The Routledge Handbook of African Theology 9781138092303, 9781315107561

Citation preview

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY

Theology has a rich tradition across the African continent, and has taken myriad directions since Christianity frst arrived on its shores.This handbook charts both historical developments and contemporary issues in the formation and application of theologies across the member countries of the African Union. Written by a panel of expert international contributors, chapters frstly cover the various methodologies needed to carry out such a survey.Various theological movements and themes are then discussed, as well as biblical and doctrinal issues pertinent to African theology. Subjects addressed include: • • • • • • • • • • • •

Orality and theology Indigenous religions and theology Patristics Pentecostalism Liberation theology Black theology Social justice Sexuality and theology Environmental theology Christology Eschatology The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament

The Routledge Handbook of African Theology is an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the theological landscape of Africa. As such, it will be a hugely useful volume to any scholar interested in African religious dynamics, as well as academics of Theology or Biblical Studies in an African context. Elias Kifon Bongmba holds the Harry and Hazel Chair in Christian Theology and is Professor of Religion at Rice University, Houston,Texas. He was the editor for the Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa (2015) and serves as President of the African Association for the Study of Religion.

Routledge Handbooks in Theology

The Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology Edited by Wolfgang Vondey The Routledge Handbook of African Theology Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ religion/series/RHT

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY

Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park,Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Elias Kifon Bongmba; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Elias Kifon Bongmba to be identifed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-09230-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10756-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Dedicated to Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Cameroonian Theologian and Philosopher, 1934–2018

CONTENTS

List of contributors Foreword

xi xvii

PART I

Theological method

1

1 Theology today in Africa Elias Kifon Bongmba

3

2 Philosophy and theology in Africa Odomaro Mubangizi

26

3 Theology of inculturation: History, meaning, and implications Laurenti Magesa

44

4 Sources of African theology Chammah J. Kaunda

57

PART II

Theological movements

71

5 Dialogue between African traditional religion and Christian theology: A sure way for the survival of the Church in Africa James N. Amanze 6 African feminist theology Alice Yafeh-Deigh

73 85

vii

Contents

7 The four waves of black theology in South Africa and contexts of political struggle Timothy van Aarde

105

8 African theology: Political and public James R. Cochrane

121

9 The sermon debate and political theology in Kenya Galia Sabar

136

10 From reconstruction to reaffrmation:African Christian theology in an era of hot peace Jesse N. K. Mugambi

151

11 Christian theology and public health challenges in sub-Saharan Africa Jacquineau Azétsop

168

12 Theology and reconstruction in Africa Julius Gathogo

194

13 Doing theology ecumenically: Some African perspectives on ecumenical theology Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa 14 Theology and development in Africa Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

210 224

15 African theology after Vatican II:Themes and questions on initiatives and missed opportunities Peter Kanyandago

247

PART III

Regional and emergent theological themes

263

16 The Ethiopian Orthodox Church:Theology, doctrines, traditions, and practices Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

265

17 Evangelical theology James Nkansah-Obrempong

280

18 (How) Are we doing ecotheology in (South) Africa? Some hermeneutical refections Ernst M. Conradie viii

292

Contents

19 Abundant life—holistic soteriology as motivation for socio-political engagement:A Pentecostal and missional perspective Martina Prosén

303

20 We create the path by walking: Evolving an African narrative theology Joseph G. Healey

320

21 Postcolonial theology in Africa: Looking back and looking forward Tinyiko Maluleke

335

22 The theology of the African Initiated Churches Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa

346

23 Faith-based organizations in Africa and the option for the poor: Rapid diagnostic and insights from the theology of Father Joseph Wresinski Quentin Wodon

357

24 African Christian theology and sexuality: Some considerations Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

367

25 Theology and peacemaking in Africa Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

381

PART IV

Biblical and doctrinal theology

399

26 Bible and theology in Africa Lovemore Togarasei

401

27 Christology in Africa Martin Munyao

412

28 Rumors of salvation: Perspectives of salvation in African Christian thought David Tonghou Ngong

429

29 Patristic ecclesiology in Africa Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

443

30 Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood:Application to Africa’s milieu Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja ix

462

Contents

31 Liturgical theology—African perspective Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

480

32 Eschatology in Africa:Anticipation and critical engagement Elias Kifon Bongmba

503

Index of names and subjects Index of biblical passages and citations

521 534

x

CONTRIBUTORS

Timothy van Aarde served as a researcher for North West University, South Africa. He served as a lecturer in theology with Veritas College for 10 years.Van Aarde has extensive missionary experience in Africa having served as full-time missionary for 6 years in Burundi and 4 years as a part-time missionary in South Africa. He currently serves as pastor of Collie and Boyup Baptist Church,Western Australia, and is writing a commentary on Ephesians. James N. Amanze is a Malawian national working at the University of Botswana in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Botswana. He holds a Diploma in Theology (Makerere University), Bachelor of Social Science (University of Malawi), Bachelor of Theology (University of Oxford), MA (University of Oxford) and PhD in Religious Studies (University of London). He has published extensively in refereed journals, chapters in refereed books and numerous books on Biblical Studies,Theology, Religion and Philosophy and a textbook for African Universities. He is a member of Societas Oecumenica and Secretary of the Association of Theological Institutions in Southern and Central Africa (ATISCA). Jacquineau Azétsop, SJ, trained at Boston College and at the Bloomberg School of Public Health of Johns Hopkins University. He is Associate Professor and the current Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontifcal Gregorian University. His teaching and research include issues of health and society, social inequalities, religion and health. He has authored or coauthored a number of academic articles. He has published or edited Structural Violence, Population Health and Health Equity (2010), HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refection, Public health and Social Transformation (2016), and Integral Human Development: Challenges to Sustainability and Democracy (2019). Elias Kifon Bongmba holds the Harry and Hazel Chair in Christian Theology at Rice University, where he serves as Chair of the Department of Religion. His book, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa, won the Frantz Fanon Prize in Caribben Studies. Bongmba’s most recent book is Witchraft as Social Diagnosis:Traditinal Ghanaian Beliefs and Global Health with Roxanne Richetr and Thomas Flowers as co-authors. Ezra Chitando is Professor of History of Religions in the Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy at the University of Zimbabwe and Theology Consultant on HIV xi

Contributors

and AIDS for the World Council of Churches His research interests include religion, gender, sexuality, HIV, security and other themes. James (Jim) R. Cochrane (BSc, MDiv, PhD, DDiv h.c.), Emeritus Professor Religious Studies and Senior Research Associate, Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, co-directs the International/African Religious Health Assets Programme and convenes the Leading Causes of Life Initiative. Previously Director of the Research Institute on Christianity and Society in Africa and editor of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, he has authored about 150 essays and articles, and books including The Human Spirit: Groundwork (with Douglas McGaughey), Religion and the Health of the Public: Shifting the Paradigm (with Gary Gunderson), Circles of Dignity:Theological Refection and Community Wisdom, and Servants of Power: English Speaking Churches in South Africa, 1903–1930. Ernst M. Conradie is Senior Professor in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa where he teaches systematic theology and ethics. He works especially in the feld of ecotheology. His most recent monographs are The Earth in God’s Economy (LIT Verlag, 2017) and Redeeming Sin? Social Diagnostics amid Ecological Destruction (Lexington, 2017). Julius Gathogo, is Senior Lecturer, Kenyatta University, Kenya; and a Research Fellow, University of South Africa (UNISA). He has published over 1000 publications as journal articles, book chapters, individually authored books, and newspaper columns, among other publications. He has published African Hospitality from a Missiological Perspective, Pangs of Birth in African Christianity, Beyond Effciency in Leadership, Whimpers of Africa, Mutira Mission (1912–2012), Liberation and Reconstruction in Africa, and Mau-Mau Rebels in Kirinyaga Kenya. Tadesse W. Giorgis earned his doctorate in Counselling Psychology from the University of Iowa. He is currently Professor of Councselling and Psychology in the Counseling Graduate Progran at Chicago State University. He has held faculty positions at several universities in Ethipia and Mexico. Masiiwa Ragies Gunda is a holder of a PhD from Bayreuth University, Germany. He is currently Guest PSI Professor at Bamberg University, Germany. Gunda’s research interests lie in the intersection of the Bible, Justice and Marginalised communities with special focus on sexual minorities. Gunda has also been involved in the production of materials for Religious involvement in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights discourses. Gunda is the author of At the Crossroads: A Call to Christians to Act in Faith for an Alternative Zimbabwe (2018). Father Joseph G. Healey, MM is an American Maryknoll missionary priest who lives in Nairobi, Kenya. He came to Kenya in 1968 and founded the Regional Catholic Bishops Association (AMECEA) Social Communications Offce in Nairobi. Presently he teaches a full semester core course on “Small Christian Communities (SCCs) as a New Model of Church in Africa Today” at Tangaza University College (CUEA) in Nairobi and a similar Elective Course at Hekima University College (CUEA) in Nairobi. He co-authored Towards an African Narrative Theology and is the Moderator of the African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Website (www.afriprov.org). Stan Chu Ilo is a research professor of World Christianity and African studies at the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, DePaul University, Chicago. He is also xii

Contributors

the founder and president of Canadian Samaritans for Africa, a registered Canadian Catholic charity working with rural women in seven African countries. He is the Alan Richardson Fellow for 2019/2020 and a visiting professor of theology and religion at Durham University, U.K. He is the principal convener of the Pan-African Catholic Congress on Theology, Society and Pastoral Life. Ilo has edited several important studies on Christianity and social issues in Africa. He is author A Poor and Merciful Church:The Illuminative Ecclesiology of Pope Francis. His forthcoming book is titled Someone Beautiful to God: Finding Faith and Purpose in a Wounded World. Peter Kanyandago is a priest of the Archdiocese of Mbarara, in Uganda. He has a PhD in Canon Law from the Catholic University of Louvain. He has held different positions in his Archdiocese and in Uganda Martyrs University, which he helped to found. He is also among the founders of the University of Saint Joseph Mbarara. Among his works, one can fnd “Ethical and Pastoral Approaches to Dealing with Aids in Africa,” in Jacquineau Azestop, ed., HIV & AIDS in Africa: Christian Refection, Public Health, Social Transformation. Chammah J. Kaunda (PhD) is Assistant Professor in World Christianity in the College of Theology/United Graduate School of Theology, Yonsei University. Kaunda has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on World Christianity, African Theologies, African Pentecostalism, African Religions, Ecumenical Theology, and Missiology. His recent book is “The Nation that Fears God Prospers”: Zambian Pentecostalism and Politics (Fortress, 2018). Laurenti Magesa teaches African theology and ethics at Hekima University College, Jesuit School of Theology,Tangaza University College and the Maryknoll School of African Studies, all in Nairobi, Kenya. He is the author of several books and many articles on African theology. His latest book is The Post-Conciliar Church in Africa: No Turning back the Clock (Nairobi: CUEA Publications, 2016). Tinyiko Maluleke, Center for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He served previously as the Executive Director of Research for UNISA. He has published dozens of peer-reviewed and scientifc papers in scholarly journals. Professor Maluleke is a highly regarded public intellectual who has lectured widely around the world. Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja is an international scholar, educator, mediator, trainer, and process facilitator. Her doctoral thesis, “People’s Experiences, Perceptions and Images of Confict and Peacebuilding in South Kivu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,” received the University of Manitoba Distinguished Dissertation Award. Evelyn has published articles in journals and online, book chapters, and co-published two books. Her forth coming book is Paradise Turned into Hell: Congo, a Mirror into Resource Wars, Money, and Power. Odomaro Mubangizi (PhD) is a Jesuit Priest from Uganda. He is Dean of the Philosophy Department at the Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he also teaches philosophy and theology. He is also Editor of Justice, Peace and Environment Bulletin. His research interests are: globalization, African philosophy and theology, Social and political philosophy; social ethics and Catholic Social Teachings. He has published widely in these areas and is keenly interested on the interface between social ethics, international relations, and global governance. xiii

Contributors

Jesse N. K. Mugambi, PhD (Nairobi), FKNAS, EBS is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of f Nairobi; a lay churchman (Anglican), and an ecumenist. His authorship is interdisciplinary, across Philosophy, Theology and Applied Ethics. Some of works include: Contextual Theology Across Cultures (2009); Contextual and Global Challenges in Applied Ethics, 2012; Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, 2003; Christian Theology and Environmental Responsibility (2001); Religion and Social Construction of Reality (1996); From Liberation to Reconstruction (1995); A Comparative Study of Religions, 1990; African Heritage and Contemporary Christianity (1989); African Christian Theology:An Introduction (1989); God Humanity and Nature in Relation to Justice and Peace (1987). Martin Munyao, PhD is a lecturer at Daystar University, Nairobi, Kenya where he teaches Missions in the Department of Theology and Pastoral Studies. He earned his PhD in Missiology from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN. He has a Th.M. in African Christianity from Daystar University. David Tonghou Ngong (PhD in Religion, Baylor University) is originally from Cameroon and currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion and Theology at Stillman College, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA. His research focuses on the theology and ethics of contemporary African Christianity. Among his publications are numerous journal articles, book chapters, and two monographs, The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology (Peter Lang, 2010) and Theology as Construction of Piety (Wipf and Stock, 2013). His most recent publication is the edited volume A New History of African Christian Thought (Routledge, 2017). James Nkansah-Obrempong PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary, serves as the Dean NEGST and Professor of Theology and Ethics Africa International University, in Nairobi. He is author of Foundations for African Theological Ethics, 2013. His most recent work on Evangelicalism is his essay “Evangelical Churches and Movements in Africa” in Anthology of African Christianity, Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2016. Idara Otu is a Catholic theologian and member of the Missionary Society of St Paul. He received his doctorate in systematic theology from the University of St Michael’s College, Toronto, Canada, where he also served as an Aquinas Research Scholar. He teaches Dogmatic Theology, Vatican II and Research Methodology at the National Missionary Seminary of St Paul, Abuja, Nigeria. His research focus includes ecclesiology, ecotheology, interfaith dialogue, and Catholic social doctrine. His book Communion Ecclesiology and Social Transformation: Between Vatican Council II and African Synod II will be published by Wipf and Stock, in 2020. Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel teaches Ecclesiology and Church Polity at Stellenbosch University. She holds two doctorates, namely in Systematic Theology and in Church Polity. Her research focusses on Reformed church polity, gender justice, law and religion, ecumenism. She has published several articles on these themes in accredited theological journals or books. Her most rcent essays is “The Quest for Religious Pluralism in Post-Apartheid South Africa” in Religion, Pluralism, and Reconciling Difference. Editors:W. Cole Durham, Jr. and Donlu Thayer. Brigham Young University, 2019. Martina Prosén is a PhD Candidate in Global Christianity and Interreligious Relations at Lund University, Sweden and her research focuses on worship practices in two charismatic xiv

Contributors

churches in Nairobi, Kenya. Drawing on qualitative methods she investigates how worship, in the sense of congregational singing, shapes spirituality and theology. Prosén holds a M.A. and a M.Theol. from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and has a long history of living and working in different parts of Africa. She has published several texts, most notably a chapter called “Pentecostalism in Eastern Africa” in The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa, 2015. She co-edited a special issue of Mission Studies Vol. 35, no. 2, 2018. Galia Sabar PhD, is a leading scholar in Migration and African Studies, President of Ruppin Academic Center (RAC), a leading college in Israel and a Professor of African Studies,Tel Aviv University. For the past 25 years, Professor Sabar research has focused on three main themes: Ethiopian Jews (in Ethiopia and Israel); World Migrations with special emphasis on African migrants and refugees; and the relation between religion and politics in Africa. Among her many publications are Church State and Society in Kenya, 2002, and We are not here to Stay,African Migrant Workers in Israel and back in Africa published in 2009. Prof. Sabar is an activist in several Israeli and international NGO’s. In addition to the many awards she is a reciepient of the Unsung Heroes Award, granted by the Dalai Lama in 2009. Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa teaches ecumenical studies and social ethics in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa. His research traverses the felds of ecumenical studies, social ethics, African theology and the history of Christianity in Africa. Some of Sakupapa’s recent publications include: Sakupapa, T.C 2019. Ethno-Regionalism, Politics and the Role of Religion in Zambia: Changing Ecumenical landscapes in a Christian nation, 2015–2018. Exchange, 48 (2), 105–128, Sakupapa, T.C 2018. The Decolonising content of African Theology and the Decolonisation of African Theology: Refections on a Decolonial future for African Theology. Missionalia 46 (3), 406–424. Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa served Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy. He has published a book Towards an African-Christian Environmental Ethic (University of Bamberg Press, 2014) and many book chapters and journal articles on religions and contemporary issues such as ecology, development, gender, HIV and AIDS, sexuality, animals in religions, religions and reconciliation, peace and confict resolution, and human rights. Eshete Tibebe is a historian on the Social and Political History of the Horn of Africa and Contemprary Christianity in Africa. He is author of The Evangelical Movement I Ehtiopia and Jijjiga:The History of Strategic Town in the Horn of Africa. Lovemore Togarasei is a Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Botswana. He teaches courses in biblical studies and theology. He has published widely. He is currently leading a team that is investigating the impact of religious beliefs in health seeking and health provision behaviors in Botswana, an Africa Theological Advance project funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Elochuckwu Eugene Uzukwu is Professor of Theology; frst holder of Father Pierre Schouver C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Mission, Duquesne University. Expert in liturgy-sacraments, ecclesiology, and contextual theology, Uzukwu, Editor of Bulletin of Ecumenical Theology, has published four books. His best known are God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness:Appropriating Faith and Culture in West African Style (2012); Worship as Body Language. Introduction to Christian Worship: xv

Contributors

an African Orientation (1997); A Listening Church. Autonomy and Communion in African Churches (1996/2006; Polish translation, 2018). He edited Mission for Diversity: Exploring Christian Mission in the Contemporary World (2015); co-edited with Akuma-Kalu Njoku, Interface between Igbo Theology and Christianity (2014). Quentin Wodon holds PhDs in economics, environmental science environmental science, health sciences, theology and religious studies. He is a Lead Economist at the World Bank. Earlier, he taught at the University of Namur. He also taught at American University and Georgetown University, and is a Distinguished Research Affliate with Notre Dame. He has more than 500 publications, served as President of two economics associations. His awards include the Prize of Belgium’s Secretary for Foreign Trade, a Fulbright grant, the Dudley Seers Prize, and the World Bank President’s Award for Excellence. He dedicates signifcant time to pro bono work, including recently on catholic education. Alice Yafeh-Deigh is Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Azusa Pacifc University. She is a native of Bamenda, Cameroon, Central Africa. Alice studied theology in France, and earned graduate degrees New Testament from Yale University Divinity School, and a PhD in Biblical Studies from Princeton Theological Seminary. Alice’s areas of expertise, research, and teaching interests include New Testament Exegesis, Biblical and classical languages, Greco-Roman Sexual Ethics, Cultural Hermeneutics, Feminist Hermeneutics, Postcolonial Hermeneutics, Disability Studies, and literary and rhetorical methods of biblical interpretation. She author of Paul’s Sexual and Marital Ethics in 1 Corinthians 7: An African-Cameroonian Perspective, 2015.

xvi

FOREWORD

The Routledge Handbook of African Theology is a collaborative conversation that has involved colleagues around the world whose theological commitments include Africa. I thank my colleagues, who wrote essays for the book.They have received and responded to many emails and listened patiently to me describe the project at different conferences around the world.They deserve our thanks for the publication of this book. I thank the editorial staff at Routledge, who have been amazingly patient. I thank especially Joshua Wells, the editor at Routledge who commissioned the project, and provided useful guidance and editorial support during the project. I thank Harini Yuga and Jayanthi Chander for their editorial work that has led to the publication. Several colleagues have given help along the way. I thank Namakula Evelyn Mayanja, Jacquineau Azetsop, David Ngong, Alice YefhDeigh, and Elochucku Eugene Uzukwu. My colleagues in the Department of Religion at Rice University have all been very supportive and patient. I thank Dr. Francis Wepngong Ndi for the transcription of the Limbum songs in the chapter on eschatology. I thank Dean Kathleen Canning for the generous support from Dean’s Research Fund, which has made the research and coordination of this book possible. I thank Odelia Yuh N. Bongmba, Dino Bongmba, Carl Manju, and Alain Bongmba Nfor, members of our household who have been supportive and given up many family conversations because I was working on this book. Mabel Bongmba, Donald Bongmba, and the lovely grandchildren Amara Munkeng N. Bongmba and Afanyui Ikem Bongmba, have all been supportive and can now breathe a sigh of relief because grandpa has completed his edited book. Elias Kifon Bongmba Houston, April 2020

xvii

PART I

Theological method

1 THEOLOGY TODAY IN AFRICA Elias Kifon Bongmba

The Routledge Handbook of African Theology is designed to invite readers to explore aspects of theology in Africa.We set out to present a volume that captures elements of theology on the continent as a way of giving readers a snapshot of what some of the leading theologians and scholars think today. We asked the contributors to focus on introducing the theological idea, defne it, give readers an overview of the theological motif, theoretically, historically, or thematically, as a way of documenting the history of the theological concept. Contributors also had the choice of developing the theological motif or offering a critical constructive narrative and laying out new theological positions. The positions expressed remains those of the individual scholars and theologians. The goal was to cast a long glance on the history of theology in Africa, by going on a journey with the authors, as they explore specifc topics.We are delighted to offer this volume as one of the snapshots of theological adventures in Africa that should serve as a conversation starter and reference work on selected topics in African theology. This book is a reference work that provides targeted insight to invite a broad and robust theological dialogue in the African context. The history of theology in Africa is as old as the Christian tradition. Mission and colonial practice contributed to its development. In response, assertions of black personality and personhood emerged during the early trans-Atlantic dialogues, and the development of Pan-African ideals began to lay down the seeds of theology. Such theological defnitions appear in the work of scholars like Edward Wilmont Blyden, and in the postcolonial moment, African theology received one of its most unequivocal intellectual stances in Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent. The modern history of theology in Africa is rich because of its constructive engagement with the history of the ecclesial community, but also has a resistance movement which has asserted a theological will to defne the faith tradition with African perspectives while remaining true to the Christian tradition. African theology has grown in critical dialogue with Christian history but has remained entangled with global forces of Christianization, domination, and liberation by balancing global and African specifcity in the theological enterprise. The Handbook explores theology in Africa from different angles. The chapters are written frst from an interdisciplinary perspective, and articulations refect each contributor’s interpretation of the topic. We aim to give a broad interpretive view on the issues as a way of inviting further critical dialogue. Given that methodological orientation, our positions are broad critical overviews that are tentative and open for critical assessment and dialogue. Where individual contributors take a stand on a theological idea and present a compelling argument, they do 3

Elias Kifon Bongmba

so in a spirit of critical dialogue, which aims to persuade readers who may not agree with the doctrinal position articulated. Second, we write with postcolonial thought in mind, even when it is not clearly stated. Postcoloniality emerged in Africa and most of the majority world during the era of decolonization and has been revitalized in recent decades to rethink the perennial and debilitating impact of the imperial order. Postcoloniality as a discourse and practice has opened a robust and contested dialogue on the idea of the “postcolony,” which is not only an idea but in many ways an amalgamation of socio-political and economic arrangements, which dominate everyday life for people in the majority world.The critical dialogue of postcoloniality questions both the imperial order and its legacies and the world that has emerged from the rubble of the empires of domination.What has emerged in many ways has also compromised the will to thrive that has engendered a battle which, for lack of a better description, has been marked by the ongoing survival of not the fttest, but of those who control power and resources. The debate on postcoloniality is crucial to theology in Africa today. As contributors to this volume, we claim and argue that as theologians, we follow the path blazed by our pioneers who believed that theology was a critical discipline for the survival and thriving of human freedoms; the building of vibrant political communities; and the cultivation of a culture of respect, dignity, and responsibility. It is no surprise that theologians articulated some of the earliest political discourses in Africa. One might think that this is a presumptuous statement to make, but we must not forget that the theological contribution has been signifcant. One only has to think of V.Y. Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa, one of the most invoked texts in African studies, to notice that after he mapped the invention of Africa through a gnosis that imposed, as it attempted to crush, the thriving of African gnosis and the African will to think and “be,” Mudimbe turned to what he famously described as the African pris de parole and discussed the signifcant contributions of Africans. Mudimbe discussed the work of Edward Wilmont Blyden, Alexis Kagame,Vincent Mulago, and Fabien Eboussi Boulaga.These theologians rejected imperialism in all its forms, yet articulated an African will to determine their future even as they sought to bring down ideologies of domination.1 Michel Foucault, whose critique of power provided the architectonic on which The Invention of Africa was structured, drew many of his ideas from theological writings. It is, therefore, not surprising that in the recent critical appraisal of postcoloniality, theologians have come full circle to reclaim a discourse which they pioneered so powerfully on the eve of independence. Postcolonial thought was not only a critique and rejection of colonial domination but also a reaffrmation and reclaiming of black life, thought, and praxis. The chapters in Part I address sources and selected methodological approaches to theology in Africa. Chammah J. Kaunda, in his chapter, discusses the sources for theology in Africa, highlighting contextuality as the grounds of diversity in theological refection that avoids grand narratives but also reaffrms African resources for theological thinking. The African context builds on the multiplicity of cultures as necessary resources for theology. Kaunda analyzes several defnitions of theology in Africa, arguing that most theologians insist that African theology should be drawn from and respond to the “African life, realities, cultures, philosophies, and faith … in historical context.” Such theology should refect on the Gospel in the light of African cultures. Kaunda argues with African cultures in mind that theological thinking draws its materials from the Bible, African religious culture, African philosophy, Christian history in Africa (including mainline churches and African Initiated Churches), and other literary products and fundamental ideas by African thinkers. Kaunda argues that both Charles Nyamiti and John Mbiti have asserted that the Bible is the primary and irreplaceable source of theology.2 African women theologians have turned to the Bible to offer a robust critique of patriarchy that continues to compromise the lives of women in Africa and stresses the importance of scripture as a source for theology.3 Jesse Mugambi turns to the Bible to adopt the biblical motif of reconstruction 4

Theology today in Africa

for a theology of reconstruction in Africa. Embracing the Bible as a source for theology must not absolutize the Bible, especially if one thinks of the crucial role the Bible has played in colonial domination. Instead, what is called for is a critical reading of sacred texts that offer new insights for Africans to address the human condition today. A critical dialogical reading of the Bible would open doors for considering the impact of local religious beliefs and practices on theological understanding.4 Second, indigenous religions are an essential source of African theology. While departing from Mbiti’s view that indigenous religions served as a preparation for the Gospel, Kaunda argues that the Christian tradition has a lot to learn from African religions because of their salvifc dimensions. A sustained engagement with African religious thought is crucial because it will offer scholars the tools to develop a broad theological perspective. John Pobee called on theologians to draw theological resources from African music, mythology, proverbs, prayers, arts, and ritual performances to develop a relevant theology for Africa.5 In a similar vein of thought, Henry Okullu argued that African theologians ought to “go frst to the felds, to the village church, to Christian homes to listen to those spontaneously uttered prayers before people go to bed. We should go to the schools, to the frontiers where traditional religions meet with Christianity.”6 Therefore an interreligious dialogue that takes every religious tradition seriously is necessary to build an authentic theology in Africa. In his chapter, Odomaro Mubangizi explores the relationship between theology and philosophy in Africa. Mubangizi draws materials from Western philosophy, African world view, contemporary African philosophy, history of theology in Africa, and the Bible to make a compelling case for dialogue between philosophy and theology. He grounds his argument on methodological pluralism to build “a bridge between African philosophy and theology by integrating insights and approaches from the Western tradition, African traditional religions, social sciences, as well as from Hebrew Bible and New Testament.” Mubangizi articulates signifcant themes in African philosophy and theology through an analysis of the sources and methodologies, illustrating with charts the main themes and leading actors in modern African philosophical and theological scholarship. He uses a holistic approach to knowledge; draws from local knowledge systems, mythology, and rituals; and argues that there is a triadic cosmic system that connects God, humanity, and the cosmos as a basis for spirituality and philosophy in communion with all reality as a basis of liberation.7 Ubuntu has emerged as a signifcant philosophical concept, which encompasses all dimensions of life and individuality and a sense of belonging to a community that has its practices that shape well-being.8 Ubuntu conceptually allows us to address philosophical anthropology, social ethics, ecology, politics, economics, ecclesiology, and rituals of initiation. Mubangizi argues that an integrated epistemological system in Africa should embrace theology, philosophy, and the natural and social sciences (and we should add the human sciences).This will provide a methodological holism and promote comparative studies. He illustrates this idea with charts and maps out the themes as well as African theologians who have addressed those topics and promoted the imperative of liberation, inculturation, and social justice. Central to his analysis is the notion of inculturation, by which he means the grounding of philosophy and theology in African realities and symbolic systems. He contends this is a promising approach to develop a comparative dialogue between philosophy and theology and also present a robust philosophical and theological project. Methodological pluralism in philosophy and theology requires scholars to study a wide range of texts, artifacts, literature, performances, and music to develop a critical and rigorous approach that will build a conceptual framework for theology and philosophy in Africa and create new tools for a critical understanding of contested issues like time, ethics, and further studies of Ubuntu. 5

Elias Kifon Bongmba

Laurenti Magesa discusses the history, meaning, and implications of the theology of inculturation, contending that the invitation to accept Jesus was given to all nations, and that the disciples were charged with the mission to tell the story of Jesus in all the world.The question then was how would the disciples and later followers apply a mandate that would institute cultural pluralism as an expression of the church? One approach was to adapt the Gospel in each context. Megasa discusses evangelization and culture in light of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which linked evangelism to local culture.The Lausanne Covenant also declared that the Gospel does not privilege any culture as the superior culture. Contextualism is scriptural and refects God’s revelation to all cultures with the incarnation of Jesus being the paradigmatic example, and here, Magesa argues that the scholarly description of inculturation came from Jesuit Pedro Arrupe when he described inculturation as “the incarnation of the Christian message in a particular cultural context.” Sociologically, inculturation promotes human dignity because the Gospel message takes otherness seriously. But more importantly, inculturation is the process where the Gospel enlivens “human culture from within.”9 Inculturation has practical and theological implications. From a practical perspective, it is a dynamic concept that permits ecclesial communities to negotiate different ways of living as Christians in different locales, a practice demonstrated by the various contextual negotiations in the New Testament and the transforming power of the Gospel throughout history. In light of Nostra Aetate, inculturation is an invitation to people everywhere to fnd God in all things. It is an invitation to discover an ecumenical spirit.10 Magesa also tracks the theological trajectory of inculturation in Africa, arguing that the theology of inculturation has been a central aspect of church life. Inculturation offers Africans the conceptual resources that will enable African churches to tap into local spiritual resources to strengthen the faith community. Inculturation allows the African churches to explore doctrinal themes such as Christology, salvation, the ecclesial community with African ideas, and the teachings of the Gospel. The chapters in Part II of the Handbook discuss the selected theological movements in Africa. We have created this distinction because these chapters discuss movements that have focused on specifc areas within the African context.The section opens with James Amanze’s chapter on the relationship between theology and African religions. He calls for a dialogue between African traditional religions and Christian theology as a way of ensuring the survival of the church in Africa.A critical dialogue would revitalize contextual theology in Africa. In the frst part of the chapter, he offers broad descriptions of African traditional religions and argues that individual and communal faith practices are grounded in common beliefs in a Supreme God, who is credited with creation as, the sustainer of the created order, eternal, and the one who provides for all people. This belief in a Supreme Being is grounded in a cosmology that “embraces the physical and the metaphysical, the visible and the invisible, matter and spirit, sacred and profane.” The colonial and Christian encounter devastated African religions because Europeans worked to undermine African religions, but they have survived and continued to thrive. Missionary Placide Tempels made a great effort to understand African religions and published his famous work Bantu Philosophy to help missionaries understand the African religions and worldview.11 These publications promoted prevailing theological concerns that were described as inculturation indigenization, acculturation, adaptation, and Africanization. Such publications generated a critical dialogue, and the authors wanted to demonstrate the vitality of African religions and its importance to Christian theology, since theological categories employed by theologians were part of the vocabulary of African religious thought. A good example cited by some scholars is the idea of salvation, which in traditional religion refers to wholeness and not only the liberation of the soul.12 Practitioners of indigenous religions did not 6

Theology today in Africa

focus primarily on a departure into a new world somewhere in heaven, but had a concern with the here and now also, implying concern for “procreation, restoration, preservation, survival and the continuance of human, societal, and environmental life in this world.”13 The dialogue between African traditional religions and Christianity will enable Christianity to survive and thrive in Africa.14 Theology is not an antidote for the so-called cultural captivity, but could be used to address the needs of persons in Africa.15 Alice Yafeh-Deigh discusses feminist theology in Africa, noting that the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (Circle) set the tone for a revolutionary theological engagement and invited African women to engage in critical debates about women, gender, and feminism in the context of patriarchy and postcolonial hierarchies.Yafeh-Deigh highlights intellectual developments such as Ubuntu and Bosadi feminism in Africa, womanism in the African American context, and intersectional feminism, arguing that these theoretical interventions and contestations have shaped global feminist theology and called into question homogenization, marginalization of women, and varieties of patriarchy.Yafeh-Deigh maps out the history and development of African feminist theology to highlight its mission of countering oppression and articulating social justice that respects human dignity.Yafeh-Deigh also points to the parallels between the African feminist theologies and African American womanist theologies. Yafeh-Deigh discusses the history of the Circle and its founding under the leadership of Mercy Amba Oduyoye.The Circle has been led by several coordinators, who have championed issues that affect African women in the context of patriarchy and gender injustice in the postcolonial state. The Circle stood at the forefront of the fght against HIV/AIDS, by organizing academic conferences, educational and teaching materials to fght the pandemic, and contributory factors such as the feminization of poverty.The Circle promotes its core intellectual values through grassroots theology that challenges injustice and patriarchy and encourages the empowerment of women in all sectors. To accomplish these things, the Circle has promoted a critical, contextual, and decolonial reading of the Bible to counter all forms of oppression.16 Also, women in Africa and the African diaspora have prioritized the lived reality of women as a basis for critical theoretical analysis. This contextual theological thinking has promoted cultural hermeneutics to prioritize justice in all domains of life in the postcolony, especially in fghting the scourge of HIV/AIDS, which has disproportionately affected women and young girls.A critical interface of African feminism with global feminism must work together to redress the cultural imbalance that has held back African women.The success of this crucial global dialogue can only occur if women are treated as equals in all areas of human endeavor, especially in academic institutions.The Circle has created a sisterhood and promoted gender sensitivities that live in the lives of its members. James R. Cochrane discusses public theology, arguing that Christianity has always had something to do with the public and politics because, from the very beginning, Christian communities have never been about individuals but also about the community. He places public theology on two levels, the symbiotic and antagonistic.At the symbiotic level, public theology is implicit or derivative and coexists with or is derived from the dominant political culture. There is the teaching part of theology and theological discourse that contributes to a greater understanding of the prevailing political order. Cochrane argues that at the antagonistic level, theological discourse rejects and offers a creative alternative to the political ideas and also opposes the dominant political ethos.These are not frozen positions because there are changing dynamics in the two levels, where the symbiotic is refected in the different positions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and at the antagonistic level, in the changing discourse in Jesse Mugambi’s theology of reconstruction. According to Cochrane, the implicit focus of political theology is its impact on the faith community even as it explicitly addresses the broader community and is deriva7

Elias Kifon Bongmba

tive when it functions within a social contest, which also shapes its self-understanding. A good example of how the implicit and the derivative interact is Saint Augustine’s The City of God. Cochrane analyzes recent work on Pentecostal theology that also offers penetrating ideas on public/political theology in the work of Ruth Marshall and Nimi Wariboko.17 There is an implicit nature to these theologies worked out in African contexts, where theologians and politicians have taken different positions on the relationship between church and state. In the case of Zambia, Frederick Chiluba took action to favor Christians when he declared Zambia a Christian country. Cochrane maps out resistant political theologies on the continent, such as the inculturation theology of Charles Nyamiti, Jean-Marc Ela’s African theology of liberation, South African black theology, the critique of the nation-state in Emmanuel Katongole’s work, the theology of reconstruction by Jesse Mugambi, the feminist theology of the members of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, and Elias Kifon Bongmba’s political theology in Dialectics of Transformation in Africa. In her chapter, Galia Saba takes the reader through an aspect of public theology which centered on the role of faith leaders speaking out for social justice. We invited Saba to write this chapter to highlight the rhetorical force of sermons and public statements from faith leaders as part of public theology.Writing as a social scientist, she charts the teachings on church and state for the Kenyan churches. Members of the Kenyan clergy challenged the politics of President Daniel Arap Moi. Dr. David Gitari, of the Anglican Church, blazed the trail, and other leading members of the clergy criticized injustice and rejected the view that their role was mainly to support the state. Moi in public pronouncements had invited religious leaders to be active in public life, even though he led an oppressive regime which curtailed freedoms, cracked down on opponents, limited free speech, and suppressed opposition. Other religious leaders, including Bishop Muge and the Reverend Timothy Njoya, followed Bishop Gitari’s lead and criticized President Moi’s strong-arm tactics, called for a release of political detainees, and criticized human rights abuses in Kenya. Saba discusses how the clergy used sermons and their publications to oppose oppression and rallied Kenyans to fght for social justice, with Bishop Gitari of the Anglican Church leading the charge with his book A Christian View of Politics in Kenya. Bishop Henry Okullu published Target and Beyond as avenues to educate Kenyans on their social responsibility in the wake of a growing political crisis, and Bishops Okullu, Gitari, and Muge spoke out regularly against the abuses of the regime to congregations that were eager to hear their call for justice.The political gimmickry of Moi and his party drew clear responses from the religious leaders with the infuential National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) speaking out against the abuses of the region. Some evangelical churches left the NCCK.When Moi called on clergy to get out of politics, the clergy continued the “sermons debate” in which they preached expository sermons that explored the text offering a sharp contrast between the public ministry of Jesus and the political situation in Kenya.18 Saba’s discussion of the sermon debate provides an insightful reading of church-state relations in Kenya during a turbulent period. In his chapter, Jesse N.K. Mugambi has proposed a shift from reconstruction to reaffrmation in an era of hot peace, arguing that African faith communities must chart the way forward and redefne the future of Africa because faith in God also offers hope for a better future and compassion for all of the created order. Recently the leaders of the African Union have issued Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, which lays out ambitious goals that the African leaders want to achieve to transform Africa by outlining seven principles that affrm the identity and dignity of Africans. Mugambi reminds readers that religion, more than other components of culture, safeguards African culture. Mugambi’s journey through the theology of reconstruction has been an articulation of the critical role culture plays in the future of Africa. Mugambi argues that his 8

Theology today in Africa

programmatic approach to the theology of reconstruction was grounded on biblical hermeneutics, the science of interpretation, which allowed readers to focus on the message of the Bible. Mugambi returns to Nehemiah and claims that he recognized despondency in his people and encouraged them to carry on the task of rebuilding. This was a process of affrmation, and today that self-affrmation is needed to transform an Africa that has been demoralized by development left unachieved because of worldwide political corruption. Development studies demonstrate that other countries collude with Africans to empty Africa of its resources.19 Mugambi argues, “the theology of reaffrmation challenges us to emphasize the strengths and opportunities available rather than the weaknesses and the threats that obstruct the accomplishment of a particular project.” Some of the deadliest challenges African communities faced at the end of the 20th century were in health, a situation aggravated by the HIV and AIDS pandemic and the regular visitation of the Ebola virus disease, both of which killed mercilessly and made signifcant killer diseases like malaria look like child’s play. Jacquineau Azetsop, in his chapter, discusses theology and public health in Africa, examining some of the challenges that the continent still faces and how theological research and refection can contribute to address these medical challenges and enable Africans to experience abundant life. Azetsop begins from the premise that the task of theology is to promote a refection on human experience from the Christian tradition. This view of theology sets it up as a task that examines issues in context and offers perspectives to all members of the community on how to promote well-being and public health. Therefore, all assets (including) of Christian communities in Africa should be deployed to improve public health and well-being. Azetsop builds a case for theology and public health in three movements. First, health is limited to biological determinism, which would then call for clinical intervention alone. Second, Christian communities have religious assets that can and should be deployed to the service of public health. Third, he argues that the religious assets and practices are grounded in the Christian tradition, which takes health to be a central component of Christian understanding in society. Finally, Azetsop proposes the kind of networking and advocacy that could establish a broad approach to public health, especially in the wake of social injustice which excludes many from accessing resources that would contribute to well-being. Azetsop, therefore, sees health as part of the total social system that calls for a practice that includes, but exceeds, justifcation for taking health seriously on human rights and dignity, even though those two categories are crucial. Azetsop approaches health, then, from a social justice perspective and says that promoting it is part of everyday life. This invites a critical approach to the social determinants of health.20 The social reality which precludes others from accessing health resources should be seen as an invitation for Africans to engage in a theological refection that promotes a prophetic vision for society. Studies of HIV and AIDS from South Africa demonstrate that apartheid and social inequality created the conditions for the devastation of society by HIV and AIDS.21 A theology of health should rethink what it means to live under the reign of God and heal the sick.Theologians are invited to rethink the dominant narratives that have shaped marginalization in Africa and to focus deliberately on persons and communities to come up with new approaches to epidemiology that embraces the imago Dei, following the lead of Gaudium et Spes.22 Azetsop builds a case for an embedded theory that would foster an understanding of the challenges and uses studies of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to highlight structural violence in society created by dominant narratives that stressed individualism. Africans must appropriate the imago Dei in critical dialogue with practice that respects otherness and Ubuntu philosophy, which upholds personhood in light of other persons. Effective health care would examine 9

Elias Kifon Bongmba

multiple views of healing and develop a bricolage of healing in a context where faith healing is valued. Doing this would move away from the language of condemnation to affrmation. A theology of health is also a theology of society.Therefore, churches ought to be participants in the decision making process on issues of health. A theology of reconstruction emerged as a signifcant theological movement on the continent following major publications by Jesse N.K. Mugambi and Charles Villa Vicencio. In his chapter, Julius Gathogo discusses the theology of reconstruction as the ffth stage of theological research in Africa (liberation, inculturation, gender-liberation, market-theology, and reconciliation), born in the 1990s, when Mugambi developed and articulated the idea at the General Committee of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) in 1990. Gathogo begins his chapter with a survey of theological stages in Africa: patristic theology, colonial theological work, missionary driven theology, theology of adaptation, and reconstruction. The interdisciplinary theology of reconstruction rallied African researchers to think beyond the structure of the neo-colonial system and economy and ask critical questions about the rebuilding of Africa in the tradition of Ezra and Nehemiah. Reconstruction theology drew ideas from the Bible, science and technology, Christian institutions in Africa,African cultural and religious background, Pan-Africanism, and programmatic initiatives like the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Mugambi introduced the idea in his address to the General Committee of the AACC on March 30, 1990, on the topic “The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa.”23 He called on theologians to go beyond the Exodus motif and develop the reconstruction motif because the fgure of Nehemiah offered a better example of a leader at the time of the New World Order, as he exemplifed leadership, service, and rebuilding society. Reconstruction was adopted as the theme of the 8th General Assembly of the AACC at Yaoundé, Cameroon, during which the churches were invited to rise and build their societies.24 Reconstruction theology offered an inclusive approach with broad social, political, and economic implications that should apply today, even in the context of global migrations. Inclusivity called for all members of the political community to work together. Gathogo argues that such inclusivity in theology was challenging even at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah because the exiles who returned home met the citizens who did not go into exile. Therefore, Nehemiah invited all of Israel to unite and rebuild Jerusalem. Gathogo argues that today, a theology of reconstruction in Africa should involve all people, including those living with disabilities. Accordingly, reconstruction requires a cultural, anthropological, and philosophical analysis as part of its multi-disciplinary approach. He argues that reconstruction theology calls for critical reading of biblical texts to understand who the essential players of society at the time were, and to see if one can fnd parallels today of leaders who have exerted dictatorial powers and those that offer perspectives on reconstruction.Also, he argues that storytelling provides an entry into theology.25 Storytelling was central to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.Also, Gathogo discusses a quadrilateral theological imperative today that is framed by the environment, patriarchy, HIV and AIDS, and violence that are crucial to the reconstruction today in Africa. He argues that events like the Genocide of 1994 in Rwanda offer an example of the urgent need for a theology of reconstruction. In addition, such a theology of reconstruction should focus on and strengthen African families and a reckoning of what binds Africa together for Africans to develop a genuine appreciation of the other. Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa writes on sub-Saharan African perspectives on doing theology ecumenically in a decolonized context.26 Sakupapa traces the idea of ecumenism (oikouménē), which means variously, household, administrative units of the world, to the early Christian councils that met under the jurisdiction of the Pope. Modern understanding of ecumenism is refected in the Edinburgh Conference of 1910 and the modern conciliar movement best expressed 10

Theology today in Africa

in the World Council of Churches (WCC).27 Developments that concretized the WCC and Vatican II documents Unitatis Redintegratio and Lumen Gentium emphasized the oneness of the church. Sakupapa argues ecumenical initiatives promoted cooperation and comity among mission agencies and churches as well as the development and growth of the All Africa Conference of Churches. Ecumenism has included initiatives for theological education and social services, especially health in the wake of HIV and AIDS. African theology has seen great strides in ecumenical dialogue since the publication of the seminal text Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs.28 Theological Education by Extension promoted the quest on ecumenical theology in the 1970s. Pentecostalism has introduced new dimensions and challenges to ecumenism and ecumenical theology and expanded understandings of ecumenism beyond traditional mainline churches. These developments have promoted other emphasis in church life such as faith healing and fnances that require critical dialogue among faith communities in Africa. Ecumenical theology thus faces the challenge of rethinking and defning theology in this multi-faith and multiexperiential Christian experience in the African context. Sakupapa calls for self-conscious efforts to develop a contextual and constructive theology with ecumenical consciousness to refect the plurality within the Christian tradition. Ecumenical theology would go a long way by helping ecclesial communities listen to their people and other members of the communities where they have made their homes, as Elias Bongmba has argued, stating that African churches must “build intersubjective bonds by recovering the art and practice of listening.” Sakupapa argues that ecumenical theology is a “soteriological discourse,” which should issue in social transformation.29 In their chapter, Stan Chu Ilo and Idare Otu discuss theology and development in the context of the African social setting, where a theology of development is a “witnessing, and proclamation by Christians and churches in Africa to bring about a continuing realization of the mission of God in Africa’s evolving history.” After a brief review of development history in which African projects of change were constructed in relationship to helplessness and poverty, they argue that discourses of development introduced changes that would improve the human condition in Africa. Theologians have explored human and social development as part of a broad understanding of salvation and a desire to promote programs that would enable people to experience well-being.A theology of development needs to be seen in the light of God’s mission on earth. Theologies of development attempt to address challenges communities face by articulating the importance of faith communities paying attention to the causes of poverty at the local level to come up with grassroots solutions. It is, therefore, essential that theologians recognize the limitation of linear reading of history as developmental progress and also emphasize different ways in which Christian theology can promote the fullness of life in the African context. Such a project invites theological anthropology, which should stress the idea of abundant life and goodness of humanity. Recognizing the good of humanity requires a holistic vision of humanity that rejects “the totalizing designs and plans of globalization, modernization, and secularization.” Theological ideas of development should be grounded in history. Besides, development should be a process in which people become agents of their history as they seek to develop their capacities and create a cultural capital to build the social, cultural, and political institutions that strengthen them to manage the human condition.30 Theologies of development should cultivate new sites of hope, which will point to a path to the abundant life in response to the state of marginality that pervades Africa today.31 In his chapter, Peter Kanyandago discusses African theology after Vatican II, highlighting selected themes and initiatives that have been taken and missed opportunities in theological analysis. Kanyandago focuses on a few hallmarks, trends, and shifts that have raised questions about human identity and dignity. Kanyandago argues that Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent and the debate on African theology in Kinshasa were inaugural events in modern African theology. 11

Elias Kifon Bongmba

Vatican II and the canonization of the Uganda Martyrs were watershed theological events in Africa.32 Kanyandago argues that the Vatican document Ad gentes divinitus inaugurated inculturation and contextual theology. Following Vatican II, His Holiness Pope Paul VI visited Uganda in 1969, during which he called on Africans to adapt the Gospel and the church to African cultural realities. The African Council Project called for by Fabien Eboussi Boulaga was discussed, and despite endorsements from the Pope and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, the African Council Project did not materialize; instead the African Synod of Bishops became a signifcant player in theological discussions. Kanyandago argues that others think the project collapsed because of the linguistic divide between Anglophone and Francophone bishops.The failure of the project hindered proposed ideas on the use of African rites.The other post-Vatican II initiative was the Zairian Rite inspired by Cardinal Malula, which promoted the idea of celebrating the Catholic Eucharist in Congolese language and traditions—a view consistent with the discussions and doctrines of Vatican II. The proposed text of the Missel Romain pour les dioceses du Zaire: essai de compréhension was eventually watered down and promoted biblical ancestors as African ancestors. Despite these setbacks, Kanyandago argues that specifc themes have emerged in African theology. First, theological research has called attention to the signifcance of identity and dignity. Second, the Bujo-Ilunga theological project has discussed the contributions of the pioneers of African theology.33 Kanyandago argues that this signifcant project leaves some things to be desired. The discussion focuses on only 3 priests out of the 11 who contributed to Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent;Vincent Mulago, Hebga Nlend, and Alexis Kagame are written about, out of 28 theologians.34 Kanyandago also argues that the colonial linguistic divide has not helped very much in fnding a consensus. He discusses revealing attempts that have been made to restore a place for African ideas from offcial documents. African theology continues to examine the relationship between liberation and inculturation.35 Other important issues include the question of ecclesial ministries for Africa, especially the service and leadership of women. The chapters in Part III of the book discuss regional and emergent theological themes in Africa. Ezra Chitando and Nisbert T. Taringa argue that the theology of African Initiated Churches (AICs) developed with the growth of the churches, and their history offered insights into the theology of the communities.AICs emphasize the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, who inspires Christians to expand Christian witness and give new revelation to Christians.36 The Spirit empowers the leaders of the churches who serve as prophets and healers.37 The Holy Spirit has democratized ministry and calls both men and women to serve God, even though patriarchy persists and hinders the ministry of women in many of the churches. AICs introduced African spirituality and promoted African culture, even though they have been very critical of aspects of African culture.AICs have taken a different approach to evil and abandoned colonial missionary dismissive attitude toward beliefs like witchcraft.AICs believe in healing, and prophets in the churches practice a ministry of healing.38 AICs’ teachings also take life as it is lived on earth seriously, and the leaders of the churches work to enable members to experience the abundant life here on earth. AICs believe that there is a supernatural hand in things that happen in the world. They practice the ministry of healing to give members relief from their physical impediments. AICs take the Bible to be the Word of God, and they depend on it for teaching and order their lives by some of the promises in the Hebrew Bible. In their chapter on the theology of the Orthodox Church, Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis discuss theological aspects of one of the Ethiopian Orthodox Churches (EOCs). The Judaic character of the church has infuenced its theology and practice of leadership that is closely related to the teachings and traditions of the Hebrew Bible.The EOC has developed a 12

Theology today in Africa

theology of salvation that emphasizes the Ten Commandments, charity, fasting, and a theological vision that is different from the teachings of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine.39 Perhaps the most distinct theological development in the EOC has been its relationship to the monarchy, which reached its high point during the reign of Emperor Zara Yacob in the 15th century.The theological development of the church has been shaped by monasteries that have been centers of learning, sacred texts, and religious art. The monasteries promoted evangelization and were interrupted by the 1527–1543 war led by Ahmad Gragn, which caused a decline in the growth of the EOC.The war brought the Jesuits in Ethiopia and converted Emperor Susenyos (1607–1632) to Catholicism, an action that led to civil strife, the expulsion of the Jesuits from Ethiopia, and the abdication of the throne by Susenyos. Emperor Fasiledas led to an internalization of the teachings and practices of the church, and succeeding kings sealed off the country from any external infuence and promoted local teachings. The Jesuit interlude introduced a rigorous Christological debate because Catholicism stressed the two natures of Christ in contrast with the monophysite position of the EOC leading to two Christological schools, the wold qib (also known as Qibat unctionists or Hulet Lidet, two birth) and Yestegalij (Sost Lidet, three birth), and the debates had an impact on the unity of the church and nation and politically led to Zemene Mesafnt,“Era of the Princes,” from 1769 to 1855, when the power of the monarchy was at its lowest point.The solution would only come when Emperor Tewodros (1855–1868) introduced the Tewahedo doctrine that emphasized that Christ was the Son of God, but also God, and the Council of Boru Meda called by Emperor Yohannes IV endorsed this as the doctrine of the church. Tibebe and Giorgis argue that Emperor Menelik used military power to unite and expand the country, promoted missionary work, and constructed church buildings.40 Emperor Haile Selassie won the independence of the church but made the Emperor the head of the church—a constitutional provision that had a profound impact on the functions of the church.The church promoted education, and the Emperor supported the translation of the Amharic Bible in 1961 and encouraged missions, especially to the Caribbean.41 In the post-monarchial era, church and state were separated, and religious freedom was extended to all in 1991. The EOC draws its theology from the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus, espousing a non-Chalcedonian theology emphasizing the teachings of the Alexandrian Bishops. The church considers itself as one, hence the name Tewahedo. God is the creator and ruler of the world corrupted by the original sin. Jesus came to deliver the world from punishment, and he will return to give judgment on the earth. Sacraments are an integral part of church life and worship hymnology, and the architecture of the church refects the Hebrew tradition with worship space separated into the holy and the holy of holies. EOC theology promotes a robust monastic tradition and the monks provide moral critiques of society.Their belief system encourages ascetic practices, and their theology promotes celebrations of various aspects of church life and encourages devotion to the Virgin Mother Mary, who is honored with the observation of Lideta and Baata, in honor of her presentation in the Temple of Jerusalem. Medhane Alem honors the Holy Savior.The holidays of the EOC include the New Year celebration, Christmas, Easter, and two other feasts, Meskel (feast of the cross) and Timket (the feast of the epiphany to commemorate the baptism of Jesus). Evangelicals comprise a signifcant group in African Christianity. In addition to individual evangelical denominations, the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar has articulated its theology in seminaries, Bible colleges, and universities in Africa. In his chapter, Nkansah-Obrempong argues that African evangelicals today have their immediate roots in missionary work from the 17th century. Nkansah-Obrempong discusses themes of evangelical theology, arguing that it is committed to the centrality of Christ, missional, and trinitarian. 13

Elias Kifon Bongmba

The Pentecostal and charismatic groups have revitalized evangelical traditions with lively worship and their emphasis on the power of the Spirit to overcome demonic powers. He argues that evangelical teachings promote spiritual and economic transformation in their localities. Evangelicals are engaged in advocacy for political and religious freedom. Evangelicals express concerns on the notion of postmodernism, which some think denies the idea of an absolute truth, which for evangelicals is the teaching of the Bible. Nkansah-Obrempong correctly argues that evangelical theology must address the problem of sexuality in Africa, especially the debate on same-sex relations in Africa, and address poverty by preaching a Gospel that takes social justice seriously. I do not share the Evangelical perspective on same sex relations but think it invites a rigorous and respectful debate. One serious challenge for evangelicals in Africa today is managing the contextual approach to the Bible to promote diversity and take a clear position on social responsibility in the wake of growing poverty and health challenges. In his chapter, Ernst Conradie articulates hermeneutical refections on ecotheology with a focus on South Africa, and in doing so, highlights what, in my view, are critical aspects of the extensive literature on ecological theology in Africa. Conradie’s title is an invitation to diverse theological communities to think creatively about ecotheology and recognize the gravity of the situation. Africans face a crisis, and theological thinking ought to fnd ways of addressing the crisis now. Conradie argues that ecotheology today follows the Methodist Quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason in different ways.42 Theologians of ecotheology work from multiple sub-disciplines that include textual studies, historical studies, systematic theology, ethics, practical theology, and missiology to develop positions grounded in current research. In the South African context, there is still a divide, which pits earthkeeping ministries and theology with those who say that Christianity, as well as other religions, is already part of the problem to be investigated. Conradie argues that a deep divide exists within ecotheology. Some scholars interpret earthkeeping as a Christian witness, and others see Christianity itself as a contaminated community as other religions are on the question of environmentalism.43 Some faith-based organizations (FBOs) are signifcant partners in ecotheology.44 What is fascinating is that these theological discussions provide a contextual and critical approach to ecotheology as one of the major concerns of our times.45 Conradie invites theologians to promote environmental awareness, arguing that it should address issues related to conservation, sustainability, social justice, and the relationship of ecological concerns to national economic and political priorities, as well as raise critical questions about the Anthropocene and what is needed to redress human actions that destroy the environment.46 While there may not be a distinctiveness to African approaches, ecotheology could focus on deforestation, droughts, excessive mining, the use of fertilizers, and farming practices and address them in light of indigenous ecological knowledge and appropriate those in the context of a decolonial understanding of knowledge systems and ecofeminist approaches.47 The most vibrant form of ecotheology may well be the many ecofeminist contributions, especially emerging from the Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians.48 Conradie notes (laments) the South African domination in ecotheological production but makes the case that the urgency demands a continental approach. Conradie offers revealing ideas about what God might be doing in light of the ecological crisis, key among them the idea that God is counting on humanity to repent their destructive acts and do something about the environmental crises. In her chapter, on holistic soteriology and social engagement, Martina Prosén thinks about salvation, good, and evil, to revisit her background as the daughter of Swedish Pentecostal missionaries, raised in Rwanda, who still has strong memories of ethnic cleansing. Prosén probes what an abundant life means in a world of violence. Prosén opens with a discussion of Christian social engagement around the world as an integral part of the Swedish Pentecostal mission 14

Theology today in Africa

endeavor around the world to preach the faith and serve the less fortunate members of the society through holistic missiology. Prosén discusses dimensions of Pentecostal theology as interpreted by scholars and mission leaders. Salvation, seen as abundant life, was at the center of Swedish Pentecostals in Africa, where people understand salvation to include deliverance from evil spirits. Salvation similarly implies social responsibility as liberation theologians have articulated through their teachings, which has raised social consciousness around the world and has also questioned what it means to be human. African Pentecostals consider salvation as having implications for the here and now, as part of a holistic soteriology. Prosén illustrates this argument from Pentecostal songs. Prosén concludes that a holistic soteriology implies working for peace, justice, and sustainable living and promoting environmental justice. Africans tell stories, and this has not eluded theologians, notably Joseph Healey, who in his chapter discusses the evolution of African narrative theology. The themes of the story of the Bible are forgiveness, and this is refected in the prodigal son who repented and returned to the father and was welcomed with a big feast, no matter how skinny he was. Stories from North Cameroon also indicate that the family will always appreciate the one who returns home. Healey tells the story of two Kenyan communities in the Parish of Tegeti, whose members included persons from the Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities, who met together to reconcile following the crisis that disrupted both communities during the post-election violence of 2007. Healey argues that telling stories is a way of living, listening, and practicing theology. Stories help theologians understand society and the Church. Building on the work of the Second African Synod, which developed an Apostolic Exhortation on good governance, restorative justice, peace, and reconciliation in communities that have experienced violence, Healey stresses the importance of stories because they are a narrative theology. Healey has argued in his scholarship that Small Christian Communities are an example and model of the Christian community that will promote peace following the theme of the Second African Synod. To accomplish these, African theologians need to recover the gift of telling stories because they are an essential method of theological construction. Several African theologians have emphasized the importance of story in their work, including John Waliggo, Emmanuel Katangole, and Laurenti Magesa. Narrative theology is also a theology of inculturation and conversation that draws on the notion of palaver, local narratives, and proverbs. It is also symbolic theology which draws from artistic forms. In his chapter,Tinyiko Maluleke discusses postcolonial theology in Africa as he looks back and forward to what is to come. Maluleke highlights the deep roots of theology in Africa impacted by Negritude and the revolutionary writings of Frantz Fanon and modern African writers. Devotional literature provided a holistic depiction of the African world, capturing its material and spiritual essence. Maluleke argues that the African religious worldview was and remains central to rethinking and reclaiming African life. Maluleke laments that for some faith communities, African religions seem to be the enemy that must be eliminated for Christianity to grow. However, scholars like Kwame and Gillian Bediako have stressed the central role of indigenous religions. Postcolonial theology is essential because it is a resistance to projects of denigration and despoliation that predate the actual imperial order but continue in the aftermath of imperialism. Postcolonial theology reasserts and reclaims African religious heritage, and serves as indigenous theology and a theology of protest. We understand the indigenous elements which must be restored. Some engage in postcolonial thinking with reluctance because it is fraught with sad ambiguities inherent in the Christian tradition itself.Theological history in Africa makes postcolonial theology a theology of protest, not mainly against domination by Western powers, but 15

Elias Kifon Bongmba

as a protest which must probe, in the words of Jesse Mugambi, into why the most religious continent remains the most impoverished continent.With that in mind, postcolonial theology must also explore the idea of hope. It is the future-looking theology whose critical hermeneutical posture must explore all the sources of theology, advocate for social justice, embrace the global nature of God’s mission, and reclaim the role of African religions. Postcolonial theology should be grounded in the imago Dei. A postcolonial theology must address the gender contradictions that continue to hunt Africa. In his chapter on faith-based organizations in Africa, Quentin Wodon explores the theology of Father Jesseph Wresinski, who founded the organization All Together in Dignity (ATD). Wodon offers a critical analysis of their work on health in Africa and discusses their services to those who live on the margins in light of the commitment to a theology that demonstrates “a preferential option for the poor.”49 In the frst part of the chapter, Wodon argues that data indicates that while FBOs set out to serve the poor, they actually “serve better-off households proportionately more.”This is a revealing analysis of the data that calls for a critical examination of the work of FBOs. In asking how FBOs can serve the poor, he examines the work of Father Joseph Wresinski of the International Movement ATD Fourth World. He concludes by examining the role of faith and spirituality in reaching the poor. Wodon uses data analysis to study services provided in education in 16 African countries.Wodon argues that For healthcare, the beneft incidence estimate for FBOs in the poorest quintile is slightly higher than is the case in the public and private secular sectors, but differences in estimates between public facilities and FBOs tend to be small.The data suggest that in comparison to public providers, FBOs equally reach the poor. FBOs do all they can to reach the poor, especially in Uganda and Burkina Faso, based on the data he has examined.50 Wodon’s theological discussion focuses on Father Joseph Wresinski, a priest who founded ATD in 1957.The group now has consultative status 1 with the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations. The group’s modus operandi starts with building a rapport with the people to understand their circumstances, their aspirations, their cultural practices, and the family unit and how it can be strengthened. They engage locals in the discussions and the projects and motivate the community to focus on the poor. ATD, working together with Fourth World and Franciscans International, uses a handbook that specifes principles on working on poverty issues in ways that uphold the dignity of the poor and make the poor the primary actors.Wresinski and his followers argue that serving the poor begins with the recognition that the poor themselves are at the front of the fght against poverty. Their work is grounded in the Vatican II document Populorum Progressio that calls for economic and social development that promotes the good of everyone and helps people live holistically. In supporting the poor people, service providers also learn from the poor. Sexuality, especially same-sex relations, is today one of the most contested theological issues in Africa. Masiiwa Ragies Gunda addresses the theological tensions on this topic.The Victorian and colonial missionary enterprise was at odds with African understanding and celebration of sexuality.51 Gunda argues that sexuality should be seen as a broad subject which refers to different cultural understanding of the human body, biological sex, social determinants of sex, and what Sylvia Tamale has described as a wide array of complex elements, including sexual knowledge, beliefs value, attitudes and behaviors, as well as procreation, sexual orientation, and personal/interpersonal 16

Theology today in Africa

sexual relations … pleasure, the human body, dress, self-esteem, gender identity, power, and violence. It is an all-encompassing phenomenon that involves the human psyche, emotions, physical sensations, communication, creativity, and ethics.52 Gunda argues that Christian leaders issued directives on sexuality and marriage from the 2nd century, emphasizing sexuality as part of the total experience of being human but also focused on what was appropriate: the idea that a sexual relationship involved only male-to-female connection. Early exhortations of sexuality focused on women as if they were the problem. Missionaries sought to change sexual and marriage culture in Africa and that hurt expressive cultures in the arts because missionaries thought such expressions were markers of lax moral attitudes on sexuality. Gunda demonstrates that Christianity sent sexuality into the closet with chastity rules and created a climate of suspicion and guilt. Women bore the brunt of scrutiny and were sometimes portrayed unfairly as victims of the domination of hypersexual males.53 Victorian colonial prescriptions on sexuality would later shape the growing anti-same-sex rhetoric and legislation in Africa. Gunda locates a theology of sexuality in the critical texts on creation.54 Male and female were created in the image of God, and therefore, sexuality is part of the overall plan of what it means to bear the image of God.African theology ought to reclaim sexuality, celebrate the body, and rethink church teachings that reject alternative views of human sexuality. Gunda recommends that theologians rethink the four sources of sexual authority that prevail in the African church today: missionary teaching, traditional African perspectives, colonial legal prescriptions, and the present global view, which promotes romantic ideals of sexuality. Such an investigation would be useful if it also examines the culture of suspicion, stigma, and violence which has grown around same-sex relations and probes whether such actions refect the love of God. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-, or Intersex (LGBTI) people are Christians who are loved by God, and the church has a responsibility to be accepting and loving. In Part IV of the book, the chapters address selected biblical and doctrinal categories. In Chapter 26,“Bible and Theology in Africa,” Lovemore Togarasei discusses the place of the Bible in African theology. Biblical exegesis has advanced from pre-modern, modern, and postmodern interpretive strategies that have opened new contextual questions about the biblical text. Also, feminist and postcolonial readings have developed insights about the Bible as a source for theological development and analysis. Togaresei argues that the hermeneutics of trust assumes that the Bible offers a message that demonstrates a preferential treatment of the oppressed while a hermeneutic of suspicion recognizes ambiguities in the biblical texts that call for critical analysis to reject domination.55 Ecclesial traditions in Africa have demonstrated a variety of approaches to the biblical text, and in this chapter,Togaresei focuses on the African Initiated Churches (AICs) and Pentecostal and evangelical churches. These churches rely solely on the Bible for their theology and see biblical characters and leaders as role models and paradigms for the church today. Some churches encourage the observance ritual of practices in the Hebrew Bible regarding food and drink. Some of the churches see the Bible as a magical text that can be invoked to solve almost all problems. The modern Pentecostal churches, also called “fre churches,” take the Bible as the sole authority in all areas of life, teaching, and ministry, enshrining a practice Paul Gifford has described as performance and declaration.56 Togaresei argues that theological thinking and development is hindered if the Bible is the only source for theological refection. This belief in the African context has created what he calls “‘gospreneurs’—men and women who manipulate the gospel for self-aggrandizement and 17

Elias Kifon Bongmba

enrichment.” These approaches compromise theological discourse because even politicians misquote the Bible and excoriate pastors, exhorting them to stick to the Bible and not engage in a prophetic reading of the text to address social injustice. Despite these manipulations,Togaresei argues that the Bible is a valuable source, in addition to other sources such as the traditions of the faith community. He call on evangelicals should rethink their relationship to the state, given the fact that many evangelical churches have used the Bible to support politicians uncritically. Since this is such a big problem,Togaresei calls for a rethinking of theological education in Africa that would involve fnding ways to navigate a balance between spirituality and theological scholarship. In this regard, evangelical leaning churches need to develop a theology that addresses the complexity and realities of globalization that will enable them to address issues raised by “religious pluralism, liberal secularism, prosperity gospel … and Postmodernity” through a theological hermeneutic developed on the continent. Christology has been a signifcant subject of study and analysis in Africa, with so much historical and symbolic emphasis on Jesus of Africa, since in his infancy, Jesus’ parents sought refuge in Egypt. Theologians in Africa have developed Christology from an African perspective with notable publications on Jesus.57 In his chapter on Christology, Martin Munyao starts by highlighting what is often missed by many, the early obscurity of Jesus Christ, but moves quickly to claim that various Christologies have emerged, seeking to understand Jesus in context. Munyao outlines different Christologies, arguing that Roman Catholics have championed the Nicene tradition, yet promoted inculturation. Evangelicals in Africa have argued for a personal relationship with Jesus as a central determinative theological category that shapes one’s future because evangelicals see Christ as the only door to salvation. Munyao argues that liberal Christianity presents Christ as a mediator between God and humankind because the ministry of Jesus touches all persons regardless of socio-economic status, race, and sexual orientation. Liberal and progressive theologians also argue that salvation should have an impact on public institutions and public life. In the rest of the chapter, Munyao discusses different interpretations of Jesus. The mythological approaches to Christology have included theology from below, which has emphasized historical Christological formulations and connected Christ to the prehistoric past of Africa. This approach stresses the view that Christ is victorious over all forces. Other approaches have yielded several descriptive titles of Christ in Africa as healer, liberator, chief, mediator, master of initiation, ancestor, and elder brother. Munyao devotes the rest of the chapter to a discussion of the Christologies of leading African theologians. David Ngong discusses theological perspectives on salvation in Africa, arguing that soteriology is central to African Christian theology. He highlights Gerrit Brand’s taxonomy of salvation, which studies salvation from an anthropological, social, cultural, ontological, and vitalistic perspective.58 While this taxonomy has given a structure to and addressed the content of salvation, Ngong discusses salvation as health.59 He analyses two broad rubrics: the spiritual and traditional and the modern and empirical views of salvation.The spiritual and traditional salvation perspectives are grounded in early Christian traditions in Africa and African indigenous religions.The modern and empirical traditions examine salvation in light of colonialism, slavery, the postcolonial nation-state, and global ecological challenges. Ngong explicates these two dimensions of salvation from historical-critical insightful perspectives from the work of several theologians from the early church and contemporary theologians, including Clement and Origen, both of Alexandria; the Desert Fathers; Perpetua and Felicita; Saint Anthony; Saint Athanasius; Arius; Cyril; Saint Augustine; and the Ugandan martyrs, to name only a few.60 The spiritual view of salvation lives today in ecclesial traditions such as “Coptic Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and some African Evangelicals,” and many African Initiated Churches. 18

Theology today in Africa

The modern views of salvation address the challenges of modernity, the imperial project, and the excessive destruction of global resources, which has created untold poverty around the world.The Christian tradition has offered ideas about a better life, and this makes salvation not merely a spiritual change, but a transformation of people and society. Modern views of salvation have been championed by black theology and power in South Africa, which promoted reconciliation in the work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In Cameroon, Jean-Marc Ela, and Engelbert Mveng have denounced political practices that have promoted the dehumanization of Africans, establishing a critical theological tradition which we see in many African countries, as Galia Saba’s chapter discusses. Such views of salvation have addressed challenges such as HIV/ AIDS, same-sex relations, and political contestations that continue to create frictions and secessionist movements in Africa. Ngong argues that an eschatological vision that Christians will spend eternity with God should not be used as a pretext to ignore the implications of salvation for the here and now. A signifcant part of Christian theology was shaped in North Africa. In her chapter, MaryAnne Plaatjies-Van Huffel discusses patristic theology in Africa by examining the contributions of some theologians from that era. Plaatjies-Van Huffel introduces the readers to the ecclesiology of 12 leaders, most of whom occupied signifcant ecclesiastical seas in the region. Some of them occupied the infuential Bishop’s chair at Rome and are known today as the African Popes. These leaders saw the Christian church as a spiritual community with a mission to the society that they were a part of and lived as pilgrims. Pope Victor addressed theological issues regarding Easter and introduced Latin as the language for the Catholic Mass. Melchaides strengthened the place of the church within the empire and was the frst Bishop of Rome to have an offcial residence at the Lateran Palace. He sought and received permission to build the Lateran Basilica. He opposed the Donatist practice of rebaptizing Catholics in Africa. Pope Gelasius strengthened the primacy of Rome and laid the groundwork for the doctrine of papal supremacy. Pope Gelasius I was the third Catholic Pope born in Africa. He was appointed in AD 492 as Pope. He affrmed the primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the entire Church, both east and west, throughout his tenure. Gelasius exiled the Manicheans from Rome and burned their books before the doors of the Basilica of the Holy Mary. His presentation of doctrine set the model for later popes when they asserted claims of papal supremacy. His boldest teaching was the idea that both the secular and religious powers derive from God, even as he stressed the separation of church and state—an idea that remains an essential part of international law today in many countries. Plaatjies-Van Huffel discusses the Donatist controversy, which developed from the persecution of Emperor Diocletian and dominated church life in North Africa for many years. This controversy brought to the table theological contestations on leadership, rebaptism, local control, and the extent of state infuence on doctrinal and church matters.The Donatists stressed high moral standards and rebaptized Catholics who had fallen during the persecution. In the end, the state stepped in, and the Donatists were suppressed in North Africa. Saint Augustine remains one of the most colorful theologians of the early church, whose writings continue to shape the Church today and whose teachings shaped the Christian understanding of heresy, baptism, the church, and the church’s place in the world. The diverse doctrinal positions of ecclesiology in the early church continue to shape new perspectives on theology today, even as African theologians seek to ground theology in the African context. In her chapter on biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood, Evelyn Namkula Mayanja discusses what she describes as natural and divine personhood, as a quest rooted in the grounding of the faith in the local culture, and calls for a correlation of ideas from African thought, Christian theology, and the evangelizing work of the church to rethink personhood in a complex political and economic context where social injustice reigns. Mayanja then traces the 19

Elias Kifon Bongmba

notion of personhood in classical philosophy and literature as well as Hebrew traditions. Persona referred to a masked fgure that performed and the idea would develop into the “bearer (man) of social or civic role who possesses or cultivates the virtues of prudencia (prudence or wisdom) Justitia (justice), temperantia (temperance) and fortitude (courage).”61 Aristotle employed the term prosópon to refer to the face while the Epicurean philosophers considered a person as a “holistic and naturalistic” entity, something we have come to associate with personhood.62 Plato thought that Socrates held the view that personhood consisted of the psuche (soul, mind) that is active and brings together the intelligible and the physical.When a person dies, the soul separates from the physical body and is purifed. Getting ready for the separation of the soul from the body, one had to exert control over fears, illusions, and pleasure-seeking, and other desires.Thus, Socrates distinguished between psuche and the body. Mayanja argues that these views infuenced early church views and teachings on personhood. Mayanja takes the readers through an analysis of the biblical tradition and argues that the notion of the imago Dei is central to understanding personhood and traces different versions of understanding the person and the human in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Biblical images of a person also include the physical aspect of personhood, as a person is endowed with a soul, a spirit, and also a relational being.63 Rationality connects humanity to God and other persons, and these are relationships of responsibility.The notion of personhood is a divine-human relationship, but one that is rescued from a fallen condition by Jesus and thus restores harmony between the body and soul. Mayanja develops this thought in the history of doctrine, highlighting the theology of Saint Augustin and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and notes that Pope Benedict XVI distinguishes humanity from other creatures because human beings think and pray and these are activities that recognize a creator. But more importantly, personhood is also defned by the Vatican II document on The Church in the Modern World, which expressed: “Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions … where men and women are treated as mere tools for proft, rather than as free and responsible persons … are infamies indeed.” Mayanja further discusses aspects of personhood from the Catholic tradition, which includes a position that is at the heart of some of the debates of today: that personhood begins at conception. Mayanja argues that what is missing is the discussion of the limitation of personhood to men at the expense of women, and the church has not done better because the “encyclicals and pastoral letters about women’s dignity and role in the salvation history abound, without concrete actions.” Likewise, the Africanization of theology has not fared better on the notion of personhood because Africans remain decentered from the discourse.64 This situation holds thanks to John Mary Waligo’s idea that Africans have done what one should not do, build their future on the values of other people.65 Mayanja then argues that a reconstruction of personhood in African theology should draw from African concepts such as Ubuntu or Omuntu which provide ideas on which to construct a theological notion of personhood.66 Other concepts explored by philosophers include obuzima, amagara, in Kinyarwanda, and okra, okrateasefo, sunsum, and nipadua, as well as Umuntu and Ubuntu.67 Taking the Akan people’s case, Kwame Gyekye notes that a human person is comprised of three elements: okra (the essence of the person where okrateasefo refers to the living soul, the spark of the Supreme Being, Onyame), sunsum (what gives one personality or character), and nipadua (body).68 Mayanja argues that Ubuntu ontology is central to understanding humanity and social relations, and in light of the inculturation of theology, it should become part of the message of the Gospel. Mayanja warns that Ubuntu is not a fait accompli, but something that individuals work on and refne, because it is not only the physical part of a person but includes one’s social relations that must be developed. 20

Theology today in Africa

Mayanja warns that communal bonds, when exaggerated into reliable ethnic entities, could become disruptive of the very notion of personhood and humanity, as we have seen with the Rwandan Genocide. She argues,“What happened in Rwanda continues to happen in Southern Sudan, Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Mali, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and many other African nations.” Mayanja relates personhood to Christian eschatology, arguing that African thought holds that persons are given a destiny toward which they move because, in Akan society, the soul carries a destiny.69 Mayanja then tracks the quest for an African theology of personhood, questioning what has changed, since the end of colonialism did not improve the conditions of Africans in a signifcant way because Africans still face “challenges that disfgure the human person” in different areas of life, including political leadership and the lack of resources to meet the food and medical needs of the continent. Women face perennial marginalization, and globalization of the economy has turned the Mediterranean Sea into a burial ground for many Africans feeing destitution. Grounding her thoughts on Pope John Paul II in the Centesimus Annus, Mayanja briefy outlines some practical things necessary to reconsider personhood from a theological perspective. Worship and festivals have been central to ecclesial life and theology in Africa. Elochukwu E. Uzukwu discusses liturgical theology in Africa; in light of an array of ideas key to worship and festivals are the performance and the beliefs of the performing community that expresses body theology and rituals which according to Monica Wilson “reveal values at the deepest level.” Uzukwu’s account of liturgical theology emphasizes the precedence of the rite.70 Uzukwu’s discussion of liturgical studies and theology begins with the role texts played in worship in North Africa, followed by a discussion of the idea of memorial in the celebration of the liturgy and ends with the idea of witness of life and an epiphany of the church which displays the memory of the church and of Jesus, and the other saints who continue to nurture existence in the world. Uzukwu argues that early worship was linked to a text (doctrine) and the idea was to maintain doctrinal unity in the liturgy, although there is clear evidence that later, a more liberal approach prevailed, even if liturgies were still scripted. In Ethiopia, the liturgy demonstrated elements of creativity; hence there was more freedom than what prevailed in the North African Church, and this gives us insights into the freedom that has infuenced liturgical theology in Africa. Uzukwu cautions that one cannot draw a sharp distinction between the rule of prayer and the rule of faith as both are related. Contemporary liturgical actions today are a memorial and ancestral celebration that follow the Hebrew tradition in celebrating the God of ancestors, and in the case of Christians, Christ as an ancestor.There is broader mimesis in African liturgies that brings together African ancestral memorial and Jewish-Christian memorial which can be seen in the liturgical celebration of an African Initiated Church and post-Vatican II innovations in Africa. Uzukwu discusses the ordination of Samuel Oschoffa, the founder of the Celestial Church of Christ in Nigeria, to give an example of local liturgical theology. Drawing from the liturgical text written for that ordination, one sees elements of liturgical theology in practice as the service demonstrates a refection and proposals to live theology in all aspects of church life. Uzukwu also argues that ancestral memorials in Eastern Africa are mimesis of the performance of the rule of faith and as such are suggestive of theological refection. In doing this Uzukwu departs from Saint Augustine’s criticism of “cult of ancestors,” because the early Christian communities borrowed rites from the locality and transformed them into a meaningful expression of Christian teaching and practice, even in practices like funerals.71 The Eucharistic celebrations of Eastern Africa and the Bantu Kongo communities followed Christian traditions by giving doctrinal expressions in ecclesial rituals and liturgy. In the Congo context, François Kabasele Lumbala became a leading voice in liturgical theology.72 Uzukwu discusses this expres21

Elias Kifon Bongmba

sion of liturgical theology in the Eucharistic prayers developed by the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA). He also argues that martyrdom in the Christian tradition has nurtured liturgy, and in the case of the Ugandan Martyrs, Uzukwu argues that martyrdom, therefore, in several African contexts has become not only the giving up of one’s body but also worship and the celebration of theology. In his chapter, Elias Kifon Bongmba initiates a discussion of eschatology in Africa, arguing that the ecclesial community should move away from the theological prediction to transformative social practice. Bongmba begins with a brief recollection of eschatological anticipation in Christian churches in the Wimbum area of Cameroon but devotes the frst section of the chapter to John Mbiti’s groundbreaking New Testament Eschatology in an African Background.73 Mbiti argued that Christianity is “intensely eschatological,” but mission Christianity promoted an otherworldly eschatological vision and neglected the sacramental life of the church and local religious beliefs.The critical reception of the book focused mostly on Mbiti’s account of time among the Akamba at the expense of the rich theological analysis of eschatology and church life. In the rest of the chapter, Bongmba draws from Fabien Eboussi Boulaga to argue that eschatology is not merely about the anticipation of an apocalypse and future exit, but an invitation for transformative practice. He builds this argument on the eschatological discourse of Jesus in the Gospels, where Jesus told his disciples that one of the main issues of the judgment would be what people have done to help others.This, Bongmba argues, is a call for a transformative practice and an invitation to engage in ecological transformation as part of an eschatological vision.

Notes 1 V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). 2 Charles Nyamiti, 2005, Studies in African Christin Theology:Vol. 1 Jesus Christ, the Ancestor of Humankind: Methodological and Trinitarian Foundations (Nairobi: Catholic University of East Africa, 2005) John S. Mbiti, 1979, 90. 3 Tinyiko Maluleke, 2005, 482 4 Justin Upong, 2002; David Adamo, 2015. 5 John Pobee, 1987, 26. 6 See, Henry Okullu, 1974, 54 7 Magesa, Op. cit., 174. 8 Ibid., 175. 9 Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll: Orbis books, 1988), 12. 10 Vatican II, Nostra Aetate, no. 2. 11 Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy,Translation into English from La Philosophie Bantoue, the French Version (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959). 12 Adelakun,“A Theoretical Refection…,” 28. 13 Henry J. Mugabe,“Salvation from an African perspective,” Indian Journal of Theology 36.1 (1994): 32. 14 See James N. Amanze, A History of the Ecumenical Movement in Africa (Gaborone: Pula Press, 1998), 197 where this has been discussed in detail. 15 Motlhabi,“African Theology…,” 127. 16 Musa Dube, 2006, 2012. 17 Nimi Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2014), xiii. 18 David M. Gitari, 1986.“The Church’s Witness to the Living God in Seeking Just Political, Social, and Economic Structures in Contemporary Africa.” In Gitari and Benson 1986, 119–40 and G. P. Benson, eds. 1986.Witnessing to the Living God in Contemporary Africa. Findings & Papers of the Inaugural Meeting of the Africa Theological Fraternity held at Kabare, Kenya, 23–9 July 1985 (Kabare, Kenya, Africa Theological Fraternity, 1986). 19 George Moody-Stuart, Grand Corruption: How Business Bribes Damage Developing Countries (London: Worldview Publications, 1997).

22

Theology today in Africa 20 Michael Marmot and Richard Wilkinson, Social Determinants of Health (Oxford: University Press, 1999). 21 Fassin Didier, When Bodies Remember. Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa (Berkley, University of California Press, 2007). Fassin Didier,“The Embodiment of Inequality:AIDS as a Social Condition and the Historical Experience in South Africa,” Science and Society 4 (2003): 54–59. 22 Lawrence Wallack and Regina Lawrence,“Talking about Public Health: Developing America’s ‘Second Language,” American Journal of Public Health 95, no. 4 (April 2005): 567–57, https://www.ncbi.nlm .nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449221/. See also Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 1965, n.26, .http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist _councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html 23 Jesse Mugambi,“The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa,” in J. B. Chipenda, A. Karamaga, J. N. K. Mugambi, and C. K. Omari (eds.), The Church of Africa: Towards a Theology of Reconstruction (Nairobi:A.A.C.C., 1991), 29–50. 24 Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2003), 210. 25 R. Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 84ff. 26 Noble, Ivana, Tracking God: An Ecumenical Fundamental Theology (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010), p. ix. 27 Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition: A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1991), 84. 28 Kwesi Dickson and Paul Ellingworth, eds., Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs 29 Mugambi, Christian Theology & Social Reconstruction, 104. 30 Emmanuel Katongole, The Sacrifce of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011). 31 Stan Chu Ilo, “Cross Currents in African Christianity: Lessons for Intercultural Hermeneutics of Friendship and Participation,” in Vladimir Latinovic (ed.), Pathways for Interreligious Dialogue in the Twenty-frst Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 194. 32 Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II:The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1975). 33 Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya, eds., African Theology: The Contribution of the Pioneers, vol. 1 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2003); Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya, eds., African Theologians: Contributions of Pioneers, vol. 2 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2006); Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya, eds., Théologie africaine au XXe: Quelques fgures (African Theology in the 21st Century: Some Figures), vol. 3 (Fribourg:Academic Press Fribourg, 2013). 34 A recent similar initiative can be found in Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, ed., The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2016).The book also has some contributions from non-Catholics. 35 Benedict Ssettuuma Jr., Inculturation:Towards an Integral Approach for Ownership, Permanence and Relevance of Christianity for a People (Kampala:Angel Agencies, 2010), 51–65. 36 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Get Up … Take the Child … and Escape to Egypt’: Transforming Christianity into a Non-Western Religion in Africa,” International Review of Mission 100, no. 2 (2011): 347–48. 37 Allan Anderson,“African Initiated Churches of the Spirit and Pneumatology,” World and World 23, no. 2, (2003): 180–81. 38 G.C. Oosthuizen, 168. 39 Isaac, 168 40 For further details, see Tibebe Eshete, The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia (Waco: Baylor University, 2009), 30–34 41 Christine Chaillot, The Ethiopian Ortodox Tewahedo Church (Paris: inter-Orthodox Dialogue, 2002), 54–55 42 There is a wealth of literature here. See, for example, Anthony Balcomb, Journey into the African Sun: Soundings in Search of Another Way of Being in the World (Pretoria: Unisa, 2014), also Ernst M. Conradie, “Views on Worldviews: An Overview of the Use of the Term Worldview in Selected Theological Discourses,” Scriptura 113 (2014): 1–12. 43 For a discussion of such debates, see also the volume by Clive W.Ayre and Ernst M. Conradie (eds.), The Church in God’s Household: Protestant Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ecology (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2016). 44 Compare their respective homepages at http://www.arocha.org/en/ and https://safcei.org.

23

Elias Kifon Bongmba 45 See again Conradie,“Contemporary Challenges to Christian Ecotheology.” 46 See Ernst M. Conradie, “To Cover the Many Sins of Galamsey Mining,” Missionalia 46, no. 1 (2018): 109–30. See also Kuzipa Nalwamba, “Mineral Resources and Multinational Corporations and Its Impact on African People,” in Vuyani Vellem, Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth and Philip Vinod Peacock (eds), Bible and Theology from the Underside of Empire (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2016), 175–84. 47 See Emanuel Asante,“Ecology: Untapped Resource of Pan-vitalism in Africa,” African Ecclesial Review 27 (1985): 289–93; Marthinus L. Daneel, African Earthkeepers Volume 2: Environmental Mission and Liberation in Christian Perspective (Pretoria: Unisa, 1999); Samson K. Gitau, The Environmental Crisis: A Challenge for African Christians (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2000); Gabriel Setiloane, “Towards a Biocentric Theology and Ethic – via Africa,” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 9, no.1 (1995): 53–66; Harvey Sindima,“Community of Life,” The Ecumenical Review 41, no.4 (1989): 537–51; Eugene Wangiri, “Urumwe Spirituality and the Environment,” in Mary N. Getui and Emmanuel A. Obeng (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 1999), 71–89; Bryan MacGarry (ed.), Waste or Want? Environment and poverty Seminar Papers (Harare: Silveira House, 1995), also Jesse N.K. Mugambi and Mika Vähäkangas (eds.), Christian Theology and Environmental Responsibility (Nairobi: Acton, 2001) and the so-called Machakos statement entitled “The Earth belongs to God,” Bulletin for Contextual Theology in Africa 8, no. 2&3 (2002): 112–13. 48 David G. Hallman (ed.), Ecotheology.Voices from South and North (Geneva:World Council of Churches, 1994), Rosemary Radford Ruether (ed.), Women Healing Earth:Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism and Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996); Musimbi Kanyoro and Nyambura J. Njoroge (eds.), Groaning in Faith:African Women in the Household of God (Nairobi:Acton, 1996); and Mary N. Getui and Emmanuel Obeng (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 1999); Mary N. Getui and Matthew Theuri (eds.), Quests for Abundant Life in Africa (Nairobi: Acton, 2002); Isabel Phiri and Sarojini Nadar, On Being Church: African Women’s Voices and Visions (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2005). 49 See F. Dimmock, J. Olivier, and Q. Wodon, “Network Development for Non-state Health Providers: African Christian Health Associations,” Development in Practice 27, no. 5, 580–98. 50 R. Reinikka and J. Svensson,“Working for God? Evidence from a Change in the Financing of Not-forproft Healthcare Providers in Uganda,” Journal of the European Economic Association 8 (2010):1159–78; R. Gemignani, C. Tsimpo, and Q. Wodon, “Making Quality Care Affordable for the Poor: Faithinspired Health Facilities in Burkina Faso,” Review of Faith & International Affairs 12, no. 1 (2014): 30–44. 51 Richard Elphick 2012, 77. 52 Sylvia Tamale, 2004, 2. 53 See Meghan Vaughn, 1991, 133; Mark Epprecht, 2009, 1261. 54 M. Gunda, 2011, 93. 55 West’s analysis of the use of the Bible in African theology focuses on scholarly works while this article goes down to the use of the Bible to formulate theology at grassroots level. 56 Paul Gifford, “Trajectories in African Christianity,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 8, no. 4 (2008): 275–89. 57 A partial list includes Albert Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity (Maryknol: Orbis Books, 2001), Albert Nolan, Jesus Today: Spirituality of Radical Freedom (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2006); Diane Stinton, Jesus of Africa: Voices of Contemporary African Chistology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004); Charles Nyamiti, Studies in African Christin theology:Vol. 1; Charles Nyamiti, Studies in African Christian Theology: Volume 2, Jesus Christ, the Ancestor of Humankind: An Essay on African Christology (Nairobi: Catholic University of East Africa, 2006); Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike, “Christology and an African Woman’s Experience,” in Jesus in African Christianity: Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology (Nairobi: Initiatives Publishers, 1998), 133; Robert Schreiter, ed. Faces of Jesus in Africa (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991); Jesse N. K. Mugambi, Jesus in African Christianity: Experimentation and Diversity in African Christian Theology (Nairobi: Initiatives Publishers, 1989);Takatso Mofkeng, The Crucifed Among the Crossbearears:Towards a Black Christology (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1983); Kuma Afua, Jesus of the Deep Forest (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1980); Kwame Bediako, Jesus in Africa:The Christian Gospel in African History and Experience (Yaoundé: Editions Clé, 2000); John Chiubem Nwaogaidu, Jesus Christ- Truly God and Truly Man:Toward a Systematic and Dialogue Between Christology in Africa and Pope Benedict XVI’s Christological Conception (Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2014) Joseph Quayesi-Amakye, Christology and Evil in Ghana:Towards a Pentecostal Public Theology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013) 58 Gerrit Brand,“Salvation in African Christian Theology:A Typology of Existing Approaches,” Exchange 28, no. 3 (July 1999): 196. For a longer version of his engagement of the doctrine of salvation in African

24

Theology today in Africa

59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73

and Western theology from the perspective of philosophical theology, see Gerrit Brand, Speaking of a Fabulous Ghost: In Search of Theological Criteria,With Special Reference to the Debate on Salvation in African Christian Theology, Contributions to Philosophical Theology (Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2002). David F. Ford, Theology:A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 103. See the brief narrative of the events by Bob French, “The Uganda Martyrs: Their Countercultural Witness Still Speaks Today,” The Word Among Us (August 2015), available at: https://wau.org/archives/ article/the_uganda_martyrs/. For more on the Uganda Martyrs, see John F. Faupel, African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa). Marcus Tullius Cicero and Patrick Gerard Walsh, On Obligations (Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Marcus Cicero, and Michael Winterbottom, De offciis (Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis). (Oxonii; New York: E Typographeo Clarendoniano; Oxford University Press, 1994.) Rolnick. C. Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, 3 vols. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997). Molef Kete Asante, “The Philosophy of Afrocentricity,” in Afolayan Adeshina and Toyin Falola (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy (New York: Palgrae Macmillan, 2017), 231. Laurenti Magesa, African Religion:The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), xi. Tempels, Bantu Philosophy, 64. See; Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Refections on the African Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 85; Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 31. Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity, 85 Ibid. This informs of my earlier study, Uzukwu,Worship as body language: introduction to Christian worship: an African orientation. See Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 26–27. Robin N. Jensen, “Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity,” in Laurie Brink and Deborah A. Green (eds.), Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context: Studies of Roman, Jewish, and Christian Burials (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008),133–4, 140–43. See also Elochukwu Uzukwu, “Endless Worlds, Creative Memories: Indigenous (West) African Eschatologies Exploding the Future of Christianities,” in Christophe Chalamet, Andreas Dettwiler, Mariel Mazzocco, and Ghislain Waterlot (eds.), Game Over? : Reconsidering Eschatology.Theologische Bibliothek töPelmann (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2017). Thoughts inspired by Adolphe Gesché,“Le Christianisme comme athéisme suspensif - Réfexions sur le ‘Etsi Deus non daretur’,” Revue Théologique de Louvain 33(2002). John S. Mbiti, “Christian Eschatology in Relation to Evangelization of Tribal Africa.” PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1963.

25

2 PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IN AFRICA Odomaro Mubangizi

Introduction What does it mean to engage in African philosophical and theological discourse in the 21st century, if we can revisit the old question—“what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Medieval scholars, who generally always kept philosophy and theology together,1 in fact, referred to philosophy as a handmaid of theology—Philosophia ancila theologia. The relationship between the two disciplines is not that simple. Philosophers continued to address questions on the existence and attributes of God, but mainly from a purely rational perspective rather than revelation, demonstrating the challenge of fnding a balance that does not compromise theology or philosophy.2 In addition to philosophy, the African worldview and developments in African philosophy offer opportunities for mediation between theology and philosophy that establishes a holistic dialogue that does not draw a sharp distinction between thought and spirituality in the way we have come to see in Western dualistic thinking. I do not imply that one cannot make distinctions in African thought between ideas we have come to associate with secularity and religion or spirituality. In other words, there are aspects of intellectual engagement such as economics, politics, science, and technology, or sub-disciplines like sexuality, governance, leadership, and development, that are generally far removed from the theological discourse and can also contribute to theology and philosophy in Africa. In this chapter I offer a bridge between African philosophy and theology by integrating insights and approaches from the Western tradition, African traditional religions, social sciences, as well as from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, to offer a methodology for African philosophy and theology from both comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives as suggested by Copleston, who has argued that both theology and philosophy were related in a common quest to understand the cosmos.3 I adopt a dialogical approach because both theology and philosophy have expanded by incorporating insights from many intellectual traditions to build a methodological holism and epistemological holism—the view that knowledge, in all its complexity and apparent diversity, seeks to explicate reality, but approached from different perspectives for practical purposes necessitated by spatial and temporal limitations. The chapter will present a brief descriptive analysis of the main developments and themes in African philosophy and theology, highlighting their sources and methodology. I will then argue for critical engagement on the symbiotic relationship between African philosophy and theology. 26

Philosophy and theology in Africa

I will then briefy highlight some insights from Pauline and Johannine cosmology to consolidate the links between African philosophy and theology from a Christocentric point of view.

