(Note: This post is an edited version of a paper written for an academic program at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. It was originally written for a professor who adheres to Liberation Theology. It is therefore addressed to people of that perspective. However, others may also find its challenge to Liberation Theologians thought-provoking. References for some quotations have been left in condensed academic format. For full publication information, see the bibliography at the end.)
Christianity as we know it today began in empire.
Yes, Christianity began with the birth of Jesus Christ within the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. But the Christianity that Jesus founded is not the Christianity that exists in the world today. Today’s Christianity began in the year 325 AD, in a city of the Roman Empire named Nicaea, under the tutelage of the Roman emperor Constantine I. This was when the God of the Bible began to be replaced by the imperial god—or rather, by an imperial Roman triumvirate of gods—that is worshiped by the vast bulk of Christians today.
Until that imperial god has been dethroned, all efforts to “decolonize” the minds of oppressed people in the Christian world, not to mention the minds of their oppressors, will be in vain. It is not possible to decolonize the minds of people who worship a god that was fashioned under the auspices of a brutal emperor for the purpose of justifying his campaign of conquest and the pacification of the conquered under his imperial rule.
For more on the imperial god of Constantine and Calvin, please click here to read on.
This harsh, arid desert environment is precisely where Jesus fought the first of his temptations recorded in the Gospel story. It was right after he was baptized in the cooling waters of the Jordan that the spirit led him into the desert. We read that he fasted forty days and forty nights—and the number forty, especially when it is mentioned together with fasting, corresponds to temptation. The Children of Israel wandered forty years in the desert before they could enter the Holy Land. And Moses twice fasted forty days and forty nights on Mt. Sinai when receiving the Ten Commandments and all the accompanying laws.
As the Africans surpass all others in interior judgment, I have talked with them on matters requiring rather deep consideration, and recently on God, on the Lord the Redeemer, and on the interior and exterior man; and since they derived great pleasure from that conversation, I will here mention what their perceptions were from their interior sight on these three subjects. (Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion §837)
The story of Jesus as a boy at the Temple in 
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 