How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"But I need a job," my mother insisted, "and haven't you noticed that all the Christians have jobs?" Besides, going to church won't mean that I will stop worshipping your religion." She put an emphasis on the word your.
"You can't have it both ways, dammit," my father said angrily.
…
A month or so later my mother defied my father and secretly took us to the local Full Gospel Church, where we were baptized. Though baptized, I still continued being skeptical about Christianity. As for my mother, despite openly and proudly calling herself a Christian, her tribal beliefs continued as strong as ever, latently when things seemed to be going right, and actively when things were going wrong. Hers was a Christianity of expediency. (11.27-28; 30).
Initially, Mark's mother becomes a Christian out of practical concerns. She doesn't want her children to go hungry any longer, and believes that converting to Christianity will bring financial gains.
Quote #5
"I agree makulu, madam," Granny said, wiping her sweaty brow wither forearm. "All children, black and white, are God's children, madam. The preacher at my church tells us the Bible says so. 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven,' the Bible says. Is that not so, madam? Do you believe in the words of the Bible, madam?"
"I'm afraid you're right, Ellen," Mrs. Smith said, somewhat touched. "Yes, I do believe in the Bible. That's why I cannot accept the laws of this country. We white people are hypocrites. We call ourselves Christians, yet our deeds make the Devil look like a saint. I sometimes wish I hadn't left England." (30.96-97).
Mrs. Smith is the first white person that either Granny and Mark have met who recognizes that apartheid is evil. She also recognizes that justifying it with religion is wrong. Through his experience with Mrs. Smith, Mark learns that there are sympathetic whites even in South Africa.
Quote #6
I frowned upon organized religion for the simple reason that about me I saw it being misused: by the government in claiming that God had given whites the divine right to rule over blacks, that our subservience was the most natural and heavenly condition to be in; by some black churches to strip ignorant black peasants of their last possessions in the name of payment for salvation of their souls; and by the same churches to turn able-bodied men and women into flocks of sheep, making them relinquish responsibility for their lives in the hope that faith in Christ would miraculously make everything turn out right.
Worst of all, I found among members of some churches a readiness to accept their lot as God's will, a willingness to disparage their own blackness and heritage as inferior to the white man's Christianity, a readiness to give up fighting to make things just in this world, in the hope that God's justice would prevail in the hereafter, that the hungry and the oppressed and the enslaved in this world would feast on cornucopias while singing freedom songs and hosannas in a heaven without prejudice. In short, organized religion made blacks blind to, or avoid to seek escape from, reality. (36.4-5)
Mark believes in justice here on earth, and faults religion for its emphasis on rewards in the afterlife. He also recognizes that religion seems to be a legitimizing force for apartheid.