Developments and themes in African philosophy and theology: sources and methodology Christian theological thought borrowed ideas from Greek philosophical tradition and Egyptian religious and philosophical systems, and this is evident in the work of the early Church Fathers and theologians in northern Africa.4 The pursuit of theology by using all forms of knowledge and argumentation available, the sacred texts and other texts accessible to the early scholars, demonstrates that philosophy and theology have had a long relationship. All history of hitherto existing philosophy and theology is a history of adapting and enculturating concepts to their context in an attempt to explain and justify ultimate reality. The early development of theology and philosophy must be located in the dialectic encounter of pre-colonial Africa with the Western culture that was ushered in by the powerful twin forces of colonialism and evangelization.Two main approaches to this matter can be discerned, and they are still operative in Africa even today: frst, imposing a foreign mentality and trying to supplant the local culture and mentality with the assumption that the latter is incompatible with the Gospel values; second, trying to assimilate, integrate, and enculturate elements from local customs and traditions into the Gospel and life of the Church.5 The second option, which is, of course, the better approach, draws from social scientifc disciplines, helping to bridge the gap between philosophy and social and natural sciences on the one hand, and theology on the other hand.We take cultures and traditions seriously because Vatican II in Ad Gentes 11, 2, urged missionaries to understand the cultures in which they work and “learn of the riches which a generous God has distributed among the nations.”6 Articulating African philosophy and theology cannot ignore the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the people. Early formulations of African thought were defned as “mentalité nègre” or “Negritude” and associated ideas such as vital force.The African’s way of looking at reality has been described as mythopoetic—a view that privileged synthetic from abstract thought—hence the emphasis on symbols, stories, and myths.7 What emerged was also described by F.W. Goetz, S.J. as “cosmobiology,” which some did not consider as philosophy.8 Such thinking stressed participation and not causation, highlighting the interaction between humanity and the environment, in what some called a cosmic dance, whose key elements were rites and symbols, deployed to help humans adjust to their surroundings and habitat.9 Father Van de Loo, S.J., studied Guji Oromo culture in Ethiopia by analyzing Gada ritual system, kinship, marriage, funeral and burial rites, childbirth rituals, seasonal rituals, cattle rituals, and rituals that relate to seasons, weather, and work.10 Similarly, Paul Baxter gave a profound and deeply philosophical understanding of Oromo gaada as ritual, something similar to the African rituals of initiation, which all members of the society must pass through.11 In addition to myths and rituals, conceptual schemes take the form of proverbs, riddles, short fables and stories, and poems and songs, which articulate ethics and morality. Thus, the African philosophical/religious worldview can be expressed by the model below: All reality comes from and is sustained by God, but God remains distinct from creatures. Of all the creatures, only humans share the divine element of God, and it is only human beings who have a moral responsibility to care for the rest of creation. From this follow practical and ritualistic implications. First, dialogue and conversations take place among the three beings in the cosmic system: dialogue between humans and the cosmos (use of natural elements for religious rituals or ceremonies); dialogue and conversation between God and humans (such as in prayer, worship, and 27

Odomaro Mubangizi

God

Spirit World Cosmos

Humanity

Figure 2.1 African triadic cosmic system.

revelation); and dialogue and conversation between the cosmos and God. Second, the action takes place among the three beings: God acts on inanimate beings (both inorganic and organic), giving them existence as well as life for plants and animals); God acts on animals by giving them life and sensation; and God acts on human beings by giving them intellect. And human beings and the cosmos act on each other (minerals, soils, plants, and animals give food, shelter, artifacts, and raw materials for technological inventions that humans use to produce more things). St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), in his Spiritual Exercises—a spiritual journey with God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit—sums up this unifed view in the concluding contemplation and indicates how God balances all things and makes them work in harmony for good.12 Oromo metaphysics or ontology, which we have used as a sample illustration, captures well most of the elements in African ontology that are similar to the concept of vital force.Van de Loo characterizes Ayaanaa as an immaterial element that constitutes the essence of all entities.13 Some Western scholars embrace this integral cosmology and spirituality that has implications for ecology as demonstrated in the prayer of St. Basil:“O God, enlarge within us a sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers and sisters the animals, to whom you gave the earth as their home in common with us.”14 Human beings rely on the cosmos (sun, soil, plants, water, air, minerals, and animals) for survival. Cosmic equilibrium is maintained when all the dimensions of the system work in harmony: human beings with God; human beings with the cosmos; and the earth with God through human agency. The complicated relationship between the cosmos and God and the cosmos and human beings is well captured in some biblical psalms, especially where the Psalmist claims that the things that exist declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1–9). To demonstrate how rituals are profoundly cosmic, one Oromo ritual for cattle will suffce as an illustration. If cattle are sick, early in the morning when the entire herd is present, all members of the household sit facing the rising sun, and the head of the household, using milk and honey beer with butter, barley, and ensete (false banana which is a staple food), says: Keep my cows healthy, excite my bull, may the young cows that are overtime become pregnant, make grow what is small, let me live with old cows, Become fat, full of blood.15 Notice how health and fertility are central to the ritual prayer. Blood is considered the key element of vital force and indeed life itself. 28

Philosophy and theology in Africa

Synthesis and integration of African philosophy and theology We can present the various trends both in African theology and African philosophy in the following schema in Table 2.1. From the previous discussion as well as the schema in Figure 2.2, we can arrive at the following conclusion that praxis is applied to spirituality, where ontology, worldviews, values, beliefs, customs, rituals, theology, and philosophy converge in the day-to-day lived reality. Notice the dynamic relationship among the three elements: theory and conceptual framework inform praxis while praxis will, in turn, help to reformulate and further deepen as well as enrich theory and conceptual framework.An African spirituality of liberation has produced exciting developments that encompass the major elements in African philosophy and theology: healing, rituals of initiation, charismatic leadership,African solutions to African problems,African ecclesiology, and African political theory with corresponding African institutions and organizations. What emerges from all this is an African spirituality and philosophy of communion with all reality, which is a source of liberation.17 In African philosophy, Ubuntu has emerged as a major philosophical concept which encompasses all dimensions of life, individuality, and a sense of belonging to a community, and whose practices shape well-being.18 Ubuntu conceptually allows us to address philosophical anthropology, social ethics, ecology, politics, economics, ecclesiology, and rituals of initiation. Briefy put, philosophy informs theology and vice versa, while natural and social sciences inform both philosophy and theology. This is because—as has been stated several times—in African metaphysics, the material, the intuitive, the symbolic, the sacred, and the rational are intricately intertwined.

Method in African philosophy and theology: a comparative perspective To further spell out methodological and epistemological holism, I will use some of Lonergan’s insights to shed some light on methodological issues in African philosophy and theology. Lonergan defnes method as a pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results.19 This understanding of method provides critical insights to the protracted debates about method in African philosophy and theology.According to Lonergan,“A theology mediates between a cultural matrix and the signifcance and role of religion in that matrix.”20 Lonergan critiques the classist notion of culture to make room for other remote cultures as if to anticipate the eruption of African philosophy.21 If culture is a set of meanings and values that informs a way of life, as Lonergan rightly points out, it follows that philosophy and theology are part and parcel of culture. Methodological implications accrue from the two approaches to culture. The classist view of culture tends to create a sense of permanence, but the empirical approach could make both theology and philosophy become an ongoing process, calling for a critical analysis of their methods.22 It is this empirical view of culture that has generated a vast body of African philosophy and theology from the 1960s to the present. Lonergan compares his models or theoretical framework to a proverb, and African theologians have studied proverbs as a source for theology and religious ideas.23 The method is a dynamic structure within an individual who philosophizes or theologizes. For African philosophy and theology, this framework for creativity will include proverbs, myths, riddles, poetry, dance, and art. African philosophy and theology have worked on the themes put in Table 2.2. Some of the philosophers and theologians who contributed signifcantly to the development of African philosophy and theology in the 19th century have crossed over into the 21st century 29

Table 2.1 Synthesis, Integration, and Praxis of African Philosophy and Theology School or Trend

Examples of Main Conceptual Frameworks

Examples of Praxis or Application and Knowledge Production

Sage and ethnophilosophy and theology

Ubuntu, palaver, Ayyanaa, vital force, African ontology, proverbs, riddles, folktales, poetry and songs, music, spirit world, divination, symbols, spirit possession, healing, witchcraft and sorcery, cult of saints, parables of Jesus, mythology, Supreme Being, God, ancestors, inculturation,African moral philosophy and theology

Rituals, e.g. naming ceremony, circumcision, baptism, Eucharist, marriage, funeral rites, healing, anointing, ordination, initiation of diviners and healers, storytelling, dance, liturgy and worship, sacrifice, speech, homilies, Irrecha of the Oromo,Timkat and Meskel of Orthodox Ethiopia, ancestor veneration, Marian devotion, Corpus Christi processions, Eucharistic adoration, cult of Uganda Martyrs, charismatic and Pentecostal movements, independent churches, Journal of African Philosophy and Theology, African Synods in Rome,16 AMECEA, IMBISA, and SECAM Plenaries, Small Christian Communities (SCC)

Nationalist, liberationist, ideological school

Negritude, Pan-Africanism, African political philosophy, African political theology,African social ethics, colonialism, neocolonialism, feminism, democracy, freedom, equality, unity, justice, self-determination, self-reliance, consciencism, Ujamaa, Harambee, humanism, black theology,African Independent Churches, liberation theology, inculturation, sustainable development, governance, human rights, economic development, peace and security

Independence struggles and liberation movements, political parties and their manifestos, women’s liberation movements and charitable and social justice NGOs (Fahamu, Caritas, Oxfam, CRS, JRS), Justice and Peace Commissions,Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, FAWE,AU parliament, Institute of Contextual Theology, African Union and its specialized agencies and programs, Regional Integration groups (EAC, SADC, ECOWAS,AU, UNECA, IGAD)

Professional school

African hermeneutics, analytical and critical philosophy and theology, the invention of Africa, African biblical theology and exegesis,African ecclesiology, theology of the Spirit or pneumatology,African liberation theology, social analysis, pastoral theology,African social ethics, and moral theology, Mariology, feminist philosophy and theology

African Bible, research and policy centers (BICAM, SECAM, IMBISA AMECEA,World Council of Churches, All Africa Conference of Churches), ecclesial institutions and secular institutions of learning (major seminaries, Christian and secular universities both in Africa and abroad, African studies centers across the world, NEPAD, OSSREA, CODESREA) publication houses,African philosophy and theology journals,African philosophy and theology conferences and seminars

Theology

Philosophy

Natural & Social Sciences

Figure 2.2 An African integrated epistemological system (AIES).

Table 2.2 Main Themes, Issues, and Approaches in African Philosophy and Theology of the 20th Century African Philosophy

African Theology

Main themes and issues

Nature, sources, history, justifcation, ancestors, culture, identity, rites of passage, person, life, vital force, tradition and modernity, the concept of God, beliefs (divination, witchcraft, death, herbalist), marriage,African socialism, Pan-Africanism, humanism, Harambee, Negritude, decolonization

Nature, problems, methods, inculturation, ancestors, rites of initiation, liberation, black theology, morality, spirituality, interpretation, nature, sources, history, justifcation, God, eschatology, HIV/AIDS, social justice, church as a family, Small Christian Communities

Approaches

Sagacity, proverbs, ethnophilosophy, professional approach, narrative, anthropological, liberationist, rational criticism, hermeneutics

Narrative, rational criticism, hermeneutics, translation, cultural anthropological approach

Some leading scholars and period (when a given scholar started engaging in either African philosophy or theology)

Placide Tempels (1940s), John Mbiti (1960s),Alexis Kagame (1950s), Frantz Fanon (1960s),Abraham W.E. (1960s), A.T. Dalfovo (1990s), Jomo Kenyatta (1960s), Leopold Senghor (1960s), Julius Nyerere (1960s), Kwame Nkrumah (1960s), F. Eboussi-Boulaga (1960s), Kaunda,Walter Rodney (1960s), George Cotter (1960s), Claude Sumner (1970s),Ali Mazrui (1980s), Ifeanyi Menkiti (1980s), Odear Oruka (1980s), Kwame Gyekye (1980s), Kwasi Wiredu (1980s), Sodipo (1980s),V.Y. Mundimbe (1980s),Tsenay Seerqueberhan (1990s), Raphael Okechukwu Madu (1990s), Hountodji, Paulin (1980s), M. Hegba (1980s), P. Bodunrin (1980s), Kwame Anthony Appiah (1990s), D.A. Masolo (1990s), Emmanuel Eze, 1992, F. Ochieng-Odhiambo (1990s), K.M. Kalumba (1990s),

Bénézet Bujo (1980s),Vincent Mulago (1950s), Mveng (1970s), E. Mujynya (1960s), Michael kayoya (1970s), Bolaji Idowu (1970s), Patrick Kalilombe (1970s), Byaruhanga-Akiiki (1970s), Tshibangu (1960s), K.Appiah Kubi (1970s), Charles Nyamiti (1970s), J.S. Pobee (1970),Alan Boesak (1970s), Jean-Marc Ela (1980s), Desmond Tutu (1970s),Adrian Hastings (1970s),Aylward Shorter (1970s), J.N.K. Mugambi (1980s), Laurenti Magesa (1980s), M.A. Oduyoye (1980s), John Mary Waliggo (1980s), Michael C. Kirwen (1980s), Joseph Healy (1980s),Albert Nolan (1980s), Nasimiyu-Wasike (1990s)

Odomaro Mubangizi

and taken up new themes and issues, including African ecclesiology, African spirituality, justice and reconciliation, development, confict and violence, exploitation, HIV/AIDs and its impact, poverty, inequality, governance, ecology, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and globalization.The table below presents some of these issues, themes, and approaches.

Table 2.3 Main Themes, Issues, and Approaches in African Philosophy and Theology of the 21st Century African Philosophy

African Theology

Main themes and issues

Knowledge, epistemology, hermeneutics, African cultural knowledge, cultural inquiry, concept of time, aesthetics and art,African ethics, Ubuntu philosophy, decolonization, feminism, metaphilosophy,African political thought, region integration and good governance, sustainable development, gender equality, African spirituality and cosmology, public health, social ethics, ecology, global health

The African ecclesiology, Church as a family of God, Small Christian Communities,African spirituality, justice and reconciliation, development, confict and violence, exploitation, HIV/AIDs and its impact, poverty, inequality, governance, ecology, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and globalization, political theology, biblical interpretation

Approaches

Hermeneutical approach, interdisciplinary approach, narrative, comparative approach, feld research, historical, policy

Applied ethics, pastoral approach, feld research, social analysis, anthropological, interdisciplinary approach, narrative,African approaches to biblical hermeneutics

Some leading scholars and period (year of publication of major works)

Kaphagawani Didier (2000), Ernest Beyaraza (2000), Messay Kebede (2004) Bongmba Elias (2009), Michael Kirwen (2005–2008),Tedros Kiros (2001), Munyaradzi Felix Murove (2009), Ramose Mogobe (2002),Yoseph Mulugeta Baba (2011–2015)24

Emmanuel Katongole (2005–2016), Joseph Healey (2011–2016), Mundele Albert Ngengi (2012), Elias Omondi Opongo (2008–2016), Laurenti Magesa (2011– 2016), Jacquineau Azetsop (2016), Lado Ludovic (2015), Festo Mkenda (2011– 2016),Agbonkhiagmeghe E. Orobator (2000–2016), Odozor P. (2000–2015), Peter Henriot (2000–2015), Peter Kanyandago (2000–2015), Anne Arabome (2014–2016), Lilian Dube (2000–2015),Tereza Okure (2000–2011), Paul Bere (2011–2016), Peter Knox (2000–2016), Philomena Mwaura (2000–2016), Musa Dube, Elias Kifon Bongmba (2006–2007)

African philosophy and theology of inculturation: convergence of theory and praxis In Christian theology, the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth occupies a central place.This central notion that God became a human being inspired the philosophy and theology of inculturation, which emphasized the view that God took on human form and lived among human beings with all its social, economic, political, and cultural variation and challenges. Christianity likewise got incarnated in a specifc culture, namely the Jewish culture, and even borrowed some 32

Philosophy and theology in Africa

Greek concepts and Roman worldviews; having been transplanted to Africa, it should get fully immersed into African culture and be shaped by the African worldview. Nowhere is this inculturation more evident and dramatic than in African liturgical music and elements in the form of the local language, dance, and musical instruments such as drums, shakers, mbira (Zimbabwe), and horns.25 Performance of liturgical music demonstrates musical form, improvisation, melody, rhythm, thyme, harmony, and musical instruments.26 Crispinah Machingura’s study, based on interviews among the Shona of Zimbabwe, reveals how much the drum is a strategic cultural instrument: Chawasarira’s drum, the dinhidza, is meant for a thanksgiving harvest among the Korekore people. The dinhidza drum was played after the Korekore crop harvests. People would then brew beer during the process of kupura [threshing] the harvest. While gathering to thresh the harvested crop, people would drink beer and play the dinhidza drum.27 There is more to the drum because drumming is a cultural institution and a philosophy. In most African cultures, a drum is a symbol of power. For instance, among the Bakiga-Banyankore, the verb “to rule” is referred to as “Kutwara engoma”—to take the drum.The famous royal drum of Rwanda Inganji karinga is another case in point of the power of drums.A drum is used for communication, summons people to a meeting, announces the death of someone, and warns people of danger.The drum also plays a crucial role in major life events and rituals of initiation.28 Since drums and mbira were associated with invocation of spirits and ancestors in traditional rituals, zealous Christians found the use of these instruments in Christian worship quite challenging. There have been some attempts to inculturate African traditional rituals into Christian liturgy. Some of these attempts demonstrate that indeed philosophy and theology can be married in ritualistic performance.Take the example of the rain making ceremony and the mass to pray for rain: The Mass to pray for the rains is based on and an imitation of a Shona (Karanga) rain making ceremony (in its theme to ask for rains and the use of the indigenous mbira instrument), a ceremony associated with the appeasing of the ancestral spirits so that God will send them rains.29 This shift to recognize and celebrate African culture in sacred worship has come at some price. Getting rid of the use of Latin and Gregorian chants in the Catholic Church was quite a hurdle. Even up to today, there are some church circles that still long for the return to the ancient Latin, claiming that only Latin is the sacred language and using sophisticated arguments that translations closer to Latin capture the meaning much better. In a continent of “song, dance and musical instruments, language and languages … the heart of its communal and artistic inheritance,”30 as Adrian Hastings describes it, it was a tragedy that the early missionaries were suspicious of this complex and rich cultural diversity. To reject the most ritualistic and cosmic African symbol—the drum—was to reject the epicenter and pivot of African philosophy and theology.This partly explains why the period of the 1960s, right up to the present time, is marked by constant and repeated assertion of African values and identity both in philosophical and theological discourse, summed up in concepts such as “adaptation,” “inculturation,” “interculturation,” “indigenization,” and “contextualization.” The gradual and steady cultural revolution in worship, as Hastings points out, was spear-headed at frst by African Independent Churches.31 33

Odomaro Mubangizi

Worship is a very emotional event and activity, and worshippers get emotionally agitated when certain songs and modes of expression do not suit their spiritual or religious sensibilities or tastes.Worship and ritual as expressed in music and dance is the cultic dramatization of ontology or being.Therefore, to impose one’s style of worship and songs on another culture is a form of ontological imperialism and violence. Some of the most vibrant liturgical hymns that celebrate African vitalogy32 and convey African philosophical and theological themes are in the following languages: Swahili, Bemba, Chewa, Shona, Rukiga-Runyankore, Kinyarwanda, Igbo, Yoruba, Ndebele, and Zulu.The holistic view of reality that is at the heart of vitalogy is what is celebrated in African rituals and liturgy: This term (vitalogy) expresses a thought, which defnes itself with life, experienced, in a unifed vision of all that can be known … This unifed vision has the following crucial implication that informs the whole ontological, cosmic, and anthropological edifce, of which humanity is a vital part.33 When Pope Paul VI frst visited Africa in 1969, his famous words in Uganda could not have come at a better time in Africa’s quest for self-determination and indeed for defning an African Christianity and theology: Indeed you possess human values and characteristic forms of culture which can rise to perfection so as to fnd in Christianity, and for Christianity, a true superior fullness and prove to be capable of a richness of expression all its own, and genuinely African … in this sense you may, and you must, have an African Christianity.34 At the time Pope Paul VI made this statement,Africa was just emerging from the snare of colonial domination. Pope Paul VI had also come “to lay the foundation stone for the new shrine of the Uganda Martyrs at Namugongo and to attend the inaugural meeting of SECAM, a body linking for the frst time all the Catholic bishops of Africa.”35 This was a call for an African ecclesiology, African liturgy, and devotion, where the cult of ancestors should have a place symbolized by the Uganda Martyrs. And for sure, the Uganda Martyrs Shrine at Namugongo is built like a traditional African hut—a massive round structure that attracts millions of pilgrims every year on the third of June.Since inculturation is at the heart of African philosophy and theology, the notion of culture has to be explained. Hastings argues:“Culture implies the totality of social structure, art, and artifact, language use, recreation, the intertwining of belief and life.”36 Culture is related to philosophy in different ways. First, a systematic and conceptual refection on culture in its various elements. Second, a systematic and conceptual refection on divinely revealed propositions and how they affect and are affected by culture is what theology is.37 Third, the theology of inculturation which addresses different beliefs and practices such as witchcraft, saints, and ancestors; women in the Church and society; initiation and sacraments; marriage; healing; power and politics; poverty and development; ethics; proverbs, symbols, and myths; the arts, death, political liberation, and the church as an extended family refect the place of culture in theology and philosophy. Finally, African philosophy and theology are imbedded in ancient myths and symbols; it is important to make some brief comments about these two dimensions of African culture and worldview. Mircea Eliade, a leading scholar on myths and symbols suggests that symbolic thinking is not limited to children, poets, or the so-called unbalanced mind. He has argued that symbolic thought: is consubstantial with human existence; it comes before language and discursive reason. The symbol reveals certain aspects of reality—the deepest aspects—which defy any 34

Philosophy and theology in Africa

other means of knowledge. Images, symbols, and myths are not irresponsible creations of the psyche; they respond to a need and fulfll a function, that of bringing to light the most hidden modalities of being.38 Reality is so complex and so rich that it can only be expressed in symbols and mythology. How else can one express the reality and meaning of suffering other than using the symbol of the cross? How else can one express the mystery of God other than by the incarnation? Symbols will remain elusive and hard to categorize since each culture has the freedom to coin its symbols and imbue them with meaning and value as they wish: a fag of a nation or liberation movement, body marks, ritual vestments, fetishes and amulets, sacred buildings and artifacts, etc. Since symbolism is closely related to mythology, it is worth mentioning the function that myth fulflls.39 First, myths express, enhance, and codify belief. Second, myths reinforce and safeguard morality.Third, myths provide a motive for ritual and moral actions. In summary, both primitive faith and moral wisdom are found in mythology. This is the reason why Christian theology has its foundation in creation and fall myths found in Genesis that incorporates ancient cosmogonies and cosmology. Paul Ricoeur considers myths as second-degree symbols, while among elementary symbols of evil, he includes deflement, sin, and guilt.40 Ricoeur makes a link with philosophy and mythology, stating, “The symbol gives rise to thought.”41 Since the main vocation of the philosopher and theologian is to seek understanding, symbols have the power to provoke philosophical and theological refection. Table 2.4 demonstrates how all major human systems are products of the philosophy of symbolism. Each of the identifed social structures has a corresponding philosophy and theology: nation—political and social philosophy as well as political theology and social ethics; culture and religion—philosophical anthropology, philosophy of religion, and theological anthropology; market—economic philosophy and social ethics as well as Christian social teaching. It is true that symbols give rise to thought—and we can add that symbols are the storage of thought.43 The fact that no nation claims exclusive ownership of symbols, myths, or knowledge is the reason the debate about the African origins of Greek philosophy, Hellenic cultural infuences in Ethiopia, and the interaction among Ethiopia, Israel,44 Nubia, and Egypt is important.45 Regardless of what anyone thinks, these debates point to the existence of a complex worldview in Africa upon which African philosophy and theology are grounded. I.C. Onyewuenyi argues that the Greek culture was copied from the Nile kingdoms of Nubia, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt and points out the well-known facts: Plotinus, an important philosopher in his day who published widely and opened a school in Rome, came from Lycon, in Egypt; the frst woman philosopher, Hypatia, was from Alexandria; Saint Augustine, Origen, Cyril,Tertullian are from North Africa; Greek or Western philosophy is copied from indigenous African philosophy and mystery systems. Cheikh Anta Diop, after analyzing the African worldview with specifc reference to Egyptian cosmogony, identifes the following common elements:46 spiritualistic element, offering sacrifces to ancestors and the Supreme Being, ritual food, the immortal principle in humans, and vital force. These elements are immortalized in African kings and Pharaohs who were considered to be divine, and as having greater vital force. This point is well summed up by Diop: “The Pharaoh is the demiurge on earth who recreates the universe through ritual gestures. If he does not have the vital force of God, evils will befall the earth.”47 When these elements are put together, an African political theology emerges. Leaders are intermediaries between God and humanity.To avoid the anarchy described in the above quotation, smooth political transitions are an absolute necessity for Africa. Political leaders who fail to nurture the vital force of God will no doubt bring disaster to their countries. Policy failure, poverty, wars, environmental degradation, and massive human rights violations can all be understood from the vitalistic perspective. 35

Odomaro Mubangizi Table 2.4 A Schema of Symbolic System Social Structure

Abstract Symbols

Concrete Symbols

Symbolic Quality: Good or Evil

Nation or political organization/party

Constitution, language, anthem, ideology, laws, power, political parties, manifesto Ujamaa, consciencism, political theories, Negritude, Pan-Africanism, humanism

Flag, coat of alms, animal, courts, throne, stool, spear, shield, guns, war planes, parliament, state house

Good: nationalism, unity, cooperation, aid, progress, peace, justice, equality, civil rights movements, civil society, freedom Evil: war, tribalism, violence, xenophobia, racism, hate speech, colonialism, imperialism, fascism, totalitarianism

Tribe, clan, culture, and religion

Rituals, art, sculpture, language, creed, taboos, myths, proverbs, poetry, songs, ancestors, heroes, spirits, folktales, magic, family, civil society, religious and cultural organizations

Shrines, churches, media, altars, cross, rosary, sacred books, amulets, fetishes, initiation rites (birth, marriage, baptism, ordination, body parts,42 circumcision, Eucharist, confrmation), religious and cultural leaders, pyramids, tabernacle, fre, light, water, oil

Good: worship, prayer, reconciliation, unity, celebration, grace, peace, love, hope, faith Evil: sorcery, witchcraft, fundamentalism, tribalism, sin, deflement, guilt

Educational or formation institutions

Scientifc formulae, theories, philosophies, and theologies, concepts

Schools, books and other publications, website, internet, mobile phones, technological tools, machines

Good: knowledge, values, effciency Evil: ignorance, indoctrination, deception

Market

Economic rules and theories

Money, banks, shops, malls, companies, adverts, factories, industries, commercial products

Good: effective delivery of goods and services, fairness Evil: Exploitation, injustice, poor working conditions, greed, unemployment

Problematics in categorizing and historicizing African philosophy and theology For the systematic development of African philosophy, credit frst goes to African philosophers who came up with some taxonomy of African philosophy: sage philosophy; ethnophilosophy; professional philosophy; and liberationist-nationalist philosophy. This characterization of close inspection betrays some conceptual and theoretical diffculties.While the sage school of philosophy is associated with African wise men (some gender bias here since women were generally excluded from the domain of wisdom in most traditional African societies, even though some specialists like diviners were women), ethnophilosophy is associated with folk or communal wisdom. Odera Oluka is famed for the conception of sage philosophy while John Mbiti and 36

Philosophy and theology in Africa

Alex Kagame and Placide Tempels are linked to the ethnophilosophy school. One can argue that there is no fundamental difference between sage and ethnophilosophy. Is a sage philosopher at the same time not an ethnophilosopher? And is ethnophilosophy at the same time not sage philosophy? The fact that it is professional philosophers such as Alex Kagame, Odera Oluka, and John Mbiti, who came up with the notions of ethnophilosophy and sage philosophy, raises further questions on this characterization. The other challenge in trying to categorize African philosophy and theology is the fact that African ontology does not permit clear-cut dualism. If the boundary between the secular and sacred is blurred as the previous discussions have demonstrated, it is equally diffcult to clearly defne what philosophy is. For instance, poetry, proverbs, folktales, rituals, sacrifces, and dance are on the one hand considered as forms of leisure and communal celebrations, but on the other hand, they are conveyers of deep and profound meanings and metaphysical beliefs that require special skills to be interpreted.They are philosophy and theology being acted out dramatically and symbolically. That African oral literature in proverbs, sayings, riddles, stories, myths, fables, plays, songs, prayers and symbols, legends, idioms is a source of narrative theology and philosophy is asserted by some of the leading African theologians and philosophers: Anne Nasimiyu, Gwinyai Mozorewa, Aloysius Lugira, Charles Nyamiti, Alex Chima, Pobee, and John Mbiti.48 Notice that we use “source of.”Therefore, just reciting proverbs, stories, riddles, and myths does not constitute philosophy or theology. These oral forms of literature become philosophy or theology when one refects on them systematically and distills philosophical and theological ideas and builds concepts from them.When universal values are identifed in African proverbs or myths, that is when theology or philosophy is constructed. On the role of music, dance, poetry and ritual performance, Laurenti Magesa, in his What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality, presents the key elements and meaning of African performance and aesthetics: Life is not a “spectator sport” or something to be experienced by proxy. What is expected for one to grow into Ubuntu in Africa and become fully human is to participate in the dance of life, one’s own dance within that of the community … The dance of life includes everything that is connected with the nurturing life in the world, that is, social institutions, economics, and politics, cookery, painting, sculpture, architecture, the art of speech, music, gestures, and sense of beauty among others. All of these are dynamic activities … They may be rightly referred to as symbols or “sacraments,” concrete manifestations of spiritual presence in the world.49 This holistic view of reality that encompasses humans, rituals of life, works of art, social institutions, architecture, and speech, signifying spiritual energies or vital force, is what has led to the conclusion that Africans are “notorious religious,” as John Mbiti put it. Spiritual and divine power is all around. This is what lies at the core of African philosophy and theology—where ontology, cosmology, ethics, politics, economics, beliefs, theology, spirituality, and eschatology converge. If this worldview or philosophy is well understood, it helps to explain all other aspects of human life, the world, spirit world, and God. Failure to participate in this dance of life properly, either by one’s choice or by exclusion, is what constitutes moral or cosmic evil. Bad governance, corruption, poverty, divisions and disunity, natural disasters such as earthquakes, violence and confict, theft, jealousy, greed, hatred, selfshness are disruptive of the moral and cosmic dance.50 Since ritual plays a pivotal role in African cosmology and social life, Magesa has raised a crucial question on the role of liturgy in bridging the gap between African tradition and Christina 37

Odomaro Mubangizi

tradition: “Can liturgy serve as the ‘platform’ that embraces Christian tradition as interpreted across time and cultures and place it in dialogue with the African context?” I would answer this question in the affrmative as Magesa does.The same problem can be raised about philosophy only that philosophy has to develop an equivalent of the liturgy. This is where African traditional rituals and poetic performance come in. Can the recital of heroic songs, poems, riddles, and proverbs be considered as meeting points where Western philosophy can meet African philosophy? I think so. Rituals such as circumcision, entering a new house, funeral rites, naming, marriage, etc., would be considered as a dramatization of philosophical and theological anthropology and cosmology. The more diffcult question is how to contextualize sage and ethnophilosophy into a neat historical framework. The standard historical framework of Western philosophy is neatly classifed into the following epochs: ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, modern philosophy, and contemporary philosophy. How does one classify sage and ethnophilosophers in historical epochs? Africa has a different tradition of recording time.Ask an old man, who let us estimate is 90 years of age, and he will say something like: “I was born during the great famine or during a certain war or the locust invasion.”The concept of time is not abstract but rather intimately linked to key events, existential threats such as foods, droughts, famine, or epidemics. It was once thought that if one were schooled in the Greek concept of Chronos, one would fnd it exceedingly challenging to adjust to the African concept of time, but that is not the case today as scholars understand these different views of time and recognize that the African view of time does not lack the idea of Chronos. Just to give a simple illustration of how the African conception of time is a challenge even in daily life: if someone is going for some important meeting, a liturgical celebration or appointment, and on the way he or she comes across people having a funeral of someone or a wedding ceremony, it is not uncommon for that person to stop by, stay for a few hours with the people, and then proceed for the other meeting.The person will not feel bothered that he or she will be late for an hour or two.The person will expect that the other people or person with whom the prior appointment was initially made will understand the existential imperative of attending a party or a funeral that was not in the initial plan. Here the philosophy is that time and events are fexible, and nothing is rigidly defned or cast in stone. With this ambiguity around time, Mbiti even argued, somehow exaggeratedly, that Africans have no concept of the future and only have sasa and zamani—now and the distant past. Even then, in these two concepts, time is not measured in terms of specifc quantities such as seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years.The Bantu (specifcally Bakiga-Banyankore) use terms hati and kare to refer to now and long ago respectively. Time is cosmically defned among Banyankore and Bakiga: day time is talked of as ny’omushana—meaning when there is sunshine; night time is talked of as ny’ekiro—when there is darkness—Erizooba, this sun; oku kwezi, this moon referring to this month. Natural cycles such as seasons around which crops are cultivated, human life cycles such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death are the major indicators of time or landmarks. It is not uncommon to fnd names of people among Bantu communities that invoke cosmic elements such as: Nyanjura—one who was born during the rainy season; Nyamishana—one who was born during the sunny season; Nyakwezi—one who was born during the full moon; Rwanyekiro—one who was born in the night; and Kazooba—one born during the day or sunny day. But this generalization should not be taken too far to imply that there is no attempt to have some precision about time. Day and night are further divided into sub units: very early in the morning before people wake up or before cock-crow—omwi tumbi; after cock-crow—omu kasheshe; mid-day and early afternoon—omwi hangwe; shortly after or at sunset—omu mwebazo; 38

Philosophy and theology in Africa

at night—omukiro. All major activities are organized around these time frames: meals, going to work, resting, weddings, funerals, administering traditional medicine, consulting diviners, offering sacrifces, courtship, traditional dances, and visiting friends. Each time is given some metaphysical signifcance and certain activities or rituals, which can only be performed at a given time. One Bakiga-Banyankore proverb links time, ethics, and social interaction: Owa kutwara nyekiro, omusiima bwa shesha—the one who takes you at night, you thank him early the next morning.Traveling at night is associated with evil deeds such as murder. Do not thank someone before you have woken up! Time has some sacredness attached to it, just like space.The basic philosophical and theological assumption is that time is created by the Supreme Being, God, who has assigned a specifc activity for each period. Doing things at the wrong time is a grave transgression. For instance, it would be strange to fnd someone cultivating at night. Only witches or wizards can reverse the natural rhythm of things like dancing at night—the infamous “night dancers.” Equally abominable is conducting a funeral in the morning or at night—it has to be conducted in the afternoon. From the preceding observations, one can already discern a distinctively African worldview that lays the foundation for African philosophy and theology. It is a worldview that has its coherence, logic, and conceptual scheme. Some of the major themes in African philosophy and theology can be discerned.The person as a processual entity—childhood, puberty, healing, marriage and death, and naming and the cosmic value of names. This is the basic African philosophical anthropology—the concept of time and how reality is ordered according to the divine decree. Human beings have no power and liberty to reorder space and time at will; they have to learn how to order their daily activities within the temporal and spatial framework that the Supreme Being has established.51 Ancestors and spirits will take offense if the established cosmic order is disrupted. Around this worldview, myths, riddles, proverbs, cosmogonies, and folktales are constructed to ensure that the wisdom hidden therein is transmitted from generation to generation. You cannot construct an authentic African philosophy and theology without examining these basic phenomena since they are the basic structure of society, social control, power, ethics, belief system, ontology, ultimate reality, meaning, and human destiny.Adrian Hastings identifed the main themes that had been the primary concern of African philosophers and theologians since the 1960s:52 Negritude and liberation; inculturation and contextualization; healing; witchcraft; sorcery; spirit possession; prophetic and Pentecostal phenomena; inculturated ecclesiology through African Independent Churches; and power, politics, and poverty.

“I am because we are, and since we are therefore I am:” Ubuntu philosophy and theology This phrase coined by John Mbiti, who is among the pioneers of African philosophy and theology, captures well the source and method of African philosophy and theology. Human beings are the center of both African philosophy and theology. It is human beings who engage in philosophical and theological discourse—basic and obvious. But the maxim also indicates that to be is to be in communion with others.This same concept is captured in an IsiZulu phrase— Umuntu umuntu ngabantu—a person is a person through other persons.Therefore philosophical and theological ideas draw from communal thought and practices. To be is to be with others and so to philosophize and to theologize is to philosophize and to theologize with others.The philosopher and theologian are just articulating the collective wisdom of the community and probably should not even claim too much credit.Think about it.Who can claim to have brought 39

Odomaro Mubangizi

wisdom and knowledge into the world? One African proverb says that no one can understand the wisdom of God and the smile of a dog. The concepts of unity, solidarity, harmony, hospitality, respect, responsiveness, caring, humaneness, compassion, openness, self-assurance, availability, reciprocity, generosity, collective wisdom, cooperation, and community that are pervasive in African philosophy and theology of Ubuntu53 are well captured in African proverbs.A few proverbs will suffce to make the point:54 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion (Amharic—Ethiopia). Two hands wash each other (Akan, Runyankore-Rukiga—Uganda; Zulu—South Africa). Two eyes are better than one (Haya—Tanzania). Two fngernails kill a louse (Luyia—Kenya). Obwengye tibwomwe—knowledge is not for one person or no one has a monopoly over knowledge (Rukiga-Runyankore). Ageitereine gata eigufa—it is teeth that work together that break the bone (RukigaRunyankore). Ezitaheire tizakiira—hands that do not give do not receive (Rukiga-Runyankore). Nyenge nyenka, akeenga mabi—one who brewed alone, brewed bad beer (RukigaRunyankore). Oku kunda ekitakukunda ni nkenjura omwihaamba—to love what does not love you is like rain in the forest (Rukiga—Runyankore). Omwana omwe tarinda mishure—one child does not keep away birds from the garden (Rukiga—Runyankore). Embwa tekamwa—a dog is never milked (Rukiga Runaynkore). Some people are called by this as a name.This proverb indicates that some things are never done—they are just taboo. Warning not to do what nobody has ever done. Ngu oruhu rwembwa tibaruhekamu, ati nkehekamu nyakwegyendera—that people never carry children on their back in the skin of a dog, and you say, I carried in it the one who died. (Rukiga—Runyankore). Nyantagambirwa akambukira omubwato bweibumba—one who refuses advice sailed in a boat made of clay.

Notice how the proverbs are crafted with the economy, poetic qualities (personifcation, rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia, alliteration, imagery, metaphor, and simile), and morphological techniques to make them memorable and aesthetically pleasing. Like all literature, African proverbs have a double meaning—one literal and the other hidden that requires some interpretation.55 When one is passing on a hard piece of advice, a humorous and witty proverb makes it palatable without the culprit being offended or being defensive and thus they will be more likely to accept it.That proverbs are used to sweeten words is affrmed by a Nigerian proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe in his famous novel Things Fall Apart: “Proverbs are palm wine with which words are eaten;” the Oromo also have a similar proverb: “speech without proverbs is like salt without stew.”The Bible also has books dedicated to proverbs and wise sayings, and Jesus used some proverbs as well:“a blind cannot lead the blind,”“you cannot be a slave of both God and money;” and parables (sower, mustard seed, wedding banquet, talents) to pass on his message indirectly, even though the Pharisees and Scribes discovered that he was referring to them and got furious with him and eventually plotted to get rid of him. One can add biblical philosophy to the new disciplines that would integrate philosophy and theology using biblical resources. How does all this ft into the African philosophy and theology of liberation? The re-asserting of African conceptual scheme is the frst precondition for an African liberation that both 40

Philosophy and theology in Africa

philosophy and theology should contribute to. Therefore, it is vital to engage in a systematic process of liberating and decolonizing African philosophical and theological discourse. In this process, hermeneutics plays a vital role in this program of African liberation so that all reality is examined from a liberating perspective. The main question to guide any philosophical and theological investigation is: how does all this contribute to African liberation?

Conclusions All history of hitherto existing philosophy and theology ought to be one of liberation broadly conceived to embrace all dimensions of human life. Liberation also includes freedom from erroneous reasoning that ignores logic and liberation from idols of a particular ethnic group or race, religion, gender, class, and ideology. It is for these reasons that a clearly articulated African philosophy and theology need to embrace feminism, Pan-Africanism, and Ubuntu. Such an approach will create the conditions for deepening social integration, inculturation, and liberation as a way of expanding the critique of our common humanity opened up in Negritude and decolonization.African philosophical theology must combine African cosmology, ontology, vitalogy, Ayyanaa, African conceptions of God, ancestors, and spirits, integral healing, palaver, and Ubuntu ethics. African proverbs, riddles, mythology, symbolism, and rituals are the primary sources of African philosophical theology, and they should be allowed to dialogue with scripture. And since most African philosophers and theologians have been schooled in the Western tradition, there is no illusion that these scholars will over-night abandon the Western intellectual culture.There will be a cross-pollination of ideas and a hybridization of knowledge production, as has always been the case throughout history. The major challenge facing African philosophy and theology that needs urgent attention is the strengthening of academic institutions to mainstream African philosophy and theology. Ironically, most centers and institutes of African studies are found outside Africa in European and American universities, where some of Africa’s best intellectuals are seeking sanctuary, a situation that has created intellectual dependency.The recent calls for theory offer African and non-Western scholars an opportunity to go beyond critique to come up with theories that refect local ideas.Ali Mazrui once pointed out, “Africa produces what it does not consume, and consumes what it does not produce.”This is true with regard to conceptual resources.What prevents African governments and churches from setting up African universities that confer degrees in indigenous knowledge systems56 with a particular focus on African philosophy and theology? What prevents African governments and their development partners from developing an educational curriculum that integrates African values and belief systems right from primary to tertiary levels? Africa cannot develop both economically and technologically without frst coming to terms with its indigenous values and beliefs—in short, its ethics, ontology, and cosmology. Such a theory building should be interdisciplinary57 to enable African scholars to address challenges the continent faces on climate change, land reform, geopolitics, political economy, debt, development theories, confict resolution, industrialization, migration, gender, HIV/AIDS, sexuality, economic and political justice, transitional justice, confict resolution, governance, democracy, and human rights.58 In doing this revamping of intellectual resources to strengthen theology and philosophy, the idea of Ubuntu as an African perspective on humanity should remain at the center. Grounding philosophy and theology with this concept has the potential of responding to the many challenges of the continent which Christian churches have joined forces with the state to solve—the main diffculties being poverty and health.There is a strong possibility of developing an African philosophy and theology of health care and medicine that is holistic and integral to the spiritual aspirations of humanity.59 41

Odomaro Mubangizi

Notes 1 For studies of philosophy and theology, see Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy Volume 2 Augustine to Bonaventure (New York: Image Books, 1962). 2 For a thorough and detailed study of an African narrative theology that integrates African philosophy and theology, see Joseph Healy, MM and Donald Sybertz, MM, Towards an African Narrative Theology (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1996). 3 Ibid., p. 24. 4 Healy and Sybertz, Op. cit., pp. 28–54. 5 See P.Van Pelt, Bantu Customs and in Mainland Tanzania (Tabora—Tanzania:T. M. P. Book Department, 1971), p. 1. 6 “Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity” no. 11, in Austin Flannrery, O. P., Vatican Council II:The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (Bombay: St. Pauls, 1997), p. 725. 7 Van Pelt, Op. Cit., p. 6. 8 See, ibid., p. 7. 9 Ibid. 10 Joseph Van De Loo, Guji Oromo Culture in Southern Ethiopia (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1991), pp. 23–53, 101–106, 155, 213–215, 269. 11 Paul Baxter,“Preface,” in ibid., p. 12. 12 Quoted in Ibid., p. 138. 13 Quoted in Yoseph Mulugeta, “The Role of Negritude in Restoring and Indigenous Gada Oromo Political Philosophy for ‘Good Governance’ in Ethiopia.” M. A. Thesis, The Catholic University of Eastern Africa, 2011. p. 114. 14 Quoted in Magesa, What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality (Nairobi:Action Publishers, 2014), p. 174. 15 Quoted in Van De Loo, Op. cit., p. 214. 16 For discussion on how to take African ideas seriously in understanding the universe, see Aghbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, ed., Reconciliation, Justice, and Peace:The Second African Synod (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2011); Cecil McGarry, S.J., What Happened at the African Synod (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1995). 17 Magesa, Op. cit., p. 174. 18 Ibid., p. 175. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. xi. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 For a collection and scholarly study of African proverbs, as well as their philosophical and theological merit, see Healy, MM and Sybertz, MM, Op. cit.; Marius Cisternino, The Proverbs of Kigezi and Ankore (Rome: Museum Combonianum, 1987); George Cotter, Salt for Stew: Proverbs and Sayings of the Oromo People with English Translations (Addis Ababa: United Printers, 1990). 24 See Yoseph Mulugeta, “The Role of Negritude in Restoring and Indigenous Gada Oromo Political Philosophy for ‘Good Governance’ in Ethiopia.” M. A. Thesis, The Catholic University of Eastern Africa, 2011. See also his Metaphilosophy or Methodological Imperialism? The Rationale for Contemporary African Philosophy with Reference to Oromo Philosophy (Nairobi: CUEA Press, 2015). 25 For a study of liturgical music as a form of inculturation, see Crispinah Machingura, Evaluating Shona Liturgical Music in Localised Practices of Inculturation within the Catholic Mass in Zimbabwe (Master of Arts (Ethnomusicology) in the School of Arts, College of Humanities – University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, November 2014.) 26 How Shona liturgical songs, performance, and musical instruments refect culture, see, ibid., pp. 67–125. 27 Ibid., p. 47. 28 Ibid., p. 106. 29 Ibid., 122. 30 Adrian Hasgings, African Chiristian Theology:An Interpretation (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1976), p. 48. 31 Ibid. 32 For a detailed and most recent discourse on vitalogy, see Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia, African Vitalogy: A Step Forward in African Thinking (Nairobi: Paulines Publications,Africa, 1999), pp. 165–205. 33 Ibid., p. 202. 34 Paul VI,“Closing Discourse to All Africa Symposium,” 1969, Gaba Pastoral Paper, No. 7, p. 51.

42

Philosophy and theology in Africa 35 Hastings, African Christian Theology:An Interpretation (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1976), p. 17. 36 Ibid., p. 44. 37 See, Healey, MM and Sybertz, MM, Op. cit.; Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), African Philosophy: An Anthology (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1998); Ivan Karp and D. A. Masalo (eds.), African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); John Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa (London: SPCK, 1970); John Mbiti, New Testament Eschatology in an African Background: A Study of the Encounter between New Testament Theology and African Traditional Concepts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Laurenti Magesa, Anatomy of Inculturation: Transforming the Church in Africa (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004) 38 Eliade, Ibid., 12. 39 Eliade, Myth and Reality, Op. cit., p. 20. 40 See, Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 25–150. 41 Ibid., p. 348. 42 See Fr. Joseph van De Loo, S.J., Religious Practices of the Guji Oromo (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press, 1991), pp. 34–50. 43 See Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), pp. 9–124. 44 For detailed and critical studies about the story of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), pp. 195–217; I Kings 10:1–13; 2 Chronicles 9:1–12; Faye Levine, Solomon & Sheba (New York: St. Martins Press, 1980). 45 See Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1926). 46 Cheik Anta Diop, “Is there an African Philosophy?” The African Mind: Journal of African Religion and Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1989, pp. 3–7. 47 Ibid., p. 7. 48 See Healy, MM, an Sybertz, MM, op. cit., pp. 28–31. 49 Magesa, Op. cit., p. 67. 50 On how Ubuntu philosophy is interconnected with morality on issues of interreligious dialogue, governance, politics, economics, reconciliation and peace, see ibid., pp. 123–166. 51 This cosmic ordering that is divinely instituted is what the book of Genesis presents in mythical form on how God carefully created the world and all it contains in an orderly and systematic way, including rest. See Genesis 1:1–2:1–25. 52 Hastings, Op. cit., pp. 37–77. 53 For a detailed and scholarly discussion of Ubuntu concept and its application in confict resolution, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, politics, management, and leadership, see Adeoye O. Akinola and Ufo Okeke Uzokike, “Ubuntu and the Quest for Confict Resolution in Africa,” Journal of Black Studies,Vol. 49 (2): 91–113, 2018. 54 Quoted in Healy and Sybertz, Op. cit., p. 115. 55 See Raphael Okechukwu Madu, African Symbols, Proverbs, and Myths:The Hermeneutics of Destiny (New York and Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1992). 56 So far only the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa has doctoral programs in indigenous knowledge systems. 57 See Linda Hogan and A. E. Orobator, eds., Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2014); Bénézet Bujo and Michael Czerny, eds., AIDS in Africa: Theological Refections (Nairobi: Paulines Africa, 2007); Jacquineau Azetsop, ed., HIV & AIDS in Africa: Christian Refection, Public Health, Social Transformation (New York: Orbis Books, 2016). 58 James Stormes, S.J., et al., eds., Transitional Justice in Post-confict Societies in Africa (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2016); Martin Plaut, Understanding Eritrea (Inside Africa’s Most Repressive State (London: Hurst & Company, 2016); Gérard Prunier and Éloi Ficquet, eds., Understanding Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi (London: Hurst & Company, 2015). 59 For the spirituality of herbalism and how ancestors are a part of herbalist practice, see Magesa, op. cit., pp., 30, 31, 68, 91, 92.

43

3 THEOLOGY OF INCULTURATION History, meaning, and implications Laurenti Magesa

“God does not show favoritism…” Chapter 10 of the book of the Acts of the Apostles narrates in some detail the encounter between the Apostle Peter and Cornelius, a captain in the Roman army there. Sent almost against his will by the Spirit of God, Peter comes to a remarkable and revolutionary perception of the kind that not only surprised Peter and his colleagues who followed Jesus, but was something people at the time would have found unthinkable. In his speech to Cornelius and the “large gathering of people” at his house, Peter condenses his newly acquired discernment of Jesus’ core mission into a single sentence, one that is truly the foundation of the universality of the Gospel. It is a fundamental understanding. “I now realize,” he confesses, “how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34–35). But the elaboration he makes to the gathering gives fesh to this new appreciation and helps Cornelius and his party come to the same awareness as well. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem … He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. (Acts 10:36–43)1 The main elements Peter is underlining, and that he insists cannot be separated from the task of the proclamation of the Gospel, include the fact that the universality of Jesus’ message arises from the identity of Jesus himself, “who is Lord of all” because he is the anointed one of God; that the works Jesus performs are under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and are aimed at the 44

Theology of inculturation

liberation of humanity from every chain of evil; and that his works must be continued in various places, in the same way, and under the same guidance of the Spirit of God by his “witnesses.” Peter’s is an excellent synthesis of the indisputable requirements of the proclamation of the Gospel across the ages.The commission of Jesus to his disciples is irreversible; it mandates them to go to “all nations” without exception and “preach the Good News to everyone” (Mk. 16:15, Mt. 28:19,Acts 1:8).Thus, the privilege of all peoples throughout the world to hear the message of the Gospel, on the one hand, and the responsibility of Christ’s followers to spread the message, on the other, were pretty much settled questions from the very beginning of the Christian movement, at least in principle.The contentious question was and in various ways continues to be how to go about this double task. Is the ideal method to let each people hear the message “in their particular tongue,” as happened at Pentecost (Acts 2:1–13), or in one or another “favored” expression, as the early Judaizers insisted (Acts 15:1, also Gal. 2:1–19)? Again, in many subtle and palpable ways, the question still exercises the thinking of Christians and, as from the beginning, with several responses. The history of the Christian churches shows that practical attitudes to this question have ranged from refusal to accept the legitimacy of cultural pluralism in terms of proclamation and reception of the Gospel in one extreme, through some degree of tolerance in the middle, to positive approval.2 The frst attitude was fuelled mainly by various forms of political colonialism with which the churches may have been associated at one time or another.The controlling dialectic in this situation was the supposed “superiority” of the culture or cultures of the evangelizers in which the Christian faith happened to be expressed over the receiving cultures that were invariably deemed “inferior” and “unworthy” of expressing the truth of the Christian faith. On close analysis, however, the issue here does not appear to have been the faith but essentially human ego, perhaps unconsciously disguised as faith.With the gradual recognition of the reality of the persistence or permanence of different cultures in the world and the inevitable translation of the message of the Gospel in different modes of perception, despite the attitudes of the evangelizers, cultural tolerance followed as a missionary strategy. The acknowledgment of positive religious values in every culture was grudging. Even though cultures are different, the realization grew in certain parts of the world that there can be no other way to impart the message of the Gospel except to “adapt” it to certain aspects of different cultures that cannot be easily wiped away, and that would cause great harm if they were. But one approach to the interaction between the proclamation of the Gospel and human “language” or culture that has prevailed and seems most acceptable theologically today is the style and attitude dramatized at Pentecost. In terms of the history of the church in the Far East, as an example, it was fundamentally the style articulated in 1659 by the Vatican Congregation for evangelization for missionaries there to follow.The Congregation instructed European missionaries to the Chinese and Indo-Chinese peoples to Put no obstacles in their way; and for no reason whatever should you persuade these people to change their rites, customs, and ways of life unless these are obviously opposed to religion and good morals. For what is more absurd than to bring France or Spain or Italy or any other part of Europe into China[?]. It is not these that you should bring but the faith which does not spurn or reject any people’s rites and customs, unless they are depraved, but, on the contrary, tries to keep them … admire and praise what deserves to be respected.3 Although oscillating between observance and neglect at certain times and places, this approach to culture has stayed at the heart of the church’s proclamation of the Gospel. 45

Laurenti Magesa

Current perspectives on evangelization and culture In current times, the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church (Vatican II), meeting around the mid-20th century (1962–1965), was very specifc about the relationship between the mission of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and human culture. One of the Council’s most signifcant documents, the Constitution, on the relationship between the church and the world, Gaudium et Spes, declared that There are many ties between the message of salvation and human culture. The Incarnate, Son of the Father, has spoken according to the culture proper to each epoch. Likewise, the Church in the course of time has used the discoveries of different cultures so that in her preaching, she might spread and explain the message of Christ to all nations. At the same time, the Church is not bound exclusively to any race or nation, any particular way of life. Faithful to her own tradition, she can enter into communion with the various civilizations.The Gospel of Christ constantly renews the life and culture of fallen man. It never ceases to purify and elevate the morality of peoples. By riches coming from above, it makes fruitful the spiritual qualities and traditions of every people and age.The Church, in the very fulfllment of her own function, stimulates and advances human and civic culture by her action, leading … [people] toward interior liberty.4 Although the Council was speaking from the perspective of Catholic Christianity, the insights it offers on the subject are those also of many other major Christian churches. The evangelical mission statements at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974 and the Affrmation of the World Evangelical Fellowship at Iguassu, Nigeria, in 1999 are examples. Both affrmed the same thing as Vatican II.The Lausanne Covenant states that “The Gospel does not presuppose the superiority of any culture to another, but evaluates all cultures according to its own criteria of truth and righteousness, and insists on moral absolutes in every culture.”5 And according to the Iguassu statement, messengers of the Gospel must commit themselves to the task of constantly clarifying “the relationship between Gospel and Culture, both in theory and practice,” because “The Gospel is always presented and received within a cultural context.” Therefore, the statement directs, Christians must continue studying “how different cultural perspectives may enrich our understanding of the Gospel as well as how all worldviews have to be critiqued and transformed by it.”6 A paper prepared for a conference of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Athens, Greece, in 2005 on mission and evangelism specifed that In any culture, the message of Christ must be proclaimed in language and symbols adapted to that culture and in ways that are relevant to people’s life experiences. There are different approaches to culturally sensitive evangelism. For some people and churches, such witness is implicit when churches regularly celebrate the liturgy, including in it, where appropriate, local cultural symbols. Others suggest that “a way of making non-intrusive contact with communities of other cultures is that of ‘presence.’An effort is frst made to get to know and understand people in that community, and sincerely to listen to and learn from them … At the right time, people could be invited to participate in the story of the gospel.” In some cases, the gospel may best be conveyed by silent solidarity or be revealed through a deeply spiritual way of life. In contexts which are hostile to the voicing of the gospel, the witness could take place 46

Theology of inculturation

through providing “a safe space” for spirituality to germinate, where the Jesus story can be revealed.” Others insist that in most contexts explicit testimony is called for that there is no substitute for preaching the word, following the manifold impulses and dynamics of the Holy Spirit.7 In a letter dedicated specifcally to evangelism, Pope Francis has recently described the “adaptability” of the Gospel to different cultures as something to celebrate: it constitutes, in his words, the “joy of the Gospel.”The aptitude of the Gospel of Christ to enter into every culture and to be able to be expressed and proclaimed through the various cultures of the world is a joyous gift. As he insists (in criticism of certain mentalities and tendencies prevailing in some quarters of the church),“We cannot demand that peoples of every continent, in expressing their Christian faith, imitate modes of expression which European nations [for example] developed at a particular moment of their history.” Faith in Christ is universal; he insists it “cannot be constricted to the limits of understanding and expression of any one culture. It is an indisputable fact that no single culture can exhaust the mystery of our redemption in Christ.”8 To explain this core point of the proclamation of the Gospel, he continues to clarify that The People of God is incarnate in the peoples of the earth, each of which has its own culture.The concept of culture is valuable for grasping the various expressions of the Christian life present in God’s people. It has to do with the lifestyle of a given society, the specifc way in which its members relate to one another, to other creatures and to God. Understood in this way, culture embraces the totality of a people’s life. Each people in the course of its history develops its culture with legitimate autonomy.This is due to the fact that the human person,“by nature stands completely in need of life in society” and always exists in reference to society, fnding there a concrete way of relating to reality.The human person is always situated in a culture:“nature and culture are intimately linked.” Grace supposes culture, and God’s gift becomes fesh in the culture of those who receive it.9 It follows, then, according to the Pope, that “When properly understood, cultural diversity is not a threat to Church unity,” since “The Holy Spirit … transforms our hearts and enables us to enter into the perfect communion of the blessed Trinity, where all things fnd their unity.” In our cultural diversity, he observes, the Holy Spirit himself “brings forth a rich variety of gifts, while at the same time creating a unity which is never uniformity but a multifaceted and inviting harmony.”10 As he sees it, this fact is also in tune with the logic of the incarnation, which is both deeply cultural at the same time as it is eminently transcultural.According to Pope Francis, therefore, Evangelization joyfully acknowledges these varied treasures which the Holy Spirit pours out upon the Church.We would not do justice to the logic of the incarnation if we thought of Christianity as monocultural and monotonous.While it is true that some cultures have been closely associated with the preaching of the Gospel and the development of Christian thought, the revealed message is not identifed with any of them; its content is transcultural. Hence in the evangelization of new cultures or cultures which have not received the Christian message, it is not essential to impose a specifc cultural form, no matter how beautiful or ancient it may be, together with the Gospel.The message that we proclaim always has a certain cultural dress, but we in the Church can sometimes fall into a needless hallowing of our own culture, and thus show more fanaticism than true evangelizing zeal.11 47

Laurenti Magesa

These and numerous other statements of a similar orientation from various Christian traditions12 provide a synthesis of both the mission of the church in the world, which is evangelization, and the practical dynamics of approaching this charge, or Christian pastoral action.The church does not do mission as her own invention. Because it is essentially God’s mission, she follows a scheme intrinsic to God’s self-revelation to humanity from the beginning of creation, as it is expressed in the Scriptures.This “structure” forms the history of salvation. In one word, it constitutes the dynamics between divine revelation and human culture or cultures.This is what is referred to theologically as “inculturation,” the process through which “the Church ‘introduces peoples, together with their cultures, into her own community,’” as Pope Francis explains. For “every culture offers positive values and forms which can enrich the way the Gospel is preached, understood and lived.” In this way, the Church takes up the values of different cultures and becomes sponsa ornata monilibus suis,“the bride bedecked with her jewels.”13

Contextuality and divine self-revelation The subtleties of the interplay between faith and culture, or inculturation, that are indicated in the churches’ documents just exemplifed also permeate the Scriptures.They are based on and arise from there.When Jesus is described in the New Testament as “Messiah” or “The Anointed One of God,” for instance, the designation is not without foundation in the practical history of Israel. The title can only be properly understood within the context of this history. The narratives about the liberation of the people of Israel from the situation of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the land of Canaan, theologically recalled in great detail in the biblical books of Exodus and Joshua, provide a good clue to the context of the ascription “Messiah” later on to the person and work of Jesus. Moses was, of course, the principal fgure in the initial movement of the freedom of the people of Israel. However, the person who succeeded him to complete the mission was Hosea son of Nun, who was christened “Joshua” by Moses himself, evidently to connote the saving activity of God in his successor.14 The salvation of the people of Israel by God’s power through the actions of mentors he “anointed,” like Joshua, is the central and overriding motif of the entire narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. The same theme is taken over from the very outset in the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament, as culminating in Jesus. For the New Testament, Jesus appears as the new Joshua for the new people of God, the Christian community. When the angel Gabriel announces to Mary the news of her being chosen by God to bear God’s son, therefore, the salvation theme is obvious at every stage of the account. Jesus, as the new Joshua, is the preeminent Messiah—rendered in Greek as “the Christ.”The angel pronounces this detail to Mary by alerting her to the effect that “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus [Joshua].” Luke’s Gospel specifes that this new Joshua “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end” (Lk. 1:31–33). In short, just as of old with Joshua in the liberation of Israel as a prototype, God will be acting through Jesus to liberate the entire humanity. What this affrmation demonstrates is the fact that the saving activity of Jesus is founded in the liberating activity of God himself, as expressed in God’s activity among the people of Israel’s existence.Theologically, Israel is a prototype of the entire human race; her history of salvation is also archetypical of the history of humanity. Jesus’ activity is the mystical representation or, in fact, the actual extension and completion of the divine activity of liberation for the whole of 48

Theology of inculturation

the human race since creation. By prefacing, as he does, the saving activity of Jesus with a list of his genealogy in his Gospel account, Matthew also means to impart this exact lesson. He bases the messiahship of Jesus upon the salvation leitmotif of Israel by recording the major fgures connected with it. In a more metaphysical but perhaps even more profound way, the evangelist John likewise begins his Gospel by reclaiming the same context of the divine self-revelation to and for humanity from the beginning of creation.The Word (the manifestation of God on earth) existed from the beginning, but he “became fesh [human] and made his dwelling among us.We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:4).The Word, who is Jesus, is now Immanuel, God amongst us, and he is the same as all of humanity in all respects but sin (see Mt. 1:23 and Heb. 4:15).This is the incarnation—the fundamental mystery for human salvation. The incarnation and its natural extension and conclusion in the teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus constitute one process—theologically described as the Christ-event—that revealed completely and fully the meaning of God and his activity in the world concerning the ultimate goal of humanity. Like many others, Pope John Paul understands this process appropriately as a “sublime mystery.” It is a mystery which took place in history: in clearly defned circumstances of time and space, amidst a people with its own culture, a people that God had chosen and accompanied throughout the entire history of salvation, in order to show through what he did for them what he intended to do for the whole human race.15 The Christ-event took place, and its consequences continue to do so, in real time and actual geographical and social locations and conditions, with God using the appropriate symbols and signs and language to impart his liberating message clearly, whether or not it is accepted by humanity.Whatever the case, however, comprehension by specifc men and women, the addressees of God’s message, is essential to the process.There could not and cannot be any “revelation” at all without God’s direct engagement with the world; that is, God’s interaction with humanity in time and space. Revelation is truly a “dialogue” or a process of “communication” between God and humanity. Such also is clearly the case with the Christian Gospel carried on by the church in the world; it means that to be effective as such, the Gospel must be proclaimed in a “language” capable of being understood by the intended hearers.The Gospel must be contextualized in time and place if it is to have a meaningful reception and response. For “Just as ‘the Word became fesh and dwelt among us’” (Jn. 1:14), as Pope John Paul II explained,“so too the Good News, the Word of Jesus Christ proclaimed to the nations, must take root in the life-situation of the hearers of the Word.”This is what it implies to go out and preach the Gospel to all nations.Thus, in the view of Pope John Paul II, inculturation corresponds to the incarnation. “Inculturation is precisely this insertion of the Gospel message into cultures. For the Incarnation of the Son of God, precisely because it was complete and concrete, was also an incarnation in a particular culture.”16 Like everything involved in human communication, the Gospel of Christ must be interpreted: salvation history is simply this dialectic encounter between God and peoples as formed by their cultures. It is an ongoing call and response, a continual dialogue which always and necessarily takes place in specifc cultural contexts and never in a cultural vacuum. Practically, the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the world makes certain demands on its messengers. It “presupposes that preachers and teachers enlarge their horizons to include an accurate and intimate understanding of the culture and language of the people they address.”17 A problem arises if this requirement is ignored or forgotten and the Gospel is presented without 49

Laurenti Magesa

attention to variations of social settings.Anthony J. Gittins presents it as a thesis in “intercultural living” that Since a particular culture (or constellation of cultural traits) marks every single person, it follows that a person’s faith can only be lived culturally; there is no lived faith without a corresponding lived culture. Faith is expressed in practice.This requires that everyone be encouraged to express faith through one’s culture and be made aware that failure to live deeply within and through one’s own culture can produce a kind of religious or spiritual schizophrenia.18 It becomes diffcult for anyone to identify oneself fully with the Gospel if the message of the Gospel is expressed and presented as an “alien” reality, far removed from one’s deepest experience.

Scholarly meaning of the concept Given the conditionalities of the communication of the Gospel message within specifc contexts, we may adopt it as one of the best technical and scholarly descriptions of the notion of inculturation that was provided by the Jesuit father Pedro Arrupe. In his 1978 “Letter to the Whole Society on Inculturation,” Arrupe saw inculturation as the process of “the incarnation of Christian life and the Christian message in a particular local cultural context.”And this must take place in such a way that the experience not only fnds expression through elements proper to the culture in question (this alone would be no more than a superfcial adaptation), but becomes a principle that animates, directs, and unifes a culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring about “a new creation.”19 This is precisely the dynamics, according to Pope John Paul II, that makes the Christian faith a culture, something that is demanded by both Gospel and culture. “The synthesis between culture and faith is not just a demand of culture, but also of faith,” John Paul II declares. “A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not faithfully lived out.”20 Scholars isolate two fundamental properties of the process of inculturation, one mainly theological and the other explicitly sociological, even if the two are not completely unconnected. The theological aspect pertains to the nature and method of divine self-revelation that we have briefy discussed above.This is that God reveals God’s divine self through concrete events and locations in history. The Christian God is a historical God, not an abstract philosophical one aloof from humanity.The Christian God is, indeed,“Immanuel”—God with us, as already noted, a reality concretized by the fact of the incarnation, in the person of Jesus who lived and suffered and died for the liberation of humanity (Phil. 2:5–7). Therefore, in Christianity, the human relationship with God is also concrete, demanding the practice of love-justice, the imperative of doing the will of God, which is a sincere concern for and service of other human beings, especially those in need (Mt. 25:31–46). In this task, time and space, and therefore human culture, cannot be dispensed with, for it is in these situations that the divine will is revealed. The sociological aspect of inculturation concerns itself with human dignity that, in the process of evangelization, is realized by recognizing and respecting the “otherness of the other.” Teresia Hinga describes this as everyone and every community’s “right to be different and the right to resist imposed difference.”21 On the part of the recipients of the Gospel, inculturation, 50

Theology of inculturation

therefore, demands the right of self-defnition, or the ability to assert that “this is who or what I am.” One becomes an adult when one reaches this point in life. It is a liberating moment, even in theological terms, because it allows the faith to sink its roots into the very being of the individual and the community. One cannot avoid referring here to the empowering question Jesus posed to his disciples concerning his identity:“And you, who do you say that I am?” In Peter’s answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus acknowledges this moment and confrms the maturity of Peter’s faith and his readiness for the responsibility of leadership (Mt. 16:13–20). At this point in the discussion on the notion of inculturation in academic scholarship, it is useful to specify what inculturation is not. Strictly speaking, even if the process has important overt sociological expressions and consequences, such as modes of conducting Christian ritual (liturgy), and a sense of personal and cultural dignity—as has just been pointed out—inculturation is primarily a theological term that essentially refers to “God and faith.”22 It is much deeper than enculturation, acculturation, or adaptation, which are sociological processes.23 But “when we speak of inculturation,” as Aylward Shorter specifes,“we are referring to a phenomenon that transcends mere acculturation. It is the stage when a human culture is enlivened by the Gospel from within.”24 From pastoral theology, therefore, what Gittins cautions about the popular usage of the phrase “liturgical inculturation” is important to keep in mind concerning other areas of church life as well. The subject of inculturation is faith, “not liturgy, ritual, translation, or adaptation.” If one is to be precise theologically, liturgy can only be “acculturated” or “adapted” to the relevant cultures.“If, however, liturgical modifcations produce a harvest of renewal in the way the faith is lived, then that harvest—and not the liturgy itself—is inculturated faith.”25 It means that genuine inculturation is always a deeper reality than its sociological manifestations. It encompasses these externals, it is true, but it works to transform the interior attitudes of persons and communities so that they have new perspectives on actual living. For this, perhaps the phrase “to be born again,”26 if used correctly in its theological sense, is accurate: true inculturation should bring about “new life.”

Practical and theological dynamics of inculturation The historical dynamics of inculturation in the Christian Church contain necessary tensions about the distinction between what is “clean” or “unclean;” or what is permissible or otherwise based on Christ’s Gospel. Inculturation is, consequently, a narrative that pertains to what, legitimately, Christian people at any given time and place may or may not do.As such, inculturation is a highly dynamic and interactive process which has, as one of its main features, continuous explicit or implicit comparisons between or among modes of human existence in the world. The question of how “we” do things in relation, or as opposed, to “them” is always a major (even if often implicit) component of the narrative of inculturation regardless of what, in the end, the answer to the inquiry might be. For, in general, the sense of evaluation of the “other” belongs to the very nature of human communication and infuences the direction of human interactions, for better or worse. From the New Testament, the story of inculturation is clearly illustrated by tensions in the early existence of the church, leading to their (theoretical, doctrinal27) resolution at the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem at around 50 CE.The Apostle Peter’s spiritual transformation28 is certainly analogous in many fundamental ways to that of Saul of Tarsus or Paul (Acts 9), and there are paradigmatic instances of inculturation both in primitive Christianity and today. Initially resistant to appreciating the “different other,” seen from their vantage points as impermissible or, indeed, 51

Laurenti Magesa

“unclean,” both Peter and Paul are led into a new insight to appreciate the other’s perception of reality, something that radically transforms them.They embrace a new perspective. Whatever impression these and other accounts in both the Old and New Testaments portray, the transformation of this nature is not a sudden happening; it is rather a stretched out and usually unfnished development. Inculturation, the divine activity transforming peoples and cultures from within, as is also evident throughout the later history of the church as the proclamation of the Gospel moves from one place of the world to another, is similarly a long-drawn-out and ongoing development. In his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, Pope John Paul II notes likewise that The process of the Church’s insertion into peoples’ cultures is a lengthy one. It is not a matter of purely external adaptation, for inculturation “means the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their integration into Christianity and the insertion of Christianity into the various human cultures.” The Pope continues to explain that inculturation is thus a profound and all-embracing one, which involves the Christian message and also the Church’s refection and practice. But at the same time, it is a diffcult process, for it must in no way compromise the distinctiveness and integrity of the Christian faith.29 Still, the Gospel must, necessarily, even if gradually, take on the symbols and language proper to each locality. For, “From ancient times down to the present,” as the conciliar document of Vatican II, Nostra Aetate, puts it, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrate their lives with a profound religious sense.30 Inculturation must, therefore, encourage all people of faith to “fnd God in all things,” to borrow a phrase from the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola.This is one of its most important theological implications. Inculturation reminds us of the greatness of God, who cannot be captured or contained in human understanding at any one time or place, but must continually be sought “in all things.” Ecumenism and interreligious dialogue are, therefore, proper and necessary elements of the process.This is why, according to Vatican II, the Church exhorts her sons [and daughters], that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these … [people].31

Inculturation in Africa It should be clear how and why inculturation is a worldwide requirement of the Gospel. Nevertheless, it is more pronounced in some regions of the world where the message of Christ has been formally introduced only in comparatively recent times. This is the case with Africa south of the Sahara. Realizing this fact, Pope Paul VI echoed the spirit of the conciliar document 52

Theology of inculturation

Gaudium et Spes, noted above, to the entire episcopate of the African Catholic Church gathered in Kampala in 1969.The Pope urged the bishops to take the African context seriously in the task of proclaiming the Gospel.Without mincing words, they said: you may, and you must, have an African Christianity. Indeed, you possess human values and characteristic forms of culture which can rise up to perfection, such as to fnd in Christianity, and for Christianity, a true superior fullness, and prove to be capable of richness of expression, all its own, and genuinely African … [Y]ou will be able to remain sincerely African, even in your interpretation of Christian life; you will be able to formulate Catholicism in terms congenial to your own culture; you will be capable of bringing to the Catholic Church the precious and original contribution of “negritude” which she needs, particularly in this historic hour.32 Similarly, the fnal Communiqué of the Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians stated in 1977: We believe that African theology must be understood in the context of African life and culture and the creative attempt of African people to shape a new future that is different from the colonial past and the neo-colonial present. … African theology must reject, therefore, the prefabricated ideas of North Atlantic theology by defning itself according to the struggles of the people in their resistance against the structures of domination. Our task as theologians is to create a theology that arises from and is accountable to African people.33 Numerous more references can be cited to the same effect. In short, the point being made, in the words of Bishop Bernard Agre from the Ivory Coast in 1990 is that the African church must stop being seen or seeing itself as “a carbon copy of Europe.” It is imperative for the churches of the continent, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to construct their Christian vision and history.34 Essential to inculturation in Africa is the critical “rehabilitation” of African spiritual/ religious values.“African religious experience and heritage … should have formed the vehicle for conveying the Gospel verities to Africa,” as Archbishop Desmond Tutu once observed. “It … [is] vital for the African’s self-respect that this kind of rehabilitation of his religious heritage should take place.” African spirituality, according to Tutu, remains “a great store from which we [Africans] can fashion new ways of speaking to and about God, and new styles of worship consistent with our new faith.”35 This exercise involves the human faculty of the intellect, the imagination of Africa. Imagination creates culture as much as it transforms it. For faith in Jesus to become a culture and to transform culture in Africa, Africans must envision what is possible for the church there under the guidance of the Gospel. In Africa, African theology must fulfll this role. African theology must address questions that African people and communities are facing. The questions John V. Taylor posed more than half a century ago (in 1963) must form the quest of African theology: these are such as “if Christ were to appear as the answer to the questions that Africans are asking, what would he look like?”This is the question for African Christology. If Christ came into the African world as the liberator of the African person, how would he act? This is the question for African soteriology. And, fnally, “if Africa offered … [Christ] the praises and petitions of her total uninhibited humanity,” how in practice would this appear? This is the question for African ecclesiology and worship.36 For inculturation in Africa, these remain the most urgent questions. 53

Laurenti Magesa

Conclusion Inculturation as a matter of “encounter” between the Gospel of Christ and particular cultures— the Gospel concretely meeting cultural human beings with their own strengths and shortcomings and with their values and customs, some responding positively and others negatively to Christ’s invitation to discipleship—must be acknowledged as the essence of evangelization or evangelism in the Christian Church. As briefy spelled out by M.A.C.Warren, the challenge of inculturation in the process of proclaiming the Gospel throughout the world is, therefore, always twofold: frst, to constantly try to respond to “the deep human needs” of peoples of a particular location at a specifc point in history, and, second, “to make peoples of different cultural backgrounds feel at home” in the new environment the proclamation of Gospel continuously constructs and establishes.37 In this sense, and pragmatic terms, inculturation cannot but be part and parcel of Gospel and of the Christian Church which is called upon to proclaim it throughout the ages.The document of the World Council of Churches, already referred to, states accordingly: When the gospel interacts authentically with a culture, it becomes rooted in that culture and opens up biblical and theological meaning for its time and place.The gospel will affrm some aspects of a culture, while challenging, critiquing, and transforming others. Through such processes, cultures may be transfgured and become bearers of the gospel. At the same time, cultures nourish, illuminate, enrich, and challenge the understanding and articulation of the gospel.38 As the same document continues to elaborate, inculturation is, therefore, never anywhere a carte blanche but a complex affair. This is its ultimate challenge. To be faithful to the spirit of the Gospel of Christ, it must take into account the Gospel’s defnitive vision and goal for the whole of the human race and the entire creation: The gospel challenges aspects of cultures which produce or perpetuate injustice, suppress human rights, or hinder a sustainable relationship towards creation.There is now need to go beyond certain inculturation theologies. Cultural and ethnic identity is a gift of God, but it must not be used to reject and oppress other identities. Identity should be defned not in opposition to, in competition with or in fear of others, but rather as complementary. “The gospel reconciles and unites people of all identities into a new community in which the primary and ultimate identity is identity in Jesus Christ.”39

Notes 1 For this activity of Jesus, see also Mt. 4:23. Scriptural quotations are from the New International Version of the Bible (NIV). 2 For documents from the history of the church that indicate these different attitudes, see, for example, Robert A. Hunt, The Gospel among the Nations: A Documentary History of Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010). 3 Cited by Peter K. Sarpong, “Christianity Meets Traditional African Cultures.” In Hunt, The Gospel among the Nations, 176. 4 Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, no. 58. Incidentally, already in 1939. Pope Pius XII had written in a similar vein in his encyclical letter Summi Pontifcatus (no. 44–45) that “The Church of Christ … cannot and does not think of deprecating or disdaining the particular characteristics which each people, with jealous and intelligible pride, cherishes and retains as a precious heritage. Her aim is a super-

54

Theology of inculturation

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

natural union in all-embracing love, deeply felt and practiced, and not the unity, which is exclusively external and superfcial and by that very fact weak … The Church hails with joy and follows with her maternal blessing every method of guidance and care which aims at a wise and orderly evolution of particular forces and tendencies having their origin in the individual character of each race, provided that they are not opposed to the duties incumbent on men from their unity of origin and common destiny.” “The Lausanne Covenant (1974).” In Hunt, The Gospel among the Nations, 263. “Iguassu Affrmation of the World Evangelical Fellowship, 1999.” In Hunt, The Gospel among the Nations, 267. fle:///C:/Users/Fr.%20Magesa/Downloads/Preparatory%20Paper%20No%201%20(2).pdf, no. 52. Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel – Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013, no. 118. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 115. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 117. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 117. See some of these documents in Hunt, The Gospel among the Nations. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, no. 116. For a discussion on this and related names, see Jews for Jesus,“An Introduction to the Names Yehoshua/ Joshua, Yshua, Jesus and Yeshu.” https://jewsforjesus.org/answers/an-introduction-to-the-names-yeh oshua-joshua-yeshua-jesus-and-yeshu/ John Paul II,Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa, 1995, no. 60. John Paul II, Ecclesia in Africa, no. 60. See Frederick E. Crowe, Christ and History: The Christology of Bernard Lonergan from 1935 to 1982 (Ottawa: Novalis, 2005), 186. Anthony J. Gittins, Living Mission Interculturally: Faith, Culture, and the Renewal of Praxis (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), 4–5. “Letter to the Whole Society on Inculturation.” Quoted by Carl F. Starkloff, “Inculturation and Cultural Systems – Part 1.” Theological Studies, 55 (1994): 69. For the entire letter, see J. Aixala, ed., Other Apostolates Today: Selected Letters and Addresses of Pedro Arrupe SJ.Vol. 3 (St. Louis: institute of Jesuit Sources, 1981), 172–181. In terms of inculturation discourse, there are two signifcant issues to note within Christianity.The frst involves the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches and movements, for whom the question concerning inculturation does not arise, at least not as a point of theological speech.These churches’ main orientation is to apply the Bible as it is, an assertion that is usually prefaced by the mantra “the Bible says.” Consciously, therefore, many Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal communities reject the process of inculturation as an adulteration of the Bible.Yet this does not mean that they altogether escape the implications of the dynamics of the notion. There are also the indigenous Christian movements and churches in different parts of the world, one important expression of which are the African Initiated, Independent, or Indigenous Churches (AICs).Although these do not, as a rule, have a “theology” of inculturation, their practical expression of it is often extremely pronounced as a sociological reality.The practice of polygamy is a case in point in several African AICs, where these churches object to the rule of monogamy in the mainline churches in Africa as a cultural imposition. In this case, they appeal, if pressed for an explanation, to the practice of some of the patriarchs in the Old Testament for justifcation of their own behaviour. In the main, however, “inculturation” in these churches and movements takes place intuitively without much academic theological refection. Message of John Paul II to Cardinal Paul Poupard for the 20th Anniversary of the Pontifcal Council for Culture. https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2002/may/documents/hf_jpii_spe_20020514_message-poupard.html Teresia Hinga, “Inculturation and the Otherness of Africans: Some Refections.” In Peter Turkson and Frans Wijsen, eds., Inculturation: Abide by the Otherness of Africa and Africans (Kampen: Uitgeversmaatschappij J.H. Kok, 1994), 17. Gittins, Living Mission, 60. See Gittins, Living Mission, 56–60. Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 12. Gittins, Living Mission, 60. See Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in Jn. 3:1-21.

55

Laurenti Magesa 27 It is important to emphasize the theoretical or doctrinal aspect of the instructions of the Apostolic meeting of Jerusalem described in Acts 15 because, in actual fact, the conficts continued.That intercultural tensions cannot be completely resolved once and for all is of the nature of human communication. Be it intra- or intercultural, inculturation is an ongoing process, a continual attempt to “adjust” modes of human existence and the message of the Gospel to ever-changing circumstances. 28 See above. 29 Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, no. 52, 30 Vatican II, Nostra Aetate, no. 2. 31 Vatican II, Nostra Aetate, no. 2. 32 Paul VI, Address “To the Inaugural 1969 SECAM, Kampala.” See Teresa Okure, Paul van Thiel et al., 32 Articles Evaluating Inculturation of Christianity in Africa (Eldoret: AMECEA Gaba Publications, 1990), 35–36. Italics in original. 33 Pan-African Conference of Third World Theoogians,“Final Communiqué.” In Kof Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres, eds., African Theology En Route (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 193. 34 See Frans Wijsen and Harrie Hoeben,“We Are Not a Carbon Copy of Europe.” In Turkson and Wijsen, Inculturation, 72. 35 Quoted in Kwame Bediako, Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 50. 36 John V.Taylor, The Primal Vision: Christian Presence amid African Religion (London: SCM Press, 1963), 24. See also, Benezet Bujo, African Theology in Its Social Context (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992). 37 M.A. C. Warren,“Foreword.” In Taylor, Christian Presence, 8. 38 fle:///C:/Users/Fr.%20Magesa/Downloads/Preparatory%20Paper%20No%201%20(2).pdf. no. 49. 39 No. 50.

Bibliography Bujo, Benezet. African Theology in Its Social Context. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992. Crowe, Frederick E. Christ, and History:The Christology of Bernard Lonergan from 1935 to 1982. Ottawa, ON: Novalis, 2005. Gittins, Anthony J. Living Mission Interculturally: Faith, Culture, and the Renewal of Praxis. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015. Hunt, Robert A. The Gospel Among the Nations:A Documentary History of Inculturation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010. Magesa, Laurenti. What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. Martey, Emmanuel. African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993. Mugambi, J.N.K. African Christian Theology:An Introduction. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya, 1989. Pope, Francis. The Joy of the Gospel – Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013. Shorter, Aylward. Toward a Theology of Inculturation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988. Taylor, John V. The Primal Vision: Christian Presence amid African Religion. London: SCM Press, 1963. Turkson, Peter, and Frans Wijsen, eds. Inculturation: Abide by the Otherness of Africa and Africans. Kampen: Uitgeversmaatschappij J.H. Kok, 1994.

56

4 SOURCES OF AFRICAN THEOLOGY Chammah J. Kaunda

For nearly [a century] now African theologians have established a tradition which while learning from theological frameworks developed elsewhere, still seeks to produce theologies that will speak meaningfully and constructively to the African churches and the African condition. —Tinyiko Sam Maluleke (2001: 368).

Introduction The sociocultural and political manifestations of Christian faith have always raised the crucial question of the context and text. The question of context and text suggests that the context itself is also text.This means that in culturally variegated contexts such as the African continent, there can be no totalizing theological project.African theologians therefore have warned against “imposition of grand narratives” which are perceived as “nothing but the pretense that all are the same and the same is all—which is but one more way of dismissing, ignoring and silencing the voices of the poor and marginalized” (Maluleke 2001: 369).1 In other words, specifc contexts of theologizing even with the same cultural space are terrains of contestations, diverse experiences, and mutually contradictory claims to knowledge.This conceptualization of reality has led some African theologians to suggest that “one umbrella paradigm” for all African theology is inadequate for there are already numerous diverging and contesting African theologies (Maluleke 2001: 371).This is in keeping with contested and negotiated African interpretations of reality.The question is: How is Christian faith experienced and articulated in various contexts and periods of its manifestations? The postmodern and postcolonial era has seen various scholars from differing contexts attempting to construct situated theologies relevant and culturally sensitive within particular cultural contexts. In the beginning, African theologians sought to critique the universalization of Eurocentric theology—as a fxed measure and authentic representation of Christian theology and by which to judge and postulate—to imagine or construct pure theology. In contrast, Africanists argued that Christian faith has always “carried a burn of the incarnation and that its historical manifestation in Jesus Christ concentrated and made visible a process that is occurring throughout history” (Sanneh 1983: 170).2 This argument is well articulated by John Mbiti 57

Chammah J. Kaunda

(1970: 438),“Christianity is always a beggar seeking for food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures it encounters in its never-ending journeys and wanderings.” In his article “What is African Theology?” Harry Sawyerr (1987: 22) stressed, The church in Africa is faced with a clamant demand for an interpretation of the Christian faith, in a sanguine hope that such an interpretation, when produced, would provide a means of bringing home to Africans the truths of the Christian gospel in an idiom related to the African situation. Thus, African theologians have attempted “a correlation of African and Christian ideas” (Mbiti 1969: 159) in order to construct an “authentically African Christianity” (Gibellini 1994: xi) expressed in concrete African thought forms, idioms, and metaphors (Kurewa 1975: 36; Sanneh 1983: 170), a “theology brewed in an African pot” (Orobator 2008: Theology Brewed in an African Pot). Whereas the agenda “to produce theologies that will speak meaningfully and constructively to the African churches and the African condition” (Maluleke 2001: 368) has found unanimous acceptance among most African theologians; however, “the debate on the sources and criteria for truly African and truly Christian theology has continued to our time” (Maluleke 1997b: 8). The aim of this chapter attempts to underline sources of African theological refection. In what follows, I analyze various defnitions of African theology.

On delineations Various Africanists have attempted to give a contextual defnition of African theology in various ways—all who are oriented toward understanding the function of Christian faith within the African historical context.3 Gabriel Setiloane (1986: 34) sees African theology as a theology “expressed in the categories of thought which arise out of the philosophy and worldview of Africans.” Setiloane’s characterization reinforces the All Africa Conference of Churches’ (AACC) view of African theology which arose from the Abidjan theological consultation in 1969.This consultation described African theology as “A theology which is based on the Biblical Faith and speaks to the African ‘soul’ (or relevant to Africa) … expressed in the categories of thought which arise out of the philosophy of African people” (cited in Muzorewa 1985: 196). The underlying phrase was “expressed through African thinking and culture.” Muzorewa (1990: 174) defnes African theology as a refective interpretation of what the Biblical God is doing to enhance African survival through the agency of people who are informed by Scripture and traditional concepts of the God who is revealed to us through the faith and the life of Jesus Christ. Ngindu Mushete (1994: 20) stresses that it is a theology that “operates based on the cultural and religious experience of the African peoples … responding to the questions posed by African society in its contemporary evolution.” In other words, the Africanness of theology is not only measured by the degree of its inculturation but also by the extent to which it can adequately respond and speak to the spiritual and material needs of Africans in their total context (Tienou 1990; Du Toit 1998).The implication here is that no theology can claim Africanity that is not arising, shaped, and expressed from and responding to concrete African life, realities, cultures, philosophies, and faith of African people in their particular historical context. 58

Sources of African theology

Charles Nyamiti (1971: 1, see also his 1979, 1994; Ukpong 1984; Stinton 2004a, 2004b) defnes African theology as “systematic and scientifc elaboration of Christian faith by African needs and mentality.” For James Okoye (1997: 9), African theology, or what some call African Christian theology, is that theology which refects on the gospel, the Christian tradition, and the total African reality in an African manner and from the perspectives of the African worldview.The total African reality, of course, includes the ongoing changes in the cultures. Mbiti (1980: 119) had given an earlier defnition of African theology as “theological refection and expression by African Christians.” In New Testament Eschatology in an African Background: A Study of the Encounter between New Testament Theology and African Traditional Concepts, Mbiti (1971: 187) described African theology as “a Theology built upon areas of apparent similarities and contact between Christianity and traditional African concepts and practices.” The initial understanding of African theology followed a comparative approach searching for the possible physical contact between Africa and Christian faith—the emphasis was on “continuity” and “discontinuity and or confict” (Sawyerr 1968, 1970; Dickson 1969; Oduyoye 1979; Muzorewa 1985, 1990; Kibicho 1978; Setiloane 1978).4 Mbiti (1998: 144) later advanced the defnition as “the articulation of the Christian faith by African Christians: both theologians and lay people. Christians ask themselves what their faith means and try to explain or live it within the context of their history, culture, and contemporary issues.” Mbiti’s and Okoye’s delineations encompass some key features or sources which African theologians have identifed as critical for doing African theology. It remains that African theology is a peculiarly African form of theological refections which gives some unique spin on the phenomenon of global theological thought (Maluleke 2010; Phiri 2008/9; Parratt 1995; Ukpong 1994; Pobee 1979).

The question of the sources The subject of African theology as authentically African and authentically Christian is closely connected with the question of its sources.The question of sources has been discussed since the inception of African theology over half a century ago. It was particularly discussed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.5 Some Africanists suggested the Scripture (Bible) and African religiocultural heritage as the main sources of African theology. Others, especially African Catholic theologians, pointed to Christian revelation and African philosophy. Nyamiti (1971: 1) suggests that to keep the integrity of its Christian ethos, African theology should also be grounded on both Christian revelations and African cultures. Still, other Africanists held that analysis of sermons by both African and non-African preachers and or translation of the Bible into vernacular languages. In short, early African theologians did not offer all the tools needed to develop an authentic African theology (Appiah-Kubi and Torres eds., 1979, Stinton 2000). The ongoing and continuous process of critical refection within African theology has shown that its sources are multifaceted and dynamically fow from the confuence of different strands of Christian heritage, African religiocultural past, African scholarship (e.g., fction, poetry, philosophy, and African literature including great personalities and thinkers such as Nelson Mandela, Frantz Fanon, Web Du Bois, Desmond Tutu, and Mercy Oduyoye), and various religious and non-religious imaginations of Africa. It is chiseled in the fres of sociocultural, religious, political, economic, and historical developments. The complex realities in which African Christians live have formed a rich source of African theology.These realities included the variegated cultural forms of life, history of the continent and diaspora (from pre-colonial, 59

Chammah J. Kaunda

colonial, and postcolonial), arts, family, communal life, and numerous existential struggles such as against ecological degradation, epidemics (such as HIV and AIDS, Ebola and COVID 2019), racism, sexism, heterosexism, economic, political, social, and cultural oppressions and all forms of exploitation and injustices. Thus, the primary sources of African theology have been outlined as follows (Martey 1993; Pobee 1979, 1997; Muzorewa 1985; Stinton 2000): the Bible, Christian traditions and theological heritage, and ecumenical and various experiences; African traditional religions, cultures, history, and contemporary experiences both within the continent and in the diaspora;6 African anthropology, biographies,7 reason/rationalism, and all scientifc disciplines (natural sciences, social sciences, and formal sciences);8 and African Initiated Churches (AICs) and all religious traditions and non-religious worldviews in Africa including all contemporary African realities. It is important to stress that any African theology based exclusively only on mainline Christianity is inadequate, and similarly for any African theology based entirely only on AICs. It should be clear that there is no such thing as pure African Christian theology.African theology has always been “inter-religious, seeking to be more than a proselytizing theology without denigrating Christianity” (Maluleke 2007:416; Odozor, 2014 :97). Indeed, as Maluleke (2007: 416) highlights, “If anything, the growing plural situation in Africa demands an even broader and more rigorous inter-religious approach.” Each of these main sources consists of a number of sub-sources which often function as primary sources on their right, depending on the focus of a particular theological refection. Depending on the preferred source(s) or sub-source(s) and the method(s), various strands of African theology have been articulated. Mbiti (1998)9 outlines the following streams: cultural theology, black theology, liberation theology,African women’s theologies, postcolonial theology, science and technology theologies, queer theologies,African diaspora theologies and decolonial theologies.This an expansion of Maluleke’s (1997a) list which includes theologies of the AICs, African charismatic/evangelical theologies, reconstruction, and translation theologies.10 In what follows, I make some commentary on the sources that have attracted debate as to their methodological approach—the Bible and African indigenous religions.

