The West's Assault On The Christian African Family

In 1900, there were 9.6 million Christians in Africa. As of 2025, there are over 754 million. This alone is a staggering figure. But it's even more significant as we examine it in relation to Christianity in other regions of the globe. With just under 552 million Christians in Europe, just under 417 million in Asia, and 620 million in Latin America, Africa already leads the Christian world in terms of population. And it is set to keep growing.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world currently exceeding the population replacement birth rate, which is also encouraging for African Christianity, as believing parents have more children and raise them as Christians. While these numbers do not assess the vitality and strength of the faith of those they are counting -- considering that African churches are standing stronger than Western churches on key, contested biblical truths of marriage and family -- at least on this issue the convictional level of Christianity is higher in Africa than the West. Of course, the above doesn't account for how the Lord may move in these regions and bring revival, but these numbers represent the current state of Christianity globally.

Are we prepared for this shift? Do we recognize it? Most of us, due to habit, education, training, or culture, may be inclined to still think of the West (Europe, the United States, and the Commonwealth countries of the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) as the "Christian world." Historically, that is true. Europe and the lands it settled have predominated as the center of global Christianity for hundreds of years, giving birth to biblically-influenced arts, science, and education, the Reformation, America's own founding, and sending missionaries around the globe -- including to Africa within the last two centuries.

But the West has not kept pace. Over the past 100 years, Christianity has faded in the lands that once cultivated it. Even more, a subtle and dangerous shift has developed in the last several decades -- the West has begun to actively work against biblical principles in the lands to which it once sent missionaries. And the Christians in Africa feel it. I heard it from their own mouths over the past week.

Perhaps no subject loomed larger over the Pan-African Conference for Family Values, held May 12-14 in Nairobi, Kenya, than what the West has done to target the African family in recent years. This gathering was the second such one hosted by the Africa Christian Professionals Forum, convening Christian faith leaders and advocates for biblical values in law and policy from around the continent. The focus was the family and key contested areas of life, marriage, family, sexuality, and religious freedom. What has the "Christian West" done for the African family?

As far as the Africans at this conference are concerned, the West has not been helping; indeed, it has been actively working against their families. Their primary source of pain is that the boatloads of money that have been pumped into the continent to kill their unborn children (by promoting abortion) and attack the integrity of the human person and undermine marriage and family (by promoting LGBT ideology) have come from ... the West. 

Not only that, but the way in which this money is coming in is coercive. African government leaders are having their arms twisted by Western diplomats and NGOs and told that if they don't agree to allow abortion and LGBT ideology, they aren't going to get the financial aid they often so desperately need.

This happened in the past six months in Sierra Leone, which the Biden administration told it wouldn't get aid unless it passed a pro-abortion law. At the conference, I heard anecdotally from one Kenyan leader that "the week after Biden was elected" in 2020, LGBT groups and advocacy efforts "showed up" in the country. I heard how Malawi political leaders were taken aside by abortion groups and lobbied to pass an abortion bill. Christian taxpayers in the United States are having their money held over the heads of their fellow believers in Africa and used to pressure them to disavow the truths about their faith.

It would be bad enough that the West is taking positions that undermine the African family, but the malicious nature and arm-twisting of it all makes it that much more exploitative, closer to a coercive interrogation in which a subject is situated in a closed room and information is extracted from him or her under conditions of pressure. Only now, the interrogators are Western governments, and the detainees are Africans.

Layer on top of this the colonial history of the West coming to exploit, dictate, and control African people and resources, with Africa still struggling to break free of these bonds -- and it only makes the current situation worse and more traumatizing. Only this "new colonialism" comes in the form of white Western elites attacking the biblical view of the family in Africa. No matter what those who attempt to twist the facts may say, it is white Westerners now coming once again to tell Africans what they need -- or else.

Those who want to twist this truth must face the facts: who founded Planned Parenthood? A white woman named Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who thought black people needed to stop having babies. Today, International Planned Parenthood Federation is one of the leading promoters of abortion in Africa. Marie Stopes is led by ... white Western elites. The list goes on. 

An overwhelming amount of the money being funneled like a river into Africa from Western governments and allied NGOs concerning issues of family, marriage, and human sexuality is being used to directly work against the biblical foundations of the family that God instituted in Genesis 1-2. The created order is being attacked in Africa, and Africans are feeling it.

This is why participants in the Pan-African Conference on Family Values gathered. They want to do something about it by identifying and describing the problem and strategizing and resourcing the way ahead. For my part, I acknowledged what my own country and others have done to undermine the family and apologized and repented for our behavior toward these fellow believers in Africa. I let them know that many faithful Christians in the United States who still hold to the whole counsel of God's word are standing with them on the truth of Genesis 1-2, as they face this destruction coming from the West.

The West's entire effort in this regard contradicts the normal rules of diplomacy, which prescribe actions to improve a bilateral relationship, and whereby one seeks to cultivate a good image in the hearts and minds of the people and government of the host country. In this case, Western capitals are coercively arm-twisting with zeal in order to plant abortion and LGBT ideology in African countries, alienating their people and governments and making them open to advances from China and others. 

Because Western abortion and LGBT advocates know Africans don't want to accept those policies, much of their work is done deceptively. The law, language, and aid packages offered by the West may not on first glance say "abortion" or "LGBT." But dig and scrape beneath the surface a little further, and when it concerns family issues, they are often there, sometimes hidden beneath innocuous-sounding language.

All of this points toward the spiritual nature of what is happening. Sexual ideologies are a religion in the West, and the West is quite logically zealously proselytizing what it believes. And in a spiritual war, the answer is prayer -- the people of God must seek direction from God on how to proceed.

The heartening part of being with these African Christian brothers and sisters was seeing the vitality and conviction of their faith. Many are being called by the Lord and stepping forward into key roles, whether serving in government, advising the government from outside, getting into activism, or serving, counseling, and supporting families, parents, and children as they walk out trying to heal the family destruction often imported by the West - including our entertainment, pop culture, and media. 

As I reminded the participants at the conference, just because something has come from the West does not mean it is good. It must be biblical to be good. And just because the West has sent many missionaries in the past does not mean that people coming from the West will continue to bring good things -- indeed, as many are seeing, tragically they are bringing harm.

Yet this conference brought solidarity between the African believers called to defend God's word in the public spaces, and those in the United States with a similar call. It was tremendously encouraging to be with them and know that we are in this together, as we lock arms with the joy and presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we know God wants to perfect his church -- his body -- and it is a global body. The Pan-African Conference on Family Values saw this unification of the Body of Christ that our God desires continue in a fresh way.

As I leave Africa, I know the Holy Spirit is leading these brothers and sisters in the Lord, as I can testify to what I saw, heard, and felt during the few days there. We know God is always looking for those who will step forward and defend what he wants to defend -- whether in English, Swahili (the mother tongue of Kenya), and in every other language under the sun. And in this matter, as we approach the day when peoples of all tribes, tongues, and nations will gather as one to worship the lamb, we can start to gather now.

As we each bear witness to where God has placed us, we remember that we are only testifying to what God has already said in the beginning about his creation -- that he brought forth life on the earth, that he created us male and female in his image, to be joined together as one man and one woman in marriage -- and that it was good. The truth of what we testify to is clear. It is simple. Let us not make it difficult. The question is: do we have the courage and conviction to do it?

Originally published at The Washington Stand