What Does It Mean to Decolonize My Faith?

Vol. 3

A Personal and Collective Reflection

The word decolonize can sound heavy, even polarizing, but in the context of faith, it’s an invitation. An invitation to pause. To reflect. To ask: How did I come to believe what I believe?

Decolonizing faith isn’t about abandoning Christianity; it’s about peeling away the layers of cultural and political control that were wrapped around it for centuries. It’s about separating the liberating message of Christ from the colonial structures that reshaped it into something it was never meant to be: a tool of domination and erasure.

So, what does it mean to decolonize your faith?

It means asking brave, tender questions. It means re-examining the version of Christianity many of us inherited through systems built to control, not to liberate. It means understanding that our ancestors, Indigenous, African, Asian, Latin American had spiritual lives before colonization. And those spiritual lives weren’t demonic or primitive. They were sacred. They were full.

When I first traveled to Africa before the pandemic, something shifted in me. Standing on ancestral soil, I could feel the silence of stories that were never passed down. Later, through my studies in psychology and behavioral health and especially after receiving my genetic test results, I began piecing together the larger picture: faith, identity, trauma, and healing are all connected.

That led me to the question: Have we been worshipping through a lens that wasn’t ours to begin with?

Guiding You Inward: Questions for Reflection

As you read this, I invite you to explore these questions for yourself, not with guilt or fear, but with openness:

• Have I ever felt a quiet tension between my culture and my faith?

• Have I accepted beliefs or practices without knowing where they originated?

• Do I know anything about the spiritual practices of my ancestors before colonization?

• What spiritual habits do I follow because they bring me closer to God and which do I follow out of fear or obligation?

• Do I feel I have permission to explore other ways of connecting with the Divine?

  
  

You don’t need all the answers today. You just need the courage to ask the questions.

The Journey Is the Healing

We’ve all inherited beliefs many of them powerful, some of them harmful. Some were born of love, others of survival. And still others were imposed upon us by colonizers who took sacred traditions from one land, renamed them, and forced them onto another.

Decolonizing your faith is about understanding that legacy, not to shame it, but to heal it. To honor the real message of Christ, not the manipulated version. To reconnect with your spiritual heritage and integrate it into a faith that brings you peace, not pressure.

Start with Curiosity

If your spirit is longing for something deeper, you’re not alone. This series exists because so many of us are beginning to ask the same questions. The truth is: we’re not here to shame the journey that brought us here. We’re here to reclaim what was buried and re-center what is true.

And that begins not with revolution, but with reflection.

So, ask the questions. Be still with them. And listen.

🟠 Coming Up Next:

In the next post, we’ll begin exploring the spiritual richness of the nations and cultures mentioned in the Bible, how understanding their context can deepen our connection to God.

© 2025 CJ Thigpen Lewis. All rights reserved. This content is the intellectual property of CJ Thigpen Lewis. No part of this post may be copied, reproduced, or distributed without explicit written permission from the author.