The Bible Regarded as a framework within which African theology originated and developed, AACC perceives African theology as a branch of human sciences grounded in the biblical faith which is relevant to Africa (Muzorewa 1985). Nyamiti (2005) suggests the Scripture as a primary source of African theology. For him, the Bible is the “soul of theology” and the Christian tradition. In essence, he perceives African sociocultural situation about the past, present, and future together with non-Christian religions and their sacred texts as secondary.The essentialness of the Bible as a primary source of African theology is not only stressed among Catholic theologians but among Protestant scholars as well. For instance, John Pobee (1987: 25) declares the Bible “is the foundation document” on which “African theology has to be rooted.” Similarly, Mbiti (1979: 90) asserts,“Any viable theology must and should have a biblical basis, and African theology has begun to develop on this foundation.” For Mbiti (1979: 10, italics added for emphasis), Nothing can substitute for the Bible. However much African cultural-religious background may be close to the biblical world, we have to guard against references like “the hitherto unwritten African Old Testament” or sentiments that see the fnal revelation of God in the African religious heritage. 60

Sources of African theology

This is a similar position taken by Edward Fahole-Luke (1976: 141), who states that “the Bible is the basic and a primary source for the development of African Christian Theology.” Mbiti criticizes African liberation theology. He (1980: 121) laments, the “neglect in Africa of the biblical backing of the theology of liberation is a very alarming omission that calls urgently for correction; otherwise that branch of African theology will lose its credibility.”Tite Tienu (1990: 76, italics added for emphasis) demands that for African theology to be authentically Christian, it must be tested for both its “Africanness” and “correctness.”The former refers to its adequacy in meeting the needs of African people in their total context.The latter, he underlines, should be judged by the degree to which they are faithful to the Christian Scriptures. In that sense, African theologies have the same reference point as any other Christian theology. If we maintain the double concern of relating the totality of biblical revelation to the totality of the situation of African Christians, African theology will truly become a discipline at the service of the church. Jesse Mugambi (1995: 39) highlights, “The challenge, as we enter the twenty-frst century, is to discern other biblical motifs that would be relevant for a theology of transformation and reconstruction.” My point is that most African theologians believe that the Bible is the qualifer of any authentic Christian theology and must qualify African theology to be Christian theology. Maluleke (2017) observes that many African theologians have warned that any African Christian theology that does not take biblical exegesis seriously risks becoming mere “anthropological theology.” Many African theologians who argue not only the connections but also the continuity between the African world and the biblical world give high-level reverence to the Bible as the Word of God (Maluleke 2005). Maluleke (2005: 482) notes that even African women theologies have not managed to escape the trapping of this view of the Bible.The very titles of some of the books they have written testify to this effect: Talitha, qumi, Who Will Roll Away the Stone, and The Will to Arise. In spite of being aware of the literalistic interpretation of the Bible and calling for biblical criticism by such scholars as Pobee (1987: 25),11 the evangelical esteem for the Bible remains the canonical approach for most African Protestant theologians, also some Catholic scholars such as Nyamiti as already demonstrated above. Itumeleng Mosala (1986, 1989) warns of an African theological pitfall of absolutization of the Bible and masking it as an instrument of domination. Mosala (1989: 15) stresses that much of African theologizing has taken as its hermeneutical point of departure the expression that “the Bible is revealed ‘Word of God’ … an absolute, non-ideological Word of God.” Like Mosala, Maluleke (1997a: 11) has questioned the validity of such an equation of the Bible with the Word of God in an African theologizing project. He (Maluleke 1997b: 11) argues that in absolutizing the Bible as the Word of God, many African theologians, especially African Protestants,“have mistakenly made the Bible both a historical and harmonious book with one message for all people in all situations for all time.” He perceives this view of the Bible as potentially harmful as it legitimizes the biblical view of the powerful.This theological pitfall is also observed by African women theologians. Mercy Oduyoye (1995: 174) for instance, laments,“throughout Africa, the Bible has been and continues to be absolutized: it is one of the oracles that we consult for instant solutions and responses.”As Pablo Richard, writing from Latin America, cautions, “If we absolutize the Bible as if it were a direct and material word of God, our history will be imprisoned by the text and eventually wiped out,” and there is no “worse domination than that imposed in the name of sacred text” (cited in Fernandez 1994: 173).The argument is that the “Word of God” is more than the Bible, and the missional activity of God is not limited to the Bible. James Lowry (2001: 102) rightly argues: 61

Chammah J. Kaunda

The mission of God is not limited to the mission of the church; we also quickly confess the texts given to the synagogue and church are not the only texts through which God chooses to speak. We must stop short of saying that for Christianity the texts of the Old and New Testaments are no more than one canon among many canons as though, for Christianity, our texts have no extraordinary value in their particularity and historical signifcance. Still, we are anxious to hear what other texts and the voices they have infuenced tell of the mission of God.The same is true of the oral testimony to God other than the testimony that comes to us from our rich oral tradition. Having said that, the text of the Old and New Testaments remain for us the primary testimony of the mission of God in the world through which Christianity is formed and into which we believe Christianity has been invited to participate in a particular way. If we agree with Lowry’s argument, then, the place of the Bible in African theology should open up the possibility of unpretentious affrmation of the salvifc value of other religions, including African indigenous religions. This requires developing dialogical approaches in engaging the Bible with the texts of other religions, including non-religious texts (Fernandez 1994). However, it is also important to stress that while seemingly absolutizing the Bible, many African theologians are aware that the Bible does not contain “claim it and have it” solutions to African existential challenges. African Biblical scholars have developed various hermeneutical paradigms for “encounter between the Biblical text and the African context” (Ukpong 2000: 3). They stress acknowledging the critical role of African religiocultural heritage in shaping the African Christian religious consciousness, beliefs, and practices as foundational for genuine interpretation of the Bible in African contexts (Orobator 2010; Manus 2002; Adam 2001a, 2001b, 1999). David Adam (2015, 2001a, 2001b, 1999), Justin Ukpong (2002), and Chris Manus (2002) underline that African biblical hermeneutics makes African sociocultural and religious context as the text of theological interpretation. It is an African-centered approach to the analysis of the biblical text which prioritizes African worldviews and cultures.This method characteristically makes use of the historical-critical method to analyze the biblical text, and anthropological and sociological approaches to analyze the African context. The most recognized forms of approaches in African biblical scholarship have been inculturation, liberation, feminist, and postcolonial hermeneutics (West 2010; Dube 1997, 2001, 2002; Manus 2002).12 Cornel Du Toit (1998: 374) argues that an African biblical hermeneutics that does not also engage African cultures and religions as a resource for doing theology cannot produce authentic African theology. However, Maluleke (1996: 11) critiques African biblical scholarship for its “failure to problematize the relationship between African theologies and the Bible on the one hand, and the relationship between the Bible and African Christianity on the other as a serious shortcoming.” This “serious shortcoming” has meant that innovation and creativity are left unattended to in African theology.The result is the inadequate contribution to the liberation of African people and the transformation of the structures of oppression and exploitation into spaces of liberation. Thus, Maluleke (2005: 483–484) calls for a ‘suspicious’ and critical view of the status, contents, and use of the Bible, a commitment to a materialist reading of the Bible (‘behind the text’), a commitment to the cultural struggles of [African people], and fnally a view of the Bible as (or a need for it to become) a ‘weapon of struggle’ in the hands of the marginalized. 62

Sources of African theology

On African indigenous religions Mbiti had a reductionist view of African indigenous religions as preparation for the Christian gospel. He argues: African Religion refects God’s witness among African people through the ages. It has been a valuable and indispensable lamp on the spiritual path. But however valuable this lamp has been, it cannot be made a substitute for the eternal Gospel which is like the sun that brilliantly illuminates that path. It is a crucial stepping-stone towards that ultimate light.As Christianity develops in our continent, answering African needs and being frmly in our culture, it will derive great benefts from the work already done by African Religion. The Gospel has come to fulfll and complete African religiosity (cited in Bediako 1992: 334, italics added for emphasis). African theologians have argued for continuity between Christian faith and African indigenous religiosity. Many of them have seen a continuum concerning pre-Christian African religions and Christian faith in terms of preparation and fulfllment (Kagame 1956; Mbiti 1969, 1970, 1971, 1977; Mulago 1969, 1991; Idowu 1969, 1973; Asante 1985; Bujo1992; Bediako 1992, 1995). These scholars have seen continuity to the extent of perceiving African indigenous religions in the biblical world. Other African scholars such as Okot P’Bitek, Gabriel Setiloane, Samuel Kibicho, and Tinyiko Maluleke have resisted perceiving African indigenous religions as inferior and incomplete; rather they should be seen as a full and fully salvifc revelation on their right. However, this is not a claim for the perfection of indigenous religious traditions, since Christianity, Islam, and all human religions are permeated by human weaknesses and sinfulness (Kibicho 1968, 1978, 2006). Despite weaknesses, African indigenous religious traditions are equally valid in the same way Christianity and other religions are. This is not to deny the fact that for those who have decided to become Christians, Christian imagination “provides the most valid framework for a complete life” (Maluleke 1996: 17).Yet, it is unfair for African theologians to reduce an equally valid religious tradition to a mere preparation for the coming of the Christian Gospel or Islamic message. The challenge is that many African theologians are yet to adequately problematize the relationship between African indigenous religions and African Christianity. p’Bitek (1971) has long challenged what he perceived as intellectual smuggling—a situation in which some Africanists subtly introduced Western concepts and ideas into African cultural contexts and claimed that they were indigenous to Africa.The challenge, as Maluleke (2001) notes, is that African theology cannot proceed or even qualify to be regarded as African theology without being deeply entrenched in African religiocultural heritage. The questions may be raised here: who is the custodian of African religiocultural heritage? Is it an abstract phenomenon to be extracted from the past or the concrete lived experiences manifesting in African daily life? Who defnes African religiocultural heritage? To overcome this problematic relationship between African indigenous religions and African Christian faith, some African theologians argued for praeparatio evangelica as an intellectual bridge between these traditions. In a way, these Africanists negated the validity of African indigenous religious traditions, and as a consequence, these traditions are never perceived as intellectual spaces deserving interreligious dialogue, rather they are regarded as mere theological sources for African Christian theologizing. In the search to exploit African indigenous religions’ spiritual resources, Pobee (1987) proposed phenomenology as a theological approach for African theology. He argued for African theology to be constructed on data collected from African 63

Chammah J. Kaunda

indigenous religions. Since there have been no written scriptures, Pobee (1987: 26) called for the collection and study of their key sources such as hymns, myths, proverbs, invocations, arts, symbols, prayers, incantations, ritual, songs, dreams, shrines, sayings, beliefs and customs, names, riddles and sacred places, and other oral traditions, in order to construct a truly African theology. This simply suggests that most African theologians have taken an intellectual transposition of spiritual resources from within African indigenous religions into Christianity, which is believed to be the fulfllment (Mulago 1969, 1991; Idowu 1969, 1973;Asante 1985; Bujo1992). This approach underlies the perception that shows that African indigenous religious traditions have been sidelined (perhaps, perceived as unqualifed) from being a valid partner in interreligious dialogue.This raises a question: why are some African theologians struggling with African indigenous religions as complete revelations, scriptures, traditions, cultures, and reason? (Uka 1991; Parratt 1983).The answer to this question lies in the way they conceptualize African Christianity. While some African theologians have suggested that African Christianity should no longer be seen as Western religion, but as non-Western religious tradition (Bediako 1995), deep down they continue to struggle with what Maluleke classifes as unconscious twoness analytical category of African Christianity and African indigenous religions.They have not been able to see that while African Christianity is a new religious tradition in Africa, it is nevertheless a “coherent African religion” (Maluleke 2005: 124) which should be understood on its own terms without mediating through African indigenous religions and/or colonial or Western Christianity, so that African theologians can acknowledge the integrity of African Christianity on its terms. Desmond Tutu’s (1987) famous description of the African Christian experience as suffering from spiritual schizophrenia—a double religious consciousness—must be engaged with suspicion. At a phenomenological level, many African Christians do not experience their religion in terms of a confictive dichotomy between African and Christianity, in a sense that they do not conceive themselves as half Christian and half African as if they have to navigate two conficting worldviews within themselves.They believe that they are truly Christian, truly African without inner division, confict, confusion, and or incoherence; these aspects are completely the same, fully coherent within, even where this religious identity appears to be experienced in ambivalence and loyalty confusion. African Christianity cannot be artifcially dichotomized as “African” and “Christianity” or articulated in the contradictory opposite manner—it can only be understood as African Christianity as a whole. African Christianity functions in the religious interstitial between African indigenous religions and colonial Christianity. This simply means that African Christianity feeds on the religious and spiritual resources of these two religious traditions, and at the same time has its distinctiveness as an African religion. It must be regarded as a religious phenomenon in its own right. Maluleke (2005: 124) admits,“African Christianity is not textbook Christianity.” He adds that African Christianity is not the same as historical Protestant or Catholic Christianity in Europe and North America. Paul Gifford (2015: 4–5) concedes: Everyone is aware of the diversity within Christianity, like the historical divisions between East and West, or Catholics and Protestants, or Anglicans and Methodists. But the far more profound difference revealed in [Africa] is largely ignored.This difference has nothing to do with historical denominations … Much writing on global Christianity, or southward shift of Christianity, is built on an assumed essentialism. Most studies assume that a Christian is a Christian is a Christian (or a Catholic is a Catholic is a Catholic) … while Christians … [in Africa] may read readily divided in [historical denominations], it may be that the signifcant religious characteristics of Presbyterians in [Africa] are shared in the [many] with [African] Catholics. In other 64

Sources of African theology

words, it is something else (something local and cultural, something … African) that constitutes the really signifcant characteristic of all [Africa’s] Christians—which may also characterize other [Africans], even Muslims. I have cited this passage at length because it shows that even some Western scholars are beginning to acknowledge the uniqueness of African Christianity in the constellation of global religious traditions. These Christians are not merely in Africa but are African Christians. In a sense, that African Christianity is discernable, describable, and observable as a distinctive new African religion in its own right.While many historical denominational labels have continued in African Christianity, they nevertheless are merely smokescreens, which at closer examination become more theoretical than practical.These make more sense in Euro-America than in Africa. However, African Christianity “is not also a rehash of traditional religions. It is rather, a new religion—new about precolonial African religion[s] and new about colonial Christianity” (Maluleke 2005: 125). This, in essence, means that African Christianity cannot be adequately investigated from either historical Christian traditions and dogmas or historical African indigenous religions. It is largely a coherent religion that borrows and lends, shapes and is shaped, critiques and is critiqued, negotiates and is negotiated, and interprets and is interpreted by other traditions, especially Western Christianity and African indigenous religions.Therefore, to authentically investigate African Christianity, it requires “rethinking many inherited analytical categories, whether they be phenomenological or theological” or social scientifc (Maluleke 2005: 125). Henry Okullu (1974) underlines that the criteria and sources for African theology come closer to the affrmation of African Christianity as African religion. He (1974: 54) rightly argues: when we are looking for African theology we should go frst to the felds, to the village church, to Christian homes to listen to those spontaneously uttered prayers before people go to bed.We should go to the schools, to the frontiers where traditional religions meet with Christianity.We must listen to the throbbing drumbeats and the clapping of hands accompanying the impromptu singing in the independent churches.We must look at the way in which Christianity is being planted in Africa through music, drama, songs, dances, art, paintings.We must listen to the preaching of a sophisticated pastor as well as to that of a simple village vicar.We must try to understand what these sermons are saying and how congregations understand them. Everywhere in Africa, things are happening. Christians are talking, singing, preaching, writing, arguing, praying, discussing. Can it be that all this is an empty show? It is impossible. This then is African theology. In other words, the African Christian activities of African churches in different African cultural contexts are already an expression of the manifestation of traditional African religiocultural worldviews, not only in the present but in African Christian form. This present manifestation must be perceived as the frst valid material source for doing African theology.African theologians need to convince themselves that African religiocultural imaginations are as present within African Christianity as they are in African indigenous religions. The duty of African theology is to theologically analyze how and what forms the traditional African spirituality and religiocultural imaginations have taken in their present manifestation within African Christianity. My argument is that the dialogue between these religious systems should no longer be based on separation but rather on the understanding that in many ways African Christianity is an expression of and part of an ongoing and continuous process of African sociocultural and religious change 65

Chammah J. Kaunda

taking place throughout the continent. However, African theology that desires to be rooted in African cultures cannot afford to adopt an innocent reading of African Christian activities in African cultural contexts (Chitando 2009: 54) and excludes the experiences of women and the integrity of creation in their theologizing (Phiri 1997a: 18, 1997b: 69; Njoroge 1997: 80). Maluleke (1997a: 22, italics as found) stresses that African theology should seek to maintain a critical, no dichotomy balance between “the validity” of African Christianity and “the legitimacy” of African religiocultural present manifestation within contemporary African Christianity.They have to be critical of African Christianity’s inherited beliefs and practices from both African traditional religions and colonial Christianity, without denigrating African Christianity.

Conclusion The chapter argues that any theological construction that seeks to be relevant within its context of theologizing must seek to utilize sources in a way that makes it accountable to the benefciary community. I have demonstrated that African theology cannot merely claim sources from African indigenous religions without frst problematizing and clarifying its relationship to these religious systems.The sources embedded within African indigenous religions should be respected as sources of religious experience for the community of faith within these religious traditions.This means that African theologians must try to listen attentively and engage with respectful interreligious dialogue with African indigenous religions. It also means that there is an urgent need for African theology to develop a more constructive and African sensitive methodological approach for dialogue between Christian theology and African indigenous religious traditions. It is not enough for African theology to merely utilize sources emerging from African indigenous religions. African theology should seek to clarify how and what forms these sources have taken in their present manifestation within African Christianity. Having clarifed that, African theology must seek to redirect these sources in ways that could best beneft African people in their struggle for sociopolitical, economic, and religious transformation and liberation.

Notes 1 To avoid what Maluleke (2001: 370) has classifed as “totalizing grand narratives” in the articulation of African theology, many African theologians have suggested referring to this body of knowledge in plural as “African theologies”—signifying the various and distinctive contextual theologies which are done in Africa.Various scholars have also debated the issue of terminology (Kato 1975; Mbiti 1980; Nthamburi 1991; Mugambi 1989; Phiri 1997; Maluleke 1997; Mpangi 2004). This chapter refers to African theology in the singular to suggest that while there is much diversity, there are similarities which outweigh the differences. 2 For similar argument, see also Kwame Bediako 1992, 1995; Zvomunondita Kurewa 1975; Zeblon Nthamburi 1991; Bolaji Idowu 1983. 3 Various defnitions of African theology have been presented by a number of scholars (Kato 1975; Setiloane 1986; Mugambi 1989; Nthamburi1991; Muzorewa 1990; Mushete 1994; Mpangi 2004). 4 See also many articles in Dickson and Ellingworth’s (1969) Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs and Fashole-Luke and others (1978), Christianity in Independent Africa, especially part 2, “Traditional Religion and Christianity: Continuities and Conficts.” 5 African Theology En Route, edited by Kof Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres, consists of papers that were presented at the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians, December 17–23, 1977, Accra, Ghana. The book was an attempt to outline some sources, especially African religiocultural heritage, and how they were utilized in the formulation of African theology. 6 Creative engagements with African diaspora remain weak. African theology can no longer be done in isolation from diaspora. Diaspora is part of an ongoing and continuous process of evolution of African humanity within various sociopolitical, economic, and historic contexts.

66

Sources of African theology 7 There has been an ongoing collection of African biographies in the online Dictionary of African Biography (see: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/dictionary-of-african-biography). 8 African theology has not given serious attention to natural sciences and formal sciences.The scientifc world we live in demands that African theology develops approaches that seriously consider and are affected by all human knowledge of the other disciplines, including the natural sciences and formal sciences. 9 John Mbiti (1998: 146–149) identifes three areas of African theology: oral theology, symbolic theology, and written theology. The oral theology is largely produced by the masses through their daily activities and experiences with God through songs, sermons, prayers, conversations, Bible studies, in dreams, testimonies, etc. The second is symbolic theology, which Martin Ott (2000) classifes as “African theology in images,” and it is expressed through artistic works, drama, symbols, rituals, colors, forms of worship, dress, church decorations, etc. Ott (2000: 164, 273, 290, 547, 554) has shown that some of the myths of origin have been preserved through paintings and carvings. Finally is written theology, which Mbiti argues is for the privileged few who have had considerable education and are able to articulate their ideas through Western tools of reading and writing theology. Each of these strands also functions as the source of doing African theology. For a detailed discussion of each area, see Mbiti (1998). 10 For a detailed discussion of these strands, see Mbiti (1998) and Maluleke (1997b), who have analyzed each strand. 11 Pobee (1987) suggested that the history of religions approach is appropriate for African biblical interpretation. 12 Gerald West (2010) has discussed each of the four mentioned appropriation paradigms. In addition, Manus (2002) outlines and analyzes more forms of appropriation in West Africa, which include thematic, comparative, inculturation, contextualization, cultural, and black theology.

Bibliography Adamo, DT. 1999. “African Cultural Hermeneutics.” In: Sugirtharajah, RS (ed.). Vernacular Hermeneutics. Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 60–90. Adamo, DT. 2001a. Explorations in African Biblical Studies. Eugene:WIPF and Stock Publishers. Adamo, DT. 2001b. Reading and Interpreting the Bible in African Indigenous Churches. Eugene:WIPF and Stock Publishers. Adamo, DT. 2015.“The Task and Distinctiveness of African Biblical Hermeneutic(s).” Old Testament Essays, 28/1(1), 31–52. Asante, E. 1985. “Ecology: Untapped Resources of Pan-Vitalism in Africa.” African Ecclesial Review, 27/5, 289–293. Bediako, K. 1992. Theology and Identity:The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa. Oxford: Regnum Books. Bediako, K. 1993. “John Mbiti’s Contribution to African Theology.” In: Olupona, JK and SN Sulayman (eds.). Religious Plurality in Africa: Essays in Honour of John S. Mbiti. Berlin: Religion and Society, 367–388. Bediako, K. 1995. Christianity in Africa: The Renewal a Non-Western Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bujo, B. 1992. African Theology in Its Context, 1st Revised Edition. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa. Chitando, E. 2009. Troubled but Not Destroyed. Geneva:WCC Publications. Dickson, D. and Ellingsworth, P. (eds.). 1969. Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books. Dickson, AK. 1975. “Continuity and Discontinuity Between the Old Testament and African Life and Thought.” In: Appiah-Kubi, K and S Torres (eds.). African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-African Conference of the Third World Theologians, December 17–23, 1977, Accra, Ghana. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 95–108. Dube, M. 2002. “Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces and Religion.” In: Donaldson, LE and K Pui-lan (eds.). Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Religious Discourse. London and New York: Routledge, 100–120. Du Toit, C. 1998. “African Hermeneutics.” In: Maimela, S and A König (eds.). Initiation into Theology: The Rich Variety of Theology and Hermeneutics. Pretoria:Van Schaik, 373–398. Dube, MW. 1997.“Toward a Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible.” Semeia, 78, 11–26. Dube, MW. 2000. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. Danvers, MA: Chalice.

67

Chammah J. Kaunda Dube, MW. (ed.). 2001. Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible (Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship, 2).Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Fashola-Luke, EW. 1976.“The Quest for African Christian Theologies.” In:Anderson, GH and TF Stransky (eds.). Mission Trends No 3:Third World Theologies. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 139–141. Fasholé-Luke, E. 1978.“Introduction.” In: Fasholé-Luke, E, R Gray,A Hasting, and G Tasie (eds.). Christianity in Independent Africa. London: Rex Collings, 357–363. Fernandez, ES. 1994. Toward a Theology of Struggle. Eugene:WIPF and Stock Publishers. Gabaitse, RM. 2012. “Towards an African Pentecostal Feminist Biblical Hermeneutic of Liberation: Interpreting Acts 2:1–47 in the Context of Botswana.” Doctor of Philosophy, University of KwaZuluNatal, Pietermaritzburg. Gibellini, R. (ed.). 1994. Paths of African Theology. New York: Orbis books. Gifford, P. 2015. Christianity, Development, and Modernity in Africa. London: Hurst and Company. Idowu, B. 1969. “God.” In: Dickson, K and P Ellingworth (eds.). Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 17–29. Idowu, B. 1973. African Traditional Religion:A Defnition. London: Heinemann. Kagame, A. 1956. La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise de l’Etre. Bruxelles: Academie Royale des Sciences Coloniale. Kato, HB. 1975. Theological Pitfalls in Africa. Kisumu: Evangelical Publishing House. Kibicho, GS. 1978. “The Continuity of the African Conception of God into and Through Christianity: A Kikuyu Case-Study.” In: Fasholé-Luke, E, R Gray, A Hasting, and G Tasie (eds.). Christianity in Independent Africa. London: Rex Collings, 370–388. Kibicho, SG. 1968.“The Interaction of the Traditional Kikuyu Concept of God with the Biblical Concept.” Cahiers des Religiones Africaines, 2, 223–237. Kibicho, SG. 1978. “The Continuity of the African Conception of God into and Through Christianity: A Kikuyu Case Study.” In: Fashole-Luke, EW, R Gray, A Hasting, and G Tasie (eds.). Christianity in Independent Africa. London: Rex Collings, 370–388. Kibicho, SG. 2006. God and Revelation in an African Context. Nairobi:Acton Publishers. Kurewa, JWZ. 1975.“The Meaning of African Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 2, 32–42. Lowry, JS. 2001. “The Bible as Scripted Hope.” In: Brueggemann,W (ed.). Hope for the World: Mission in a Global Context. Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox, 95–102. Maimela, SS. 1984. God’s Creative Activity Through the Law:A Constructive Statement Toward a Theology of Social Transformation. Pretoria: UNISA. Maluleke, ST. 1996.“Black and African Theologies in the New World Order: A Time to Drink from Our Own Wells.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 96, 3–19. Maluleke, ST. 1997a. “The Smoke Screen Called Black and African Theologies-the Challenge of African Women.” Journal of Constructive Theology, 3(2), 39–63. Maluleke, ST. 1997b. “Half a Century of Africa Christian Theologies: Elements of the Emerging Agendas for the Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Constructive Theology, 99, 4–23. Maluleke, TS. 2001. “Theology in (South) Africa: How the Future Has Changed.” In: Speckman, MT and LT Kaufmann (eds.). Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nola. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publication, 364–389. Maluleke,TS. 2005.“African Christianity as African Religion: Beyond the Contextualization Paradigm.” In: Battle, M (ed.). The Quest for Liberation and Reconciliation: Essays in Honor of J. Deotis Roberts.Westminster: John Knox Press, 116–126. Maluleke, ST. 2007. “Half a Century of Africa Christian Theologies: Elements of the Emerging Agendas for the Twenty-First Century.” In: Kalu, OU (ed.). African Christianity: An African Story. Trenton: Africa Word Press, 409–429. Maluleke, TS. 2010. “Of Africanised Bees and Africanised Churches: Ten Theses on African Christianity.” Missionalia, 38/3, 369–379. Maluleke, TS. 2017. “Between ‘Descriptive Haste’ and ‘Prescriptive Haste’.” http://contendingmodernit ies.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/descriptive-haste-prescriptive-haste/ (accessed 19 September 17). Manus, CU. 2002. “Methodological Approaches in Contemporary African Biblical Scholarship:The Case of West Africa.” In: Katongole, E (ed.). African Theology Today. Scranton: The University of Scranton Press, 1–21. Martey, E. 1993. African Theology, Inculturation and Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Mbiti, JS. 1970. “Christianity and Traditional Religions in Africa.” International Review of Mission, 59(236), 430–440.

68

Sources of African theology Mbiti, JS. 1980.“The Biblical Basis for Present Trends in African Theology.” International Bulletin of Mission Research, 4/3(3), 119–124. Mbiti, SJ. 1969. African Religion and Philosophy. London: Heinemann. Mbiti, SJ. 1971. New Testament Eschatology in an African Background: A Study of the Encounter Between New Testament Theology and African Tradition Concepts. London: SPCK. Mbiti, SJ. 1977.“Christianity and African Culture.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 20, 26–39. Mbiti, SJ. 1979. Concepts of God in Africa. London: SPCK. Mbiti, SJ. 1998. “African Theology.” In: Maimela, S and K Adrio (eds.). Initiation into Theology: The Rich Variety of Theology and Hermeneutics. Pretoria: J L van Schaik Publishers, 141–158. Mosala, IJ. 1986. “The Use of the Bible in Black Theology.” In: Mosala, IJ and B Tihagale (eds.). The Unquestionable Right to Be Free. Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers, 175–199. Mosala, IJ. 1989. Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology. Grand Rapids:William Eerdmans. Mpagi, PW. 2002. African Christian Theology: In the Contemporary Context. Kibubi: Marianum Publishing Company Limited. Mugambi, JNK. 1987. God, Humanity, and Nature in Relation to Justice and Peace. Geneva: WCC. Mugambi, JNK. 1989. Christianity and African Culture. Nairobi:Acton Publishers. Mugambi, JNK. 1995. From Liberation to Reconstruction. Nairobi: East African Education Publishers Ltd. Mugambi, JNK. 2003. Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction. Nairobi: Acton. Mulago,V. 1969.“Vital Participation.” In: Dickson, K and P Ellingworth (eds.). Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 137–158. Mulago,V. 1991. “Traditional African Religion and Christianity.” In: Olupona, KJ (ed.). African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society. New York: Paragon House, 119–134. Mushete, AN. 1994. “An Overview of African Theology.” In: Gibellini, R (ed.). Paths of African Theology. London: SCM Press, 9–26. Muzorewa, G. 1985. Origins and Developments of African Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Muzorewa, G. 1990.“A Defnition of a Future African Theology.” Africa Theological Journal, 2, 168–179. Njoroge, JN. 1997. “The Missing Voice: African Women Doing Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 99, 77–83. Nthamburi, Z. 1991. The African Church at the Crossroads: Strategy for Indigenization. Nairobi: Uzima Press. Nyamiti, C. 1971. African Theology: Its Nature, Problems, and Methods. Kampala: Gaba Publications. Nyamiti, C. 1979. The Way to Christian Theology for Africa. Kampala: Gaba Publications. Nyamiti, C. 1994. “Contemporary African Christologies: Assessment and Practical Suggestions.” In: Gibellini, R (ed.). Paths of African Theology. London: SCM Press Ltd, 62–77. Nyamiti, C. 2005. Jesus Christ, the Ancestor of Humankind: Methodological and Trinitarian Foundations. Nairobi: CUEA Press. Odozor, PI. 2014. Morality Truly Christian and Truly African. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, p. 97. Oduyoye, AM. 1979. “The Value of African Religious Beliefs and Practices for Christian Theology.” In: Appiah-Kubi, K and T Sergio (eds.). African Theology en Route: Papers from the Pan-African Conference of the Third World Theologians, December 17–23, 1977, Accra, Ghana. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 109–116. Oduyoye, AM. 1995. Daughters of Anowa:African Women and Patriarchy. New York: Orbis Books. Okoye, James. 1997. “African Theology.” In: Müller, K, T Sundermeier, SB Bevans, and RH Bliese (eds.). Dictionary of Mission:Theology, History, Perspectives. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 9–17. Okullu, H. 1974. Church and Politics in East Africa. Nairobi: Uzima Press. Orobator, AE. 2008. Theology Brewed in an African Pot. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Orobator, AE. 2010. “Context Theological Methodologies.” In: Stinton, DB (ed.). African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations. London: SPCK, 3–11. Ott, M. 2000. African Theology in Images. Blantyre: CLAIM. P’Bitek, O. 1971. African Religion in Western Scholarship. Kampala: East Africa Literature. Parratt, J. 1983. “African Theology and Biblical Hermeneutics in Africa.” Africa Theological Journal, 12/2, 88–94. Parratt, J. 1995. Reinventing Christianity: African Theology Today. Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Phiri, AI. 1987. “Doing Theology as an African Woman.” In: Parratt, J (ed.). A Reader in African Theology. London: SPCK, 45–56. Phiri, AI. 1997. Women, Presbyterianism and Patriarchy: Religious Experience of Chewa Women in Central Malawi. Blantyre: CLAIM.

69

Chammah J. Kaunda Phiri,AI. 2008/2009.“African Theological Pedagogy in the Light of a Case Study on Gendered Violence.” Journal of Constructive Theology, 14(2 & 15)(1), 109–124. Phiri,AI and Nadar, S. 2006.“What’s in the Name?-Forging A Theoretical Framework for African Women’s Theologies.” Journal of Constructive Theology, 12(2), 5–24. Pobee, J. 1979. Towards an African Theology. Nashville:The Parthenon Press. Pobee, J. 1987.“The Sources of African Theology.” In: Parratt, J (ed.). A Reader in African Christian Theology. London: SPCK, 23–28. Pobee, J. (ed.). 1997. Towards Viable Theological Education: Ecumenical Imperative-Catalyst of Renewal. Geneva: WCC Publications. Sanneh, L. 1983. West African Christianity:The Religious Impact. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Sawyerr, H. 1963.“The Basis of a Theology for Africa.” IRM, 52, 266–278. Sawyerr, H. 1968. Creative Evangelism:Towards a New Christian Encounter with Africa. London: Lutterworth. Sawyerr, H. 1970. God: Ancestor or Creator? Aspects of Traditional Belief in Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. London: Longman. Sawyerr, H. 1978. “Jesus Christ – Universal Brother.” In: Shorter, A (ed.). African Christian Spirituality. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 65–67. Sawyerr, H. 1987. “What Is African Theology?” In: Parratt, J (ed.). A Reader in African Christian Theology. London: SPCK, 9–22. Setiloane, G. 1979. “Where Are We in African Theology?” In: Appiah-Kubi, K and S Torres (eds.). African Theology en Route. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Boks, 59–65. Setiloane, MG. 1978.“How the Traditional Worldview Persist in the Christianity of the Sotho-Tswana.” In: Fasholé-Luke, E, R Gray, A Hasting, and G Tasie (eds.). Christianity in Independent Africa. London: Rex Collings, 402–412. Setiloane, MG. 1986. African Theology:An Introduction. Braamfontein: Skotaville Publishers. Stinton, D. 2000.“Jesus of Africa:Voices of Contemporary African Christology.” In: Merrigan,T and J Haers (eds.). The Myriad Christ: Plurality and the Quest for Unity in Contemporary Christology. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 287–313. Stinton, D. 2004a.“Africa, East, and West.” In: Parratt, J (ed.). Introduction to Third World Theologies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 105–136. Stinton, D. 2004b. Jesus of Africa:Voices of Contemporary African Christology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Tienou, T. 1990. “Indigenous African Theologies: The Uphill Road.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 14(2), 73–77. Tutu, MD. 1978. “Wither African Theology?” In: Fasholé-Luke, E, R Gray, A Hasting, and G Tasie (eds.). Christianity in Independent Africa. London: Rex Collings, 364–369. Tutu, MD. 1987. “Black Theology/African Theology - Soul Mates or Antagonists?” In: Parratt, J (ed.). A Reader in African Christian Theology. London: SPCK, 36–44. Uka, EM. 1991. Readings in African Traditional Religion: Structure, Meaning, Relevance, Future. New York: Peter Lang. Uka, EM. 1991.“The Concept of God.” In: Uka, EM (ed.). Readings in African Traditional Religion: Structures, Meaning, Relevance, Future. Bern: Peter Lang, 39–52. Ukpong, J. 1984. African Theology:A Profle, Spearhead No. 80. Eldoret: Gaba Publications. Ukpong, J. 1994. “Christology and Inculturation: A New Testament Perspective.” In: Gibellini, R (ed.). Paths of African Theology. London: SCM Press, 40–61. Ukpong, J. 2000. “Polular Readings of the Bible in Africa and Implications for Academic Readings.” In: Gerald, W and M Dube (eds.). The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories, and Trends. Leiden: Brill, 582–594. Ukpong, J. 2002. “Inculturation Hermeneutics: An African Approach to Biblical Interpretation.” In: Dietrich,W and L Ulrich (eds.). The Bible in a World Context:An Experiment in Contextual Hermeneutics. Grand Rapids:William B. Eerdmans, 17–32. West, GO. 2010.“Biblical Hermeneutics in Africa.” In: Stinton, DB (ed.). African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations. London: SPCK, 21–31.

70

PART II

Theological movements

5 DIALOGUE BETWEEN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY A sure way for the survival of the Church in Africa James N. Amanze

Introduction This chapter examines a decade-long argument in Africa: that to ensure the survival of the Church in the bowels of mother Africa, there is a need for Christian theology to enter into dialogue with African Traditional Religion (ATR). This chapter argues that unless Christian theology is contextualized in Africa, its message will continue to be irrelevant to the African people. The chapter will frst defne African Traditional Religion. It will then discuss the encounter of ATR with Christianity, focusing on the negative attitude that missionaries and colonial governments had toward this world religion. It will then examine the attempts that have been made by various theologians to engage Christian theology with ATR as a way of making the former relevant and acceptable to the African people. The chapter will end by examining how Canon Ronald Wynne, an Anglican clergyman in Botswana in the 1970s, attempted to contextualize Christian theology among the Hambukushu in Botswana as a model worthy of emulating.

The nature and characteristics of African Traditional Religion Since this chapter is about the need for dialogue between African Traditional Religion (ATR) on the one hand and traditional Christian theology on the other, it is important to understand what we mean by ATR. Interestingly, while from a sociological perspective there is no single universal defnition of religion, African Traditional Religion seems easy to defne and quick to grasp. J.O.Awolalu in “What is African Traditional Religion?” has defned ATR as the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. It is the religion which resulted from sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans and which is being practiced today in various forms and various shades and intensities by a very large number of Africans, including individuals who claim to be Muslims or Christians.1

73

James N. Amanze

Awolalu has gone further to explain the meaning of the word “traditional” which, according to him, means “indigenous,” or “aboriginal” or “foundational,” “handed down from generation to generation, upheld and practiced by Africans today.”2 Viewed from Awolalu’s perspective, African Traditional Religion is a heritage from the past but not treated as a thing of the past. It is that which connects the past with the present and the present with eternity. According to Awolalu, ATR is not a “fossil” religion, a thing of the past or dead religion. It is a religion which is practiced by living men and women today. Awolalu has further indicated that adherents of ATR are, by and large, very conservative in the sense that they have managed to resist the infuence of modernism heralded by the colonial era, including the introduction of Christianity, Islam,Western education, improvement in medical services, and the like.They prefer instead their traditional culture, their forms of worship, and the covenants that hold them together. In addition to this, Awolalu has noted that even though Africa is a large continent with a multitude of nations which have complex and diverse cultures, languages, and dialects, it can be argued that it is still right to talk about African Traditional Religion in the singular.This is because many African societies have many basic similarities in their religious systems.3 For example, in the frst place, it is a well-established fact that the concept of the High God is widely known in tropical Africa and that it existed long before the coming of Christianity and Islam. In most African societies, the High God is conceived as One, Creator, Almighty, Provider, Supreme, Eternal, and Comforter. One of the most fundamental characteristics of the High God is that he is Spirit; therefore, he cannot be represented by graven images for that would constitute a form of idolatry. In addition to this, many African societies share a belief in the existence of spiritual beings.These spirits are good or bad, personal or impersonal, human or non-human. It is believed that they are all presided over by a personal Creator God, who alone is regarded as having derived his being from himself. Coupled with this, human beings are considered as homo-religious.The cosmology of the African people embraces the physical and the metaphysical, the visible and the invisible, matter and spirit, sacred and profane. Besides, the African people share the notion of the imperfect nature of the human condition. This is seen in the fact that almost all African societies have creation stories of myths, which give an account of the origins of life and death. Again, in addition to the above phenomena, most of the African traditional religions place a great deal of emphasis on the here and now of human existence, in which case they do not promise personal salvation in heaven or damnation in hell. Rather they are concerned with the life of the individual and the communities in the present plane of human life. Furthermore, traditional African religions are based on communal values, lack religious founders, and share a plethora of rites of passage; they are ministered by traditional religious specialists and share a variety of sacrifces, offerings, religious festivals, agricultural rituals, sacred places, and religious objects. All in all, these similarities are so common that one is justifed to have considered ATR in the singular.4

The despicable encounter between Christianity and ATR during the colonial period Awolalu has observed that during the colonial period, missionaries had a negative attitude toward African Traditional Religion.They were subjective and consequently they could not see anything good in ATR to dialogue with.They did not bother to study ATR to appreciate any goodness inherent in it. To devalue its belief systems, rituals, practices, ceremonies, spirituality, places of worship, and religious specialists, derogatory terms such as primitive, savage, fetishism, juju, heathenism, paganism, animism, idolatry, and polytheism were used. The usage of 74

Dialogue between ATR and Christian theology

such terms placed ATR in confrontation with Christianity.This created no room for dialogue between the two world religions.5 Kwame Bediako, in his paper titled “The roots of African Theology,” has reported that Dietrich Westermann, in his lectures of 1935, which were subsequently published in a book titled Africa and Christianity, advanced the view that anything that existed in Africa before the introduction of Christianity ought to be eliminated and replaced by Christianity. Interestingly, the bulk of Western missionaries shared Westermann’s view in the sense that they too called for the eradication of ATR.6 It is important to note that this view was not new. It had already been expressed by the delegates at the Edinburgh World Conference in 1910, who concluded that the traditional religions of Africa, which they described as “animism,” contained “no preparation for Christianity,”7 and consequently they had to be destroyed. It appears to me that based on what we know today, they were absolutely wrong. It is important to point out that the confrontational nature of the encounter between Christianity and African Traditional Religion is attributed to several factors. Emeka C. Ekeke and Chieke A. Ekeopara have argued that, in the frst instance, this was caused by lack of understanding on the side of the missionaries from the beginning of missionary expansion regarding the ontology of God, divinities, spirits, and other aspects of ATR. According to Ekeke and Ekeopara, there were various factors that led to this misunderstanding and the subsequent controversy. These included, among others, prejudice among Western scholars who measured African traditional religious concepts using Christian lenses.There was also a lack of dedication to study of African Traditional Religion, leading to hasty conclusions.The sad side of the story is that most of those who came to study the religions of Africa were armchair scholars. Many of them used scanty information obtained from one or two localities in Africa, out of which they drew general conclusions regarding the nature of ATR, devoid of general knowledge of the continent of Africa as a whole.8 Benezet Bujo in African Theology has observed that, based on wrong perceptions regarding the true nature of African religious thought, colonial governments waged vigorous campaigns against ATR as manifested in the practice of polygamy and the cult of the ancestors. In these campaigns, the missionaries acted as powerful allies of the secular authority. They condemned wholesale the whole religious and social structure of the African people.The consequences of this approach were that it undermined and destroyed the whole fabric of society.9

The need for dialogue between African Traditional Religion and Christian theology The confict between Christianity and ATR was not conducive to peaceful co-existence between these world religions. In some African communities, this led to open wars between the colonial authorities and the indigenous people.10 These conficts generated the need for dialogue between Christianity on the one hand and African Traditional Religion on the other. Benezet Bujo has noted that the real starting point for such a dialogue goes back to 1945 through the missionary activities of Placide Tempels, a European Franciscan missionary in the Belgian Congo. According to Bujo, Tempels, unlike other missionaries of his time, made great efforts to understand the African cultural heritage to be able to proclaim the Good News of salvation to the African people. To achieve this, he analyzed the fundamental elements of the African cultural tradition to get to the bottom of the thought categories and religion of the peoples of Africa. In the process, he discovered that the whole African religion and worldview generally was “life-force.” He eventually concluded that to the African people “to be” was the same as “to have life-force.” Armed with this knowledge, 75

James N. Amanze

Tempels began to contextualize the Gospel among the African people to make it relevant to them.11 Tempels’ initiative generated a series of other initiatives by African scholars such as Vincent Mulago, Alexis Kagame, John Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu, Charles Nyamiti, Kwesi Dickson to name but a few. Ssettuuma Benedict, in his book titled Inculturation, has pointed out that the dialogue between ATR and Christian traditional religion was undertaken to enable Christianity to divest its foreignness on the African soil.This process gave rise to different names with a broad range in meaning. Such terms include adaptation, Africanization, indigenization, acculturation, and inculturation.Their primary objective is “to make Jesus Christ ever more understood, appreciated and accepted by the people in their cultural and existential situations as their Saviour and source of their life style and basis of their integral transformation.”12 Characteristically the dialogue became theological and has remained so to the present day.

The rational for the need for dialogue between Christianity and ATR From an academic perspective, dialogue between African Traditional Religion and Christianity has taken place largely in the form of “theological refection” between the two world religions. Such a dialogue has been justifed in several ways. One of the reasons that has been put forward for the need for dialogue between ATR and Christianity is that the former can enrich the latter in its theology as it proclaims the Kingdom of God in Africa. It has been argued, for example, that the concept of salvation as found in Christian theology is foreign to the African theological thought, and therefore rather diffcult to understand.Adewale J.Adekalun, for one, has indicated that though the concept of salvation is found in all religions, its meaning is different from one religion to another.13 William Barclay, cited by Adekalun, observed that most Christians in the Western world do not believe in salvation as wholeness.The focus tends to be the salvation of the soul and not the body.Western Christian traditions, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, emphasize the concept of salvation as the overcoming of the alienation created between God and humankind because of sin.This concept, it is argued, does not encompass everything that is meant by the term “salvation” in the African context.14 John S. Mbiti, in his discussions regarding the doctrine of salvation, has brought into play the notion that in ATR, salvation is wholeness. Since human beings are created body and soul, there is a need that salvation should be both physical and spiritual. One of the pertinent issues that have been noticed in ATR is that African people tend to look at life holistically. Life is not departmentalized, and all aspects of life are infuenced by religion.This tends to make Africans perceive salvation as wholeness because life is wholeness.15 Bringing the concept of wholeness into the schema of salvation, it is argued, enables African Christians to have a complete and relevant understanding of what salvation is all about.This is because salvation as wholeness is in line with the African way of life, which sees all the challenges of human life as needing salvation. Thus salvation is not confned to the soul but also encompasses the physical. It includes salvation from illness, hunger, poverty, and the like.16 In the same vein, Henry J. Mugabe, drawing from the Shona people in Zimbabwe, has indicated that among these people, salvation does not relate specifcally to the afterlife but the whole person. According to Mugabe, “Shona religion is anthropomorphic; it is life-affrming. This world religion is concerned about procreation, restoration, preservation, survival and the continuance of human, societal, and environmental life in this world.”17 In this regard, according to Mugabe, the Shona use several words for the concept of salvation or redemption. Many such words have to do with the preserving and sustaining of life of the individual or community in

76

Dialogue between ATR and Christian theology

this present life.This is because Africans have a holistic view of salvation, which encompasses all aspects of life in this world.18 He writes: the reason why many African Christians embrace both Christianity and African Traditional Religions is that they perceive traditional religions as being able to meet real needs in procuring salvation in this real world … while Christianity merely concerns itself with the hereafter. An understanding of salvation that is preoccupied only with the salvation of souls from eternal damnation has left this impression on the bulk of African people.19 Mugabe has noted that the African peoples’ concept of salvation as wholeness is based on their understanding of the nature of sin as found among the Shona of Zimbabwe. He has pointed out that among the Shona, sin is not confned to the realm of spirituality but covers any antisocial activities that are aimed at hurting individuals and communities. According to Mugabe, although sin includes evil thoughts,Africans do not view sin in abstract metaphysical terms. Sin has to do with real-life situations.20 Another reason that has been put forward regarding the need for dialogue between ATR and Christianity is the survival of Christianity itself. K.W. Makhulu, cited in James N. Amanze, has argued convincingly that the lack of inculturation of the church in Africa would lead to its disintegration. According to Makhulu, one of the reasons that led to the disappearance of Christianity in North Africa, as a result of Muslim invasion in the 7th century, was the lack of indigenization in the rank and fle of the Church. The indigenous people—the Berbers—did not feel at home in the Romanized Christianity of the time. Makhulu has noted that the present vibrancy of the Church in Africa will come to nothing if the church continues in its North Atlantic captivity.21 In this regard, at the 1997 Annual Assembly of the Botswana Council of Churches, David Modiega, the former General Secretary of the Council, made a passionate appeal to its member churches to contextualize. He noted: The Church in Botswana today must not continue in its present state unless she is deliberately courting disaster. … Let her remember history. There was a church in North Africa.That church, the mother of those makers of church history, Augustine, Tertullian, Cyril, Athanasius, to name a few. She is no longer in existence today; she perished long ago.Why? It was. Basically, she remained a foreigner and never belonged in the environment in which she lived.22 This sentiment has been echoed by Mokgethi B.G. Motlhabi, who has indicated that the reason for producing African theology is that it liberates people from cultural captivity, that is, from a theology that is dominated by the Western culture at the expense of African culture. This is clearly expressed in the Final Communique of the 1977 Pan African Conference that was held in Accra, Ghana, which states as follows: We believe that African Theology must be understood in the context of African life and culture and the creative attempt of African peoples to share a new future that is different from the colonial past and the neo-colonial present. The African situation requires a new theological methodology that is different from the approaches of the dominant theologies of the west.African Theology must reject the prefabricated ideas of North Atlantic theology by defning itself according to the struggles of the people

77

James N. Amanze

in their resistance against the structures of domination. Our task as theologians is to create a theology that arises from and is accountable to African people.23 Motlhabi has noted that, generally speaking, Christianity in Africa has tended to look down upon other world religions and to associate them with paganism and superstition. Christianity was considered by the early missionaries to be “true” religion, meaning only Christianity possessed authentic revelation and the God of Christianity was the only true God.There has been, therefore, the tendency to speak about other religions as “false religions,” which represent “false gods.” In some instances, to distance itself from “false religions,” Christianity has opted to call itself “faith” and claimed that it is not a religion. By calling Christianity “faith” and not “religion,” Christianity has subscribed to itself superior status at the expense of others.24 This is evidenced by the fact that during the missionary period, the mission of the missionaries consisted of persuading people to turn away from their false beliefs and throw away their “false gods” in favor of Christianity and the Christian God.According to Motlhabi, a conversion meant primarily the “turning away” from “evil ways.” Motlhabi has observed that missionaries never attempted to undertake objective studies of the religions of the areas that they came to evangelize, to identify aspects of culture which complied with Christian norms and ideals and proceed respectfully with their task of evangelization.This would have enabled them to discover and affrm that which was consistent with the Gospel in the indigenous religions. In doing so, they would have also discovered things that were contradictory to Christian teaching that warranted replacement with Christian alternatives. Such an approach, however, was not possible because of what Motlhabi termed “Western arrogance and superiority complex.”The Western approach was bent on recreating everything strange according to the Western image and consequently transformed and refashioned that which was different.25 In the context of South Africa, dialogue between traditional religion and Christianity empowered the African people in their struggle against colonialism, socio-economic and political oppression, racism, landlessness, deprivation, and poverty. Motlhabi has argued that for theology to be meaningful to the African people, it must speak to them about God in a way that is understandable to them. It must take into account their background, culture, traditions, customs, history, and ongoing life experiences. According to Motlhabi, the God whom the African people can understand must be an African God.The Christian God must be incarnated in Africa as well as in each distinct context of the African continent.26 Motlhabi has charged that to make the colonized African people accept Christianity, it must be stripped naked of its foreignness and redressed in African garb. It must not only assume an African form but must be completely African in character and values.27 Motlhabi has argued that in the dialogue between ATR and Christianity, theologians should not consider ATR as merely “preparatory to the gospel.”The ATR beliefs, practices, and values should be considered as consonant with the Gospel.28 Furthermore, another reason that has been advanced in favor of a dialogue between ATR and Christianity is that such a dialogue enhances African personality, which was dehumanized during the colonial period to the extent that Africans lost their identity. Nahashon Ndung’u has indicated that during the colonial period the missionaries believed that “they were frst to clear the ground by eliminating the stupid customs, vain beliefs … devoid of all sound sense. So the African culture had to be destroyed to have a tabula rasa on which the superior European culture was to be inscribed.”29 The consequences of this approach were that eventually, the missionaries succeeded in creating a class of Africans who hated themselves and their culture and struggled to imitate the white man.According to Ndung’u, the colonization of the African mind has been the greatest damage that the west has caused to the Africans, for they no longer have a basis for 78

Dialogue between ATR and Christian theology

developing their African personality.They are ashamed of their Africanness, and they grope in vain to adopt the European image.30 This state of affairs has been perceived by African scholars as needing a liberating spiritual and religious response.This meant that there was a need to enable the Western and African religious, traditional cultures to enter into dialogue. This point has been reiterated by Sussy Gumo Kurgat, who has argued that dialogue between ATR and Christianity asserts and enhances the dignity of the African people. She has pointed out that when dialogue takes place between churches and indigenous religions, it leads to a better self-identifcation and hope of convergence or growth toward a common horizon. Kurgat puts it thus: When the Gospel is transmitted and received within a culture, one begins to appreciate the true nature and the contours of a Christian approach to that culture. In other words, the question of a Christian approach to culture is always a dynamic process, which starts with the Gospel taking people as they are when it encounters them and continues to transform their world-view, their habits and actions and relationships into the image of Christ.31 What the above text confrms is that by putting ATR on a par with Christianity, it affrms its worthiness as a religion, thereby affrming the dignity of the African people and their cultural heritage.

Dialogue between ATR and Christianity and the emergence of Christian theology One of the outcomes of the dialogue between ATR and Christianity in Africa has been the emergence of African theology, or better still African Christian theology.The architects of this theology are many and varied, but here we shall discuss some of the contributions made by some of the pioneers in this feld, namely Bolaji Idowu and John S. Mbiti.

Bolaji Idowu’s contribution to African Christian theology Bolaji Idowu is considered as one of the frst African theologians who called upon African scholars to give serious consideration to the need of making Christian theology relevant to the African people. This is because Christianity has been perceived in Africa as a foreign religion since in its presentation, the missionaries failed to take into account the traditional African thought.This brought in the need for a dialogue between Christianity and African Traditional Religion as a means of enabling Christianity to survive in Africa in time and space.32 Bulus Galadima has noted that Bolaji Idowu was of the view that the need to bring Christianity into theological dialogue with ATR was based on the fact that many educated Africans identifed the God of Christianity as the God of the “White man.”This became a real challenge since both African Christians and theologians sought to make the Christian message available to their fellow Africans.33 In this regard, Idowu made a passionate call to his fellow theologians that they must know their people thoroughly and approach their beliefs reverently to make their theology relevant and easily understood by people in the African continent.34 African Christian theology as espoused by Idowu is a theology that employs African traditional religious beliefs, practices, spirituality, and ethics as mediums of communication to express divine truths in a manner that an African can understand the Christian message. This point has been reiterated by Galadima, who has indicated that contextualization in Africa requires 79

James N. Amanze

the need to pay close attention to the role of African culture in doing Christian theology.This involves transmitting the concepts and ideas embodied in Christianity to the African mind, for “though Africans have embraced Christianity they are still Africans. Therefore, they have a strong desire to maintain their identity as Africans, though Christians.”35

John Mbiti’s contribution to African Christian theology Another theologian who has consistently called for dialogue between ATR and Christianity and who has substantially contributed to the development of African Christian theology is John S. Mbiti. He has advocated that African Christians and African Christianity should not be carbon copies of American Christians and American Christianity. He argues that African indigenous religions are suffciently compatible with Christianity to the extent that it gives Christianity an African character.36 One of Mbiti’s contributions in this regard has been his unique understanding of conversion.According to Kinney, Mbiti perceived conversion as “not simply a clear, sudden forsaking of one’s religious system and the simultaneous total embracing of another.The conversation is a process both theological and psychological, which means for African Christians conversion is the blending of Christianity and traditional religions in a creative manner.”37 Kinney has observed that from Mbiti’s perspective, traditional religions are largely compatible with Christianity. Mbiti considers ATR as preparatio evangelica and that the New Testament fulflls many of the ideas found in African religions of which Africa knows nothing. In the dialogue between African Traditional Religion and the New Testament message, ATR must assume the listening posture and receive the new word.38

The making of African theology: the case of Canon Ronald Wynne in Botswana This refection on the dialogue between Christian theology and African Traditional Religion would be incomplete without referring to how Canon Ronald Wynne, an Anglican priest, contextualized his theology among the Hambukushu people who had settled at Etsha, Botswana, as refugees from Southern Angola. They had never been converted to Christianity before. In June 1970, Father Wynne, in the service of the Botswana Christian Council, went to start missionary work among them. But before he started his missionary enterprise, Rev.Wynne studied the culture of the Hambukushu carefully and critically. He was determined never to repeat the mistakes of the past, when in Botswana many of the frst generation of Christians were taught to despise their traditional background and heritage to the extent that they “cut themselves off ” from the roots of their ancestral religion.39 It is important to note that Father Wynne was not the frst one to do so. For example, one of the missionaries who took the daring step to enter into dialogue with African Traditional Religion was John William Colenso, once Anglican Bishop of Natal. Colenso rejected the belief espoused by his fellow missionaries that non-Christians were doomed to hell. He also defended polygamists and respected positive qualities of Nguni life. In the same vein, Bishop Vincent Lucas, the Anglican Bishop of Masasi,Tanganyika (now Tanzania), was strongly convinced that the initiation ceremony of circumcision (jando), as practiced by the Africans in the Masasi region, had much that was good, which could be used for the advancement of the Christian Gospel. His venture to Christianize jando was so successful that the White Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church in the region also introduced a similar initiation ceremony in their area of infuence.40 It is interesting to note that in contrast with Colenso and Lucas, who focused their contextualization primarily on matters of pastoral care,Wynne took a step further by applying the method of contextualization across a broad spectrum of systematic theological discourse. To 80

Dialogue between ATR and Christian theology

achieve this, he used African Traditional Religion. Space does not allow us to cover everything he did, but here are a few examples of a contextual approach to traditional Christian theology. (a) On the doctrine of God (Nyambi)—Rev. Wynne observed that the Hambukushu have a wonderful sense of “presence” of others. They live in a world of presence, face to face interaction with the living, the living dead, the unborn, and all of nature. Basing himself on this human experience of “presence,” Rev.Wynne directed this sensory perception beyond the immediate surroundings to the real “presence of God” encountered by human beings in the Bible, which entered the closed circle of the human family in Christ; Christ who lived perfectly a life of presence with God and toward his brother-man, and who has constituted the whole family in himself, the second Adam. In this regard, he taught the Hambukushu that Nyambi, the God of their traditional religion, was the same God whom he came to proclaim according to the Scriptures.41 (b) On the doctrine of Christ (Christology)—Wynne also placed a great deal of emphasis on the relation between Christ and the ancestors. This led him to develop a new Christology—“Christ the New Founder-Ancestor.” He is the New Adam, the progenitor of a new humanity.As in Adam all die, in Christ came the resurrection of the new humanity in God. Wynne developed his Christology on what the Hambukushu already knew concerning the intermediary and intercessory role of the ancestors in society. Basing his Christological refection on Roman 8:29,Wynne presented Christ to the Hambukushu as our “Elder Brother,” the “frstborn” among many brethren, who rose and ascended into heaven and through whom we have access to the Father.Wynne told the Hambukushu that Christ has been where the ancestors are now and that with them he has become their deliverer, too, and through his resurrection, he has given them life and ultimate hope for heaven.42 (c) On sacramental theology (baptism)—Wynne developed his theology of baptism by drawing a parallel between Hambukushu initiation ceremonies for girls and a ritual of baptism for entry into the Christian community. He pointed out to them that as initiation ceremonies are required for a girl to enter into the community of adults, baptism was a Christian rite required of a person who wants to enter into the Family of God—the Church. Christ instituted it as a way of initiation into the universal family, which goes beyond the Hambukushu tribal group.43 (d) On the theology of the Lord’s Supper—in his teaching of the theology of the Lord’s Supper,Wynne drew vastly from the Hambukushu’s religious meal at the harvest time and the occasional meals that the Hambukushu have after communing with the ancestors. Basing his teaching on the Hambukushu traditional religious meals, which enhance solidarity among the living, the living dead, and the unborn children,Wynne turned the Hambukushu’s attention to the communal meal of the Family of God, the Church—a sacrifce not of animals but the Holy Sacrifce of the Body and Blood of Christ. He emphasized that through it, the Hambukushu would enter into a covenant relationship with God, with the entire Hambukushu village family, with the whole Christian family, and with the living here on earth and those beyond in the spiritual kingdom.44 (e) On ecclesiology (nature and work of the Church)—Wynne developed his ecclesiology among the Hambukushu based on the human family with special reference to the Hambukushu social system. He observed that the Hambukushu social structure was permeated with a strong sense of solidarity within the tribe. Based on this social solidarity,Wynne turned the Hambukushu’s attention to the universal Family of God—the Church—in its three-tier structure: militant on earth, expectant in the life beyond, and triumphant in heaven, and experience what the Apostles’ Creed calls “the Community of Saints.” He taught them that the ecclesia consists of the living, the living dead, and the unborn.45 81

James N. Amanze

It is important to note that Wynne’s contextual evangelical theology was approved by the Botswana Christian Council (BCC), and out of it was born a church called Mashtwero, which literally means “Liberation.” The name of the church became a symbol of liberation not only from the colonial yoke of the Portuguese in Angola, from where the Hambukushu had come from as refugees, but also the freedom to embrace Christianity in the context of their culture as Africans. At the 1985/6 Annual Assembly of the Botswana Christian Council at Etsha it was reported that the Church was given a new name, Nkirishe dho Mashutwero dha Jesusi Kristusi, which means “The Liberation Church of Jesus Christ.”46 The church as “Liberator” continues its mission of bringing people into the Kingdom of God to the present day, and it is very likely to resist the test of time because it is well grounded on contextual theology which is relevant, well grasped, and accepted by the Hambukushu people at Etsha.

Conclusion In conclusion, this chapter has made a case regarding the need to contextualize Christian theology in Africa. This can be done by enabling Christian theology to enter into a meaningful dialogue with African Traditional Religion. The chapter has discussed the nature of African traditional religions and has marked its resilience despite the onslaught launched against it by the colonial authorities and missionaries during the colonial period and in modern times by education and modern ways of living.Various attempts to ride against the tide by African theologians such as Bolaji Idowu, John S. Mbiti, Kwesi Dickson, Charles Nyamiti, to name but a few, have been discussed.The benefts of enabling a dialogue between ATR and theology have been examined.The chapter has concluded that contextualization of Christianity generally and theology in particular is a necessity and not a choice. This is because translating Christianity into the African religio-traditional thoughts and worldview will enable Christianity to become entrenched in the bosom of mother Africa and remain here forever.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

J. O.Awolalu,“What Is African Traditional Religion,” Studies in Comparative Religion 10, no. 2 (1976): 1. Awolalu,“What Is African Religion…,” p. 1. Awolalu,“What Is African Religion…,” p. 1. See James N.Amanze, African Traditional Religions and Culture in Botswana (Gaborone: Pula Press, 2002), pp. 18–24, where these have been discussed in detail. Awolalu,“What Is African Religion…,” pp. 5–9. Kwame Bediako, “The Roots of African Theology,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, April, 1989, p. 58. Bediako,“The Roots of African Theology…,” p. 58. Emeka C. Ekeke and Chike A. Ekeopara,“God, Divinities and Spirits in African Traditional Religious Ontology,” American Journal of Social and Management Sciences 1, no. 2 (2010): 209. Benezet Bujo, African Theology (Nairobi: Pauline Publications, 1992), p. 39. See James N. Amanze, A History of the Ecumenical Movement in Africa (Gaborone: Pula Press, 1998), pp. 135–152, where such conficts on the African continent have been discussed in detail. Bujo, African Theology…, p. 53. Ssettuuma Benedict, Inculturation (Kampala:Angel Agencies, 2010), p. 18. Adewale J.Adelakun,“A Theoretical Refection on Mbiti’s Concept of Salvation in African Christianity,” Nebula 8, no. 1 (December 2011): 26. Adelakun,“A Theoretical Refection…,” p. 28. Adelakun,“A Theoretical Refection…,” pp. 28–32 Adelakun,“A Theoretical Refection…,” p. 33. Henry J. Mugabe,“Salvation from an African Perspective,” Indian Journal of Theology, 36.1 (1994): 32.

82

Dialogue between ATR and Christian theology 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Mugabe,“Salvation from an African Perspective…,” pp. 32–33. Mugabe,“Salvation from an African Perspective…,” p. 33. Mugabe,“Salvation from an African Perspective…,” p. 33. See Amanze, A History of the Ecumenical Movement in Africa, p. 197, where this has been discussed in detail. James N. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana:The story of the Botswana Christian Council, Gaborone: Pula Press, 2006, p. 241. Motlhabi,“African Theology….” pp. 125–26. Motlhabi,“African Theology…,” p. 126. Motlhabi,“African Theology…,” p. 127. Mokgethi B. G. Motlhabi, “African Theology or Black Theology? Towards an Integral African Theology,” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 8, no. 2 (November 1994): 123. Motlhabi,“African Theology…,” p. 123. Motlhabi,“African Theology…,” p. 124. Nahashon Ndung’u,“Towards the Recovery of African Identity,” in Mary N. Getui and Emmanuel A. Obeng (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction (Nairobi:Acton, 1999), p. 260. Ndung’u,“Towards the Recovery…,” pp. 20–21. Sussy Gumo Kurgat,“The Theology of Inculturation and the African Church,” Greener Journal of Social Sciences 1, no. 1 (December 2011): 33. Bulus Galadima,“Evaluation of the Theology of Bolaji Idowu,” African Journal of Evangelical Theology 20, no. 2 (2001): 109. Galadima,“Evaluation of the Theology…,” p. 106. Galadima,“Evaluation of the Theology…,” p. 106. Galadima,“Evaluation of the Theology…,” p. 108. See John W. Kinney, “The Theology of John Mbiti: His Sources, Norms and Method,” Occasional Bulletin,April 1979, p. 65. Kinney,“The Theology of John Mbiti…,” p. 65. Kinney,The Theology of John Mbiti…,” p. 66. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, p. 317. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, pp. 317–318. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, p. 324. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, pp. 325–326. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, p. 328. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, p. 329. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, p. 330. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana…, p. 338.

Bibliography Adelakun, Adewale J. “A Theoretical Refection on Mbiti’s Concept of Salvation in African Christianity.” Nebula 8, no. 1 (2011: 25–32). Amanze, James N. A History of Ecumenism in Africa. Gaborone: Pula Press, 1998. Amanze, James N. African Christianity in Botswana. Gweru: Mambo Press, 1998, 90–91. Amanze, James N. African Traditional Religion and Culture in Botswana. Gaborone: Pula Press, 2002. Amanze, James N. Ecumenism in Botswana:The Story of the Botswana Christian Council. Gaborone: Pula Press, 2006. Awolalu, JO.“What Is African Traditional Religion.” Studies in Comparative Religion 10, no. 2 (1976: 1–10). Bediako, Kwame. “The Roots of African Theology.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 13, no. 2 (1989: 58–65). Benedict, Ssettuuma. Inculturation. Kampala: Angel Agencies, 2010. Bujo, Benezet. African Theology. Nairobi: Pauline Publications, 1992. Ekeke, Emeka C. and Chike A. Ekeopara. “God, Divinities and Spirits in African Traditional Religious Ontology.” American Journal of Social and Management Sciences 1, no. 2 (2010: 209–18). Galadima, Bulus. “Evaluation of the Theology of Bolaji Idowu.” African Journal of Evangelical Theology 20, no. 2 (2001: 105–31). Kinney John, W. “The Theology of John Mbiti: His Sources, Norms and Method.” Occasional Bulletin 3, no. 2 (1979: 65–7).

83

James N. Amanze Kurgat, Sussy Gumo. “The Theology of Inculturation and the African Church.” Greener Journal of Social Sciences 1, no. 1 (2011: 90–8). Motlhabi, Mokgethi B. G. “African Theology or Black Theology? Towards an Integral African Theology.” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 8, no. 2 (1994: 87–113). Mugabe, Henry J.“Salvation from an African Perspective.” Indian Journal of Theology, 36.1 (1994: 31–42). Ndung’u, Nahashon. “Towards the Recovery of African Identity.” In: Mary N. Getui and Emmanuel A. Obeng (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction, 258–265. Nairobi:Acton, 1999.

84

6 AFRICAN FEMINIST THEOLOGY Alice Yafeh-Deigh

There are multifaceted strands of feminism in Africa. Located alongside the broader praxis-oriented frameworks of African (male) liberation theology, global feminist discourse, and feminist theology, African feminism is born out of African women’s unique socio-political and religious struggles against interlocking systems of oppression (gender, class, race, sexuality, etc.). Despite there being numerous multilayered concerns and emphases, African feminism operates from the core premise that both culture and religion oppress African women. Secular and religious feminists alike are thus primarily concerned with gender inequalities and the various institutions that perpetuate violence against women. In their rationalization, advocacy for women’s rights is legitimated by the fact that such oppressions constitute fundamental human rights violations. As former First Lady Hillary Clinton said, “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.”1 It is important to note that in this chapter, I focus exclusively on feminist theologies in Africa; my analyses do not encompass the whole of African feminism’s diverse spectrum. I begin with a preliminary note on feminist terminology, including suggested qualifers such as “womanism” and “intersectional feminism.” I then trace the development of feminist theologies in Africa within the framework of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (the Circle), whose origins and current status also prove pertinent to the discussion.

Defnition of the term “feminist/feminism” A consideration of the commonly used, yet deeply contested, term “feminism” is valuable for approaching the varieties of feminist theological movements in Africa. In contemporary usage, it is commonplace to accept that “feminism” is a catch-all encapsulating the various social, religious, and political movements that work to critique androcentric-patriarchal systems and advocate women’s rights and gender justice. As it assumes many contextual defnitions, “feminism” describes cross-border networks that coalesce around a crucial principle of promoting the full humanity and dignity of women. Global implications aside, the term has historically been used in a narrower sense to refer to waves of political campaigns for women’s rights that emerged in the United States. In the late 19th and early 20th century, First-Wave Feminism centered on the advocacy of women’s right to vote, own property, and hold political offce; the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote was to be one result of this wave. In the 1960s, Second-Wave Feminism extended First-Wave Feminism’s emphasis on women’s enfranchisement to include 85

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

equality in workplaces and in traditional gender roles and norms, which called for women’s liberation on multiple fronts. Emerging in the 1990s, Third-Wave Feminism has focused on issues like cultural diversity, gender identity, and intersectionality and has engaged in a postmodern critique of Second-Wave Feminism’s simplistic, essentializing discourses about women. Despite this and the fact that First- and Second-Wave Feminism were fundamentally represented as white middle-class Euro-American feminist movements, most contemporary feminists are acutely aware of the limitations of gender as a single analytical category and can agree that all three waves coalesce around gender justice.

Defnitional issues in womanism and African feminist theologies Although the usage of the term “feminism” has changed and broadened with time, the problem remains that much of feminist discourse has prioritized white Euro-American women while overlooking the specifc oppression and lived experiences of women of color, which makes the term culturally inappropriate for and incompatible with women of color. White EuroAmerican feminists have been criticized for their unacknowledged prejudices and failure to recognize the multiple axes of women’s oppression within a diverse world.2 As ways to address the lacunae in the feminist approach, theorists and theologians of color have either coined various alternatives to “feminism” or introduced an adjective to describe the particularity of their standpoints and give their perspectives a public voice.The most prominent of these alternatives include womanism, black feminism, mujerista theology, Asian feminist theology, Dalit women’s theology, minjung feminist theology, African feminism, concerned African women’s theology, Africana womanism, Ubuntu feminism, and Bosadi feminism. These various articulations are grounded in the actual experiences, emancipation struggles, and the complex historical and cultural realities of the particular communities of women. Each perspective, nevertheless, is unifed in the goal of making women’s lived experiences their central concern.3 Many black women, particularly African-American women, embrace Alice Walker’s alternative term “womanist”4 as a way to build upon the ideas of feminism while expanding them to include racial and class concerns.Womanism takes into account how the dynamics of race and class intersect with those of gender and brings to the fore feminism’s limited applicability for and perspective into the lives of nonwhite, non-middle-class women, which suggests that the antidote is sensitivity and receptiveness to these women’s historical and present realities.5 Despite the nature of its origins, womanism can be seen to represent more than the interests of black women in the United States; it presupposes a collective consciousness of race that is not localized, but global (Williams 1993; Cannon,Townes, and Sims 2011;Yafeh-Deigh 2015). Nevertheless, just as there exists controversy over qualifer “feminist,” Walker’s “womanism” can be seen to possess an underlying cultural specifcity that limits its applicability to African women.The historical experiences of slavery in the United States form a central place in womanist discourse, which thus distinguishes the African-American female scholar from the non-American female scholar of color.6 It must also be noted that Africa’s colonial history, colonial legacy, and cultural heritage has formed little to no part of the feminist or womanist discourse.The African context and its cultural traditions are foundational to feminist analysis.7 Musimbi Kanyoro, although she self-identifes as feminist, notes that “African women […] fnd themselves at a crossroads with Womanist and feminist theologies that are not inculturated. […] Thus, neither feminist [nor] womanist … offers a liberating theology for African women.”8 Mary Ebun Modupe Kolawole affrms that concepts like African feminism and black feminism can be seen “as identical to singing African songs from the belly of the beast.”9 Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar maintain, 86

African feminist theology

We do not want to be called feminist, because of its seeming neglect of race and class; neither do we want to be called womanist because, as some have argued, the experiences of African-American women are different from those of African women.10 In the end, most African women see womanism and similar Euro-American feminist movements as refections of black North American women’s distinctive sociocultural realities. That there is such a variety of alternative terms to discuss African women’s lived experiences accentuates how feminism in Africa fnds itself relating to no singular female reality.As Josephine Ahikire asserts, feminism in Africa defes simple homogenizing descriptions.11 To confront the complexity of women of color’s experiences and to theorize their oppression, Kimberlé Crenshaw proposed in 1989 an integrative approach called intersectionality, which quickly gained popularity in the research and writings of black feminist women in the United States. Intersectionality provides women of color with an analytical framework and vocabulary for dealing with multiple axes of inequality. In my contention, the central tenets of intersectionality theory are highly compatible with feminist movements in Africa. Crenshaw’s stated goal was to “contrast the multidimensionality of Black women’s experience with the single-axis analysis that distorts these experiences.”12 Indeed, she was concerned with feminism’s inability to perceive the “intersectional identities” of women of color.13 Although intersectionality has grown to encompass more than one defnition, Juliet Williams, a gender studies professor at UCLA, proposes a defnition that captures well the polycultural dimensions of feminist movements and the different visions of women’s lived experiences without undermining their singularity: Intersectional feminism is a form of feminism that stands for the rights and empowerment of all women, taking seriously the fact of differences among women, including different identities based on radicalization, sexuality, economic status, nationality, religion, and language. Intersectional feminism attends to how claims made in the name of women as a class can function to silence or marginalize some women by universalizing the claims of relatively privileged women.14 Williams underscores intersectionality’s emphasis on interlocking female realities. To then speak of interlocking oppressions would, according to Patricia Hill Collins, draw attention “to the macro-level connections linking systems of oppression such as race, class, and gender.”15 Accordingly, one might respond in the mode of Mari J. Matsuda: When I see something that looks racist, I ask,“Where is the patriarchy in this?”When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, “Where is the heterosexism in this?” When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask,“Where are the class interests in this?”16 Since it is now commonplace to underline the multilayered experiences of women in Africa, the intersectional feminist framework is a helpful alternative, allowing for the fact that people in no unique system exist or live in the same social positions.17 The framework thus begins with the acknowledgment that people, given their location in the class structure—whether a professional managerial type or unemployed, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual—must necessarily experience life differently.18 For African women, intersectionality gives room for the variances between the country, civil law, and the manner of female oppression while not compromising a singular defning African reality. In my work, I use a tri-polar “Afro-feminist-womanist” paradigm to address the multivalent nature of African women’s intersecting inequalities.This tri-polar approach assumes that black 87

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

women’s oppression and social inequalities differ among women depending on their social locations, and aims to move beyond the polarizing binary of feminist/womanist while holding in dynamic tension the specifc histories and cultures that shape my feminist consciousness with the converging experiences of women across cultures and social locations. To be sure, most white Euro-American feminist approaches do address other dynamics of oppression— race, class, sexual orientation, nationality—primarily due to the actions of African-American, Asian-American, and Latina women who have sought to fnd a seat in conversation and have demonstrated that the future of feminism is to increase inclusivity.19 To conclude, in this chapter, the qualifer “feminist” refects the current usage of the word, which is to say, I do not use it in the restrictive sense of referring to white middle-class EuroAmerican women’s historical, socio-political, and contextual realities. “Feminist” carries an inclusive meaning that stresses the fact that African women, in particular, possess varied, multilayered experiences of discrimination and marginalization.Ahikire cogently asserts, Feminism is a myriad of various theoretical perspectives emanating from the complexities and specifcs of the different material conditions and identities of women, and informed by the many diverse and creative ways in which we contest power in our private and public lives. In African contexts, feminism is at once philosophical, experiential, and practical.20 In this way, it is my goal to convey the intersectionality and interlocking of female experience as well as demonstrate the particulars of African women’s oppression and gender justice.

Feminist theologies and secular feminist movements in Africa In a general sense, feminist movements in Africa are activist coalitions fghting unequal distributions of power in African society that are at the root of gender oppression. Global developments of feminist consciousness were major triggers for the historical foundations of African feminist movements, both secular and religious. In their early stages, feminist organizations and women initiatives in the form of women’s rights activism spread across and fourished in Africa as secular movements.The United Nations’ 1975–1985 Decade for Women also helped lead to the rapid evolution of feminist thought and women’s development in Africa. Fundamentally, secular and religious feminists pose a radical challenge to the patriarchal, androcentric structures of traditional cultures and spiritual patterns. The distinctive character of African feminist theologies is that unlike secular feminists who draw primarily from human rights organizations, religious feminists locate themselves and operate within the framework of religion. In Africa, faith functions with a notable presence in the public sphere. Accordingly, religious feminists emphasize the interplay between religion, culture, and politics and, therefore, confront gender oppressions grounded in religious beliefs and practices. Of course, religious feminists understand a Christian framework to be vital for achieving feminist goals of liberation and a central institution populating and shaping the cultural context and practical realities of African women’s lives.

African feminist theologies This section maps out general trends and signifcant developments in African feminist theologies. In this chapter, I use the singular theology with a plural meaning in order to acknowledge commonality and to underscore, in Phiri’s words, that “despite the differences in terminology, 88

African feminist theology

all women would like to see the end of sexism and the establishment of a more just society of men and women who seek the wellbeing of others.”21 Indeed, Phiri speaks voluminously on the notion that African women theologians, far from avoiding the topic of diversity, want to recognize the myriad facets of women’s lived experiences.22 Theology singular is a way for me to show the wide-reaching value of each perspective contained within an expansive discourse. The origins of African feminist theology can be traced within the horizon of African liberation theologies, liberation theologies elsewhere in the world, and global feminist theological movements. According to Phiri, African feminist theology is a subcategory within feminist theology, which itself is within liberation theology—context and approach is the distinction between categories.23 Alongside liberationist paradigms, which stress the economic and political, especially as shaped by race and class,24 African feminist theology exists under an anti-oppression paradigm and continues the fght for central social justice issues.Thus, African women theologians fundamentally concur with liberation theology’s grassroots paradigm and its emphasis on structural or material transformation. While also agreeing with the contention that resistance to power and oppression must be grounded in the experiences of oppressed and marginalized, African women theologians go further, maintaining that gender concerns are central social justice issues that any theology must address. The patriarchal and androcentric orientation of African theology has inhibited the movement itself from taking women’s distinctive experiences of oppression seriously.Accordingly, it is not uncommon for African women theologians to feel ignored and marginalized in the felds of both feminist and African theology. African women theologians, in response, employ a framework of the hermeneutic of suspicion to rethink and recast those frameworks used by feminist or African theologians to highlight the experiences and concerns of African women to bring about equity and liberation for African women. Analysis of gender issues is accomplished through multiple theological lenses intending to eradicate and transform social and religious systems that subordinate and devalue women.That many women consent to oppressive stereotypes and attitudes demonstrates that they, at the grassroots, have internalized oppression.The work of African women theologians aims to help women develop a sense of their agency. Privileging religious women’s experiences within patriarchally structured relationships is one avenue for this. As Kanyoro notes, African women theologians’ primary focus on women’s experiences functions as a frontal attack on the societal silencing of women’s voices and experiences.25 African women, Kanyoro avers, “speak out in protest” because “their cry is for the power to participate with dignity, the power to name themselves, the power to celebrate true partnership in society and the ecclesia.”26 Religious feminist scholars across the disciplines are actively engaged in, among other things, faith-motivated advocacy scholarships to help women speak up and share their stories.

Affnities between North American and African feminist theologies There are feminist core assumptions that establish a common ground to connect the theologies of North American and African feminist theologies, which allows for collaborative work among Christian women while recognizing that the shared ideas are differently contextualized. Crucially, among the core assumptions is that “a serious and critical review of Christian symbols, doctrines, and practice is necessary to determine precisely how and if the religion can support women’s oppression.”27 Rosemary Radford Ruether claims that the initial underlying assumption for feminist theology in its various contextualized expressions begins with “the promotion of the full humanity of women.”28 Indeed, the acknowledgment of women’s essential dignity is in the foreground and central to any localized or global discussion of gender equity. For feminist theologians, the moral claim is grounded in Christian theology. Another core assumption states 89

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

that the construction of womanhood has been infuenced by patriarchy. Phiri speaks of this being a global women’s issue, and that for African Christian women, in particular, patriarchy has an active hand in predetermining the roles women can play in the church and society by defning women as the inferior sex.29 Similarities aside, African feminist theology takes a confrontational, subversive stance to challenge the racism, white privilege, and assumed objectivity within white Euro-American (which is to say, Eurocentric) feminist paradigms. Consequently, many African feminist theologians agree with Delores Williams’ womanist critique of “white feminist participation” in perpetuating white supremacy.30 Williams insists that while white feminists address multiple axes of oppression, they do not explore their complicity and participation in oppressive systems, that is, “women’s oppression of women,” which stems from their failure to recognize black women’s voices.31 Recognizing that “womanist theology is organically related to black male liberation theology and feminist theology in its various expressions,”32 she understands womanist theology to present a “non-separatist and dialogical” perspective that is at once development of previous lenses while also signaling that there are “new analytical categories needed to interpret simultaneously black women’s and the black community’s experience in the context of theology.”33 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza lays the whole of the problem of dissonance between feminists squarely on white male privilege. She contends, “Christian theology is not only white-middle-class but white-middle-class-male, and shares as such in cultural sexism and patriarchalism. The ‘maleness’ and ‘sexism’ of theology is much more pervasive than the race and class issue.”34 Ruether concurs with Schüssler Fiorenza, arguing that as a result of white male privilege, feminism, in general, has arisen to challenge the “patriarchal gender paradigm” that makes the male the default of humanhood while the female possesses those characteristics deemed inferior and auxiliary.35 The central belief of womanist and African feminist theologies that insists that feminist theology has historically been done through the prism of white EuroAmerican, Eurocentric feminist paradigms enables feminists of color to identify the historical lack of racial consciousness in white feminist theology. As a result, Phiri and Nadar emphasize that a distinctive emphasis of African feminist theology unites the issue of women’s oppression with racism, economic injustice, and the practice of racially harmful religious and cultural traditions.36 Virginia Fabella similarly avers, “Neither Third World men nor First World women can determine the Third World women’s agenda. Third World women maintain that sexism must not be addressed in isolation, but within the context of the total struggle for liberation in their countries.”37 As another point of difference, African feminist theology is rooted in a plurality of religious traditions, not all of which are Christian. Nevertheless, the centrality of Christian religious discourses is due to Christianity being the predominant religious tradition in sub-Saharan Africa. As such, African feminist theology operates mainly with Christian presuppositions, however much it acknowledges other religious claims. For an African postcolonial feminist theologian like Musa Dube, not only unmasking the oppressive gender ideologies in biblical texts but also reading for decolonization and liberation is a focal point within theological studies.38 As African feminist theological contestation and critique have elicited a radical re-examination of religious and traditional cultural values, the nature of such theology sees a signifcant intersection between African culture, faith, and feminism. As a fnal note,African feminism developed primarily through the Circle of African Women Theologians (the Circle).The creation of the Circle represented the institutionalization of African women’s struggle for gender justice. The designation “concerned” in the phrase Concerned African Women Theologians essentially encapsulates the multilateral goals and direction of the Circle. Nyambura Njoroge cogently summaries the meaning of the word “concerned:” 90

African feminist theology

By calling ourselves “concerned,” we are stating that we care deeply about the erosion and destruction of human dignity and life, all life, in Africa. We are concerned that much needs to be done in the areas of religion and culture to address the social evils that block the experience of abundant life for people and the environment. We are concerned that for too long, women have been silenced and as a result, many have suffered, and others died because nothing was done.We are concerned that unless we name the sin of sexism and work for its elimination, our Africa religion institutions will continue and we care, we want to join with those who struggle for justice, peace, and reconciliation in our continent.39 In its mission and orientation, the Circle is activist, with a goal of empowerment for all African women. In the next section, I trace the origin and development of the Circle and analyze the methodological approaches of African feminist theology within the Circle’s setting.

A brief chronological sketch of the history of African feminist theology The literature on and by African women theologians of the Circle is so extensive that it is impossible to mention all of it here. The emergence and spread of feminist theological consciousness in Africa can be almost entirely credited to the work of the Circle, which Mercy Amba Oduyoye, nicknamed the “mother of African women’s theologies,” was instrumental in founding.40 Although commonly called the Circle’s founder because of her pioneering role in launching the collective in 1989, Oduyoye considers herself the initiator rather than the founder. She maintains that the idea to form the Circle was the collaborative work of fve African women theologians who met in Geneva, at the World Council of Churches (WCC).41 All of the fve founding members were at the same time members of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT), and several of them worked at the WCC. Proximity to the WCC and EATWOT had already exposed them to feminist theologies in the two-thirds world, giving some explanation as to why Oduyoye calls the Circle an “irruption within an irruption.” She sees the origin of the Circle as directly related to the rise of African liberation theology and the increase of a true global feminist consciousness. In this sense, the entire feminist paradigm of the Circle could be described as revisionist in orientation.The Circle developed revisionist theologies around the expressed desires of educated African women to raise the consciousness of women across Africa and to address the many genders, race, class, and cultural barriers to women. In Oduyoye’s contention, “Silence is no longer an option where women theologians are concerned.”42 Consequently, the Circle functioned as a trailblazing movement and provided theological space for storytelling, dialogue, and solidarity for millions of women in different continental and African contexts, giving them rein to speak for themselves and against gender inequities.The Circle has also become a crucial vehicle for promoting African women’s research, writing, and publication, including those oriented toward liberation praxis and unequivocally rooted in and motivated by the religious faith. The Circle’s inaugural conference took place in Accra, Ghana, in September 1989, on the theme “Daughters of Africa Arise;”43 the meeting brought together 70 African women theologians.The purpose was “to provide space for African women to refect on how their diverse struggles have been shaped and infuenced by the historical, religious, cultural and theological milieu in which they live.”44 Accordingly, Kanyoro, the Circle’s frst coordinator, describes the importance of the Circle for African women because they “are engaged in theological dialogue with the cultures, religions, sacred writings and oral stories, which shape the African context and defne the women of this continent.”45 The conference also encouraged African women from across Africa 91

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

and in the diaspora to speak “loudly and clearly against various manifestations of violence in the contemporary African context, particularly violence against women.”46 It is signifcant to note that these events occurred during the Third Wave of feminism, which “recognizes that women are by no means a homogenous group, and therefore any attempt at describing women’s experiences (women’s collective experiences being the chief cornerstone of feminist discourse) must essentially and inevitably consider that women’s experiences are indeed varied and different.”47 Because African feminist theologies emerged out of this global context, Nadar explains, African women theologians have strived to carve a space for themselves which is both welcoming of, and takes seriously, their experiences from within varied African contexts—these experiences include, among others, experiences of colonialism and apartheid (Dube 2000), patriarchal oppression within culture (Kanyoro 2002), the rise of the HIV pandemic particularly within the context of gender oppression (Phiri et al., 2003; Dube and Kanyoro 2004), and the ever-increasing feminization of poverty (Haddad 2000).48 After the inaugural 1989 conference, the Circle met every seven years to foster and nurture the vision that was born in Ghana. At its inception, the Circle aimed to encourage African women theologians to “concentrate their efforts on producing literature from the base of religion and culture to enrich the critical study and empowering practice of religion in Africa.”49 The priority given to research and writing led, in 1992, to the Circle’s publication of its frst book, The Will to Arise:Women,Tradition, and the Church in Africa, edited by Oduyoye and Kanyoro. The second Pan-African conference took place in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1996, on the theme “Transforming Power: African Women in the Household of God.”50 One hundred and seventy women, both women activists and intellectuals, committed themselves to the challenging task of confronting oppression against women. It was at this second Pan-African conference that Kanyoro was nominated the frst general coordinator of the Circle. The third Pan-African conference was held in Addis, Ababa, Ethiopia, in August 2002, on the theme “Sex, Stigma, and HIV/AIDS: African Women Challenging Religion, Culture, and Social Practices.” The conference was propelled by the urgency of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its enormous implications for women. African women theologians saw the epidemic as a critical gender problem, and all conference papers had to address the epidemic and its relation to women’s social, political, fnancial, and sexual human rights.This focus on issues of women’s health and HIV/AIDS continued in the fourth Pan-African conference, held in Yaoundé in September 2007, on the theme: “The Girl Child, Women, Religion and HIV and AIDS in Africa: A Gendered Perspective,” which revived the 2002 HIV/AIDS theme. As Philomena Mwaura avers, “The realization of the severity of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its gendered dimension led the Circle of African Women Theologians from 2002–2007 to focus their theological refection on the pandemic.”51 The ffth and last Pan-African Conference of the Circle was held in Kempton Park, South Africa,August 2013. The current goals of the Circle are to continue interrogating patriarchal infuences and women’s social, systematic, and institutionalized oppression in more complex ways; to engage more openly with male theologians; to offer more mentoring opportunities for untrained writers and theologians; and to increase dialogue with ecumenical organizations.

Central concerns of the Circle Due to space constraints, it impossible to do justice to the full range of issues explored by the Circle. I discuss only what I consider some of the salient concerns. From its early development, 92

African feminist theology

certain interests and emphases have characterized the Circle. Importantly, it was formed to give a voice and space for women doing theology at the grassroots and in academia to refect equally together, a goal which has remained a central task of the Circle.As Oduyoye puts it, Our story is one of letting it be known that African women are awake. They have heard Jesus say “Talitha cum” (Mark 5:41). Cultural expectations that kept us “behind the curtain” are being exposed. Disempowering religious teachings are being challenged.We are awake to our responsibility as creative beings made in the image of God. The Circle has motivated African theologians to pay more attention to what culture and religion do in women’s lives.52 The Circle calls for an end to traditions/practices that inhibit, dehumanize, and harm women. Also, Circle members use the grassroots advocacy paradigm and community-based activism to continue confronting and advocating against culturally based practices and beliefs that are harmful to women as well as children. Key toxic practices addressed throughout the lifespan of the Circle include battery, sexual abuse of female children and workers, female genital mutilation, dowry-related violence, marital rape, and emotional, verbal, psychological, economic, and spiritual abuse. To foster the Circle’s grassroots advocacy agenda, Beverly Haddad holds that women theologians need to recognize and take seriously the reality that “experiences of survival shape the lives of ordinary African women each day. And, for these women, each day God is with them in their ‘wilderness experience,’ a situation of near destruction when survival becomes paramount.”53 Moreover, Phiri and Nadar believe that the empowerment of women at the grassroots requires women to become bilingual, capable not only of holding discourse within their communities and within academia, but also of embodying the cultural and social requirements of each unique space.54 The Circle maintains that the private religious life must also manifest in the public and secular sphere, which refects the Circle’s goal to challenge, disrupt, deconstruct, and blur the stark public/private gendered spaces/boundaries between men and women. Subversion of public/ private gendered spaces/boundaries is signifcant for allowing women’s concerns and demands to be exposed to the patriarchal system that perpetuates unhealthy dichotomizing. In the Circle’s conceptualization, private experiences are rooted in social conditions. Indeed, Mwaura argues that “part of challenging patriarchy through developing an African Women’s public theology is precisely to challenge the assumption that women and women’s theology should not deal with politics, economics, and law and provide them with a framework and language to support this.”55 About culture, in particular, the Circle emphasizes that while culture is necessary for contextualizing the Gospel and engaging the Bible, it is not enough. Notably, since the 1960s, African theologians have engaged in inculturation, an attempt to reformulate and reinterpret the Gospel so that it can be at home in African culture;56 in Kanyoro’s words, inculturation “attempts to ‘Africanize’ in the sense of affrming African culture and positioning it as the basis for developing African liberation theology.”57 However, inculturation theologians (comprised primarily of men) tend to homogenize the discourse with limited regard for gender concerns, leaving the framework “tacitly gendered” from a male perspective.58 As a result, Kanyoro retorts that “inculturation is not suffcient unless the cultures we reclaim are analyzed and are deemed worthy regarding promoting justice and support for life and the dignity of women.”59 Inculturation can be used to legitimize cultural practices like patriarchal relations of dominion and subordination, which has led women like Loreen Maseno to propose “gendering inculturation” as a “process of integrating a strategic and social understanding of women as a distinct group, thereby incorporating women’s cultural experience and including a commitment to the emancipation of 93

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

women into inculturation.”60 Inculturation shows promise; yet, culture is by no means free from the very weaknesses that plague this framework. Primarily due to the male-oriented, patriarchal structure of African religious institutions, the Circle contends that new methodologies and theories are required not only to provide a foundation for social change for the African context but also for women and women theologians to move forward. New theories are also necessary because the various methods that exist do not capture the real lived experiences of African women adequately.

Methodological trends in African feminist biblical interpretations Feminist contextual interpretations have resulted from the dynamic interaction between biblical texts and interpretive contexts. However, even though the Bible is the foundation from which African feminist theologians tackle issues of oppression,61 many women agree with Schüssler Fiorenza’s bold assertion that women should exercise care; she proposed that the contents of biblical texts should be marked with the label:“Caution, could be dangerous to your health and survival.”62 Her warning coheres with Musa Dube’s decolonizing stance vis-à-vis the Bible. For Dube, a decolonizing reading has the goal of not only deconstructing biblical texts, revealing potential dangers, and exposing imperialist constructions, but also enacting social transformation.63 She avers,“A decolonizing reading’s main objective is liberation.”64 The consensus among African feminist theologians, continental and diasporic alike, is that the African context and African lived realities serve as starting point and the primary subject of feminist inquiries and biblical interpretation.Thus, the Circle argues that the Bible must be viewed holistically, not merely to support one’s own beliefs, standing, or culture. Gerald West captures this goal well when he states, Interpreting the biblical text is never, in African biblical hermeneutics, an end in itself. Biblical interpretation is always about changing the African context.This is what links ordinary African biblical interpretation and African biblical scholarship, a common commitment to “read” the Bible for personal and societal transformation.65 With the church contexts, transformation involves more than creating positions for female leadership. Indeed, the Circle states that the creation of seemingly progressive leadership roles can maintain or further legitimize oppressive ecclesial structures. In line with this reasoning, Schüssler Fiorenza explains that the scope of social transformation is delimited by the theological language, imagery, and myth that still embody their traditional oppressive foundation. “Structural change and the evolution of feminist theology, and nonsexist language, imagery, and myth have to go hand in hand,”66 she says. It is this insistence on social transformation and liberation that Dube sees as the distinctive difference between male and female readers of the Bible.67 The full dream of African feminist theologians, therefore, rests on the cooperation and collaboration of men and women. Odyoye describes this communal, ecclesial unity as “men and women walking together on the journey home with the church as the umbrella of faith, hope, and love,”68 and she goes on to say,“The church must shed its image as a male organization with a female clientele whom it placates with vain promises, half-truths and the prospect of redemption at the end of time. Wider vistas of human living are needed here and now.”69 As such, in terms of reading approaches, African feminist biblical scholars use deconstructionist critical strategies to unmask socio-political agendas encoded in biblical texts that seek to establish their interpretation and worldview as solely authoritative; the process then directs itself to the society at large calling for the fulfllment of justice and change. 94

African feminist theology

Some signifcant trends of African feminist theologies As articulated by the members of the Circle, theoretical and academic study is always joined with practical, real-world solutions and application.Also, like liberation hermeneutics, the feminist trend is to hold the Bible in “ideological ambivalence” because it is both the word of God and a tool that humans have used for oppression. Furthermore, alongside liberation hermeneutics’ emphasis on material conditions (that is, economics, class, etc.), feminists place particular concern on women’s place in the African and biblical context. Hence, while African feminist theology engages in interdisciplinary dialogues with a wide array of different theoretical and hermeneutical approaches, it privileges contextual theologies/contextual hermeneutics.70 Some prominent African feminist models for doing theology are narrative theology, cultural hermeneutics, and postcolonial hermeneutics. Narrative theology has, since the Circle’s inception, held an important role in highlighting and sharing the stories of marginalized and often voiceless women. Storytelling is itself intimately connected with African culture and knowledge sharing. Kanyoro explains that the Circle commissioned women to engage in storytelling in order “to remember and to name their experiences by articulating their stories of faith and life.”71 Narrative theology similarly values story as art, skill, and tool for conveying the subjective nature of truth, which is to say, truth as each understands it, as opposed to the historically Euro-American belief in objective truth or reality. Contextual theologies/cultural hermeneutics underline the different feminist theological and hermeneutical contextualizations within sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, because high levels of social fragmentation along religious, cultural, and ethnic lines eschew broad strokes of generalization and simplifcation.Accordingly, the Circle emphasizes the need for “local contextual solutions being used to solve practical problems at the grassroots level.”72 Each cultural context necessitates a specifc approach.With the understanding that culture comprises the framework that determines women’s welfare and status, Kanyoro insists that a cultural hermeneutics or contextual and communal approach is indispensable for the Circle to achieve its goals.73 Mwaura further accentuates the value of a hermeneutics that seeks to grow out of women’s unique cultural and religious realities: Actions such as returning to our villages to do theological work with our communities make our work exciting.We do not stop at simply asking for some issues from our communities as subjects for research, as has been done in the past. We stay with the issues, slowly discovering with the community what the word of God or our culture is sending to us.We examine this with feminist hermeneutical keys, and then we engage ourselves practically in some form of change.74 In her practice of feminist cultural hermeneutics, Kanyoro contends that it was important for herself as an African feminist theologian “to come to terms with identifying in our cultures those things that were beautiful and wholesome and life-affrming and to denounce those who were denying us life and wholeness.”75 It is the act of connecting to the undercurrent, undergirding details of women’s lives that allows for a detailed assessment of culture and oppression therein. Postcolonial hermeneutics is becoming increasingly signifcant in African feminist theology. The approach’s popularity can be attributed to how it addresses the global problem of power asymmetries, particularly as it relates to gender power relations. As defned by Dube, postcolonialism is “a study of international relations of how the ideology of domination, collaboration, and resistance are expounded and enacted between nations;”76 postcolonial analytical strategies 95

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

locate themselves in “relationships of domination and subordination that were created in modern imperialism did not end when geographical independence was won.”77 Dube has done pioneering work in postcolonial feminist biblical hermeneutics. She stresses, as mentioned above, a “reading for decolonization” in biblical and cultural texts to critique and resist imperialist structures and colonialist oppression. She sees the need for this hermeneutical approach as arising from the historical belief that biblical books are compatible with colonialism; in her words,“the Bible function[ed] as the ‘talisman’ in imperial possession of foreign places and people.”78 She is adamant, therefore, that “reading for decolonization” is imperative for those seeking liberation and questioning how Africa’s colonial history impacts their reading of the Bible.79 As a fnal note, the crisis created by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa has become a priority in the feminist theological analyses of many Circle women.The Circle has been engaged in both activist and academic discourses that hold the contextual, political, and religious dimensions of the crisis as central features in their praxis-oriented conversations.80 Dube, for example, has given special attention to postcolonial feminist HIV/AIDS hermeneutics81 and perceives the HIV/AIDS pandemic to exist within other social diseases of poverty; gender inequalities; violence; human rights abuse; ethnic conficts and cleansings; national and international injustice; and discrimination by sexuality, race, age, and physical ability.82 The damaging nature of the pandemic elicited new hermeneutical questions from Dube, prompting her to ask, If Jesus can heal this much, why can’t Jesus heal us of HIV/AIDS in our nation and the world? With the HIV/AIDS death scare, stigma, suffering, and fear of dying or contracting the disease, how do you read the synoptic gospels? The social setting of illness, fear, and discrimination against the sick and orphans demanded a rereading.83 In her continued efforts to read the Bible within the context of HIV/AIDS, Dube’s praxisfocused hermeneutics engages in collaborative reading with non-academic readers. She, moreover, demonstrates the need for contextualized and recontextualized passages of Scripture that refect and interact with the cultural issues and crises pressing African people.

Main problems raised by African feminism and the interface between the Circle and white North American feminist theologians The main problems between the Circle and other groups of scholars and theologians relate to a divergence of central foci. For example, African men theologians are in general focused on inculturation or liberation theology, both of which tend to gloss over the aspects of culture which are not good. As a result, men use the Bible to approve of the African context around them or support cultural traditions and practices without analyzing whether this does harm to the marginalized. It is most common for African men theologians to operate almost exclusively through their position of respect, authority, and dominance within the African context (which hearkens to the Eurocentrism of white feminists). Oduyoye’s ecumenical and holistic vision of a community of men and women supporting one another is not intended to replace any current theological methodologies; instead, Oduyoye wants African feminism and its methods to be an addition to what others have already accomplished. Another major stumbling block is the lack of opportunities for women and girls to become educated and forge strong connections within scholarship and academia.This includes limited scholarships for women and girls, few avenues for church fnancial and spiritual support, communities favoring males’ advancement, African universities focusing on antiquated European theologies, women lacking social or academic mobility without church or male backing, feminist writings not able to fnd publishers or a place 96

African feminist theology

in college curricula, women theologians not well trained in academic and professional writing nor able to fnd permanent positions as writers and scholars, and the list goes on.84 African feminist movements are similar to Western feminist movements, both being described as different shades of the same color.85 Whereas Western feminism tends to focus on race, class, and gender, African feminism fnds culture requiring the most attention—culture being, in a sense, an underlying matrix of race, class, and gender. It is primarily the African context and its unique methodologies that shape African feminism into something distinct from Western feminism. I have already discussed many of the issues between each group of feminists, so it would be grossly disingenuous not to acknowledge the collaborative work and the support of white middle-class Euro-American feminist theologians. The Circle was able to engage in research, writing, and publication, mainly due to the help of feminist theologians from the United States. Several white middle-class Euro-American feminist theologians, especially professors at Yale Divinity School, including Letty Russell, Margaret Farley, Shannon Clarkson, Kristen Leslie, Serene Jones, and Kari Hartwig, were and still are sources of motivation and inspiration to the Circle. The Addis Ababa Pan-African Circle Conference is a direct result of the partnership meeting on “Gender, Faith, and Responses to HIV & AIDS in Africa” held at Yale by the invitation of the Yale faculty above.86 Letty Russell and Shannon Clarkson equally coordinated the International Feminist Doctoral of Ministry program, from which many Circle members graduated; it should be mentioned that the program is a product of the Ecumenical Decade and ETE Program in World Council of Churches (WCC).87 Njoroge also recognizes that how the Circle members interacted and collaborated with the staff in WCC, Lutheran World Federation (LWF), World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), and All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) facilitated the Circle’s rising global presence and funding opportunities.88 Although of an advantaged social group, these white feminist theologians take a bold stand against systematic discrimination against and oppression of women of color; notably, they work alongside women of color for the elimination of oppressive institutional, cultural, and societal attitudes and beliefs. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit Africa severely, it was the partnership with the Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA),World Council of Churches, Phiri notes, that was instrumental in helping African churches deal competently and effectively with issues relating to HIV and AIDS.The partnership made it possible for a workshop on HIV/AIDS to be held in different African countries. Odoyuye and other founding leaders of the Circle have worked diligently toward building coalitions among feminist theologians across the globe, urging African women to engage in critical conversations with other women across cultural boundaries and assist in giving the voiceless an avenue to speak.

