I will have to reread that chapter in the Walter Rodney book to see exactly what he said.
It sounds as if you were exposed to different ideas, yet still have to do the historical research to clarify some of these issues.
Yosef Ben Jochannan, Gerald Massey, John G Jackson and Charles Finch all make a case for the African origins of Christianity. I have recognised that some people twist these findings and justify their practise of Christianity because it supposedly originated in Africa. However, what these scholars argue is that some of the main aspects of Christianity (e.g saviour, virgin birth, moral codes etc) originated in Africa. This is very different to saying that Christianity as we know it today originated in Africa. This is not what those who have done the research argue. Christianity is a relatively recent invention, and is a hodge-podge of things assembled from different places, often outside of a context which persons can make sense easily. The doctrines of St Augustine, (who supported slavery), and the political ambitions of someone like Emperor Constantine (Council of Nicea) played a key role in determining aspects of what constitutes modern Christianity, which was then imposed on people through conquest.
Even if persons make a case for Ethiopians having a long tradition in Christianity, this tradition is still relatively young when compared to the history of ancient civilizations in Africa. The best of African spirituality for me lies in the (much) earlier traditions, and not in the Ethiopian Christian traditions. Ancient people did not have a religion, in terms of how people today define what a religion is. I am also not big on the tendency to represent deities as white/light within the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian tradition.
I battled with swallowing the idea that Jesus Christ all together did not exist, That the Bible is a lie
The history and reality is a more complex than this. The bible is not an original document. If one goes through it with a historical lens, one can easily see the ideas of ancient indigenous Africans in it. So it does contain certain truths. However, without understanding much history, I don’t think people can make sense of the better parts of it.
Given this, although painting the white Jesus black is a step in the right direction, this is not enough to overcome the problems inherent in using one contradictory hodge-podge of a book as one’s main guide to the universe.