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Christianity believes in inanimate gods, which their God is eternal. There is a huge difference between the Bib Clan religion and Christianity, it will be shown. When Mr… Brown, the missionary, comes to the village of Muffin to spread the word of God to the Bib Clan, he met Sauna. Mr… Brown and Sauna has a conversation about their differences In religion, Sauna telling Mr… Brown that the Bib Clan believes In one supreme God but had others that they worship, the name of their God Is Chuck, because “he made all the world and not other Gods. Sauna also mentions to Mr… Brown that they also worship carved wood, “they tree from which it came was made by Chukka, as indeed other minor God were” Sauna tells Mr… Brown that the Bib religion “make sacrifices to the little gods, but when all else falls there is no one to turn to they go to Chucks. ” (180) Another God, besides the carved wood, that the Bib worship, is the Oracle of the Hills and Caves. The Bib believe that they must do whatever the Oracle of the Hills says, if the don’t the people of the village will be punished. An example of this is when the
Oracle of the Hills pronounces that Shameful, the boy living with Awoken, need to be killed. Since the Oracle of the Hills and Caves says that It must be done, “the men of muffle took the boy outside the village and killed him” (57). The Bib religion Is very different from Christianity. Since charlatanry only believes In one God, they don’t have all of these other Gods as the people of muffin believed in, such as the carved wood, and the Oracle of the Hills and Caves. Sometimes thinking that the Bib religion would only have one or two gods, but they didn’t.
Included with the other Gods that they worship, there was another which was the snake known as the sacred python. When the Christian missionaries come to the village, the son of the snake priest says that he “ate and killed the sacred python” (185). The son of the snake priest was named Enoch, he did eat the sacred python, when he decided to convert to Christianity. This Is one huge deference between the Bib Clan and Christianity, of how and what they worship. However there are some differences between Bib and Christianity Is the bullet In animate Gods, and inanimate Gods.
Christians have an inanimate God, which means Christianity, the Bib believe in animated Gods, which are alive and their Gods can be seen, such as the spirits. When the Bib Clan would talk to their spirits, as when the gewgaws had emerged once again from their underground home, they saluted on another and then reappeared on the ill (92). The Bib Clan Gods’ emerged from underground, and that they speak to them Just as humans would. Comparing that to the Christians way, is different. Christians don’t believe of having spirits rise from the dead, or from the underground to come and solve problems.
Christians Just believe that God is number one, and that they pray to God for helping them solve problems, but not face to face as the Bib Clan claims to do with their Gods. Another contrast between the two religions is the practice of polygamy compared to monogamy. Polygamy is what the Bib Clan practice, which is having many wives at one time. In Muffin, the more wives a man had, the better, Just like Awoken, he had three wives, and “another man in the village was a wealthy man who had three barns and nine wives with thirty children” (18).
But this is all common practice for the en in Muffin to have more then one wife. Each wife and her children would live in different huts, and the man lives by himself in his Obi. In contrast, Christians practice monogamy and that’s being married to one wife at a time, Christians believe that when a man and women become united in Christ, they become one. In conclusion, Things Fall Apart portrays, social, culture, and religious aspects of Africa. Christianity and Bib are both types of religions, but they are practiced in very different ways.
A difference was the practice of polytheism, which would be the live in more then one God and monotheism, belief in one God which is practiced by the Christians. The second difference was the Bib worship animate Gods, unlike the Christians who worship inanimate God. In addition is that the Christians practice monogamy, being married to only one wife, and the Bib practice polygamy, more then one wife. Here were two very different religions and practices but each had the choice of which one they wanted to follow, some stayed with the Bib Clan religion, but others converted to Christianity, it’s their choice.