The Circle/African feminist theology today The Circle has been the primary vehicle for the development and transformation of African feminist consciousness—a developing sense of sisterhood. The launching of the Circle has mobilized many subaltern feminist groups to contest, resist, and challenge structural oppression, including patriarchal ecclesiastical structures. It has been a formidable force in advancing gender equity through refective actions toward social justice. For many women, the Circle is a safe space in which persons of diverse cultural and ethnic groups feel comfortable working together through coalitions and teamwork. Indeed, as Mwaura explains,African women’s theology is deeply indebted to the work of the Circle.89 Undeniably, African feminist consciousness has spread even as the Circle has of late contracted and, in some ways, lost momentum.That the Circle is shrinking can be partly explained by the increasing number of African continental and diasporic women scholars who are fnding alternative venues to do research and publish works. 97

Alice Yafeh-Deigh

Also, it must be noted that many of the pioneering leaders of the Circle came from mainstream religious traditions.Auli Vähäkangas remarks, Both Oduyoye and Kanyoro have a historical Protestant church as their background which labels their thinking.That type of mono-cultural situation is becoming increasingly rarer in today’s Africa. In a contemporary multicultural/multi-faith situation, the African theologian also needs the skills and knowledge of anthropology to discover all aspects of a given culture.90 Despite maybe approaching its end, the powerful impact of the Circle speaks for itself: African women are carrying a new sense of sisterhood, connections, and tools into their respective cultural contexts—their different realities—to initiate the process of accomplishing justice and give voiceless women voices. Currently, African feminist theology is receiving fresh vitality and creative energy through its engagement in the African Biblical Hermeneutics forum at the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion, two international academic organizations. These conferences heighten the visibility of African women theologians and have, concurrently, crystalized the fact that more African women have gained access to graduate degrees since the launching of the Circle in 1989. While deliberately designed to be academic in orientation, the research and scholarship done at these conferences are praxis-oriented and couched to be accessible to a wide range of theologically and non-theologically trained readers. Furthermore, in an attempt to level the playing feld between academic feminist theologians and grassroots feminism, several African feminist theologians have become involved in grassroots advocacy and community-based activism91 (Haddad 1993; Kanyoro 2001; Dube & Kanyoro 2004; Nadar 2006; Masenya 2006). The growing importance of African feminist voices in these various felds reinforces the success of the Circle and celebrates the legacy and unswerving commitment of the Circle’s pioneers.With the issue of the HIV/AIDS pandemic dominating the current scene, African feminists have come to possess the necessary avenues for sharing their perspectives and practical responses to this emergency. The conversation is indeed shifting to see justice on a wider spectrum. For African women theologians, in particular, an adequate and effcient response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic must arise with an eye to the subaltern and marginalized members of society, which is to say, those who are voiceless and most vulnerable to suffering and oppression.

Notes 1 Hillary Clinton (speech, United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, September 5, 1995). 2 Cf. Jacquelyn Grant, ed., Perspectives on Womanist Theology (Atlanta: ITC Press, 1995); Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness:The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (New York: Orbis Books, 1993); Linda E. Thomas, “Womanist-Theology, Epistemology, and a New Anthropological Paradigm,” Cross Currents 48, no. 4 (1998): 488–499; Katie Geneva Cannon, Emilie M.Townes, and Angela D. Sims, eds., Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2011); Alice Yafeh-Deigh, Paul’s Sexual and Marital Ethics in 1 Corinthians 7: An African-Cameroonian Perspective (Bible and Theology in Africa) (New York: Peter Lang Inc., 2015). 3 Yafeh-Deigh, Paul’s Sexual and Marital Ethics in 1 Corinthians 7. 4 Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens:Womanist Prose (New York: Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1983). 5 Yafeh-Deigh, Paul’s Sexual and Marital Ethics in 1 Corinthians 7. 6 Ibid.

98

African feminist theology 7 Cf. Mercy Amba Oduyoye, “Feminist Theology in an African Perspective,” in Paths of African Theology (London: SCM Press, 1994); Musimbi Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Perspective (New York: Pilgrim Press, 2002); Isabel Apawo Phiri,“African Women Theologies,” in African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations (London: SPCK, 2010); Philomena Njeri Mwaura,“Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology:The Case of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians” (lecture, the Annual Hendrik Kraemer Lectures,Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2015). 8 Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics, 15. 9 Mary Ebun Modupe Kolawole, Womanism and African Consciousness (Trento: Africa World Press, 1996), 10. 10 Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar, “Treading Softly but Firmly: African Women, Religion, and Health,” in African Women, Religion and Health: Essays in Honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye (New York: Orbis Books, 2006), 5. 11 Josephine Ahikire, “African Feminism in Context: Refections on the Legitimation Battles,Victories and Reversals,” Feminist Africa 19 (2014): 9. 12 Kimberlé Crenshaw,“Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex:A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1, no. 8 (1989): 139. 13 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1243. 14 Juliet Williams,“What Intersectional Feminism Means,” USA Today (January 19, 2017). 15 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000), 82. 16 Mari J. Matsuda,“Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal Theory Out of Coalition,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1189. 17 Kirill Filimonov and Jakob Svensson, “(re)Articulating Feminism: A Discourse Analysis of Sweden’s Feminist Initiative Election Campaign,” Nordicom Review 37, no. 2 (2016): 53. 18 Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill, “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism,” Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (1996): 326–327. 19 Yafeh-Deigh, Paul’s Sexual and Marital Ethics in 1 Corinthians 7. 20 Ahikire,“African Feminism in Context,” 8. 21 Isabel Apawo Phiri, “Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity,” Religion & Spirituality 61 (2004): 16. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 16. 24 Gerald West, Reading Otherwise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with their Local Communities (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 4. 25 Musimbi Kanyoro,“Inculturation and the Mission of the Church,” in Inculturation and the Mission of the Church in Nigeria:The Third CIWA Theology Week 4th–8th May 1992, eds. J. Brookman-Amissah and J. E.Anyanwu et al. (Port Harcourt: CIWA Publications, 1992), 28. 26 Ibid. 27 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness. 28 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk:Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 18. 29 Isabel Apawo Phiri,“Doing Theology in Community:The Case of African Women Theologians in the 1990s,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 11. 30 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, xiv. 31 Ibid., 185. 32 Ibid., xiv. 33 Ibid. 34 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Feminist Theology as a Critical Theology of Liberation,” Theological Studies 36, no. 4 (1975): 613. 35 Rosemary Radford Ruether, “The Emergence of Christian Feminist Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3. 36 Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar, “‘The Personal Is Political’: Faith and Religion in a Public University,” Acta Theologica Supplementum 14 (2011): 83. 37 Virginia Fabella, Beyond Bonding:A Third World Women’s Theological Journey (Manila: Institute of Women’s Studies, 1993), 35.

99

Alice Yafeh-Deigh 38 Cf. Musa Dube, “Readings of Semoya: Batswana Women’s Interpretations of Matt.15:21-28,” Semeia 73 (1996): 111–129; Musa Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis: Chalice, 2000); Makhosazana K. Nzimande, Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation in Post-Apartheid South Africa:The Gebirah in the Hebrew Bible in the Light of Queen Jezebel and the Queen Mother of Lemuel. PhD, Brite Divinity School,Texas Christian University, 2005. 39 Nyambura Njoroge, “The Missing Voice: African Women Theology,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 79. 40 Cf. Mercy Amba Oduyoye, “The Story of a Circle,” The Ecumenical Review 53, no. 1 (2001), 99; Nyambura Njoroge,“Talitha Cum! To the New Millennium:A Conclusion,” in Talitha Cum:Theologies of African Women, (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001). 41 Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Who Will Roll the Stone Away? The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women (Genève:WCC Publications, 1990), 27. 42 Mercy Amba Oduyoye,“Gender and Theology in Africa Today,” The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (2006). 43 Musimbi Kanyoro “Beads and Strands: Threading More Beads in the Story of the Circle,” in African Women, Religion, and Health: Essays in Honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye, (New York: Orbis Books, 2006) 24. 44 Mwaura,“Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology.” 45 Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics, 16. 46 Teresia M. Hinga, “African Feminist Theologies, the Global Village, and the Imperative of Solidarity Across Borders:The Case of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 18, no. 1 (2002): 82. 47 Sarojini Nadar, “Feminist Theologies in Africa,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions (West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2012), 270. 48 Ibid. 49 Kanyoro,“Beads and Strands,” 21–22. 50 Njoroge,“The Missing Voice,” 77. 51 Mwaura,“Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology.” 52 Mercy Amba Oduyoye,“The Story of a Circle,” The Ecumenical Review 53, no. 1 (2001): 99. 53 Beverley G. Haddad,“Constructing Theologies of Survival in the South African Context:The Necessity of a Critical Engagement between Postmodern and Liberation Theology,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 14, no. 2 (1998): 11. 54 Phiri and Nadar,“Treading Softly but Firmly:African Women, Religion, and Health,” 6. 55 Mwaura,“Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology.” 56 Loreen Maseno,“Gendering Inculturation in Africa:A Discussion of Three African Women Theologians’ Entry into the Inculturation Scene,” Norwegian Journal for Missions 4 (2004): 225. 57 Musimbi Kanyoro.“Engendered Communal Theology:African Women’s Contribution to Theology in the 21st Century,” in Talitha Cum! Theologies of African Women (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001), 167. 58 Maseno,“Gendering Inculturation in Africa,” 227. 59 Kanyoro.“Engendered Communal Theology,” 167. 60 Maseno,“Gendering Inculturation in Africa,” 226. 61 Chris Barrigar, “The Imperative Inherent in the Gift of Freedom: Karl Barth and Amartya Sen on Human Freedom,” Asia Journal of Theology 18 (2004): 111. 62 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 14. 63 Musa Dube, Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations (Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship) (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 598. 64 Ibid. 65 Gerald West,“Biblical Hermeneutics in Africa,” a paper presented at the Ujamaa Centre (University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008), 1–14 at 2; to be published in John Parratt, ed., John: A Reader in African Theology (rev. ed.; London: SPCK, forthcoming), 2. 66 Fiorenza,“Feminist Theology as a Critical Theology of Liberation,” 620. 67 Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, 169. 68 Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Beads and Strands: Refections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa (New York: Orbis Books, 2003), 99. 69 Ibid.

100

African feminist theology 70 Cf. Oduyoye,“The Story of a Circle,” 97–100; Kanyoro,“Engendered Communal Theology.” 71 Musimbi Kanyoro, “Feminist Theology and African Culture,” in Violence against Women, eds. M. Getui and G.Wamue (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 1996), 4. 72 Auli Vähäkangas, “African Feminist Contributions to Missiological Anthropology,” Mission Studies 28 (2011): 177. 73 Kanyoro.“Engendered Communal Theology,” 164. 74 Mwaura,“Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology,” 96. 75 Kanyoro, Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics, 5. 76 Musa Dube, “Looking Back and Forward: Postcolonialism, Globalization, God and Gender,” Scriptura 92 (2006): 183. 77 Ibid. 78 Musa Dube, “Reading for Decolonization,” in John and Postcolonialism:Travel, Space, and Power, (New York: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2002a), 60. 79 Ibid. 80 Cf. Musa Dube and Musimbi Kanyoro, eds., Grant Me Justice! HIV/AIDS and Gender Readings of the Bible (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2004); Madipoane Masenya,“Killed by Aids and Buried by Religion: African Female Bodies in Crisis,” in Let My People Stay! Researching the Old Testament in Africa, ed. Holter, K (Nairobi: Acton, 2006), 131–146; Sarojini Nadar,“‘Barak God and Die!’:Women, HIV, and a Theology of Suffering,” in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2006), 189–204. 81 Musa Dube, “Rereading the Bible: Biblical Hermeneutics and Social Justice,” African Theology Today 1 (2002b). 82 Musa Dube, ed. “Social Location as a Story-telling Method of Teaching in HIV/AIDS Contexts,” in HIV/AIDS and the Curriculum: Methods of Integrating HIV/AIDS in Theological Programs (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2003). 83 Dube,“Rereading the Bible,” 6–7. 84 Cf. Isabel Apawo Phiri,“Major Challenges for African Women Theologians in Theological Education (1989-2008),” International Review of Mission 98, no. 1 (2009): 105–119. 85 Sarojini Nadar,“A South African Indian Womanist Reading of the Character of Ruth,” in Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible, ed. Musa W. Dube Shomanah (Atlanta and Geneva: Society of Biblical Literature and WCC Publications, 2001), 159–175. 86 Nyambura Njoroge, “A New Way of Facilitating Leadership: Lessons from African Women Theologians,” in African Christianity: An African Story, ed. Kalu Ogbu (Department of Church History, University of Pretoria, 2005), 456. 87 Ibid., 453. 88 Ibid. 89 Mwaura,“Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology,” 95. 90 Vähäkangas,“African Feminist Contributions to Missiological Anthropology,” 183. 91 Cf. Beverley G. Haddad,The Role of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa in the Social Transformation of the Western Cape 1960-1990 (Bellville: University of the Western Cape, 1993); Kanyoro,“Engendered Communal Theology”; Dube and Kanyoro, eds., Grant Me Justice! HIV/AIDS; Nadar,“‘Barak God and Die!’”; Masenya,“Killed by Aids and Buried by Religion.”

Bibliography Ahikire, Josephine.“African Feminism in Context: Refections on the Legitimation Battles,Victories, and Reversals.” Feminist Africa 19 (2014): 7–23. Barrigar, Chris.“The Imperative Inherent in the Gift of Freedom: Karl Barth and Amartya Sen on Human Freedom.” Asia Journal of Theology 18 (2004): 110–137. Cannon, Katie Geneva, Emilie M. Townes, and Angela D. Sims, eds. Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader. Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2011. Clinton, Hillary. Speech given at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, September 5, 1995. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1, no. 8 (1989): 139–167.

101

Alice Yafeh-Deigh Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–1299. Dube, Musa. “Readings of Semoya: Batswana Women’s Interpretations of Matt.15:21–28.” Semeia 73 (1996): 111–129. Dube, Musa. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. St. Louis: Chalice, 2000. Dube, Musa. “Reading for Decolonization.” In John and Postcolonialism:Travel, Space, and Power, edited by Musa Dube and Jeffrey L. Staley. New York: Sheffeld Academic Press, 2002a. Dube, Musa. “Rereading the Bible: Biblical Hermeneutics and Social Justice.” African Theology Today 1 (2002b): 57–68. Dube, Musa. “Social Location as a Story-Telling Method of Teaching in HIV/AIDS Contexts.” In HIV/ AIDS and the Curriculum: Methods of Integrating HIV/AIDS in Theological Programs, edited by Musa Dube. Geneva:WCC Publications, 2003. Dube, Musa. “Looking Back and Forward: Postcolonialism, Globalization, God and Gender.” Scriptura 92 (2006): 178–193. Dube, Musa and Musimbi Kanyoro, eds. Grant Me Justice! HIV/AIDS and Gender Readings of the Bible. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2004. Fabella, Virginia. Beyond Bonding: A Third World Women’s Theological Journey. Manila: Institute of Women’s Studies, 1993. Filimonov, Kirill and Jakob Svensson. “(Re)Articulating Feminism: A Discourse Analysis of Sweden’s Feminist Initiative Election Campaign.” Nordicom Review 37, no. 2 (2016): 51–66. Grant, Jacquelyn, ed. Perspectives on Womanist Theology.Atlanta: ITC Press, 1995. Haddad, Beverley G. The Role of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa in the Social Transformation of the Western Cape 1960–1990. Bellville: University of the Western Cape, 1993. Haddad, Beverley G. “Constructing Theologies of Survival in the South African Context: The Necessity of a Critical Engagement Between Postmodern and Liberation Theology.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 14, no. 2 (1998): 5–18. Haddad, Beverley G. “African Women’s Theologies of Survival: Intersecting Faith, Feminisms, and Development.” PhD. School of Theology, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000. Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. Hinga,Teresia M.“African Feminist Theologies, the Global Village, and the Imperative of Solidarity Across Borders:The Case of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 18, no. 1 (2002): 79–86. Kanyoro, Musimbi. “Inculturation and the Mission of the Church.” In Inculturation and the Mission of the Church in Nigeria:The Third CIWA Theology Week 4th–8th May 1992, edited by J. Brookman-Amissah and J.E.Anyanwu et al. Port Harcourt: CIWA Publications, 1992. Kanyoro, Musimbi. “Feminist Theology and African Culture.” In Violence Against Women, edited by M. Getui and G.Wamue. Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 1996. Kanyoro, Musimbi. “Engendered Communal Theology: African Women’s Contribution to Theology in the 21st Century.” In Talitha Cum! Theologies of African Women, edited by Nyambura Njeroge and Musa Dube. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001. Kanyoro, Musimbi. Introducing Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics:An African Perspective. New York: Pilgrim Press, 2002. Kanyoro, Musimbi. “Beads and Strands: Threading More Beads in the Story of the Circle.” In African Women, Religion, and Health: Essays in Honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye, edited by Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar. New York: Orbis Books, 2006. Kolawole, Mary Ebun Modupe. Womanism and African Consciousness. Trento:Africa World Press, 1997. Maseno, Loreen. “Gendering Inculturation in Africa: A Discussion of Three African Women Theologians’ Entry into the Inculturation Scene.” Norwegian Journal for Missions 4 (2004): 225–236. Masenya, Madipoane.“Killed by Aids and Buried by Religion:African Female Bodies in Crisis.” In Let My People Stay! Researching the Old Testament in Africa, edited by Knot Holter. Nairobi:Acton, 2006. Matsuda, Mari J. “Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal Theory Out of Coalition.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1183–1192. Mwaura, Philomena Njeri. “Gender Equity and Empowerment in African Public Theology:The Case of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.”Annual Hendrik Kraemer Lectures.Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2015.

102

African feminist theology Nadar, Sarojini. “A South African Indian Womanist Reading of the Character of Ruth.” In Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible, edited by Musa Dube. Atlanta/Geneva: Society of Biblical Literature and WCC Publications, 2001. Nadar, Sarojini. “‘Barak God and Die!’: Women, HIV, and a Theology of Suffering.” In Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, edited by R. S. Sugirtharajah. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006. Njoroge, Nyambura. “The Missing Voice: African Women Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 77–83. Njoroge, Nyambura.“Talitha Cum! To the New Millennium: A Conclusion.” In Talitha Cum:Theologies of African Women, edited by Nyambura Njoroge and Musa Dube. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001. Njoroge, Nyambura. “A New Way of Facilitating Leadership: Lessons from African Women Theologians.” In African Christianity: An African Story, edited by Ogbu U. Kalu. Pretoria: Department of Church History, University of Pretoria, 2005. Nzimande, Makhosazana K. “Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Gebirah in the Hebrew Bible in the Light of Queen Jezebel and the Queen Mother of Lemuel.” Unpublished PhD Dissertation. Brite Divinity School,Texas Christian University, 2005. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Who Will Roll the Stone Away? The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women. Genève:WCC Publications, 1990. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. “Feminist Theology in an African Perspective.” In Paths of African Theology, edited by Rosino Gibellini. London: SCM Press, 1994. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba.“The Story of a Circle.” The Ecumenical Review 53, no. 1 (2001): 97–100. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Beads and Strands: Refections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa. New York: Orbis Books, 2003. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. “Gender and Theology in Africa Today.” Journal of Constructive Theology 8 (2002): 35–46. Phiri, Isabel Apawo. “Doing Theology in Community: The Case of African Women Theologians in the 1990s.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 68. Phiri, Isabel Apawo. “Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity.” Religion & Spirituality 61 (2004): 16–24. Phiri, Isabel Apawo.“Major Challenges for African Women Theologians in Theological Education (1989– 2008).” International Review of Mission 98, no. 1 (2009): 105–119. Phiri, Isabel Apawo and Sarojini Nadar. “Treading Softly but Firmly: African Women, Religion, and Health.” In African Women, Religion and Health: Essays in Honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye, edited by Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar. New York: Orbis Books, 2006. Phiri, Isabel Apawo and Sarojini Nadar.“African Women Theologies.” In African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations, edited by Diana B. Stinton. London: SPCK, 2010. Phiri, Isabel Apawo and Sarojini Nadar. “‘The Personal Is Political’: Faith and Religion in a Public University.” Acta Theologica Supplementum 14 (2011): 81–94. Phiri, Isabel, Beverley G. Haddad, and Madipoane Masenya, eds. African Women, HIV/AIDS, and Faith Communities. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2003. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk:Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “The Emergence of Christian Feminist Theology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, edited by Susan Frank Parsons. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth.“Feminist Theology as a Critical Theology of Liberation.” Theological Studies 36, no. 4 (1975): 605–626. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Rhetoric and Ethic:The Politics of Biblical Studies. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999. Thomas, Linda E. “Womanist-Theology, Epistemology, and a New Anthropological Paradigm.” Cross Currents 48, no. 4 (1998): 488–499. Vähäkangas, Auli. “African Feminist Contributions to Missiological Anthropology.” Mission Studies 28 (2011): 170–185. Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. New York: Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1983. West, Gerald. Reading Otherwise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with Their Local Communities. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.

103

Alice Yafeh-Deigh West, Gerald.“Biblical Hermeneutics in Africa.” In African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations, edited by Diane B. Stinton. London: SPCK, 2010: 21–31. Williams, Delores. “The Color of Feminism or Speaking the Black Woman’s Tongue.” Journal of Religious Thought 43, no. 1 (1986): 42–58. Williams, Delores. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. New York: Orbis Books, 1993. Williams, Juliet.“What Intersectional Feminism Means.” USA Today (January 19, 2017). Yafeh-Deigh, Alice. Paul’s Sexual and Marital Ethics in 1 Corinthians 7. An African-Cameroonian Perspective (Bible and Theology in Africa). New York: Peter Lang Inc., 2015. Zinn, Maxine Baca and Bonnie Thornton Dill. “Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism.” Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (1996): 321–331.

104

7 THE FOUR WAVES OF BLACK THEOLOGY IN SOUTH AFRICA AND CONTEXTS OF POLITICAL STRUGGLE Timothy van Aarde

Introduction1 The emerging post-Cold War and post-apartheid paradigm of black theology performs a unique role in reaffrming the human dignity of Africans and their black identity.The “caricature was a byproduct [sic] of the apartheid culture was that blacks lost their human dignity and identity.”2 It is the contribution of black theology to the affrmation of the dignity of Africans and their identity which is the inherent and continued contribution of the theology. Black theology in South Africa is a contextual theology that engages current political powers and structures from an African context and is in this sense distinct from American black theology and liberation theology, which has its roots in Latin America.3 Black theology in South Africa was born in the context of the South African liberation struggle; it is synonymous with the apartheid struggle. It was a black consciousness movement that affrmed the dignity of South Africans and their history, and also helped them rediscover their identity.4 It is an interpretation of American black theology that is honestly and authentically an African black experience within the complexity of the meaning of blackness in South Africa.5 Black theology in South Africa has consisted of two waves. The frst “wave” was built on the foundations of black consciousness laid by Steve Biko.6 All in all the black person had become a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowned in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity. In response, the black consciousness movement helped black people to fnd their identity in themselves.7 According to Kee, “[t]he second wave of black theology in South Africa is best represented in the work of Allen Boesak.”8 The agenda for a third wave9 was set in the 1980s by the “Black theology project” and the signifcant article, “Black Theology and Authority” contributed by Mokgethi Motlhabi.10 The agenda set by Motlhabi has still to be kick-started and given the necessary impetus and momentum for there to be a third wave of South African black theology. This article makes the contribution that human dignity, to which identity is to be added, can provide the impetus for such a third wave of black theology in South Africa. 105

Timothy van Aarde

Black consciousness of Steve Biko and black theology in South Africa There is an important question to ask:“Is black theology in South Africa a sibling of American black theology or a more distant relative?” Says Kee:“Black theology is set in the wider context of the worldwide struggle for liberation” (2008: 84).11 In South Africa, the umbilical cord of black theology was American black theology and liberation theology, and as it has come of age, it has become not simply a church for Africa but a church of Africa with its own authentic black expression of Christian faith.12 It is the foundation laid by Biko13 and later by Boesak that gave black theology in South Africa its unique place and set it apart from South American liberation theology.14 Biko laid the foundations for a strong grassroots black consciousness in which blacks could learn to assert themselves and stake their rightful claim. “Black consciousness instils a critical attitude towards the world and the way it undermines personal identity, well-being and human dignity.”15 It began with an awakening of a black consciousness, with self-affrmation and the re-evaluation of relationships with whites.“Black consciousness did not evolve in isolation, however, but should be viewed in conjunction with black power, black nationalism, black identity, racial nationalism and racial internationalism.”16 The idea behind the black consciousness of Biko was the assertion of the dignity and identity of blacks. It was the rediscovery of the dignity and identity of Africans as being central to the black consciousness of Biko that set it apart from its American counterpart in the complexity of the integration process.17 In Woods’ view,“[t]he idea behind black consciousness was to break away almost entirely from past black attitudes to the liberation struggle and to set a new style of self-reliance and dignity for blacks as a psychological attitude leading to new initiatives” (1987: 33). What made Biko’s black consciousness “stand out was his invocation of certain values underlying the struggle—humanity, identity, selfrespect, trust in oneself, responsibility, pathos, to name but a few.”18 Under the apartheid system, black South Africans were robbed of their human dignity, identity, and human rights.19

The contribution of Allen Boesak to a South African black theology The African scholar Mbiti (1969) saw black theology as a purely American phenomenon, concerned with American social problems without recognizing the possibility of the contextual transposition20 of black theology in new contexts such as South Africa giving birth to a distinct strand of black theology.21 South African black theology is not a homogenous theological movement. In the case of South African theology, Biko put the accent squarely on African culture which is made up of many diverse elements and a diversity of cultural expressions.22 He “turned to African culture for a retrieval of black identity.”23 Moore believed that black theology is what he called a “situational theology,” and in the case of South Africa, blacks are not a homogenous group but coexist in a multiplicity of situations.24 He tried to understand as clearly as possible who these people were, what their life experiences were, and the nature and cause of their suffering which constituted the essence of an African identity. Black theology in South Africa’s roots is that each ethnic group had to be able to attain its style of existence but without the fear and threat of loss of culture in relation to the other.25 The vision of Nelson Mandela of a rainbow nation was grounded in the mutual respect groups have for the culture and language of one another in South Africa. It was a vision of the harmonious co-existence of diverse ethnicities born out of the struggle in which Africans were robbed of their dignity and African identity.The apartheid ideology imposed geographical boundaries of separation in order to maintain ethnic identity. It was out of this mutual respect for one another’s complete freedom of self-determination26 that Biko argued that a genuine fusion of the lifestyles of the various groups would arise.The multiracial character of black theology in South Africa is 106

The four waves of black theology

attributable to Boesak: he insisted that people of mixed race be included. He did not advocate an American black theology that cast itself as a purely black–white struggle.The essence of the black theology that developed in South Africa was a struggle for human dignity, what it means to be human, and an identity which clearly set it apart from its American counterpart that focused on what it meant to be black.27 The fundamental criticism leveled against American black theology is that it had lost its sense of what it meant to be African. It came to play its drum to a victimization mindset as it was not anchored in its God-given and -created African cultural roots. The black consciousness of Biko instilled a critical attitude toward the world and the way it undermines personal identity, well-being, and human dignity.28 It developed in a different direction from the American black theology. Central to this was the idea of Stevo Biko that blacks have allowed evil to reign supreme by recognizing that black people were not innocent victims. Boesak took this further and called it a “pseudo-gospel.” It developed in a direction expressed by clichés such as “Black is beautiful” in the context of a white–black society in America, and in South Africa, it developed according to its African context expressed by sentiments such as “African is beautiful.” It was Mbiti’s unfamiliarity with the South African context that led him to see South African black theology as “purely an American phenomenon.”29 It is necessary to understand that apartheid ideology necessitated a unique response in the form of a black theology.The ideological distinctions between white and African cultures placed the stress upon the cultural distinctions among African ethnic identities and upon separate linguistic and racial groups. It was capitalized upon and given as proof of the existence of not only different but also irreconcilable differences.30 Apartheid was motivated by the view that different African ethnicities need to be kept apart for their own protection. It was a system that focused on the creation and maintenance of artifcial differences between ethnicities.As long as distinctions between ethnicities could be maintained, apartheid seemed to be a justifable solution. It is as if identity is determined by one’s race—“racial identity,” as identifed by Boesak—and it is permitted to “determine everything else in a person’s life with an overwhelming intensity,”31 leading to the image of God and human dignity being undermined and trampled underfoot.32

The parting of the ways of South African and American black theology Boesak’s criticism of American black theology was that it was infuenced by the ideology of black power and he rejected it as a secular movement that had no faith in love and so it had failed to display the Christian insights of Martin Luther.33 His criticism of American black theology was also that of Martin Luther King that “love is identifed with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love.”34 He identifed the “stubborn refusal to respect the dignity of Black personhood” (Boesak 1984: 87) as the central problem of South African society. For Boesak, a critical distance existed between African and American black theology; for him, the criticism of American black theology is that “it is a contextual theology which has only a shallow understanding of the context and consequently only a limited vision of the task” (Kee 2008: 83).35 The second criticism is that American black theologians “generalize their analysis of their situation, as if it were the norm for all black [people] throughout the world.” Kee continues: “Boesak was infuenced by American black theology but he retains a South African perspective which make [sic] him deeply critical of the assumptions, values and aspirations of the American form.”36 For Boesak, American black theology tended to become narrow, blinkered, and self-obsessed. It has a thin conception of black identity, as stated by Shelby (2001: 239): The prevailing thin conception of black identity in the United States holds that blacks are those people who have such inherited physical traits as dark skin, tightly curled or 107

Timothy van Aarde

“kinky” hair, a broad fat nose, and thick lips, and/or those persons who are descendants of people that are presumed to have such characteristics.37 A thick conception of black identity requires more than a common physical appearance or shared ancestry (cf Shelby 2001: 240).Thick identity is tied neither to “race,” nor to biological ancestry (cf Shelby 2001: 241). A collective black identity is an absolute prerequisite for black solidarity (cf Shelby 2001: 243). Black theology in South Africa was instrumental not only in ending the structural sin of apartheid but also in the development of a national reconciliation that led to the building of a new South Africa. Black theology has a role to play in the rethinking of an African theology. Buthelezi (1974) wrote an article entitled “An African theology or a black theology?” in which he explained the different departures of an African theology and black theology.38 Black theology in South Africa developed uniquely and faced different struggles than elsewhere, for instance South America and the struggle for liberation, or North America and the emancipation of American blacks. Mbiti however, argues that no distinction should be made between black theology and an African theology. His analysis is that black theology is African theology and African theology is black theology.39 Although black theology is an African theology, African theology is not necessarily per se a black theology, which affrms the assertion that South African black theology is a unique black theology distinct from American black theology.40 For Mbiti, black theology stands in a continuity with Latin American liberation theology, which is a theology of confict on behalf of the poor and the marginalized.41 Black theology in South Africa is a grassroots42 theology that does not simply act on behalf of the poor and the marginalized, but draws the poor and marginalized into the struggle on the grounds of human dignity and black identity. Black theology in South Africa was part of an ongoing movement of liberation and not simply a transposition of South American liberation theology.A new agenda was set for black theology against the background of an African context. In terms of the broader context, it was part of liberation theology, but in its specifc context it was a uniquely South African theology. Boesak used the language borrowed from liberation theology of “the oppressed” and “oppressor,” but he avoided the stigma of victimization associated with these terms by asserting that the oppressed are not absolved and innocent. This is a perception of victimization that engenders powerlessness, weakness, and helplessness.43 “It effectively blocks off all awareness and therefore the sense of responsibility necessary to confront the other as a human being. This leads to an inability to repent which in turn makes genuine reconciliation impossible.”44 He developed the thought of Biko that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” and made the statement that “the greatest ally of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Boesak did not travel down the road of mainstream liberation theology in which the black people of South Africa are regarded as having been oppressed and are helpless and innocent victims.Whereas Biko turned to African culture for a retrieval of black identity, Boesak turned to the gospel for black identity.45 For Boesak, the dignity of humanity was founded upon human beings being made in the image of God.

The reclamation of victimization Maria del Guadalupe Davidson develops the idea of the “reclamation of victimisation.”“The reclamation of victimisation argues that victims can gain affrming identity reclaiming and renaming their past pain and using it to create a better self.”46 Her idea of the reclamation of victimization

108

The four waves of black theology

does not blame or absolve white racism, as she sees “blaming” as externally focused:“The reclamation of victimization calls for turning inward of black identity to speak to itself about itself.”47 Her contention is that “affrming black identity must speak to its own painful history but not be constituted as a victim by others.”48 She asserts that “the positive tension between past and present is a marker of revolutionary black identity.”49 Biko and Boesak did not approach the past through the lens of psychology, but theologically. The reclaiming of victimization requires invoking the theological building blocks of repentance because the oppressed are not absolved from innocence and so they are victims. Repentance is the recognition by the oppressed of having allowed themselves to become victimized. It is a part of overcoming the self-perception of being a victim. It was repentance by the oppressed for having allowed themselves to be oppressed that created the space for the oppressors to be confronted with the guilt of their oppression—and that brought about the demise of apartheid. The repentance exercised by Biko and Boesak took this form: recognition of the justifcation of the oppression by the complacency of the oppressed in passively accepting their situation.50 Repentance is the frst step in the process of liberation from a slave mentality. It opens up the space for the oppressor to repent, which makes genuine reconciliation possible. According to Boesak, “Black theology offers reconciliation and peace in a situation where citizens do not trust each other, where we have been driven apart by laws, and where we are kept apart by fear and hatred.”51 Boesak departed from liberation theology in terms of a second important trajectory.The liberation theology of Gutiérrez focuses on the liberation of people from oppressive structures and places the emphasis on liberation and freedom as the ultimate goal. For Boesak, the focus was not primarily about liberation from oppressive structures but a rediscovery of human dignity and identity. Freedom without dignity and identity is no freedom at all; in fact, it is another form of bondage. Liberation and freedom are about emancipation and limits future possibilities whereas human dignity and identity, respect for ourselves, knowing who we are, and where we have come from open up new possibilities for the future. Liberation and freedom without human dignity and identity is a “pseudo-freedom,” as Boesak calls it. For Gutiérrez, a man has to liberate himself from all that limits and keeps him from self-fulfllment and also from all impediments to the exercise of his freedom.52 Liberation and freedom are of paramount importance in liberation theology. Liberation theology is therefore negatively oriented. It has as its agenda revolution: confronting the power structures of society. It weds the biblical message and aspects of Christian thought and practice with Marxist theory.53 In contrast, black theology is positive:“It speaks of Christian hope where so many have lost all hope.”54 It confronts the imbalances of power and abusive power structures, but it does so in order to restore human dignity and identity, which is true freedom.The quest for true freedom in black theology leads to the creation of a new person55 and a qualitatively different outcome from the avocation of freedom by liberation theology.The source of the creation of the new man, for Boesak, is not found in liberation or freedom. He is insistent that black theology itself falls under the judgment of the Word. Black experience and the black situation alone do not have revelation value on a par with the Scriptures. Boesak writes:“The black experience provides the framework within which blacks understand the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. No more, no less.”56 Following this, the oppressed can adopt the role of the oppressors if liberation or freedom is their sole aim. In the African context, the white colonial rulers have been replaced by a new black elite:“The black elite simply crossed the line to join those who held the power and privilege.”57 The roots of oppression lie deeper than liberation and freedom, the end of apartheid in South Africa. It is about the rediscovery of human dignity and identity so that theology as an African theology still has much to do.

109

Timothy van Aarde

A third wave of black theology: racism, human dignity, and black identity A third wave of black theology is needed to set a new agenda for black theology which goes beyond apartheid and race and color. If Allan Boesak is right and black theology was about much more than ending apartheid and racialism and was part of a larger ongoing movement, then the rediscovery of human dignity and black identity are central to identifying its role and place in a post-apartheid South Africa. Boesak identifes “human fulflment and wholeness,” humanity and humanness, as core to the Gospel truth. He quotes an African proverb in Sesotho: Motho ke motho ka batho ba bang—“I am human only because you are human.”58 Dignity and identity in South Africa have to be rediscovered in the context of the community in which the value and signifcance of the other is reaffrmed. He continues: “Black theology also speaks of the discovery of being a human being,”59 that is, it is fundamentally about what it means to be human. “If racism is the agenda,” warns Kee, “then black theology becomes redundant with the end of apartheid.” Racism is based on identifying characteristics that distinguish different “races” such as skin color, eye color, and type of hair, customs, language, religious beliefs, and more. Racism was one of the forms or faces of apartheid, but its roots lay much deeper.60 Apartheid was a social construct in which self-approbation emerged from the negative valuation of the other. It is illogical that racism can only be a personal matter because to make a generalization requires the presence or consideration of a group; thus racism is a social matter. Racism as a social system relies on its ability to defne the other.61 “The act of defnition requires the exercise of the power of one group over another.”62 It is the act of defnition that sets up a dependency of blacks on the dominant other, whites, for their social identity that is at the root of the social construction of apartheid. In this regard, Motlhabi asserts:“Racism as such is not the real poison in inter-personal relations. It is that for which racism exists, i.e. vast discrepancies in the distribution of power.”63 Behind the face of apartheid was an authoritarianism and a social structure in which some people regarded themselves as superior. Such people believed they had the right to exercise control over the lives of others by virtue of the position they held within the social structure. Racism was the legitimation of unequal power relations, of dominance as a relationship that provided a semblance of content for apartheid. It would be superfcial to think that the end of apartheid would radically alter relations of power and advantage, because it is through social structures that inequalities in power are perpetuated. It was these power inequalities that perpetuated the institution of apartheid at a deeper ideological level. As Kee puts it: “In tracing the origin of oppression back to interest and relations of power, black theology roots oppression in the economic base of society.”64 It is the defning of one’s own culture as being superior and the other as inferior that provides the rationale and justifcation for unjust legal, social, political discrimination and oppression. Nothwehr expresses it as follows: “Racism in the broad sense is self-valuation through the devaluation of the other,” that is, it is based on identifying a particular biological or other characteristic to defne the self as superior in relation to the other who is defned as inferior. In a narrow sense, racism is a focus on biological difference or specifc traits that are given to devised paradigms called “races.”65 “The particular characteristic defning inferiority and superiority,” he maintains, “are indelibly stamped into the very body of the other and thus cannot be changed through any form of assimilation into the ‘superior’ way of being or culture.”66 The roots of racism can be overcome only through the restoration of human dignity and black identity.67 For black theology in South Africa to recover its loss of black identity, it will require a collective struggle for the reconstruction of black solidarity, but without “race” as a viable biological concept.68 110

The four waves of black theology

A fourth wave of black theology in Africa The fourth wave is infuenced by contextual changes on the African continent (e.g., a more integrated multicultural African society and the realization of the needs of the poor). A fourth wave is evidenced in the role of the Kairos document in the churches’ response to the Palestinian struggle as well as the ability of black theology from South Africa to be transposed to other African contexts.

Kairos theology and the post-apartheid relevance of black theology in South Africa The third wave of black theology has been given impetus by the rebirth of Kairos theology in South Africa. It was the rediscovery of the role black theology played in the restoration of black South Africans’ human dignity and black identity that was behind this rebirth. The criticism of Kairos theology is also a criticism of black theology in South Africa that it “was important for the common good in the quest for liberation in the struggle against apartheid, but is found greatly wanting in its resourcefulness for the public good in the quest for reconstruction and transformation in contemporary struggles.”69 One of the leading exponents of the third wave is Itumeleng Mosala.70 He advocates that black theology has to progress beyond two alternatives: (a) the reading of a text whose aim is simply to recover the meaning of the text, and (b) an existential (spiritual) privatized internalizing of it.71 For Mosala, black theology can only be an instrument of liberation if it has freed itself from the assumptions and basic presuppositions it shares with the ruling classes. South African black theology which has liberated itself from the Marxist class struggle can be an instrument of liberation theology.The only valid hermeneutical starting point for a black theology for Mosala is the social, cultural, political, and economic world of the black working class and peasantry. In the post-apartheid, theological discourse in South Africa may need to be re-appropriated and responsive to new challenges “for the kind of public impact and critical participation that the times demand.”72 A public theology is needed that addresses “the much-needed dimensions of contextuality, criticality and change.”73 The most basic presupposition of black theology is about human dignity and black identity, which sets it apart from liberation theology.

The relevance of black theology for the Kairos Palestinian movement Black theology “was a response to ‘Black Consciousness,’ that is to the growing awareness among younger blacks led by Steve Biko, the organic intellectual of the movement, that the Kairos had come to take their destiny into their own hands.”74 The people with whom the Kairos-Palestine document stands in solidarity is the “church people;” the “black church” and so also black theology are from South Africa. The Kairos Palestinian movement is a demonstration that a document from the struggle is transposable to contexts of struggles for liberation outside of the African context. The Kairos Palestinian document introduced in 2010 to participants in the World Council of Churches is the product of a third wave of black theology.The support of more than 60 key church leaders has been given to the document. It was recognized that the Kairos Palestinian document was “helping to reconnect with our South African context and to review the state of prophetic public theology in the church, academy and society.”75 The Kairos Palestinian document is a statement of solidarity with the apartheid struggle, grounded in a common experience of oppression, displacement, and suffering. But, more fundamentally, it is grounded in the struggle 111

Timothy van Aarde

for human dignity and identity, in a context of suppression of the two most basic dimensions of what it means to be human.The language of the struggle against apartheid was recast in the context of the struggle of the Palestinian people as a functional apartheid. The signifcance of the document is that it evidences that the apartheid struggle was a source of hope and identifcation for people struggling for the valuation of human dignity, liberation, and ethnic autonomy. The theology that underlines the document is black theology in South Africa. It is evidence that black theology of South Africa can serve to give impetus to struggles for liberation in places where one ethnic people is suppressed by another. The theological response of the church in South Africa serves as a response of the church in contexts of the struggle for human dignity and identity. It is a theology that can give hope.“Hope involves agency, reason and possibility. It is responsive—to God, to others, to life, to the future—and is thus participatory. It has a vision of abundant life, incompatible with fatalism.”76

The relevance of black theology for overcoming tribalistic and ethnocentric differences: the case of the Rwanda genocide and Burundi war During the colonization period, the most common technique used to gain control was that of “divide and conquer.” “The colonizers’ act of eliminating one group or favoring another over against the Others was a genocidal activity.”77 It was the legacy of colonialism that accentuated tribalistic and ethnocentric divisions amongst peoples which created an unstable political situation that, when combined with dire economic poverty, resulted in a general sense of distrust and enfranchisement among all citizens and a volatile environment, even to the point of genocide which took place in Rwanda and Burundi (cf. Nothwehr 2010: 121–122). The imbalances of power in the postcolonial state, and the multiplication of violent conficts amongst ethnic groups which was promoted by colonial practice, has prevented many Africans from experiencing genuine change.The lack of freedom demonstrates that there is still a need for a black theology, or a theology of the oppressed.The genocide in Rwanda and war in Burundi are the result of a manipulation of historical and biblical narratives by the oppressors, the white colonizers, so that the black elite oppressed become the oppressors.The value of a black theology that belongs to Africa is that it is able to deal with the devastating effect of colonialism that has plagued newly independent nations and address the divisions remaining among peoples on the African continent. It is black theology that has the potential to unite different African ethnicities as it gave to South African people a sense of a cohesive unity and identity. Black theology provides a communal sense of identity that is able to bring about a cohesive sense of national identity in contexts of tribalism, ethnocentrism, and the new racism of Xenophobia.

The hermeneutics of black theology One of the most enduring legacies of South African black theology is its hermeneutics.78 A prerequisite for a black theology is a contextual reading of the Scriptures.A return to the most traditional meaning of hermeneutics, in which the most basic reading and interpretation of a message is the human beings’ search for identity and signifcance, is needed.The Exodus for the people of Israel was an identity-forming narrative and not primarily a liberation narrative.The Israelites had been so stripped of their identity and so they had been disconnected from their Jewish roots.The Exodus is a central biblical narrative in the history of Israel. Israel’s identity as a nation was bound up with Yahweh who was the God of the Hebrews.Yahweh introduces himself to Moses as,“The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” (Ex 3: 6) and identifes himself with them as an oppressed people. “In the exodus, not only does God reveal himself in 112

The four waves of black theology

the midst of Israel’s slavery, his revelation (as the ‘I am’) also discloses a new history of future for Israel.”79 It was in Israel’s discovery who God was, the “I am,” that they learned who they were and discovered their identity as the people of God. The liberation of Israel was secondary, their rediscovery of their identity was primary.The redemption of Israel was an identity-forming act by God. God is portrayed as the God who hears the cries of his oppressed people:“And now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them” (Ex 3: 9). God reveals himself as the God of Israel for the sake of the nations. He does not take the side of the oppressed, Israel, against the oppressors, Egypt:“The God who chose Israel out of the nations remained always the God of all the nations.”80 Niles continues: “Such a conception of Israel’s life and mission demanded on the one hand that it guards its identity in the world, and on the other hand that it serves the world towards which its mission was set.”81 Yahweh’s unique purpose with Israel gave to the nation a special identity, a unique mission which set it apart from all other races, cultures, tribes, families, and nations. God wanted to liberate the Egyptians from their fears and dread which caused them to oppress the people of Israel as much as He wanted to liberate Israel.The Egyptians, however, did not see themselves as in need of liberation. But human beings are continuously in need of liberation because we are constantly enslaving ourselves. One of the conditions of God’s covenant relationship with Israel was that they would not oppress the foreigner.82 God was particularly concerned with just social relationships and justice among those who claimed God to be on their side. He did not tolerate or condone injustice among anyone who appropriated his name. After each exile God led His people to a renewed understanding of human dignity and their identity. In the book of Nehemiah and Ezra, Israel’s identity as the people of Yahweh is reshaped and rediscovered.The period of renewal began with a call by the prophets for the people to renew their covenant relationship with God and so to rediscover their identity. Israel, as God’s covenant people, was to participate in Yahweh’s universal purpose for the whole world. The central biblical narrative in American black theology83 and liberation theology is the Exodus. In these theologies, the Exodus is a defnitive narrative that serves as a source for overcoming oppression, which is understood as political victimization. Just as God liberated Israel from Egypt, so the Bible’s message calls people out of bondage.84 The Exodus and Old Testament “prophets call for social justice in ways that pave the way for similar outcomes now.”85 Boesak pursues the theme of the Exodus, but he is careful not to argue that “God has taken sides in the South African situation.”86The Exodus in South African black theology is not appropriated by the blacks against the whites as though God were on the side of the blacks. In the South African context, God is on the side of the righteous, those who are motivated by the love of God and neighbor. Bosch suggested that we should focus more on the idea of love than justice, because that will prevent our prophetic mission from becoming purely political.87 Love precedes all theology.“Christian love as correctly lived excludes no one and loves everyone”—the oppressed and the oppressor.88

A hermeneutic of love and justice Gutiérrez speaks of a theology of a “second act” and Aguilar for this reason proposes a hermeneutics of a “second act,” “not only because it is a process of interpretation of an already past event but also because the sole principle of Christian interpretation is love” (Aguilar 2009: 35). A theology of liberation needs to emphasize “a second step” to remain on Gutiérrez’s path of theology.89 “Love is the frst and only central act in the silence of God” (Aguilar 2009: 35). It is the centrality of God’s love denied by human beings in apartheid that becomes the only possible theology. Ricoeur (1991) makes the history of humanity, rather than God’s involvement in the history of humanity, central to the process of interpretation. It is to this interpretative 113

Timothy van Aarde

framework of Ricoeur that the views of Gutiérrez of people’s understanding of the place and mode of God’s presence in their lives and in the process of history as “a very changeable locus theologicum” is added.90 It makes human beings the central players, although God plays a part in it.The biblical texts of Israel’s experience of its exile are brought into dialogue to answer the question of the absence or presence of God in the midst of trauma by Aguilar. “The meaning of the biblical text comes from the contextual reading of an appropriate text and not from extrapolating and manipulating sentences in order to prove the point already assimilated.”91 “The contextual reading of the Scriptures is essential because it takes into account the everchanging relationship between human beings and God in an unpredictable historical setting that can only be expressed as the now and the future to come.”92 For Gutiérrez, the presence or absence of God is a biblical dialectic that he refers to as “the tension between God’s visibility and invisibility, between God’s obvious and hiddenness.”93 Gutiérrez connects God’s love to his presence and the presence of God’s kingdom to the acceptance of God’s demands; in his view, the Kingdom of God is dependent upon justice:“God’s presence or absence is therefore related to people’s attitude towards others, especially those in need.”94 This, however, makes God’s presence or absence dependent upon justice as the central concern. God is equally present with the oppressed and the oppressor, the just and the unjust, the loving and the unloving, as there is no human action or omission or attitude upon which God has made his presence or absence dependent. God is as present with his people during their sojourn in exile as when they reside in the land of Israel. Israel’s injustice was the result of forgetting their covenant with God, the love of God for His people, but God never forgot His people.The exploitation and oppression of the poor was symptomatic of a breakdown of Israel’s covenant relationship with God. It is as God’s love for His people is rejected that God’s will and justice are eclipsed. It was because Israel did not live in a covenant relationship with a loving God and did not perceive God to be a God of justice that they began to oppress others. Love and justice are closely related:“Love is the root of justice, and doing justice is a way of loving.”95 In other words, if love and justice go together in the praxis of black theology, there will be both liberation and reconciliation that will include not only the liberation of the oppressed but also the repentance by the oppressors.96 It is the reorientation of black theology to biblical concepts that distinguishes it from liberation theology.97 Forrester makes the point that they are inseparably bound together:“Love without justice is in danger of becoming sentimental and irrelevant; justice without love easily becomes judgmental and uncaring.”98 The prophet Jeremiah reminds the people of God as covenant people to show compassion and practice justice toward one another. Salvation has therefore been promised to all those who search for the kingdom and its love and justice in fulfllment of the covenant’s demand for love and justice. It is a recognition of God’s radical love through the incarnation of a personal God that became visible in the Person of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, which is central to the covenant.The crucifxion of Jesus of Nazareth remains at the center of the loving plan of God.The God of life is present in moments of complete human annihilation and loss of human dignity. God’s love is for the oppressed but also for the oppressors. It is through the love of the oppressed toward the oppressors, which is only possible if the idea that they are victims is overcome, that both the oppressed and the oppressors can experience freedom. God’s love is all embracing; it seeks to set everyone free.

Black theology—a theology of dignity and identity and not a materialist theology It has been proposed that black theology is materialist theology, but it is liberation theology that is materialist. Although South African black theology was about economic liberation, it is only 114

The four waves of black theology

in the context of a rediscovery of human dignity and identity that there can be true economic freedom. Liberation theology which performs a Marxist analysis deals only with an analysis of class; black theology has been expanded to include culture and race. The hermeneutical method of liberation theology makes use of a materialist reading, aims at a materialist history of Israel and an African materialist history: “The social, cultural, political and economic world of the black working class and peasantry constitutes the only valid hermeneutical starting point for a black theology of liberation.”99 In liberation theology, God takes sides with the poor against the rich and the theology becomes a weapon in the hands of the oppressed. Black theology does not depict God as taking sides, but rather God liberating both the poor and the rich—the rich are in need of liberation as much as the poor. While liberation theology struggles for class and economic freedom, black theology is a theology of black emancipation, culturally, socially, politically, and economically.The mantra of liberation theology is found in Jesus’ frst sermon in Nazareth:“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor” (Lk 4: 18). Luke is read as a champion of the poor, captives, and oppressed. A liberation theological reading of Luke 4: 18–19 and 20–28 eclipses the fact that Jesus confronts the false Jewish expectations which were tied to a Jewish nationalism and a struggle for liberation when Jesus identifed with the Jewish people’s struggle for liberty and their oppression: “[a]ll the people spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (Lk 4: 22).The picture changed suddenly and the Jews were “flled with wrath” (Lk 4: 28) when Jesus also identifed himself with their oppressors.Theology has a responsibility to both the oppressed and the oppressors to break the cycle of oppression so that both the oppressed and the oppressors experience freedom.

Black theology as a source of empowerment The rediscovery of an African identity through the frst two waves started by Steve Biko and Allan Boesak gave to black theology in South Africa a unique identity separate from American black theology and liberation theology. Black theology in South Africa became a theology of empowerment instead of one that existed as a reaction to racism or apartheid. For Biko, the accent was on the human being rather than on power.100 Black theology is that of the voiceless and powerless, not exclusively of the poor and marginalized. Powerlessness is the inability to control what happens, the inability to plan for the future, and the imperative of focusing on the present. It was as a new black wealthy class emerged in South Africa after 1994, and black South Africans gained access to economic and political resources, that the cycle of oppression continued, but through the new black elite. That elite had crossed the line to join those who held power and privilege. It is because the cycle of oppression was not broken that the oppressed blacks have themselves become the new oppressors—20 years after the apartheid struggle ended, the language of apartheid is still being used by the oppressed in the role of the oppressor to justify personal agendas of gain.The black theology that gave a new confdence and self-perception to black South Africans that they had control over their destiny has been replaced by agendas of personal greed. Black theology in South Africa has never had racism as its agenda.The roots of oppression lie deeper than racism so that while the end of apartheid is a welcome development along the way, it is not the end. It involves much more than the idea that the perception of inferiority has simply been replaced by access to economic and political resources. Rather, it is the ongoing stereotypes of the other as inferior which formulate a mythical or ideological construct that provides a rationale or justifcation for legal, social, and political equality, giving the false impres115

Timothy van Aarde

sion that all problems of inequality will simply disappear with the attainment of economic and political equality.The unjust discrimination and oppression will simply continue and new oppressors will replace the old because the deeper-seated human dignity and identity has not been suffciently addressed. The third wave is a new awareness of the agency of ordinary marginalized Africans and the espousal of a multiplicity of African identities.101 There can be no advocacy of a single African identity because African culture is extremely diverse. But, according to Maluleka,“The agency of African Christians and the African poor is being rediscovered, explored and respectfully interpreted.”102 When articulating a multiplicity of African identities, nothing about African culture or the African poor must be romanticized. It was the common struggle against a system that robbed people of their human dignity, identity, and rights that unifed them. When values of human dignity, identity, and rights are upheld with the same fervor by a generation that grew up in a post-apartheid era, the South African nation will once again be unifed, and in this, black theology can play a central role if it takes up the challenge.

Conclusion The essence of the black theology that developed in South Africa was a struggle for human dignity, what it means to be human, and to know one’s identity. This clearly set it apart from liberation theology: black theology is a grassroots theology that does not simply act on behalf of the poor and the marginalized but draws them into the struggle on the grounds of human dignity and identity. It is a theology that confronts imbalances of power and abusive power structures in order to restore human dignity and identity.The reorientation of black theology to the biblical concepts of repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness, love, justice, and the poor distinguishes it from liberation theology, which is oriented toward freedom, liberation, justice, and the struggles of the poor interpreted almost exclusively through the Marxist theory of class struggle. On the contrary, black theology struggled against the construct of one people or ethnic group as superior and the dehumanization of the other, who is viewed as inferior. Black theology has a responsibility to both the oppressed and the oppressors, to break the cycle of oppression so that the oppressed do not become the oppressors. What is required is a return to the most traditional meanings of hermeneutics in which the most basic reading and interpretation of a message is the human being’s search for dignity and identity. The hermeneutic interprets the Exodus, the return from the Exile, and other biblical events as dignity- and identity-forming narratives rather than narratives of liberation. It is because human dignity and identity have been disregarded in post-apartheid South Africa that, now more than ever, there is a need for a black theology.

Notes 1 The chapter frst appeared as an article “Black theology in South Africa – A theology of human dignity and identity” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72, no. 1: a3176. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v72i1.3176. It was extended to include a proposed fourth wave of black theology. 2 Du Toit 2008: 34. 3 (2009: 176). African Americans were not really clear about their real status and identity in their own country (cf Motlhabi 2). 4 The apartheid government blatantly disregarded the humanity and human dignity of black people in South Africa (cf Motlhabi 2008: 175). 5 See Pinn 1998.

116

The four waves of black theology 6 Black consciousness takes what he refers to as “cognizance of the deliberateness of God’s plan in creating black people black” (Biko 1978: 49). 7 Ndalamba 2010. In search of an appropriate leadership ethos: A survey of selected publications that shaped the black theology movement. MTh thesis: University of the Western Cape, 2010. 8 Kee 2008: 79. 9 The frst wave of black theology is identifable with Malcom X’s proclamation in the 1950s and Dr. Martin Luther King. The second wave of black theology has its 1960s roots in civil rights activism and James Cone, who identifed it with liberation theology. Cone was the founder of black liberation theology. He identifed the overriding message of the OT prophets as a condemnation of the nation of Israel and of the religious establishment for oppressing the poor. The third wave of black theology includes black feminism and black womanist identity and has addressed the inadequacy of black theology and its inseparable relation of race and class to include also the realities of gender bias and other factors endemic to human culture of the past and present. 10 Mokgethi Motlhabi was originally a candidate for the Catholic priesthood, who became the director of the black theology project when Ntwasa was banned (cf Kee 2008: 85). 11 Kee 2008: 84. 12 Boesak 1978: 58, 75. 13 Black consciousness seeks to “infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life” (Biko 1978: 49). 14 Boesak 1978: 70. 15 Du Toit 2008: 33. 16 Du Toit, 2008: 31 17 “Its ultimate aim was to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society” (Biko 2004: 55, in Du Toit 2008: 33). 18 Du Toit 2008: 32. Assuming responsibility to fnd identity probably has an individualistic bias (cf Du Toit 2008: 31). 19 Du Toit, p. 32. 20 Allen Boesak,“Black theology is a ‘contextual theology,’” Boesak 1984: 61. 21 Mbiti 1974: 41–44.Two strands of black theology are identifable, one which excludes whites and the other which includes them. 22 Biko saw community identity as the hallmark of an African culture (cf Du Toit 2008: 31) distinct from the individualistic identity of American black culture. 23 Du Toit 2008: 35. The strategy of Biko was to promote African culture, languages, and religions (cf Du Toit 2008: 35). 24 More 1973: 5.The vision of a rainbow nation has its origins in mutual respect for one another’s complete freedom and the self-determination of Biko. 25 “Black consciousness is intimately linked with the importance of dignity in African culture” (Du Toit 2008: 35). 26 The term “self-determination” is more comprehensive and refective of Biko’s black consciousness than the “self-responsibility” identifed by Du Toit (2008: 28–52). “Self-responsibility” is one of the essential constituents of “self-determination.” 27 “The fact that apartheid was open and legislated racism whereas American democracy fell short of its claims as far as black people were concerned is a good illustration of one of the concrete differences in the two situations” (Motlhabi 2008: 176). 28 Du Toit 2008: 33. 29 Motlhabi 2008: 9. 30 Motlhabi 2008: 9. 31 Boesak 1984: 114. See also p. 104. 32 For Boesak (1984: 62), the breaking down of the wall of partition in Christ makes possible a country where all its citizens live in peace together. 33 A. Kee 2008: 84. 34 King Jr. 1967: 43. 35 Kee 2008: 83. 36 Kee 2008: 82. 37 Thin black identity is expressed in terms of the racialist view or the ethnic view (cf Shelby 2001: 241). 38 Buthelezi 1974. 39 Mbiti 1969; Motlhabi 2008: 178.

117

Timothy van Aarde 40 “The preoccupation of American black theology with liberation theology from racial oppression limited its relevance outside the Republic of South Africa” (Pobee 1979: 38–39). 41 John Mbiti 1974: 41–44. 42 It has been suggested that black theology was not acclaimed as grassroots theology as most of its activities were centered in institutions of higher learning and rarely was it the subject of the “pulpit,” because mainline churches were either suspicious or held in check by the “missionary eye of learned,” and attempts to engage grassroots were problematic. 43 Boesak 1978: 6. See Kee 2008: 81. 44 Boesak 1978: 4. 45 Black Christians understand and interpret their situation in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (cf Boesak 1984: 60). 46 Davidson 2006: 16. 47 Davidson 2006: 16. 48 Davidson 2006: 16. 49 Davidson 2006: 16. 50 Cornel West criticizes black liberals’ use of victimization by stating that it “adhere[s] to a victim-status conception of black people that results in blaming all personal failings of black people on white racism” (West 1982: 75). 51 Boesak 1984: 62. 52 For Gutiérrez, liberation is the instrument of self-fulfllment, whereas for Biko and Boesak dignity and identity bring about self-fulfllment. 53 “We wish to hear a word from the Churches relative to what is being done in South Africa: not a word in the name of Marx or Lenin or Stalin or Mao; but, rather, a word in the name of Jesus Christ and in the name of the church” (Boesak 1984: 143). 54 Boesak 1984: 62. 55 Biko envisaged a new and renewed humanity. 56 Boesak 1978: 12. 57 Kee 2008: 87. 58 Boesak (1984: 55–56). 59 Boesak 1984: 61. Apartheid meant that the most important thing about a person was not that he or she was a human being created in the image of God with inalienable rights but his or her racial identity (cf Boesak 1984: 114). 60 Kess 2008: 87. 61 It is the “I-Thou” relationship that offers the possibility of human interaction. 62 Nothwehr 2010. 63 Motlhabi, quoted in Kee 2008: 86. 64 Kee 2008: 87. 65 Nothwehr 2010: 119–120. 66 Nothwehr 2010: 121. 67 Shelby (2001: 266) argues that “black solidarity can survive the well-known critique of racial/ethnic essentialism; it can be sustained despite the loss of ‘race’ as a viable biological concept.” 68 Black theology can survive despite the loss of “race” as a viable biological concept if it recovers black solidarity. 69 Le Bruyns 2012: 4. 70 cf Kee 2008: 87. 71 cf Kee 2008: 89. 72 Le Bruyn 2012: 5. 73 Le Bruyn 2012: 5. 74 John W. de Gruchy (de Gruchy 4: 2016). 75 See also Le Bruyn 2012: 5. 76 Le Bruyns 2012: 9. 77 Nothwehr 2010: 122. 78 See Maluleke 2000: 31. 79 Emmanuel Katongole 2011: 111. 80 Niles 1962: 250. 81 Niles 1962: 250.

118

The four waves of black theology 82 The “Noahic code” (Gen 9:1–7) is made up of practical, moral/ethical articles; it affrms the inherent value of the human person (Gen 9: 5) and it links criminal law to metaphysical and theological considerations (Gen 9: 6).A criminal act is an offence to the dignity of man and to the honor of God. 83 “They (blacks) were not fully African, nor were they fully American. The lack of resolution of this identity question was at the soul and deep being (heart) of blacks.This led Ron Karenga and Le Roi Jones to embark in dealing with these questions of identity” (Ndalamba 2010: 29). Identity was at the root of South African black theology whereas American black theology advocated primarily for the emancipation of black Americans. 84 Yarborough 2011. 85 Yarbrough 2011: 274. 86 Kee 2008: 84. 87 Bosch 1992: 402–403. 88 Aguilar 2009: 116. 89 Aguilar 2009: 18. 90 Aguilar 1998: 64. 91 Aguilar 1998: 71. 92 Aguilar 1998: 71. 93 Aguilar 1998: 56. 94 Aguilar 1998: 58. 95 Bowh Si 2008: 92. 96 Bowh Si 2008: 93. 97 Black theology has been re-oriented by Boesak and Tutu to include human dignity and reconciliation. 98 Forrester 1997: 77–79. 99 Mosala 1989: 21, in Kee 2008: 89.The contribution of Mosala is that the importance of workingclass blacks must be understood comprehensively—as cultural, political, and economic—and that the struggle against such domination be consciously and deliberately directed at all these levels. 100 Du Toit 2008: 35. 101 Maluleke has argued:“Africans have always been agents, never ‘simply victims, wallowing in self-pity’; they have always exercised their agency in struggles for survival and integrity. However, their agency has not always been recognized, let alone nurtured,” Maluleke 2000: 28. 102 “There is a new realization that the African poor, African Christians and Africans in general are not without resources, intellectual, material and spiritual resources for survival and resistance,” Maluleke 2000: 31.

Bibliography Aguilar, MI. 1998. The Rwanda Genocide: Call to Deepen Christianity in Africa. Eldoret, Kenya: AMECEA Gaba, Publications. Biko, S. 2004. I Write What I Like. Johannesburg: Picador Africa. Boesak, A. 1978. Black Theology Black Power. London: Mowbrays. Boesak, A. 1984. Black and Reformed: Apartheid, Liberation and the Calvinist Tradition. Johannesburg: Skotville Publishers. Bowh Si, OB. 2008. Mission as Transformation:An Exploration of the Relationship Between Mission and Development. International Review of Missions 97(584/585):91–102. Buthelezi, M. 1974.An African Theology or a Black Theology? In: Basil Moore (ed.), The Challenge of Black Theology in South Africa.Atlanta: John Knox Press, 29–35. Davidson, M del G. 2006. The Rhetoric of Race:Towards a Revolutionary Construction of Black Identity.Valѐncia: Publications de la Universitat de Valѐncia. De Gruchy, J. 2016. Kairos Moments and Prophetic Witness: Towards a Prophetic Ecclesiology. HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72(4):a3414. Du Toit, C. 2008. Black Consciousness as an Expression of Radical Responsibility: Biko an African Bonhoeffer. Religion & Theology 15(1):25–52. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV. Forrester, DB. 1997. Christian Justice & Public Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katangole, E. 2011. The Sacrifce of Africa:A Political Theology for Africa. Grand Rapids:W. B Eerdmans. Kee, A. 2008. The Rise and Demise of Black Theology: Reclaiming Liberation Theology. London: SCM Press.

119

Timothy van Aarde King Jr., ML. 1967. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community. New York: Harper & Row. Le Bryuns, C. 2012.The Rebirth of Kairos Theology? A Public Theological Perspective. Brazil–South Africa Consultation on Citizenship & Interculturality, vol. 23. Pretoria: UNISA. Longman, T. 2010. Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maluleke,Tinyiko, S. 1995. Black Theology Lives! On a Permanent Crisis. Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 9(1):1–30. Maluleke,Tinyiko S. 2000.The Rediscovery of the Agency of Africans:An Emerging Paradigm of Post-Cold War and Post-Apartheid Black and African Theology. Journal of Theology of Southern Africa 108:19–37. Mbiti, JS. 1974. An African Views American Black Theology. World View 17(8):41–44. Moore, B. 1973. Black Theology:The South African Voice. London: C Hurst & Company. Mosala, IJ. 1989. Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co. Motlhabi, M. 2008. African Theology/Black Theology in South Africa: Looking Back, Moving On. Pretoria: University of South Africa. Motlhabi, M. 2009. Phases of Black Theology in South Africa: A Historical Review. Religion & Theology 16(3–4):162–180. Ndalamba, KK. 2010. In Search of an Appropriate Leadership Ethos: A Survey of Selected Publications that Shaped the Black Theology Movement. MTh thesis. University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. Niles, DT. 1962. Upon the Earth:The Mission of God and the Missionary Enterprise in the Churches. New York: McGraw-Hill. Nothwehr, DM. 2010. Defning ‘Racisms’: Understanding Our Globalized, Terrorized, Ecologically Threatened World. In: OU Kalu, P Vethanayagamony & EK-F Chia (eds), Mission After Christendom: Emergent Themes in Contemporary Mission. Louisville:Westminster John Knox Press, 115–127. Pinn, AB. 1998. Varieties of African American Religious Experience. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Pobee, JS. 1979. Towards an African Theology. Nashville:Abingdon Press. Ricoeur, P. 1991. On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. London/New York: University of Chicago Press. Shelby, T. 2001. Foundations of Black Solidarity: Collective Identity or Common Oppression? Ethics 112:231–266. West, C. 1982. Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Woods, D. 1987. Biko. New York: Holt. Yarborough, RW. 2011. New Testament Studies in Africa. In: AJ Köstenberger & RW Yarborough (eds), Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century. S.Wheaton: Crossway, 249–276.

120

8 AFRICAN THEOLOGY Political and public James R. Cochrane1

Christianity in Africa, never as privatized as in much of Europe and North America, has long produced theologies with some sense of the political and of the signifcance of the public.2 After preliminary remarks about Christianity and the political or the public, which will help us avoid some basic misconceptions, I outline a way of distinguishing between different positions, focusing mainly on the last few decades but commencing with the longer tradition.

Preliminary remarks Christian theology, whether African or not, for most of its history and even in its most introspective moments, has either explicitly or implicitly always had something to do with the political or the public. It can be no coincidence that early Christian communities described themselves as ecclesia, a term originally referring to the assembly of the citizens of Athens during its golden era. This already indicates a public or political self-understanding of some kind. Moreover, despite gnostic infuences and some modern tendencies, since the inception of the frst Christian communities, theology has hardly ever been merely about individual persons and their internal (or “eternal”) condition but, rather, about a community and its presence in the world. Of course, the nature and extent of the political or public role of Christian theology has varied greatly over time and from place to place, with deep, long-standing, and not infrequently contradictory contestations about the place and role of the Christian community in the world. To complicate matters, the terms used here—the political and the public—are not without challenging historical and internal contradiction. One derives from the Greek polis, the body of citizens who deliberated upon and made decisions about their common life together; the other links to the Roman res publicae, the “affairs of the public” that are presumed to be the focus of governance. But both the Greek city-state and the Roman Empire rested on slave economies and treated women as minors or as disenfranchised citizens. In short, few generalizations are possible about public or political theology and no dogmatic claims can be made based on one or another supposedly “fxed truth” that any particular Christian community may want to assert as defnitive.Whether in Africa or elsewhere, then, any discussion of public or political theology requires us carefully to grasp what is meant by these terms to avoid misunderstanding or fruitless debate.

121

James R. Cochrane

SYMBIOTIC ANTAGONISTIC

Implicit or Derivative

Constitutive or Circumscribing

Rejecting or Alternative

Resistant or Critical

Examples of changing relations: Ethiopian Orthodox Church: established to disestablished Mugambi’s shift from liberation to reconstruction

Figure 8.1 Forms of public/political theology: general schema.

What, then, makes theology “public” or “political”? At a minimum, it refers to a claim, within a community of faith, about the meaning of that faith and community for the wider life of society as a whole.This can take many forms, however. I would like to distinguish between two basic orientations: those that are symbiotic with the state or political order, by which the dominant political order is accepted as normative; and those that are antagonistic to the dominant order, either divergent from it or opposed to it. Symbiotic relationships can be broken down further into (i) those that co-exist implicitly or are derivative of the political order, and (ii) those that directly defne or circumscribe the political order. Similarly, antagonistic relationships can be separated into (iii) those that completely reject or create an alternative to the dominant political order, and (iv) those that criticize or actively resist the dominant political order. I do not deal much here with forms of theology that reject a political order or role, such as some forms of evangelicalism or personalist spirituality, for they will have no particular public or political theology as such. Nor with those that express an alternative such as some Anabaptist or peace church theologies (though it is noteworthy that the Quakers in South Africa worked actively against apartheid3). Nor those—a rarity in Africa—that circumscribe the political order by asserting one faith tradition as defnitive while subjugating or expunging other traditions. While all are present in Africa, our discussion deals primarily with those other forms of theology captured in (i), (ii), and (iv) above, that have tended to be most prominent in Africa.

Symbiotic theologies (i)—implicit or derivative public/political theology Public or political theology is implicit when it happily coexists with the dominant political order but its impact is indirect, a side effect of what theology says to its primary addressee, the Christian community itself. It is derivative when it draws upon the social order as representing in some fashion its own self-understanding and explicit in directly addressing the wider society by largely legitimating or buttressing that order. That the implicit and the derivative symbiotic forms of public theology can overlap may be seen in one of the great classical works of Christian theology from northern Africa that still remains deeply infuential in Africa and may explicitly be called public theology:Augustine’s The City of God. It sought to address the overwhelming reality of its time and place: the collapsing 122

African theology

Roman Empire. Augustine’s concern was deeply pastoral and spiritual.The familiar world (the “Earthly City”) was falling apart, disappearing under clouds of uncertainty and violence as Roman rule evaporated, and many blamed Christianity for this, calling for a reinstatement of old pagan values. Augustine sought both to counter this view and to console Christians fearful of the collapsing order, encouraging them instead to place their hope in “another” world, another authority, the “City of God.” The defning battle for him was between those, including political authorities, who serve God, and those who serve the limited realm of the present temporary world. The Catholic Church functioned, in his view, as the earthly guarantor of the heavenly, eternal “City of God.” Contra those who blamed Christianity for the collapse, he argued that the Roman Empire had succeeded for so long precisely because it had embraced the Church (the frst part of his book pursues this argument).The Empire itself, however, was not the City of God; it was and always had been a temporary, earthly reality whose passing was not decisive. Far more decisive was that whatever form of polity subsequently emerged, it should ultimately serve the City of God. In effect, this placed the Roman Catholic Church at the heart of the reconstruction of the new era. It also did two other things of considerable theological signifcance, however, both of which shaped much of colonial Christianity and are still present today. First, it reinforced a dualist understanding of reality, between heaven and earth; and second, it accentuated the distinction between pastoral and spiritual activity on the one hand and social and political life on the other. A related shift occurred in Christian interpretations of the key Greek New Testament word dikaiosynē, from its anchoring in a notion of God’s “justice” in Paul’s canonical writings to a notion of “justifcation” (through faith), in effect inaugurating a psychologization of faith and a turn toward the inner life.This led to a gradual diminishment of the exercise of faith as a life lived in the world, by which law (our ordering of society) is and must be subject to the justice that always transcends and grounds any particular law.4 If Augustine’s interests derived in part from an alliance with Roman interests at one level, at another, they were shaped by a concern to defend and protect the Christian faith whatever regime happened to hold earthly power.This defense of the faith, however, contained within it an implicit political theology as well, as is evident in Augustine’s reaction to the Donatist movement. The Donatists were at the time a widespread and infuential movement of indigenous African Christians who took their name from a Berber bishop of the 4th century and fourished for a while in what today we call Algeria and Tunisia.Among other things, they believed that the Church had become impure in its alignment with imperial rule.5 Augustine, however, felt they threatened the unity of the Church because they rejected those authorities of the church, some in high positions, who had succumbed to Roman authority during the Christian persecution under Emperor Diocletian; these they regarded as “traditores” or “surrenderers,” to be removed from the Church. This was not all; the Donatists also represented African rather than Roman interests and they had widespread local support among ordinary African Christians, another potential threat for Augustine. The public or political dimensions of Augustine’s theology may be regarded as “implicit” to the extent that it was rooted in and used the language of the tradition to make claims or express judgments that were not directed explicitly toward a particular political order but that nonetheless had clear and evident implications for it.This is in fact a default position in much of Christianity and we will not consider it further here. Indeed, it has not really generated many seminal theological perspectives in recent times in Africa, though one may note the way it has also played itself out in evangelical and charismatic theologies as described by Anthony Balcomb in his study in the South African context, which he calls Third Way Theology.6 123

James R. Cochrane

As far as it concerns derivative forms of public or political theology in Africa, we might think today of Pentecostal thinking, still rapidly growing and increasingly infuential in many African countries. It is derivative of the prevailing socio-economic order to the extent that it refects what Ruth Marshall7 describes as a highly nuanced reoccupation of, and aspirational response to, radical economic and political insecurities in the “postmodern” transnational city, especially in a symbiotic adaptation of the new realities of media, mobility, migration, and materiality. In some of its manifestations, African Pentecostalism (as elsewhere) is also a paradigmatic expression of neo-liberal capitalism and its commodifcation of everything, including the intangible dimensions of life.Whichever it may be, much Pentecostalist public or political theology is rather different from what we have so far considered. Nimi Wariboko’s interpretation of Nigerian Pentecostalism (his own tradition) captures this well.Wariboko thinks that Ruth Marshall and others have not adequately treated the production of knowledge or epistemic question of Pentecostalism. He views the public impact of Pentecostalism as resting on access to “the underlying character—the so-called noumenal, invisible realm—of events, circumstances and coincidences in the world.”8 This invisible realm lies behind the political realities of the phenomenal (material) world and discerning it enables one to act in relation to those realities. In Nigeria this is amplifed by a conviction that God has specially chosen the nation “to lead the fnal evangelization of the world … and to draw the black race into global economic and technological supremacy.”9 For Wariboko, the decisive point here is that the invisible determines the visible and not the other way around. Being able to access the noumenal, invisible realm allows one to discern the real nature of the struggle for justice and human fourishing. It is not in the frst instance a material struggle; rather, it is spiritual warfare. In his terms, politics is saturated with spiritual presence. To explain the real is to “see” what is going on in the invisible realm that shapes what happens in the visible.The key marker, then, of Nigerian Pentecostalism’s engagement with politics and the public is that it allows one to act properly in the material world by “extracting knowledge from the invisible realm to explain, predict, and control the visible world.”10 Wariboko refers to this as spiritual optics:“an orientation that considers concrete, visible realties (sic) as framed, animated, and underpinned by things not seen.” For him, the invisible and the visible are not separate realms but “intertwined and complementary.”11 Nonetheless, one can question here an implied ontological dualism in the assertion of two kinds of reality, both of which are external to us as human beings. There is, however, no individualism in this view for, as Wariboko sees it, Nigerian Pentecostalism endows one personally with what he calls “altersovereignty” (sovereignty of the other), a concept that asserts friendship as the ultimate virtue.This, he suggests, is the foundation upon which political life should be built.Amos Yong, in the Foreword to Wariboko’s book, argues that this is a political theory about the needs of the postmodern 21st century:“The intersubjectivity of embodied creatures … has the potential to unleash spiritual powers, both ecclesially and socially, politically, and economically, sometimes separately but more often together.”12 Wariboko’s own way of saying it is that “Pentecostalism is a process, formation practice, for the production of truths and ethics of hope that converts noumenal knowledge into phenomenal technologies of existence.”13 In effect, it is a mobilization of agency through the transformation of the subject (conversion, that is, being born again in the spirit), this in a context where the distortions and asymmetries of power and money, coupled with the long historical oppression signifed by the nature of “blackness,” otherwise restrict all hope and limit all aspiration. The aim of such politics is to open up a new and hopeful future by means of imaginatively prefguring, then actively fguring, an alternative way of being in a fraught and fragile socio-economic environment. 124

African theology

For Wariboko this is an expression of the eschatological character of the Gospel, the “notyet” that will come into being through the mediation of the divine Spirit. It refects a desire for justice that we might call a soft form of liberation for those who live on the edge of existence. Though it is unlikely to institute “stable forms of sovereignty,” in his view, because Pentecostals are “subjected to God and … become subject of God,” it does have “great potential for developing the kinds of virtues and practices of moral excellence that can stabilize the political community and the socio-political redemption of the Nigerian polis.” Ruth Marshall, however, points out that there is no guarantee that this kind of politics will be emancipatory.14 After all, the idiom of warfare, spiritual or otherwise, includes “weapons” that are intended to be turned against the other and there is no reason to think that this could not be materialized, that is, turn into real war.A further concern has to do with the status of human reason within this framing (noting that all theology is refection on faith, that is, an exercise of human reason).Wariboko himself expresses this concern about Pentecostal theology even as he wants to clarify it.What worries him is its “relentless rejection of reason and reasoning where they should matter most.”15 If public theology is not merely to be an expression of the unrefective passion of people who believe they possess the truth by which to judge others—with dangerous practical consequences for others, as we see in various radicalizations of religious doctrine in many parts of the world—then this is no small point.

Symbiotic theologies (ii)—constitutive or defnitive public/political theology Probably the most well-known paradigm of constitutive public or political theology is Emperor Constantine’s recognition in the 4th century of Christianity as an offcial religion of the Roman Empire (along with other religions), a position later consummated by Emperor Theodosius when he declared Christianity to be the single offcial religion of the Empire. A constitutive political theology establishes, undergirds, and legitimates earthly authority in its own name. When this also serves to subdue, delegitimize or suppress other faith traditions than the offcial one, then it becomes prescriptive (and likely oppressive) as well.16 Contemporary forms of public or political theology that make one religion offcial or “established” and thereby circumscribe what is supported and what is not are not really found in Africa outside of North Africa (where Islam is often the offcial religion), and few, if any, Christian theologians actively seek to defend such theologies any longer. In some countries, however, a particular tradition has sometimes played a dominant and constitutive role. A pertinent example in modern Africa is that which supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, which explicitly justifed racist and exclusionary policies on the grounds of a particular (distorted) interpretation of the Christian faith.17 For example, the deliberate, systematic under-education of black Africans over many decades, perhaps the most devastating enduring legacy of that era, was elaborated within the framework of what was offcially called Christian National Education. Christianity was not the offcial religion in law, but in practice it held powerful sway. A further, less malign example of constitutive public or political theology may be seen in the declaration in 1991 by President Chiluba, an avowed Pentecostalist, of Zambia as a Christian state.Though relatively tolerant, he and his regime favored Christians (especially charismatics and Pentecostals) above others, including using state discretionary funds to support their projects, and re-established broken ties with Israel in the name of “Christian Zionism” while cutting ties with some Muslim countries.18 In any constitutive form of public of political theology, especially any “hard” version of it, one can see hints of something to be feared as offcial or authorized versions of a tradition are utilized to exercise oppressive or malignant political control. Generally, they do not favor a 125

James R. Cochrane

plurality of faiths or will tolerate this only under a circumscribed and often closely monitored order.There is of course something to be gained by embracing a plurality of faiths (or no faith). The embrace of plurality is most commonly seen in public or political theologies in liberal or constitutional democracies in which no religion is privileged and all, in principle, are largely free to operate (constrained only by agreed norms of tolerance and by legality).Then we are back at symbiotic forms of public/political theology. However, if embrace is not possible or desired, there is yet another option: criticism of and resistance to an oppressive or exclusionary authority on Christian grounds.

Antagonistic theologies (iv)—resistant or critical public/political theology Africa is not short of public or political theologies that express either resistance to, or strong criticism of, a dominant social order, laying bare its contradictions and/or the harm it may do.They include theologies of inculturation or Africanization, black theology and Kairos theology in South Africa,African women’s theology, theologies concerned with issues of sexual orientation (limited in the African context19 but likely to grow20), and postcolonial theology.As I cannot deal with all of these trajectories nor excavate any one of them in full here, let me instead consider some exemplary representatives of some of the main lines of thought: Nyamiti’s inculturation theology, Ela’s African liberation theology, South African black theology, Katongole’s theological critique of the nation-state in Africa, Mugambi’s theology of liberation and reconstruction, the work of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, and Bongmba’s dialectics of transformation. Charles Nyamiti from Tanzania is often seen as the doyen of a theology of inculturation. He is a Roman Catholic steeped in its dogmatic tradition who sought to rethink the entire tradition from within the “totality” of the African situation, past, present, and future. As Antonio notes, Nyamiti “calls into question and displaces—or at least attempts to displace—standard western categories [such as the doctrines of God, Christ, Church, Holy Spirit, Eucharist] by reconstituting their meaning in a rediscovered African idiom.”21 A good example is Nyamiti’s well-known reading of Jesus Christ as our “Brother-Ancestor.”22 This immediately links the received tradition to the deep-seated and widespread respect for ancestors that characterizes most African cultures and, at the same time, it emphasizes the kinship solidarity that is important to a communal understanding of one’s life together with others. Nyamiti also contrasts this with the idea of “Christ the liberator” as found in South African black theology, which bothered him because he felt it to be insuffciently attentive to the cultural dimensions of emancipation.23 This alone makes it clear that Nyamiti views theological inculturation not merely as a dogmatic task but also a necessary corrective to a tradition that entered subSaharan Africa in the garb of colonial European missions (Christianity was of course present in North Africa almost from its inception). Is a theology of inculturation a political or public theology? The consensus is yes, in the sense that it represents a protest against a colonial cultural matrix that seeks to assert its hegemony and an assertion of Africa agency via cultural re-appropriation and innovation.The West, after all, does not own Christianity, however much it has shaped the West (and both the Coptic and Ethiopian churches in Africa predate much of the West). As Antonio puts it most succinctly, inculturation is “an oppositional discourse whose goal is to resist and displace the epistemic claims of a western infected Christianity” in a way that corresponds “to the polemical and combative thrust of Africanism itself.”24 The link between liberation and inculturation has been long debated with the dominant consensus aimed at reconciling the two. A good example is Jean-Marc Ela’s attempt to fnd a 126

African theology

mid-position between them by emphasizing a double view of fdelity to the past coupled with a response to the shock of poverty, violence, exploitation, and hunger in the present. Ela’s work is flled with a passion for and focus on local people in villages, on the voice of peasants or the poor and the marginalized.25 In African Cry, he thus speaks of the importance of a “shade-free” theology, one that,“far from the libraries and offces, develops among brothers and sisters searching shoulder to shoulder with unlettered peasants for the sense of the word of God in situations in which this word touches them.”26 Ela roots the sense of the word of God not in mere communal solidarity, however, for the situation of the peasantry (and many others who are not peasants, one may add) is both a political reality and a public question that requires an equivalent response: “A dependent church among oppressed peoples—this is the global context in which the gospel must be read today and in which the new tasks of Christianity in black Africa must be defned.”27 More directly antagonistic to a particular dominant, oppressive order are the theologies that shaped resistance to apartheid in South Africa, in particular, black theology and Kairos theology (which began with a challenge to the Church to reject outright any compromise with a state built upon, and has had many international spin-offs).28 The rise of the black consciousness movement in South Africa is most closely associated with the name of Steve Bantu Biko but of course it included others, not least some trained in theology, and it was they who took up the themes of black theology.29 Among them was Mokgethi Motlhabi, editor of the frst book on black theology.30 For black theology, racism was the key issue, specifcally, the imposed ideology of inferiority that had shaped long decades of colonial and segregationist history, countered by the insistence on a confdent, strong black identity. In the case of black theology, this was grounded in a reinterpretation of the black Christ in particular. Naturally, a focus on the racialized order of apartheid did not imply any naive abstraction from structures of power or its material conditions, from oppression and exploitation, but it was the issue of human dignity and freedom that ran uppermost, a theme to which Motlhabi returns in his retrospective and prospective evaluation of black theology.31 Indeed, Biko, who for a while also worked with the infuential anti-apartheid Christian Institute of Southern Africa (banned by the state in 1977 along with many black consciousness organizations),32 contributed a key chapter to the frst book on black theology, aptly titled Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity. Here he writes that “Freedom is the ability to defne oneself with one’s possibilities held back not by the power of other people over one but only by one’s relationship to God and to natural surroundings.”33 Blackness for Biko (using a Hegelian dialectic) is thus to be seen as the antithesis of whiteness, the thesis. Given white domination, the antithesis necessarily requires the mobilization of black people—but as a strategic (political) and temporary necessity and not as an end in itself.There is no special privileging of one kind of human over another (which one would hardly expect given the extent to which segregation and apartheid did just that).The end goal for Biko, the synthesis, is an all-inclusive “true humanity.”34 Today, in a post-apartheid era, racism has not disappeared as a key issue, and exactly how to proceed with the agenda that black theology put in motion has been the subject of many writings and much debate, though less so now than before.The changed context has pushed South Africans to pay closer attention to the theme of decolonization and what postcoloniality might mean.This is of course not new to the rest of Africa.Among those who have been for some time been considering those issues in theological terms is Ugandan Emmanuel Katongole. Katongole’s political theology is most powerfully expressed in The Sacrifce of Africa, published in 2011. It confronts what he sees as the founding narrative of the colonial project—“a story of power, greed and plunder” that shaped the postcolonial nation-state and that, largely invisibly, 127

James R. Cochrane

“continues to hold Africa in its enchanted grip.”35 Postcolonial experiences of “chaos, war and corruption” in many parts of Africa are therefore not “indications of a failed institution; they are ingrained in the very imagination of how nation-state politics works.”36 His radical conclusion is that a lie sits at the heart of Africa’s “inception into modernity,” for the founding stories of the nation-states upon which much of the history of postcolonial Africa is built is one in which “the institutions of modern Africa rejects Africa itself.”37 This is the frst, destructive “sacrifce of Africa.” In Katongole’s view, within that overarching narrative and accompanied by prayers for the king (or other colonial ruling authority) and the promise of heaven, Christianity in colonial form largely confned itself to self-defned “spiritual” and “pastoral” tasks as distinct from “the determination of material and bodily practices that properly belong to the feld of politics.”38 For this reason, he believes, Christianity was unable to help shape a new future in Africa. If postcolonial Christianity is itself built upon what Katongole regards as “the politics of self-deception,” then it must be challenged, and this includes questioning cherished notions like “‘development,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘civilization,’ and ‘progress.’”39 What would it mean in this case to move beyond narrow interests of colonial Christendom in the spiritual and the pastoral, and how does one go about this? Infuenced by Stanley Hauerwas, Katongole wants us to focus not on the spiritual, the pastoral or, even, the political as such, but on narratives. This is not to do away with the political but to recast it in the form of everyday, ordinary life and its practices, so that we may take lived social existence rather than a grand political project as the basis of rethinking Christian theology. It means relocating one’s theology away from the (defled?) dominating centers of power and authority even as it encourages grassroots Christian activism. It is concerned less with any certainty about one’s control over society and more with attention to the emerging life-giving future that one can midwife but not determine: “inventing the future is a gift to be received,” as Katongole puts it.40 In essence, Katongole seeks to relocate political theology by rooting it in Christian narratives drawn from biblical and local sources that are capable of giving rise to a new and redemptive social imagination, to “demonstration plots” for the Gospel as he calls them,41 a shift from “strategies to stories”42 that are able to cut across and under the dominant paradigm of the nation-state that has so plagued postcolonial Africa.This makes for what one can call the creative, second “sacrifce of Africa,” one that now holds and builds upon hope for the future. Another East African who has thought long and hard about a way into a new future is theologian and philosopher Jess Mugambi from Kenya. He, too, is fully aware of the ongoing challenges facing Africa and the importance of liberation from what Edward Antonio calls “Colonial Christendom”43—the problematic constitution of Christianity as defnitive of the colonial encounter. Nonetheless, Mugambi wished to see theology moving into a constructive phase, a shift from the notion of liberation as “freedom from” a condition of oppression, which has dominated critical or resistance theologies in Africa, to one in which the question of “freedom for what” is foregrounded.44 In the context of the end of the Cold War and as a response to the various forms of racism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and ideology that had thoroughly distorted African societies to the point where the negative consumed the positive, Mugambi has proposed a “theology of reconstruction” as a necessary step in breaking free of the past and rebuilding the present across all spheres of society.45 Theologically he captures this in a shift from the Exodus motif of liberation to one that is centered on Nehemiah, the Hebrew Bible fgure responsible for rebuilding and ruling Jerusalem with wisdom and justice.46 The emphasis on justice implied in this fgure is central to theologies of reconstruction, a bulwark against mere change of rule from the colony to the postcolony that is no guarantee of justice—as Mugambi well knows from his experience in Kenya. 128

African theology

Reconstruction theology in this sense, though it shifts away from a liberatory discourse (illustrated in Figure 8.1 via Mugambi’s intellectual trajectory from an antagonistic position in the direction of a symbiotic one), never loses sight of the critical function that theology as a political and public exercise must play. Simultaneously, at least for Mugambi, it also never loses sight of the need to reconstruct the personal, the ecclesial, and the cultural spheres of life, indeed all of human life, opening itself up to theological interpretations that draw up all available resources. At this point, it opens itself up to “multi-disciplinary analyses involving social scientists, philosophers, creative writers and artists, biological and physical scientists”47 (Mugambi 1995: 40). In, short, reconstruction theology in Mugambi’s sense is a cipher for an all-encompassing public theological praxis. How effective are such theologies of reconstruction? This depends probably on place and time, but Tinyiko Maluleke, a second generation black theologian from South Africa, is not sure that a theology of reconstruction would bring much, if any, change in the African situation (Maluleke 1997: 23), nor is he content with any devaluing of African theologies of inculturation and liberation whatever their weaknesses. In short, he argues against any short-circuiting of either thrust.48 Indeed, he questions the very notion of “public theology,” by which he largely refers to a global network of theologians (including strong representation from South Africa and Nigeria) in ways that resonate with his questions about theologies of reconstruction. In the context of ongoing injustice and pain, he believes that “Without a theory of resistance it is diffcult to conjure up a theory of construction. … Indeed, one of the fallacies of the critique laid against liberation theologies is that their efforts amounted to no more than protest and resistance.”49 In short, resistance and reconstruction are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps the most durable and signifcant expressions of theology, that engage critically and innovatively with the public and the political while simultaneously expanding the meaning of the political, come from the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.50 The Circle, declares Nyambura Njoroge, is deeply concerned about “the erosion and destruction of human dignity and life, all life, in Africa,” about “the social evils that block the experience of abundant life for people and the environment,” and about the silencing of women and the sin of sexism.51 African women’s theology also attends a politics of the body, that is, the impact on real bodies— physical and sexual, somatic and psychic—of poverty, patriarchy, power, or pillage, particularly of course as it affects women, fully aware of the way gendered relations in society are structured and of the asymmetries of power they often represent.52 Equally important are the elements of a positive vision that appear in African women’s theology, one example being Teresa Okure’s tellingly titled essay “First Was the Life, Not the Book.”53 Noting that “Emerging and liberating trends in biblical studies … require that readers address their life situations as part of interpreting scripture,” she insists that a hermeneutics that promotes life in its fullness—and this alone—grounds a faithful interpretation.54 This may counter part of the Augustinian heritage that shapes much of the Western Christianity and its impact upon Africa: a foregrounding of a conception of original and ongoing sin that must be redeemed, which in theory and practice places an emphasis on the negative as initially defnitive of human life, both metaphorically and analogically privileging “death” rather than “life” as the beginning of theological refection.55 Such a view of sin also places a great deal of power in the hands of those who claim to be the interpreters, even the conduits, of what counts as redemption. Public or political theologies shaped by this tradition often fnd it easier to criticize what harms us and our society but harder to offer any profoundly positive response to the demand to build a world of human justice and comprehensive well-being.The latter is exactly what much of African woman’s theology, at least as evidenced in the Circle, calls for in its emphasis on life and our creative (though never naïve) contribution to redemption (rebirth) in the world. 129

James R. Cochrane

One could easily miss the deeply political implications of African women’s theology if one forgets that life succeeds in the face of death, specifcally, the systematic structures and forces of “death” by which we harm and diminish each other (and ourselves simultaneously). A particularly potent reminder of this is Musa Dube’s Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of The Bible.56 In a provocative reading of the book of Matthew, particularly the Great Commission to missionize the world, she links the deep patriarchal thread that runs through the Bible with conquest and imperialism. The critical point here is that patriarchy, under which feminists tend to subsume all oppressions, cannot be divorced, in Africa at least, from colonization. A reading of the Bible that focuses on its patriarchal thrusts without also dealing with its imperial or conquest-oriented texture is insuffcient. There is in fact a “double colonisation” at work that must be deconstructed or, as Dube would put it, decolonized.57 Although the effects of colonization and racism remain core themes, in one way or another, virtually all the African public or political theologies we have considered also pick up on issues that Elias Bongmba rather uniquely identifes in his provocative treatment of “the dialectics of transformation in Africa” as a number of “human crises” in the postcolonial era.58 These include (1) the “privatization of power”—not the interplay of the private and the public but rather “an exclusionary political praxis that has reserved political power and the spoils of power to a few self-anointed rulers,” one that turns “a public offce into a personal, private privilege” and that “thrives on restrictive networks, clientele relationships, and the politics of patronage;” (2) a “pauperization of the state” occasioned by “political practices that have caused the economy to decline and that have led to the scandal of poverty and environmental degradation,” accompanied by a “dearth of political and economic ideas and resources” as a result in part of ill-adapted development projects, a neo-colonial economy, political corruption, poor management, and an impoverished political praxis; (3) a “prodigalization” of the state by some through a politics of looting and [deliberate] mismanagement; and (4) the “proliferation of violence” seen in “the abuse, torture, and denigration of the African people carried out by governing elites and their agents” and in conficts and civil wars.59 Fully aware of the historical legacies that still live on, Bongmba argues, along with Mbembe whom he quotes, that Africa’s postcolonial leadership nonetheless is largely responsible for these crises that Africans are subjects of a free will by which a different future can be chosen, and that public and political theology ought to head in that direction far more forcefully. Bongmba himself60 advocates for the recovery of an African humanistic perspective that embraces the intersubjective dimensions of social life and treats the political and ethical obligations as grounded in an intersubjective set of relations that rests on a genuine recognition of an “other” and facilitates the celebration of heterogeneity and plurality over homogeneity. To ground what this might mean, Bongmba addresses a number of prickly themes, among them the status of the widow in Africa as a hermeneutic starting point for rethinking patriarchy and gendered relations61 and a call for erotic freedom, which he defnes as “the energy that swells up streams of joy in people, … [that] enables us to connect with other people and things. … [and that] teaches, nurtures, and provides energy for us to make changes in life.”62 For Bongmba none of this can be separated from rethinking power in Africa. Here he innovatively draws upon a reinterpretation of Yoruba cosmology, specifcally its conception of àse or “life force,” power in a wider and deeper sense, of a kind possessed by every person yet aware of otherness, especially in a normative sense of community that expects everyone to use their own power to contribute to the well-being of all.This rules out any approach to people that treats them as “objects for manipulation” or marginalizes them, which should both function as a strict limit on political power and constitute the foundation for social praxis.63

130

African theology

The dynamic of political or public theology Theology is a living attempt to refect on the meaning and signifcance of faith; it is “faith seeking understanding,” in Anselm’s classic phrase. It is thus necessarily dynamic, responsive to the context and the times within which it occurs, and this is no less true of those that actively engage in thinking about the public or the political than it is for anyone else.The diagram of four forms of public or political theology is helpful, then, only if one does not read it as a static map of positions. Rather, it should be read in relation to the changing relations of any particular theologian or body to a particular context and time. The two examples provided in the diagram illustrate this. One shows a shift by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from a state church to a disestablished but politically still infuential church. Founded in the 4th century, it became the offcial state church in 333 CE and was disestablished in 1974 under a new Marxist government. Since then it has regained some authority with the political elite but no longer as the state church.The other example shows a shift in focus in the thinking and writing of Jesse Mugambi of Kenya from liberation to reconstruction (which we have discussed). In his case, this is the result of a recognition that one cannot forever remain in a position of resistance, an articulation of what one is against, but at some appropriate point, when the contextual conditions are ripe for rebuilding one’s society, must consider articulating in concrete terms what one stands for. Perhaps some of what we learn from those who have produced Africa theologies is that we may need to think of hybrid political theologies, if not in the mainstream then at least on the critical margins, as an unexpected edge of public witness in Africa that may still evolve in the future.There are certainly many situations in Africa, particularly where confict between Islam and Christianity raises its head, that require a rethink in this regard. African Christian theology lives alongside Islamic theologies and African indigenous thought. In local contexts, they fow into and across one another even when they appear to be opposed at a more formal dogmatic level, as is the case in South Africa, both during the struggle against apartheid and now through inter-faith groups and institutions. A good example is the inclusion by the Christian Institute—banned by the apartheid state in 1977 but still infuential in less obvious ways long afterwards—of Muslims and Jews (and declared agnostics or atheists) in its own programs, often as leaders of them.64 Here there was no sense that this was contradictory to the Christian faith it continued to represent as theologically as intrinsically inclusive, at least in its commitment to a common practice aimed at the fullness of life, and the justice that this requires. In sum, to understand political or public theology in Africa (or for that matter, anywhere else) one has to read it not simply historically but also dynamically, that is, as necessarily evolving and shifting over time, perhaps even radically so, if the situation demands it. One sign of poor theology may be precisely that it remains locked in a fxed position that appears impervious to history and context even when it claims to be historical and contextual (then it probably deserves to be described as ideology rather than theology). In sketching the scope and scale of public or political theology in Africa, then, what at frst glance may seem fairly straightforward turns out to be rather more complex. Precisely this complexity is what we have to grasp.

