, translated the Scriptures, established hospitals and shared the good news of Jesus Christ. Many sacrificed comfort and even their lives for the Gospel. African Christians owe much to those faithful men and women.
That part of history deserves gratitude, but history also tells another story. Some missionaries, consciously or unconsciously, confused Christianity with European civilization. They preached Christ they also exported Europe. The two were often presented as though they were inseparable. Gradually, Africans were taught that becoming Christian meant dressing differently, speaking differently, worshipping differently, naming their children differently and even thinking differently about themselves. Little by little, a dangerous message took root. What is European is Christian and what is African must first be changed.
Whether anyone intended it or not, that message left deep scars. It quietly suggested that God accepted Europeans as they were, but Africans needed a cultural makeover before they could fully belong. Yet that idea is difficult to reconcile with Scripture. When God called Abraham, He did not make him Egyptian. When God called Moses, He did not make him Babylonian.
When God chose David, He did not give him a foreign name. When the angel appeared to Mary, he did not rename her. When Jesus called Peter, James and John, He did not replace their Jewish identity with Roman culture. Even the apostle Paul, whose Hebrew name was Saul, did not receive a new name at his conversion as many people assume. “Saul” was his Hebrew name, while “Paul” was his Roman name, both existing within the cultural world in which he already lived. Scripture simply begins using the Roman form of his name as his ministry expanded among Gentiles.
The Bible simply does not present changing one’s cultural identity as a requirement for salvation. Salvation transforms the heart, it renews the mind and it changes character. But nowhere does Jesus teach that it must erase a people’s God-given identity. Perhaps that is why the early Church resisted placing unnecessary cultural burdens on new believers.
The apostles understood that cultures should be transformed where they contradict God’s truth, but they should not be discarded merely because they are different. That principle still speaks to Africa today. Every culture contains practices that honour God and practices that do not.
The Gospel calls every people to reject sin, it does not call every people to reject themselves. This distinction is one of the greatest gifts Christianity offers the world. Christ came to redeem every nation, not to replace every nation. The more we read the New Testament, the clearer this becomes. Jesus never asked anyone to exchange their culture for another.
He asked them to exchange darkness for light, pride for humility, hatred for love, and death for life. That is the transformation the Gospel promises. Everything else deserves careful examination. As we revisit our history, we should ask ourselves an honest question. If Jesus commanded baptism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (but never instructed His disciples to replace the names of those being baptized) how did the idea of “Christian names” become so widespread across colonial Africa? The answer is found not only in theology, it is also found in history.