Notes 1 Acknowledgment: This chapter is based on research supported in part by a National Research Foundation of South Africa Grant Number 103705; all opinions, fndings and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are mine, for which the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever.

131

James R. Cochrane 2 “Public” here should not be understood in opposition to that which is “private,” a distinction characteristic of modern secular societies but one that limits too strongly what counts as public, as we will discuss later. 3 Betty K. Tonsing, The Quakers in South Africa: A Social Witness (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). 4 The seminal essay on Augustine’s infuence in psychologizing the faith is Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” The Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (1963): 199–215. On Paul’s understanding of justice and justifcation, the most important current work is Herman C. Waetjen, The Letter to the Romans: Salvation as Justice and the Deconstruction of Law, New Testament Monographs (Sheffeld: Sheffeld Phoenix Press, 2011). 5 Still the most valuable account of what can be called a “proto-nationalist”African resistance movement is W. H. C. Frend, The Donatists, Oxford Scholarly Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 (1951)). 6 Anthony O. Balcomb, Third Way Theology: Reconciliation, Revolution and Reform in the South African Church (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1993). 7 Ruth Marshall, “‘Dealing with the Prince over Lagos’: Pentecostal Arts of Citizenship,” in The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging, ed. Mamadou Diouf and Rosalind Fredericks (NewYork: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015); see also Political Spiritualities:The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 2009). 8 Nimi Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014), xiii. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 39. 11 Ibid., 1. 12 Ibid., ix. 13 Ibid., 3, italics in the original. 14 Marshall,“‘Dealing with the Prince over Lagos’: Pentecostal Arts of Citizenship.” 15 Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism, 56. 16 Constitutive political/public theology is not restricted to the Christian faith, of course; it can equally be observed within Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu traditions, to name just a few. 17 In particular, a truncated version of the theory of Dutch theologian and premier Abraham Kuyper was used. During the apartheid era, other faith traditions were tolerated but sometimes barely so—it was not uncommon to read of some Reformed theologians writing about and fulminating against the “Roomse gevaar,” the danger of Rome, viz. the Roman Catholic Church. 18 Chiluba was a member of the old Pentecostal Assemblies of God church. See Isabel Apawo Phiri, “President Frederick J.T. Chiluba of Zambia:The Christian Nation and Democracy,” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 4 (2003): 401–28; Paul Gifford,“Chiluba’s Christian Nation: Christianity as a Factor in Zambian Politics 1991–1996,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 13, no. 3 (1998): 363–81. 19 But see Paul Germond and Steve De Gruchy, eds., Aliens in the Household of God: Homosexuality and Christian Faith in South Africa (Cape Town: David Philip, 1997). 20 Elias Bongmba,“Homosexuality, Ubuntu, and Otherness in the African Church,” Journal of Religion and Violence 4, no. 1 (2016): 15–37. 21 “Introduction,” Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse in African Theology, ed. Edward P. Antonio (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 17. 22 Charles Nyamiti, Christ as Our Ancestor: Christology from an African Perspective (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1984). Similar attempts to link Christ to an understanding of African ancestral thinking can be found in Bénézet Bujo, African Theology in Its Social Context (St. Paul Publications-Africa/Daughters of St. Paul, 1992); John S. Pobee, Toward an African Theology (Nashiville:Abingdon Press, 1979). 23 For an early analysis of this debate from the side of a black theologian, see Mokgethi B. G. Motlhabi, “African Theology or Black Theology? Toward an Integral African Theology,” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 8, no. 2 (1994): 113–41; for his more recent analysis, see African Theology/Black Theology in South Africa: Looking Back, Moving On (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2008). 24 Antonio, Inculturation, 15. 25 See, for example, Jean-Marc Ela, L’afrique Des Villages, Collection Les Afriques (Editions Karthala, 1982). No English translation is available. 26 Jean-Marc Ela, African Cry, trans. Robert R. Barr (Eugene, OR:Wipf & Stock, 2005), vi. 27 Ibid., 7. For an example of another African liberation theologian worth noting, particularly for his insistence that it is not a copy of Latin American liberation theology but, rather, one rooted in the diversity

132

African theology

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

and rich cultural experiences of Africa, see Laurenti Magesa, Anatomy of Inculturation:Transforming the Church in Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014). The Kairos document, Challenge to the Church:A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa, vol. Rev. 2nd ed. (Braamfontein: Skotaville, 1986). Among the early key fgures were Manas Buthelezi, Simon Maimela, Bonganjalo Goba, Takatso Mofokeng, Buti Tlagale, and Itumeleng Mosala.Also worth noting are the roots of South African black theology in the rise at the turn of the 20th century of the Ethiopian movement in South Africa,African independent churches that broke away, in large part on political grounds, from mission churches of the time; see Erhard Kamphausen, Anfänge der Kirchlichen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung in Südafrika: Geschichte und Teologie der Äthiopischen Bewegung, 1872–1912 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1976). Unfortunately no English translation is available Mokgethi B. G. Motlhabi, Essays on Black Theology, Black Theology Project (Johannesburg: University Christian Movement, 1972); also published in different form as Basil Moore, ed. Black Theology: The South African Voice (London: C. Hurst & Co, 1973). Motlhabi, African Theology/Black Theology in South Africa: Looking Back, Moving On. See Peter Walshe, Church Versus State in South Africa: The Case of the Christian Institute (London, and Maryknoll, NY: C. Hurst, and Orbis Books, 1983). Aelred Stubbs, ed., I Write What I Like: Steve Biko.A Selection of His Writings (Oxford: Heinemann, 1987), 93.The essay frst appeared in Moore. Ibid., 90. Emmanuel Katongole, The Sacrifce of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 16. Parenthesis added. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 20–21. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 180. Ibid., 145. Ibid., 4. Antonio,“Introduction: Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse,” in Antonio, Inculturation, 9, 10. James R. Cochrane, “On Freedom: Risking a (Faithful) Reinterpretation,” in Religion and Social Reconstruction in Africa, ed. Elias Bongmba (New York: Routledge, 2018 forthcoming). Jesse N. K. Mugambi, “The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa,” in The Church of Africa: Towards a Theology of Reconstruction, ed. Jose B. Chipenda, et al. (Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, 1991). For a similar shift in South Africa, see Charles Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Jesse N. K. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995), 160–80. Ibid., 40. Tinyiko Maluleke, “Half a Century of Christian Theologies in Africa: Elements of the emerging agenda for the 21st century,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 4–23. Tinyiko Maluleke,“The Elusive Public of Public Theology:A Response to William Storrar,”International Journal of Public Theology 5 (2011): 87. See, for example, Mercy A. Oduyoye and Musimbi R. A. Kanyoro, The Will to Arise: Women, Tradition, and the Church in Africa (Eugene, OR:Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005). Nyambura J. Njoroge, “The Missing Voice: African Women Theology,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 79. This is well captured in Musa W. Dube, “Talitha Cum Hermeneutics of Liberation: Some African Women’s Ways of Reading the Bible,” in The Bible and the Hermeneutics of Liberation, ed. Alejandro F. Botta and Pablo R.Andiñach (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). Teresa Okure, “First Was the Life, Not the Book,” in To Cast Fire Upon the Earth: Bible and Mission Collaborating in Today’s Multicultural Global Context, ed. Teresa Okure (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2000). Ibid., 196–97. For further analysis, see James R. Cochrane, “The Spirit of Humanity: Contra Theologies of Death,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 152 (2015): 6–20.

133

James R. Cochrane 56 Musa W. Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000). For a more recent collection on the same theme, see Musa W. Dube, Andrew M. Mbuvi, and Dora R. Mbuwayesango, eds., Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship 13 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). 57 Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, 113. 58 Elias K. Bongmba, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2006). 59 Ibid., Chapter 1: Defning the Human Crisis in Africa, 9–38. 60 Ibid., 123. 61 Bongmba draws here among others upon Daisy N. Nwachuku, “The Christian Widow in African Culture,” in The Will to Arise: Women, Tradition, and the Church in Africa, ed. Mercy A. Oduyoye and Musimbi R.A. Kanyoro (Eugene, OR:Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005). 62 Bongmba, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa, 159. 63 Ibid., 178–79. 64 See, for example, James R. Cochrane, “Agapé: The Cape Offce of the Christian Institute,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (2004): 53–68.

Bibliography Antonio, Edward P., ed. Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse in African Theology. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Balcomb, Anthony O. Third Way Theology: Reconciliation, Revolution and Reform in the South African Church. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1993. Bongmba, Elias. “Homosexuality, Ubuntu, and Otherness in the African Church.” Journal of Religion and Violence 4, no. 1 (2016): 15–37. Bongmba, Elias K. The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2006. Bujo, Bénézet. African Theology in Its Social Context. Nairobi, Kenya: St. Paul Publications-Africa/Daughters of St. Paul, 1992. Cochrane, James R. “Agapé: The Cape Offce of the Christian Institute.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 118 (2004): 53–68. Cochrane, James R.“The Spirit of Humanity: Contra Theologies of Death.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 152 (July 2015): 6–20. Cochrane, James R.“On Freedom: Risking a (Faithful) Reinterpretation.” In Religion and Social Reconstruction in Africa, edited by Elias Bongmba, 226–242. New York: Routledge, 2018. Dube, Musa W. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000. Dube, Musa W. “Talitha Cum Hermeneutics of Liberation: Some African Women’s Ways of Reading the Bible.” In The Bible and the Hermeneutics of Liberation, edited by Alejandro F. Botta and Pablo R.Andiñach, 133–46.Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009. Dube, Musa W., Andrew M. Mbuvi, and Dora R. Mbuwayesango, eds. Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, Global Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship 13. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. Ela, Jean-Marc. L’afrique Des Villages. Collection Les Afriques. Paris, France: Editions Karthala, 1982. Ela, Jean-Marc. African Cry. Translated by Robert R. Barr. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005. (Orbis Books, 1986). Frend,W. H. C. The Donatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 (1951). Germond, Paul, and Steve De Gruchy, eds. Aliens in the Household of God: Homosexuality and Christian Faith in South Africa. Cape Town: David Philip, 1997. Gifford, Paul.“Chiluba’s Christian Nation: Christianity as a Factor in Zambian Politics 1991–1996.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 13, no. 3 (1998): 363–81. The Kairos Document. Challenge to the Church: A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa, Vol. rev. 2nd ed. Braamfontein: Skotaville, 1986. Kamphausen, Erhard. Anfänge der Kirchlichen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung in Südafrika: Geschichte und Teologie der Äthiopischen Bewegung, 1872–1912. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1976. Katongole, Emmanuel. The Sacrifce of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011. Magesa, Laurenti. Anatomy of Inculturation:Transforming the Church in Africa. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014.

134

African theology Maluleke,Tinyiko. “The Elusive Public of Public Theology: A Response to William Storrar.” International Journal of Public Theology 5 (2011): 79–89. Marshall, Ruth. Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Marshall, Ruth. “‘Dealing with the Prince Over Lagos’: Pentecostal Arts of Citizenship.” In The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging, edited by Mamadou Diouf and Rosalind Fredericks, 91–114. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. Moore, Basil, ed. Black Theology:The South African Voice. London: C. Hurst & Co, 1973. Motlhabi, Mokgethi B. G. Essays on Black Theology. Black Theology Project. Johannesburg: University Christian Movement, 1972. Motlhabi, Mokgethi B. G. “African Theology or Black Theology? Toward an Integral African Theology.” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 8, no. 2 (1994): 113–41. Motlhabi, Mokgethi B. G. African Theology/Black Theology in South Africa: Looking Back, Moving On. Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2008. Mugambi, Jesse N. K.“The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa.” In The Church of Africa:Towards a Theology of Reconstruction, edited by Jose B. Chipenda,A. Karamaga, Jesse N. K. Mugambi and C. K. Omari, 29–50. Nairobi:All Africa Conference of Churches, 1991. Mugambi, Jesse N. K. From Liberation to Reconstruction:African Christian Theology After the Cold War. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995. Njoroge, Nyambura J.“The Missing Voice:African Women Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 77–83. Nwachuku, Daisy N.“The Christian Widow in African Culture.” In The Will to Arise:Women,Tradition, and the Church in Africa, edited by Mercy A. Oduyoye and Musimbi R. A. Kanyoro, 54–73. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005. Nyamiti, Charles. Christ as Our Ancestor: Christology from an African Perspective. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1984. Oduyoye, Mercy A., and Musimbi R.A. Kanyoro. The Will to Arise:Women,Tradition, and the Church in Africa. Eugene, OR:Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005. Okure, Teresa. “First Was the Life, Not the Book.” In To Cast Fire Upon the Earth: Bible and Mission Collaborating in Today’s Multicultural Global Context, edited by Teresa Okure, 194–214. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2000. Phiri, Isabel Apawo.“President Frederick J.T. Chiluba of Zambia:The Christian Nation and Democracy.” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 4 (2003): 401–28. Pobee, John S. Toward an African Theology. Nashville,TN:Abingdon Press, 1979. Stendahl, Krister.“The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” The Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (1963): 199–215. Stubbs, Aelred, ed. I Write What I Like: Steve Biko.A Selection of His Writings. Oxford: Heinemann, 1987. Tonsing, Betty K. The Quakers in South Africa:A Social Witness. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002. Villa-Vicencio, Charles. A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Waetjen, Herman C. The Letter to the Romans: Salvation as Justice and the Deconstruction of Law. New Testament Monographs. Sheffeld, UK: Sheffeld Phoenix Press, 2011. Walshe, Peter. Church Versus State in South Africa:The Case of the Christian Institute. London/Maryknoll, NY: C. Hurst/Orbis Books, 1983. Wariboko, Nimi. Nigerian Pentecostalism. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014.

135

9 THE SERMON DEBATE AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN KENYA Galia Sabar

If I keep quiet … I’m a sinner in the eyes of God and in the heart of my people.1 —Church State and theological debates: a social scientifc historical analysis of Kenya 1980–1990

Introduction On a Sunday morning in Kenya you can witness an endless procession of men, women, and children making their way to church.Wearing long white robes with elegant white head cloths or European-style outfts, the churchgoers fll the city streets and dusty rural paths.They walk in groups, some chanting hymns and drumming, and gathering additional followers on the way. The walk ends as they congregate in huge stone churches, in small huts, public gardens, or busy roundabouts for a prayer service. Talk to Kenyan men and women, and many of them will tell you their religious affliation and their ethnic background are the two anchors of their identity. As they tell stories of their congregation or of work on church committees and organizations you will hear joy in their voices and see the light in their eyes. Stop to listen to a sermon in one of the churches or prayer gatherings, and you will see more than depth of religious feeling. Some preachers stick to reading passages from the Bible, usually focusing on one story and exploring it as the theme for the sermon. Others go beyond it, using the story as a metaphor to comment on current affairs or as a means to criticize Kenya’s politics, current economic affairs, or world leaders’ conduct. Thirty years ago, several leading clergy chose to speak out, at a time when voicing criticism against the government, and especially against the President, was forbidden and dangerous. These few brave clergymen took a leading role in shaping both the discourse and the actions calling for a radical change in Kenya’s political conduct. Using their pulpit, several Anglican bishops, Catholic cardinals, and Presbyterian priests were outspoken in their opposition. They not only protested violence and corruption and demanded that human dignity be restored but also sought to redefne the role of the Church. By saying: “If I keep quiet … I’m a sinner in the eyes of God and in the heart of my people,”2 the Anglican clergyman, The Most Reverend Dr. David M. Gitari, not only defned his role as a religious leader but also challenged those calling for the exclusion of religion from the 136

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya

political arena. In the tenuous balance between church and state, the offcial position of the Anglican Church was carefully presented not as a rival claimant to power, but simply seeking to “complement” the work of the politicians. In spite of this, the political establishment regarded the Anglican Church as dangerous and treacherous, a view that helped push it into opposition. President Moi himself was careful to maintain the image of a devout Christian, endeavoring to appear reasonable and conciliatory toward the churches. In this chapter, we look at the ways in which Anglican leaders in Kenya used Christian theology and their pulpit to challenge the regime of President Daniel arap Moi.We focus on how the sermons were used as a platform for political and social transformation in Kenya during the decade of 1980–1990, the frst years of the struggle for political change, a multiparty system and democracy.Though exploring the infuence of several leading Anglican clergy, the focus will be on Dr. David Gitari, who not only shaped the political debate through his sermons, but also led the struggle and set the path for others to follow.3 This historical analysis is important for considering both the position of the church and Christian theology in Kenyan politics today and its position in other failed states in postcolonial Africa.

Church and state—preliminary notes Kenya is not an isolated case, and in fact, religion is a strong force in the politics of all states, both those termed “modern” and those termed “traditional” (Belshaw et al. 2001; Bongmba 2012; Haynes 1994; Huntington 2012; Norris and Inglehart 2004; Ellis and Haar 1998;Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2000).The academic premise maintains that the interaction between theology, politics, culture, and society is an ongoing process all over the world, with complex implications and consequences (Bax 1987; Bediako 1996; Bongmba 2012; Haynes 1994; Keogh 1990; Mews 1989; Moyser 2003a, 2003b; 2004; Sahliyeh 1990;Wolf 1991). Scholars have shown that in many sub-Saharan African countries, as government authority and legitimacy plummeted in the wake of corruption, economic failure, and political repression, people turned to religion and other civil society organizations to defend their interests and to exert pressure on politicians.4 Though scholars agree that civil society groups played a role in shaping social and political processes in Africa, the nature and effectiveness of these groups are still in dispute (Elolia 2012; Holmquist and Ford 1998; Gifford 2009; Sabar 1996, 1997). Here we will highlight the debate between church and state in Kenya, and demonstrate that while the hostility of the debate escalated, the basic claims remained the same throughout the decade.The representatives of the state attempted to drive a wedge between the prophetic and the political realms. The role of the church according to local politicians was to preach personal piety, resignation, obedience, and peace—and to avoid politics. The church, through sermons and publications, maintained its moral imperative to guide the politicians by speaking out against the evils in society (Benson 1996; Chepkwony 1987; Gathogo 2007; Gifford 2009; Gitari 1996b; Githiga 2001; Knighton 2009; Maupeu 1996; Okullu 1974; 1984; Oluoch, 2006; Sabar 1996, 1997). All in all, it is clear that in the 1980s religion was a force to be reckoned with in Kenyan politics. Several mainline churches, headed by the Anglican Church, were ready to mobilize their members for socio-political change and their infuence was grounded in the deep religious feeling of the Kenyan people.There was little separation between religion and the fabric of everyday life, between spiritual and material, or between God and politics. This is not surprising taking into consideration that most of the mainline churches, led by the Anglican Church, are of the oldest and most well-established churches in Kenya, with the frst Anglican missionaries arriving in East Africa in 1844. It was favored by the colonial power, and 137

Galia Sabar

over the years developed a wide reach in Kenya, both ethnically and geographically, offering its members a range of social and economic services and activities.Though not the largest church, both the people and the government have recognized the Anglican church as a central institution in the social arena and as a strong political force (Anderson 1970; 1977; Barrett et al. 1973; Karanja 1999; Knighton 2009; Lonsdale et al. 1978; Sabar 2002). In previous work, I showed that the combination of the spiritual authority of the church with their wide network of social, educational, health-related, and economic activities made it an integral part of society, an instrument of transformation, and a power that the government had to reckon with (Sabar 1996, 2002, 2009). Between independence in 1963 and 1978, most churches supported the frst President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and took an active role in the mission of nation building. Obviously, here and there, criticism was voiced, but all in all, only a few open disputes erupted. More than once, Kenyatta claimed that the churches are the conscience of the Kenyan nation, and as such, their voice should be heard.

From mediation to opposition Following the death of President Kenyatta in 1978, his loyal Vice President Daniel arap Moi was elected president. Moi vowed to lead the country based on three Christian values: peace, love, and unity. Following his election, he invited church leaders to take an active role in managing the country. During a meeting with Anglican bishops in January 1981, Moi urged the churches not to relax their efforts in preaching spiritual matters, and maintained that preaching the Holy Scriptures helped the government maintain stability. He stressed that the churches should regard themselves as part and parcel of the government (Nation January 22, 1981). In May 1981, Kibaki, the then-vice president, reaffrmed this stand by stating that “Politics and religion are inseparable” (African Press Service May 25, 1981). It is unclear to what extent the churches were aware of Moi’s efforts to co-opt them, though there are no indications that they did not initially accept Moi’s invitation at face value. Moi presented himself as a leader who would spread the country’s wealth to the neglected and underprivileged. The image of a leader who was a devout Christian, respected the churches, and would rule the country through the Christian values of love, peace, and unity had obvious appeal. The political climate began to change in late 1981 as Moi’s policies became increasingly oppressive. He limited the freedom of debate in parliament by threatening to “take disciplinary action,” including against the police force, and against his own party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU). He increased his control of KANU by promoting his supporters and dismissing the party’s governing bodies. He executed a campaign against dissidents and “political splinter groups” (Widner 1992, 142), using tactics such as rumor-mongering, false accusations of corruption, and selective dismissals and appointments.5 He threatened those who criticized him including journalists and editors, university students and faculty, leaders of the Law Society of Kenya, and other professional organizations. Finally, he instigated the process of making Kenya a one-party state to ultimately suppress all opposition, allowing him to dismiss local and international claims that his actions were unconstitutional.This law was pushed through parliament in 45 minutes on June 9, 1982. Between 1978 and 1981, most churches, except a few lone voices, did not express public objection to Moi’s growing coercion. This changed in August 1982 when Moi used massive force to crush a coup and then proceeded to further curb Kenyans’ few remaining freedoms. Given the current political climate in the fall of 1982, the clergy felt they had no choice but to speak out. Kuria, the Anglican archbishop, called for the full participation of the churches 138

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya

in restoring peace and order, while also protesting the widespread arrests and detentions. The Catholic bishops joined in and published a pastoral letter calling for a more accountable leadership, the renewal of Kenya’s commitment to socialism and democracy, a more just division of wealth, and for the churches to assume the responsibility that Kenyatta had assigned them as “the conscience of the nation” (Baur 1990). The politicians in return angrily demanded that the churches stay out of politics.This message was unheeded as Kuria continued to call for the release of the detainees, and Anglican bishops Gitari and Muge, and the Presbyterian Rev. Njoya took every opportunity to voice their stand on human rights abuses, detention without trial, the corruption in Kenya’s leadership, and the evils of a one-party system.6

The sermons debate As part of his efforts to restore order after the attempted coup and minimize opposition voices, Moi called for an open and free debate over the nature of the country and its ruling mechanism. He invited the churches to take part in this debate, expecting them to support him and legitimize his regime. However, the public debate assumed an independent momentum and became increasingly malicious. Bishop Gitari, a leading fgure both in his own Anglican church and in the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), played a signifcant role in this discourse. Based on a book he edited entitled A Christian View of Politics in Kenya (NCCK 1984), he laid the theological groundwork for the prophetic role of the church in state matters. Based on the modalities of conduct adopted by the ancient prophets in biblical times, he called upon current-day clerics to denounce the wrongs of rulers.7 Moreover, he claimed that keeping silent about political abuses was itself a political act.Yet, the Anglican Church did not have a consensus on how to react to the political climate, and voices from within the church were heard with varying amounts of support from the silent to the outspoken.The radicals within the Anglican Church broadcast this discourse and utilized all available platforms including local church newsletters; the magazines Target, edited by Rev. Henry Okullu, and Beyond, published by the NCCK; weekly slots for sermons and lessons on the state radio and television; the platforms for youth groups, women’s groups, vocational training courses, religious classes in schools, and, of course, the church pulpit.Via pulpit sermons, they solicited publicity from the broadcasting and print media, both local and international. It should be mentioned that throughout history, the Anglican Church had allowed the clergy to freely express their views since colonial times, giving free reign to those who wished to use their pulpits to criticize government actions. In reaction to Moi’s oppressive policies, the radicalized higher clergy, especially Okullu, Gitari, and Muge, escalated their use of this medium. They were powerful speakers, using the long-standing oral tradition of inspirational preaching to arouse the interest of the congregation, touching them emotionally and engaging them intellectually. Huge congregations focked to their churches to listen to their sermons and hear their leader’s views on political issues. During their sermons, the churches were fully occupied and loudspeakers were often placed outside so the crowds there could also hear.8 The media was enlisted to extend the reach of these messages. In the early and mid-1980s, they made sure that reporters were informed of when and where they were scheduled to preach, either by word of mouth, or in Okullu and Gitari’s cases, calling and extending a letter of invitation to journalists to inform them when a signifcant sermon was planned. By the late 1980s, both local and international reporters followed these preachers around of their own accord, knowing that there would be something newsworthy to report. In June 1985, the ruling party, KANU, adopted the queuing system, requiring voters to physically line up behind their preferred candidate or his poster.The measure would mean that only 139

Galia Sabar

Moi’s associates would be elected and all disagreement within the party eliminated. Leading Anglican clergy-led teachers, civil servants, and clergymen of other denominations, along with some trade union leaders, delivered written and spoken protests against this measure.They contended the system that would require citizens to publicly reveal their political preference by queuing behind a candidate. Several church leaders, embracing their role as models, called for clean elections, adding that queuing could lead to improper pressures and propositions by politicians.9 Other clerics linked the queuing with the rampant corruption in the state’s political processes and rallied for keeping the voting clean and uncorrupted (Sabar 1997).The bishop’s protest, though loud and clear, did not impact government policy. At the KANU annual convention in August 1986, the party backed the continuation of the open queuing system, thereby hindering all opposition voices (Widner 1992). The NCCK was among the frst to protest. A conference that it had organized to discuss the role of the church in society was coincidentally in session at the same time as the KANU annual conference. Led by Bishop Gitari, the 1,200 pastors at this conference signed a declaration calling for the abolition of the queuing system and sent it to the press.10 Archbishop Kuria warned politicians that they should not underestimate the depth of popular discontent surrounding the queuing policy.11 Bishop Okullu delivered a similar statement, emphasizing that the number of people who secretly supported the NCCK position was staggering. Bishop Muge of the Diocese of Eldoret openly demanded that Moi repeal the resolution in his address to a Kenyan Anglican Youth Organization (KAYO) meeting. He urged the church to protest “when God-given rights and liberties are violated.” He added that in Africa, where there were so many one-party states,“It was the role of the church to stand up against the pressures of totalitarianism in the name of one-party systems” (Weekly Review August 29, 1986). In the early months of 1986, KANU formed a new national disciplinary committee with broad discretion for punitive action.This committee had the power to expel party members or impose sanctions on those who, in its view, committed “any act which in the opinion of KANU is not in its interest” or in any way undermined the president or the KANU government (Widner 1992; Gifford 2009). Fear of losing their positions through a party purge was prevalent among politicians. Scrambling to prove their loyalty and condemn the opposition, Moi’s people were swift to accuse the NCCK and its member churches, especially the Anglican Church, of disloyalty and of intentionally creating chaos. Nicholas Biwott, a powerful politician, urged those churches that disapproved of the NCCK’s stand to leave the organization. Some of the conservative evangelical churches (the African Independent Pentecostal Church, the Kikuyu Association of Baptist Churches of Nyeri, and the Gospel Church to name only a few) succumbed and withdrew from the organization. They came out in support of KANU and the new voting system, and their leaders rallied against involvement of the clergy in politics (Nation March 25, 1986; The Standard March 22, 1986).The bishop of the African Independent Pentecostal Church asserted that the NCCK was opposing African culture and suggested that it be investigated since it was trying to ruin the country (Weekly Review August 29, 1986). John Kamau, the general secretary of the NCCK, retorted that “the question of disloyalty does not arise … debate is a healthy exercise. If a country cannot debate an issue of national signifcance, we shall be denying ourselves the very root of democracy” (Weekly Review August 29, 1986). The atmosphere was extremely charged as the resistance mounted. The Catholic Church, the Law Society of Kenya, large sectors of the business and farming community, intellectuals, and politicians in exile joined the Anglican Church and the other mainstream Protestant churches in the attack on the queuing policy and other repressive measures. Five prominent Kenyan politicians also joined the ranks of the opposition. In effect, the only two safe venues left for dissent were the confnes of the lawyer–client 140

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya

relationship and within the church, where the members could speak among themselves and with their pastors. In this atmosphere, leading Anglican clerics continued to use their pulpits to speak against the restrictions on freedom and the roots of corruption that they promoted (Benson 1996, Gifford 2009, Sabar 2009). In an effort to pacify the opposition, Moi conceded that clergymen, civil servants, and members of the armed forces would be exempt from queuing (Throup 1995, 1997;Widner 1992). However, a few months later, the new Constitution of Kenya was introduced which included additional repressive resolutions. The Anglican Church joined the Law Society of Kenya’s calls to reject the new constitution. Moi, in turn, reiterated his warning that “religion must not be dragged into politics and church leaders should confne themselves to the spiritual aspects of life, leaving politics to the politicians.” Church pulpits, he insisted,“should not be turned into political platforms” (Weekly Review November 28, 1986).

“Bringing God’s word to bear on our contemporary world is … Prophetic Ministry”12—expository sermons, 1987–1988 In 1987, Kenyans’ voting rights were further curtailed and the debate continued to escalate. Criticism continued to emanate from many church platforms. In 1987, Kenya was witness to what Gitari termed “a sermons debate.” Four of Gitari’s sermons directed to confront the current affairs of June 1987 were published, along with the political and media commentary that followed, in his book Let the Bishop Speak (Gitari 1988b). In the foreword, Gitari explains that these sermons are examples of what he terms “expository preaching.” “Expository sermons,” he submits, combine preaching and teaching.They start with a passage from the Bible and analyze it verse by verse in both its historical and religious context, and in terms of its application in the modern world.“This process of bringing God’s word to bear on our contemporary world is part of what is meant by a prophetic ministry,” he explains (Gitari 1988b). Here we will look at two sermons, their motivation and the responses they evoked.The frst sermon was prepared in reaction to an announcement in a daily newspaper in May 1987, stating that voting in the general elections would be open only to those who could produce evidence that they were members of KANU and had paid their annual dues. The sermon was delivered on June 7 in the coffee growing area of Mutira in the Central Province, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Mutira Archdeaconry.The sermon was directed at the many clerics in attendance, as well as the congregants. Gitari based his sermon on Matthew 9:35f—which tells of Jesus going out to the cities and villages to preach and to heal, and of compassion for the “harassed and helpless.” He drew a parallel to the KANU membership requirement, which he deemed as “unconstitutional,” as it would deny the democratic rights of those who could not afford the dues, and the potential for rich politicians to pay their membership fee in exchange for votes. In the sermon he noted the low KANU registration in the district, questioned obstacles to joining the party, and urged people to make an effort to join up so that they could vote. From the government’s point of view, the most antagonistic aspect of the sermon was that he urged the church’s evangelists and priests to “follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ” and to go out and preach and teach in “every market, every secondary school, every primary school, every dispensary, and every village” in the parishes where they were licensed (Gitari 1988b). This was a general call for the ministry to be active and involved in their communities, but it was also a blatant political call.The service that Gitari envisioned was not focused only on care of individuals, but articulated that “We are called upon to be healers of broken societies and communities.” It was a ministration, he told his audience, that required a priesthood who could “challenge the present generation” and who read newspapers to keep “up to date in current affairs.” Moreover, in listing the “harassed and helpless” that the clergy should visit, Gitari specifcally urged them to 141

Galia Sabar

mingle with the coffee farmers “and listen to their uncertainties as they ponder the implications of the dissolution of KCPU [the Kenya Cooperative Planter’s Union] and its replacement with a new union controlled by Moi loyalists” (Gitari 1988b). Given that this sermon was delivered in a coffee-growing area, this call was viewed by some as the church instigating a revolt. Reprimands were swift. Politicians called Gitari’s statements “destructive criticism” (Standard June 8, 1987), and demanded that Gitari “stop turning churches in the district into a political forum” and accused him of “misleading Kenyans” (Kenya Times June 10, 1987).According to Gitari, some local KANU leaders were apparently perturbed that he had invited a Minister of Parliament (MP) to speak at the inauguration sermon.They sent a contingent of KANU’s rowdy Youth Wing to his sermon the following Sunday to heckle if he mentioned the KANU (Gitari 1988b). Moi seemed to be infuenced by these events. Initially asserting that he was “taken aback” by the bishop urging his congregates to pray for the “oppressors” in the Kenya Planters Cooperative Union (Standard June 9, 1987); but then, a day later, he retracted the registration requirement.This was a signifcant move, though with the recently legislated voting procedures, voting in the general election meant little since most of the representatives were elected in closed primaries (Nation June 10, 1987).The following Sunday, Gitari chose the subject of the prophet Jeremiah for his sermon. He used the pulpit to blast the organized intimidation and criticism, specifcally naming KANU and the Youth Wingers, and reaffrmed the biblical injunction to preachers and prophets to “expose injustices in society” (Gitari 1988b). The bishop spoke his mind again two weeks later.The occasion was a civic service that had been traditionally held in that specifc church every June since the early 1960s, and included local political leaders.The local vicar had originally chosen Joshua 1 as the text for the sermon, but Gitari was writing a sermon relating to Daniel in the lion’s den, which he felt better suited his message. Gitari’s name did not appear on the invitation. His appearance was apparently an unpleasant surprise for the politicians in attendance, as the debate over his criticism of the voter registration was still raging. Before Gitari delivered his sermon, the district commissioner, the mayor, the party chairman, and the chairman of the county council all spoke briefy.The mayor warned the church leaders not to bring politics into the church. Gitari did not hold back and the sermon drew a poignant and explicit parallel between Daniel and the honest Kenyans persecuted by Moi’s representatives. He criticized the state’s abuse of power, starting from the 1986 change in the constitution, and continuing with the widespread dismissals of civil servants from their jobs because they were suspected of being anti-Moi.As Gitari preached, the text describes a situation in which conspiracy and corruption were the order of the day and truth had to struggle. He presented Daniel, King Darius’ trusted advisor, as “a hard-working civil servant, honest, capable who was removed unjustly from his position … due to tribalism and corruption.” As he described it, Daniel was a Jew “who spoke the truth” and was disliked by “the rest of the civil servants [who] could not deal with him.” The parallels drawn between the deeds of Darius’ advisors in getting the King to approve an ordinance condemning anyone who worships any god but himself to the lion’s den and the then current situation were peculiarly apt: “The method used to remove him was by changing the constitution.”To defect the anticipated censure, he compared Darius’ ordinance to the “change [in] the constitution campaign of 1976,” which Moi and his supporters had thwarted. He continued with “King Darius made the mistake of allowing the constitution to be changed before this matter that affected fundamental human rights was thoroughly discussed by all concerned,” which is an obvious reference to the various constitutional changes under Moi’s regime (Kings 1996; Sabar 2009). To drive the message home, Gitari added: “Daniel was in effect telling the king that when the constitution is illegally changed so as to interfere with a fundamental human right … that new law can be disobeyed” (Kings 1996). 142

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya

Not surprisingly, this sermon also provoked a barrage of criticism. Moi, as before, chose to understate the dispute. He commented only that the bishop had praised him in previous sermons, and stated that “it is beyond his understanding to see what is the bishop trying to say to us” (Standard June 22, 1987). He chose instead to let his henchmen do the criticizing for him. The local police commissioner claimed that the sermon bordered on subversion, and warned church leaders to make sure that “they did not appear to be waging a war against the state” (Standard June 22, 1987).A minister from the offce of the president demanded that Gitari recall his statements (Standard June 24, 1987; Nation June 24, 1987). The local party chairman concluded that the biblical story “has no parallel in Kenya” and accused Gitari of “seeking to create chaos, confusion, and incite the people against their popularly elected leaders.”13 The charges were countered by Gitari, as well as by other clerics who stood by him. A week later, Gitari delivered yet another sermon critical of the government.This time he referred specifcally to the criticisms of the Daniel sermon, rejecting the right of politicians to tell preachers what they are allowed to preach. Moi again intervened to deescalate the tension, asserting that since Kenya was a “democratic country,” the bishop should be allowed to speak his mind (Nation July 1, 1987). These sermons are but two of the many delivered by Gitari and others preached criticizing Moi’s regime, but they reveal something of the encompassing, uncompromising, and, at times, provocative tone of the church’s contempt for Moi’s regime from the mid- to late 1980s.

Expanding the debate: the spillover effects of the sermons The sermons were not only a platform for dissent, they also fueled the debate that the government had inadvertently started. The messages were clearly understood, even when the biblical abuses of power were mentioned without specifc reference to the local scene.14 Attendance at some of the sermons reached 5,000, and furthermore, they were covered by virtually all of Kenya’s newspapers. For a number of the sermons, including the one on Daniel, the press coverage lasted for over a month, with lively discussions and charges and countercharges reported. Covering the sermons not only gave the press the chance to raise public awareness but was also an outlet for their own criticism of the government. For example, the June 8, 1987 Standard article reporting on Gitari’s comments on the coffee-growers’ problems is headlined “Gitari under Fire over KPCU,” calling his involvement in the matter “alleged,” and goes on to present a sympathetic account of how “Bishop Gitari … urged clergymen to mingle with coffee farmers and listen to their uncertainty as they pondered the dissolution of their union and its replacement with another,” and quotes his statement, “You cannot but have compassion for them.” Written in a similar vein, an article reporting on the Daniel sermon opens with the headline “Gitari Calls for Public Debate,” highlighting in large print that he “called for suffcient public debate before changes are made in the Constitution.” In both articles, the newspaper clearly chooses to report the event in a way that conveys support for Gitari and his criticism of the government. Criticizing the government through journalism was a dangerous act in Moi’s Kenya. Hundreds of journalists and editors were detained for reporting on government corruption, the threats to democracy, and human rights violations. And yet reporting on a sermon was still tolerated. The Standard and other papers could use the sermons to circumvent the restrictions that were placed on the press. A history of orations of political discontent, thinly veiled in biblical imagery, goes back to the colonial period in Africa, and Kenya was no exception. Restricting this kind of reporting would have been very diffcult, if not impossible, even for Moi’s regime, as it was a deep-rooted tradition in Christian African countries. 143

Galia Sabar

The public debate over the sermons not only involved the Anglicans, but engaged large sectors of the population.The Evangelical church lashed out at the mainstream churches for meddling in secular issues (Maupeu 1996; Gifford 2009). Editorials, both for and against the sermons, were published in daily papers.These related to the controversial issues raised by the sermons, primarily the government’s misuse of power and corruption, and the role of the church in politics.15 The widespread attention given to the sermons and the increasing anti-government sentiment made it impossible for the government to ignore. The response was sometimes in the form of intimidation, such as sending the Youth Wingers to heckle. But, like the church, the government also exploited the press for their own ends. For instance, following the Daniel sermon, The Kenya Times, which was partly owned by KANU, published the following warning: The laws of the land do not allow any churchman … to indulge in any manner of subversion, and it is a penal offense to incite disaffection … Dissemination of subversive literature, too, constitutes a penal offense and all those clerics who are nowadays circulating written sermons among worshippers should be extremely careful lest they are caught red-handed breaking the laws of the land. (Kenya Times June 29, 1987) The parliament was also dragged into the debate. Several MPs challenged the right of the clergy to speak out, and accused them of “serving foreign masters,” advising President Moi to limit their freedom of speech.16 The sermons together with their press coverage put Moi’s government and supporters on the defensive. Unable to quell these voices, they were coerced into engaging in a public debate on government policies and to respond to charges against them.

Epilogue It would be several more years of struggle for the Anglican Church, along with other civil society organizations and some bold politicians, until there were major changes in the political system. The turning point in Kenya’s political history came in 1990, as a result of both international and internal pressure.The controversial queuing system was offcially abolished, and a KANU Review Committee headed by the vice president was established to assess the political system. In 1991, the constitutional provision instating one-party rule was repealed. Several opposition parties were registered and 1992 was witness to the frst multiparty elections since independence. It was diffcult for this new opposition to achieve consensus, with opinions divided on virtually all major issues, and energy wasted on internal power struggles. In seeking common ground, they discussed issues such as the violent ethnic clashes, fear of election rigging, and the power of a united opposition. A two-day interparty symposium was organized in May 1992 by the Protestant NCCK, with the active involvement of the Anglican Church, with the goal of discussing national issues. KANU representatives did not attend, and so the meeting which involved NCCK and its member churches and various opposition groups turned into a campaign by the churches to unite the opposition.Two signifcant things came out of this symposium. First, the NCCK and its member churches took an offcial stand to actively support the opposition; and second, the churches created a forum for the opposition to organize and discuss political issues (NCCK 1991, 1992a, 1992b).The Kenyan clergy calling for change was a bold move but for Bishop Gitari this was not enough. For him, changing the ruling elite was but the frst step in a much-needed overall reform in political conduct. As he said: “When a country changes its government, it only pushes one set of sinners out and puts another set of sinners in.The most passionate idealists are never completely free from egocentricity and partisan bias” (Gitari and Knighton 2001). In fact, 144

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya

Bishop Gitari stressed that the church should not support a specifc party, but rather engage in a critical collaboration with anyone who respects God’s purposes (Gitari and Knighton 2001). Pre-election days were tense. Rumors of the president’s intention to cancel the elections caused riots in and around major towns. Nevertheless, on December 29, 1992, the frst multiparty elections since independence were held in Kenya, under the watchful eye of international observers and inspectors. President Moi and KANU won the election—although the total number of votes cast for opposition candidates and parties was far greater.17 The reactions of the opposition to the election results were harsh, declaring that the elections were a hoax and the results rigged. The president’s call for a united post-election Kenya was accepted with great suspicion from the opposition. Barely congratulating the president and KANU on their victory, the Anglican clergy, Catholics, and PCEA leaders simply called for peace and prosperity in what they described as a “troubled country.”The general feeling was of great loss:“We shall continue to fght for what we believe is right. Freedom, justice peace [sic] and human dignity are at stake and not one candidate or another,” said a frustrated Church of the Province of Kenya (CPK) clergyman in Nairobi on the day the results were published.18 Offcially, the churches maintained that as religious organizations, they were neither affliated with nor was their work affected by one political party. From 1990 to 1992, hardly a day passed without a church member appearing on the news or releasing a statement to the press, but following the election the clergy fell silent. From early 1993 to about 1996, the mainstream churches, including the Anglican Church, opted to focus on humanitarian aid alongside issues of peace and justice.They continued their activities related to education, health, development, and welfare, refraining from direct involvement in politics (Achieng 2004; Kinas et al. 2018; Mwangi 2008).There was a shift in the period leading to the 1997 elections when the Anglican clergy emerged with the call for a new and uncorrupt government.This voice retreated once again when Moi was re-elected with 40 percent of the vote. Following a period of introspection, early in 2000 the leadership of the Anglican Church regained its position as a vanguard force in generating and molding the debate on the nature and content of politics in Kenya. Indeed, the 2002 elections saw KANU’s frst defeat; Moi stood down and the KANU candidate Uhuru Kenyatta was defeated by Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) alliance (Kagwanja 1998, 2001). Once Moi was defeated, it seemed that most mainstream churches, Anglican included, focused on humanitarian help following violent clashes in the post-election era, but altogether withdrew from their position as the safeguards of human dignity.Their position had been one of resistance to Moi and KANU and its repressive policies and they now had no clear stand as to how Kenya should proceed in the post-Moi era (Deacon 2017; Gitari 2003, 2005; Kavulla 2008; Klopp 2009; Lonsdale 2009; Murunga et al. 2007; Mwangi 2008; NCCK 2008). As this chapter closes, the question remains as to when and how any church decides to use its theological authority, social and economic power, and moral authority to challenge oppressive regimes. Interestingly, since the turn of the 21st century, some of the Pentecostal churches in Kenya, previously either supportive of the regime or altogether silent on political matters, became vocal in their political criticism of the regime. It hence remains an interesting topic to study when, how, and which church decides to position itself as an integral part of society, an instrument of political transformation, and a power the government must reckon with.

Notes 1 Bishop David Gitari, Gitari, Kirinyaga, 1989. 2 Ibid. 3 Between 1982 and1998, Gitari published several books and booklets, as well as small leafets. See: Gitari 1982, 1986a, 1986b, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c, 1991d, 1996a, 1997, 1998. His two later publications came after some political and ethnic turbulence, see: Gitari 2003, 2005.

145

Galia Sabar 4 The early literature tended to dichotomize state and society and to view civil society as either engaging or disengaging with state and society, or exciting the state or voicing the grievances of society.The initial assumption, held by scholars in the 1980s, was that a vibrant civil society would, as a matter of course, bridge the gap between the people and the regime—engage them, incorporate them, and voice the grievance of the people to the ruling powers—and lead to democratic reforms. See, for example, Anyang Nyonga 1983, 1989; Azarya 1988; Barkan and Homquist 1989; Chazan et al. 1998; Harbeson 1988; Migdal 1991; and Widner 1992.When time proved this a vain hope in such countries as Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya, and others, it became clear that the assumption would have to be reconsidered.The simple dichotomies were modifed in favor of the understanding that the relationship between the state and civil society is a dynamic and multidimensional one, varying with the particular social group, conditions in the state, and the key players. Moreover, the limitations of the power of social organizations were better appreciated, as was the diverse nature and modus operandi of these organizations. See, for example, Bratton 1989; Bayart 1989; Comaroff and Comaroff 1997; Harbeson 1998; Mamdani 1990; and Mbembe1989, 1992, 2001a, 2001b. 5 On these restrictions, see Weekly Review from August 1, 1980; August 8, 1980; August 22, 1980; September 12, 1980; October 17, 1980; and 14 November 1980. 6 Weekly Review October 9, 1982;April 15, 1983; May 13, 1983. For Njoya’s view see: Njoya 1984, 1987a, 1987b. For Okullu’s view see: Okullu 1984 and Oluoch 2006. 7 It should be noted that although the NCCK published this booklet, not all its member churches held the same views. Even within the Anglican church itself there were those who did not agree with the relatively radical tone of Gitari and his colleagues. (For central publications by the NCCK relevant to this debate, see: National Council of Churches of Kenya 1984; 1991, 1992a, 1992b, 2008.) 8 The author joined very many of the sermons and diocesan events of Anglican bishops all over the country in 1988 and between 1989 and1992 and 1995 and1996. 9 For some of the clerics’ statements, see Weekly Review June 7, 1985: 3–5; and June 28, 1985: 1, 7–9. 10 Interview held with Bishop Gitari, Kirinyaga, July 1992. 11 Archbishop Kuria as quoted in Throup,“Render Unto Caesar” 1995: 151. 12 Gitari 1988b. 13 Nation June 27, 1987. See also the editorial in the Kenya Times June 29, 1987, accusing Gitari of misinterpreting parts of the Old Testament “in a vain effort aimed at justifying his own radical disposition.” 14 From many unoffcial talks with CPK members in Kirinyaga, Nyeri, as well as with St. Andrew’s College theology students. See also local publications such as: Diocese of Kirinyaga. 1994. “Good Stewards of God’s Varied Gifts: Preparatory Documents for the Second Ordinary Session of Synod.” St Andrew’s Institute, Kabare 22–5 August 1994. 15 For “Letters to the editor,” see Nation June 23, 1987; Standard June 23, 1989; Nation June 30, 1987; Taifa Leo June 30, 1987; Nation July 1, 1987. 16 The House of Parliament stated: “This is an eccentric Bishop, there is nothing wrong in the resolutions … [A]ll Kenyans should be patriotic and the bishop is serving external … [T]he CPK is a mere province of another church and it is possible the bishop is serving those masters” (Nation September 30, 1988). Concerning the right of the clergy to speak out, the minister Prof. Ongeri said:“Kenya recognizes Christianity and the power of God and that was why parliament allowed church leaders to attend Parliament and pray for the country during state opening of the house.What we heard from Bishop Gitari constitutes a rebellion.This is a rebellion activated by some politicians” (Nation September 30, 1988). 17 Presidential votes: D. Moi 1,930,534; K. Matiba 1,402,069; M. Kibaki 1,012,569; O. Odinga 914,550; G. Anyona 14,048; Parliamentary Seats (total 178): KANU 94; Ford Kenya 29; Ford Asili 30; DP 22; Kenda 0; KNC 1; KSC 1; PICK 1. 18 Interview with Rev. S.K. of the CPK in Nairobi, January 1993.

References Achieng, Rosaline. 2004. The Unfnished Task:A National Survey of Churches in Kenya. Nairobi: Afriserve. Anderson, John. 1970. The Struggle for the School: The Interaction of Missionary, Colonial Government, and Nationalists’ Enterprise in the Development of Formal Education in Kenya. London: Longman. Anderson,W. B. 1977. The Church in East Africa, 1840–1974. Nairobi: Uzima Press. Anyang Nyongo, P. 1983.“The Decline of Democracy and Rise of Authoritarian and Factionalist Politics in Kenya.” Horn of Africa 6/3:25–35.

146

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya Anyang Nyongo, P. 1989.“State and Society in Kenya:The Disintegration of the Nationalist Coalitions and the Rise of Presidential Authoritarianism.” African Affairs 88/351:229–251. Azarya, V. 1988. “Reordering State and Society Relations: Incorporation and Disengagement.” In: The Precarious Balance, eds. D. Rothchild and N. Chazan. Boulder, CO:Westview University Press, 137–148. Barrett, David B., George K. Mambo, Janice McLaughlin, and Malcolm J. McVeigh, eds. 1973. Kenya Churches Handbook: The Development of Kenyan Christianity, 1498–1973. Kisumu: Evangel Publishing House. Baur, John. 1990. The Catholic Church in Kenya:A Centenary History. Nairobi: St. Paul Publications. Bax, M. 1987. “Religious Regimes and State Formation:Towards a Research Perspective.” Anthropological Quarterly 60/1:1–11. Bayart, J.-F. 1989. “Les Egglises Chrestiennes et la Poitique Du Ventre: La partage du gateau ecclesial.” Politique Africaine 35:3–26. Bediako, K. 1996. “Understanding African Theology in the Twentieth Century.” Bulletin for Contextual Theology 3/2:1–11. Belshaw, Deryke, Robert Calderisi, and Chris Sugden, eds. 2001. Faith in Development: Partnership Between the World Bank and the Churches of Africa. Oxford: Regnum. Benson, G. Patrick. 1986. “The Church’s Witness to the Living God in Social and Political Structures in Contemporary Africa.” In: The Living God, eds. D. M. Gitari and G. P. Benson. Nairobi: Uzima, 156–179. Benson, G. Patrick. 1995. “Ideological Politics Versus Biblical Politics: Kenya’s Protestant Churches and the Nyayo Churches.” In: Religion and Politics in Africa, eds. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle, London: James Currey, 177–199. Benson, G. Patrick. 1996.“Mission Policies:The Result of Bible Reading or the Result of Circumstances? In: The Anglican Communion and Scripture, ed. R.W. Stott. Oxford: Regnum, 152–160. Bongmba, Elias. 2012. “The African Renaissance and Religion.” In: Religion, Confict and Democracy in Modern Africa:The Role of Civil Society in Political Engagement, ed. Samuel K. Elolia. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene, OR: Prickwick Publication, 51–75. Bratton, M. 1989. “The Politics of Government: NGO Relations in Africa.” World Development 17/4:569–587. Chazan, N., Peter Lewis, Robert A. Mortimer, Donald Rothchild, and Stephen John Stedman, eds. 1988. Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Chepkwony, Agnes. 1987. The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in Development:A Study of the National Christian Council of Kenya (NCCK), 1963–1978. Uppsala: Studia Missionalia Uppsaliensa 43. Comaroff, John L. and Jean Comaroff. 1991, 1997. Of Revelation and Revolution, 2 volumes. Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press. Comaroff, John L. and Jean Comaroff. 1997.“Postcolonial Politics and Discourses of Democracy in Southern Africa: An Anthropological Refection on African Political Modernities.” Journal of Anthropological Research 53/2:123–146. Deacon, Gregory. 2017.“I Will Make You into a Great Nation, and I Will Bless You: Citizens,Traitors and Christianity in Kenya.” In: Christian Citizens and the Moral Regeneration of the African State, chapter 9, eds. Barbara Bompani and Caroline Valois. London: Routledge. Ellis, Stephen and Gerrie ter Haar. 1998. “Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Modern African Studies 36/2:175–201. Samuel L. Elolia, ed. 2012. Religion, Confict, and Democracy in Modern Africa: The Role of Civil Society in Political Engagement. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications. Gathogo, J. M. 2007. “Church and State Confict in Kenya, 1986–1991.” Swedish Missiological Themes 95/3:265–284. Gifford, Paul. 2009. Christianity, Politics, and Public Life in Kenya. London: Hurst. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1982. “Claims of Jesus in the African Context.” International Review of Mission 71/281:12–19. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1986a. Ten Great Years, 1975–1985. Speech Presented to Members of Parish Councils at St. Paul’s Embu on Tuesday, 21 January 1986. Embu: Diocese of Mount Kenya East. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1986b. “The Church’s Witness to the Living God in Seeking Just Political, Social, and Economic Structures in Contemporary Africa.” In: Witnessing to the Living God in Contemporary Africa, eds. David Gitari and G. P. Benson. Kabere, Kenya:Africa Theological Fraternity, 119–140. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1988a. “Evangelization and Culture: Primary Evangelism in Northern Kenya.” Paper delivered at the Lambeth Conference London. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1988b. Let the Bishop Speak. Nairobi: Uzima.

147

Galia Sabar Gitari, David Mukuba. 1988c.“The Church’s Witness to the Living God: Seeking Just Political, Social, and Economic Structures in Contemporary Africa.” Transformation 5/2:12–20. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1989. A Modern Service of Holy Communion. Nairobi: Uzima. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1991a.“Church and Politics in Kenya.” Transformation 8/3:7–17. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1991b.“You Are Doomed,You Shepherds of Israel.” Sermon Preached at St.Thomas, Kerugoya, 9 June 1991. Mimeograph. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1991c. “Can These Bones Come Back to Life?” Sermon Preached at St. Thomas’ Pro-Cathedral, Kerugoya, During the First Anniversary Celebrations of the Diocese of Kirinyaga, 21 July 1991. Mimeograph. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1991d. Modern Services. Nairobi: Uzima. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1996a.“A Christian Perspective on Nation-Building.” EFAC Bulletin 47/19–23:29. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1996b. In Season and Out of Season: Sermons to a Nation. Oxford: Regnum. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1997.“The Sanctity of Human Life: Priority for Africa.” Transformation 14/3:19–23. Gitari, David Mukuba. 1998.“The Bishop as Leader and Teacher.” Transformation 15/2:12–15. Gitari, David Mukuba. 2003.“Retired Archbishop Calls for Ministry of Peacemaking.” Anglican Communion News Service, ACNS 3280, 28 January 2003. Available at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/ar ticles/32/75/acns3280.html (accessed 18 February 2005). Gitari, David Mukuba. 2005. Responsible Church Leadership. Nairobi: Acton. Gitari, D. M. and G. P. Benson, eds. 1986. Witnessing to the Living God in Contemporary Africa. Findings and Papers of the Inaugural Meeting of the Africa Theological Fraternity Held at Kabare, Kenya, 23–29 July 1985. Kabare:Africa Theological Fraternity. Gitari, D. M. and B. Knighton. 2001.“On Being a Christian Leader in Africa.” Transformation 18/4:247–262. Githiga, Gideon Gichuhi. 2001. The Church as a Bulwark Against Authoritarianism: Development of ChurchState Relations in Kenya, with Particular Reference to the Years After Political Independence, 1963–1992. Oxford: Regnum. Harbeson, J. W. 1988. “Political Crisis and Renewal in Kenya: Prospects for Democratic Consolidation.” African Today 45/2:161–184. Haynes, Jeff. 1994. Religion in Third World Politics. London: Lynne Rienner. Holmquist, F. and M. Ford. 1998. “Kenyan Politics: Towards a Second Transition?” Africa Today 45/2: 227–258. Hungtington, S. P. 2012. “The Clash of Civilizations?” In: F. J. Lechner and J. Boli, eds. The Globalization Reader, 4th ed.West Sussex:Wiley-Blackwell, 37–44. Karanja, John K. 1999. Founding an African Faith: Kikuyu Anglican Christianity, 1900–1945. Nairobi: Uzima. Karanja, John K. 2008.“Evangelical Attitudes Towards Democracy in Kenya.” In: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, ed.Terence O. Ranger. New York: Oxford University Press, 67–94. Kavulla,Travis R. 2008.“‘Our Enemies are God’s Enemies’.The Religion and Politics of Bishop Margaret Wanjiru, MP.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 2/2:254–263. Keogh, D., ed. 1990. Church and Politics in Latin America. London: Macmillan. Kinas, Makokha Vincent, John B. Karega, and B. K. Chacha. 2018.“The Role of Church in State and Public Affairs During the Moi era, 1978–2002.” Journal of Philosophy. Culture and Religion, [S.l.] 1/1:54–76. Kings, Graham. 1996. “Proverbial, Intrinsic and Dynamic Authorities: A Case Study on Scripture and Mission in the Dioceses of Mount Kenya East and Kirinyaga.” Missiology: An International Review 24/4:493–501. Klopp, Jacqueline. 2009.“The NCCK and the Struggle Against ‘Ethnic Clashes’ in Kenya.” In: Religion and Politics in Kenya. Essays in Honor of a Meddlesome Priest, ed. Ben Knighton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing House, 183–199. Knighton, Ben, ed. 2009. Religion and Politics in Kenya. Essays in Honor of a Meddlesome Priest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing House. Lonsdale, John, Stanley Booth-Clibborn, and Andrew Hake. 1978. “The Emerging Pattern of Church and State Co-Operation in Kenya.” In: Christianity in Independent Africa, eds. Edward W. Fashole-Luke, Richard Gray,Adrian Hastings, and Godwin Tasie. London: Rex Collings, 267–284. Lonsdale, John M. 2009. “Compromised Critics: Religion in Kenya’s Politics.” In: Religion and Politics in Kenya. Essays in Honor of a Meddlesome Priest, ed. Ben Knighton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing House, 57–93. Mamdani, Mahmoud. 1990.“State and Civil Society in Contemporary Africa: Reconceptualising the Birth of State Nationalism and the Defeat of Popular Movements.” Africa Development 15/3–4:47–69.

148

Sermon debate and political theology in Kenya Maupeu, H. 1996.“Eglises Kenyanes et Democratisation: Le Bilan d’un Echec?.” Seminar Paper Presented at Nairobi: Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique, Nairobi. Mbembe, A. 1989. “L’Argument Material dans les Eglises Catholiques d’Afrique: Le Cas du Zimbabwe.” Politique Africaine 35:50–65. Mbembe,A. 1992.“Provisional Notes on the Post-Colony.” Africa 62/1:3–37. Mbembe,A. 2001a.“At the Edge of the World: Boundaries,Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa.” Public Culture 12/1:259–284. Mbembe, A. 2001b. On the Post-Colony: Studies on the History of Society and Culture. Berkley, CA: University of California Press. Mews, S., ed. 1989. Religion in Politics. London: Longman. Migdal, J. 1991. “A Model of State Society Relations.” In: New Directions in Comparative Politics, ed. H. Wiarada. Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 43–55. Moyser, G. 2003a. Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction. Nairobi: Acton. Moyser, G. 2003b.“Evangelistic and Charismatic Initiatives in Post-Colonial Africa.” In: Charismatic Renewal in Africa, eds. Mika Vähäkangas and Andrew Kyomo. Nairobi:Acton, 111–44. Moyser, G. 2004.“Religion and Social Reconstruction in Post-Colonial Africa.” In: Church-State Relations: A Challenge for African Christianity, eds. J. N. K. Mugambi and Frank Kürschner-Pelkmann. Nairobi: Acton. Murunga, Godwin R. and Shadrack W. Nasongo, eds. 2007. Kenya: The Struggle for Democracy. London/ Dakar: Zed/Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. Mwangi, Stephen Njihia. 2008. “Episcopal Leadership in the Anglican Church of Kenya: A Critique.” M.Phil.Thesis, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, University of Wales, Cardiff, UK. National Council of Churches of Kenya. 1984. A Christian View of Politics in Kenya. Nairobi: National Council of Churches of Kenya. National Council of Churches of Kenya. 1991. Kairos for Kenya:The Right Time for Kenya. Nairobi: National Council of Churches of Kenya. National Council of Churches of Kenya. 1992a. Why You Should Vote. Nairobi: National Council of Churches of Kenya. National Council of Churches of Kenya. 1992b. The Cursed Arrow: A Report on Organized Violence Against Democracy in Kenya. Nairobi: Church House. National Council of Churches of Kenya. 2008. “Hope for Kenya.” Press Statement. 15 February 2008, Nairobi. Njoya, Timothy. 1984. Human Dignity and National Identity. Nairobi: Uzima. Njoya, Timothy. 1987a. Out of Silence:A Collection of Sermons. Nairobi: Beyond Magazine. Njoya, Timothy. 1987b. Human Dignity and National Identity: Essential for Social Ethics. Nairobi: Jemisik Cultural Books. Norris, P. and R. Inglehart. 2006. Sacred and Secular Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Okullu, Henry. 1974. Church and Politics in East Africa. Nairobi: Uzima. Okullu, Henry. 1984. Church and State in Nation-Building and Development. Nairobi: Uzima. Oluoch, Jemima Atieno. 2006. The Christian Political Theology of Dr John Henry Okullu. Oxford/Nairobi: Regnum/Uzima. Ranger, Terence O., ed. 2008. Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sabar, Galia. 1996. “The Power of the Familiar: Everyday Practice in the Anglican Church of Kenya.” Church and State 38:377–397. Sabar, Galia. 1997. “Church and State in Kenya 1986–1992:The Churches’ Involvement in the ‘Game of Change’.” African Affairs 96/382:25–52. Sabar, Galia. 2002. Church, State, and Society in Kenya: From Mediation to Opposition, 1963–1993. London: Frank Cass. Sabar, Galia. 2009. “Was There No Naboth to Say No?” Using the Pulpit in the Struggle for Democracy: The Anglican Church, Bishop Gitari and Kenyan Politics.” In: Religion and Politics in Kenya. Essays in Honor of a Meddlesome Priest, ed. Ben Knighton. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing House, 123–140. Sahliyeh, E., ed. 1990. Religious Resurgence and Politics in the Contemporary World.Albany: State University of New York Press.

149

Galia Sabar Throup, David. 1995. “‘Render to Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s’: The Politics of Church-State Confict in Kenya, 1978–1990.” In: Religion and Politics in East Africa:The Period since Independence, eds. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle. London: James Currey, 143–176. Throup, David W. and Charles Hornsby. 1997. Multi-Party Politics in Kenya:The Kenyatta and Moi States and the Triumph of the System in the 1992 Election. Oxford: James Currey. Wald, Kenneth and Allison Calhoun-Brown. 2000. Religion and Politics in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefeld. Widner, Jennifer A. 1992. The Rise of a Party-State in Kenya: From Harambee! to Nyayo! Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Wolf, E. 1991.“Introduction.” In: Religious Regimes and State Formation: Perspectives from European Ethnology, ed. E.Wolf, 1–7. New York: State University of New York Press World Association of Newspapers.

150

10 FROM RECONSTRUCTION TO REAFFIRMATION African Christian theology in an era of hot peace Jesse N. K. Mugambi

Introduction Both Christianity and Islam are religions of “Peace.”Throughout their history, they have been premised on the proclamation of peace and harmony within and between nations and communities. In practice, these two religions have been tattered by confict, both within and between them.The confict is inherent much more in the leadership than in the teachings contained in the respective core scriptures. From a phenomenological perspective, Christianity and Islam illustrate the potential of religions to foment both confict and conciliation, depending on the interests and the priorities of the leaders. Religion has the potential to hold societies together and also tear them apart. Africa offers dramatic illustrations of both these possibilities. In this chapter, the focus is on Christianity, while well aware that Islam could also illustrate the same insight.The sub-title of the chapter is the phrase “African Christian theology in an era of hot peace.”The second half of this phrase echoes the title of a book by Sir Anthony Parsons, From Cold War to Hot Peace: UN Interventions 1947–1994.1 Indeed, the Cold War may have slowed the ideological chess game between the key players, but the interlude became a period of hot peace, in which the pawns continued to antagonize each other.Africa became the arena for this antagonism.African Christianity became enmeshed in efforts to clear the impasses. Re-affrmation beckons while discouragement pulls in the opposite direction. In 1983, Professor Goran Hyden published a book titled No Shortcuts to Progress, alluding to the insight that every community and every nation must chart its path toward the future. Otherwise, they will remain as appendages of others.2 Re-affrmation of identity is a major step in the arduous task of defning Africa’s future.

The indispensability of African Christianity Christianity embodies how individual and community life are built on the trilogy of faith in God, hope for a better future, and compassion for fellow humans and other creatures (I Cor. 13:13).The source and assurance for this trilogy is God the Creator, Guarantor, and Protector of everything just and perfect, exemplifed by Jesus of Nazareth, whom believers affrm as the Son of God. No being surpasses God’s magnifcence and excellence.This truth is so basic that 151

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

a denial of it could be considered a joke, a play on words, or a self-deception.3 The Bible attests to this insight and has appealed to Africans because traditional African religiosity resonates with the fundamental affrmation that everything originates from God, irrespective of shape, size, or form. Christian mission ought to re-affrm this fundamental insight as a universal truth claim, rather than attempting to introduce it as new teaching. When (and if) Christians from one culture seek converts in other cultures based on proclaiming God’s ultimate benevolence as a new message, they risk being dismissed, by potential converts, as messengers ignorant of ultimate reality. On the other hand, the proclamation of the Gospel becomes much easier when the Christian faith is presented as an affrmation of whatever is true, humane, compassionate, just, honorable, pure, pleasant, commendable, and excellent (Phil. 4:8–9). Jesus won followers in multitudes because he taught with authority, not as the Scribes. He affrmed what needed affrmation and left his hearers to decide on the consequences of the opposite. St. Paul became the exemplary missionary because of his empathetic disposition: For though I am free concerning all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.20 To the Jews, I became as a Jew, to win Jews.To those under the law, I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.21 To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law.22 To the weak I became weak so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might, by all means, save some.23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings. (I Cor. 9: 19–23, NRSV) In human relations affrmation is much more fruitful than condemnation. The tragedy of foreign Christian missions in Africa has been their condemnatory and condescending attitudes toward the so-called “natives.” Potential converts are fellow human beings alongside missionaries, but in practice, there has been a cultural and attitudinal barrier between those who have come to proclaim the Gospel and their potential converts. Missionary condescension over and against their targeted “native” individuals and communities has often resulted in almost total failure when assessed based on the declared original intentions. In missionary outreach, humility has yielded great positive dividends, whereas condescension and patronage have resulted in resentment and rejection of the messengers and the message. This paradox can be traced in all cultures throughout the history of Christian mission. At the core of the schisms in the history of Christianity is the contestation between the harbingers of the Gospel (missionaries), on the one hand, and the recipients (converts) who, having embraced the Gospel, enthusiastically embarked on making it the “salt” and the “light” of their respective cultures (Matt. 5:13–16), while the missionaries, on the other hand, insisted on determining the parameters of that acceptance. The Bible, as the Word of God in various translations, is perhaps the most powerful reagent in the chemistry of cultural transformation.The tragedy of the modern Christian missionary enterprise in Africa has been its presumption of cultural superiority, premised largely on a false sense of religious superiority, resulting in the formation of the largest number of independent churches in history.This condescension is rooted more in imperial ideology than in the Gospel (Matt. 18:1–4).The domineering attitude within missionary enclaves and colonial rule have been translated into prejudice across races and ethnic self-centeredness within communities. Tribal enclaves were created by the colonial administration, destroying the symbiotic interdependence that was taken for granted in pre-colonial Africa. Denominational competition brought rifts within and between families, with each denomination claiming to be more “Christian” than its 152

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

competitors. Jesus commends humility and condemns pride.The most successful missionaries in history were those immersed in the host cultures of the people being evangelized4 (Jn. 13:34–35; Phil. 2:1–3). Prescribed history textbooks portrayed the most bigoted missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators as the most successful; we were ordered to “obey” rather than “emulate” them. In practice, the African learned and echoed the old African adage:“Saying ‘Yes, Sir’ is not a burden, if it will save your neck and preserve your sanity!” The third millennium of the Christian era has begun with a resurgence of cultural and religious re-affrmation on every continent. This re-affrmation coincides with the consequences of Martin Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses at the Wittenberg cathedral in Germany, on October 31, 1517.5 Although Luther was concerned primarily with the right of Germans to assert and affrm their cultural and religious identity in resistance to Roman imperial domination, the momentum generated by this initiative has continued to shake empires in every continent. Thus is the European Reformation illustrative of similar movements in all continents and all cultures. Its prominence arises from the publicity and the momentum it enjoyed when European kingdoms and fefdoms took advantage of the liberation it proclaimed.African Instituted Churches, with their charismatic and Pentecostal tendencies, are illustrative of the Reformation fervor that Luther’s protest ignited in Europe. At least three tributaries converge into this river of re-Affrmation: the East African Revival Movement, the African Instituted Churches, and the African Charismatic Expressions of Christianity.While the missionary legacy lingers on, African expressions of the Christian faith vibrantly celebrate the joy of the Gospel. African initiatives in translating new editions of the Bible from the original biblical languages are in the offng, taking cues from similar efforts in Europe on the eve of the Reformation.6

Missionaries as rulers and converts as subjects Most Africans entered the 21st century as citizens of their respective sovereign nations, in contrast with the plight of their ancestors at the beginning of the 20th century, when Africans, except Ethiopians, were colonial subjects of foreign empires. By the end of the 20th century, African Christianity, distinct from the missionary-dominated churches of the colonial era, had become the most infuential religion in this continent. How did this happen? Imperial subjects, desperate for support against imperial domination, found comfort, courage, and assurance in the Bible, which had been translated into African languages from European translations. For African “natives,” the Bible was the “Word of God,” irrespective of the missionary agents who proclaimed it.Thus the “native” converts made a radical distinction between the Bible and the European missionary agents who had imported it into Africa.7 When missionaries read the Bible, they did so as imperial citizens, in contrast with the African natives who read the same Bible as imperial subjects.8 During the 20th century, many young Africans—as subjects, not as citizens—were conscripted into imperial armies of World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945). Many of them perished in vain; neither of these “world wars” was fought for the liberty of Africans and African nations. At the end of both wars, rewards for some imperial veterans were tracts of land in African colonies in addition to administrative positions to rule over African “natives.” Resources and labor from the colonies were used for post-war reconstruction in Europe and North America. By contrast, African veteran survivors lost much more than they gained, both materially and politically.About this tragedy,Ali Mazrui comments: What must never be forgotten is Africa’s involvement in the global confict which preceded those events and changed the face of both post-war Europe and post-war Africa. Fifty-fve thousand Ugandans served in the King’s African Rifes, for example. 153

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

Some of the 87,000 Tanganyikans who served in the war participated in the 1942 invasion of Madagascar against Vichy and in favor of de Gaulle. Many African soldiers were involved in the war against Japan in Burma. Already in 1939, the Nigerian Regiment had raised 15 battalions.Thousands of North African soldiers gave their lives for several years in the fuctuating fortunes between Rommel, Montgomery, Eisenhower and other high-profle combatants north of the Sahara.9 If these imperial wars were fought for “liberty,” how could the imperial rule be justifed for the imperial citizens, but not for imperial African subjects? If the wars were fought for democracy, why was democracy justifed in Europe and North America, but denied for the colonies in Africa? Such questions remained on the Pan-African agenda throughout the 20th century and remained unanswered in the 21st century.They are questions about politics and religion, about economics and culture.The relics of collaboration between the colonial state and the colonial missionary establishments are still evident in most African nations wherever Christianity has been introduced. Missionary facilitation of African struggles against imperial domination is hard to fnd if it existed at all.There is much-documented evidence of missionary condemnation of African struggles for sovereignty. It was not until the end of the Cold War, in 1990, that “Democracy and Development” became prescriptions for the former colonies in Africa. Before then, dictatorships were tolerated and patronized. Coups and counter-coups were normative, as the imperial power blocs competed for resources in Africa. The missionary enterprise generally complied with the imperial mandates under which they operated.The honorary title for the missionary was often the same as that of the imperial administrators. In East Africa, this title was Bwana—“boss” or “Lord.” Instead of serving, they were to be served by their “native” converts. St. Paul’s instruction and advice in Rom. 13:1–5 was often invoked in missionary instruction of the African “natives,” as if the missionary and the “natives” were ideologically on the same political and economic plane. This paradox is still operational wherever foreign missionaries operate in Africa. What ideology should a foreign missionary presuppose when teaching and preaching to the “natives” abroad? What does “patriotism” and “national sovereignty” mean for a missionary serving abroad? What, precisely, should a missionary teach and preach abroad on matters of political and economic self-determination? In retrospect, St. Paul’s ideological ideal would be applicable for imperial citizens, but hardly for imperial subjects.10 Exegetically, it is worth emphasizing that St. Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, his father having bought his citizenship.Thus his status was not in any way comparable with that of his companions. He could appeal directly to Caesar when his rights and freedoms were infringed upon, but his colleagues could not. The difference in status between Paul and the rest of the Jews is evident in his trial as narrated in Acts 25–28. This distinction reverberates in the history of Christian missions in Africa. Missionaries in Africa, like St. Paul in the Mediterranean region, enjoyed rights and freedoms to which their African converts could never appeal, as long as imperial domination prevailed. African “natives” did not enjoy any protection under imperial rule.They, like Jesus, were powerless. But like Jesus, they believed that God the Creator was much more powerful than any earthly power.As history unfolded, God delivered the remnants to liberty. It is this faith in divine deliverance that has energized African Christianity. Loud echoes of joy can be witnessed across tropical Africa, even when there seems to be no justifcation for rejoicing. In global indices, Africans have become poorer and weaker even as their faith and hope in God has increased, a reality based on the belief that human regimes are fnite, while divine power is almighty and eternal.Thus the African Instituted Churches of the colonial era have ignited loud echoes in the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the post-apartheid era. 154

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

After World War I, the First Pan-African Congress of 1919 in Paris emphatically raised concern for freedom of the colonial subjects in Africa and the dignity of African Americans in North America. This concern echoed again at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945, after World War II, attended by many of the frst generations of 20th-century African statesmen who eventually rose to national leadership in their respective countries. Fifty years later, this concern persisted, even after the Cold War. The Seventh Pan-African Congress was convened in Kampala, Uganda, in 1994, the same year that a political volcano erupted in neighboring Rwanda—resulting in an unprecedented loss of life and property—and the same year that apartheid was formally de-legitimized in South Africa. Apparently, for 50 years following the Fifth Pan-African Congress, Africa failed to stabilize politically, economically, and religiously. While South Africa was being admitted membership of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) as a sovereign nation, other African nations were in the throes of internal strife. Paradoxically, African Christianity was exploding numerically while it was declining in Europe and North America, where most missionaries to Africa had originated. How can these paradoxes be explained? The “baby-boom” generation of Europe and North America (born between 1946 and 1964) was enjoying the benefts of post-World War II reconstruction at the same time that their “baby-doom” African age-mates were agitating for justice under regimes that were tolerated as necessities in the context of the Cold War.11

The East African revival as an anti-colonial movement Generally, the ideological position of missionary societies was pro-empire since they were imperial instruments for “civilization” of the “natives.” The frst generation of African converts to Christianity considered themselves frst and foremost, the servants of Christ, in obedience to the Gospel.The Bible was the Word of God, and the missionaries were harbingers of the “reign of God.”The notion of “God as Creator” was not new to Africans, even though the missionaries believed they had come to teach Africans about “God.”The Bible would have been impossible to translate if God was unknown to Africans.Thus, in the ears and minds of many African converts, the “Kingdom of God” that the missionaries proclaimed was conceptually at great variance with the “reign of God” that the African converts embraced wholeheartedly from the Bible. The East African Revival Movement is illustrative of this paradox. African converts welcomed missionaries particularly for the skill of literacy that they introduced, enabling the converts to read the Bible that proclaimed the reign of God. But the converts rejected with great subtlety the missionary ideology that condoned subjugation of Africans under imperial rule. One marching song composed by revivalists in the Gîküyü language for children in Sunday school had the following words: Türî athigari a mwathani Ona twarumwo tütiüragia Türî athigari a Jesü tükenage We are the soldiers of Almighty When we are slighted, we do not mind We are the troops of Jesus—we do not mind. Rîrîa tügathiî matuinî Tükaaragia na araika Türî athigari a Jesü tükenage 155

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

When we shall enter the heavenly reign We shall be talking with angels therein We are the troops of Jesus—we do not mind.12 Members of the East African Revival were caught between two ideologies: imperial power and nationalist resistance. Both of these conficting ideologies had one thing in common: force. The revivalists were caught between the opposing poles of this confict. Many of them were persecuted, even to death, for their faith. In theological terms, the revivalists believed that the might of empire would not prevail over the might of God the Creator, revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.13 As history unfolded, national sovereignty was achieved. Adherence to Christianity grew to unexpected proportions across the whole of tropical Africa. Throughout the 20th century, the struggles of Africans for national sovereignty had many casualties in every colony.To struggle for freedom was treason, a crime eligible for capital punishment or life imprisonment, as if some human beings had the right to live in freedom at the expense of others. Many Africans dared to challenge the powers-that-be, so that they, and future generations, would live in liberty. Most did not survive to see a dream come true. Some of the survivors were to steer the process of transition and pave the way for Pan-African unity.They included church leaders, statesmen, trade unionists, teachers, and others. Since schooling was available only and exclusively in mission schools, the frst generation of African activists against imperial domination and colonial rule were the alumni of these schools. Some of them tried to establish independent schools, as was the case in central Kenya. Such initiatives were condemned as subversive, and the leaders were jailed as criminals. Founders of independent churches were also banned and jailed, even though missionaries could compete for African souls. Missionaries endorsed the incrimination of African founders of churches, even though colonial policy approved multi-denominational Christianity. In retrospect, such contradictions boggle the mind. In June 1974, I published a paper titled “Theology and Liberation” in the WSCF [World Student Christian Fellowship] Dossier Number 5, later published as a chapter in African Christian Theology: An Introduction.14 In that paper, I articulated the concerns of the African “baby-doom” generation, in contrast with those of the Euro-American “baby-boom” generation.15 Socialization determines perceptions and perspectives that someone undergoes during childhood, adolescence, and early childhood.There is nothing objective about any process of socialization. Hence the competition for infuence in the schooling at primary, secondary, and university levels.The adage seems to remain true for every generation:“Whoever pays the piper, calls the tune.” Among other insights, I suggested that salvation and liberation are two sides of the same “coin”—the coin of human fulfllment. It is impossible for a person to experience fulfllment without both salvation and liberation. Salvation refers to the spiritual and moral domain, while liberation refers to the social and economic domain. Without liberation, salvation is practically irrelevant, while salvation without liberation is ultimately frustrating. In retrospect, these insights remain valid. Europeans and North Americans on average have experienced liberation and to a large extent, discarded salvation. This stance is illustrated by the decision to exclude any reference to the contribution of Christianity in the development of Europe, at a time when economic and technological prowess is becoming increasingly illusory. Paradoxically, Africans on average are still religiously inclined as they struggle for, and aspire to, technological and economic prowess.While many Africans may appear spiritually elated, their religiosity seems practically irrelevant amongst an elite that continues to jostle for technical and economic prowess. But this prowess is ultimately frustrating because the more the elite acquire, the more frustrated they seem to become. 156

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

African churchmanship and statesmanship in tandem In January 1958,African church leaders representing mainline Protestant denominations met at Ibadan, Nigeria, for the frst All Africa Church Conference.16 One of the concerns raised was the liberation of the continent from imperial domination and colonial oppression, and the role of churches in that campaign.17 Ghana had attained independence in March of the previous year under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. Accra became the venue for the frst All Africa People’s Conference in December 1958.18 These two events illustrate the close relationship between the religious and the political dynamics in the struggle for political liberation and economic well-being in Africa. Five years later, in April 1963, the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) was launched in Kampala, Uganda, followed by the launch of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963, with 32 African heads of state present. Again, the link between church leadership and political leadership was evident, even though African politicians and church leaders operated within their respective social domains.19 In Durban, South Africa, in 2002, the OAU Summit of 53 heads of state replaced the OAU with the African Union (AU).Within 40 years, most African nations had achieved sovereignty. South Sudan joined the African Union in 2011.This process established the AU to propel the nations of Africa into the future, taking into serious consideration Africa’s history and identity. One of the priorities endorsed by the Durban Summit was the formulation of “Agenda 2063,” outlining the aspirations that African nations and peoples wished to achieve by the frst centenary of the African Union. The Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union, in 2013 (May 26–27) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, endorsed the decision to formulate Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. The Popular Version (launched in August 2015) articulates concisely the goals that African governments committed their citizens to achieve by 2063:Africans who will be alive then will witness: 20 1. A prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development. 2. An integrated continent politically united and based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance. 3. An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice, and the rule of law. 4. A peaceful and secure Africa. 5. An Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values, and ethics. 6. An Africa where development is people-driven, unleashing the potential of its women and youth. 7. Africa as a strong, united, and infuential global player and partner. These seven aspirations summarize concisely the determination of Africans to reaffrm their identity and their dignity. Religion is included in the ffth aspiration of Agenda 2063: “An Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values, and ethics.” More than any other among the six pillars of culture (politics, economics, kinship, ethics, aesthetics, and religion), it is a religion that safeguards and promotes a nation’s cultural identity. Africans, as Professor John S. Mbiti has observed, are very religious. This religiosity is manifested in a wide variety of expressions (including Christianity and Islam)—superimposed onto the pre-Christian and preIslamic African religious heritage.Thus the African religious heritage has distinguished African Christianity and African Islam from the expressions of these two religions in other continents. Imperial domination and colonial rule in Africa suppressed this heritage through indoctrination, the prohibition of African rituals and practices, and punitive legislation. In most African coun157

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

tries, this violation of human dignity was resisted vehemently.The Christian missionary enterprise was an integral part of this violation, through schooling and catechetical indoctrination. 21 To what extent will African Christianity participate in shaping Agenda 2063 of the African Union? The All Africa Conference of Churches has been invited to participate in the popularization of Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want while taking cues from the role of African Church leadership in the struggles for national sovereignty during the half-century between 1963 and 2013. Hopefully, the human and spiritual resources available in Africa’s religiosity will be engaged constructively and overtly in the articulation and shaping of the core values that beft Africans of the coming generations.

The western Christian missionary enterprise and African responses Africans who have accepted the Christian faith take the Bible very seriously, but fnd contradictions between what most missionaries have proclaimed and how they have lived amid their African converts. Their negative and condescending attitude toward African heritage has compromised the noble intention of converting Africa to their respective brands of Christianity. Competition and rivalry between and among themselves have not helped their cause. One of the consequences of this negative missionary attitude was the formation of thousands of African Independent Churches. David B. Barrett, in his book Schism and Renewal in Africa, observed that by 1968 there were more than 15,000 such churches, concentrated in those colonies where European settlement was most established and colonial rule most viciously applied, especially in Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.22 Leaders of those independent churches were condemned as criminals and imprisoned. Others were persecuted in various ways, even though in Europe and North America freedom of religious belief and expression was deemed a basic right. This dark history of the Christian missionary enterprise in Africa remains part of the legacy of African Christianity. In 2001, Allan Anderson published The African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press), expanding the notion of African church independency to include Pentecostal and charismatic churches that were not breakaways from the missionary enterprise.23 African churches themselves are not perfect. No churches are. No human institutions can be perfect. Human imperfection demands that church leadership be undertaken with profound humility.Attitudes akin to arrogance and complacency are incompatible with church leadership, African or otherwise. Jesus condemned such attitudes, even among his disciples. Pomposity has become normative in some manifestations of church leadership, which both Jesus and St. Paul condemned. Ritual is important, but excessive ritual can obstruct religious discernment. African religiosity is a very complex phenomenon, perhaps much more complex than the religiosity in any other continent. In his book Concepts of God in Africa (Second Edition, Nairobi: Acton, 2012), Professor John S. Mbiti documents the depth and complexity of African conceptualizations of God. This complexity nullifes any insinuation that literacy is a necessary condition for theological and philosophical depth.24 Likewise, the late Professor Ali Mazrui’s book, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (London: BBC, 1986), illustrates the confuence of European Christianity and Arabian Islam with the African religious heritage, especially in Eastern, Southern, and Western Africa.25 In 1995, I published From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War (Nairobi: EAEP).26 My book, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction (Nairobi: Acton, 2003), was intended to clarify some of the concerns that had been brought to my attention from readers, both in Africa and elsewhere. One of the clarifcations pertained to the relation158

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

ship between liberation and reconstruction.27 In real life, these two processes are not conducted in tandem.Thus they are not a matter of either/or. Rather some aspects of culture will require liberation while others will function at the next level, reconstruction.This clarifcation will be more helpful if it is appreciated that people who consider themselves “liberal” in some aspects of their social consciousness are at the same time very conservative in others.Was Jesus a “liberal” or a “conservative?” In some respects, he seemed “liberal” to his critics. But in other respects, he was shockingly “conservative.” But he was radical in his social ministry, to the extent that ordinary people recognized him as a Rabbi who proclaimed new teaching with authority,“not like the scribes” (Mk 1:21–28; Matt. 7:21–29). Radical iconoclasm is impossible to sustain because those who are most radical about some concerns also tend at the same time to be extremely conservative in others. Both of my books on this theme of social reconstruction emphasized that historical confgurations after the Cold War provided African scholars with a window of opportunity to take stock of the indoctrination and conditioning they had internalized, followed by critical crafting of new paradigms in the interest of Africans and their posterity.As for Christianity, the implication of this insight is that African Christian theologians must question the presuppositions packaged for their schooling, and a duty to re-package their Christian faith by the cultural heritage of Africa and Africans. Professor Paul Gifford, in a review of my works, questioned the validity of this principle, as follows: Mugambi, for example, has dismissed inculturation, seeing it as a Catholic ploy to divert attention from the need to promote a theology of liberation.Yet, for our purposes, it is legitimate to consider him here, because for Mugambi culture is pivotal; culture must always be the touchstone, criterion, fulcrum. It seems to be a conclusive argument against something if it can be labeled “alien to the African cultural and religious heritage.”“African Christianity, in particular and African culture in general, will be reconstituted from characteristically African frames of reference.”28 Indeed, African Christianity is “African” only to the extent that it resonates with African cultural self-understanding. This insight requires no debate: Italian Christianity is “Italian” to the extent that it resonates with Italian cultural heritage. Greek Christianity is “Greek” to the extent that it resonates with Greek cultural heritage. Russian Christianity is “Russian” to the extent that it resonates with Russian cultural heritage. Scottish Christianity is “Scottish” to the extent that it resonates with Scottish cultural heritage. Irish Christianity is “Irish” to the extent that it resonates with Irish cultural heritage. German Christianity is “German” to the extent that it resonates with German cultural heritage. English Christianity is “English” to the extent that it resonates with English cultural heritage. Swiss Christianity is “Swiss” to the extent that it resonates with Swiss cultural heritage. And so on. And so on! Africa cannot be an exception to this principle. The struggles for political and economic liberation in tropical Africa took place both within and outside the missionary-led churches and schools. Ironically, some of the best pupils and students of missionary schooling became the most eloquent critics of the missionary enterprise. Those critics did not reject Christianity as such. Rather, they criticized and sometimes rejected missionary presentations of it. The Bible became the litmus test for the validity of missionary teaching and practice. Since the Bible was presented (and translated into African languages) as the Word of God, African converts would regard any missionary teaching that seemed contradictory to biblical teachings as un-Christian. Independent churches were formed as alternatives to missionary-led Christianity.At the same time, within 159

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

the missionary-led churches fellowships evolved (some covert and others overt), where Africans could express themselves freely and comfortably, without experiencing missionary condescension.The East African Revival Movement is a lasting and vibrant example of such fellowships. My book From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War (1995) explores the dynamics of African Christianity until 1990, the year that marked the end of the Cold War, the end of offcial apartheid, and the independence of Namibia. Before 1990, the struggles of the oppressed in Southern Africa seemed endless. Campaigns for liberation through the OAU and the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) were designed to continue indefnitely. In February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from life imprisonment on Robben Island, South Africa, after 27 years. His release facilitated negotiations that resulted in the abandonment of offcial apartheid and the establishment of democracy based on universal suffrage. Inauguration of the new South Africa in April 1994 marked a new historical signpost for Africa and Africans; at this point, South Africa joined the OAU. The Theology of Re-Construction as articulated in my writings of that period was an attempt to make theological sense of the events and processes that Africa was undergoing. At that time, it seemed as if peace was on the horizon; as if the rehabilitation of South Africa within the “international community” would ensure peace for the whole continent. In From Liberation to Reconstruction, I hinted at this optimism. Professor Tinyiko S. Maluleke, in his review of this book, cautioned perceptively against too much celebration and emphasized that the end of the Cold War was a challenge for African scholars to “drink from our wells.”29 He was alluding to a quotation from my book: Africa plunged into the new world order not as a stable continent, but as a region receding into ethnic fragmentation and economic disintegration … Today Africa fnds itself in the ideological wilderness, having firted with the ideologies of other peoples for the frst three decades of the post-colonial era. (Mugambi 1995:207)30 Maluleke’s caution is worth citing here because it remains valid, current, and futuristic. He challenges African scholars to guard vigilantly against complacency, and search inquisitively for alternatives that best meet our needs for this and future generations, without limiting the search to religion.While religion is important, it is not suffcient to spark effective change, as Maluleke emphasizes: To my mind, enough has been done already to lay a frm foundation upon which African theologies can build well into the twenty-frst century.This, however, does not mean that our task is to merely distill the best out of generations of Black and African theological scholarship.The 21st century challenges us to push the boundaries of Black and African theologies by isolating the crucial issues, mapping out the challenges, and identifying past and current traps.31 Since most schools had been established as part of the Christian mission, the leaders of liberation movements were alumni of those schools.Their most direct experience of unfair treatment was in the schools they attended and in the writings that missionaries and other ethnographers published.The African elite in the third millennium is much more exposed than its predecessors during the colonial period were.The internet has become much more accessible than any physical library.There is, therefore, no excuse for pleading ignorance or lack of exposure. 160

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

Biblical hermeneutics and the theology of reconstruction A clear conceptual distinction must be made between biblical exegesis and biblical hermeneutics. Whereas the former (exegesis) focuses on specifc portions of text, the latter (hermeneutics) is concerned with the message intended in the Bible as a whole. Exegetical analysis of a portion of text helps show the nuances of the words used, but such analysis is inadequate for placing the analyzed portion of text within the biblical message as a whole.The pre-exilic, exilic, and postexilic narratives make sense only when read in comparison and contrast with the pre-exodus, exodus, and post-exodus narratives. The prophetic narratives (especially Jeremiah) cautioned that failure to abide by prophetic guidance would inevitably lead to an extended exile.Whereas the Exodus was the fight of a whole population from persecution, the exile was massive deportation of a population by an imperial power as punishment for failure to comply with imperial decrees. My interest and focus have been on hermeneutics because the response of Jesus to his critics was always hermeneutical. Whenever the critics quoted a portion of the text intended to discredit the teachings and actions of Jesus, in reply, Jesus would provide the meaning behind the texts invoked. By so doing he would “disarm” his critics through reason, rather than through retaliation. It is helpful to illustrate my approach concerning some criticism leveled against my choice of the Ezra–Nehemiah texts as useful biblical references in the theology of reconstruction. One critic suggested that I had given too much credit to Nehemiah and Ezra (returnees from exile), while downgrading the initiatives of the local people in Jerusalem. A careful reading of the Nehemiah narrative indicates clearly that he was clandestinely invited by the wananchi (people of the land) to come and help them, in the context of the oppression and exploitation that they were suffering, exemplifed by Sanballat the Honorite and Tobia the Amorite, and Gersham the Arab. These three potentates were furious when they learned that Nehemiah had come to encourage the desperate community (Neh. 2:11–20). Nehemiah motivated the people to contribute materials, labor, and expertise to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and the project was completed in 7 weeks and 3 days—52 days (Neh. 6:15), amidst frustrations and intimidations from the detractors. Reconstruction, after years of oppression, requires great resolve, determination, and courage. It requires concerted effort involving everyone, with assigned roles toward the accomplishment of the project within specifed time and performance targets. Performance contracting has become normative in organizational management.The book of Nehemiah provides a template dating from the 5th century BC, but valid for the third millennium CE. Individuals, not crowds, infuence history. Crowds, like swarms of bees, or herds of wildebeest, follow the leader, for good or for ill.The challenge is in the quality of leadership not in the might of the leader. Nehemiahs will always triumph against the alliances of the Tobias, Sanballats, and Gershams. But the strength of the Nehemiahs is in their faith and in the determination of the community, not in the sophistication of material tools. In my book Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, I make a clear distinction between liberation as a protracted struggle—a process, and a battle, as an event. War consists of many battles. Winning one battle is not equal to winning the war. The struggle for liberation will continue on many fronts, but reconstruction must be undertaken on those fronts that are liberated, while the battles continue on other fronts. To these dynamics, it is essential to add a third dimension—the process of re-affrmation.When reconstruction has begun, those involved must embark on the restoration of confdence among those who had previously been indoctrinated to despise themselves and their identity. Re-affrmation of one’s dignity is the pinnacle of the theological quest. 161

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

From theology of reconstruction to theology of re-affrmation Biblical texts are fragments belonging to different literary genres, compiled to achieve specifc purposes as determined by the compilers in different periods. Although exegesis helps to illustrate how language use changes over time, place, and purpose, the most constructive use of biblical texts is in the discernment of the overall message of the community of faith—the message that pervades the entire corpus. Such is the task of hermeneutics, rather than exegesis.These two scholarly undertakings—hermeneutics and exegesis—are indispensable in the scriptural analysis. Hermeneutics without exegesis risks becoming too “philosophical” at the expense of contextual relevance. Conversely, exegesis without hermeneutics may become a semantic pastime, devoid of the overall message of the entire scriptural canon. According to the Ezra–Nehemiah narrative, a despondent community is restored and elevated through encouragement by a highly trained and committed elite.The conficts among the elite happen to be the greatest handicap to the disadvantage of ordinary people.The Nehemiah narrative began with a depiction of a community completely downhearted, owing to discouragement, exploitation, and oppression. Its leaders clandestinely pleaded for assistance from the emperor.The message arrived through Nehemiah, who was permitted to sort out the problem, with all the necessary facilitation. On arrival, he conducted a feasibility survey and concluded that the community could accomplish the task of utilizing their resources. Nehemiah happened to be someone fully conversant with the plight of the despondent community. Having conducted a thorough feasibility study, he concluded that the problem of the community was not lack of resources, nor lack of expertise. He convened a consultative meeting to announce his arrival and also to deliver his prescription. His advice was that all solutions, resources, and expertise were within the community. He encouraged them to mobilize themselves and immediately embark on the task of rebuilding the wall.The next chapters explain how the community, energized by Nehemiah’s encouragement, organized its members and assigned tasks within tight performance targets. Each segment of the wall was allocated to a specifc team, which in turn assigned duties for completion in tandem with teams working on the other sections of the wall. The role of Nehemiah was oversight, coordination, encouragement, and advice. At no point did he request assistance from the emperor, even though he had access to it. Within seven weeks the project was completed, all with local expertise, local resources, and local labor. Self-affrmation is essential for the restoration of self-confdence, both for individuals and communities.Tropical Africa has been so demoralized by the “development” narrative and paradigm that a counter-narrative is essential. How is it that Africa exports technical personnel to the same countries that export their personnel to “help” Africa? Corruption, ineffciency, and “tribalism” are vices from which Africa suffers immensely. It is erroneous, however, to portray Africa as the only continent where corruption thrives. There is abundant information in the public domain, confrming that North Atlantic Transnational Corporations deliberately violate standards, rules, and regulations to defraud much, much more money than is lost through “corruption” in Africa.When discovered and exposed, such corporations only “apologize” or offer to pay “compensation,” or offer to pay the previously under-stated dues. George Moody-Stuart, in his book Grand Corruption, provides a glimpse of this giga-corruption.32 When “trade” is disguised as “aid,” the corruption therein becomes much, much worse than theft. In the game of “foreign aid,” Africa continues to suffer a net loss in real terms, while the books of account portray Africa as “developing” or regressing in the opposite direction. The 2014 Executive Summary of the Action Aid Report, Honest Accounts? The true story of Africa’s billion-dollar losses, opens with the following confession: 162

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

“The idea that we are aiding Africa is fawed; it is Africa that is aiding the rest of the world.”According to this Report,Africa is suffering a net loss of 58 billion US Dollars annually. While Africa in 2014 received USD 158 billion in “Aid,” the outfow was at least USD 192. This report—looking at the amount Africa loses to the rest of the world, in comparison with what it receives in aid and other infows—is a response to a growing unease we have at Health Poverty Action that the UK public is not hearing the truth about our fnancial relationship with Africa. And hence what needs to happen for global poverty to be tackled.We are guilty of presenting ourselves as generous benefactors to the world’s poor.We present the aid budget as an act of charity, of which the UK should be proud: there are people worse off than us so we are selfessly giving to support them year after year. And yet, what this report demonstrates quite clearly, is that—in comparison with what it loses—the amount Africa receives back in aid is negligible.The truth is that rich nations take much more from Africa than they give in aid—including through tax dodging, debt repayments, brain drain, and the unfair costs of climate change—all of which rich nations beneft from.33 No nation, race, or gender is more immune to corruption than any other. It is an insult for the media to portray Africans, or any other people, as more “corrupt” than others. All humans are prone to fnd shortcuts, for good or ill. Humility and mutual appreciation are virtues worth emulating, while self-congratulation and self-aggrandizement are vices to be shunned.There is hardly any evidence that expatriate personnel posted to Africa are immune from the shortcomings attributed to the African elite. In practice, the many members of the African elite are an integral part of the game called “globalization.”The net outfow of money from tropical Africa is in favor of the nations that give “aid,” making “aid” another name for “trade.” Effective social reconstruction is possible under conditions in which communities have confdence in their ability to solve their problems, both at local levels and among the elite.The presence of expatriate personnel inhibits the building of such self-confdence. If there is goodwill, the most effective utilization of “aid” is through the deployment of qualifed local personnel who can deliver expertise, as was the case with Nehemiah and Ezra. Caution is essential in the hermeneutical reading of such biblical narratives as Ezra–Nehemiah. Neither Nehemiah nor Ezra were perfect personalities. The biblical narratives do not contain perfect individuals. Rather, through these personalities, the readers can learn what ought and what ought not to be done in particular circumstances. The New Testament ought to be read contextually and interpreted based on the same principle.The disciples of Jesus were not perfect individuals. But through their strengths and shortcomings, we learn what Jesus expects of us. The theology of re-affrmation challenges us to emphasize the strengths and opportunities available, rather than the weaknesses and the threats that obstruct the accomplishment of a particular project. In my book From Liberation to Reconstruction, I suggested that the theology of reconstruction should be: reconstructive rather than destructive; inclusive rather than exclusive; proactive rather than re-active; complementary rather than competitive; integrative rather than disintegrative; programme-driven rather than project-driven; people-centred rather than institution-centred; deed-oriented rather than word-oriented; participatory rather than autocratic; regenerative rather than degenerative; future-sensitive rather than pastsensitive; co-operative rather than confrontational; consultative rather than imposing.34 Another insight discernible from the Nehemiah–Ezra narratives is the relationship between social reconstruction as a theological emphasis on religious commitment, application of technical 163

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

expertise, and the encouragement of local communities. In some circles, the Bible (and other sacred texts) is to be read exclusively as “religious text,” applicable only in the religious domain.The book of Nehemiah, in contrast, illustrates the necessity of involving all experts and utilizing all available resources needed to complete a project successfully within the shortest possible time. Religious personnel may possess expertise in religious matters. But other experts are required to help society achieve its aspirations.The book of Nehemiah portrays commendable teamwork, in which the whole community is involved.Through such teamwork every individual is appreciated and affrmed. Involvement reduces confict, especially when the interests of all are taken into serious account. Biblical hermeneutics differs from biblical exegesis, in that hermeneutics deals with broad themes and trends, while exegesis deals with incidents. Thematically, the book of Nehemiah belongs together with the book of Ezra and the books of the Chronicles.Whichever one of these books an exegete might prefer for textual dissection, the details will not broadly alter the overall message.The frst two chapters of Nehemiah provide the prologue to the main message of the book. Nehemiah faced opposition from the beginning to the end. But in spite of his detractors, he mobilized ordinary people for the specifc task of rebuilding the derelict wall of Jerusalem. Such managerial acumen is rare in any generation, in any culture.35 Some critics of my emphasis on the necessity to change focus from liberation to reconstruction have suggested that one should continue struggling, struggling, and struggling, world without end. Such an endless struggle is not only frustrating, it is counter-productive. Happiness is experienced when someone achieves small successes. No human project can be completed in an instant.The greatest joy of a normal person is to experience success in the accomplishment of a project, implemented in stages, according to a plan.When the whole project is completed, it is time to celebrate, while preparing for the next one. Idleness is one of the great threats to human dignity. Continuous re-affrmation of one’s identity is the surest way to guard against a return to bondage. In Matt. 5:13–16, Jesus reminds us: You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.

13

You are the light of the world.A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. 14

Conclusion What then, is the conceptual basis for this theology of re-affrmation as a sequel to the theology of reconstruction? Metaphors convey serious insights much more forcefully than straightforward claims. In Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, the reader is reminded of an old Acholi saying:“Let no one uproot the pumpkin in the old homestead.”36 In rural Africa, homesteads would be shifted from time to time.The reasons for shifting the homesteads were various, but the most signifcant was to allow the homestead and the environs to regenerate naturally. Houses were not permanent, so a family could relocate when it was time to build new ones. The process of relocation was as follows.The head of the household would identify a new location where the new homestead would be constructed. He would then arrange with other families to assist in the construction of the new homestead. On completion, relocation would begin, a few members at a time. The food crops would not be uprooted, because the family 164

From reconstruction to reaffrmation

would require at least a full season to grow food near the new homestead. During that period, the family would rely on the crops left behind. In practice, those crops would not be uprooted. They would remain there for the family to use until the new crops were ready to be harvested. Tropical Africa is in transition, with a young population whose median age in 2016 was 19.5, compared to 30.1 for the whole world.37 A youthful population is an asset in the long term, if well nurtured and focused. It is a great liability if distracted by aimless pursuits and pastimes. Wisdom requires that we affrm whatever we already possess while improving such assets with insights from within and without. It is folly to import ideas wholesale from other cultures in the name of “development” and expect success. Theologically, the implication of this insight is that self-affrmation is the beginning of healing. Jesus teaches that those who consider themselves healthy do not need a physician, but those who know their condition will seek the necessary advice from the appropriate quarters. Self-affrmation must not be confused with self-congratulation. Rather, self-affrmation means soul-searching to appreciate the positive and constructive aspects of our selves as individuals, communities, and nations, to deploy them for improvement of our weaker aspects. In contemporary technical jargon, we are challenged to do our own “SWOT” analysis, to discern our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.This self-analysis ought to be done by us, and for us—not by others for their self-interests. On what principles should such self-affrmation be undertaken? St. Paul (Phil. 4:8–9) provides clues worthy of consideration: Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. 8

Without self-affrmation, we risk falling prey to those who exploit our shortcomings and take advantage of our inability to appreciate our strengths and our opportunities.The role of African Christian theologians, as part of the African elite, is to provide insightful and exemplary leadership in matters theological and ethical, so that the younger generation may enjoy mentorship from within, rather than from without. In conclusion, it is worth recalling Professor T.S. Maluleke’s advice, written in 1996: “African theologians will have to re-discover and clean up their wells, for they will have little choice but to drink from those.”38 The African Union’s Agenda 2063 urges all African elite to take stock of their intellectual assets and invest them toward a prosperous future. There is no exception to this challenge. African Christian theologians ought to consider their scholarly engagements as contributions toward the ffth aspiration of Agenda 2063—“An Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values, and ethics.” There is a reason to hope that African Christian theologians will respond constructively if they refrain from taking their cues from scripts other than Africa’s drama on the theatre of the “New World Order.” They will have a vital role if they depend more on God’s inexhaustible power than on the patronage of self-interested lobby agencies from within and without. Such re-affrmation should form the basis for the restoration of hope and courage of Africans, especially among the younger generation. In the canonical biblical texts, there are hermeneutical clues to this theology of re-affrmation. Somewhat surprisingly, in the canonical biblical texts, it is the weak, not the strong, that win in the end. God empowers the weak and shames the proud. Humility pays in the end. 165

Jesse N. K. Mugambi

Notes 1 Anthony Parsons, From Cold War to Hot Peace: UN Interventions 1947–1994, London: Penguin, 1999.As Early as 1971 Pierre Hassner had published an article titled “The new Europe: From cold war to hot peace”, International Journal,Vol. 27, No. 1,Winter 1971/1972, pp. 1–17. 2 Goran Hyden, No Shortcuts to Progress: African Development Management in Perspective, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. 3 On this point, see John S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa, Second Edition, Nairobi: Acton, 2012, pp. 409–410. In this reference, Mbiti is commenting on a British author who ridiculed the Khoi and San of Southern Africa for their very complex notion of the deity they have worshipped for millennia. 4 Such as Mattheo Ricci in China; Roberto de Nobili and Lesslie Newbegin in India. See, for example, Vincent Cronin, Wise Man from the West: Mattheo Ricci and His Mission to China, New York: Harper Collins, 1984;Vincent Cronin, A Pearl to India The Life of Roberto De Nobili, London: Rupert HartDavis, 1959. 5 See From Confict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, LWF and PCPCU, 2013. 6 The frst complete translation of the New Testament from Greek by an African scholar as sole author is John S. Mbiti’s Kiikamba version, Utianiyo Mweu Wa Mwiyai Yesu Kilisto, Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 2014. More such translations will be part of this re-affrmation of African identity. 7 Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Mission and British Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Centuries, London: IVP, 1990. Robert W. Strayer, Ways of the World:A Brief Global Histroy,Vol. 1, Bedford: St. Martin’s, 2015. 8 Tshishiku Tshibangu in collaboration with J. F. Ade Ajayi, Lemin Sanneh,“Religion and social evolution,” in Africa Since 1935, UNESCO General History of Africa,Vol.VIII, 1993, Ch. 17, pp. 501ff. 9 Ali Mazrui,“Towards the Year 2000,” UNESCO General History of Africa,Vol.VIII, Ch. 30, p. 906. 10 On this point, see Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Mission and British Imperialism in the 19th and 20th Centuries, London: IVP, 1990. 11 http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/13chapter5.shtml 12 Nereah Wathumu, Sunday School teacher at Immanuel Church, Kigari, Embu, Central Kenya, during the early 1950s. 13 Derek R. Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c.1935–1972 (African Studies), London: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Dorothy Smoker, Ambushed by Love: God’s Triumph in Kenya’s Terror, CLC Ministries International, 1994. 14 J. N. K. Mugambi, “Theology and Liberation,” in WSCF Dossier No. 5, June 1974, also in J. N. K. Mugambi, African Christian Theology:An Introduction, Nairobi: Heinemann, 1989. 15 The phrase “baby-boom generation” is familiar in European literature, referring to Europeans born after World War II until about 1964.Africans born during that period can rightly be referred to as the baby-doom generation, because they, and their children after them, suffered the humiliation and exploitation that accompanied the strategies of European and North American post-war reconstruction.The rhetoric of “Development” and “Democratization” in North Atlantic discourses fails to appreciate the distinction between the privileged status of the “baby-boom” generation, and the “under-dog” status of the “baby-doom” generation. This distinction helps, perhaps, to appreciate the contribution of such African authors as Wole Soyinka,Anthony Appiah, Cyprian Ekwensi, Okot P’Bitek, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Micere Mugo, Mazizi Kunene, Ezekiel Mphahlele,Alex la Guma, and others. 16 Representatives of the frst generation of African leaders of Protestant churches attended these pioneer ecumenical conferences, including John G. Gatu of Kenya, Bola Ige and Bolaji Idowu of Nigeria, Kwesi Dickson and Christian Baëta of Ghana, and Harry Sawyerr of Sierra Leone. 17 L. B. Greaves, “The All Africa Church Conference, Ibadan, Nigeria, 10th to 20th January 1958,” International Review of Mission,Vol. 47, Issue 187, 1958, pp. 257–264. 18 Modern History Sourcebook: All-African People’s Conference: Resolution on Imperialism and Colonialism,Accra, December 5–13, 1958 http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1958-aapc-res1.html\ 19 “History and Background of Africa’s Regional Integration Efforts,” UN Economic Commission for Africa, http://www.uneca.org/oria/pages/history-background-africas-regional-integration-efforts 20 African Union – The Africa We Want – Agenda 2063 – Popular Version, http://agenda2063.au.int/en/si tes/default/fles/agenda2063_popular_version_05092014_EN.pdf 21 John S. Mbiti, “The Dialogue between African Religion and Christianity,” 24 May 2010, Tangaza College https://benbyerly.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/john-mbiti-the-dialogue-between-african-re ligion-and-christianity/

166

From reconstruction to reaffrmation 22 David B. Barrett, Schism and Renewal in Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. 23 Allan Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001. 24 John S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa, Second Edition, Nairobi:Acton, 2012. 25 Ali Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, London: BBC, 1986. 26 J. N. K. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction:African Christianity after the Cold War Nairobi: EAEP, 1995. 27 J. N. K. Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, Nairobi:Acton, 2003. 28 Paul Gifford, “Africa’s Inculturation Theology: Observations of an Outsider,” https://eprints.soas.ac.u k/7956/1/AfricasInculturationTheology.pdf 29 Tinyiko S. Maluleke,“Black and African Theologies in the New World Order: A Time to Drink from our Own Wells,” Journal of theology for Southern Africa,Vol. 24, No. 3, November 1996, pp. 3–19. 30 Maluleke,“Black and African Theologies.” 31 Maluleke,“Black and African Theologies.” 32 George Moody-Stuart, Grand Corruption: How Business Bribes Damage Developing Countries, London: Worldview Publications, 1997. 33 Martin Drewry, Foreword, Honest Accounts? The True Story of Africa’s Billion Dollar Losses, London: HealthPoverty Action, July 2014. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hdcfFyahM 34 Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction, p. xv. 35 On this point, see, for example, Ntozakhe Cezula, “Identity Formation and Community Solidarity: Second Temple Historiographies in Discourse with (South) African Theologies of Reconstruction.” PhD dissertation, Stellenbosch University, 2013. 36 Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lawino, Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966. 37 http://www.indexmundi.com/world/median_age.html 38 Maluleke,“Black and African Theologies,” 3–19.

167

11 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND PUBLIC HEALTH CHALLENGES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Jacquineau Azétsop

Is Christian theology well equipped to understand, theorize, and respond to public health crises, such as the HIV and Ebola crises or other ongoing epidemics or endemic diseases in Africa? What type of ecclesial practices and network connections are required for such endeavors? And, more importantly, why should health be considered as a locus theologicus in a continent confronted with all sorts of crises? We ought to remember what Gary R. Gunderson and James R. Cochrane proposed: Religion in its deepest foundations and public health in its genesis are not just about specifc intellectual disciplines or felds of practice but, ultimately, about the health of the whole and health for all, the well-being of people.1 This chapter is meant to provide the linkage between theology and health, bearing in mind the particular signifcance that health enjoys in most African settings. Theology is frst of all a refection on human existence in the light of Christian faith and tradition.We may then affrm that theological refection is frst of all a theology of culture and society because “Theology frst originates in the life of the local church, because it is always a refection on faith as it is lived concretely.”2 Christian theologians cannot help but address health concerns because health is at the center of people’s daily life and determines how people conceive human existence.The social credibility, existential depth, and metaphysical relevance of Christian theology is at stake, since health is at the confuence of all the dimensions of human life, including the harmony of the cosmos and the relationship with ultimate realities. So, addressing health concerns is not merely an intellectual endeavor, but more importantly, it is a categorical imperative for Christian theology’s relevance in a continent where health cannot be confned to its biological meaning and to biomedical and technical solutions. In order to make our task a theologians relevant within such a context, doing Christian theology entails scrutinizing culture and society to critically uncover social barriers to good health and envision, in the light of the Christian doctrine as well as of biblical symbols and metaphors, ways of positively renewing and sharpening values and practices susceptible of promoting a better society and the public’s health. The central argument of this chapter is that both religious assets of Christian churches and African values tend to promote a vision of public health that does not isolate health systems 168

Christian theology and public health challenges

from other spheres of society, indicating a way of theologizing on health issues as an endeavor which is always related to social arrangements and organizations that determine the course of human existence.The metaphysical-religious-ethical apparatus that sustains the quest for wellbeing, and responses to community health challenges in African traditions as well as in Christian churches, does not accommodate a fragmented approach to human existence and to community healthcare needs. Using a language cherished by Michael Walzer, health is a dimension of human existence which is related to other spheres of justice.3 Four main points, interwoven with my personal experience as a public health interventionist and lecturer, will be argued to support the central thesis of this chapter. First, that health cannot be reduced to its biological dimension, but necessarily includes its socially comprehensive component without which intervention will be mainly clinical; thus, an adequate answer to most health challenges should address the social matrix of biological disorder and people’s ability to avert health crises. “Biological individualism”4 that seeks disease etiology and designs intervention solely or primarily from behavioral and clinical perspectives should be avoided.The second point argues that Christian churches and other religious denominations have important religious assets and institutional practices which are instrumental in Christian churches’ ability to address crises.The third point notes that these religious assets and institutional practices are deeply rooted in the foundational norms of the Christian faith tradition, for which reason a concern for health, understood comprehensively, is not a sectoral issue but a central one for the self-understanding of the Christian churches and their identity in the world.The fourth point highlights some key network and advocacy strategies that may be developed or to further churches’ comprehensive approach to public health challenges in a world where social injustices tend to exclude the “have not.”

Defning health The word “health” refers to the physiological and psychological state of individuals, human groups, and communities, and the quality and duration of their lives. Health should not be defned only in terms of the absence of diseases, infections, infrmities, or psychic depressions. Health (like illness) is at the crossroads of a multiplicity of environmental, social, economic, political, and psychological factors, and there are interrelationships between them. The economic cannot be the whole thing; we must invent a new social contract that can serve as an anchor of new dynamic initiatives that can generate a new intelligibility of health problems. A new intelligibility of the health professions, emerging from structural causes, could make it possible to perceive the health professional as an advocate of the poor and promoter of a new humanity. With regard to the health of the population, we will assume the World Health Organization’s defnition of health (WHO, 1946),5 all the anthropology that carries the right to health,6 the Alma Ata Primary Healthcare philosophy,7 and the Health Prerequisites of the Ottawa Charter.8 There is no need to state that health is a fundamental right and should be considered as such.9 Our approach to health as a sphere of justice will be perceived in a systemic fashion,10 health being a subsystem of the social system. It is not therefore a sphere independent of others, which will justify the link between public health and development.The defnition of health by the WHO goes beyond the realm of medicine because it is “not just the absence of disease or infrmity, but an optimal state of physical well-being, mental and social”.11 This defnition, although idealistic, has the merit of not being limited to diseases. As this WHO defnition incorporates the notion of social well-being, interpretations of the concept of public health should be broadened. Health promotion is an important component of public health that uses strategies to address the social responsibility of health sector agents and therefore different partners that increase 169

Jacquineau Azétsop

community capacity.The individual remains at the center of the process that allows him to act for the beneft of his health in and with his community. Therefore, the need to guide health policies in a promotional way could be benefcial to the population.As a conceptual framework, health promotion mandates action on the social determinants of health for the development and well-being of individuals in a healthy environment.These determinants refer to the factors that determine the context in which individuals and social groups live.These factors are related to working conditions, culture, family, society, religion, politics, and the physical environment. In this perspective, Health is therefore perceived as a resource of everyday life, and not as the purpose of life; it is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, and physical abilities. Health promotion is therefore not just about the health sector: it is not just about advocating lifestyle choices that promote good health; its ambition is the complete well-being of the individual.12 As well, health promotion is not just about the health sector, but goes beyond healthy lifestyles and access to healthcare to social well-being. Such a frame of reference integrates the clinical, social, and religious aspects of health. Indeed, the WHO, through the Ottawa Charter, states that Good health is a major resource for social, economic and individual development and an important dimension of quality of life.Various political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral and biological factors can all favor or, on the contrary, undermine it. The aim of health promotion is precisely to create, through an awareness-raising effort, the favorable conditions necessary for the development of health.13 The approach to society and to the human person, the anthropology of health promotion, has close connections with the traditional African approach to health and to some extent with the Michael Marmot’s Commission for the Social Determinants of Health.14 For Sir Michael Marmot and his collaborators, the conditions under which the person is born, grows, ages, and dies constitute what might be called social determinants of health (WHO, Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, 2008).The socio-economic environment conditions health by making it vulnerable or by protecting against risk factors.The human person is considered not as a being isolated from others, but as being nested within the social fabric. Society appears to be a source of opportunities and risks for people’s well-being.The Marmot commission report’s anthropology is close to that of the African culture, in that the person is perceived as a being that is already and always caught up in a complex web of relationships. No doubt this understanding of the person shapes healing and behavior choices. An analysis of therapeutic itineraries and multifaceted outlooks of worlds of meaning that shape healing choices takes us beyond conventional healing systems and methods. Healing behaviors are quite surprising.They are recursive, mapping a path through and beyond the paradox of either/or, a path which is sometimes simple and other times complex and chimeric.These behaviors unveil clearly, but not always, that the determinants of healing choices can be located at the intersection of economic reasons, perceived effcacy of therapeutic offers, the worldview consideration, etc. The complex reasons that often motivate healing behaviors show that the knowledge of people’s preferences is not determined by the mind alone, or through the body alone.The complex nature of healing behaviors comes from that fact that healing is a process of integration and not just a biological cure, of accepting paradox and creating harmony where it has been broken, and that is why, frequently, it is associated with words such as harmony or balance. 170

Christian theology and public health challenges

Christian theology and the promotion of the goals of public health What does it mean to theologize in contexts of increased poverty and marginalization of the masses, especially when the poor have a short life expectancy, and often die of preventable or treatable diseases or from road accidents? Not only do many live in infrahuman conditions, but few have access to quality care. Most of the poor receive no effective medical care, or none at all. Since the cost of care is often high, recourse to traditional doctors or spiritual healers tends to be the most affordable option. For many children, there is no such thing as proper vaccine coverage. For many, tuberculosis, which can be cured with isoniazid and rifampin, is as lethal as Ebola fever or some forms of cancer. In addition, pregnant women who go to hospital for childbirth are not always sure they will return home alive. It is obvious that a focus on public health crises challenges Christian churches to rekindle their propheticism as they carry out their ministry as caring, healing, and pastoral entities, seeking to promote a vision of health rooted in local cultures and anchored in a vision that does not separate public health crises from the social system. Ongoing public health challenges, such as Ebola or HIV or other common epidemics like measles or cholera, while challenging the very notion of what it means to be a just and caring society, question the goodness of God toward those who suffer. An epidemic is a privileged moment to review not only the functioning of social organizations but also to re-envision the mission of the Churches as revealed by theodicy questions raised by sufferers and their kin. Through the theory of embodiment, Didier Fassin connects the objective dimension of AIDS experts to the subjective perceptions contained within popular accounts of HIV infection in South Africa.15 He concludes that the subjective and objective dimensions coincide.The magnitude of the HIV and AIDS pandemic results from the structural chaos created by the apartheid regime. Hence, AIDS is nothing other than the embodiment of a violent social system that treated some like sub-humans and others like gods. Infected bodies simply tell the truth about the immediate past of South Africa, a past of savage brutality. Paul Farmer has named epidemics such as AIDS and tuberculosis “pathologies of power,”16 because their vectors mostly attack the economic nobodies and weakest of our human society, while sparing the powerful and the rich. Together with the recent Ebola epidemic that destroyed many lives in three countries of West Africa, these epidemics are pathologies of inequality, both at the local and global levels.17 As Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God and heal the sick, Christian churches, in solidarity with other faith-based and civil society groups, continue to carry out this noble task.This response combines charity activities (curing the sick, healing ministry, material assistance, and spiritual accompaniment) and the fght for justice since public health is premised in human rights and social justice.18 The churches attend to sufferers’ immediate needs but also ought to challenge the socio-economic and political structures that are breeding grounds for diseases.These two components are hinged on the teachings of Jesus, who readily attended to the immediate needs of people and challenged oppressive structures that hindered people from fourishing. Hence, a theology of healing ought to be a liberation theology, that is a theology that ensures people’s liberation from diseases, from fear of all sorts and from the effects of social sins.The individual, groups of people, and social institutions are all subjects of healing. What prompts a theological refection on public health crises in Africa? Approaching an important human problem, health, with a faith consciousness allows us to look at health challenges and the quest for healing in Africa from the standpoint of Christian revelation so as to rethink Christian churches’ thoughts and actions in such a crucial sphere of human existence. The magnitude of public health crises, especially the AIDS pandemic, in some parts of Africa has prompted such a move.The German Jesuit and theologian Karl Rahner taught us that theology 171

Jacquineau Azétsop

has to be an anthropology since it is concerned with human beings.19 The theology of and on health in Africa assumes the historical trajectory of Africans and takes into account the peculiar features of a marginalized continent. Relying on statistics and narratives as well as on analytic tools, this attempt to critically refect on health and healing challenges calls for a methodology that refects the complexity of the subject at stake.The complexity and multidimensionality of health challenges call for a holistic approach to healing and cure. Health involves natural sciences, medical skills, questions of meaning, social determinants of diseases, etc. Then what can the role of Christian theology be in the midst of the public health chaos with which most African countries are confronted? The task of a theologian is to engage the complex social and ideological realities that shape public health crises, working closely with Christian communities, struggling to shape and sharpen the churches’ praxis in the face of suffering, and looking for ways of inventing solutions that may connect the churches’ evangelizing mission with partners that may be willing to team up with Christians. (1) To achieve such a goal, theologians ought to question dominant metaphors that undermine people’s dignity by reaffrming the oneness of the human family as rooted in the imago Dei metaphor and in the theology of creation. (2) The tools used to analyze society ought to be well chosen. Christian theologians should advocate for theoretical tools, shaped by the Christian vision of the common good that can be used to fght for social justice and promote a preferential option for the poor. Christian theologians ought to challenge the ever-growing individualist anthropology that shapes some dominant approaches to modern epidemiology. (3) It is only after having analyzed society that theologians may address the cultural politics and an ever-growing healing culture that entertains fear. (4) Suggest an option for the poor rooted in Christian symbols and doctrines that question the dominant tendency to social exclusion which is prevalent in both the African and global society. Since theological endeavors aim at improving Christian communities’ witness and testimony to God’s love for humanity, it is necessary to single out pastoral practices that portray Christian churches as healing churches whose ministry is patterned on the praxis of Jesus as a healer and an opponent of all forms of socio-economic and political oppression. (5) These healing churches have to face the challenge of responding to the complexity of people’s health needs including the quest for meaning infuenced by cultural representations of diseases and religious backgrounds as well as socio-economic factors.

Christian faith, individualism, and its limits in public health Beverly Rockhill laments that “The dominant philosophy of modern epidemiology is individualism, despite the limitations of epidemiologic tools and methods when considering the individual level.”20 Similarly, Jonathan Lomas affrms that “Epidemiology has been colonized by the individualistic ethic of medicine and economics.”21 The language of individualism centers on the values of freedom, self-determination, self-discipline, personal responsibility, and limited government. The language of individualism is easy for most Americans to use, because it taps into values reinforced by dominant societal myths endlessly repeated in the popular culture. But although it may be this country’s frst language, individualism is not a suffcient language for advancing public health.22 The concept of personhood that is assumed in most health intervention and in the bioethics literature is the liberal ideal of an unencumbered, rational, self-interested, and self-suffcient subject whose values are very individualistic. Persons are perceived as separate from one another; their interests are private and must be respected and accommodated as far as possible.This approach 172

Christian theology and public health challenges

to personhood has been presented as the anthropological framework for disease prevention and health promotion. Such an approach ignores the larger social contexts that individuals and population groups inhabit, or these contexts tend to be considered as irrelevant. Instead, AIDS prevention requires a conception of persons that recognizes and responds to their fundamental socially, politically and economically situated nature. Persons are constituted by their relationships, and the communities they inhabit are complex layers of different sorts of social connections.23 When shaped by the same anthropological approach, the connection between modern human rights and public health can powerfully challenge epidemiological underpinnings that sustain social inertia and indifference, especially when it comes to addressing the social barriers to prevention and treatment of epidemics. Jonathan Mann pioneered the feld of health and human rights through his approach to AIDS not only as an intracellular disease but as a human rights issue.24 Throughout the world, the highest socio-economic classes often struggle with reduced access to affordable food, adequate housing, and healthcare, and protection from environmental hazards. Having grappled with the complexity of AIDS’ risk differentials between various population groups, Mann pointed out the inadequacy of classical epidemiology. He was aware that epidemiology was a much-needed feld of intellectual inquiry that has its underlying assumptions and methods. However, he noted that applying classical epidemiological methods to HIV/AIDS ensures, even pre-determines, that risk will be defned in terms of individual determinants and individual behavior. Epidemiology has, thus far, failed to develop models and methods suited to discovering the societal dimensions which strongly infuence and constrain individual behavior.25 Classical epidemiology cannot fully capture the AIDS etiology and distribution because it lacks the tools and methods necessary to understand how social dynamics and institutions shape the risk for infection and disease occurrence. Mann wrote that “as the HIV epidemic matures and evolves within each community and country, it focuses inexorably on those groups who, before HIV/AIDS arrived, were already discriminated against, marginalized and stigmatized within each society.”26 Epidemiologists cannot afford to neglect the infuence that the social environment exerts both on the process of choice and the types of behavioral options which are available and appropriate. Modern social epidemiologists argue that throughout history, social elites have inequitably organized societies through laws, policies, and cultural norms in order to protect or beneft their position. As a result, persisting inequalities based on gender, class, age, sexual identity, race/ethnicity and other characteristics are the rule, rather than the exception.27 Mann recognized that HIV infection rates were closely connected to inequality, injustice, discrimination, and the failure of public health to recognize the deep roots of vulnerability worldwide. We cannot help but humbly accept that the anthropological assumptions that shape epidemiologic theory determine the course of action taken to prevent and treat a given disease.These anthropological assumptions presuppose a preexisting approach to social justice and human rights. Harald Heggenhougen, a medical anthropologist, notes that Equity, social justice and human rights issues are integral to this process since the degrees to which they are upheld as realities in people’s lives are refected in their 173

Jacquineau Azétsop

epidemiology, in the patterns and prevalence of diseases. Thus, one function of epidemiology is to show this connection. Understanding, and contextualizing research in terms of these and other social (political and economic) determinants of health is paramount for formulating any effective intervention to improving health. 28 There is no doubt that our conscious or unconscious ideas about society and the human person shape epidemiologic theories and determine how we understand human agency, disease causation and distribution, society’s intervention in health promotion, and the assignment of responsibility for health.29 A substantial body of theoretical and empirical work shows that the state of the public’s health unavoidably refects systemic forces operative in society rather than individual behaviors. Indeed,“a key class of determinants of health is the full set of macro-socio-economic and cultural factors that operate at the societal level,”30 necessitating interventions that span the many levels of the society in which any given health problem exists. Ironically, many professionals in the feld of public health believe in the importance of social determinants of health yet routinely rely on strategies that largely ignore social determinants in favor of individual, behavioral approaches to improving health. Although this disconnect between public health theory and practice has several sources, including the structural and philosophical limitations of conventional public health,31 a signifcant cause is the fact that a language to properly express the unique public health approach has not been adequately developed. The cognitive linguist George Lakoff has revealed the metaphors underlying the language of individualism form a coherent and compelling package rooted in widely accepted moral values.32 The political virtues of limited government and personal responsibility correspond, at a subconscious level, with many Americans’ mental model of personal morality in which self-reliance is a moral obligation. Government policies that interfere with the mechanisms of personal responsibility and self-discipline are therefore seen, in a sense, as immoral.Thus, a predominant belief is that “people should accept the consequences of their own irresponsibility or lack of self-discipline, since they will never become responsible and self-disciplined if they don’t have to face those consequences.”33 Christian theologians ought to reject individualism as an explanatory framework for disease prevention and treatment because such a hermeneutical lens will only result in one-sided policies and interventions limited to the provision for health information for the sake of behavior change or medical cure.The best solution to public health crises faced by African populations cannot be solved by providing only adequate preventive information and good medical interventions. In Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plague, talking about HIV infection, Farmer affrms: We know that risk of acquiring HIV does not depend on knowledge of how the virus is transmitted, but rather on the freedom to make decisions. Poverty is the great limiting factor of freedom to make decisions. Indeed, gender inequality and poverty are far more important contributors to HIV risks than is ignorance of modes of transmission or cultural beliefs.34 The commitment to the fundamental worth of every single human being is grounded in the truth that we are all created in the image and likeness of God.The common good tradition is grounded on this principle and yields positive effects for human prosperity. Good health yields positive benefts for the entire community. The common good tradition is grounded in the commitment to intrinsic human dignity, located in the imago Dei, and requires participation in 174

Christian theology and public health challenges

society’s affairs.The common good tempers individualism and all sorts of partisan interests that do not seek to achieve the common goals set by society. However, contemporary debates on the common good navigate among liberal, communitarian, and egalitarian views of a just society. The view of the common good is essentially social and does not begin with the libertarian emphasis on the individual; instead, it emphasizes individual dependence and social interdependence and stresses the welfare-enhancing role that public institutions should play in society in order to include those who are economically and politically marginalized in the mainstream economy or politics through various forms of contributions from individuals and other social constituencies as well as legal arrangements. The common good is “the sum total of those living conditions, whereby men are enabled more fully and more readily to achieve their own perfection.”35 The common good refers to the sum … of all the civic conscience, political virtues and sense of right and liberty, of all activity, material prosperity and spiritual riches, of consciously operative hereditary wisdom, of moral rectitude, justice, friendship, happiness, virtue and heroism in the individual lives of its members.36 Attempting to refect on the common good in a complex world, the Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et Spes, emphasizes its meaning as follows: the sum conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfllment, today takes on an increasingly universal complexion and consequently involves rights and duties with respect to the whole human race. Every social group must take account of the needs and legitimate aspirations of other groups, and … the general welfare of the entire human family.37 The social conditions to which Gaudium et Spes refers are inevitably connected to basic human rights: food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one’s conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom, even in matters religious.38 These conditions form what Sir Marmot’s commission calls “the social determinants of health.” Unless more structurally oriented interventions that aim at changing the social landscape are implemented, the entire continent, especially the least fortunate, will remain a favorable target for all sorts of health conditions and pathogens. Thus, the individual-cognitive pole of disease causation should be tied to the structural-political pole to create a broader analytical and theoretical framework within which poor health can be understood from point of view of the fragility of leaders’ convictions and the failure of policy makers in postcolonial Africa,39 not to mention rapacity and the logic of predation that shape the global economic system.40 As a sphere of the social system, health is controlled by politics. A biosocial analysis of public health which challenges the functioning of social institutions, both at national and global levels, should be considered in order to detect the logics of the production of disease in their complexity and formulate the consequent responses. Diffcult social conditions, mainly related to poor 175

Jacquineau Azétsop

governance, are at the root of most public health problems. Rejecting a behavioral approach to HIV infection in South Africa, Fassin affrms that To understand why and how social agents act and interact as they do and, for example, why violence has crept into the very heart of gender relations in the townships or how sexuality is negotiated between desire and commerce, we must explore the everyday life-world and the history by which it is informed.41 In other words, people’s “conducts,”42 not behaviors, were shaped by their experience of their lived world. Can the theory that accounts for the distribution of AIDS between population groups be essentially behavioral when feld inquiry reveals that the concentration of the disease in one population group is rooted in social organization? Fassin’s phenomenological approach, which is a radical rejection of behaviorism, allows us to understand that the past is not only embodied in our present “but also, more materialistically, that individual and collective history is embodied in what we are.”43

A plea for embedded theories for understanding public health crises The history of epidemics is thus an integral part of the history of racial segregation in South Africa.The risk of contagion has often been the most effective argument to justify the implementation of legal and physical measures initiating or reinforcing the separation of groups that it would have been more diffcult politically to justify by strictly biological criteria.44 Using AIDS in Malawi as a case study, I intend to reject the use of individualism as a framework for disease etiology and intervention and make a case for an embedded social theory.The study of the AIDS crisis in Malawi shows how historical processes—the British colonial rule and political bricolage under Kamuzu Banda—and the violence of everyday life often spread through cultural politics have shaped macro-social factors which, in turn, have structured risks for infection by the HIV virus.As an analytic tool and hermeneutic key, the theory of structural violence is used to show how Malawi became an AIDS-producing society.The HIV and AIDS epidemic in Malawi is not a mere biological event but also a social process whose spread is not only propelled by poor behavior but also structural factors.The war against HIV not only concerns the fght against a virus but also the fght against pathogenic practices and structures that exercise their power on the human body. Social and economic forces have played a critical role in the spread of HIV although they have been largely overlooked in favor of factors that operate at the individual level.45 The HIV and AIDS epidemic is embedded in Malawi society through the legacy left behind by a political and economic history that was defned by the British colonial regime and the one-party autocratic leadership of Kamuzu Banda.A wounded and fragile social body created opportunity for a massive spread of HIV. The former South African president Thabo Mbeki caused a world stir when he declared that poverty is the cause of AIDS.46 This statement may be dismissed because of its lack of scientifc backing and the obvious fact that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS in the human body. However, studies have discovered how the HIV and AIDS epidemic is closely interwoven with the social conditions.47 In the case of South Africa and Malawi, the way people were treated whether during Banda’s regime or under the inhumane system of apartheid cannot be historically and epidemiologically dissociated from the high rate of AIDS in these countries. As an 176

Christian theology and public health challenges

embodiment of time and of the world, AIDS tells a story of violence. This epidemic reminds us that “history is not merely a narrative or the sum of competing narratives. It is also what is inscribed within our bodies and makes us think and act as we do”.48 Specifcally, South Africans’ prerefexive view of the social world as run through by a color line, the interactions between men and women in matters of love or sex, the attitudes of employers to employees on the farms or in the mines, the norms of conduct people impose on themselves on the farms or their children, in sum what is called racial, gender, class, and generational relations … are caught up in and shaped by particular experiences of time.49 Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the world’s poorest and close to 90 percent of people living with HIV.50 Poverty reduces people’s ability to master the course of their lives, thereby constraining their agency in making choices regarding their sexuality.51 Women tend to be more vulnerable to economic conditions. In dire need, human beings can forgo the value of life for the sake of money which is offered to them in order to buy their pressing basic needs. The AIDS epidemic appears to be a recording of the subtle and silent violence historically perpetrated by social forces that have directly or indirectly structured the likelihood of being infected by a dangerous intracellular virus called HIV. Long before the appearance of the virus, these forces have determined access to life-saving opportunities and shaped the welfareenhancing function of the state.The incorporation of past and present injustices in individuals’ bodies uncovers social logics that have set the stage for the spread of the virus in Malawi. From the colonial period till today, colonial racism, state-based ethnocentrism, gender imbalances, and condescending classism have impaired people’s ability to fourish by preventing them from having access to the basic dimensions of well-being. High risks for infections in Malawi have something to do with national and regional contexts of vulnerability in which individuals and communities fnd themselves. Socio-economic and gender discrimination is often the consequence of structural violence aided by the appeal to culture. Culture is often used to give legitimacy to violence, justifying both physical and socio-economic violence by making it look normal and acceptable. Aspects of culture such as religion and gender ideology have been used to exclude women from participating in society’s affairs.52 The theory of structural violence allowed us to situate the AIDS pandemic in Malawi in its historical context because “Biological and behavioral explanations cannot provide an exhaustive interpretation of the pandemic.”53 An embodied approach to HIV infection puts bodies back into society and society into the body.54 Thus, there is a dialectical relationship between human embodiment and an inequitable social world. Biology plays an important role in that “it may impinge directly on the self, provide signals for identity construction, and act as a limiting factor on social action for the sufferer.”55 The logic that determines the HIV infection questions the human relationship with the social world and its material basis. Our focus on embodiment to understand the social etiology of an epidemic of such magnitude “helps bridge the structureagency, micro-macro divide,”56 opening up a venue for discussing issues of justice. Daily life, community agency, and individual biographies in affected countries were deeply shaped by local cultures, socio-political unrest, and large-scale mining.57 Hence, The embodied processes are most consequential for people in subordinate positions, via the invalidating defnitions of others and the threats to selfhood and ontological security these engender.This reveals yet another powerful pathway through which the negative effects of inequality take their toll.58 177

Jacquineau Azétsop

Chris Shilling offers a compelling case for a corporeal realist approach that sees bodies as the complex medium for the constitution of society.59 By this, he means human bodies are the source, location, and means of society—i.e., bodies have an independent causal role in the creation of society; they are a site on which the structures of society inscribe themselves and they are a means for positioning individuals within society in ways that may or may not foster human potentiality. In fact,“Embodiment is a multi-dimensional process that cannot be reduced to biology or society, but instead involves the complex interplay of various modalities of our lived body or bodily-being-in-the-world.”60 Turner astutely underscores the fact that the focus on embodiment in health and illness resituates the biological body within the social world.61 Taking into account the body as central and critical for the constitution of society, we focus both on the lived experiences and expression of the biological body without undermining the macro-oriented concerns and extra-corporeal matters that shape daily biographical profles of individuals and their community. It is regrettable that the truths about the AIDS epidemic, in Africa in general and in Malawi in particular, have been buried under premises and interpretations borrowed from behavioral and medical approaches to disease. Social and historical research can untangle some of these established truths and orthodox interpretations, and bring to the forefront the reality that the AIDS epidemic cannot be properly understood and addressed if we do not rely on hermeneutical keys and theories that unveil the process of embodiment of daily social brutality that contributes to an epidemic of such a magnitude. AIDS is not merely a natural disaster or a medical condition, it points to an ongoing process of denial of basic rights and violations of Malawians’ dignity. Such a socio-historical and phenomenological perspective does not undermine the behavioral and medical explanations of the risks of infection by HIV and occurrence of AIDS, but seeks to provide an interpretation which shows how the socio-historical and medical–behavioral interpretations can be compatible. There is no doubt that in the context of Malawi, “biological and behavioral explanations cannot provide an exhaustive interpretation of the epidemic: observable inequalities must have a place in the etiological model of AIDS.”62 Developing an etiological model of AIDS that does not take into account how men and women who have gone through traumatic events view their own history simply means a part of the truth about the social production of the epidemic will be veiled by the dominant interpretation.The disease not only entails a biological process that weakens the immune system, but also a social process of ongoing marginalization that weakens the physical body.AIDS is the revealer of truths about the Malawian society, for the history of the epidemic in this country cannot be understood solely by examining individuals’ biographies but also, and more importantly, by scrutinizing social history and collective narratives. The pandemic has to be understood phenomenologically as an experience of the body, understood as the meeting point of the present and the past.The intelligibility of the history of AIDS is grasped when one begins to understand how the connection between the past and the present shapes the experience of infection, disease, survival, and death. Long before the epidemic, life was precarious and undermined by colonial, post-independence, and gender ideologies.The epidemic is not just an exceptional situation which has nothing to do with the past. The pandemic imports old structural inequities into today’s context. Hence, Malawi will remain propitious ground for epidemics if the deep-seated inequities that shape the social system and weaken physical bodies are not addressed in a more consistent manner. To conclude, let us say that AIDS is not to be looked at as either a medical-pharmaceutical problem or solely as an issue of a change in human behavior. It is truly an issue of integral development and justice, which requires a holistic approach and response by the Church.63 178

Christian theology and public health challenges

The Jesuit anthropologist Lado Ludovic echoes the same claim, although he expresses it differently, as follows: The battle against HIV and AIDS will only be won by continuing to fght on three fronts: individual responsibility, which calls for changing behavior and attitudes; the culture that embodies the values and established practices; and structural changes that aim to eradicate social structures that cause poverty and injustice, in favor of a fairer global, political, and economic order.64 The choice of the theoretical apparatus for analyzing and understanding public health crises may help to capture and scrutinize the social root of these crises. This analytical and interpretative tool should be able to capture how cultural politics and social forces operative in society determine collective trajectory and shape individual pathologies. Here, the Christian notion of “social sin” or structural evil appears to be an important element that may help grasp the intelligibility of most public health crises within the frame of the common trajectory of given social groups, nations, regions, and continents. We are talking about a trajectory often determined by public values and attitudes, social institutions, and laws and policies that undermine people’s worth and violate human rights. Social sin stands in opposition to social justice, which is mediated by institutions and individuals determined to change society into a life-promoting sphere where resources and opportunities are equitably distributed.

The biblical metaphor of imago Dei versus divisive conceptions of “otherness” The language of exclusion operative in both local and global contexts favors the conscious or unconscious creation of new alterities based on geographical reasons and/or ideological assumptions. Geography was used to create an African “other” in the context of the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea Conakry.The media was quick to construe Ebola as an “African problem,” while in reality Africa is a vast and vastly diverse continent, and the epidemic was limited to a small part of West Africa. Some of the coverage of the epidemic relies on colonial tropes of African backwardness, and depicts Africa as an uncivilized and diseased continent.What we need is to both familiarize ourselves with the actual geography of the epidemic as well as the reality of African diversity, and to move away from the language that paints Africa as a backward place in need of Western civilization. The creation of these new alterities on a global scale is ironically reinforced by a big divide between the rich and the poor in most African countries, where the bipolarity of social life tends to be a scandal for whoever contemplates the degrading treatment that most leaders and the ruling class administrate to other citizens.The ruling class assumed the dehumanizing practices from colonial rulers and even reinforced them. It is both amazing and shocking to see how the former colonized rulers, once they became rulers, treated their fellow citizens.African rulers massively oppose the rule of law; even advanced democratic countries such as Senegal and Benin have recently witnessed the re-emergence of dictatorial practices through which heads of state behave as potentates. Obviously, such a political climate favors the suppression of the claims of the poor. As long as the means of communication are controlled by the elites, the voices of the poor will never be heard except if they operate a tour de force using social media or popular protests. Geography alone does not justify the creation of new alterities but also ideological assumptions based on gender, race/ethnic, and social status. Brooke G. Schoepf affrms that, to justify the spread of HIV, African women have been portrayed as reservoirs of diseases.65 Paul Farmer 179

Jacquineau Azétsop

has shown that the transnational tale of the AIDS pandemic in Haiti was never mentioned for ideological reasons.66 The creation of new alterities aims to victimize some targeted population, undermining their dignity and considering them as sub-human. Contrary to this divisive language that prompts neglect and willed exclusion, the Christian language of imago Dei invites us to emulate God’s solidaristic love for human beings.The imago Dei is a relational term that spells out God’s relationship to humanity.The image of God is not restricted to the God head but extends to humanity. Human beings are related to each other and to God.The image of God therefore establishes a vertical and horizontal communion.67 The image of God establishes a bond that cannot be destroyed, even if it is distorted by sin. In this sense, The imago Dei spells human dignity.The image of God places on each person a special and immeasurable worth. In other terms, each person is dignifed just by being human. Individuals have their dignity not because they are rational or spiritual beings but because they are created in the image of God.68 This metaphor provides us with a moral compass for action sustained by a theological horizon through which every single human being is perceived as being invested with a divine likeness. Solidarity is a key principle that shapes Christian churches’ charity work and ministry. Solidarity is rooted in the biblical metaphor of imago Dei that serves as a foundational ground for human dignity. Solidarity refers to God’s solidaristic love for humankind and to Jesus’ sacrifcial death. As Mary Jo Iozzio et al. affrm, The imago Dei legitimates the unity and diversity of humanity by allowing gender, race, culture … as inherently good in the tri-relationality that includes self, God, and other. In this context, human beings are called to go forth and be the active presence of God in the world, for the world. Grounded in the Trinity, the essence of imago Dei refects the fundamental relationships within God’s self.69 Living out the tri-relationality of God for us, human beings discern the responsibility that comes with being imago Dei.This responsibility requires conscious action for justice with care: to stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, to uphold the dignity and sanctity of life, and to recognize God as the source of human transcendent and relational integrity.70 In other words, what is at stake for a community that truly lives with the imago Dei is the very being of God and God’s relevance for societies plagued by public health crises and social strife of all sorts. God is truly respected and glorifed if the human community strives to stand against whatever evils affect the life of every single member.The relational approach to imago Dei resonates well with the African conception of human existence which stresses that one’s humanity remains incomplete when others do not enjoy a good life. In most African settings, To be a human being, to be a moral, ethical person—Mtu (in Kiswahili) and Muntu (in nearly all other Bantu languages with slight phonetic variations), it is not possible to live in isolation … One can only become truly human in community, in the context of other human beings in the world, and in some sort of relationship to the dead. Kinship is what in large measure constitutes life itself and its mystique.71 180

Christian theology and public health challenges

The Ubuntu philosophy, which holds that a person is a person because of other persons, reinstates the view that one’s survival is premised on the support of others.72 Beyond attempts to understand public health challenges as individual issues, the imago Dei metaphor challenges the human community to perceive them as a hindrance to the well-being of the human community.This broad view calls for a pragmatic and effective solidarity with the most vulnerable. From a theological standpoint, This option is shaped by the transcendence of a God who takes side for the marginalized and by the liberating praxis of Jesus of Nazareth (Luke 4: 17–21).The solidaristic love for his people is totally fulflled through Jesus’ life and death, which open a venue for a hermeneutical mediation allowing us to understand the life of destitute sick through Jesus’s praxis and life. Hence, the incarnation of the Word of God and Jesus’s ministry and earthly existence have an important theological and moral signifcance for the option for the poor.They play a normative and inspirational function in shaping this option.73

A preferential option for the poor Focusing on the AIDS pandemic, as well as recent Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and attempting to underscore the social justice component of the churches’ healing ministry, I emphasize that an epidemic of this magnitude invites us to profound social change, because it calls into question the leaders’ political inertia, the multifaceted violence of neoliberalism, the pathogenic nature of modern capitalism, and the lifeendangering character of some cultural practices often sustained by willed cultural immobility and politics. On its own, the AIDS pandemic questions our co-existence, the way we treat others, the consistency of our social policies, the seriousness of solidarity within our global village, and so on. To borrow an expression dear to the anthropologist and French doctor Didier Fassin, we will say that “an epidemic is a moment of truth.”The social logics and forces that sustain HIV transmission challenge us to adopt an etiological model that goes beyond the biomedical and behavioral paradigm. A phenomenological perception of the AIDS epidemic puts the process of incorporating socio-global ills into the body of the individual at the center of refections on HIV prevention and AIDS management. Therefore, a phenomenological approach challenges us to assume both an ideological and a theoretical stand that aims at rethinking the epistemological approach by which we identify the causal links between individual behavior and infection. The approach I am evoking here cannot accommodate a one-dimensional or sectorial refection.The AIDS epidemic is a multidimensional and global reality, the eradication of which will not be achieved through partial analyses and fxed solutions. From a theoretical point of view, the social, cultural, and political conditions for the production of knowledge of society should be made explicit. Thus, the HIV and AIDS epidemic highlights the pressing need for critical and self-critical refection to uncover the values that shape our quest for truth but also for steps to change the institutions that govern the real world. Taking forward Gutierrez’s insight about liberation theology, Paul Farmer argues that a preferential option for the poor, is, in a sense, an epidemiological one: most often, diseases themselves make a preferential option for the poor. Every survey, across boundaries of time and space, shows us that the poor are sicker than non-poor.They’re at increased risk of dying prematurely, whether from increased exposure to pathogens (including pathogenic situations) or 181

Jacquineau Azétsop

from decreased access to services—or, as is most often the case, from both of these “risk factors” working together.74 Farmer then concludes, emphasizing that “Given this indisputable association, medicine has a clear—if not always observed—mandate to devote itself to populations struggling against poverty.”75 The connection between poverty (and social exclusion in general) and health calls for a deeper refection, a structural analysis, to unveil social forces that weaken people’s ability to avert preventable or curable diseases. Here, theology cannot help but unveil the defciencies of the liberal human rights movement. The most glaring of these defciencies emerges from intimate acquaintance with the suffering of the poor in countries that are signatory to all modern human rights agreements. When children living in poverty die of measles, gastroenteritis, and malnutrition, and yet no party is judged guilty of a human rights violation, liberation theology fnds fault with the entire notion of human rights as defned within liberal democracies.76 For Jean-Marc Ela, “to follow Jesus is to live out his subversive plan, his stance for the poor against situations of misery and oppression.”77 The option for the poor is not an external commitment that arises out of mere sympathy for the worse off, but rather an integral part of the Christian identity. Christian solidarity is essentially relational; it shows that one does not live the faith in isolation but in relation to others. Solidarity denotes the fundamental dependence and interdependence that exist between human beings. It reminds us that our destinies intermingle; “it reminds us our mutual need for one another as a constitutive dimension of our humanity.”78 Solidarity is an ethical demand of our faith in the controversial man of Nazareth. Informed by a genuine sense of compassion, Christian solidarity challenges us to locate and relocate the liberating praxis of the churches in loci of oppression and unnecessary suffering. It is an active commitment to justice. In all the places where human beings are suffering, the future of God is at stake and thus the liberating power of Christ should be expressed through the praxis of the Church.79 Taking the side of the poor simply means to follow the God of life whose solidarity for humankind is at the very core of his being. Thomas Schubeck notes: “the decision to follow Jesus involves reproducing Jesus’ own history by historicizing the values he proclaims: love, justice, freedom.”80 The option for the poor is a prioritarian approach to justice that cannot be satisfed with mere claims of distributive justice, but with deeper solutions that suggest a structural reform rooted in a deeper retrospective analysis to understand how contemporary society is shaped by the past, even like slavery, colonization, and postcolonial brutality.81 The recent epidemic of Ebola in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia shows that epidemics often follow a path of inequality,82 expression of an embodiment of the world.83 We then see how a historically broad analysis of disease etiology goes beyond the empirically visible to disclose connections that exist between present epidemics and past events. In addition, such a reform ought to be geographically broad to capture the transnational tale of oppression felt locally. Living in an interconnected world, we ought to acknowledge that what happens at micro-levels is often the product of macro-policies and practices designed by the powerful. We cannot help but recall the devastating role that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank played in African economies and public health systems in the 1980s and 1990s. Even though people should control their lives, there are many aspects of social life which are beyond their control such as the systems of production, political and legal structures, gender roles, social and public policies, and many other societal arrangements that shape their lifecourse. 182

Christian theology and public health challenges

Structural analysis should scrutinize institutions, question how best to equitably serve the needs of all citizens and provide them with the fundamental dimensions of well-being needed to lead a decent life.84 Even though this may seem utopian, the ultimate goal of the option for the poor is to rethink society, its institutions and its practices, so as to favor people with an equitable share in the common good through distributive and contributive mechanisms that reduce unjustifed and unnecessary injustices.

A caring and healing Church Public health, with its focus on the community, is likely to link health issues with religious communities, especially since, as Gary R. Gunderson suggests, the community dimension of religion is an important piece of the puzzle of the impact of religion on health.85 Programs integrating religion and health take different forms depending on which aspects of religion are chosen to be highlighted. Some focus on individual beliefs and practices related to health issues; others further emphasize the vital role of community activities, programs, and networks as factors in the overall well-being of individuals.The community niche generates social capital that fosters mutual support in bad situations. Emile Durkheim already suggested that individuals are less likely to commit suicide in religious communities where the feeling of integration or belonging to the group is stronger.86 The community bond is an important vector of well-being for the individual, in that it has a protective effect on each member in relation to the danger of suicide.87 Just like public health and as a community of beliefs and practices, religion has an eminently social character. Not surprisingly, Durkheim used statistical data to establish the link between suicide morbidity and a range of social factors including religion. His work showed that the suicide rate varied within the same country and from one country to another. He found that the rate of suicide was higher among widowers and divorced people compared to married couples, men compared to women, and Protestants compared to Catholics and Jews.88 The Second Vatican Council described the church as a sacrament, that is,“a sign and instrument … of communion with God and unity among all people.” Faithful to this sacramental understanding, the Council articulated a vision of the church in which its members, as disciples of Jesus, are called into communion with both God and others and are sent in mission to proclaim the Good News of the reign of God.The Council declared:“the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or … a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race.”89 The sacramentality of Christian churches is a way through which they express God’s providential love for humanity. This approach to the churches’ selfunderstanding calls for communion within the churches and with the world. Hence, the community dimension cannot be neglected; it is indeed an asset on which Christian responses to public health crises can be developed. Maria Mercedes Rossi, a missionary doctor, shows how in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia, local Christian communities respond to the AIDS crisis relying mainly on the universal religious values of love, compassion, solidarity, and the thirst for justice and the Ubuntu cultural concept. These communities created home-based care where community volunteers, family members, and Christians all came together to care for the sick and most vulnerable people.90 In a similar way, Leonard Chiti shows how home-based care became a true expression of God’s presence to people living with or affected by HIV.91 He argues that Many in our society, including within the church, saw the HIV and AIDS crisis as a problem to be solved. And those who were afficted were rejected. They had to be hidden from society, confned to their homes until they died. Society had given up on them. Members of HBC [home-based care] refused to follow this well-trodden path. 183

Jacquineau Azétsop

They not only confronted the pandemic head-on but also exhibited great courage and faith in a compassionate God.They became witness to the unfailing and unchanging love of God.92 What does it mean to be a church in Africa today when we know that the body of Christ, as it says in the canticle, is composed of the sorrow of men crushed by injustice?93 The churches’ relevance in contemporary Africa no longer resides solely in the churches’ ability to play their spiritual leadership role and to perform liturgical acts, but also in their willingness and capacity to participate in the making of new society, where unjust social structures and the dehumanizing social inequities that they produce are challenged by the subversive power of the Gospel. Members of Christian churches defne themselves as followers of Jesus Christ. Following the footsteps of Jesus, they attempt to enact the praxis of Jesus whose heart was open to all and excluded no one.The Gospel of the Kingdom must be proclaimed to all, and the charity and compassion of Christians must be directed to all, simply because they are persons, children of God. Christian churches have a long history of caring for the sick, including innumerable initiatives. In many African countries with inadequate public healthcare systems, Christian churches work to improve health, eliminate infant mortality, and combat widespread disease. So, Christian communities have consistently shown concern for the welfare of all. However, to truly play their prophetic role following the signs of time, Christian churches need to move a step further so as to have more say in society and, thus, in the healthcare sector. Far from being a question whose answer would consist in multiplying health structures, it is a question of inventing another type of presence in the health sector, knowing that the ills that plague the whole society also affect this sector, because the health system is only a subsystem of the social system. The Church can create new health structures in the environments where the need arises, but we should look further. Health promotion requires greater social and political commitment on the part of Christian churches. For, as we have recalled in the wake of Michael Walzer, politics is a sphere of justice that determines and conditions other aspects of human life. By adopting a stronger theoretical stance, not only do we avoid confning health problems within the biomedical framework, but we highlight the political role of Christian churches (as well as that of other religious denominations) in such a sensitive area as public health.The economic repression suffered by the masses in the mega-cities and rural areas of the African continent may reinforce a greater attachment to some cultural practices that have serious implications for health and give rise to a tendency to reproduce these same practices within institutions of Christian churches. If this analysis proves to be true and relevant, the issues of social inequality and good governance should be included in the refections of the link between health and religion. It is no longer enough to provide cures in churches’ hospitals and healthcare centers. The time for more audacious prophetic actions has come.The urgency of such a move comes from the need to address the root causes of poor health by inventing signifcant new strategies which consist of fnding a way to infuence social and health policy. Health problems cannot be dissociated from political issues and material scarcity.These problems often result from a social system that favors a minority of the rich at the expense of the mass of the poor, the cities at the expense of the countryside, and the powerful at the expense of the weak. How to improve health indicators in a meaningful way without attacking the system of economic domination and symbolic violence that underlies it? In connection with other Christian churches and other faith-based entities, Catholic and Protestant churches, whose institutional visibility is obvious, could consider actions that aim to infuence the course of social and health policies.The national health offces of the bishops’ conferences can play an important role in initiating a movement that would integrate the coordination of other Christian and faith-based denominations, in view 184

Christian theology and public health challenges

of concerted actions, aimed at infuencing the course of social policies and healthcare at the national level. Similarly, the associations of Christian nurses, physicians, pharmacists, lawyers, and other health professions can team up with other associations of civil society to demand more just social and health policy. How to understand the political lethargy of Christian churches in countries where they manage a large part of health structures? Healing cannot be limited to curing the sick, but should extend to the need to foster a bigger social transformation that includes and transcends medical care. It is about curing the very wounds of African societies to promote the well-being of all.This vision is premised on the idea that confning health to the medical feld would be myopic because a sick society can only favor the mushrooming of sicknesses and misery.A broader approach to healing is needed to avoid focusing on symptoms instead of facing the fundamental causes of public health crises which are rooted in social organization. Medical care remains important but should be included in a bigger package: the social determinants of health.

To the persistent quest for healing, what response from the churches? Faith healing is increasingly requested as an alternative means for cure in many Christian churches on the African continent because it tends to be in tune with fnancial and geographic accessibility to care and with people’s worldview convictions. The belief in the supernatural etiology of suffering remains strong in many African traditional settings. Diseases are believed to be caused not only by humans, but also by the spirits and the dead.A disease can be perceived as resulting from divine punishment, as a result of a violation of a taboo or instruction important for society’s harmony. So, a transgression of society’s law or the non-observance of divine prescriptions may cause illness. Healing, when it occurs, is made possible by a supernatural power, operating through the healer, who has the power to remove harmful impacts of the disease. Healing is not incompatible with taking medication, because there is meaningful distinction between diseases of natural origin and those of supernatural origin. Disturbance of the cosmic harmony leads to disease, and the goal of treatment is to restore harmony. In most traditional cultures, healing is part of a socio-religious system in which the power and meaning of life are to be found in the relationships within the self, with other people, with the physical environment, and with the ancestors. Treatments, therefore, deal not only with particular aspects of the sick person’s body, but also with the social environment. The high demand for healing in Christian churches more or less follows the existing patterns in traditional settings. Hence, to be relevant, healing ministry in Christian churches cannot help but assume aspects of local cultures that resist Cartesian dualism. In the same way that traditional healing is symbolic, so too is faith healing. Faith healing belongs to the realm of symbolic healing since human beings live in a world mediated for them by symbolic meanings of their culture. Conversion is required for faith healing to occur because the patient or believer needs to share the symbolic world of religion, participate in the church’s life, share the world order suggested by Jesus which binds him to the church, and accept the mediatory role of the healer. Symbolic healing conceives the human organism as part of overlapping biological, social, and cultural environments.All these separate entities are mediated by symbolic constructs that interact with the purely biological dimension. Healing, therefore, most basically consists of restoring balance. Faith healing is sustained by a more comprehensive anthropology which does not reduce healing to the restoration of the physical and physiological integrity of the person.We fnd here an area of both opposition and possible collaboration with biomedicine.The individualistic Cartesian model of medical practice is not conducive to an approach to healing which is comprehensive.The community, as happens in faith and traditional healing, is not a therapeutic management entity. Within the biomedical paradigm, healing is not understood as a social 185

Jacquineau Azétsop

reconstructing endeavor. It is well established in the public health community that a wounded community can only produce wounded individuals. Hence, health intervention needs to address both societal and human issues. When talking about symbolic healing, we do not mean fake and unreal. Even biomedicine has some symbolic aspect.The placebo effect is the most researched aspect of symbolic healing in biomedicine. It undoubtedly represents the angle most likely to enable science to encounter symbolic healing in a way that its effects can be interpreted within the biomedical paradigm. Responses to health problems result from an association of strategies and solutions that summons several worldviews, including one informed by religion or spirituality. Patients’ therapeutic itineraries are, often, a complex path, a real mixture of therapeutic practices underpinned by different rationalities, at the same time heterogeneous and homogeneous. This composite set, which is made and unmade according to the socio-historical contingencies, refects not only the complexity of human existence but also the psychological and existential anguish and insecurity connatural to human existence with which patients and relatives are often confronted.This blend of health rationalities and worldviews refects the pluralistic perception that determines therapeutic choices.This therapeutic bricolage challenges the fragmented nature of responses to healing requests offered by Western medicine. This entanglement or overlapping of practices refects a certain quest for therapeutic effcacy by patients and a lack of dialogue between the various actors involved in the health feld.The use of clinical medicine, traditional healing, and faith healing varies according to the type of problems that patients face, depending on their religious affliation, ethnicity, and perception of the effectiveness of therapeutic offerings. Notwithstanding the diversity of determinants that infuence the therapeutic journey of believers, the mix of these three strategies occurs at one time or another.Thus, the way in which patients seek the cure, the strategies they use, and the health universes that determine their choices relativize or not the importance of interventions informed by rationalities borrowed from other cultural areas. The theory of insecure modernity developed by Professor Pierre-Joseph Laurent of the “Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Prospective” of the Catholic University of Louvain may help explain the therapeutic bricolage and ongoing religious innovations prevalent in most African countries.94 The theory stresses that uncertainty, unpredictability, violence, and socio-religious changes are becoming inextricable and unavoidable attributes of contemporary societies.These major movements induce signifcant changes of lifestyles, institutional and religious practices, schemes of thought, and people’s security modes.These changes create a clash of cultures and rationalities shocks, favor the marginalization of those who cannot cope with change, create opportunities for new syncretic religious practices, and promote socio-existential insecurity. As a theoretical framework, “insecure modernity” can accommodate the theories of cultural shock and that of structural violence. The theory of the clashes between cultures allows us to understand religious innovations, based on divergent or pragmatic acculturation, through which believers constantly invent the sense of the sacred in order to fnd solutions to their problems. Moreover, the theory of structural violence will help us understand the quest for spiritual healing that is prevalent, but not exclusively, among low-socio-economic classes as a result of social exclusion. The central question with which Christian churches are confronted is then to know how faith in Jesus Christ accommodates the therapeutic bricolage which is operative in the lives of many Christians and more and more in healing liturgies of some Christian churches. Should we say that the problem is more a question of fnancial insecurity, the limited response of biomedicine to the quest for health and well-being in Africa, or simply a problem of religious syncretism which should not be tolerated? The response to these questions is not easy taking 186

Christian theology and public health challenges

into account the complexities of structural, symbolic, and personal challenges that determine individuals’ and communities’ life trajectories. Dismissing these challenges and condemning people without offering a sense of direction will not help face the future of Christianity in Africa. Christian churches should embark on a serious refection to discern the real issues of faith involved in local and Christian healing practices in order to incorporate them into the Church’s liturgy and healing practices. Here, one pitfall needs to be avoided: the Western understanding of health and healing should not be understood as the Christian way and local practices and ongoing therapeutic bricolage should not be Christianized for the sake of inculturation. A deeper pastoral and theological refection is needed to discover the root causes of the ongoing social and symbolic malaise that prompts the increase in healing requests and the adequacy or inadequacy of present-day pastoral responses to those increasing requests for healing.Theology cannot be merely abstract, taking as its point of departure biblical texts and Christian doctrines.Theology has to emerge from the daily life of local churches as a refection of lived faith. The pastoral discernment meant to address the ongoing quest for healing should be rooted in a theology which is necessarily defned by the circumstances of communities, by the lives of Christians who claim to be practicing faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be embodying its meaning in what they say and do.Theology can only be as true and authentic as the relation to Jesus Christ out of which it emerges, in the particular and daily existence of Christian communities.95 This way of doing theology engages culture, politics, and economy. It clearly shows that the gospel must be received and embodied anew in every context and is not truly heard until it comes to expression in the cultural symbols of hearers. It is a way of doing theology that endorses the pathos of society and helps people fnd God even in the midst of existential chaos and anguish where the sense of the divine tends to vanish.

Conclusion: Is a theology of/on health truly a theology of society? In most African settings, health is a thick concept which cannot be confned to its biological meaning. Instead, it connects people’s religious beliefs with their understanding of the community, as well as healing practices and health behaviors.Theological refection, as a critical inquiry on human existence in the light of the Christian revelation and tradition, cannot ignore how most Africans construct the meaning of health and face the many challenges with which the continent is confronted. The study of people’s perceptions of health and health interventions may help address the quest for meaning as well as the compatibility of the African quest for health with Christian doctrines, while refections on the social dimension of health may lead to critical inquiry of society’s contribution to well-being. In both cases, returning to Jesus as a model of faith to his father and as a prophet of social justice allows us to underline anew the mission of Christian churches. Beyond building healthcare infrastructures and providing care to sick people, Christian churches need to present where decisions that determine the life trajectories of nations are made. As can be seen, solutions meant to address health challenges are complex. This complexity is not alien to the social roots of health challenges, calling for a theological scrutiny that includes and surpasses the biological dimension of disease to include all the other dimensions. Thus, a theology of or on health is at the same time a theodicy and a theology of society and culture. 187

Jacquineau Azétsop

Notes 1 Gary R. Gunderson and James R. Cochrane, Religion and the Public Health of the Public: Shifting the Paradigm, ed. Gary Gunderson and Jim Cochrane (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1. 2 Lisa S. Cahill, “Concluding Remarks,” in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refection, Public Health, Social Transformation, ed. Jacquineau Azetsop (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2016), 390. 3 M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice:A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). 4 Nancy Krieger and Sally Zierler, “What Explains the Public’s Health?—A Call for Epidemiologic Theory,” Epidemiology 7, no. 1 (1996): 107–109. 5 “WHO Constitution,” 1946, World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/governance/eb/wh o_constitution_en.pdf 6 Paul Hunt and Gunilla Backman, “Health Systems and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health,” Health Hum Rights 10, no. 1 (2008): 81–92. 7 “Declaration of Alma-Ata International Conference on Primary Health Care,Alma-Ata, USSR, 6–12 September 1978,”World Health Organization, accessed March 2017. http://www.who.int/publication s/almaata_declaration_en.pdf 8 “The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. First International Conference on Health Promotion; 1986,”World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/otta wa/en/. 9 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948,” United Nations, accessed April 21, 2014. http:// www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/. 10 Walzer, Spheres of Justice. 11 WHO, 1946. 12 WHO,“Ottawa Charter,” 1986. 13 Ibid. 14 It is surprising that Marmot and colleagues did not count religion as a determinant of health. Maybe they were infuenced by a growing positivist trend dominant in public health epidemiology which insists on the need for measuring and counting; thus, confrming one of the basic characteristics of positivism which is about its aversion for metaphysics, meaning the rejection of all that cannot be empirically counted, measured, or verifed. Michael Marmot and Richard Wilkinson, Social Determinants of Health (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 15 Fassin Didier, When Bodies Remember. Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). Fassin Didier,“The Embodiment of Inequality:AIDS as a Social Condition and the Historical Experience in South Africa,” Science and Society 4 (2003): 54–59. 16 P. Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Paul Farmer et al., “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine,” PLoS Medicine 3, no. 10 (2006): e449. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/fle?id=10.1371/ journal.pmed.0030449&type=printable 17 P. Farmer, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 262–282. 18 Nancy Krieger, “A Vision of Social Justice as the Foundation of Public Health: Commemorating 150 years of the Spirit of 1848,” American Journal of Public Health 88, no. 11(1998): 1603–1606. Dan Beauchamp,“Public Health as Social Justice,” in New Ethics for the Public’s Health, ed. Dan Beauchamp and Bonnie Steinbock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 101–109. 19 Karl Rahner, Theology, Anthropology, Christology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975). 20 Beverly Rockhill, “Theorizing about Causes at the Individual Level while Estimating Effects at the Population Level Implications for Prevention,” Epidemiology & Society 16, no. 1 (2005): 124–129. 21 Jonathan Lomas, “Social Capital and Health: Implication for Public Health and Epidemiology,” Social Science & Medicine 47, no. 9 (1998): 1181–1188. 22 Lawrence Wallack and Regina Lawrence,“Talking about Public Health: Developing America’s ‘Second Language,” American Journal of Public Health 95, no. 4 (April 2005): 567–57. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449221/. 23 Francoise Baylis, Nuala P. Kenny and Susan Sherwin,“A Relational Account of Public Health,” Public Health Ethics 1, no. 3 (2008): 127–132. 24 J. Mann, Human Rights and AIDS: The Future of the Pandemic, in Health and Human Rights: A Reader, ed. J. Mann, et al. (Routledge: New York, 1999), 439–452.

188

Christian theology and public health challenges 25 Jonathan M. Mann, “Human Rights and AIDS: The Future of the Pandemic,” in Health and Human Rights: A Reader, ed. Jonathan M. Mann, Michael A. Grodin, Sofa Gruskin, and George J. Annas (NewYork: Routledge, 1999), 216–226. 26 J. Mann,“Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights,” in New Ethics for the Public’s Health, ed. D. Beauchamp and B. Steinbock (Oxford University Press: New York1999), 83–93. 27 John William Lynch, George Kaplan, and Jukka T. Salonen, “Why Do Poor People Behave Poorly? Variation in Adult Health Behaviours and Psychosocial Characteristics by Stages of the Socioeconomic Lifecourse,” Social Science & Medicine 44, no. 6 (March 1997): 809–819. https://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953696001918 28 Harald K. Heggenhougen,“The Epidemiology of Inequity:Will Research make a Difference?” Norsk Epidemiologi 15, no. 2 (2005): 127. 29 Jacquineau Azétsop,“Epidemiological Research, Individualism and Public Health,” in New Directions for Catholic Social and Political Research. Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, ed. Guido Giacomo Preparata (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, September 2016), 35–53. 30 Krieger and Zierler,“What Explains the Public’s Health?” 31 Ibid. 32 George Lakoff, Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don’t (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 33 Ibid., 97. 34 Farmer, Infections and Inequalities:The Modern Plague, xxv. 35 John XXXIII, “Mater et Magistra,” in Catholic Social Thought. The Documentary Heritage, ed. O’Brien David and Shannon Tom (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998) 65. 36 Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 41–43. 37 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 1965, n.26. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_ 19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html 38 Ibid. 39 Achille Mbembé, On the Postcolony (Berkley: University of California Press, 2001). 40 Carlos A. Martínez-Vela, “World Systems Theory,” 2001. http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/noteb ook/WorldSystem.pdf 41 Fassin, When Bodies Remember, 177. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 132. 45 Peter Lurie, Percy C. Hintzen, and Robert Lowe, “Socioeconomic Obstacles to HIV Preventions and Treatment in Developing Countries,” in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, ed. Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 204. 46 Kalipeni Ezekiel, et al., “Mapping The AIDS Pandemic in East and Southern: A Critical Review Africa”, in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, ed. Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 58–68. 47 Fassin, When Bodies Remember. 48 Ibid., XIX. 49 Ibid. 50 Lurie, Hintzen and Lowe “Socioeconomic Obstacles,” 204; Andrew S. Boozary, Paul E. Farmer and Ashish K. Jha, “The Ebola Outbreak, Fragile Health Systems, and Quality as a Cure,” JAMA 312, no. 18 (November 2014): 1859–1860. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25285459 51 Mike Kesby,“Participatory Diagramming and Ethical and Practical Challenges of Helping Africans Themselves to Move HIV Work”, in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, ed. Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 218. 52 Johan Galtung,“Cultural Violence”, Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (August 1990): 291. 53 Didier,“The Embodiment of Inequality,” s8. 54 Simon J. Williams and G. Bendelow, The Lived Body: Sciological Themes, Embodied Issues (London: Routledge, 1998).

189

Jacquineau Azétsop 55 Simon J. Williams and Lee F. Monaghan, “Embodiment,” in Key Concepts in Medical Sociology, ed. Jonathan Gabe and Lee F. Monaghan (London: Sage, 2013), 63–67. http://sk.sagepub.com/books/key-concepts-in-medical-sociology-second-edition/i502.xml 56 Ibid., 66. 57 Institute of Development Studies,“IDS, Ebola and Extractive Industry,” Practice Paper in Brief, 21 February 2015, accessed October 2015. http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/5854/ ID562%20Online.pdf;jsessionid=72A6534EC19E3CA8425FF1717641F93B?sequence=1. 58 Williams and Monaghan,“Embodiment,” 66. 59 Chris Shilling,The Body in Culture,Technology and Society (London: Sage, 2005). 60 Williams and Monaghan,“Embodiment,” 63. 61 B. S. Turner, The Body and Society, 3rd ed. (London: Sage, 2008). 62 Fassin,“The Embodiment of Inequality,” s8. 63 Propositions,“Second Ordinary Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops”, 4–25 Proposition 51, Vatican Press Offce October 2009. 64 Ludovic Lado, “Socioanthropological Dimensions of the Fight against HIV and AIDS in Africa,” in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refections, Public Health and Social Transformation, ed. Jacquineau Azetsop (New York: Orbis Book,August 2016), 35. 65 Brooke G. Schoepf, “AIDS, History and Struggles over Meaning,” in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, ed. Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 15–28. 66 Paul Farmer,“An Anthropology of Structural Violence,” Current Anthropology 45, no. 3 (June 2004). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/382250?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents 67 Elias K. Bongmba, Facing a Pandemic.The African Church and the Crisis of AIDS (Wako: Baylor University Press, 2007), 46. 68 Ibid., 49. 69 Mary Jo Iozzio, Mary Doyle Roche, and Elsie M. Miranda, “Introduction/ Globalizing Solidarity,” inCalling for Justice Throughout the World: Catholic Women Theologians on the HIV/AIDS Pandemic, ed. Mary Jo Iozzio, Mary Doyle Roche, and Elsie M. Miranda (New York: Continuum 2008), 2. 70 Ibid., 3. 71 Laurenti Magesa, African Religion:The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1997), 78. 72 Mogobe B. Ramose, “Globalization and Ubuntu,” in The African Philosophy Reader, ed. Pieter H. Coetzee and A. P. J. Roux (London: Routledge, 2003), 622–642. John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (Nairobi: East African Education Publishers, 1969). Bénézet Bujo, Foundations of an African Ethics: Beyond the Universal Claims of Western Morality (New York: Herder & Herder Book, 2000). 73 Jacquineau Azétsop,“HIV Risks, Human Behavior and Social Conditions,” in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refections, Public Health and Social Transformation, ed. Jacquineau Azétsop (New York: Orbis Book,August 2016), 61. 74 Farmer, Pathologies of Power, 140. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 142. 77 Jean-Marc Éla, My Faith as an African (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988), 109. 78 Maria Cimperman, When God’s People have HIV/AIDS:An Approach to Ethics (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005), 79. 79 Ela, My Faith, 109. 80 Thomas Schubeck, Liberation Ethics: Sources, Models and Norms (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 184. 81 Azétsop, “HIV Risks.” 82 Solomon R. Benatar,“The HIV/AIDS Pandemic:A Sign of Instability in a Complex Global System.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 27, no. 2 (2002). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1076/j mep.27.2.163.2992 83 Fassin,“The Embodiment of Inequality”, s8. 84 Madison Power and Ruth Faden, Social Justice:The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy (London: Oxford University Press, 2008). 85 James W. Curran,“Foreword,” in Religion and the Public Health of the Public: Shifting the Paradigm, ed. Gary Gunderson and Jim Cochrane (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), xviii. 86 Ellen L. Idler,“Religion:The Invisible Social Determinant,” in Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health, ed. Ellen L. Idler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 5.

190

Christian theology and public health challenges 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium: n.1, accessed June 21, 2019. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1964-11-12,_Concilium_Vaticanum_I I,_Constitutio_Dogmatica_%27Lumen_Gentium%27,_EN.pdf 90 Maria Mercedes Rossi, “The Community Faith-Based Response to the Scourge of HIV/AIDS in sub)-Saharan Africa: An Example from Zambia,” in Refecting on 30 years of HIV and AIDS in Africa: Towards an Informed, Compassionate and Effective Response, ed. P. Mombé and E. Orobator (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013), 419–435. 91 Leonard Chiti, “Fighting AIDS from the Grass Roots: History, Theology, Values and Challenges of Home-Based Care in Zambia,” in HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refections, Public Health and Social Transformation, ed. Jacquineau Azétsop (New York: Orbis Book,August 2016), 376–388. 92 Ibid., 383. 93 Jean-Marc Éla, “Church-Sacrament of Liberation,” in African Synod. Documents, Refections, Perspectives, ed. Maura Brown (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996), 134. 94 Charlotte Bréda, Marie Deridder, and Pierre-Joseph Laurent, La modernité insécurisée: Anthropologie des conséquences de la mondialisation (Louvain-la-Neuve: L’Harmattan, 2013), 11. 95 Cahill,“Concluding Remarks,” 390.

References Azétsop, Jacquineau. “Epidemiological Research, Individualism and Public Health.” In New Directions for Catholic Social and Political Research. Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, edited by Guido Giacomo Preparata, 35–53. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Azétsop, Jacquineau. “HIV Risks, Human Behavior and Social Conditions.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refections, Public Health and Social Transformation, edited by Azétsop Jacquineau, 50–64. New York: Orbis Book, 2016. Baylis, Francoise, Nuala P. Kenny, and Susan Sherwin. “A Relational Account of Public Health.” Public Health Ethics 1, no. 3 (2008): 127–132. Beauchamp, Dan. “Public Health as Social Justice.” In New Ethics for the Public’s Health, edited by Dan Beauchamp and Bonnie Steinbock, 101–109. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Benatar, Solomon R. “The HIV/AIDS Pandemic: A Sign of Instability in a Complex Global System.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 27, no. 2 (2002): 163–177. Bénézet, Bujo. Foundations of an African Ethics: Beyond the Universal Claims of Western Morality. New York: Herder & Herder Book, 2000. Bongmba, Elias K. Facing a Pandemic.The African Church and the Crisis of AIDS. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007. Boozary, Andrew S., Paul E. Farmer, and Ashish K. Jha.“The Ebola Outbreak, Fragile Health Systems and Quality as a Cure.” JAMA 312, no. 18 (2014): 1859–1890. Bréda, Charlotte, Marie Deridder, and Pierre-Joseph Laurent. La modernité insécurisée: Anthropologie des conséquences de la mondialisation. Louvain-la-Neuve: L’Harmattan, 2013. Cahill, Lisa S. “Concluding Remarks.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refection, Public Health, Social Transformation, edited by Jacquineau Azetsop, 389–398. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016. Chiti, Leonard. “Fighting AIDS from the Grass Roots: History, Theology, Values and Challenges of Home-Based Care in Zambia.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refections, Public Health and Social Transformation, edited by Jacquineau Azétsop, 376–388. New York: Orbis Book, 2016. Cimperman, Maria. When God’s People Have HIV/AIDS: An Approach to Ethics. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005. Curran, James W.“Foreword.” In Religion and the Public Health of the Public. Shifting the Paradigm, edited by G. R. Gunderson and J. R. Cochrane, xviii. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Éla, Jean-Marc. My Faith as an African. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988. Éla, Jean-Marc. “Church as Sacrement of Liberation.” In African Synod. Documents, Refections, Perspectives, edited by Maura Brown, 131–139. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996. Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Farmer, Paul.“An Anthropology of Structural Violence.” Current Anthropology 45, no. 3 (2004): 305–325.

191

Jacquineau Azétsop Farmer, Paul, Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, and Salmaan Keshavjee. “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine.” PLoS Medicine 3, no. 10, e449 (2006): 1686–1691. Fassin, Didier.“The Embodiment of Inequality:AIDS as a Social Condition and the Historical Experience in South Africa.” Science and Society 4 (2003): S4–S9. Fassin, Didier. When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Galtung, Johan.“Cultural Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305. Heggenhougen, Harald K. “The Epidemiology of Inequity: Will Research Make a Difference?” Norsk Epidemiologi 15, no. 2 (2005): 127–132. Hunt, Paul, and Gunilla Backman. “Health Systems and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health.” Health and Human Rights 10, no. 1 (2008): 81–92. Idler, Ellen L. “Religion: The Invisible Social Determinant.” In Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health, edited by Ellen L. Idler, 203–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Institute of Development Studies.“IDS, Ebola and Extractive Industry.” Practice Paper in Brief 21. February 2015. http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/5854/ID562%20Online.pdf ;jsessionid=72A6534EC19E3CA8425FF1717641F93B?sequence=1. Iozzio, Mary Jo, Mary Doyle Roche, and Elsie M. Miranda. “Introduction/Globalizing Solidarity.” In Calling for Justice Throughout the World: Catholic Women Theologians on the HIV/AIDS Pandemic, edited by Mary Jo Iozzio, Mary Doyle Roche, and Elsie M. Miranda, 1–14. New York: Continuum, 2008. Johns XXXIII, P. “Mater et Magistra.” In Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, edited by O’Brien David and Shannon Tom, 135–170. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998, n. 65. Kalipeni, Ezekiel, Susan Craddock, and Jayati Ghosh.“Mapping the AIDS Pandemic in East and Southern: A Critical Review Africa.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, edited by Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong, 58–68. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Kesby, Mike. “Participatory Diagramming and Ethical and Practical Challenges of Helping Africans Themselves to Move HIV Work.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology?, edited by Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong, 217–228. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Krieger, Nancy, and Sally Zierler.“What Explains the Public’s Health?—A Call for Epidemiologic Theory.” Epidemiology 7, no. 1 (1996): 107–109. Krieger, Nancy.“A Vision of Social Justice as the Foundation of Public Health: Commemorating 150 Years of the Spirit of 1848.” American Journal of Public Health 88, no. 11 (1998): 1603–1606. Lado, Ludovic. “Socioanthropological Dimensions of the Fight Against HIV and AIDS in Africa.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Christian Refections, Public Health and Social Transformation, edited by Azetsop Jacquineau, 27. New York: Orbis Book, 2016. Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don’t. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Laurenti, Magesa. African Religion:The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1997. Lomas, Jonathan. “Social Capital and Health: Implication for Public Health and Epidemiology.” Social Science and Medicine 47, no. 9 (1998): 1181–1188. Lurie, Peter, Percy C. Hintzen, and Robert Lowe. “Socioeconomic Obstacles to HIV Preventions and Treatment in Developing Countries.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, edited by Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong, 204–212. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Lynch, John William, George Kaplan, and Jukka T. Salonen. “Why Do Poor People Behave Poorly? Variation in Adult Health Behaviours and Psychosocial Characteristics by Stages of the Socioeconomic Lifecourse.” Social Science and Medicine 44, no. 6 (1997): 809–820. Mann, Jonathan M.“Human Rights and AIDS:The Future of the Pandemic.” In Health and Human Rights: A Reader, edited by J. Mann, et al., 439–452. New York: Routledge 1999. Mann, Jonathan M.“Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights.” In New Ethics for the Public’s Health, edited by D. Beauchamp and B. Steinbock, 83–93. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Maritain, Jacques. The Person and the Common Good. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973. Marmot, Michael, and Richard Wilkinson. Social Determinants of Health. Oxford: University Press, 1999. Martínez-Vela, Carlos A. “World Systems Theory.” 2001. http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/ WorldSystem.pdf.Accessed March 10, 2020. Mbembé, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

192

Christian theology and public health challenges Mbiti, John. African Religions and Philosophy. Nairobi: East African Education Publishers, 1969. Powers, Madison, and Ruth Faden. Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Healthand Health Policy. London: Oxford University Press, 2008. Rahner, Karl. Theology, Anthropology, Christology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975. Rockhill, Beverly. “Theorizing About Causes at the Individual Level While Estimating Effects at the Population Level Implications for Prevention.” Epidemiology and Society 16, no. 1 (2005): 124–129. Rossi, Maria Mercedes. “The Community Faith-Based Response to the Scourge of HIV/AIDS in SubSaharan Africa: An Example from Zambia.” In Refecting on 30 Years of HIV and AIDS in Africa:Towards an Informed, Compassionate and Effective Response, edited by P. Mombé and Orobator, 419–435. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013. Schoepf, Brooke G. “AIDS, History and Struggles over Meaning.” In HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology, edited by Jayati Ghosh, Ezekiel Kalipeni, Susan Craddock, and Joseph R. Oppong, 15–28. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Schubeck, Thomas. Liberation Ethics: Sources, Models and Norms. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. Second Vatican Council. “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes.” 1965, n. 26. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_ 19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.Accessed March 10, 2020. Second Vatican Council. “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium: n. 1, 1964.” http:// www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1964-11-12,_Concilium_Vaticanum_II,_Constitutio_Do gmatica_%27Lumen_Gentium%27,_EN.pdf.Accessed March 10, 2020. Shilling, Chris. The Body in Culture,Technology and Society. London: Sage, 2005. Turner, Bryan S. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage, 2008. United Nations. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948.” http://www.un.org/en/documents/ udhr/.Accessed March 10, 2020. Wallack, Lawrence, and Regina Lawrence. Framing Interconnectedness.Talking About Public Health: Developing America’s Second Language.The Rockridge Institute. http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org. No publication date. Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice:A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Williams, Simon J., and G. Bendelow. The Lived Body: Sciological Themes, Embodied Issues. London: Routledge, 1998. Williams, Simon J., and Lee F. Monaghan. “Embodiment.” In Key Concepts in Medical Sociology, edited by Jonathan Gabe and Lee F. Monaghan, 63–67. London: Sage, 2013. World Health Organization.“Declaration of Alma-Ata.” 1978. http://www.who.int/publications/almaata_ declaration_en.pdf.Accessed March 2017. World Health Organization.“WHO Constitution.” 1946. http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_con stitution_en.pdf.Accessed March 10, 2020. World Health Organization.“The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion.”Adopted at the First International Conference on Health Promotion, Ottawa, 1986. http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/pre vious/ottawa/en/.Accessed March 10, 2020.

193

12 THEOLOGY AND RECONSTRUCTION IN AFRICA Julius Gathogo

Introduction The four main African theologies in the 21st century are: African theology (AT), whose main emphasis has been inculturation; black theology of South Africa (BT), whose main emphasis is largely seen as liberation; African women’s theology (AWT), whose main emphasis is largely seen as gender-liberation; and African Theology of Reconstruction (ATOR), whose main emphasis is postcolonial rebuilding of the continent from a theo-social perspective. With the demise of apartheid in 1994, black theology of South Africa has been less vocal on the concern for liberation but is still strong on sociocultural concerns. Matters of gender-liberation, justice, equality, land, politics, and human dignity have continued to dominate black theology of South Africa as in the case of other African theologies such as African women’s theology, and African theology that has been practiced since the 1960s. While the African Theology of Reconstruction (ATOR) was born in 1990,African women’s theology was born in 1989. At the Accra Conference of 1989, which was attended by 72 leading African women theologians, Oduyoye delivered her inaugural address that urged African Christianity to do a “two-winged”1 theology through which both women and men could communicate with God. In emphasizing that a bird cannot fy by one wing, she was attempting a reconstruction of the traditional approach to theologizing in Africa where one gender did theology almost to the exclusion of the other.With her two-winged theology, Mercy Oduyoye, like the so-called post-exilic (from biblical book of Ezra-Nehemiah) African theologians, such as Jesse Mugambi, Elelwani Farisani,Villumstad, Prince Debele, and Charles Villa-Vicencio, among others, was urging for inclusivity as opposed to exclusivity, unity as opposed to division, and respect in gender relations.Thus, even though she did not mention it, she was primarily working under a reconstructive motif. Hence the spirit of reconstruction was there long before 1990, when Jesse Mugambi introduced the concept during the General Committee of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) on March 30, 1990. Since then, theology and reconstruction or the African Theology of Reconstruction has become a critical paradigm that informs African Christianity in the 21st century as we wrestle with reconstructive concerns such as ecology, gender, education, politics, national wealth, new religious movements,Afro-Pentecostalism, troubled sexuality, refugees, hunger, food security, rewriting our histories, contextualization of theology, and so on. 194

Theology and reconstruction in Africa

Theological stages in African Christianity African Theology of Reconstruction (ATOR) can be said to be the ffth developmental stage2 in African Christianity: The frst stage is Christianity as propagated by the early Church fathers and the Apologists before the 4th century CE. For, as Church historian Zablon Nthamburi notes, tradition has it that St. Mark established the church in Egypt in 42 CE. It is no wonder then that North African Christianity produced theological giants such as Tertullian, St. Augustine of Hippo, and Cyprian, and that Alexandrian Christianity produced apologists such as Clement, Origen, and Athanasius.3 These observations make us realize that the theological gains of the Western church trace their genesis from these African geniuses who unoffcially began “African Christian Theology.”This encounter provided the African church with an early opportunity to engage in the untimely theological controversies such as those of Donatism and Arianism.4 The second stage of African Christianity is characterized by the Portuguese infuence of the 15th to the 17th centuries.5 Mugambi contends that the frst European missionaries in Africa (and in particular East Africa) were the Portuguese. Arriving in the 15th century, they brought Christianity to Africa under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church.6 This agrees with Beetham, who states that priests generally accompanied the Portuguese expeditions, and “served as Chaplains to the new trading settlements and as missionaries to neighboring African peoples.”7 According to Mugambi, the Portuguese mission to bring Christianity to Africa failed because the Portuguese were not mainly interested in spreading Christianity. They were not even primarily interested in Africa—“their main interest was trading with Asia, and Africa happened to have been ‘discovered’ while the new sea route via Southern Africa was being explored.”8 The third stage is epitomized by the brand of Christianity that was propagated by the early missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries. Certainly, the modern brand of Christianity in Africa today is an offshoot of that presented by the missionary expansion of the 19th century, even though it was culturally dressed in Western attire. Curiously, the planting of Christianity in the 19th century occurred simultaneously with colonization. Consequently, there is a very thin line between the missionary intention and the intention of the colonizers.9 In my opinion, the missionaries only wanted to take advantage of the health and transportation facilities made available by the colonizing powers after the Berlin Conference of 1884/5, and not to facilitate the colonization project of the European powers. My assessment is based on the Kenyan colonial experience where the missionaries represented the Africans even in the Legislative Council and thereby acted as the unoffcial opposition party to the colonial government.10 Archdeacon Walter Edwin Owen, for example, earned the derogatory title “Arch-demon” from his white colleagues because he fought for African rights and was deeply concerned about justice.11 Nevertheless, as Idowu reports, some missionaries served as “liaison offcers between the colonial Government and the people,” while others became “part-time civil servants” and some even fought in “a war of supremacy between tribes.”12 The legacy of 19th-century missionary expansionism within Africa and the covert support it gave toward the colonial project can, therefore, not be denied; yet most African theologians would agree that there would have been no written African theology if white missionaries had not brought the Bible into Africa. The fourth developmental stage is that represented by the theologies of adaptation, indigenization or inculturation, and liberation, which was indeed experienced after the Bible was translated into the indigenous languages of the diverse peoples of Africa. In translating the Bible into the 195

Julius Gathogo

African languages, the Africans were able to discover that the Bible is their story; it has relevant stories such as the Exodus event where the oppressed were freed.They could now see that God in Christ did not come to destroy the established rules (read cultures) and patterns of peoples’ lives (Matt 5:13–17), but to give them a better meaning, thereby strengthening them. Given this, African Christianity began to courageously challenge the missionary theologies and sought to install an African Christianity as experienced by Africans themselves, as a dialogue between African culture and the Gospel took shape.Additionally, the fourth stage not only saw the birth of adaptation and inculturation theologies, but it also saw the birth of theologies of liberation which, since the 1960s, have emphasized the Exodus metaphor as the dominant motif. In these theologies, the African people have been likened to the people of Israel on their way from the land of bondage in Egypt (referring to the colonial regime) to the Promised Land (referring to the anticipated liberation)—which can be interpreted to mean the offcial end of apartheid or, generally, European colonialism.As a motif, liberation has, therefore, been modeled on the Exodus. The ffth stage is heralded by the emergence of theologies of reconstruction in the early 1990s. These theologies are modeled on Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the Wall of Jerusalem, and build on the contention that the African “walls must now be reconstructed.”13 They are geared towards inclusivity as opposed to exclusivity; they are proactive rather than reactive; complementary rather than competitive; integrative rather than disintegrative; programme-driven rather than project-driven; people centred rather than institution-centred; deed-oriented rather than word-oriented; participatory rather than autocratic; regenerative rather than degenerative; future-sensitive rather than past-sensitive; co-operative rather than confrontational; consultative rather than impositional.14 Theologies of reconstruction not only advocate the end of neo-colonialism, but they also look forward to new articulations that will incorporate postcolonial African worldview, devoid of all the problems of pessimism and defeatism. They are oriented towards the construction of a free and democratic society and nurtured by dreams of returning to historic initiatives such as the African renaissance of Pan-Africanists. Typically, they are developmental in approach as they are characterized by calls for rebuilding, renaissance, renewal, development, and rebirth.As an African theology, ATOR fnds its sources in the Bible, science and technology, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), African Cultural and Religious Heritage, and the Pan-Africanist movement of the 20th century, among others. Farisani15 and Villumstad16 are correct in contending that “African Renaissance” and ATOR are two sides of the same coin, and that these terms are both renewal concepts with the latter being “invented” by African theologians and the former being “invented” by African politicians.17 For, in spite of the differences in their respective emphasis and focus, their philosophical roots are the same. Given the above, it is critical to take into consideration Kinoti’s (1997:115) defnition of reconstruction. She explains that the idea of reconstruction assumes a preexisting framework, and states that “a cluster of words associated with the verb reconstruct should quicken our vision of asking the Church in Africa to rise and do more purposefully and decisively.” She suggests that the concept of reconstruction implies a process of “review and then move”—to create something more suitable to the prevailing environment.18 Other terminological parallels are: rebuild, reassemble, re-establish, recreate, reform, renovate, regenerate, remake, remodel, restore, or re-organize. In turn, it can also be compared with a rethink, re-examine, re-do, or rebirth (cf. Nicodemus in Jn 3). 196

Theology and reconstruction in Africa

The genesis of ATOR ATOR can be said to have begun in February 1990 when the then President of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), Desmond Tutu, and the then General Secretary, the Rev. Dr. Jose B. Chipenda, invited Jesse Mugambi, the “undisputed founder of ATOR,” to present a theological refection on the changing global patterns following the end of the Cold War in 1989 and their relevance to Africa.As a result, Mugambi, who was a researcher with the AACC at that time, presented his (inaugural) chapter entitled “Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa”19 to the Nairobi meeting of the organization’s General Committee on March 30, 1990. At that meeting, Mugambi suggested that African theological articulation in postcolonial Africa must shift its theological emphasis from the Exodus motif to a reconstructive motif. He suggested that reconstruction is the new priority for African nations in the 1990s and beyond.20 He further contended that in the New World Order, the fgure of Nehemiah, unlike that of Moses, provides us with the mirror through which we can refect on our mission to reconstruct Africa out of the ruins of the wars “against racism, colonial domination, and ideological branding.”21 Indeed, since the early 1990s, when the reconstructive motif was mooted, ATOR was considered by many scholars as a signifcant development in African Christianity which could not be ignored or interpreted as a reactionary theology as Africans faced the dramatic changes on the eve of the 21st century. Its importance to postcolonial Africa was further confrmed in 2003 when the whole philosophy behind the concept and Theology of Reconstruction was endorsed as the theme for the Eighth Assembly of the AACC at Yaoundé, Cameroon in November 2003.22 Interestingly, the theme of this Assembly was “come let us rise and Build—Nehemiah 2:18.” Since then, the challenge has been how and when to develop well-documented publications with clear, discernible, and logical coherent descriptions of ATOR. Such works ought to document the history, the defnitions, the limitations, the sources, the approaches and methodologies, the future, and the fundamental concerns of ATOR—as a discipline that has emerged from within the African Christian theology. Furthermore, biblical doctrines such as Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology will need to be worked out in the light of such theologies of reconstruction, to put it on par with other systematic theologies. Certainly, the publication of this material is done to systematize ATOR.

Some methodological considerations Methods and approaches in doing ATOR include a re-reading of the text of Ezra-Nehemiah with the post-Cold War Africa in mind, a reading of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7) and the New Testament (NT) in general with a reconstructive bias, a multi-disciplinary approach,23 an ecumenical and an all-inclusive approach.This section will only focus on the seven most important methodologies, namely a historical inquiry, inclusivity, cultural-anthropological and philosophical inquiry, multi-disciplinarity, critical re-evaluation, storytelling, and contextualization.

Historical inquiry Historical inquiry is an important method in doing ATOR. Just as the historical context of reconstruction’s predecessor, liberation theology,24 has historical factors behind it, such as slavery, colonialism, racism, and other forms of marginalization,ATOR too has various historical factors behind it.They include the end of the Cold War in 1989, the end of apartheid in 1994, the end of colonialism and its neo-colonialist versions, missionary involvement, and Western ethnocentricism, among others. It is based on post-exilic Jewish history, and it is also informed by the historical 197

Julius Gathogo

events that followed the end of World War II, such as the reconstruction phase in post-war Europe (1945–1955).This makes historical inquiry a necessary and inevitable part of ATOR methodology. As one of its major approaches, the historical method seeks to correct the imbalances of the present by borrowing from the past and learning from past “errors” without necessarily confning itself to what Kä Mana calls “the dictatorship of the past.”25 The dictatorships of the past refers to the tendency to view the successes of modern life by purely building on the conviction that the “past was better than today” and that it will remain so.This pessimistic approach to life damages our ability to focus on the future, full of buoyancy of hope. In particular, the importance of African culture is sometimes overemphasized to show that the future is guaranteed only after drawing from ancient cultural practices.While culture is essential in our reconstructive phase, it need not be overemphasized, as if it remains static. It also means building our lives on criticizing the past without deliberate focus on the future. For example, while colonialism and its dehumanizing tendencies need to be blamed on some of Africa’s current woes, there is need to go beyond mere blame, but rather seek to reconstruct the many walls that it brought down.

Inclusivity Doing ATOR requires an all-inclusive approach.This means that theology has to recognize the ecumenical movement in Africa as a vital institution whose existence is not only indispensable due to the problems created by denominationalism, but “whose presence certainly would consolidate the theological resources of the different translations of the same message of Jesus Christ to Africa.”26 Certainly, this will help in safeguarding against religious exploitation by politicians who take advantage of the fragmentation within the church. Kobia’s view is thus in line with the whole philosophy behind the idea of an “all inclusive theology.” In practical terms, inclusivity means appreciating the plural nature of African society today. That is, appreciating both Jews and Gentiles, Makwerekwere or wageni-weusi (African immigrants to neighboring countries as political or economic refugees) and the indigenous peoples, Catholics and Protestants, men and women—as all are imago Dei (made in God’s image; cf. Gen 1:27–28 and Gal 3:28), hence deserving in human dignity and respect. It also means following in the footsteps of the Ghanaian philosopher, Kwame Appiah, who scoffs at what he calls racialist Pan-Africanism (which means “uniting”Africa from xenophobic and racist ideological perspectives), and declares that Africa is like “my father’s house in which there are many mansions”— which simply means that there are many ways of being an African.27 It thus means redefning the world given globalization and thereby appreciating that human beings are citizens of the world in as much as they are citizens of a particular country or village. Mugambi captures this view as follows: At the beginning of the third millennium, it is important to strongly affrm that African identity transcends race and religion.While it is true that the continent is the native home of one large community with numerous representatives in the Diaspora scattered throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, it is also true that there are cultural minorities who have made their home in the continent and interacted with their voluntary and involuntary hosts.The rich diversity of African culture and identity may become the salvation of the human race in the third millennium.28 Inclusivity also means following the example of Jesus, whose schema of societal reconstruction saw him minister to people with leprosy, the disabled, the imprisoned, the blind, and all other marginalized members of society. Curiously, the Jewish religious heritage was divided into two: 198

Theology and reconstruction in Africa

the haberim (those who keep the law punctiliously) and the am-haarets (those who are lax in keeping the law).While the Pharisees who regarded themselves as belonging to the frst group would not give room to the latter group as they considered them polluted, Jesus accommodated the two groups (Lk 4:16–20), as they are imago Dei. In particular, he healed those with leprosy (Lk 14:2–11). Adewale strongly builds the case for the inclusion of the physically and mentally challenged into the Kingdom of God29 and quotes Sportrio: Indeed many African societies (Benin or Togo just to mention some) consider the disabled as people to exclude,“underpeople.”They are said to be dammed, victims of bad luck: they are therefore refused by their families and community … In Africa, the disabled are mainly excluded, victims of social and economical discrimination.30 Sportrio states: In accordance to UN reports, one person out of 20 is disabled, 75% of the disabled come from developing countries. An estimate of African people with disabilities is very hard.There are no data available.WHO reports that in developing countries the disabled should be approximately 10–15%, which is signifcant if we bear in mind [that] Africa has 778 million people that are forecasted to be 1, 454, 000, 000 in 2025.31 An inclusive theology thus calls both the golah or zera haqodes (returning exiles, see Ezra 9:2, Nehemiah 7:6, 9:2) and the am haaretz (the people who remained as others went to exile, see Ezra 4:1, Nehemiah 4:11, 15, 9:24, 30) to team up and rebuild the many African walls that beg for our attention. Excluding some members of the society in rebuilding the community, under various pretexts, will go against Nehemiah’s rebuilding policy, as was demonstrated in the reconstruction of the wall of the great city of Jerusalem that had been destroyed 70 years before it was rebuilt. Indeed Nehemiah invited the 12 tribes of Israel to work as a team, as they reconstructed the destroyed wall.This position agrees with that of the late Pope, John Paul II, who noted in 1994: “The cross of Christ is too heavy for one person to carry; let us team up and carry it together.”32 As members of God’s family, we can carry the cross of Christ together.

Cultural-anthropological and philosophical inquiry A cultural-anthropological and philosophical inquiry must be employed in doing ATOR, for admittedly, the concept reconstruction is highly complex. It is complex because the word “reconstruction” belongs to the vocabulary of engineering, which implies that some elements in liberation theology will have to be retained in a new theology of reconstruction. As in the case of an engineer, new specifcations must be engineered in the new designs,“while some aspects of the old complex are retained in the new.”33 This means that, on its own, a theological analysis will not do justice to its complexity. Doing ATOR, therefore, requires the supplementary methodologies of a cultural-anthropological and philosophical inquiry—with the express intention that it will also look at some ancestral resources as crucial in its articulation. Certainly,ATOR cannot ignore the huge contribution of anthropological resources in Africa, as they can, indeed, be positively exploited to do a psychosocial reconstruction of Africa.Thus, in building the case for a cultural-anthropological and philosophical inquiry, it is critical to appreciate that appealing to the use of some ancestral resources such as African philosophies, proverbs, sayings, morality, and religiosity, among others, can also provide an authentic methodology in doing theology of reconstruction. Indeed, they are largely compatible with the Christian Testament. 199

Julius Gathogo

Multi-disciplinarity ATOR will require a multi-disciplinary approach.This means that it will have to borrow heavily from other related disciplines, especially on matters that concern the development of the people of Africa. To this end, theology will have to dialogue with the social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and environmental sciences, among others.As Mugambi mentions, reconstruction: Is a concept within the social sciences, which should be of interest to sociologists, economists, and political scientists. The multi-disciplinary appeal of reconstruction makes the concept functionally useful as a thematic focus for refection in Africa during the coming decades.34 As an integrative enterprise, ATOR will draw its resources from multi-disciplinary expertise “involving social scientists, theologians, philosophers, creative writers and artists, biological and physical scientists, builders and architects.”35 Given this, Dedji sees a theology of reconstruction as “an inter-faith and inter-denominational enterprise.”36 In a continent where wars, drought, famine, land mines, and other destructive effects of political instability chaotically affect men, women, and children, the reconstruction assignment cannot be accomplished in seclusion.This reconstruction paradigm thus implies “enabling theologians as well as Christians in places of public responsibility to contribute to the urgent reconstruction task, from perspectives informed by Christian faith and critique.”37

Critical re-evaluation Doing ATOR will involve a critical re-evaluation of biblical themes of liberation and salvation, especially that of the Exodus story. By so doing, we must realize that our actual historical experience of liberation from colonial dominance is being called into question:What do we mean when we speak of “liberation from oppression” in the context of Africa? Who is Pharaoh (the colonizer) in our respective situations, and who are the people in need of being released and where would they be expected to go? The need to re-evaluate the biblical paradigms of liberation-salvation has to be done from a conscious realization that those who claim to have liberated us from the yoke of colonialism are currently our oppressors. They have simply taken over the yoke of oppression from their colonial masters and are using the same strategy of divide and rule to manipulate and exploit their respective peoples. They used popular themes of liberation to arouse our people against the colonial masters,“but today, they are using the same tactics of shrewd politics to destroy our people.”38 Critical re-evaluation also calls the practitioners of theology in Africa today to revise their past theological positions and to assess and apply ethics in their respective discourses. In other words, they should re-examine themselves and assess the relevance or irrelevance of their respective articulations. Put in another way: does the theology that we articulate divide or unite Africa? Does our theology build or destroy Africa? Does it help us to address the human crisis facing tropical Africa, now and in the future?

Storytelling As early as 1941, Richard Niebuhr, the American theologian, had captured the importance of storytelling in doing theology when he noted that a lack of memory signals that the society is 200

Theology and reconstruction in Africa

not real and, therefore, it is not living up to the expected norms.39 Moreover, Niebuhr noted that “through Jesus Christ, Christians can and must turn again and again to history, making the sins and the faiths of their fathers and brothers their faiths and sins.”40 In his words, this type of remembering is “a moral event,” or “a conversion of memory”—which alone can make genuine solidarity possible.To Niehbur, it is never complete but remains “a permanent revolutionary moment.”41 It must continue because the past is illimitable and because sin enters anew in repeated efforts to separate us from God and our fellow members of the human race through the separation of our past from them. Similarly, James Cone, the black American theologian, holds that it is only by sharing our stories that we can hope to transcend the boundaries of our past and reach towards a shared future: Every people have a story to tell, something to say to themselves, their children, and to the world about how they think and live, as they determine their reason for being… When people can no longer listen to the other people’s stories, they become enclosed within their own social context … And then they feel they must destroy other people’s stories.42 It is clear, therefore, that storytelling is an important method in doing ATOR that cannot be downplayed. In any case, church history is replete with stories of great preachers who rose to prominence through careful use of oral illustrations of their environments.They include people such as John Chrysostom, Augustine, Ambrose, Spurgeon, Sangster, John Wesley, and Francis of Assisi.These oral illustrations transform the abstract into the concrete, the ancient into the modern, the unfamiliar into the familiar, the general into the particular, the vague into the precise, the unreal into the real, and the invisible into the visible.43 Clearly, any form of communication is aided by concrete imagery. This methodology of confessing stories of life experiences was used successfully during the South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was led by Desmond Tutu. It will no doubt help in the theo-social reconstruction of the whole of Africa in the 21st century.44 Given the ongoing discussion, it is clear, therefore, that storytelling is an important method in doing theology of reconstruction. Men, women, and children naturally love stories; seldom does a person grow so old as to not enjoy a story. Having seen how storytelling as a methodology in doing ATOR has a critical role, this has led us to several concerns: frst, considering that since the elders in the traditional African society were the ones who told stories around the camp fres, who in the 21st-century Africa should carry out the task with a view to reconstructing the society? Secondly, where and when should they be narrated? Third, if a person, who was involved in, say, the injustices of the past, tells a confessional story, how can one verify the authenticity of the story?

Some fundamental concerns ATOR addresses various concerns including human rights, legal reforms, nation-building, economic empowerment, democracy, and more excellent dialogue for members of the society.45 Furthermore, ATOR deals with a variety of themes, including healing creation, creative stewardship, church and HIV and AIDS, the liberation of African women, land, biotechnology, genetically modifed foods, food security, poverty, political pluralism, and the recovery of an African identity.46 For this chapter, I intend to survey four of them, namely, environment, patriarchy, HIV and AIDS, and violence. In particular, the environment is a fundamental concern; indeed, Africa is badly affected by environmental degradation, and the situation is getting worse day-by-day. By way of illustration, 201

Julius Gathogo

on April 1, 2003, the then Kenyan Deputy Minister for the environment, Professor Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate, appeared in the Kenyan media and decried the wanton destruction of certain indigenous tree species such as the Muiri (Pinus Africana). She noted that because the tree has medicinal value, it had become extinct in Kirinyaga District (of Kenya), and its bark had been harvested and exported by unscrupulous business people. Prof. Maathai went on to wonder: “If there were no trees, how would Jesus have been crucifed? Would he have been crucifed on stones?”47 Certainly, African Christians need to be concerned with environmental issues because they are badly affected by selfsh people who interfere with it. As Karungi has emphasized, Africa is more vulnerable to environmental degradation than any other continent.48 Karungi further cites a case where West African countries were blackmailed with money to have toxic-active waste from Europe dumped in their territorial waters.49 Such dumping of radioactive waste in developing countries needs to be closely watched because ordinary people know little or nothing about it; hence, the need for African Christians to watch out and get concerned! In particular, African Christians experience the harsh reality of deforestation and the deterioration of agricultural soil.50 In Africa, the increase in the use of pollutants in the environment, e.g. biodegradable and radioactive, is common.51 In this continent, general destruction, effuents, and pollutants, poor air quality, congestion, noise, dirt, and grime are all too common.That calls for African Christians to wake up, be informed, and take a front seat in working towards the creation of a better environment. In the African church today, we baptize with polluted water.We live on a planet where most people have abdicated their ethical responsibilities to the rest of creation.This abdication is seen even in the way that some of our cities are littered with plastic bags and simply things that negatively affect our environment. It is also seen in the way our drainage systems are mismanaged. It is no wonder to see that the drainage waste in some African cities is directed to the nearby rivers, thereby polluting the same water that we use.As African Christians, we should be agents of change and social transformation.African Christians must intervene in the environment and thereby ensure that, as human beings, we do not kill our world.Thus, the environmental crisis is a fundamental concern that calls the practitioners of theology in Africa today to act and stop our boat from capsizing in the sea of destruction. The deconstruction of patriarchy is another fundamental concern of ATOR. It is critical to appreciate that patriarchy is socially constructed and not biologically determined. Patriarchy is evident within cultural, political, religious, social, and economic systems and structures. It involves men dominating women and thereby hindering authentic growth within society. Surprisingly, patriarchy is dominant in most churches in Africa. It does not facilitate social or individual progress because it is based on a lack of gender sensitivity.As Ogundipe-Leslie states, “man does not want to abandon” patriarchal attitudes and feelings of male superiority because “male domination is advantageous to him.”52 Maria-Christina Ventura observes that the exercise of deconstruction involves questioning and confronting theology, which has traditionally been defned, in terms of one culture, as a refection on God, who is not only masculine but also hierarchical and absolute.53 It, therefore, involves breaking down the elements of traditional theological thinking to analyze, destabilize, and disqualify them from speaking for all people and all cultures.Ventura furthermore adds that deconstruction provides an opportunity for reconstruction, working out new models that “can subvert the racist dynamic present in traditional theology and the culture to which it belongs so that hierarchies cease to exist.”54 HIV and AIDS is another major concern that confronts a theology of reconstruction. Certainly, this is a new Kairos moment for Africa: 202

Theology and reconstruction in Africa

The time has come.The moment of truth has arrived. Africa has been plunged into a crisis that is shaking the foundations, and there is every indication that the crisis has only just begun and that it will deepen and become even more threatening in the months to come … At this moment in Africa, the church is about to be shown up for what it is, and no cover will be possible.55 Equally, violence (general and domestic) is another fundamental concern. First, domestic violence is a common occurrence, especially within patriarchal African societies, wherein some cultures simply tolerate it. Hence, traditional Kikuyu culture, for example, allowed a husband to “discipline” his wife or wives as he pleases, this being expected from every “real man.” Unfortunately, this form of violence continues to the present day albeit in different forms, including physical assault, rape of a girl child by a relative (sometimes leading to Sexually Transmitted Illnesses such as HIV and AIDS), and in some extreme cases, men or women murdering their spouses during domestic disagreements. Such violence can be linked to alcoholism, drugs, and cultural expectations, among others.56 The second form of violence is that of ethnic, xenophobic, or internal warfare. In this, Independent African states cannot be exonerated from their contribution to the suffering of their peoples. Uganda, from the days of Idi Amin, has been stained with blood.The civil war between Biafra and Nigeria in 1967 left at least a million people dead.57 Likewise, the confict in the Great Lakes Region has its share of brutality. Civil wars in Chad and Rwanda claimed thousands and millions of lives, respectively.Whenever there is war, women and children are exposed to all kinds of violence, including sexual abuse.

Critiquing theology of reconstruction Inadequacy in addressing personal versus social reconstruction While reconstruction has a strong spiritual dimension, especially when considered against Nehemiah’s pietistic stand,58 from an evangelical perspective, it appears to overemphasize “social reconstruction” over that of “individual reconstruction.” And this may cause one to wonder: “Doesn’t real development start from the heart?”Yes, Mugambi, in particular, has addressed the case of the personal reconstruction as a starting point, but one feels that he should have prodded further.59 In any case, understanding social reconstruction as the panacea for all the ills of Africa without tackling the issue of personal responsibility and radical change of the individual, may, if unchecked, lead to the weakening of the Christian Gospel.

Failure to grasp Nehemiah’s political motivation ATOR, as currently propounded by the likes of Villa-Vicencio, Mugambi (1991, 1995, 2003), Kinoti (1997), and Farisani (2004), among others, has failed to grasp the political motivations behind Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem. Nehemiah was driven by the need to protect his “own people,” who would have been vulnerable to attack by their enemies without the protection of the wall (cf. Nehemiah 7:1–5). Likewise,African leaders have, in several cases, found themselves trying to “protect their people,” their tribes, clans, and nation states from marginalization or oppression. However, the motivation to “protect my people” has mixed fortunes in Africa. For example, in some countries, it has led to the ideology of “my people versus others.” This has resulted in a bigoted philosophy that breeds tribalism, racism, suspicion, divisions, and even death.Who knows? The Rwandan genocide of 1994 could have had such an unfortunate motivational setting. Thus, the failure by the proponents of post-exilic theology to identify 203

Julius Gathogo

Nehemiah’s political ideology behind his rebuilding project necessitates the case for a new hermeneutical approach to the text of Ezra-Nehemiah.This failure to identify Nehemiah’s political motivation does not mean ATOR is not relevant or faulty. Rather, it means that it would be stronger if we take cognizance of that fact.

Failure to be explicit on family reconstruction ATOR currently fails to address itself explicitly to the need for a family reconstruction. For what do we do about the skyrocketing divorce cases, especially in South Africa? What do we do about the increasing number of single mothers in Africa today? Even though Mugambi, in his treatise Social Reconstruction, and Theology, has talked of the need for moral reconstruction, he has failed to explicitly focus on family reconstruction, which is certainly a different area altogether.60 For family, reconstruction is the backbone to a strong church, a strong nation, a solid continent and a sturdy faith in the God of Christendom.

Making ATOR appear like SATOR Charles Villa-Vicencio, one of the chief proponents of ATOR, errs by appearing to be doing a South African Theology of Reconstruction (SATOR) rather than ATOR, thereby “separating” it from the rest of Africa by implying that the theology of reconstruction is only meant for South Africa after apartheid.61 He blunders greatly when he refuses to draw his experience from the rest of Africa when working out his theology of reconstruction. Critically, his approach amounts to cultural arrogance by thinking that some African countries are radically different from others. By making some African countries appear to be practicing unique theologies that are supposedly separate from the rest, one may treat it as a post-apartheid hangover being sneaked into post-Cold War Africa.This temptation must be resisted to save the true image of our mother Africa. In any case, it can be a new form of propaganda aimed at deceiving some people to feel different about others, yet Africans were one people who knew no boundaries before the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. In any case, globalization has made us one despite its shortcomings.This danger needs to be addressed well in advance, as it can be used to fragment Africa even further. Villa-Vicencio’s approach reminded me of a time when I was an assistant lecturer in the African Theology Department in 2003 at the then University of Natal (later in 2004 renamed the University of KwaZulu-Natal), South Africa. On September 28, 2003, I went to teach a third-year Bachelor of Theology class; and as the lecturing proceeded, we got into a very heated debate on African Christology. My students were from across Africa, although the majority were from South Africa. What shocked me was the insistence by South African students that John S. Mbiti’s concepts of culture, as seen in his books such as African Religions and Philosophy, are different from those of South Africans as he comes from Africa, North of Limpopo, specifcally Kenya. In their view, “Africa” and South Africa are radically different. I pleaded with them to see that notion as a divide and rule policy of our time that should be avoided like apartheid. It was a struggle that reminds me of the danger of distorted information.

Failure to appreciate the “Other” Maluleke’s bold criticism of the reconstruction project cannot be ignored even if it appears exclusive. In reacting to the proposal for a shift of paradigm from liberation to reconstruction,

204

Theology and reconstruction in Africa

Maluleke62 sees “hypocrisy” as inherent in the call for a shift from “a theological no” to a “theological yes.”63 He states: The hypocrisy obtains from the assumption and impression made by our inviters that they too have been involved in the same “resistance theology” in which all have been involved.As already indicated above, both these impressions and assumptions are inaccurate and misleading. Maluleke furthermore notes that the proposal for a shift from “resistance” to “reconstruction” must be understood within the context of a sustained rejection of black and African theologies of liberation by liberal theologians. For this reason, he argues, black and African theologies may understandably view both the “invitation” and the “contextual analysis” inherent in the invitation with suspicion. He cited the case of the early 1970s when contextual theology became the vogue, stating that “liberal white theologians were the frst to embrace it with a view to a local adaptation.” The same applies to “Latin American Liberation Theology … What is signifcant is that South African liberal theology has, for various reasons, largely ignored or even resisted home-grown black and African theologies.”64 It is clear, however, that Maluleke erred in his general criticism as he failed to appreciate that some proponents of a theology of reconstruction, such as Jesse Mugambi, were not only practitioners of liberation theology, who even published on it,65 but more importantly activists for a just South Africa and the then Ian Smith-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). I remember when I was in Kiburu Secondary School in Kenya, (from 1983 to 1986), a few of us used to write poems against apartheid in our school journal, The Kiburian Heights.We were nicknamed anti-apartheid crusaders and were respected for our belief in equality for all. At times, we could participate in student demonstrations whenever injustices in Rhodesia and South Africa were screened on the local television. Also, some of us participated in the struggle against apartheid through prayer, demonstrations, and publications, among others. In any case, failure to value ATOR’s inclusivity or to appreciate the “other” contributors will only help in confning us to “other” forms of “dictatorships of the past,” which will not augur well for postcolonial Africa. In any case, a failure to appreciate the “other” goes against the principle of the Gospel of love (Mk 12:28–30), as Christ set it out.The struggle against apartheid should thus not be wrongly seen as exclusively South African but as a Pan-African phenomenon, if not a global issue. Certainly, injustice somewhere is injustice everywhere.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to demonstrate the concerns of ATOR in postcolonial Africa.The purpose of the chapter was to make it clear that African Christianity has moved from the frst stage, i.e., Christianity as propagated by the early Church Fathers and the Apologists, to the ffth developmental stage, which is the reconstruction phase. In attempting to show the nature of the reconstruction phase in African Christianity in the 21st century, I have analyzed some methodological considerations in this post-exilic theology, namely historical inquiry, inclusivity, cultural-anthropological and philosophical inquiry, multi-disciplinarity, critical re-evaluation, storytelling, and contextualization. I have also analyzed some of ATOR’s fundamental concerns, which include food security in Africa, poverty alleviation in Africa, the recovery of African identity, environment, the liberation of African women, HIV and AIDS, plus violence, with special attention to the last four.

205

Julius Gathogo

After offering a critique of the theology of reconstruction, the chapter was able to demonstrate that, in the reconstruction phase, Africa has to appreciate that we are in a rare moment of grace that must be utilized for the betterment of the continent. It is a moment to rebuild our “broken walls” (Nehemiah 2:18). These walls include economy, xenophobia, ethnocentricism, and racism. It also includes poverty, disease, and ignorance. Certainly, it is a moment of saying “No to Violence”—physical or verbal. It is a season of grace when Africans are fnding their identity amidst the effects of globalization. It is a moment when all the minor theological motifs such as reconciliation, inculturation, market-theology, rural-ministry, and liberation operate simultaneously within the dominant paradigm of reconstruction, which is the overriding motif in African theology of the 21st century. Seen in this way, African Christianity has a critical role in reshaping and rebuilding modern-day Africa.

Notes 1 J. Nyambura Njoroge, “The Missing Voice: African Women doing Theology,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 77. 2 G. H. Muzorewa, The Origins and Development of African Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985), 22, distinguishes the following three stages in the presence of Christianity in Africa: • The infant Jesus as a refugee in Egypt; • Christianity in Africa under the Portuguese prowess of the 15th to the 17th century; • The dramatic 19th-century awakening.

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

He, however, fails to identify the brand of Christianity that was propagated by the likes of Augustine, Tertullian, and Cyprian, among others, as the real frst stage of Christianity in Africa. Again, it is not clear whether the coming of infant Jesus as a refugee in Egypt can be seen as the inauguration of Christianity, as there was no systematic attempt to do so. Jesus was simply an “infant refugee” and not a refugee in the strict sense of the word. Z. Nthamburi, The African Church at the Crossroads (Nairobi: Uzima, 1991), 49. It is saddening to note, however, that the rise of Islam in the 7th century CE changed the whole image as the forceful Islam from North Africa overwhelmed Christianity. Muzorewa, The Origins and Development of African Theology, 22. Jesse Mugambi, African Christian Theology:An Introduction (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1989), 21f. T. A. Beetham, Christianity and the New Africa (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), 7–8. Mugambi, African Christian Theology, 22. Mugambi, African Christian Theology, 33. G. Githiga, The Church as the Bulwark against Authoritarianism (Oxford: Regnum, 2001), 28. Githiga, The Church as the Bulwark against Authoritarianism, 217. Bolaji Idowu in C. G. Baeta, ed., Christianity in Tropical Africa. Studies Presented and Discussed at the International African Seminar, University of Ghana April 1965 (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 424. Jesse Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction (Nairobi: EAEP, 1995). Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction, xv). E. B. Farisani, Transformation and Renewal in Contemporary Africa (Rom. 12:1-2), in Mugambi, J. N. K. and Smit, J.A. (eds.), Text and Context in New Testament Hermeneutics (Nairobi:Acton, 2004), 56–79, 56ff. S. Villumstad, Social Reconstruction of Africa: Perspectives from Within and Without (Nairobi: Acton, 2005), 6. See Yoweri Museveni in E. M. Katongole, “African Renaissance and the Challenge of Narrative Theology in Africa: Which Story/Whose Renaissance?” in Katongole, E. (ed.), African Theology Today (Scranton:The University of Scranton, 2002), 208–223, 208. See also T. Mbeki,“Prologue,” in Makgoba, M.W. (ed.), African Renaissance:The New Struggle (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Mafube and Tafelberg, 1999), xix. Hannah Wangeci Kinoti, “The Church in the Reconstruction of Our Moral Self,” in Mugambi, J. N. K. (ed.), The Church and Reconstruction of Africa:Theological Considerations (Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, 1997), 115–128, 115.

206

Theology and reconstruction in Africa 19 Jesse Mugambi , “The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa,” in Chipenda, JB, Karamaga, A, Mugambi, J. N. K., and Omari, C. K. (eds.), The Church of Africa:Towards a Theology of Reconstruction (Nairobi:A.A.C.C., 1991), 29–50. 20 Mugambi,“The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa,” 36. 21 Jesse Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction (Nairobi:Acton, 2003), 128. 22 Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, 210. 23 This means that theology of reconstruction will have to borrow heavily from other related disciplines, especially on matters that concern the development of the people of Africa. Theology will have to dialogue with the Physical Sciences and Social Sciences, such as Sociology, Anthropology, and Environmental Sciences, among others. 24 A reference to a theology of liberation as a predecessor theology to reconstruction does not mean that a theology of liberation in Africa is no more; rather I mean that reconstruction has become the dominant motif in the postcolonial Africa while other paradigms such as inculturation, liberation, markettheology, and reconciliation, among others, have become minor paradigms; and that due to its inclusive approach reconstruction theology embraces all other motifs.A theology of liberation can now be done within the more dominant reconstructive motif just as reconstruction theology has been done, since the 1960s within liberation theology, albeit unconsciously. 25 Kä Mana, L’Afrique va-t-elle mourir? Bousculer l’imaginaire africain: Essai d’éthique politique (Paris: Cerf, 1991), 79. 26 Samuel Kobia, “The Next Fifty Years,” in Crouch, M (ed.), A Vision of Christian Mission (Nairobi: NCCK, 1993), 230–251, 232. 27 K. A. Appiah, In My Father’s House:Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 28 Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, 112f. 29 O.A.Adewale,“The Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14: 15-24):A lesson in inclusiveness,” Theologia Viatorum: Journal of Religion in Africa, 31(1) (2007): 19. 30 Sportrio 2002.“Africa Project.” www.sportrio.org (accessed 26 May 2017). 31 Sportrio in Adewale,“The Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14: 15-24),” 19. 32 Julius Gathogo, The Truth About African Hospitality: Is There Hope for Africa? (Mombasa: Salt, 2001), 91. 33 Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction, 12. 34 Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction, 2. 35 Valentin Dedji, Reconstruction and Renewal in African Christian Theology (Nairobi:Acton, 2003), 4. 36 Dedji, Reconstruction and Renewal in African Christian Theology, 5. 37 Dedji, Reconstruction and Renewal in African Christian Theology, 5. 38 Samuel,“The Next Fifty Years,” 233. 39 R. Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 84ff. 40 Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, 108. 41 Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, 84ff. 42 James Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 102–103. 43 Gathogo, The Truth About African Hospitality, 84. 44 For further discussion, see Julius Gathogo, “Researchspace.ukzn.ac.za.” Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. June 18, 2019. http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10413/151/ Gathogo_Julius_. 45 See Charles Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 46 See Mary Getui and E. Obeng, eds.,Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi:Acton, 1999). 47 http://www.eastandard.net/national/ nat01042003005.htm 48 T. A. B. Karungi, “The Church’s Role in Environment Protection,” in Agbasiere, J.T. and Zabajungu, B. K. (eds.), Church Contribution to Integral Development, 230–261 (Eldoret, Kenya: AMECEA Gaba Publications, 1989), 231. 49 Karungi,“The Church’s Role in Environment Protection,” 231. 50 M. L. Daneel,“African Christianity and Environmental Reform: Zimbabwean Case Study” in Phiri, I. A., Ross, K.A. and Cox, J.A. (eds.), The Role of Development, Peace and Reconstruction: Southern perspectives (Nairobi:All African Conference of Churches, 1996), 215–236, 215ff. 51 Karungi,“The Church’s Role in Environment Protection,” 230. 52 M. Ogundipe-Leslie, Recreating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations (Trenmton: African World Press, 1994), 35.

207

Julius Gathogo 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/ ipc/echoes/echoes-17-06.html/ (accessed 26 May 2017). http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/ what/ipc/echoes/echoes-17-06.html/ Kairos Document, 1986, 1 R. A. Shisanya, “Child Abuse and Neglect in Kenya,” in Getui, M. N. and Obeng, E. A. (eds.), 2003, 151–171. Nthamburi, The African Church at the Crossroads. Nehemiah’s pietistic stand is seen in his being a prayerful man. Furthermore, his encouraging statements to the builders such as,“The God of heaven will give us success …” Nehemiah 2:20, attests to this. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction. Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction. Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction. Tinyiko Sam Maluleke, “The Proposal for a Theology of Reconstruction: A Critical Appraisal,” Missionalia 22, no. 3 (1994): 245–258, 247. Villa-Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction, 1. Maluleke,“The Proposal for a Theology of Reconstruction,” 246–247. See Mugambi, African Christian Theology, Mugambi, “Liberation and Theology,” in WSCF Dossier 5 (Geneva: n.p. 1974).

References Adewale, O. A. 2007. “The Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14: 15–24): A Lesson in Inclusiveness.” Theologia Viatorum: Journal of Religion in Africa 31(1), 1.15. Appiah, K. A. 1992. In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Baeta, C. G. (ed.). 1968. Christianity in Tropical Africa. Studies Presented and Discussed at the International African Seminar, University of Ghana April 1965 (London: Oxford University Press). Beetham, T.A. 1967. Christianity and the New Africa (New York: Frederick A. Praeger). Cone, James. 1975. God of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press). Daneel, M. L. 1996. “African Christianity and Environmental Reform: Zimbabwean Case Study.” In: Phiri, I. A., Ross, K. A., and Cox, J. A. (eds.), The Role of Development, Peace and Reconstruction: Southern Perspectives, pp. 215–236 (Nairobi:All African Conference of Churches). Deji,Valentin. 2003. Reconstruction and Renewal in African Christian Theology (Nairobi: Acton). Farisani, E. B. 2004. Transformation and Renewal in Contemporary Africa (Rom. 12:1–2). In: Mugambi, J. N. K. and Smit, J.A. (eds.), Text and Context in New Testament Hermeneutics, pp. 56–79 (Nairobi:Acton). Gathogo, J. 2001. The Truth About African Hospitality: Is There Hope for Africa? (Mombasa: Salt). Getui, M. and E. Obeng (eds.). 1999. Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi: Acton). Githiga, G. 2001. The Church as the Bulwark Against Authoritarianism (Oxford: Regnum). http://www.wcccoe.org/wcc/what/ipc/echoes/echoes-17-06.html/ (accessed 26 May 2017). The Kairos Theologians. 1986. The Kairos Document: Challenge to the Church: A Theological Comment on the Political Crisis in South Africa ( Johannesburg: Skotavville Publishers). Karungi,T.A. B. 1989.“The Church’s Role in Environment Protection.” In:Agbasiere, J.T. and Zabajungu, B. K. (eds.), Church Contribution to Integral Development, pp. 230–261 (Eldoret, Kenya: AMECEA Gaba Publications). Katongole, E. (ed.). 2002. African Theology Today (Scranton:The University of Scranton), pp. 208–223. Kinoti, Hannah Wangeci. 1997. “The Church in the Reconstruction of Our Moral Self.” In: Mugambi, J. N. K. (ed.), The Church and Reconstruction of Africa:Theological Considerations, pp. 115–128 (Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches). Kobia, Samuel. 1993. “The Next Fifty Years.” In: Crouch, Margaret (ed.), A Vision of Christian Mission, pp. 11–23 (Nairobi: NCCK). Maluleke, Tinyiko Sam. 1994. “The Proposal for a Theology of Reconstruction: A Critical Appraisal.” Missionalia 22(3), pp. 245–258. Mana, K. 1991. L’Afrique va-t-elle mourir? Bousculer l’imaginaire africain: Essai d’éthique politique (Paris: Cerf). Mbeki, T. 1989. “Prologue.” In: Makgoba, M. W. (ed.), African Renaissance: The New Struggle, i–vii (Johannesburg: Mafube/Cape Town: Tafelberg). Mugambi, J. N. K. 1974.“Liberation and Theology.” In: WSCF Dossier 5 (Geneva: pp. 33–49).

208

Theology and reconstruction in Africa Mugambi, J. N. K. 1989. African Christian Theology:An Introduction (Nairobi: Heinemann). Mugambi, J. N. K. 1991.“The Future of the Church and the Church of the Future in Africa.” In: Chipenda, J. B., Karamaga,A., Mugambi, J. N. K., and Omari, C. K. (eds.), The Church of Africa:Towards a Theology of Reconstruction, pp. 29–50 (Nairobi:A.A.C.C.). Mugambi, J. N. K. 1995. From Liberation to Reconstruction:African Christian Theology after the Cold War (Nairobi: EAEP). Mugambi, J. N. K. 2003. Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction (Nairobi: Acton). Muzorewa, G. H. 1985. The Origins and Development of African Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis). Niebuhr, R. 1941. The Meaning of Revelation (New York: Macmillan). Njoroge, J. N. 1997. “The Missing Voice: African Women Doing Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99, pp. 77–83. Nthamburi, Zablon. 1991. The African Church at the Crossroads (Nairobi: Uzima). Ogundipe-Leslie, M. 1994. Recreating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations (Trenton, NJ: African World Press). Shisanya, R. A. 1999. “Child Abuse and Neglect in Kenya.” In: Getui, M. N. and Obeng, E. A. (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays, pp. 151–171 (Nairobi:Acton Publishers). Sportrio. 2002.“Africa Project.” www.sportrio.org (accessed 26 May 2017). Villa-Vicencio, C. 1992. A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Villumstad, S. 2005. Social Reconstruction of Africa: Perspectives from Within and Without (Nairobi: Acton).

209

13 DOING THEOLOGY ECUMENICALLY Some African perspectives on ecumenical theology Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

Introduction The 20th century has been hailed as an ecumenical century. In protestant theological circles, this period was largely characterized by an ecumenical excitement evident in diverse ecumenical networks and conversations, most notably through the auspices of the World Council of Churches (WCC). However, the literature on the ecumenical movement in the 21st century has been punctuated by commentary on the so-called ecumenical winter.1 This is notwithstanding the remarkable outcomes of institutional ecumenism through ecumenical dialogues at both multilateral and bilateral levels2 as well as cooperation amongst churches in matters of Faith and Order,3 mission,4 the social responsibility of the church, theological education,5 and church unity. Within the African context, recent contributions on ecumenism pay attention to the impact of changing religious (ecclesial) landscapes on ecumenism in Africa and the signifcance of local forms of ecumenism.6 The purpose of this chapter is to explore the notion of ecumenical theology concerning the changing ecclesial landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa. Cognizant of the critique leveled against African theologians who present African Christianity and African Christian theology in ways that neglect early North African developments,7 this chapter nevertheless focuses on sub-Saharan Africa not least because it addresses developments within this geographic region. Further, I will focus on academic refections on ecumenical theology while being mindful of the many levels to ecumenical activity, including institutional and grassroots ecumenism amongst others. This chapter asks explicitly what doing theology ecumenically might look like within an African context.Thus formulated, this contribution argues for ecumenical theology as a selfconsciously contextual and constructive refection and search for the common Christian theological heritage in an eschatological perspective amidst diverse theological traditions and Christianity. This necessarily begs a decolonial imagination given the Western-centric nature of dominant ecumenical discourse through the agency of North American and European church leaders, theologians, and ecumenical institutions.8 Furthermore, notwithstanding postmodernity’s critique of modern epistemologies not least in theology,9 this contribution draws on decoloniality as a category of analysis to foreground an African ecumenical hermeneutic that stresses “dialogue, praxis, and existential encounters.”10 Decoloniality may well facilitate one way of framing 210

Doing theology ecumenically

the relationship between contextuality and the theological notion of catholicity. As Aníbal Quijano argues, decoloniality “is needed to clear the way for new intercultural communication, for an interchange of experiences and meanings.”11 Therefore, in its constructive contribution, this chapter will engage with Ivana Noble’s intuition. Namely, that ecumenical theology is much more than “the process, methods, and results of dialogues between different ecclesial bodies.”12 The argument of this chapter is developed in four sections. The frst section is devoted to a conceptual analysis of the notion of oikouménē in an attempt to disavow the term’s imperial trajectory.The section also highlights notable achievements of conciliar ecumenism amidst widespread commentary of the “ecumenical winter.” This is followed by an excursus on African ecumenical initiatives to unravel the close connection between church and theology in modern African Christian theology.The third section discusses the challenges facing ecumenism in Africa’s changing religious and ecclesial landscapes with specifc reference to the complexity and vast diversity of Christianities. In the fourth section, I will highlight the broad contours of ecumenical theology in Africa. In so doing, I ask whether there is a perceived need for ecumenical unity in Africa. Differently stated, is it still necessary for Christian churches to ponder their Christian relatedness and belonging, and what role can ecumenical theology as sketched here play?

The oikouménē: unity as an imperative of the Gospel and the reality of disunity The ecumenical movement derives its name from the Greek word οἰκουμένη (oikouménē) and has come to mean the quest of Christian churches for the visible unity of the church predicated on Jesus’ prayer “that they may be one” (John 17:21).Among the ancient Greeks, the term ecumenical carried a geographical connotation namely, to refer to the “inhabitable (parts of the) earth.”That is the supposed “total habitable world.”13 Under the Romans, the term oikouménē, translated as orbis terrarum in Latin, carried an imperial meaning beyond the geographic sense. This usage carried political connotations since it designated the oikouménē to mean the “world as an administrative unit” under Roman imperial rule.That oikouménē was the “whole world,” which Caesar Augustus ordered to be taxed (Luke 2:3). Among Jews, the oikouménē denoted much more than the temporal Roman imperium but referred to God’s rule.14 It is noteworthy that in its early period, the church’s centers of power were those of the beleaguered Roman Empire. Barbara Rossing thus suggests that in the New Testament, the oikouménē “represents the world under Roman imperial hegemony.”15 Oikouménē is also used to refer to the seven ancient councils in church history.The frst of these was the Council of Nicaea which was convened by Emperor Constantine. Accordingly, Nicaea carried a double meaning, namely, that of “for the general church as a whole” and “imperial in scope and authority.”16 However, concerning the council of Chalcedon (451) for example, one may retrospectively question whether the representative aspect of oikouménē implied in ecumenical councils may well pose “a danger of postulating a part of the whole as the ‘whole’ of the oikouménē.”17 From the 11th century to the period shortly before Vatican II, the term ecumenical carried political connotations in Roman Catholic circles. It implied a view of the oikouménē as part of the world under the spiritual rule of the Pope. Concerning the modern ecumenical movement, the WCC Central Committee that met in Rolle in 1951 observed that the term oikouménē “relates to everything to the whole task of the whole church to bring the gospel to the whole gospel.”18 The 1975 WCC Nairobi Assembly would thus defne the ecumenical task as “the whole church bringing the whole gospel to the whole person in the whole world.” The organizers of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910 had considered the use of the term oikouménē in the naming of the conference, but this was objected to 211

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

on the basis that there was no ecclesiastical unity at the time to warrant such usage. Edinburgh 1910 has gone down in history as the birth of the ecumenical movement. From this conference “fowed streams that carried the movement’s continuing priorities of common witness (International Missionary Conference), common service (Life and Work) and common fellowship (Faith and Order).”19 The subsequent merger of the movements of Life and Work and Faith and Order to form the WCC in 1948 marked an important stage for the ecumenical movement and its search for the visible unity of the Christian church.The impact of Vatican II (1962–1965) on the principal orientation of the Roman Catholic Church from an “ecumenism of return” to an “ecumenism of recognition” was no less signifcant. The theological foundation of this shift was outlined in the documents of Vatican II, especially Unitatis Redintegratio and Lumen Gentium.The latter noted that the Church of Christ “subsists in the Catholic Church … although many elements of sanctifcation and of truth are found” in other churches and ecclesial communities.20 Arguably, this doctrine of the elementa ecclesiae which provides an inclusive image of the church may be interpreted as a 20th-century reception of John Calvin’s doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae (traces of the church).21 Given the previous Roman Catholic identifcation of the creedal “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” with the “Roman” church,Vatican II and the Roman Catholic’s consequent membership in the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission marked a major advance in Roman Catholic ecumenical thought. Mention must be made of the signifcance of the contribution of the Eastern Orthodox Church to the ecumenical movement. In its initial stages, conciliar ecumenism as represented by the WCC was a typically Western affair until the merger of the International Missionary Council with the WCC to become the latter’s Commission for World Mission and Evangelism at New Delhi in 1961. Nevertheless, given the appearance of general missionary conferences in several places in Africa during the early 1900s, some argue that the ecumenical movement in Africa predates Edinburgh 1910.22 While this may be the case, ecumenical initiatives within the African context found broader expression and self-conscious institutional expression chiefy through the All Africa Conference Churches (AACC).The AACC is a protestant ecumenical body that was formally inaugurated in 1963 in Kampala, Uganda, as a “fellowship of consultation and co-operation among churches in Africa.”23 The AACC has since played a crucial role in the search for unity among its member churches and associate members such as National Councils of Churches. Before discussing what it might mean to do ecumenical theology in Africa’s changing ecclesial landscapes, it is germane to offer brief remarks on the modern African ecumenical initiatives.

Mission and unity: early African ecumenical initiatives The early African ecumenical initiatives illumine the missionary legacy of having planted a divided church in Africa.24 Ironically, it was the exigencies of the “mission feld” that “bred cooperation and comity”25 through various ecumenical initiatives that predate the Edinburgh 1910. These include United missionary conferences that were held in Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1900, in Congo (1902), in Johannesburg (1904), and Kenya (1908). In Zambia, Kenya, and South Africa, missionary conferences culminated in the formation of National Christian Councils (NCCs) in 1945, 1943, and 1936 respectively.26 In East Africa, the Kikuyu Conference of 1913, which brought together representatives of various missionary groups, is an important highlight in the development of ecumenism in the region.27 However, the strong European dominance that characterized the conference has been described as “the main weakness” of the Kikuyu Conference in its search for church unity.28 The story of the Kikuyu Conference, and most specifcally that of Edinburgh 1910, illustrates that the missionary movement was the springboard for the ecumenical movement. 212

Doing theology ecumenically

Nonetheless, it is crucial to observe that it was missionary questions that brought about the “necessity for ecumenical mission thinking and acting rather than missionary personalities or their agents.”29 At the continental level, the plan to constitute a continent-wide ecumenical structure was made at the All Africa Church conference held in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1958. The decision of Ibadan led to the formal inauguration of the AACC in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963.This is not the place to underscore the contribution toward peace-building, justice, democratization, and development that has been variously explored.30 It will suffce here to mention the sub-regional ecumenical fellowships that emerged during the 1980s and 1990s with the support of the AACC. Mercy Oduyoye discerns in this development a new dimension in ecumenical relations.31

Ecumenical collaboration in theological education Churches in Africa have also collaborated in theological education. This initially manifested in the establishment of lay training centers and joint theological colleges in various countries.32 Already in 1942, the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Evangelical Presbyterian churches in Ghana founded the Trinity College in Kumasi. In 1955, St. Paul’s United Theological College (now St. Paul’s University) Limuru was established to train pastors for the Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Reformed Churches in Kenya in 1955. Other initiatives include the United Theological College in Zimbabwe and the now defunct Federal Theological Seminary (FEDSEM) jointly established by Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists in South Africa in Alice, Eastern Cape, in 1963.While some of these ecumenical ventures have been a success, several experiments have failed due to deeply entrenched denominational tendencies and rivalry. Although indicative of new frontiers in mission, the recent phenomenon of denominational universities, most notably in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe,33 and Zambia, is a refection of the failure of ecumenical cooperation amongst churches. The above notwithstanding, African churches take theological education as an ecumenical concern given its recognized importance, particularly amongst mainline churches.The signifcance of the WCC’s Theological Education Fund (TEF), in whose ambits the notion of contextual theology was popularized as an organizing principle of its work, is indispensable to the history of Ecumenical Theological Education in 20th-century Africa. As Dietrich Werner observes, the mandate of TEF at the time included a “critique of Western concepts of theological education and major calls for contextualization of forms of ministry and forms of theological education in the South.”34 Under the leadership of John Pobee,TEF also supported the Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians as an ecumenical theological community since its inception under the leadership of Ghanaian theologian Mercy Oduyoye in 1989.35 Further,TEF (presently Ecumenical Theological Education [ETE]) was the mid-wife to various theological associations in Africa. Given the ecumenical signifcance of these associations, the AACC has vigorously undertaken their revitalization following a recommendation from its General Assembly in Maputo in 2008.

Church and theology: African theology as ecumenical and comparative theology Theologically, the ecumenical movement has contributed toward the development of modern African theology as self-consciously contextual theologies.36 The AACC, in particular, played a signifcant role in the formative stages of the development of African theology among Protestant churches.37 One of its earliest initiatives was a theologians’ consultation held in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1966 at which several African theologians, including John Mbiti and Bolaji Idowu, amongst 213

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

others, discussed the question of a relevant theology for African churches. This consultation resulted in the publication of Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs (1969) edited by Kwesi Dickson and Paul Ellingworth, and subsequently gave impetus to the formulation of some guidelines on African theology at the AACC’s second General Assembly held in Abidjan (1969).Arguably, the AACC has served a platform for the exchange and development of theological ideas on the continent for both the African theological academy and its member churches. Little wonder that Maluleke describes the chief task of African theology as “enabling the church to develop her theologies.”38 Idowu Bolaji’s 1965 publication, Towards an Indigenous Church, already signaled the African theological concern and pursuit of ecclesiastical selfhood. The connection between church and theology also found expression at the very frst Faith and Order meeting held in Africa and at which African theological concerns found explicit attention.At that meeting, the representatives of United churches and church union committees from several African countries spoke of African theology as a means to promote organic church union of the churches.39 They were concerned that alien church structures “were not serving as instruments of ecclesial communion.”40 Similarly, the Programme on Theological Education (formerly TEF) organized a consultation on “Theological education in Africa: Quo Vadimus?” in Accra, Ghana, in 1985 to explore “What kind of Church and what kind of theological education would be relevant to the African context?”This consultation called for contextual theological education and recommended that “ecumenism is affrmed through the informal structures of education as well as through formal courses in colleges and seminaries.”41 Such concerns have been addressed in various ecumenical efforts, most notably through the Theological Education by Extension (TEE) movement, which offers alternative theological training to formal theological education. Founded in the early 1970s, the TEE movement in Africa has provided clergy, laity, and ministry candidates’ wider access to contextual theological education.42 TEE programs are mainly focused on providing diversifed theological education in order to equip all God’s people for ministry and demystify an understanding of theological education as an elitist enterprise.The Theological Education by Extension College in Johannesburg South Africa and the Theological Education by Extension in Zambia established in 1976 and 1979, respectively, are examples of successful TEE programs in Africa with an ecumenical orientation. Given the strategic importance of formal (academic) theological education for leadership development, mission, and ministerial and theological formation, there is no shortage of literature on the need for contextually relevant theological education and theologies in Africa.43 Amongst others, Jesse Mugambi has consistently stressed the importance of ecumenical theological training in Africa. Mugambi has most particularly pointed out the close connection between church and theology in Africa.44 Similarly, Maluleke argues that to a great extent, African theology of the last half of the 20th century has “been ‘church theology’ done by church people for the sake of the church and its missionary task.”45 Nevertheless, African theologies have also addressed the world, thus illustrating that theology in Africa has generally always related to the social context.46 This is best illustrated in Mugambi’s articulation of the African theology of reconstruction in which the church is portrayed as “facilitator of social transformation.”47 The preceding demonstrates that African theology has developed in close relation to the church and ecumenical institutions.African theology has not only been ecumenical but equally and “necessarily comparative.”48 However, some wonder whether African theology and institutional ecumenism have not been elite affairs. Concerning the latter, Samuel Kobia has argued that statements and recommendations of ecumenical structures have not always been translated into the “life of the church.”49 An even larger concern in this regard pertains to the crisis of institutional ecumenism50 amidst the changing religious landscapes characterized by what is now widely regarded as the Pentecostalization and charismatization of mainline Christianity in 214

Doing theology ecumenically

Africa.51 Pentecostalism is arguably among the major forces in the contemporary transformation of Christianity in Africa. Cephas Omenyo thus speaks of “Pentecost outside Pentecostalism” in his account of the “charismatization of mainline Christianity” in Ghana.52 I now turn to the ecumenical implications of these developments. Given the many typologies and classifcation of the diversity of African Pentecostalism and based on family resemblance theory, I will employ in what follows the term “Pentecostalism” as a general category to describe “movements and churches concerned with the experience of the workings of the Holy Spirit and the practice of spiritual gifts.”53

Ecumenism in changing religious landscapes: challenges and prospects One of the challenges of religious demographic shifts in Africa is that it complicates the understanding of church membership (denominational).The newer Pentecostal forms of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa variously self-identify as ministries, fellowships, or churches, and are conspicuously estranged from “creedal traditions” of mainline churches and the institutionalized forms of ecumenism. In research conducted in Zambia, Dutch theologian Hermen Kroesbergen found new forms of association (fellowship) among Christians in the form of multi-denomination prayer meetings, gatherings during funerals and community projects. Further, Kroesbergen observed the phenomenon of “multiple devotions,” that is, a growing practice whereby congregants of mainline churches would attend a Sunday morning church service in their denomination and visit “neo-Pentecostal ministries in the afternoon.” He discerned in these forms of association “distinctive ways of being Christian in Zambia.”54 Nevertheless, his argument that Pentecostalism has reinforced the feeling that “we are just Christians” can hardly be interpreted as “a gesture of ecumenism” given that the term “Christian” can as well be employed as a polemical concept.This notwithstanding, his analysis confrms the view that ecumenism in Africa “can no longer be reduced to its traditional and mainly institutional expressions characteristic of ecumenism among mainline (denominational) churches,” not least because of the implied erosion of denominational identity discussed above.55 Within the South African context, Ernst Conradie notes the vibrancy of grassroots ecumenism even though there is the need “to bridge the divide between mainline churches, AICs [African independent Churches] and Pentecostal Churches.”56 As elsewhere in Africa, the specifc nature of the tensions between Pentecostalism and the mainline churches are diverse. Could it be “a matter of an intellectualizing approach to Christianity (fdes quae creditur) versus an emphasis on the experiential dimension of the Christian faith (fdes qua creditur)?”57 The sources of tension and divisions between mainline and Pentecostal Christianity are indeed not only doctrinal but also include matters relating to human sexuality, and human rights concerns amidst strange religious practices such as the spraying of congregants with insecticide in the case of Pastor Lethebo Rabalago of the Mount Zion General Assembly in Limpopo, South Africa. Another case pertains to Pastor Alph Lukau’s alleged “resurrection” of a dead man. This incident went viral and elicited widespread criticism when it was revealed that the “resurrection” was staged. In Zambia, approaches differ on how to engage the state to threaten institutional ecumenism.58 Wolfgang Vondey observes that “it is virtually impossible to defne a consistent, historical character of the notion of ‘church’ among the global diversity of Pentecostal groups.”59 While it is apparent that most Pentecostals do not subscribe to creedal notions of ecclesiality dominant in the mainstream ecumenical discourse, it would be inaccurate to label all Pentecostals as being averse to ecumenism. Concerning classical Pentecostalism, Walter Hollenweger and Cecil Robeck respectively argue that Pentecostalism is “inherently ecumenical.”60 Hollenweger 215

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

further identifes ecumenism as one of the fve roots of global Pentecostalism. On the contrary, some argue that early Pentecostal ecumenism was merely “a commitment to proselytize all denominations, without discrimination.”61 Nevertheless, some Pentecostals theologians have been involved in the wider ecumenical movement and recently played a crucial role in the Global Christian Forum.62 While these contributions and the African discourse on the genealogy of African Pentecostalism and the global character of Pentecostalism are helpful, there is a need for studies on the relationship between the Pentecostal and ecumenical movements in Africa. As signifcant as attempts to explore new dimensions in African Christianity63 by ecumenical bodies such as the AACC may be, it appears that aim has often been to assist member churches in responding to the challenge posed by the new churches and ministries rather than to deeper ecumenical relations. In this regard, ecumenical theology becomes crucial as I will argue in the next section. Herein lies the signifcance of explorations of the relationship between the Pentecostal and ecumenical movements such as the one offered by Ernst Conradie concerning six core ecumenical concerns; namely, unity, Faith and Order, social responsibility, education, worship, and mission are instructive.64 One may discern a pneumatological concentration in the Pentecostal understanding of unity. It appears the Pentecostal ecumenical theology may well be described as an ecumenism of the Spirit. The participation of Pentecostal churches in the wider ecumenical dialogue can be a source of mutual renewal.What is needed is an ecumenical consciousness in the spirit of mutual understanding and communication. In this vein, the conceptualization of ecumenical unity as an imperative of the Gospel is crucial.The task of ecumenical theology becomes more crucial in this vein. In what follows therefore, I draw broad contours of what doing theology ecumenically in Africa’s changing ecumenical landscapes may entail.

An ecumenical theology: self-consciously contextual and constructive The notion of ecumenical theology has been variously explored, most notably in the Western discourse on the ecumenical movement.65 The ecumenical movement and discourses on it have made considerable impact on the character of ecclesiology. Paul Avis defnes ecclesiology as the “critical, comparative and constructive refection on the dominant paradigms of the identity of the church.”66 Several early refections on ecumenical theology privileged ecclesiology even though there has been a perennial tension in the ecumenical movement between ecclesiology and ethics.67 For instance, Hans Wolf described ecumenical theology as “a theology which refects the reality of the Church as a whole, so that it can be what it is and should be so that it can perform the service with which it has been entrusted.”68 More specifcally, ecumenical refections on the church have grappled with the problem of disunity amongst churches. This has yielded a signifcant body of literature on the various forms, notions, and models of unity69 in addition to some notable concrete expressions of unity. Czeck theologian Ivana Noble offers some useful distinctions between ecumenism, ecumenics, and ecumenical theology. She describes ecumenics as the study of the ecumenical movement, its documents, and organizations, while ecumenism is an attitude that “expresses interest, openness and goodwill to Christian others.” Noble defnes ecumenical theology as “the studying of Christian traditions in their plurality as our common heritage.”70 Noble’s description of ecumenical theology provides a useful framework for a more nuanced understanding of Christian theology as an ecumenical task.As she argues, ecumenical theology places the refection on ecumenical movement [ecumenics] into a broader theological context, pointing out where the whole of theology can learn from the achievements of 216

Doing theology ecumenically

ecumenics and ecumenism, and where it needs to adjust its focus or its methodological approaches.71 In the context of the changing ecclesial landscapes in Africa, the recovery of theology as an ecumenical task is indeed signifcant.While some African theologians such as John Pobee observe that “theology must have an ecumenical perspective and hermeneutic,”72 I argue that ecumenical theology can indeed be seen as a dimension of all Christian theology.73 Framed in this way, ecumenical theology overlaps with the felds of systematic theology and church history. Given my description of the nature of African theology as contextual, comparative, and ecumenical in the preceding sections, I suggest that doing theology ecumenically calls for an ecumenical hermeneutics. That is, how do we come to an understanding in the process of interpreting the common Christian heritage? The crucial point in this regard concerns what constitutes “a legitimate interpretation in the plurality of Christian traditions.”74 Such hermeneutics may well facilitate ecumenical consciousness, learning, and formation. In what follows, I offer four broad strokes of what doing theology ecumenically may entail in Africa’s changing ecclesial landscapes.

Ecumenical consciousness Ecumenical theology is not the mere inclusion in the curriculum of texts on the ecumenical movement.75 At the University of the Western Cape where I teach, the ecumenical orientation of theological education is not necessitated by what some may describe as sensitivity toward confessional theological education in a public university.76 Rather, there is a general sense in which theology is understood as an ecumenical task not least because of the diverse denominations, Christianities, and beliefs or lack thereof amongst our students and staff. However, this should not be mistaken for theological eclecticism, and neither does it suggest an integrative focus of theological study in the sense of ecumenics as the John Mackay tradition would have it.77 Rather, it is about the very orientation of theological education78 toward the renewed notion of the oikouménē. For as the South African reformed theologian Dirk Smit has demonstrated in his illustrious journey as theologian and teacher, one can be both confessional and ecumenical at the same time yet in a manner that “takes historicity and contextuality very seriously.”79 In this sense, diversity and difference become essential marks of unity.80 Therefore, one’s theological identity is crucial to ecumenical commitment. As Brinkmann observes, “becoming aware of one’s tradition” may very well “be counted as one of the necessary and worthwhile phases of ecumenical discussion.”81 In light of the Pentecostalization and charismatization of mainline Christianity in Africa discussed in the previous sections, the integration of Pentecostal theology in mainstream institutions of theological education remains an urgent ecumenical task.82

Ecumenical theology at the service of ecumenical formation and learning Ecumenical theology can speak to the life of churches through ecumenical formation and learning. This aspect is closely connected to the strategic importance of theological education and is therefore crucial for the development of church leadership with competencies to engage in both ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. Ecumenical learning too is not simply about including aspects of ecumenical discourse in the curriculum or even offering a designated course on ecumenism, as useful as that may be.83 It is teaching and learning that facilitates the discovery of catholicity.This is only possible where teaching and learning practices facilitate critical ecumenical consciousness. Nevertheless, ecumenical learning must of necessity be at the heart of the praxis of local churches. In this regard, ventures such as the recent AACC’s focus on ecumenical 217

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa

formation, symbolized by the holding of a theological institute of young theologians alongside and in between its Assemblies, is signifcant for the ecumenical formation and the preparation of the next generation of African church leaders and theologians.

Ecumenical theology as a practice of listening: African ecumenical ecclesiology Elsewhere, I have argued that African ecclesiologies tend to emphasize aspects of the social responsibility of the church rather than ecclesiological questions on the nature of the church. This illustrates that the social context has been decisive for ecclesiology. Most African ecclesiologies foreground relationality and communality.84 Thus, a variety of models for the church have been developed, most notably the models of the church as a family and ancestral ecclesiologies.85 These ecclesiologies stress various notions of sharing, solidarity, community, interdependence, and relationality. These ecclesiologies have ecumenical signifcance despite their limitations. Such ecclesiologies could do well to highlight how relationality and solidarity relate to diversity and equality. Elochukwu Uzukwu’s Listening Church attempts to do exactly that. Commenting on Uzukwu’s listening church model, Elias Bongmba argues that African churches must “build intersubjective bonds by recovering the art and practice of listening.” Given that listening establishes the basis of dialogue, Uzukwu’s model has ecumenical signifcance. Thus, doing theology ecumenically invites African theologians and churches to a recovery of the art of listening. Listening is indispensable to developing an ecumenical attitude of openness and warmth to otherness. Uzukwu further envisions the listening church to be “a credible agent of social transformation.”86 This, however, begs further refection on the distinctive contribution of the church in social transformation. Is the church simply another civil society organization?

Ecumenical theology as a soteriological discourse Amongst others, Jesse Mugambi remains optimistic about the role of African churches in social transformation.87 However, as I have argued elsewhere, Katongole (2011) argued that Mugambi’s critical questions opened a new line of inquiry for the church, but “Mugambi himself moved too quickly into the default mode of offering suggestions of what the church should do to assist in reconstruction.”88 Katongole locates the distinctive and decisive role of Christianity in a new “Christian social hermeneutics.” Accordingly, he opines the view of the church as a “uniquely suited community for the task of the social re-imagination of Africa” based on what he describes as the church’s “unique story and calling.” Similarly, the Congolese theologian Kä Mana locates the church as the site where God’s people are “mobilized for new activities and new strategies for social change and for building a new society.”89 I argue that these nuanced refections on the role of the church in social transformation can be seen as a soteriological discourse. This is best illustrated in the refections of Kä Mana on the problem of salvation in Africa. Kä Mana recognizes for instance that in African Pentecostalism, there is an emphasis on deliverance and exorcism, concepts which are also interpreted in socio-political terms to refer to oppressive structures and various forms of exploitation. On the other hand, African theologies have been concerned with liberation and therefore, with salvation.90 In this regard, Kä Mana’s argument for the reconciliation of the academic theologies of African Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, and the popular practical theologies of Pentecostalism, has ecumenical signifcance not least because of the implied need to take seriously both the spiritualistic and materialist dimensions of salvation.91 This suggests the need for a holistic conceptualization of salvation. However, as David Ngong has shown,African 218

Doing theology ecumenically

soteriological discourse should not neglect the eschatological dimension.92 It is in this vein that the comparative character of ecumenical theology in Africa, as outlined above, becomes crucial.

Conclusion: doing theology ecumenically This chapter has outlined broad contours of ecumenical theology in Africa as being a self-consciously contextual and constructive refection on the common Christian theological heritage. Informed by a hermeneutics of listening, ecumenical theology may well facilitate ecumenical consciousness, learning, and formation. Given the integral relation between ecclesiology and ethics, and between church and theology in African theology, doing ecumenical theology in Africa may also be understood as a soteriological discourse rooted in the African context.A selfconsciously contextual and constructive ecumenical theology has the potential to contribute toward theological vocabulary to express ecumenical unity in concepts other than Greek, Latin, or Western.Accordingly, such African ecumenical theology necessarily holds in creative tension catholicity and contextuality. As Pobee observes, the “mark of catholicity concerns both the local church and the global church.” 93

Notes 1 See for instance Gillian Evans, Method in Ecumenical Theology:The Lessons So Far (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 2 See for instance John A. Radano, ed., Celebrating a Century of Ecumenism: Exploring the Achievements of International Dialogue: in Commemoration of the Centenary of the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. (Geneva:WCC, 2011); Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch, eds., Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982-1998,Vol. 187 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000) and Robert W. Jenson, Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw in Ecumenical Theology (Fortress Press, 1992). 3 Amongst other signifcant Faith and Order documents, see Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111 (Geneva:WCC, 1982); The Nature and Purpose of the Church, Faith and Order Paper 181 (Geneva:WCC, 1998). 4 The legacy of the International Missionary Council and its merger with the WCC at New Delhi in 1961 to become the WCC’s Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) is signifcant since it brought with it into the WCC a rich heritage of third world concerns.The merger also illustrated that mission and unity belong together. This conviction has been expressed in WCC mission statements. See for instance Jooseop Keum, ed. Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (Geneva:WCC, 2013). For a historical overview on mission and unity see Norman Thomas, Missions and Unity: Lessons from History, 1792-2010 (Eugene:Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010), 103–120. 5 For an overview, see Dietrich Werner,“Theological education in the changing context of world christianity—An unfnished agenda,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35, no. 2 (2011): 92–100. 6 See for instance the various contributions on local ecumenism in a special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies 44, no. 2 (2018): 201–364. On challenges facing the broader ecumenical movement, see “Ecumenism in the 21st Century: Final Report of the Continuation Committee on Ecumenism in the 21st Century, Geneva, 2012,” in Dietrich Werner and Melisande Lorke (eds.), Ecumenical Visions for the 21st Century:A Reader for Theological Education (Geneva:WCC, 2013). 7 David Tonghou Ngong,“The theologian as critic:The contribution of Tinyiko Sam Maluleke,” Modern Theology 34, no. 4 (2018): 613. 8 This is despite the theological creativity and contributions of notable African theologians and church leaders who have served the ecumenical movement in various capacities.These include, amongst others, Andre Karamaga, Burgess Carr, Desmond Tutu, Donald M’Timkulu, Jesse Mugambi, John Gatu, John Mbiti, John Pobee, Jose Chipenda, Kwesi Dickson, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Omega Bula, Sam Kobia, and Z. K. Mathews. 9 For an overview of postmodern theologies, see Graham Ward, “Postmodern theology,” in David Ford (ed.), The Modern Theologians (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2005), 322–338.

219

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa 10 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (London: Duke University Press, 2011), 208. 11 Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and modernity/rationality,” Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (2007): 168– 178, 177. 12 Ivana Noble, Tracking God: An Ecumenical Fundamental Theology (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010), ix. 13 John Thornton, “Oikoumene,” in Roger S. Bagnall (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 4876. 14 Yuval Shahar, Josephus Geographicus: The Classical Context of Geography in Josephus,Vol. 98 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 263. 15 Barbara Rossing,“‘(Re) claiming Oikoumene.’ Empire, ecumenism and the discipleship of equals,” in Cynthia Briggs Kittredge and Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre (eds.), Walk in the Ways of Wisdom: Essay in Honor of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (London:Trinity Press International, 2003), 74–87, 82. 16 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Excellent Empire:The Fall of Rome and the Triumph of the Church (Eugene:Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), 27. 17 Ivana Noble, “Why ecumenical theology?” in Essays in Ecumenical Theology I (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 12–24, 13. 18 Cited in Konrad Raiser, Ecumenism in Transition:A Paradigm Shift in the Ecumenical Movement? (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1991), 84. 19 Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, eds., The Ecumenical Movement: An Anthology of Key Texts and Voices (Geneva:WCC Publications, 1997), 1–2. 20 Vatican Council II. “Lumen Gentium,” Dogmatic Constitution on the Church 21, no. 8 (1964): 849–900. See also Redintegratio, Unitatis, “Decree on Ecumenism.” Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on November 21 (1964), no 3. Lumen Gentium’s subsist has been a subject of various interpretations and contention especially among Roman Catholic scholars. 21 See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill (Louisville:Westminster John Knox, 2006), 1051, no. IV.2. 11. For a history of the doctrine of vestigia Ecclesiae, see Sandra Arenas Pérez, “Merely quantifable realities? The ‘vestigia Ecclesiae’ in the thought of Calvin and its 20th century reception,” in Gerard Mannion and Eduardus Van der Borght (eds.), John Calvin’s Ecclesiology: Ecumenical Perspectives (New York:T & T Clark, 2011), 69–89. Compare also the use of vestigia in World Council of Churches Central Committee. The Church, the churches, and the World Council of Churches:The Ecclesiological Signifcance of the World Council of Churches (July, 1950), https://www.oikoumene.org/en/r esources/documents/central-committee/1950/toronto-statement (retrieved October 10, 2018). 22 James Amanze, A History of the Ecumenical Movement in Africa (Gaborone: Pula Press, 1999), 154. 23 AACC.,Drumbeats from Kampala: Report of the First Assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches, Kampala 20-30 April 1963 (London: Lutterworth, 1963). 24 See Sam Kobia,“Denominationalism in Africa:The pitfalls of institutional ecumenism,” The Ecumenical Review 53, no. 3 (2001): 295–305. 25 Ogbu Kalu, Divided People of God: Church Union Movement in Nigeria, 1875-1966 (New York: NOK Publishers, 1978), 3. 26 For a discussion on initial ecumenical developments in South Africa, see Natasha Erlank,“‘God’s family in the world’:Transnational and local ecumenism’s impact on inter-church and inter-racial dialogue in South Africa in the 1920s and 1930s,” South African Historical Journal 61, no. 2 (2009): 278–297. 27 Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, John Mutiso-Mbinda, and Judith Vollbrecht, Ecumenical Initiatives in Eastern Africa: Final Report of the Joint Project of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA), 1976-1981 (Nairobi: AACC, 1982); Christopher Byaruhanga, The History and Theology of the Ecumenical Movement in East Africa. (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2015), 145. For a discussion of other ecumenical initiatives in eastern Africa for the period 1970–1980, see Jesse N. K. Mugambi,“Ecumenical movement and the Church in Africa,” in Jesse N. K. Mugambi and Laurenti Magesa (eds.), The Church in African Christianity: Innovative Essays in Ecclesiology (Nairobi: Initiatives, 1990). 28 Henrik Smedjebacka, The Search for Church Union in East Africa (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 2002), 257. 29 See Efong Utuk, From New York to Ibadan:The Impact of African Questions on the Making of Ecumenical Mission Mandates, 1900-1958 (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 1. 30 On peace building, see Samuel Kobia, Dialogue Matters:The Role of Ecumenical Diplomacy in the Run-Up to the Independence of South Sudan (Nairobi: AACC, 2013). On democratization, see Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). Regarding development, see

220

Doing theology ecumenically

31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51

52 53 54 55

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa, “The ecumenical movement and development: The case of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), 1963–2000 (Part 1),” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 44, no. 3 (2018): 1–15. Mercy Amba Oduyoye,“Africa,” in John Briggs, et al. (eds.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement,Vol. 3. (Geneva:WCC Publications, 2004), 481. For an overview, see Amanze, A History, 202, and Sakupapa, “Ecclesiology and ethics Doctoral Dissertation, University of the Western Cape, 2016. 90–91. On lay training institutions, the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (MEF) in Kitwe, Zambia, which housed the AACC headquarters in its infancy, is a prime example. For a history of MEF, see Denis MʼPassou, Mindolo: a Story of the Ecumenical Movement in Africa (Lusaka: Multimedia, 1983). See, for instance, Solmon Zwana, “Failure of ecumenism: the rise of church related universities in Zimbabwe,” Exchange 38, no. 3 (2009): 292–311. Werner Dietrich, “Viability and ecumenical perspectives for theological education in Africa: Legacy and new beginnings in Ecumenical Theological Education/World Council of Churches,” Missionalia: Southern African Journal of Mission Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 275–293, 278. On challenges facing African women theologians, see Isabel Apawo Phiri, “Major challenges for African women theologians in theological education (1989–2008),” International Review of Mission 98, no. 1 (2009): 105–119. See Sakupapa, 2017, 88–92. Gwinyai H. Muzorewa, The Origins and Development of African Theology (New York: Orbis Books, 1975), 73. Tinyiko Sam Maluleke, “Half a century of African Christian theologies: Elements of the emerging agenda for the twenty-frst century,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99 (1997): 4–23, 8. Uniting in Hope: Accra 1974: Reports and Documents from the Meeting of the Faith and Order Commission, Faith and Order Paper No. 72 (Geneva:WCC, 1975), 127–129. Uniting in Hope, 130. John Samuel Pobee and Joshua N. Kudadjie, eds., Theological Education in Africa: quo vadimus? (Accra: Asempa Publications, 1990), 198–192. See Ross Kinsler, and Desmond Tutu. Diversifed Theological Education: Equipping all God’s People (Pasadena, CA:WCIU Press, 2008), 7. Tinyiko Sam Maluleke, “The Africanization of theological education: Does theological education equip you to help your sister?” in Edward Antonio (ed.), Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse in African Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 61–76. See also the various contributions in Isabel Apawo Phiri and Dietrich Werner, eds. Handbook of Theological Education in Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2013). Mugambi, 1990, 14–20. Maluleke, 1997, 9. See Bénézet Bujo, African Theology in Its Social Context (Nairobi: Paulines, 1992). Jesse N. K. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology after the Cold War (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995), 17. Ngong, 2018, 602. Samuel Kobia, The Courage to Hope: The Roots for a New Vision and the Calling of the Church in Africa (Geneva:WCC, 2003), 135. A special edition of the The Ecumenical Review 53, no. 3 (2001) was devoted to the state of ecumenism in Africa at the turn of the century. For a recent commentary on African ecumenism, see Jerry Pillay, “Ecumenism in Africa:Theological, contextual, and institutional challenges,” The Ecumenical Review 67, no. 4 (2015): 635–650. See Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa, “Christianity in Zambia,” in Isabel Apawo Phiri and Dietrich Werner (eds.), Anthology of African Christianity (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2016), 758–765; see also Parsitau, Seleina Damaris, “From the periphery to the centre:The Pentecostalisation of mainline Christianity in Kenya.” Missionalia 35, no. 3 (2007): 83–111. Cephas Narh Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism:A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana (Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 2006). See Allan Anderson, “Varieties, taxonomies, and defnitions,” in Allan Anderson, et al. (eds.), Studying Global Pentecostalism:Theories and Methods (London: University of California Press, 2010), 17. Hermen Kroesbergen,“Radical Change in Zambia’s Christian Ecumenism,” Journal of Southern African Studies 44, no. 2 (2018): 331–343. See Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa,“Ethno-regionalism, politics and the role of religion in Zambia: Changing ecumenical landscapes in a Christian nation, 2015-2018,” Exchange 48, no. 2 (2019): 123. See also the essays in the special edition of the Journal of Southern African Studies 44, no. 2 (2018): 201–364.

221

Teddy Chalwe Sakupapa 56 Ernst M. Conradie, ed., South African Perspectives on Notions and Forms of Ecumenicity (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2013), 67. 57 Ernst M. Conradie, “Ecumenical perspectives on Pentecostal pneumatology,” Missionalia 43, no. 1 (2015): 67. 58 See Sakupapa, 2019. 59 Wolfgang Vondey,“Pentecostals and ecumenism: Becoming the church as a pursuit of Christian unity,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 11, no. 4 (2011): 326.The various contributions in this edition “ecumenical and anti-ecumenical processes in grassroots movements” and place the big story of global and institutional ecumenism in the background. 60 See Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997), 3; and Cecil Robeck, “Pentecostals and Christian unity: Facing the challenge,” Pneuma 26, no. 2 (2004): 307–338. See also Harold D. Hunter, “Global Pentecostalism and Ecumenism:Two Movements of the Holy Spirit,” in Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments. (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 21. For other contributions on Pentecostalism and the ecumenical movement, see Wolfgang Vondey, ed. Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2010). For earlier contributions see Jürgen Moltmann and Karl-Josef Kuschel, eds., Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge (New York: Orbis Books, 1996). 61 See Roger Glenn Robins, “Plainfolk modernist: The radical holiness world of AJ Tomlinson.” PhD diss., Duke University, 1999, 47. 62 Cecil Robeck,“Ecumenism,” in Allan Anderson, et al. (eds.), Studying Global Pentecostalism:Theories and Methods (London: University of California Press, 2010), 292–293. 63 See Paul Gifford, ed., New Dimensions in African Christianity (Nairobi:All Africa Conference of Churches, 1992). See also, Paul Gifford,“Some recent developments in African Christianity,”African Affairs 93, no. 373 (1994): 513–534. In 1969, the AACC General Assembly at Abidjan proposed guidelines on creative inter-confessional relationships with AICs. See All Africa Conference of Churches. Engagement:The Second AACC Assembly, Abidjan 1969 (Nairobi:AACC, 1970). 64 See Ernst M. Conradie, “The pentecostal and ecumenical movements in the African context,” in Adeshina Afolayan et al. (eds.), Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 65 See for instance, Mary Tanner, “Ecumenical theology,” in David Ford (ed.), The Modern Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 556–570; Ivana Noble,“Why ecumenical theology?” in Essays in Ecumenical Theology I (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 12–24; Martien Brinkman, A Reformed Voice in the Ecumenical Discussion (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 247–260. 66 Paul Avis, “Introduction to Ecclesiology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 3. 67 See Thomas F. Best and Martin Robra, Ecclesiology and Ethics: Ecumenical Ethical Engagement, Moral Formation and the Nature of the Church (Geneva:WCC, 1997). 68 Hans Heinrich Wolf,“Towards an Ecumenical Theology,” The Ecumenical Review 13, no. 2 (1961): 215– 227, 216. 69 For a detailed discussion, see Harding Meyer, That All May Be One: Perceptions and Models of Ecumenicity (Eugene:Wipf & Stock, 1999). 70 Noble, 2010, xiii. 71 Noble, 2018, 13. 72 John Samuel Pobee, Giving Account of Faith and Hope in Africa (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2017), 14. 73 For a useful discussion in this regard, see Stefan Höschele,“Defning ecumenics ffty years after Mackay,” Communio Viatorum 55, no. 2 (2013): 105–136. 74 Noble, 2018, 229. 75 Konrad Raiser, “The future of theological education in Central and Eastern Europe: Challenges for ecumenical learning in the 21st century,” International Review of Mission 98, no. 1 (2009): 49–63, 52. 76 See Conrad Wethmar,“Ecclesiology and theological education:A South African reformed perspective,” Verbum et Ecclesia 18, no. 2 (1997): 415–430. 77 For a discussion on Makay, see Alan Falconer,“Ecumenics, teaching ecumenics and ecumenical formation:The intentional study of ecumenism as an essential element in theological and pastoral formation,” Pacifca 14, no. 3 (2001): 313–325. 78 For a useful discussion of theological education as ecumenical learning, see Daryl Balia and Kirsteen Kim, eds., Witnessing to Christ Today,Vol. 2 (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2010), 156–157.

222

Doing theology ecumenically 79 Dirk Smit, “Confessional and ecumenical? Revisiting Edmund Schlink on the hermeneutics of doctrine,” Verbum et Ecclesia 29, no. 2 (2008): 468. 80 Meyer, 15. See also Avis, who argues that it is “not only unity but diversity as well that is an ecumenical imperative,” Avis Paul, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology:The Church made Whole? (New York:T & T Clark, 2010), 28. 81 Brinkman, 2016, 253. 82 Mookgo S. Kgatle,“Integrating African Pentecostalism into the theological education of South African Universities:An urgent task,” HTS Theological Studies 74, no. 3 (2018): 1–8. 83 On the characteristic marks of ecumenical learning, see, for instance, Dietrich Werner,“Magna Charta on ecumenical formation in theological education in the 21st century-10 key convictions,” International Review of Mission 98, no. 388 (2009): 161–170. 84 Teddy C. Sakupapa,“Ecumenical ecclesiology in the African context:Towards a view of the church as Ubuntu,” Scriptura 117 (2018): 1–15. 85 John Mary Waliggo,“The African clan as the true model of the African church,” in Jesse N. K. Mugambi and Laurenti Magesa (eds.), The Church in African Christianity: Innovative Essays in Ecclesiology (Nairobi: Initiatives, 1990). 86 Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, A Listening Church: Autonomy and Communion in African Churches (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 7. 87 Jesse Ndwiga Kanyua Mugambi, Christian Theology & Social Reconstruction (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2003), 104. 88 Emmanuel Katongoloe, The Sacrifce of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 32. 89 Kä Mana, Christians and Churches of Africa: Salvation in Christ and Building a New African Society (New York: Orbis Books, 2004), 103. 90 For a comprehensive account on salvation in African theology, see Gerrit Brand, Speaking of a Fabulous Ghost: In Search of Theological Criteria,With Special Reference to the Debate on Salvation in African Christian Theology (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002). 91 Kä Mana, 2004, 101. 92 For more on salvation in African theology, see David Tonghou Ngong, The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology: Imagining a More Hopeful Future for Africa (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 121–151. 93 Pobee, Giving Account of Faith, 288.

223

14 THEOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

Introduction This chapter will discuss theology and development in Africa from historical and thematic perspectives. We shall undertake this task through a review of signifcant voices and themes in African studies on theology and development. We shall pay particular attention to how the narratives and praxis of being and belonging in Africa are accounted for in Christian churches and by African theological voices in the search for how to meet present and complex social conditions in Africa’s march toward the future.The Christian faith in the African continent has assumed a triadic movement—as a search for wealth, health, and hope—in its present emergence as a central driver of social change in Africa. It is in this eschatological thrust that salvation and abundant life are being interpreted through multiple contending, conficting, and complementary narratives about the movement of history in Africa and the place of faith in African Christianity. There are contrasting models of morality, social ethics, and spirituality regarding how individuals, communities, faith traditions, and nations in Africa are engaging the human and material resources and other social capitals in the context of socio-economic life. In order to give a full account of how theologies in Africa are articulating these realities in terms of African development, this chapter will frst historicize six conceptual and theoretical frameworks for development discourse in theology in Africa, in dialogue with the social Gospel traditions in Christianity.We shall also survey the approaches of churches in Africa to development through their social ministries within the context of the social Gospel prophetic traditions.We will not develop this discourse in terms of an analysis of poverty, which we consider a failed and limited conceptual and theoretical paradigm for a deeper understanding of the past, present, and future direction of African history and development, and the place of the Christian faith in this movement. Finally, we shall propose an alternative language of discourse through three proposed typologies of theology and development in Africa, namely a theology of hope, a theology of marginality, and a theology of abundant life.This is with a view to showing how African theologians should engage the social question in Africa regarding how the assets of Africa and Africans can be applied to the task of bringing about human and cosmic fourishing in the continent through the agency of the Christian mission and valorizing Christian commitments by Africans toward social transformation. We shall conclude the chapter by proposing how these three typologies are central to furthering theological discourse on development in Africa. 224

Theology and development in Africa

In terms of methodology, we adopt an interdisciplinary compass in this analysis because we agree that development discourse, policies, and programs in Africa are required globally across boundaries of religion, politics, economics, culture, and spirituality.This is why the chapter will draw upon resources and voices from theology and social sciences—from those who write specifcally from an African perspective as African scholars, as well as those who write about African development and theologies from a non-African perspective.

Conceptual and theoretical frameworks for a theological account of development in Africa An African theology of development must address six related themes central to understanding the movement of history. These themes also deal with how the Christian faith in Africa and African Christian communities are participating in bringing African history by God’s will of abundant life for humans and the entire cosmos. First is developing an African theology of creation, which must show clearly that Africa is at the heart of God’s plan.African theologians must demonstrate how the human and material resources of Africa have been developed or exploited in the checkered history of the continent.This discourse should be explored vis-à-vis with what the late African scholar Ali Mazrui, concerning “resource curse” and “African predicament,” characterizes as the reality of “the garden of Eden in decay.”1 African theology of development should begin with painting a picture of the plan of God for creation, in which Africa is seen as the motherland of creation. Séverine Deneulin writes of the connection between a theology of creation and development: If one believes that God created the world out of love to manifest His/Her glory, all created life is called to share in God’s glory, for this is why creation exists. Human beings are called to refect the glory of God in their body, in their relations with each other, and in their relation with the natural environment. Christians believe that all human beings have been created in the image of God and are called to manifest God’s love in the world. When social, political and economic processes distort the capacity of humans to live in the image of God, Christians believe that restoring right relationships between people and the environment is part of affrming their belief in God the creator.2 Second is a theology of history, which must show how Africa’s history within the last 2,000 years, especially in her contacts with the West, has led Africa closer to or further away from enjoying the fruits of God’s creation. This theology must not only employ social analysis and a cultural critique of ideologies of hegemony and domination, it must also show how the churches and Christians in Africa can help to reverse the trajectory of some of the sad historical developments that birthed some of the painful narratives of human suffering and environmental crisis brought about by the different models of development embraced by Africa. Third is a theology of culture, which must critically address the different theories and narratives of being and belonging—autochthonous to Africa, or borrowed as a result of infuence on Africa by the West.All of these have affected for better or worse the meaning-making structures, social ethics, cultural knowledge, and daily choices of Africans about their world. They thus drive the prevailing worldview(s) among Africans about their relation to the material and spiritual worlds and how they offer interpretive and predictive lenses for viewing and responding to historical events as well as personal, family, and communal life and social interactions.Theology 225

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

of culture should also critically address how Christian religious groups, through their doctrines, teachings, and moral and spiritual precepts, are helping or hurting people in their search for meaning and purpose in life but especially when faced with limiting situations. Fourth is an African theological anthropology that must address what it means to be an African in a continent that internally faces myriad social challenges in the midst of an unjust global order—religious, economic, and political—which often negatively defnes and unjustly determines African culture, religions, history, and social conditions as well as contributing to the unraveling of God’s plan in ways that do not produce abundant life for Africans. Fifth, a theology of sin and conversion. An African theology of development must clearly and prophetically name the sinful structures, sinful systems, and sinful choices made by individuals, religious groups, political and national leaders, captains of industry, and heads of families and clans—and how they bring African societies closer to or further away from God’s reign. Such a theology must show how poverty, structural violence, and many of the sad socioeconomic realities that harm humans and the environment in Africa are rooted in sinful choices by individuals, churches, leaders at different levels of social life, and micro- and macro-communities in the global structures and systems. It must also identify sinful systems, processes, worldviews, and structures among nations as well as the nature of choices and relationships built by African religious and political leaders in the ever-revolving patron-client cycles that fll the African cultural, religious, and political landscapes. Finally, a theology of sin and conversion should point out the unjust and racist global order that perpetuates the economic cycle of decay, which hurts the black continent. Amid these challenges, an African theology of development must show how the sinful historical trajectory can be reversed in Africa through the agency of Africans, and particularly mediated through African Christianity working with other faith traditions to effect different levels of conversion that can lead to transformation in Africa.3 Sixth is a critical theology of Christian momentum in Africa, which must de-emphasize the triumphalism that is built on the assumption that Africa is the new center of Christianity.This claim is often made without any corresponding effort to show how this centering of Christianity in Africa is also bringing about social transformation and putting Africa in a positive light in a world where most things about Africa are often perceived through false narratives and interpretations. This requires urgently addressing the conficting narratives and dualities in the Christian mission in Africa, including the dualities of faith and unbelief; life and death; hope and despair; poverty and wealth; and poor Christians in rich churches. How these dualities can be harmonized to develop a social Gospel in Africa through social ministries and daily praxis in the quest for human and cosmic fourishing will be essential to any discourse of theology and development in Africa. Moreover to be addressed is the place of religion in development, viewed against some predominant theories of modernization and secularization that often marginalize religious discourse as irrelevant to the question of development and the evolution of the state and constitutional democracies in the modern world. These six paradigms, among others, shape the conceptual and theoretical frameworks that we fnd in contemporary literature on African theologies of development.They also refect in different ways the two dominant crises that we propose can inform one to think more critically and broadly about the larger question of the development of African societies as well as the intersections of development with the Christian faith, and articulating a contextual theology of development. We propose that two crises characterize Africa’s march toward modernity.They should shape and determine the kind of proposals that theologians in Africa make in meeting the goal of history in Africa.These two crises are the postcolonial state and the post-missionary Christianity. 226

Theology and development in Africa

Regarding the crisis of the postcolonial state, we are referring to the failure of African nations to build strong national institutions and structures that can promote, protect, and preserve the common good and equally and fairly guarantee social mobility for all citizens. Elias Bongmba demonstrates that the human crisis in Africa is directly correlated with the crisis of the postcolonial state. He characterizes this crisis using four prevalent “P’s” in Africa in the abuse and misuse of power today: privatization of power, pauperization of the state, prodigalization of the state, and proliferation of violence.4 With the emergence of independent nations in Africa in the 1960s, unworkable paradigms of development were imposed on African nations by their defunct colonial oppressors and their African petite bourgeoisie. What emerged in post-independence Africa is what George Ayittey described as “religion of development.”This is the kind of development that propelled African nationalist leaders and elites to opt for obtusely expensive and inappropriate capital-intensive techniques of production when simple, less costly techniques were available. It also contributed to the neglect and consequent decline of African agriculture. Peasant agriculture was too “backward” and was simply excluded from the grandiose plans drawn by the elites to industrialize Africa. Nor was any role envisaged for Africa’s peasant majority—the Atingas. Derided as “uneducated,” “slow to change,” and “bound by traditions,”“primitive implements” were shunned.5 This was only one of the many false starts in post-independence Africa.6 There were the innocent romantic ideals that the “poisoned chalice” of nationhood given to the now-defunct Western colonies of Africa would function well because it had been modeled on the systems of government in the West—constitutional democracy, the rule of law, separation of power, free and fair elections, etc.We know that in the frst decade of independence, most African countries were either taken over by a one-party system or through military coups, or both. The soldiers who took over governments in Africa, as well as the dictators who emerged either from a military takeover or the suppression of opposition in a one-party state, became the triggers that unraveled the inchoate social compact and false identity and foundation of postcolonial African states. They also unconsciously triggered the inevitable emergence of the multiple fault lines in many African nations, which have spewed wars, genocide, ethnic conficts, corruption in government, failed and failing states, refugee crises, and generalized suffering and poverty—all of which continue to convulse the continent today.The problem is not the emergence of the state per se in Africa, because there has always been some form of the social compact and set of values and virtues required of every person in traditional African communal societies and ancient kingdoms.The problem was the nature of the postcolonial state in Africa, how it was constituted, and the inchoate bonds of the elements constituting the state. As Adebayo Olukoshi rightly argues, there has been an erosion of the autonomy of the state in Africa and the delegitimization of local development and social policies and practices by Western governments, corporations, fnancial institutions (like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank), and aid agencies.These have led to a lack of harmonization between economic policies and locally driven instruments and agencies for social renewal.7 We also see a similar process taking shape in post-missionary churches. However, African agency in Christianity and the emergence of African Pentecostalism, charismatism, and other initiatives in Christianity took wings following independence and the return of most Western missionaries to their sending nations and home missions in the 1960s and 1970s. Just like the gift of states to Africa, which was a cargo-product made abroad and delivered to Africa without respect for Africa’s own narratives and forms of social arrangements, the missionary churches 227

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

in Africa—particularly Roman Catholicism, Anglican Communion, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterians, and the Reformed Tradition—were also established without paying serious attention to local processes and cultural and religious traditions. What the soldiers did with their armored tanks, bullets, and cannons in bringing down the state, and what the dictators did in expropriating the wealth of the state for themselves and their groups, also happened in mainline Christianity in a related but parallel context through preachers, prophets, priests, the big men/ daddies, and thick madams/mamas of these burgeoning churches. The Pentecostals had no guns and bullets, but they had the Bible and their ability to harvest the riches of God and the powers of the Holy Spirit.With these tools, what were once considered fringe movements led by “uninformed and false” pastors, preachers, and prophets have now become the new African Reformation, in the sense that these groups are now African religious subalterns who are offering strong alternatives to the missionary churches that now compete for space and membership with these groups.8 The Pentecostal revival in Africa reveals that fragmentation in the churches of Africa is only a religious version of that social reality, in which many ethnic groups, rebel leaders, and factions of political parties (among others) are breaking away from the state, or where communities are forming social capital to provide for themselves outside of the formal apparatus of failed social agencies of the state. The crisis of the postcolonial state and the crisis of the post-missionary church point to the absence of strong institutions in Africa. About the state, it shows that the structures of the state and bad state actors in Africa are contributing to the worsening of Africa’s social and economic crises.9 With regard to the churches in Africa, it shows that there has not fully emerged in the continent inculturated church institutions and structures that are deeply grounded in local processes and practices. There is a need to think of an African ecclesiology, which will birth the kinds of churches in Africa that will go beyond enchantment, devotionalism, and false claims. Such churches can then offer spiritual and religious services to God’s people and act as strong prophetic entities to fght bad state actors and check the excesses of religious fundamentalism or an unholy alliance between church and state. What has happened in Africa with regard to accession to the common good by the rank and fle is a highly competitive, volatile, and destructive run to the top—often without any institutional framework, common playing ground, or best practices developed over time.Thus, as space shrinks within the state because of the so-called state capture by families, political parties, and ethnic groups, there is greater fragmentation and competition.The multiple appeals to ever-expanding alternate sites for social integration and hope could explain in large measure the metastasizing of rebel movements, secessionist uprisings, militia groups, or terrorist cells in Africa.The same applies to both the mainline and new churches in Africa, which continue to witness an increasing number of splinter groups, and opposing positions, teachings, and doctrines. These affect how the churches approach issues of wealth creation, access to the riches of God, and health and sickness. It also affects the teaching and practices of churches in building a praxis of hope, and strengthening the agency of the people in dealing with the adverse social conditions and limiting situations that people face in Africa. In these churches, multiple narratives are emerging in answer to fundamental questions about being and belonging, death and life, and poverty and wealth, among others. The competition for membership, validation, and forms of control is heightened because of the shrinking social space as each group constructs marginal sites for enacting narratives of being and belonging—which may not fnd a home amidst the triangulation that typifes the mainline churches’ relations with their founding Western base, their formal structures, and multiple mediations of authority. It is within this larger context that one sees the challenge in any discourse on theology and development in Africa. It might be more helpful to examine the theology of development in a 228

Theology and development in Africa

particular church tradition, although it will limit the appeal of this chapter. While the authors belong to the Catholic tradition, we engage the voices of many African scholars in the examination of this theoretical and conceptual framework.While we will draw from Catholic social doctrine, we have attempted to privilege African voices within and outside Catholicism, rather than employing the Catholic social teachings as a template for the discourse.We also explore the limitations of that social heritage in engaging some of the social questions in Africa. Our goal here is to give a survey of different approaches and to make intelligible some of the principles operative in these narratives in an African Christian theology of development.

Theology and development in Africa We would like to offer a basic defnition of an African Christian notion of development. In the following discussion, it will become clear why this basic defnition is like and unlike some notions that are prevalent in development literature and current scholarship. An African notion of development in this chapter is proposed as the presence of those social, cultural, religious, economic, and political conditions that make human and cosmic fourishing possible by the daily unfolding of the reign of God in African history.An African theology of development, in this light, is concerned with demonstrating the place of the African Christian faith, social Gospel, and praxis of social transformation among Christians and through the instrumentality of their churches in the search for the rational and practical conditions for the realization of human and cosmic fourishing as essential to the fulfllment in history of God’s saving will for creation and the people in Africa, revealed through Christ. It is a theology of accountability that renders praise to God by showing how the assets of Africa, in all their richness and diversity, are being realized for human and cosmic fulfllment. It is a theology that proposes the pathway for a missional praxis offering a foundation for the kind of daily performances, witnessing, and proclamation by Christians and churches in Africa to bring about a continuing realization of the mission of God in Africa’s evolving history. How this has been demonstrated in the writings of African theologians has varied, but we will briefy show the logic of the African approach to development and why it is failing. We will show how three sets of related approaches—anthropological, institutional, and grassroots—can work together in the search for a new language and praxis for human and cosmic fourishing in Africa that appropriates the African religious tradition of abundant life.

The African development approach The common rationale for development initiatives in post-independence Africa is the integration of Africa into the global economy and is driven by the theory of modernization that seeks greater convergence in the global economy.10 The central argument for African development goes this way: poverty in Africa and other non-Western societies is the result of divergence in technical, scientifc, political, cultural, religious, and economic life from the West. The West, as the argument goes, had a Great Escape and broke the cycle of poverty through the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.This was followed by “Great Leveling” or “Great Compression,” which emerged as a result of economic growth and the two world wars, then by the “Great Convergence,” which began in the post-Reconstruction effort captured in the now-famous speech of President Truman in 1949.11 Africa, according to this vision, needs to become like the West by adopting those economic policies, political and constitutional democratic principles, structures, and practices, as well as Western economic orthodoxies. This is the only route to progress and a better future for Africans, and this is how to bridge the socio-economic disparity between Africa and the West. For this to be realized, post-independence Africa was suffused with 229

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

international ‘development industry,’ the army of outsiders coming to ‘help.’ By no coincidence, just as independence was dawning, new agencies started to form, a new wing of the World Bank for poor countries in 1960, USAID in 1961, a British colonial department became an overseas aid agency in 1962.’These groups were supported by a vast sea of “‘experts,’” advocacy groups, NGO’s, church relief agencies, etc. in their quest to help Africa.12 Arguments for or against the convergence of Africa with the world market and economic systems dominate much of literature on development by both theologians and scholars of development studies, church aid, and social justice ministries in Africa.13 There is also a narrowing of development discourse in Africa to economic growth variables like Gini’s coeffcient, poverty index, GDP, and life expectancy rates (among other indices), without attention to the “dictatorship of Western statistics on Africa,” which has been demonstrated by many scholars to be inadequate and false.14 Development theories have framed African history and societies narrowly, employing categories and practices that are often developed as part of some more sinister and destructive economic variables and practices driven by the unforgiving forces of neo-liberal capitalism, whose twin peaks were attained in the era of globalization and are diffused through the development goals, benchmarks, plans, and vision of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations (UN) (for example the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals). Dayo Olopade argues strongly that African development is following a different trajectory, which does not ft into the clinical development graph of the UN or the World Top Incomes Database (WTID). According to her, there are different convergences of interests, creativity, local initiatives, and signifcant victories and positive stories of young people, women, and civil societies, which are all changing the face of Africa. These “success stories” do not show up in some of the analyses that inform and sustain the economic and social policies of many Western governments and international organizations like the UN, IMF, World Trade Organization (WTO), and others. She, therefore, argues that “when you’re thinking of Africa in the context of the wars you’ve seen, the poverty you assume, or the government you’ve given up on, you’re likewise missing the point.”15 The framing of the African world and her peoples around a determinative cast, constructed on negative stereotypes of hopelessness and poverty, led to many dominant degrading images and representations of Africa that are still common in development literature, popular Western media,Western international mission appeals about Africa, UN development and humanitarian agencies fundraising, and global initiatives and work in Africa, among others. William Easterly shows the limitations of this African development logic and agenda. According to him, the Western development agenda that began with the formation of the League of Nations through the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, and which was directed toward Asia, Latin America, and Africa, was wrong-headed and loaded with racist agendas and the rejection of local initiatives. It was also structured to undermine the rights of the poor.16 Even though the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the rights and equality of all people, it was only a succession to a racist understanding of human anthropology and development adopted 30 years previously. It is interesting to note that when the West was drafting the agenda for ushering in “a period of development” for non-Western peoples, it failed to endorse racial equality in the second decision of Versailles.17 In the words of Easterly, it is notable that “the idea of development solidifed while the West was still unapologetically racist during the inter-war period of 1919 to 1939 … Racism would even be more at the center in colonial Africa in World War II.”18 230

Theology and development in Africa

What is obvious from the history of Africa is that African development has been historically discussed on comparative terms as the West versus Africa, or the West in Africa.This vitiates any attempt at understanding the assets of Africa or her unique and diverse approaches to wealth creation and meeting and mitigating adverse factors, whether exogenous or endogenous to her history. Indeed, most of the development discourse in Africa in secular or theological studies is often constructed about what happened or happens in other contexts, especially the West. Authors discuss African development either to validate some predominant economic orthodoxies or theological, anthropological tradition, or to show how African narratives are like or unlike these other traditions. In a few instances, an attempt is made to appropriate some of these predominant orthodoxies in part or in whole. The narratives of African development since the beginning of the New Millennium stride between Afro-Optimism in the “Africa rising” literature in such works like Ashish J. Thakkar’s The Lion Awakes,19 in Jake Bright and Aubrey Hruby’s The Next Africa:An Emerging Continent Becomes a Global Powerhouse,20 or Steven Radelet’s Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way;21 and Afro-Pessimism in such works as Robert Calderisi’s The Trouble with Africa,22 or Greg Mills’ Why Africa Is Poor.23 African development has also been defned by either a narrow understanding of development or/and a narrow reading of the African continent as if it were one country, with similar problems and a generic solution. Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer notes rather sadly that it is very distressing for many African countries and Africans to see themselves being “lumped together and dismissed as part of a disastrous whole,” because there are greater diversity and differentiation in economic growth and social conditions among African countries.24 In this regard, Bright and Hruby argue rather strongly, Sound analysis of contemporary Africa—its growth sectors, star entrepreneurs, key trends, or successful countries—will require the same unique net-sum, data-rich, historically informed, the nuanced approach applied to other complex regions of the world … China surges ahead as a global economic power, but not without its own environmental, banking, and labor setbacks. Some Eurozone countries show signs of post-recession economic growth, while others, such as Greece and Portugal, still teetering on the edge of government bankruptcy.25 In this light, there is the need to examine not only the structures of the theological discourse on development in Africa but also the language and categories being employed, as well as the content of such discourse. The word “development” is thus problematic because of its history and how it has been used in Africa. Michael Budde, therefore, argues strongly that, “Development,” among the most contested terms in the western lexicon, cannot be understood adequately unless one accepts that is a violent, coercive process—always has been, always will be. It involves the coerced reorganization of societies, peoples, lands, and practices. Sometimes that coercion is obvious, in the form of soldiers or police or private violence that pushes people off their land, prohibits them access to needed sources of food and materials, or kills people who disagree with the ends and means of actors who drive the development process. In other times and places, the coercion takes less easily perceived forms, from changes in tax structures designed to push people from self- provisioning activities to those dependent on wage markets, to legal processes that replace traditional land tenure system with those that beneft the favored agents and outcomes of development processes. Moreover, this violence is not an originating practice that, once its grim work is accomplished, can be replaced by a 231

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

more a civilized sort of cooperative or voluntary set of interactions—such doesn’t end with “primitive accumulation” stages of economic transformation, but is a necessary and ongoing function through.26 Budde calls for a church after development, meaning that a theology of development can only begin with not simply a post-development discourse, but a recovery of the goal of history within the praxis of integral salvation and the creative movement of history, which recovers again the beauty of creation by attending to the hymn of the universe and the agency of peoples. The church after development will also require the development of new ecclesiologies, new eco-spiritualties, new social practices, and local praxis of faith and historical reversal. Such practices, Budde argues, should be built around what late South African theologian Steve DeGruchy called “sustainable livelihood frameworks” as well as the ideals of Community-Based Resource Management (CBRM), which will privilege the assets and agency of people through participatory practices that are developed and sustained through appeal to both their actual faith and their vision and daily praxis of hope for a better future.27 African theologians who write on development must seek to fnd a balance in their analyses. In this regard, they must seek to untether African development discourse from its entanglement in the defeatist validation of a victim-based narrative, as if Africa is caught in a trap from which she cannot escape. This requires a more self-critical historical analysis and a broader conceptual and theoretical framework that studies Africa beyond the Western narratives.This approach privileges African agency and failures in both the emergent past and present historical contradictions of the continent, which threaten to hollow out the riches of Africa’s gifts and unique path to human and cosmic fourishing.African development should be constructed as a unique emergence in God’s mission in Africa.The narrative of a single-cause explanation of the African predicament with a direct correlation to the Western construction of a global order in which Africa is only a pawn is tantalizingly appealing. However, stopping at such an analysis without offering some workable approaches is not enough. Thus, African theologies of development must be conceived as both excavating the riches of Africa as well as showing what approaches can help the churches become important agents in bringing about social transformation in Africa.This should go beyond lamenting what Africa has received from or suffered at the hands of the West, and beyond showing how Western church aid and mission interventions in Africa can work better for Africa. Above all, different approaches to African development, whether about the state or church groups, have many problems that make them unworkable for a host of reasons. First is the rigidity of the economic orthodoxies proposed to Africans by the experts, and the rigid and top-down donor requirements and project proposals and reports required of Africans by both secular and faith-based charities.These often do not harmonize with local practices and initiatives, or cultural understanding of indigenous knowledge for creating wealth. It also shows a power differential that presumes that the donor, for instance, knows what is best for the African partner or that the expert has better know-how concerning local problems than those who are actually on the ground. It also ignores African worldviews. Kingsley Moghalu, a Nigerian economist, argues that globalization hurt Africa because it was not ready for integration into a lopsided global economy. In addition, he argues that structures were developed and imposed on Africa without regard to Africa’s worldview and without being transmitted through those frameworks, values, strategies, and organizations that uniquely apply different aspects of life in Africa in leadership and governance, social enterprise, private sector activities, agriculture, science, technology, nation-building, and initiatives in religions, among others.28 Frederick Cooper, arguing in the same vein, noted that most of these approaches to African development failed 232

Theology and development in Africa

under the regime of globalization because they were concerned with market homogenization which required coherence and “integration” of African economies. He argues that international fnancial institutions that tell African leaders that development will follow if they open up their economies will not get to the bottom of the continent’s problems unless they address how specifc structures within African societies, within or across borders, provide opportunities and constraints for production and exchange, and how specifc mechanisms in external commodity markets provide opportunities and blockages for African products.29 Cooper argues further that the idea that development is a progressive movement, which proceeds through fxed rules and the iron will of the market forces of capitalism, ignores the multiple variables which are operational in particular contexts, and other interfaces and specifc limitations and constraints in a specifc society. He proposes that scholars of African development of all approaches must give more attention to probing the causes of the problem of persistent poverty in Africa and allowing processes to emerge through “grounded theories” reifed in the local context. This will avoid “totalizing pretensions and their presentist periodization,” while also not being enslaved to the idea of an ahistorical homebred approach, which “ends up glossing over the mechanisms and limitations of spatial relationships.”30 The third challenge that follows from the preceding point is the question of the neglect of the grassroots.African theologies of development must pay attention to the narrative of a transformative Christology that centers the daily practices of people on the priorities and practices of Jesus Christ in working hard to change the African predicament to conform to God’s will in concrete history. These grassroots include small Christian communities, women and youth groups, and farmers’ groups (among others), who “operate on the values of reciprocity and a moral economy” in many parts of Africa and most churches.31 In 2000, the UN published a signifcant fnding on the defnition of poverty within the context of its plan to develop a policy on poverty and development.The book was a feld study conducted in 1999, involving over 20,000 poor women and men from 23 countries. According to one of the authors, Deepa Narayan, the formulation of any policy on poverty and development in the 21st century must be informed by those who know most about poverty—“their voices, their experiences, and their recommendations.”32 Why are the voices of the poor so decisive in the social mission of the church and poverty eradication in Africa? “There are 2.8 billion poverty experts, the poor themselves.The development of discourse about poverty has been dominated by the perspectives and expertise of those who are not poor-professionals, politicians, and agency offcials.”33 The authors found from this research that despite very different political, social, and economic contexts, there are striking similarities in poor people’s experiences. The common underlying theme was one of powerlessness, which consists of multiple and interlocking dimensions of the experience of poverty.34 The answer to poverty is not more control, but freedom, and capacitybuilding and empowerment, such that the assets of the poor can be developed so that they can fght their fght. The fourth limitation of this approach is the anthropological question and the narrow progressive/linear reading of history. Joseph Ogbonnaya argues that Africans face a new form of anthropological crisis, heightened by globalization and totalitarian ideologies.35 This is largely a result of poverty or what Jean-Marc Ela calls an “anthropology of misfortune.”36 This refers to the ways and means by which the social condition of the continent has harmed the realization of the fullness of the human person in Africa, and limited the possibility of human freedom by preventing Africans from harnessing their material and spiritual resources in the continent and 233

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

build on their assets. Ogbonnaya argues that the anthropological crisis in Africa is not simply the result of material deprivation, but arises from modern forms of cultural imperialism that rob Africans of their cultural identity and creativity.Why is the predominant African development approach unworkable? Ogbonnaya sees the answer to this as lying at the heart of social evolutionism, which is the main direction of African development plans. He argues that because neoliberalism’s operational anthropology is primarily mechanistic and hence materialistic, it is proft-oriented (not people directed), individualistic (prizing selfinterest over the common good), and centers freedom within the bounds of the market. It adopts the social evolutionistic idea of infnite progress, which gives the rich and the dominant class opportunities to progress limitlessly because those at the lower ladder of social evolution are meant to serve and provide labor for the developed progressive peoples.37 This is the kind of mindset that privileges an anthropocentric creationist account in which human progress is pursued without eco-spiritual ethics. Even though a new ecological consciousness has emerged within the last four decades in the West, the dualism of human and cosmos, poor and rich, male and female, past and future, and soul and body is still a strong worldview that continues to drive much debate today in the West about the ultimate purpose of creation. It also reveals the main lines of the power differential that creates injustice and disorder in creation and among cultures, peoples, nations, and civilizations. It is also a mindset that marginalizes the religious narrative and a God-centered ethic that locates the humanum within this divine centering of creation, helping people to develop an ethics of solidarity and care, which fows from the intimate and mutual connection of all things.Above all, it is the kind of anthropology that waters and nourishes the ground for all kinds of exclusionary practices—racism, sexism, and classism, for example—and social hierarchies and power blocs based on the dualism of superior and inferior, strong and weak, and other polarities that defne the unacceptable arc of history. Such a narrative of progress dictated by a narrowly defned sense of history fails to pass the ethical test of relationality that helps us see how our lives are held together in a common destiny, and moves people’s will to work in such a way that human and cosmic fourishing emerge through just actions and an ethics of recognition, mutuality, respect, solidarity, love, and sustainability based on a sound theological anthropology. The theological anthropology in Catholic social doctrine, for example, shares some common values with the African notion of abundant life in placing the good of the human person and communities as the goal of all development. However, an African understanding of community is theandrocosmic (God-humans-cosmos) rather than anthropocentric. Community is understood in African social ethics as the whole of the visible and non-visible universe—water, hills, trees, animals, human beings, neighbors, the living and the living dead, the not-yet-born, God, spirits, etc.This holistic notion of community is very eco-spiritual because abundant life is understood as the condition that exists when the whole of creation is fourishing because it has the fullness of life. African theologies of abundant life are concerned more with an integral development built on a spiritual and cosmic vision of a life beyond the false economic messianism of development experts and development theories.38 However, the African religiocultural worldview exempts itself from the determinism of a linear history built on any economic orthodoxy.African theological conversations reject any theological irenicism about any notions of progress procured through unethical economic systems that sometimes are foisted on African nations. Globalization, modernization, or social evolutionism are only, as Miroslav Volf proposes, “one moment in the grand arc of history which starts with creation and ends with the new 234

Theology and development in Africa

creation.”39 Thus, theologies of development must reject the totalizing designs and plans of globalization, modernization, and secularization. This rejection should be at the level of their goals, without denying some of the good things within them that can help advance a vision of creation in which all things work together for many in the cosmos.The goal here is to develop theologies of development that can transform traditions and reverse wrong historical trajectories through African humanism. John de Gruchy defnes this as a social humanism that embodies relationality as central, affrms a common human dignity beyond race, class, and gender, and seeks to embody these values in a human rights culture. Such a humanism decries “bad religion”—whether Christian or otherwise—which dehumanizes, but equally affrms “good religion” that contributes to human, social, and ecological wellbeing. It is a humanism that is inclusive and holistic, related to contextual needs, yet global in extent.40 Finally, about African development, there is the question of history. This is central because an expert makes predictions using development theories and practices. In many cases, especially for Africa, these promise much but deliver nothing but greater suffering and fragmentation of African states and religions.African Christianity is today torn apart by its hybrid notion of history. In many cases, this may vitiate attempts at a social mission or wealth creation through people’s daily practices because of the prosperity Gospel’s narrative of history.When people spiritualize human suffering and use the name of God to fll every gaping hole in their socio-economic life, when they prefer, for example, praying for miracles of healing to building hospitals and clinics, it undermines any faith-based praxis. Communities of hope and belonging, which can reverse the course of history, emerge not simply through devotions and the reinforcement of religious claims, but through practices that transform daily existence into new levels of living refecting abundant life and the Kingdom of God. Paul Gifford argues that Africa’s march toward modernity cannot be achieved simply through a criticism of Western paradigms of development by African theologians. He proposes that African theologians must move away from romanticizing African cultures and Africa’s narratives to a more critical engagement with enchanted Christianity and the prosperity Gospel. He notes that even though the Catholic Church in Africa is strong in promoting the social mission, there is a disconnect between African theologies on social issues and the daily practices of the people because the theological debate in Africa “entirely ignores the religious imagination of so many” which is an enchanted Christianity.41 What is true is that translating the strong passion for God in Africa into works of faith, social capital, strong ethical choices about social questions of the day, and praxis of reversal of history is urgently needed if Christianity is not to become another source of disempowerment and exploitation of the people.

The institutional approach: engaging the dual crisis of the postcolonial states and post-missionary churches of Africa Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson show that global economic inequality and the difference between the poor is not due to geography, culture, or the absence of the right kind of knowledge or skills, or even operational laws. Transformation of any society requires a much more complex analysis of the defects in institutions that create a vicious cycle and how centralized and inclusive states and societies can emerge by bringing about a virtuous cycle through creative destructive acts in the course of history.42 Development is not a gift any nation, race, or continent can give to another. Indeed, attempts to “develop Africa” led by the West, or attempts 235

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

to “help Africa” led by churches and other international agencies, need to be critically rethought by African theologians and scholars. Obianuju Ekeocha, for example, shows that the ideological underpinnings of much Western aid to Africa are directed toward undermining the foundations of African family life, moral and spiritual traditions, and sense of identity.43 Dambisa Moyo, writing from an economist perspective, documents with data and historical acuity how aid is destroying Africa.44 Development in Africa is thus not about aid, nor is it a gift from one strong leader or social services agency, nor largesse dished out during national independence, elections, and religious holidays by some rich African politicians or philanthropists to local people. People must be the agents of their history.Therefore, the capacity of peoples and cultures must be unhinged so that people can build the kind of religious and political institutions that are accountable and responsive to their cries and dreams. Credible data support the fact that strong and well-functioning democratic institutions tend to produce better outcomes in general for the people, and often guard against the creation by a few elites of sinful structures that sustain an extractive and clientelist state, or religious groups in which the leaders are swimming in wealth and enjoying the good life while the rest of the people wallow in sweltering poverty. The majority of Africans desire political and religious institutions that serve to promote the common good, rather than exploitative ones that destroy the fabric of societies through unjust and exclusionary practices. The Afrobarometer Index of Demand for Democracy climbed 15 points in 16 countries surveyed between 2002 and 2012, from 36% to 51%. Seven out of 10 Africans in 34 countries surveyed preferred democracy to “other kinds of government” by 2013. The demand for democracy is strongest in West Africa.Africans also see elections as the best sign of a democratic regime.45 However, the kind of democratic state being advocated here is a whole state as opposed to an extractive one. Extractive states do not follow due process, the rule of law, or transparency, even if a strongman leads them. Extractive states are often corrupt, lacking accountability and transparency, and destructive of the common good because people are only thinking about what they can get from the commonwealth rather than the kinds of sacrifces that need to be made for the common good.What happens in extractive states is: Rather than building up institutions, they [the leaders] break down old barriers to achieve their goals. Because they shake things up, they often receive immediate praise for making changes. But their refusal to follow institutional rules and adhere to acceptable norms lead, invariably, to the hollowing out of already weak systems, the erosion of checks and balances, and their substitution by political theatre and personality cult.46 This is why the churches of Africa must become prophetic in standing up to the excesses and abuses of bad state actors.The churches in Africa must address both their inner contradictions and compromises with the powers of oppression in Africa. As Emmanuel Katongole rightly observes, “if churches and coffns represent the dominant cultural realities in Africa, they also represent the predicament of a continent suspended between hope and despair.”Therefore, he proposes that saving Africa will require abandoning the false belief that “churches represent all that is hopeful about Africa, and the social, political, and economic systems represent all that is tragic (coffns) in Africa.”47 Obaji M.Agbiji and Ignatius Swart, writing in a similar vein, propose that African poverty and corruption should be blamed on both the government and religious institutions. Not only do both derive their ideologies from the same sources, politicians also use 236

Theology and development in Africa

religious ideologies in Africa to foster and sustain the structural entrenchment of poverty and corruption in many ways including the complacent attitudes of religious leaders toward African governments, and the use of churches to provide relief and charity which may assuage the conscience of the churches and oppressors of the people but fails to deal with the root causes of poverty and to build structures of justice.48 An African theology of development must pay particular attention to the many alternative sites of hope in Africa today, rather than just concerning itself with institutional churches and aid administration or simply a critique of the West.As Paul Richards shows in his work in West Africa, even in the most challenging time of the Ebola outbreak, which destroyed social cohesion in West Africa, the respect for “people’s science” and local responses were decisive in the victory over that disease in Liberia.49 The same rationality should be applied by churches in their social ministry and development work.While criticism of African development is sorely needed, as we have shown here, the main challenge today is how to enact a praxis of development and hope through a reversal of the wrong direction of history in Africa which has brought so much suffering to our people.50 Churches in Africa can become strong social capital, which could help valorize the agency of the people, identify what is working for them and support them in their fght for the eradication of poverty, and encourage civic engagement to hold governments accountable to the people. Churches in Africa can act as subalterns to unleash creative destruction that can bring down entrenched negative social, cultural, economic, and political policies and programs. They can build connections, networks, and collective energies for promoting, preserving, and protecting the common good. Bryant L. Myers identifes six forms of capitals in any community: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)

Human capital: skills, knowledge, labor, capacity, and good health, etc. Natural capital: trees, land, water biodiversity, etc. Financial capital: savings, cash, livestock, income, pensions, remittances, etc. Spiritual capital: prayer, faith, religious activities, etc. Physical capital: buildings, infrastructure, water, tools, bicycles, sewing machines, etc. Social capital: networks, groups, relationships of trust, etc.51

According to James Coleman, social capital exists “in the relations among persons.”52 It also refers to the connections among individuals and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.53 The Church of Scotland’s pioneering document A Church without Walls54 is one of the most important documents produced in the West, showing how churches can become both instruments of salvation and restoration for the people as well as important social capital oriented toward connecting people to each other and to their communities. Such connections can be based on some common elements, including both local issues and relational bonds that are always needed for building better societies. This document argues strongly that the church works better where people join together and build relationships with each other and with the wider community to which they belong. Social capital always refers to the nonmonetary value of cooperation and networking present in social relations between residents in local communities. Social capital facilitates cooperation, coordination, and participatory practices, for the mutual beneft of all.55 In a very real sense, there is no organization in Africa better positioned than the churches to play this very important role. In that regard, it is possible for every parish in Africa to have six important socio-economic and spiritual outreach groups that can form social capital in their religiously or denominationally defned spiritual context—agricultural development committee (Till the Earth to Feed the Hungry), women micro-credit cooperative group, parish mentoring and support group for the 237

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

youth, poverty eradication outreach programs, parish village or community bank, parish food bank.There might be some other groups or related social activities that could be developed.56 This is the main point defended in a well-argued essay by Peter S. Heslam about how Africa’s evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic groups can participate in creating wealth, building better networks of trust in societies where this is lacking, and practically promoting entrepreneurship through the work of pastors (pastorpreneurs) who build up churches from scratch and can transfer such skills to others, thereby giving people dignity, self-reliance, empowerment, and hope. Through these qualities, they can provide the “institutional, relational, moral, and spiritual context,” which the market economy needs to “function effciently and promote human fourishing.”57 Another practice developed by African Pentecostals, which is also very helpful in wealth creation, is “corporate anointing.” Nimi Wariboko points out that this does not apply only to fghting the devil in the spiritual sense but also to helping them in the analysis of power and how such powers can be used to enhance life or destroy it.“This praxis refects the fundamental understanding of power as generated and sustained in a network of persons and within the internal and immanent social dynamic of community and its immediate and remote larger contexts.”58 While these approaches betray their modernization theory bias, Bob Mitchell has proposed that faith-based organizations are called to bring about change and that in doing so they must always be aware of the strengths and limitations of different theories of change—change as scientifc and rationalistic or technocratic perspectives, change as community participation and empowerment, change as improving and fghting for human rights and change as a non-linear process that requires highly contextualized, fuid, and multi-disciplinary approaches.59 The last one—change as a non-linear process—is very close to what we are proposing here in this chapter. This is because it brings together creation, history, culture, African humanism, sin and conversion, and the place of African Christianity in this emergence of human and cosmic fourishing in Africa and the world. In what follows, we show what an African theology of development will look like as a non-linear understanding of how Christians and African churches can apply their Christian faith to the urgent task of fnding different approaches to bringing about abundant life for God’s people in Africa.

Theological typologies of development for African Christianity The pluralistic spectrum of the African social landscape within which development is carried out indicates complexities that undergird a theology of development.Though political, socioeconomic, religious, cultural, and ecological issues are typically not dissimilar across Africa, a theology of development is not monolithic. Nevertheless, there are fundamental social currents streaming across Africa, and one can speak generically of three typologies of an African theology of development, which are proposed here as viable pathways for meeting some of the challenging issues and opportunities for human and cosmic fourishing. As we have demonstrated in this chapter, the defnition of development is imbued with ideological underpinnings that often reinforce narratives of exclusion, marginality, and domination between the North and South, as well as social hierarchies and power differentials in the so-called developing nations. It is thus hard to privilege a particular defnition. However, we propose that viewed through an African theological lens, one needs to look at development in terms of conditions that need to be present for human and cosmic fourishing appropriate to the African traditions of abundant life, in which the common good is promoted, preserved, and accessed by all people—especially those who are poor and historically excluded. Development is, therefore, a dynamic historical process. It is within this dynamism that we propose these typologies as a theological roadmap 238

Theology and development in Africa

to be followed, based on important theological developments in Africa concerning some of the issues of governance, social ministry in the church, aid intervention, social justice, the so-called prosperity Gospel, and the cries of the poor and the marginalized.

African theology of development as refection on the praxis of hope and historical reversal An African theology of development seeks to show what hope will look like when mediated through the agency of Christians and peoples in daily praxis and their actual faith. It weaves the narratives of abundant life and reversal of history, by showing that the daily stories of resistance and new beginnings and practices of hope are concrete realizations of the footprints of God in African history. It is this recognition of God’s active presence at work in the daily commitments of Africans inspired by their faith in their struggles for survival and for a renewal of creation which offers African theologies of development data for refection. During his maiden visit to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, Pope Francis acclaimed:“Africa is a land of hope.”60 The words of Pope Francis refect the soul of the African continent.A theology of development in Africa must show why Africa is a land of hope—not simply through making assertions and claims about the unfailing courage of Africans, or the famed African Ubuntu, but rather by entering into what is going on in African history through the agency of Christianity and demonstrating the intelligibility of these daily habits—social ministry, poverty-eradication initiatives, the fght for human rights, and the rights of women—in meeting the most pressing needs of the people of Africa. Given the complex social issues that Africa faces today, the Second African Synod of Bishops spoke of the crisis of hope.61 A major task of an African theology of development is to offer hope, hewn from both the personal and community stories of Africans, and their resilience amidst social challenges.62 An African theology of development demonstrates how these stories shape the present African existential reality, how Africans respond to development, and how these stories contribute to the renewal of the cultural, economic, religious, and political landscapes of Africa. In his work Born of Lament:The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa, Emmanuel Katongole seeks to show the nature of hope in the concrete African historical context. He reveals through the narratives of community leaders in places like Congo and Northern Uganda that alternative sites of reversal of history are emerging, even in the most hopeless situations in Africa, because people—particularly African women—are resisting the forces of entropy in particular contexts of brokenness and war, by creating oases of forgiveness, healing, and restoration, which shows the face of hope.Within the African context, Katongole writes that hope takes the form of arguing and wrestling with God. If we understand it as a lament, such arguing and wrestling is not merely a sentiment, not merely a cry of pain. It is a way of mourning, of protesting too, appealing to, and engaging God—and a way of acting amid ruins.63 In other words, hope involves thinking and feeling, understanding and acting, and being agents in creating new stories that show the footprints of God. It is also about how these stories help to bring light where there is darkness as performance and praxis.A theology of development must reassure the people of Africa that “the Garden of Eden in decay” can become again the face of a new creation through the faith and works of African Christians who must be challenged by such a theology to become “active actors” in the realization of the reign of God in African history. An African theology of development initiates trajectories for the future, which inspires Africans to trust God’s graces. Consistently working through their concrete social situation, 239

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

these graces strengthen them in becoming responsible agents of their destiny and creative dreamers for future generations. Such a theology offers hope that is not based on a vague utopia or an escape from space and time, but rather provides a frm assurance of the rich possibilities and prospects for Africa’s future. Hope is not based on tangible signs, the promises of political elites, confdence in institutions, or an ideology.According to Albert Nolan, to put one’s hope and trust in God means that, while we might value and appreciate the contributions of princes, institutions, and ideologies, in the end, we simply do not treat them as the absolute and unshakable basis of our hopes for the future.64 Christian hope is ultimately founded on the Triune God (Hebrews 10:23). Hope anchored on God enables Africans to recognize what God is doing in the present and promises for the future. As Maria Cimperman states: “Because our hope is rooted in God, it allows us to truly see the world as it is, to imagine more than what we see, and to work for what we sense is possible.”65 Hope builds on the mission of Christ to liberate humanity from all that obviates human and cosmic fourishing, and on the promise of his loving presence in human history (Luke 18; John 10:10; Matthew 28:20). An African theology of development must articulate a hope based on God’s unconditional love, and God’s continuous presence in Africa’s history. Hope must express unwavering faith toward overcoming Afro-pessimism. Hope captures Africans dreaming and journeying with God toward their telos. An African theology of development bears witness to hope in a way that recognizes Africa’s eschaton as belonging to God, and Africa’s destination as a creative vision of Africans.This calls for a deeper conviction—that Africans be committed to being transformed if transformation is to occur in Africa. Drawing from Pope Francis, an African theology of development constructs a hopeful future, one that “gives priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in signifcant historical events.”66 Accordingly, the poor and marginalized are veritable voices of hope in Africa (Luke 6:20–21).Their stories reveal networks of hope seen at the grassroots, including basic Christian communities and sodalities. Empirical data do not constitute the primary currency of hope.67 Instead, the hermeneutic of hope is “measured” in terms of fdelity to the building of God’s kingdom in the here and now of Africa (Mark 1:15). It proclaims the arrival and demands of God’s reign, calling Africans to an integral conversion and prophetic imagination: conversion from past inhibitions to present possibilities as well as articulating the deepest yearnings that have been denied and suppressed.68

African theology of development as a refection on marginality The second paradigm of an African theology of development is hermeneutic of marginality. Marginality points to the social minorities and the historically voiceless in Africa—this includes persons marginalized by gender, class, tribe, or religion.69 Being marginalized evokes deprivation and diminishment, which depicts the condition of the biblical anawim (Luke 1:53). The hermeneutic of marginality prioritizes understanding, envisioning, and executing the development from the perspective of the anawim in Africa. Drawing from Gustavo Gutiérrez, we can identify the anawim as the poor, those who are regarded as insignifcant, those who are excluded from secular society and ecclesial communities, and those who are socially, economically, politically, and culturally marginalized.70 This understanding of the poor encompasses “a way of feeling, knowing, reasoning, making friends, loving, believing, suffering, celebrating, and praying.”71 The hermeneutic of marginality takes its locus from the experiences of persons living on the margins. God’s voice can be discerned through their questions and concerns, joys and sorrows, 240

Theology and development in Africa

hopes, and despair.The onerous task of an African theology of development is to rediscover the Christian vision, rooted in the mission of Christ to the poor (Luke 4:18), and reclaiming the place of honor and contribution of the poor in society. Marginality can also be seen as “the boundary where transcendence encounters human possibilities within the world.” Such junctures or peripheral arcs bear a direct relation to the suffering of the Son of God on the Cross—his suffering, being crucifed outside the city, being rejected, in pain, and a victim of injustice.72 However, in his marginality, he shows that the borders between God and the human can also be the site of injustice and oppression, and that those who are being marginalized fnd a borderless link to God, who sees the suffering of God’s Son in their marginality.The hermeneutic of marginality requires focusing a search light on the social location and pastoral accompaniment of the poor—going to where they live and becoming a pilgrim on their journey through life. Entering into the world of the poor requires unfeigned humility, attentive listening, honest conversation, integral conversion, spiritual encounter, and openness of heart.73 It means companionship, partnership, and friendship with those living on the margins in Africa. All in all, it requires that an African theology of development focuses not simply on condemning what is wrong with African development theories and practices, and denouncing sites of marginality in Africa, but also showing how God identifes with the marginal—not by bringing them to any center, but how daily practices can become sites for liberation of the poor. Nicta Lubaale writes that such marginal sites should be seen as places of fellowship, a space for collective lamentation or collective celebration space. This is the space where those who are battered by poverty and other forms of hardship look for support. It is a space where those who live in indignity fnd dignity. It is a space where those who do not have a voice … fnd spaces for their voice … a space to feel at home amid a harsh world.74 An African theology of development also must show how dehumanizing barriers, oppressive boundaries, and structures of cultural imperialism that marginalize Africans could be dismantled. It also must name how such structures of marginality have been constructed in our churches— by structures, patriarchy, lifestyle, and preaching, among others—and how a hermeneutic of reversal and a force of conversion could bring about the transformation of these sinful structures. It also demands the creation of a liberating vision, promoting mutually enhancing relationships, and building bridges of dialogue with the poor. On the other hand, the margins of Africa remain locations of potential genuine encounter and fertile grounds for prophetic imagination that can contribute to integral and sustainable development.

African theology of development as path to abundant life Central to development in the African continent is how Africans can fnd abundant life in present history. It is at the core of the anthropological crisis and the movement of history in Africa. This offers the third typology of an African theology of development, which responds to this yearning of Africans for life-in-plenitude through sharing in the community of life.The hermeneutic of abundant life explores a vision that supports human and cosmic fourishing in a mutually enhancing way, through which life is accessible to all creation. Jesus is the source of abundant life. The fullness of life that Jesus gives is articulated in chapter 10 of John’s Gospel. Jesus says:“I have come that you may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10). Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who provides pasture for all to have the fullness of life.Through his paschal mystery, Jesus offers new life to all peoples, a life that richly fows from his oneness with God 241

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu

the Father and the Holy Spirit (John 10:13–15). Africans share in this fullness of life, and they continually desire and search for green pastures to unite their life with Christ.75 An African theology of development also mines this spiritual longing of Africans for an abundant life through Christ in light of the existential exigencies of the continent. For the African, humanity fts into the fabric of the totality of creation, and the individual is in union with others and connected to nature. The identity of the individual is not without reference to other persons and not in isolation from creation.This is captured in the African concept of Ubuntu (the intrinsic relatedness of all things): we are through other people; I am related therefore I am; I am loved therefore I exist; I exist in order to participate in community, and I am nothing if I am not in community and friendship with others—nature and humans (living, dead, and unborn).76 Building upon the biblical and cultural warrants for abundant life, an African theology envisions development as biocentric, with emphasis on participation, sharing, communion, and communication with all persons and creation.This creates the grounds for the joys and sorrows of Africans to fow into a single stream of the story. Development then is not accessed by a select class.The minorities and outclassed are no longer categories or aliens in society but are treated as equal and valuable citizens.The hermeneutic of abundant life offers ways to explore the creation of possibilities for all persons to achieve abundant life, and to live in a community where every person is responsible for everyone else.As Eboussi Boulaga observed, What falls on one, falls on all. In such a relationship, the issue is the re-establishment of community, the re-establishment of the circulation of life, so that life can go on transcending itself, go on bursting the barriers, or the intervals, the nothingness, go on being superabundant.77 This view of being together is intended to engender development through a participatory and inclusive process that includes all religions, ethnic groups, and cultures. The manifestation of integral development is then seen in Africans recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in the community of life, and in living reciprocity with other creatures and valuing them as part of creation. The hermeneutic of abundant life orients a vital ethic for an African theology of development, permeating society with the Christian vision and praxis, and addressing the social challenges and sufferings experienced in the African continent. For an African theology of development to remain relevant, it must offer hope, it must account for the voiceless living on the margins, and it must be life-centered.

Conclusion What we have achieved here in this chapter is to show that development discourse in general about Africa requires a greater effort to fnd the right conceptual and theoretical framework.We also argued that it should be a theology of creation, abundant life, culture, and history. It must be grounded on theological anthropology and theological reading of the presence of sin in history and how conversion and grace bring healing, restoration, and transformation. It requires an African theology of a church immersed in history, who draws her life from the hopes and pains of people in their daily lives.We also showed that the crises of the postcolonial state and post-missionary churches largely reveal the failure of African development theories, plans, and international development plans and programs and mission by churches. 242

Theology and development in Africa

We propose that theologies of development in Africa should be theologies of hope, of marginality, and abundant life, because they show why there is hope in Africa’s social context, even amid challenges. They also point to how that hope becomes daily stories and praxis. These theologies are theologies of marginality in that they name the multiple sites of pain and despair in Africa as well as sites of a new life where God’s Son suffers and rises with the poor and the forgotten. The goal of development for churches is to help bring about those conditions that will make possible the realization of abundant life for human and cosmic fourishing. It is obvious that a grounded theology of development must be hewn from local processes and alternate sites of hope and renewal in Africa.The theological anthropology of this proposition is not simply the projection of imago Dei as its foundation, but seeing in the faces of the poor and their lives and struggles the phenomenology of the imago Dei in history. It also means paying greater attention to the contradictions and complexities of history, requiring greater effort in seeing where God is present in the midst of God’s people—not simply as claims and counterclaims, promises of future blessing and devotions, but as a new way of being which rejects everything opposed to the priorities and practices of the poor man of Galilee.

Notes 1 Ali Mazrui, The African Condition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1–22. 2 Séverine Deneulin, “Christianity and International Development,” in Handbook of Research on Development and Religion, ed. Matthew Clark (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013), 53. 3 See Pope John Paul II, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 36; Reconciliation and Penance, nos. 11–18; The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1871; see also Stan Chu Ilo, Church and Development in Africa:Aid and Development from the Perspective of Catholic Social Ethics, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 222. 4 Elias K. Bongmba, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 9–37. 5 George B. N. Ayittey, Africa Unchained:The Blueprint for Africa’s Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 87–88. 6 René Dumont, False Start in Africa, translated by Phyllis Nauts Ott, New York: Praeger, 1966. 7 Adebayo Olukoshi,“Africa and the Process of ‘Underdevelopment:’ Neo-Liberal Globalization and its Social Consequences,” in African Voices on Development and Social Justice: Editorials from Pambazuka News, ed. Firoze Manji and Patrick Burnett (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2005), 2–4. 8 On Pentecostalization of African Christianity as African Reformation see Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 104. 9 Taye Assefa, Severine M. Rugumamu, and Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed, Globalization, Democracy, and Development in Africa: Challenges and Prospects (Addis Ababa: Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2001), vii. 10 See Joseph Ogbonnaya’s well-nuanced articulation of this narrative of modernization and critical engagement by its most prominent exponent,W.W. Rostow (author of The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960]), in “The Prospect of Humanizing Development Discourse in Africa Through Christian Anthropology,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 72, no. 4 (2016): 6–7; See also Matthew Clarke’s analysis of the fve stages proposed by Rostow as well as the competing tensions about religion’s role in moderating and mediating development paradigms vis-à-vis its neo-liberal rough edges in “Understanding the Nexus between Religion and Development,” in Handbook of Research on Development and Religion, ed. Matthew Clarke (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2013), 2–4. 11 See Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now:The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018), 102. 12 Todd J. Moss, African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors, 2nd ed. (London: Lynne Rienner, 2011), 2–3. 13 See, for example, Basil Davidson, The African Genius (Oxford: James Currey, 2004), 23–42. 14 For a comprehensive study of the limitations of such economic indices in Africa, see Morten Jerven, Africa:Why Economists Get It Wrong (London: Zed Books, 2015). 15 Dayo Olopade, The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa (Boston, MA: Houghton Miffin Harcourt, 2014), 13–14.

243

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu 16 William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and The Forgotten Rights of the Poor (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 51; see also Thomas Pogge,“Recognized and Violated International Law:The Human Rights of the Global Poor,” Leiden Journal of International Law 18 (2005): 717–745. 17 Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts, 47–51. 18 Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts, 51. See also Leander Heldring and James A. Robinson, “Colonialism and Development in Africa,” in The Oxford Handbook of Politics of Development, ed. Carold Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1–40. 19 Ashish J. Thakkar, The Lion Awakes:Adventures in Africa’s Economic Miracle (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2015). 20 Jake Bright and Aubrey Hruby, The Next Africa: An Emerging Continent Becomes a Global Powerhouse (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2015). 21 Steven Radelet, Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries are Leading the Way (Washington DC: Center for Global Development, 2010). 22 Robert Calderisi, The Trouble with Africa:Why Foreign Aid Is Not Working (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). 23 Greg Mills, Why Africa Is Poor and What Africans Can Do About It (New York: Penguin Global, 2011). 24 Radalet, Emerging Africa, x. 25 Bright and Hruby, The Next Africa, 9. 26 Michael Budde,“The Church after Development,” paper delivered at World Catholicism Week, DePaul University, April 2015. 27 See Eno Anwana, “Taking Control of Africa’s Resources,” in African Voices on Development and Social Justice, 134. 28 Kingsley Moghalu, Emerging Africa: How the Global Economy’s “Last Frontier” Can Prosper and Matter (London: Penguin Books, 2014), 9, 13–14. 29 Frederick Cooper, “What Is the Concept of Globalization Good for? An African Historian’s Perspective,” African Affairs 100 (2001): 212. 30 Cooper,“What Is the Concept of Globalization Good for?” 189–193. 31 Nicta Lubaale,“The Emerging Church in Africa and Holistic Mission: Challenges and Opportunities,” in Holistic Mission: God’s Plan for God’s People, ed. Brian Woolnough and Wonsuk Ma (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 82. 32 Deepa Narayan,“Voices of the Poor,” in Faith in Development: Partnership between the World Bank and the Churches of Africa, ed. Deryke Belshaw, Robert Calderisi, and Chris Sugden (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2001), 39. 33 Deepa Narayan, Robert Chambers, Meera K. Shah, and Patti Petesch, Voices of the Poor Crying out for Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 21. 34 Narayan,“Voices of the Poor,” 21. 35 Joseph Ogbonnaya, “Gravissimum Educationis and African Anthropological Poverty,” in Christianity and Culture Collision: Particularities and Trends from a Global South, ed. Cyril Orji and Joseph Ogbonnaya (London: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2016), 90–99. Engelvert Mveng was the frst African theologian to use the term “anthropological poverty” to describe the painful condition in which human beings are living in many social contexts in Africa. See Engelvert Mveng, “Impoverishment and Liberation: A Theological Approach from Africa and the Third World,” in Paths to African Theology, ed. R. Gibellini (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 154–165. 36 J.-M. Ela, L’irruption des Pauvres: Société Contre Ingérence, Pouvoir et Argent (Paris: Editions L’Haramattan, 2007), 21. 37 Ogbonnaya,“The Prospect of Humanizing Development Discourse in Africa,” 11. 38 See Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, no. 11. 39 Miroslav Volf, Flourishing:Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2015), 11. 40 John W. de Gruchy, “Transforming Traditions: Doing Theology in South Africa Today,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 139 (2011): 15. 41 Paul Gifford, Christianity, Development and Modernity in Africa (London: Hurst and Company, 2015), 144. 42 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail:The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2013), 45–69. 43 See Obianuju Ekeocha, Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018), 13–29.

244

Theology and development in Africa 44 See Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid:Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). See also Stan Chu Ilo’s analysis of different arguments for and against aid from the West to Africa in Ilo, The Church and Development in Africa, 132–151. 45 Greg Mills, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jeffrey Herbst, and Dickie Davis, Making Africa Work: A Handbook (London: Hurst and Company, 2017), 57. 46 Mills et al, Making Africa Work, 65. Democracy Is Key to Economic Success | Opinion | Analysis, https://mg.co.za/article/2017-05-19-00-democracy-is-key-to-economic-success/ (accessed June 08, 2019). 47 Emmanuel Katongole, The Sacrifce of Africa:A Political Theology for Africa (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans), 2011. 48 Obaji M. Agbiji and Ignatius Swart, “In the wake of Overt Religiosity: A Critical and Appreciative Perspective of Religion as a Force for Social Transformation and Development in African Society,” in Wealth, Health and Hope in Africa Christian Religion: The Search for Abundant Life, ed. Stan Chu Ilo (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2018), 271–273. 49 Paul Richard, Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic (London: Zed Books, 2016), 121– 152. The same rationality was demonstrated in Oxfam’s study of 100 model community projects, see Duncan Green, From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (London: Practical Action, 2013). 50 Stan Chu Ilo, A Poor and Merciful Church:The Illuminative Ecclesiology of Pope Francis (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 211. 51 Bryant L. Myers, Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 252. 52 James, Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology 94 (1988): S95–S120, 101. 53 R. Khari Brown and Ronald E. Brown,“Faith and Works: Church-Based Social Capital Resources and African American Political Activism,” Social Forces 82, no. 2 (2003): 618. 54 The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, A Church without Walls (2001). http://www. churchofscotland. org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_fle/0006/11787/CWW_REPORT_for_website_2 Nov2012.pdf 55 We have relied on the document entitled, Churches and Social Capital: The Role of Church of Scotland Congregations in Local Community Development—a report of research carried out on behalf of the Church of Scotland Board of Social Responsibility by the department of urban studies (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2001). 56 This list is a modifed typology taken from Churches and Social Capital. 57 Peter S. Heslam, “Christianity and the Prospects for Development in the Global South,” in Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics, ed. Paul Oslington, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 16. See David King, “Godly Work for a Global Christianity: American Christians’ Economic Impact Through Missions, Markets and International Development,” in The Business Turn in American Religious History, ed.Amanda Porterfeld, Darren E. Grem, and John Corrigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 72–107. 58 Nimi Wariboko, “Political Theology from Tillich to Pentecostalism in Nigeria,” in Paul Tillich and Pentecostal Theology: Spiritual Presence and Spiritual Power, ed. Nimi Wariboiko and Amos Yong (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), 133. 59 Bob Mitchell, Faith-Based Development: How Christian Organizations can Make a Difference (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017), 25–36. 60 Pope Francis, “Full Text of the Pope’s Press Conference Aboard the Papal Plane,” Rome Reports November 30, 2015, www.romereports.com. 61 Pope Benedict XVI, Africae Munus, no. 13. 62 See Emmanuel Katongole, Born from Lament:The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans, 2017), 136–146. 63 Katongole, Born from Lament, xvi. 64 Albert Nolan, Hope in an Age of Despair (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 6. 65 Maria Cimperman, Social Analysis for the 21st Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 12. 66 Pope Francis, Evangelium Gaudium, no. 223. See also “Statement by Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.s.c. The Sexual Abuse,” https://news.nd.edu/news/statement-by-rev-john-i-jenkins-c-s-c-the-sexual-abuse(accessed June 08, 2019).

245

Stan Chu Ilo and Idara Otu 67 John W. de Gruchy, Led into Mystery: Faith Seeking Answers in Life and Death (London: SCM Press, 2013), 211–214. 68 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2000), 9. 69 Jung Young Lee, Marginality:The Key to Multicultural Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 2. 70 Gustavo Gutiérrez,“Preferential Option for the Poor,” in Gustavo Gutiérrez Essential Writings, ed. James Nickoloff (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 114. 71 Gustavo Gutiérrez, We Drink from our Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 125. 72 John W. de Gruchy,“Faith and Witness on the Boundaries: Bonhoeffer’s Enduring Challenge,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 127 (2007): 12–14. 73 Stan Chu Ilo, “The Church of Pope Francis: An Ecclesiology of Accountability, Accompaniment, and Action,” in The Church We Want:African Catholics Look to Vatican III, ed.A. E. Orobator (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016). 74 Lubaale,“The Emerging Church in Africa and Holistic Mission: Challenges and Opportunities.” 75 See Stan Chu Ilo, “Beginning Afresh with Christ in the Search for Abundant Life in Africa,” in The Church as Salt and Light: Path to an African Ecclesiology of Abundant Life,” ed. Stan Chu Ilo (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 19–22. 76 Stan Chu Ilo, “Cross Currents in African Christianity: Lessons for Intercultural Hermeneutics of Friendship and Participation,” in Pathways for Interreligious Dialogue in the Twenty-frst Century, ed. Vladimir Latinovic, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 194. 77 Eboussi F. Boualga, Christianity Without Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984), 81.

246

15 AFRICAN THEOLOGY AFTER VATICAN II Themes and questions on initiatives and missed opportunities Peter Kanyandago

Introduction It would be pretentious to do justice to theological activity of theologians on a continent as vast and diversifed as Africa spanning more than 50 years since Vatican II ended. Furthermore, living in the Anglophone part of Eastern Africa, I discuss what I have read, seen, or heard about African theology, although I have had access to sources outside this area. In this discussion, I will present what I see to be hallmarks in the development of African theology. I will focus on highlighting what has marked and infuenced the major trends and shifts in African theology after Vatican II. I would like to argue that the thread that unites the different initiatives that have been taken is a quest for having the identity and dignity of the African people recognized and rehabilitated. The way Africa has related with the outside world through the missionary and colonial enterprises has generally left a negative impact on the African mind, body, and soul.While there were very good intentions to develop Africa, generally the Africans have experienced, and are still experiencing, denial, humiliation, and exploitation from internal and external forces.Those who came with good intentions to develop Africa either did this on behalf of the Africans or failed to counteract the negative forces that were oppressing the African peoples. Any type of theology that is worth this name, therefore, should incorporate this negative experience into its work and fnd out why it exists and what can be done to correct it. I will also argue that for a long time we have insisted on theologizing without suffciently taking into account the underlying anthropological factors. For example, if we fnd racist behavior and tendencies among some missionaries, we cannot solve this simply by appealing to ecclesiological and moral approaches of mutual respect and the need to create communities where all people respect each other without analyzing racism anthropologically.Theologically, the belief that we are all created in the image of God, meaning that men and women, individually and collectively, and of all cultures, deserve to be respected because of their sharing in the divine nature, gives a particular imprint on promoting the identity and dignity of each person.This conviction receives a particular emphasis in the light of the incarnation of the Word through which human nature in its diversity becomes “divinized.” What is most striking also in the documents we’re going to examine, is that the African Church leadership and theologians have sometimes come up with original and daring 247

Peter Kanyandago

propositions, but in some cases these have not been fully supported by Africans themselves or by the Roman Curia. So we get cases of missed opportunities, sometimes like lighting a theological candle that goes out and we light a new one from a different light source without using the fame of the frst one. I can call this “candles that go out theology.”This can be frustrating and disheartening, but fortunately Africa is very resilient in this and other areas, and will therefore overcome these obstacles.

Some founding initiatives Some African theological harbingers Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent

In 1956, some African and Haitian priests published a book, Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent (Some black priests question themselves),1 which must be considered as a theological harbinger because of the questions that the priests raise and also because of the time during which they were raised. Although the book came out before Vatican II, it is worthwhile referring to it because it kind of sets the scene for issues which were raised during and after Vatican II.The publication was in French and as far as I know, despite its importance, it appears to have no English version.This work has an extra signifcance: the writers included Haitian priests, thus giving the publication a Pan-Africanist perspective.2 It is a pity that this initiative was not followed up for a long time. The topics which were addressed focused on the interface between Christian or Gospel themes with aspects of the African worldview, or, more generally, Negritude. Mulago asked if the apparent success in missionary work is “rooted in the soul of the African, or is it an expression of the general Europeanisation of the black continent? Is our missionary method complete?” And more importantly: “Is Christ ‘incorporated’ in the African?”3 These are very important questions which, at that time, were touching on what was to be called “inculturation” and the related need to respect and promote the African identity and dignity in the process of evangelizing the African. Mulago also insists that you cannot evangelize a person whom you do not understand.4 Further on, he discusses the principle of adaptation and says that adaptation is nothing else but the incarnation of the missionary act in the human being, this “commitment” in the collective … The Muntu, like any other disciple of Christ, “must be able to apprehend Christ totally with his/her mind, feelings and aspirations, without having frst to study another human science.”5 Debate on “African Theology”

After the black priests had raised some questions about the Christianity in Africa, a debate ensued about whether there can be such a thing as African theology. Bénézet Bujo has succinctly reported on this debate of 1960 between Tharcisse Tshibangu, then a student of theology at the Faculty of Theology, Lovanium, Kinshasa, and Alfred Vanneste, then Dean of the same faculty.6 I will use his presentation with the summaries of the positions of the two protagonists in the same book.7 For Bujo, the studies of Placide Tempels,8 Alexis Kagame, and Vincent Mulago had earlier signaled research in African theology, but the real debate started at Kinshasa. For Tshibangu, there was a possibility of having a theology of “African color,” provided one could show that Africans have an original thought system.9 However,Vanneste was opposed to Tshibangu’s nov248

African theology after Vatican II

elty, despite the fact that the novelty was not very revolutionary. For Vanneste,African theologians can proceed only starting from Western philosophy.10 With this debate, one can say that the stage was set for subsequent discussions on whether there can be African theology as such.The doors were open to question the status quo, which tended to keep the African Christians in a mere receiving mode. Let us now see the windows that were opened by Vatican II in the area of doing theology.

During Vatican II Although my presentation is focusing on post-Vatican II African theology, I need to give some details about what Vatican II provided as possible launching boards for African theology. The Council brought together about 2,860 fathers who attended the four sessions of the Council. Of these, only 300 bishops came from Africa, and of these about 30 were indigenous.11 Magesa observes that the African bishops were not accompanied by experts to help them, although some of their interventions, notably those of the Bishops of Beira, Mozambique, and of Conakry, Guinea, were incisive.12 The canonization of the Uganda Martyrs on October 18, 1964, and the use of African hymns and musical instruments in St. Peter’s Basilica, had more than a symbolic signifcance. In a sense it was a rehabilitation and recognition of the African who was still suffering injustices of many kinds. Furthermore, several documents were promulgated which could be used as a springboard for African theology. Among these, the following need special mention: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Decree on the Missionary Activity, and Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.13 The Decree Ad gentes divinitus can be taken to be one of the best founding documents on inculturation. Although it contains some doctrinal cautions and qualifcations, item no. 22 gives a springboard and justifcation for doing contextual theology. So too indeed, just as happened in the economy of the incarnation, the young churches, which are rooted in Christ, and built on the foundations of the apostles … borrow from the customs, traditions, wisdom, teaching, arts and sciences of their people everything which could be used to praise the glory of the Creator. To achieve this, it is necessary that in each of the great socio-cultural regions … theological investigation should be encouraged and the facts and words revealed by God, contained in sacred Scripture, and explained by the Fathers and Magisterium of the Church, submitted to a new examination in the light of the tradition of the universal Church.14 Given the importance of this text, let us try to understand what it is saying.The need for “inculturation,” although the word was not yet used here, is rooted theologically and ecclesiologically in the mystery of the incarnation. Inculturation, therefore, takes place in each culture where the Gospel is announced: it is not limited to Africa.The Council sets no limit on what can be borrowed to be submitted to new investigation. And all should be submitted to a new study “in the light of the tradition of the universal Church.”This has sometimes been used by many African religious leaders and theologians to explain their reluctance or fear to undertake a serious work of being original in our approach to pastoral, liturgical, canonical, and theological issues under the pretext that the “universal Church” does not accept this. But this expression is often understood in a narrow sense.The universal Church is always to be understood in the framework of collegiality as articulated by Vatican II, particularly in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, nos. 22 and 23. In no. 23, the Council says

249

Peter Kanyandago

the individual bishops are the visible source and foundation of unity in their own particular Churches, which are constituted after the model of the universal Church; it is in these and formed out of them that the one and unique Catholic Church exists (my emphasis). This means that it is the responsibility of the bishops in their dioceses and regions to undertake whatever is required to announce the Gospel, in communion, of course, with the Pope. Therefore, they, and their theologians, should not hesitate to undertake whatever is required to achieve this, without forgetting the need for collegiality and accountability. Let us now look at what happened after Vatican II.

African theology after Vatican II Pope VI and Africa Before visiting Uganda

Before we go to the specifcs of African theology, let us briefy look at the signifcance of Paul VI’s relations with Africa. In his letter to Africa, Africae Terrarum, Pope Paul VI gives some key ethical points in the African worldview. In no. 7 of that letter, the Pope highlights the fact that Africa has its own social systems: the more recent ethnic history of the peoples of Africa, though lacking in written documents, is seen to be very complex, yet rich in individuality and spiritual and social experiences, to which specialists are directing fruitfully their analysis and further research. Many customs and rites, once considered to be strange, are seen today, in the light of ethnological science, as integral parts of various social systems worthy of study and commanding respect.15 The Pope then gives details about what he calls the African traditional values,16 which include a spiritual view of life, with the idea of God; respect for the dignity of people; sense of family, which includes “bond with the ancestors, which fnds expression in so many widespread forms of worship;” and respect for the father and importance of community life, which sometimes involves rights of initiation in order to be incorporated. This was a strong vindication of the African. From this fow practices and rituals which express respect for all beings, often misunderstood as superstitions, but which are important for respecting and properly managing nature. Paul VI’s visit to Uganda in 1969

We shall refer to the Pope’s key pronouncements which have signifcance for African theology. At Entebbe Airport on the day of arrival, he referred to the riches and noble traditions of Africa.17 At the closing of the Symposium of Bishops in the cathedral of Kampala, the Pope expressed profoundly: We have no other desire than to foster what you already are: Christians and Africans. Hence We wish Our presence among you to have the signifcance of a recognition of your maturity (my emphasis), and of a desire to show you how that communion which unites us does not suffocate, but rather nourishes the originality (my emphasis) of your personal, ecclesial and even civil personality.18 250

African theology after Vatican II

It is during this meeting that the Pope pronounced the words which have become perennial: “by now, you Africans are missionaries to yourselves … ‘Missionaries to yourselves:’ in other words you Africans must now continue, upon this Continent, the building of the Church.”19 The Pope went on to talk about the adaptation of the Gospel and Church to the African culture.While the Vatican II and the Pope have already indicated ways for the African Church to look for originality while remaining in communion with the universal Church, Paul VI made a statement which indicated that there were bound to be some tensions in the way this would be realized when he said: First, your Church must be frst of all, Catholic.That is, it must be entirely upon the identical, essential, constitutional patrimony of the self-same teaching of Christ, as professed by the authentic and authoritative tradition of the one true Church. … You know that the Church is particularly tenacious, we may even say conservative, in this regard.20 Nevertheless, the Pope goes on to make statements that qualify or supplement the foregoing. He says that a certain pluralism is not only legitimate but desirable,“And in this sense you may, and you must, have an African Christianity.”21 After warning against making Christian profession into a kind of local folklore, the Pope said: you will be able to remain sincerely African even in your own interpretation of the Christian life; you will be able to formulate Catholicism in terms congenial to your own culture; you will be capable of bringing to the Catholic Church the precious and original contribution of “negritude,” which she needs particularly in this historic hour.22 One could not expect to get more affrming and respectful words and wishes. Above all, the words of the Pope express trust in the capacity of the African Church to come up with an original and African Catholicism, with profound respect for the African culture and traditions. Let us now see what some African theologians did concretely to take up the challenge of constructing an African Catholicism.

The “African Council” project The project

The project of the African Council is an important milestone in African theology, but it can also be seen as a missed ecclesial opportunity to recognize the maturity and responsibility of the African Churches to look for relevant solutions to the problems of Africa. Given the importance of this project, I will try to present it in some detail.23 The project was originally conceived by African theologians and explicitly asked for by Eboussi Boulaga in Abidjan during a meeting organized by the Society of Africa Culture (SAC) on black civilization and the Catholic Church between September 12 and 17, 1977. Boulaga said that there was need to take stock of evangelization and for Africans to take over the responsibility for evangelizing the black continent.24 For Mveng, who was then Secretary of the Ecumenical Association of African Theologians (EAAT), the African Council will allow the Church of Africa to evaluate the century of evangelization, harmonize her pastoral work, give itself tools and laws better suited to the African context, confrm her communion with Peter, and take her place in the missionary role of the universal 251

Peter Kanyandago

Church.25 Awinongya observes that the African Church was building on a long tradition of holding regional councils.26 Thereafter the idea was discussed at different levels, and even John Paul II later endorsed it. The Ecumenical Association of African Theologians (EAAT), which was founded in Accra in December 1977, endorsed the decision of Abidjan and put it on the agenda for study for the year 1980. This was followed by its deliberation in Yaounde between April 11 and 12, 1984, and in Kinshasa on February 24, 1986. When John Paul II visited Zaire (now DRC) in May 1980, the country episcopate expressed the desire for an African Council to the Pope. Cardinal Malula reiterated this to the Pope in Rome in April 1983. On April 23, 1983, the Pope agreed in principle with the wish of the African Christians to hold a continental council.This led to a heightened enthusiasm among the intellectuals, theologians, and a large part of the African episcopate.27 Consequently, SECAM (the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar) set up a committee called “COMITHEOL” to work on the project.This was followed by consultations by the Catholic members of the EEAT in Yaounde in 1984 and Kinshasa in 1986. During the Kinshasa meeting, the 15 theologians emphasized the fact that the project was not for the Zairian or Francophone Churches since the Anglophone episcopates and theologians had been working on the project from the beginning. In 1987, a consultation among the SECAM episcopates was organized but there was no consensus: one-third was favorable, one-third against, and one-third were not sure.The latter were for the Council, but not now.The Pope then decided: on January 6, 1989, he announced the celebration of the First African Synod.28 Reasons why the project failed

From the Pontifcal Post-Synodal Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa, John Paul II gives us an idea about his endorsement of the African Council project, which he eventually changed into the Special Assembly. He says that from 1977 to 1983, some bishops, priests, consecrated persons, theologians and lay people expressed a desire for an African council or African synod, which would have the task of evaluating evangelization in Africa vis-a-vis the great choices to be made regarding the continent’s future. The Pope says he welcomed and encouraged the idea, studying the religious problems that concern the whole continent. He points out that SECAM got involved in the planning. He then adds:“A consultation of the episcopal conferences and of each bishop of Africa and Madagascar was organized, after which I was able to convoke a Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.”29 In this text, the Pope does not say why he changed from encouraging the holding of an African Council to a Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.Whatever is to be said about the importance of the First African Synod, as the special assembly came to be called, one should note that it was not what the African theologians and pastors had spent their time discussing and preparing for more than ten years, although it was presented as an answer to the demand of Africans to have their own Council. Let us briefy ask ourselves why the African Council project failed.Awinongya notes that the theologians had not foreseen the possible obstacles they would face, since in January 1983, the New Code of Canon Law came out. In canons 439–446, the new Code has information about the institution of particular councils. For Awinongya, a particular council can only be celebrated in a region of the same Episcopal Conference, canon 439 § 1. So for the author, SECAM had no 252

African theology after Vatican II

authority to call and hold the proposed council, unless it changed its statutes. Even if we were to remain at the legal level, while promulgating the new Code, John Paul II says that the New Code of Canon Law must be seen as an attempt to translate the Vatican II ecclesiology into legal terms.Therefore, the Code must be read and interpreted in light of Vatican II.30 This means that even if the African Council project had a legal problem, it could have been overcome. This is why I agree with Hebga that the legal problem should not be advanced as a suffcient reason for changing from Council to Synod.31 For the real cause we should rather focus on the failure of SECAM bishops to have a consensus. This failure has been attributed partly to a linguistic divide in SECAM. However, the problem at stake is more than linguistic and historical. It is known that there was some opposition to the Council project in the Roman Curia. This fed into the attitude of some African Church leaders, whom Hebga calls “devoted African admirers,”32 who believe that if they fall in line with what Rome says or thinks, then they will be better appreciated. He also notes that there was opposition from the English-speaking episcopates and some African Cardinals which reinforced the negative attitude of the Roman Curia.33 This said, the First African Synod also failed to take up some proposals that had been made. According to Ignace Ndongala Maduku, the infuence of the Roman Curia was not always encouraging during the preparatory stages and celebration of the Special Assembly. Some ideas originally proposed, including the emerging African rites and the African Code of Canon Law, were subsequently expressed as questions, and lost the original audacity with which Cardinal Thiandoum,Archbishop of Dakar, had originally suggested them.Those relating to the ecclesial structures and relevant ministries were not taken up in the propositions.34 Whatever the case, one thing remains clear: the African Church leadership, the theologians, and the faithful must assume their responsibility and do what is needful to put in place what is necessary to create an African Catholicism. Let me conclude this section by noting that the African Council project is a unique missed opportunity for the African Church to seize an occasion to add an extra element toward becoming a truly African Church. It is like lighting a theological candle that goes out and we light a new one, leading to what I can call “candles that go out theology.” We therefore need to reinforce and draw from the resilience of the African that has helped her to go over immense obstacles: this resilience and courage should be deployed in the theological arena.The African Council project should be revived by revisiting and overcoming the obstacles that stood in the way. The Code should be revised to cater for a particular council at a continental level. The African Churches should build on the efforts of those who struggled to pave the way for an authentic African Catholicism.

The Zairian Rite We need to briefy mention another initiative taken after Vatican II to inculturate the liturgy in Africa. This is what has come to be known as the Zairian Rite for the Church of Zaire (now DRC). This indeed can be seen as a success story with some qualifcations. Under the inspiration of Cardinal Malula of Kinshasa, a way of celebrating the Eucharist in a Congolese manner was worked upon and put in place with the approval of Rome.The title of the missal was Missel romain pour les dioceses du Zaire (sic) [Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire].The title was given from Rome. In the approved liturgy there is invocation of the ancestors, the congregation participates more, and dancing is given a more prominent place.This initiative can be seen as a success, but at the same time we have to note that the process of approval marked, once more, the tension that we have seen elsewhere between Rome and the local 253

Peter Kanyandago

Churches. It is evident that even if the approved missal is supposed to be Zairian, the title clearly indicates that it is the “Roman” missal.A question we can ask is whether the emphasis on “Roman” is theological or anthropological? In fact, given the ecclesiology of Vatican II and the statements made by Paul VI in Uganda, one does not see what Africa should not be looking for, but what one can see is an African rite at the doctrinal, liturgical, and canonical levels. Moreover, there exist the Catholic Oriental Churches, with their Code of Canon Law, and each with its way of celebrating. Another point to note is that in the process of drawing up the missal, there were questions raised about the invocation of the ancestors. Egbulem observes that in the fnal text, although the practice is in the approved text, the questioned explanations were omitted.What survived the purge was an irregular typology made of African ancestors with Old Testament personages like Abel,Abraham, and Melchizedek, as though the dignity of African ancestors depended on these personages.35 Although Egbulem notes that despite the purge the fact of invoking the African ancestors should be seen as a success, nevertheless we should recall what we have already said about confusing theological and anthropological issues. In this case once more what is at stake is whether a Church whose central authority is based in the Western hemisphere can recognize and respect the identity and dignity of a Church based in Africa. There seems to be a problem with this, and to be able to address it, the question must be properly answered. It would appear that the relevant Roman Congregations had diffculties with the way the invocation of the African ancestors was presented.Was it the manner of presenting them, or did African ancestors as such pose a problem?

The initiatives, themes, and questions from theologians In a presentation like this, it is not possible to write about all African theologians. In this section, I will present what appears to me to represent the general trends in African theology, with all the limitations already stated above. I will frst explain the importance of identity and dignity since I have often referred to them.

The importance of identity and dignity “He resembles us!” In 2001, while on a sabbatical in South Africa, I visited a Ugandan priest who was working in a parish.We went to a remote station for mass.While we were waiting for mass to start, I saw on the wall of the Church a crucifx with an African image on the Cross. I was intrigued by this because in most of our Catholic churches we have crucifxes with a white or European Jesus. I then asked an elderly woman who was nearby what she thought of the crucifx. Spontaneously she said:“He resembles us.” For a long time I refected on the statement of this old lady, which I found was loaded theologically. If he resembles us, then we can identify with him. From a woman in a country where white racism devastated blacks and biracial, the statement can be taken as a cry thirsting for a Christianity that recognizes, respects, and promotes the individual and collective identity of the African. Identity can be seen as that which is shared by a group of people and makes them distinct from others. Identity at this level is collective and can be seen through the color of the skin, the physical appearance, language, history, and important invisible aspects like values and beliefs.

254

African theology after Vatican II

None of these separately, however, constitute identity. It is when they are put together that one can point out that a group of people is known as A or B. But identity can also be seen at a personal or individual level. Africans have been, for example, and are still being, despised and humiliated because of their collective identity as blacks. Dignity, a term we often use in relation to people, refers to what is considered worthy of or deserves respect, admiration, and promotion in a human being. It is something that is to be esteemed, and to which value is attached. Of course dignity, like identity, is differentiated. For example, in as far as it is linked to people of different sexes, it is gendered. Somebody might not respect a person because she is simply a woman. Dignity is also differentiated at the cultural level. It can also be qualifed by age and profession, although these incidental traits should not determine whether one is to be respected or not. We can say that when identity and dignity are well handled, with favorable material conditions, then you have what is required to have a fulflled and balanced human being. It would appear that many problems of the African are linked to the color of his/her skin, taken to be “black,” although in most cases it is not black. The theme of identity and dignity, therefore, remains a theological theme.To do this properly, the African Church leadership, theologians, and Christian communities and their partners should have the courage to revisit how Africa has related with the West in general, and with the evangelizing countries, in particular. It is not by chance that for Africa, the colonizing countries, France, Belgium, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, also happened to be the evangelizing countries.The colors we use in the liturgy, for example, especially the dominance of white to signify purity, holiness, should be revisited. Why is colonialism not condemned offcially in Church documents and Western theology? Let us look at some more concrete theological initiatives.

Bujo-Ilunga project Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya have edited three volumes on African theology as exposed by 28 theologians. So far, they are the most comprehensive on what some Africans have written. Like any other undertaking they have their limitations, but it is a unique contribution. They contacted some theologians who wrote about fellow theologians under the same rubrics, beginning with the pioneers, and 28 have been written about so far.36 However, given the circumstances under which the three volumes were written, and like any other undertaking, there are some gaps to be flled, as we will point out. Here, below, I give a table with the theologian who is written about, their country of origin, and those who wrote about them.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

VOLUME 1 (2003) Theologian Vincent Mulago Engelbert Mveng Tharcisse Tshibangu Alphonse Ngindu Mushete Sidbe Semporé Oscar Bimwenyi Bénézet Bujo Barthélemy Adoukonou Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu

Country of Origin DRC Cameroon DRC DRC Burkina Faso DRC DRC Benin Nigerian

Author Bénézet Bujo Meinrad P. Hebga Emmanuel Ntakarutimana Emmanuel Ntakarutimana Mawuto R. Afan Claude Ozankom Juvénal Ilunga Maya Sidbe Semporé Roger Gaise (Continued)

255

Peter Kanyandago (Continued)

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

VOLUME 2 (2006) Alexis Kagame François-Marie Lufuluabo Mizeka (1926–) Meinrad Pierre Hebga Kwesi A. Dickson Laurent Mpongo Charles Nyamiti M. Tshiamalenga Ntumba Jean-Marc Ela John Mary Waliggo Laurenti Magesa

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

VOLUME 3 (2013) Alioune Diop John Samuel Mbiti Patrick Augustine Kalilombe Eboussi Boulaga Anselme Titianma Sanon Efoé-Julien Pénoukou François Kabasele-Lumbala Peter Kanyandago Kä Mana

10 11

Rwanda DRC

Liboire Kagabo Juvénal Ilunga Maya

Cameroon Ghana DRC Tanzania DRC Cameroon Uganda Tanzania

Paulin Poucouta Joseph M.Y. Edousa-Eyison Nkelenge Hilaire Mitendo Patrick N. Wachege Albertine Tshibilondi Ngoyi Bénézet Bujo Peter Kanyandago Richard Rwiza

Senegal Kenya Malawi Cameroon Bourkina Faso Benin DRC Uganda DRC

Paulin Poucouta Bénézet Bujo Victor Mundua Eugène Goussikindey Mawuto Roger Afan Wilfred Kolorunko Okambawa Kalamba Nsapo Odomaro Ndyabahika Kalemba Mwambazambi

A list of theologians who are presented in three volumes on African theology.

A quick look at the above table obliges us to make some remarks. Of the 11 priests who contributed to Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent, only three (Mulago, Hebga, and Kagame) are written about among the 28 theologians. One is also struck by the higher number of theologians from DRC in particular, and of Francophone scholars in general.Without having to go into details to explain this, there is no doubt that there has been a tendency to have a more united “front” in the way of doing African theology from Francophone Africa. There are geopolitical and other factors related to the history of the colonizations and evangelization of Africa. This can also be said about the absence of theologians from Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) and Arabspeaking countries. Similarly, the Bujo-Ilunga project does not have female theologians, there are no theologians from southern Africa, especially from South Africa. Lastly, one should also note that of the 28 theologians who are presented, only two (Mbiti and Kä Mana) are outside the Catholic denomination.We hope that the project will be continued and that in subsequent volumes some of these gaps will be flled.37 A theological initiative that needs to be mentioned here is the work of the Ecumenical Symposium of Eastern African Theologians (ESEAT) which has been in existence for more than 30 years. It has published several volumes in different areas.38

Attempts to rehabilitate the African from offcial documents There have been attempts to recognize and, in some cases, rehabilitate the identity and dignity of the African. Some documents of John Paul II focused on demanding pardon for sins committed by sons and daughters of the Church. In 1985, while on a visit to Yaounde, he asked pardon from the Africans for the Christians’ involvement in slave trade.39 He did the same thing when he visited Senegal on the island of Gorée.40 As the year 2000 approached, John Paul II made consultations about how it was to be celebrated. Some cardinals advised that there should be confession 256

African theology after Vatican II

of sins committed by sons and daughters of the Church.As a follow-up to this, the Pope issued an Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, on November 10, 1994, emphasizing the importance of repentance and asking pardon for sins committed by the sons and daughters of the Church.41 This letter was followed by a study by the International Theological Commission42 which focused on purifying the memory. On March 12, 2000, on the frst Sunday of Lent, the Pope presided over a ceremony in which there was confession of sins asking for forgiveness for sins committed in the service of truth, sins against the people of Israel, sins committed in actions against love, peace, the rights of peoples, and respect for cultures and religions.43 In light of our discussion, and given what the Pope had already said about the sin of slave trade, the duration, extent, and gravity of slave trade, and the fact that there are at least ten offcial documents (Bulls) authorizing the leaders of Portugal and Spain either separately or together, to capture and enslave the infdels (pagans), one would have expected a specifc mention of this ignominious crime against humanity, as was the case in Israel.The ten Bulls when taken together gave the rulers of Spain and Portugal the authority to explore new lands, conquer and colonize them, take the wealth found there, enslave the pagans, and all enemies of Christ, and baptize the people they fnd there.44 One can therefore appreciate the gravity of the powers conceded in these offcial texts which often include a clause evoking the vicarious power of Christ that the concerned pope enjoys.A number of Bulls also give power to the present and future rulers. Given the signifcance of these Bulls, during the 500th anniversary of the landing of Columbus in America, some indigenous people in America had asked John Paul II to revoke the Bull Inter Caetera.45 The frst request has been followed by the project “The Long March to Rome” whose delegates went to the Vatican and met Pope Francis and relevant Vatican authorities on May 4, 2016, with an indication that there could be a follow-up.46 An apology is not enough. In some cases there should be reparations and repatriation of wealth which was looted.47 However, the matter is complicated, it needs discussion and an appropriate solution. John Paul II invited us to take the request for forgiveness seriously.

Inculturation or liberation? Another question that has come up in African theology is whether it is or should be or become liberation theology.This questioning is based on the fact that it is not enough to focus on culture. Personally, I think that this is a false question which does not take into account the fact that any theology is infuenced by the geographical, historical, and socio-political context of the theologian. The entry point for African theology was “inculturation,” and right from the beginning, it insisted on recognizing the identity and dignity of the African, which is a liberation aspect. We have to avoid an “either/or” approach and adopt a “both/and” one which is inherent in the African worldview. Emmanuel Martey got this well when he titled his book African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation.48 In African theology, in other words, inculturation and liberation should not be opposed: the two aspects are complementary. John Mary Waliggo kept insisting on the fact that inculturation had to include a dimension of integral liberation. Already in 1990, he said that Africa had to have a theology which focused on liberating Africans from suffering.49 A young theologian, Benedict Ssettuuma, a nephew of John Mary Waliggo, has a chapter in his book on inculturation titled “Factors of A Credible Liberation Inculturation.”50

Ministries for Africa The topic of ministries for the Church in Africa has come up in several discussions on African theology. Since it is not possible to do it justice here, I will highlight some salient points to continue the discussion. 257

Peter Kanyandago The ministry of women

I will open my discussion with the presence of women in the passion and resurrection of Jesus. Let us briefy look at the biblical texts which I will comment on using a layman’s approach.51 One does not need to be a specialist to see that there is something unique here. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that there were women at Calvary. For John there is Mary, mother of Jesus.The women are not just mockers or spectators: they had come with him from Galilee and had looked after him. There is certain faithfulness and courage which one must admire here. They loved, cared, and were present even at the most critical moment. Like at the resurrection, here the number does not seem to matter: the important thing is that women were there. Then at the resurrection Matthew’s account gives the impression that women witnessed the resurrection: they are there, there is an earthquake, and an angel rolls away the stone.Whatever details are given, in the four Gospels, the women are at the tomb.The names and numbers vary, but they are there. In John and Mark, Jesus frst appears to Mary of Magdala. In Matthew he frst appears to the women. In Luke the women see the empty tomb but apparently Jesus does not appear to them. In all the four Gospels the women are asked to go and tell the others, sometimes including those called apostles, companions, brothers, or disciples, and these do not believe. What is surprising is that when Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee, there are no women. This encounter is associated with the giving of power and the sending on mission. Maybe the (male) writers did not see the need to include the women since they had been the frst benefciaries of the message of the resurrection. They were the frst to be sent out to announce the resurrection, and subsequently, it would appear that men fltered them out of the mission of the Church, but it would appear they could not do this in regard to Jesus frst appearing to women. There is no way we can put between brackets the importance and role of women at the moments we have briefy sketched.We need to study in detail what the African approach to gender would contribute to this discussion. This emphasizes that the women were with Jesus in his ministry, were with him at the crucifxion, and he showed himself frst to them after the resurrection and gave them a mission. Women were not afraid even to go to the tomb early in the morning.This is a reverse of the male chauvinism which presents women as weak, timid, and lacking courage. In the resurrection message, whether from the angel(s) or from Jesus, to the women or the frightened men who were hiding, the message is: do not fear. If we want to look for appropriate ministries for the African Church, how can we exclude women, especially from presiding over the Holy Eucharist? Pope Francis asks us to be bold, creative, and courageous in working on the pastoral ministry.52 In light of this, we have to ask ourselves in a creative way how we can involve women fully in the ecclesial ministries, bringing together the theological, anthropological ,and psycho-sociological aspects in the Western hemisphere where the Latin ministerial doctrine was developed. Other ministries

To continue our search for appropriate ministries in Africa we have to take the Pope’s encouraging message cited above, Ad gentes no. 22, to submit the revealed acts and words of God as interpreted by the Church to a new examination. Ministries are better discussed if we start from the needs of the community. If we start from the doctrinal level, for example, and ask whether women should be ordained priests, the answer is clear before the discussion starts, at least for the Catholics. For Jean-Marc Ela, the starting point for discussing ministries is what he calls the sacrament of the community. He says that in each pastoral undertaking one has to ask oneself if there is a community here, and if not, what can I do to make it exist?53 He goes on to say that 258

African theology after Vatican II

the mission must concern itself with awakening “in people the capacity of action and struggle against misery, ignorance and injustice” and with opening “friends of the Gospel” to his (God’s) presence in the hut where the mother has an empty granary … We are looking for God in the voice of a people waiting for rain in the drought. Jesus Christ appears then as a God with a black face of the peasant with hands hardened by toiling under the scorching sun.54 Considering what has been said above, let us suggest some concrete ministries. • • • • • • •

Presidency of the Holy Eucharist is important but not the only one.To revisit this, it might be better to focus the Holy Eucharist as a meal rather than a sacrifce, and on minister rather than priest. Announcing the Word of God. Integrity of creation is a ministry which should be taken up in light of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Sì.55 Leadership in the community. Healing ministry which should go beyond healthcare, which is now dominated by medicalization. In this regard the African Church needs to rethink healthcare of those with HIV and AIDS.56 Solidarity to help those who are marginalized. Reconciliation and justice is ministry which is badly needed to bring justice and peace in families, communities, and society.The celebration of the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, between October 4 and 25, 2009, with the theme “The Church in Africa in Service of Reconciliation, Justice, and Peace,” and Benedict XVI’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus need to be followed up by the local churches.57

Conclusion Despite some faltering steps,African theology has made advances from Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent to The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III58 that cannot be reversed. What is needed now from the African Church leadership, theologians, and communities, is to build on what has been done, and especially on the resilience of the African.There are suffcient legal and theological reasons for the African Church not to fear looking for its identity.A lot more needs to be done to reinforce the identity and dignity of the African.To do this well, social sciences, including anthropology, need to be used to go to the root causes of some blockages in theology, especially in the area of ministries and collaboration between the universal Church and the African Church.We should also acknowledge the support the African Church has received from partners from outside the African continent for promoting African theology.Without pretending to be exhaustive, the Institute of Missiology in Aachen in Germany deserves special mention.

Notes 1 A. Abble et al., eds., Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent (Some black priests question themselves) (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1956). 2 Of the 11 articles, 4 were written by authors from Haiti. 3 Ibid., 21.

259

Peter Kanyandago 4 Ibid., 23. 5 Ibid., 32. 6 Bénézet Bujo,“Introduction to the Tshibangu-Vanneste Debate,” in Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya (eds.) African Theology: The Contribution of the Pioneers, vol. 1 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2003), 179–182. 7 See Tharcisse Tshibangu,“Towards an Africa-coloured Theology,” in Bénézet Bujo and Juvenal Ilunga Muya (eds.), African Theology: The Contribution of the Pioneers (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2003), 183–194, and Alfred Vanneste, “A True Theology to Begin with,” in Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya (eds.), African Theology:The Contribution of the Pioneers, vol. 1 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2003), 195–199. 8 Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959).This book was received with interest but also with questions at a time when the identity of the Africans was being questioned. 9 Bujo, 179. 10 Ibid., 180. 11 See Laurenti Magesa, Post-Conciliar Church in Africa: No Turning Back the Clock (Nairobi: CUEA Press, 2016), 1. 12 Ibid., 2–3. 13 I will use Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1975). 14 Ibid., Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, no. 22. 15 His Holiness Paul VI, Message to Africa (Kampala: Saint Paul Editions, 1967). 16 Nos. 7–12. 17 Pope Paul VI in Uganda (Kampala: St. Paul Publications, n. d.), 5. 18 Ibid., 8–9. 19 Ibid., 9–10. 20 Ibid., 11–12. 21 Ibid., 12. 22 Ibid., 13. 23 I will rely principally on Meinrad P. Hebga, “Engelbert Mveng: A Pioneer of African Theology,” in Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya (eds.), African Theology: The Contribution of the Pioneers, vol. 1 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2003), 43–45; Moses Asaah Awinongya, The Understanding of the Family in Ghana as a Challenge for Contextual Ecclesiology (Muenster:LITVerlag,2013);and Henri Derroitte, “Des conditions nouvelles pour l’évangélisation en Afrique:Voeux pour un concile africain (1977-1989) (New conditions for the evangelisation of Africa: Wishes for an African Council (1977-1989),” http: //www.nrt.be/docs/articles/1993/115-4/116Des+conditions+nouvelles+pour+l%27%C3%A9vang %C3%A9lisation+en+Afrique.+Voeux+pour+un+Concile+africain+%281977-1989%29.pdf 24 Derroitte, 569. 25 Ibid., 570. 26 Awinongya gives several examples in the USA, Australia, Indochina (Hanoi), India, China and Japan, see The Understanding…, 134. 27 Awinongya, 133. 28 Derroitte, 563. 29 John Paul II, Apostolic Post-Synodal Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa, 15 December 1995, http://ewt n.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2AFRIC.HTM, no. 5. 30 John Paul II, Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, 25 January 1983,The Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, The Code of Canon Law (London: Collins, 1983), xiii–xiv. 31 Awinongya, 134–135. 32 Hebga, 44. 33 Hebga, 44. 34 Ignace Ndongala Maduku,“Un synode continental à l’épreuve de l’ecclésiologie (A continental synod facing the challenge of ecclesiology),” in Arnaud Join-Lambert et Ignace Ndongala, L’Église et les défs de la société africaine: Perspective pour la deuxieme assemblée spéciale du Synode des évêques pour l’Afrique (The church and challenges of the African society. Perspective for the second Special Assembly of the Synod of bishops for Africa), novembre 2011, http://www.pastoralis.org 35 Ibid., 231. 36 Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya, eds., African Theology: The Contribution of the Pioneers, vol. 1 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2003); Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya, eds., African

260

African theology after Vatican II

37 38 39

40

41 42 43 44

45 46 47

48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Theologians: Contributions of Pioneers, vol. 2 (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2006); Bénézet Bujo and Juvénal Ilunga Muya, eds., Théologie africaine au XXe: Quelques fgures (African theology in the 21st century: Some fgures), vol. 3 (Fribourg:Academic Press Fribourg, 2013). A recent similar initiative can be found in Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, ed., The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2016).The book also has some contributions from non-Catholics. See their website http://www.eseat.co.ke with a list of their books. John Paul II,“Rencontre du Pape Jean-Paul II avec les intellectuels et les étudiants catholiques,Yaoundé, Cameroun, mardi, 13 août 1985 (Meeting of the Pope John Paul II with the intellectuals and catholic students,Yaoundé, Cameroon,Tuesday, 13 August 1985),” https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/ fr/speeches/1985/august/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19850813_intellettuali-yaounde.html John Paul II,“Discours de Sa Sainteté Jean-Paul II à la communauté catholique de l’île de Gorée dans l'église de Saint Charles Borromée, Ile de Gorée (Sénégal), samedi, 22 février 1992 (Speech of His Holiness John Paul II to the Catholic community of the island of Gorée in St. Charles Borromeo Church, Saturday, 22 February 1992),” https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/fr/speeches/1992/ february/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19920222_isola-goree.html John Paul II,Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1994). International Theological Commission, Memory and Reconciliation:The Church and the Faults of the Past (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2000). Universal Prayer: Confession of Sins and Asking for Forgiveness, http://www.vatican.va/news_services /liturgy/documents/ns_lit_doc_20000312_prayer-day-pardon_en.html For the English translations of the Bulls, except for Dum diversas, see Francis Gardiner Davenport (ed.), European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648 (Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917), and for Dum diversas see http://unamsanctamcatholicam.b logspot.nl/2011/02/dum-diversas-english-translation.html, and the text is dated 05 February 2011. I have not been able to get a Latin text of the Bull See, for example,Valerie Taliman,“Revoke the Inter Cetera Bull” by Valerie Taliman, http://www.twoc ircles.org/fles/pdf/Declaration_of_Vision.pdf See a detailed presentation of the ongoing process:The Long March to Rome:The Creator Has Been Heard, on http://longmarchtorome.com/the-creator-has-been-heard/ I have written about this topic. See Peter Kanyandago,“Ethical Responsibility and Need for Reparations: Using the Concept of Anthropological History in the African Context,” in Marco Moerschbacher and Ignace Ndongala Maduku (eds.), Culture et foi dans la théologie africaine. Le dynamisme de l'Eglise catholique au Congo Kinshasa (Culture and faith in the African theology.The dynamism of the Catholic Church in Congo Kinshasa) (Paris: Karthala, 2014), 33–44. Emmanuel Martey, African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009). John Mary Waliggo,“The African Clan as the True Model of the African Church,” in J. N. K. Mugambi and L. Magesa (eds.), The Church in African Christianity: Innovative Essays in Ecclesiology (Nairobi: Initiatives Ltd., 1990), especially 111. Benedict Ssettuuma Jr., Inculturation:Towards an Integral Approach for Ownership, Permanence and Relevance of Christianity for a People (Kampala:Angel Agencies, 2010), 51–65. I will use the text of The New Jerusalem Bible (Garden City, NY: Double Day & Co., Inc., 1985).The relevant texts are from Matthew chapters 27 and 28; Mark chapters 15 and 16; Luke chapters 23 and 24; and John chapters 19 and 20. Let us not forget the reference to the legendary Veronica, who is said to have wiped the face of Jesus with her veil. Francis, The Joy of the Gospel: Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013), no. 33. Jean-Marc Ela, Ma foi d’Africain (My Faith as an African) (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 1985), 27. Ibid., 29. Francis, Laudato Sì: Encyclical Letter of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2015). Jacquineau Azestop, ed., HIV&AIDS in Africa: Christian Refection, Public Health, Social Transformation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016) might help in this endeavour. Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011). I have not been able to present the contents of Orobator, 2016.

261

PART III

Regional and emergent theological themes

16 THE ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH Theology, doctrines, traditions, and practices Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

Introduction Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa is often associated with the coming of Western missionaries and colonialism. Ethiopia is an exception to this in many ways. Ethiopia is often described as a Christian state before Christianity. There is a grain of truth in the statement. Ethiopia is one of the most ancient nations to embrace Christianity amidst its preexisting cultural and commercial dialogues with the Mediterranean world. It constitutes a unique strand of Christianity that was deeply infuenced by Judaism, essentially resulting from its early and long-standing contact with Israel. It is also a typology of faith that has been considerably infuenced by its own local or preferably African contexts, and above all by, its historic isolation from the rest of the world for centuries. Ancient monolithic churches carved out of the solid rock of the Ethiopian mountains symbolize the enduring faith and its religiously informed cultural landscape.1 One too often forgets the existence of such an ancient church in Africa, peculiar in its theology, Jewish roots, and practices. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), the subject of this chapter, is part of the umbrella of what has been referred to as the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which includes Armenian, Coptic, Eritrean, Syrian, and Malankara/Indian.The EOC was the bulwark of the history and culture of Ethiopia in the past. It has played a dominant role in the political, cultural, and spiritual terrains of Ethiopia for centuries as will be discussed below.The church contributed to the development of the country in the felds of education, literature, art, architecture, music, etc.The EOC is one of the founding members of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and played an active role in the establishment of the All African Conference of Church held in 1963. Scholars have recently turned their notice to the study of major works like the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, which shed light on the intellectual and religious contours of the period in which Jesus lived.These treasured documents are found only in Ethiopia, thus the importance of paying attention to this African church.

Origin and development Ethiopia is widely known as the Holy Land. Among other things, contributing to this is the belief that the Ark of the Covenant, a holy relic of the Jewish people, is to be found in Ethiopia. 265

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

Though there are no concrete historical records to substantiate the belief, the enduring presence of oral traditions and the tenacity of the claim Ethiopians have held regarding the Ark no doubt requires serious consideration. Among other things that contributed to the Ark being strongly embedded in the Ethiopian psyche is the epic story enshrined in the book known as Kebre Negest (Glory of Kings) written in the 14th century AD. There is no conclusive evidence to substantiate that Judaism preceded Christianity. What cannot be denied is the existence of a large number of people in Ethiopia who practice Judaism. One can cite the case of a group of people known as the Beta Israel or the felasha as they are derogatorily referred to locally. Concurrently, what cannot also be doubted is the unique blending of the Judaic and Christian religious elements and practices in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church tradition. For instance, every church in Ethiopia keeps inside the inner sanctuary, maqdes, a wooden replica of the Ark of the Covenant, called Tabot, which symbolizes the presence of God.The construction and consecration of a local church could not be possible without planting this altar. Teshale Tibebu aptly adopts the phrase Tabot Christianity to identify the EOC from any other Christian churches in the rest of the world.2 It was because of this unique development that some scholars state that the church was founded many centuries before the birth of Christ.3 The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has long considered itself to belong to the One Holy Universal and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ and consequently maintains a biblical foundation. Ethiopia accepted the belief of Christianity directly from the original apostles who could be considered the founders of early Christianity. When, exactly, Christianity was introduced in Ethiopia is hard to establish. According to one claim, Christianity was introduced to Ethiopia by Apostle Matthew, who was believed to have traveled to Axum, the capital city of the Axumite Empire, and preached the Gospel. Other traditions relate the coming of Christianity to Ethiopia based on the biblical narrative of the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, a prominent offcial of Queen Candace as recorded in the book of Acts chapter 8. Some still posit the view that there were Ethiopian Jews who were present in the day of Pentecost and who were converted to the new faith and subsequently introduced it to Ethiopia.4 What has been commonly accepted by most scholars is that the Axumite kingdom adopted Christianity in the 4th century AD during the reign of Emperor Ezana. This version of the introduction of Christianity narrates that around AD 330, two Syrian boys from Tyre, namely Aedesius and Frumentius, appeared in the court of Emperor Ela Amida after experiencing a shipwreck.The emperor, who was impressed by their remarkable knowledge, decided to keep them in his court. Upon his death, the king’s wife promoted them to the position of her advisors until her son, Ezana, came of age and assumed the reign. According to this version, Ezana, who grew up under the infuence of these men, became a Christian and became a major instrument for the expansion of the faith. It is said that when Ezana was crowned, Frumentius traveled to Alexandria, where he requested Patriarch Athanasius to accord him the position of a bishop. Frumentius returned to Ethiopia as the frst Abuna, father of the church, under the name of Aba Selama. Because Ethiopian society was highly patriarchal, the king’s offcial espousal of Christianity had serious implications, for it greatly facilitated the expansion of the faith among the populace. Evangelization and territorial expansion went in tandem as the church and the state forged close relations early on. The introduction of Christianity in Ethiopia is a turning point in the history of the nation. It brought sociocultural shifts along multiple lines.Ancient Axumite symbols of the sun and the moon were replaced with the Cross, as was evidenced in contemporary minted coins. Ethiopia was one of the frst currencies with a coin bearing the Cross.5 The coalescence of the state and the church not only helped Christianity to become the offcial religion but it also frmly rooted the faith in the national history and consciousness of the people.The acceptance of Christianity 266

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

as the state religion has been the driving force in the history of the EOC.The only downside of this is obviously the limitation it has placed on the church as an autonomous institution to play its spiritual mission in full capacity. Ebbs and fows and shifting fortunes of the state, its strengths and weaknesses, its expansions and contractions, also affected the fate of the church. The most important development that happened after Ezana’s conversion was the introduction of monasticism around AD 480, associated with the advent of nine saints mainly from Syria.They founded monastic centers, established schools, and translated the Bible including the Books of Enoch and Jubilee from Greek into Geez, the contemporary vernacular language of Axumite society, which was later reduced to being a language of the liturgy.

The Judaic character of the EOC Though there are several elements within the belief system and rituals of the EOC that reveal Jewish practices, it is hard to establish the connection and trace the historical roots. Some scholars maintain the view known as a non-contact theory, which denies any pre-Christian contact between Jews and Christians.This line of thinking assumes that the EOC merely imitated the Old Testament ideas when implementing the faith in the local contexts. Others posit the view that the infuence of the Jewish elements got into the church either through cultural contact or through Jewish Christians who physically came to Ethiopia.6 Leaving the unsettled issue aside, what one can maintain is Jewish molding of Ethiopian Christianity, especially when its effect on praxis and teaching is palpably evident. The commonalities of the two traditions are seen in the dietary regulations, circumcision, observance of Sabbath in the performance of music, dance associated with the liturgy, and above all, the pervasive presence of the Tabot.The other manifestation of the resemblance is the architectural structure of the church. Ethiopians build their churches with threefold divisions or concentric circles which characterize the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon. One theological feature that bears out the Jewish infuence is in the conceptualization of the doctrine of salvation.The EOC places strong emphasis on the keeping of the Ten Commandments and meritorious deeds such as charity and fasting as central to human salvation, in contrast with Pauline and Augustine Christianity which stress grace and faith rather than work.7

The church and the monarchy From the very outset, the contours of church and state relations have been laid out due to the nature of the introduction of the Christian faith. Consequently, the overlapping agenda of the two institutions has been the constant refrain of Ethiopian history.The process reached its apogee in the 15th century, specifcally, during the reign of Zara Yacob (1434–1468). Emperor Zara Yacob was the descendant of the Solomonic Dynasty that arose in the 13th century.The foundation of imperial authority in Ethiopia lay in the new ruler’s claim of descent from the ancient line of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon and the Jewish origin of the Ethiopian state.The Kebre Negest is an important document that colorfully enshrines the story of the Jewish origin of the Ethiopian state by establishing the connections between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and putting the kings as champions of the Christian faith. Between the years 1270 and 1468, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church exerted considerable pressure on the non-Christian populations within the borders of the expanding empire. The monastery of Debre Lebanon founded by Tekle Haymanot and the monastery of Debre Haiq founded by Iyasu Moa were crucial for the evangelization of northern Ethiopia. The precise manner in which Christianity spread into these regions is far from clear. It appears that the 267

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

leaders of the Church and the state did not develop a systematic program of mission and evangelization, and as a result, did not methodically pursue proselytizing. Zara Yacob made vigorous attempts to bolster the missionary enterprise of the Church. For instance, he consolidated the monastic institutions and placed them under the umbrella of the Ichega to lend their evangelistic energy, some kind of structure and centrality.The improvement enhanced the zest of the holy monks to venture out and proselytize. Available information concerning the process of Christianization during the period simply highlights the exploits of monastic leaders who pioneered as missionaries, mostly following the footsteps and directions of the expanding state, and at a time taking bold singular initiatives. Monastic fgures undertook crusading evangelistic efforts by advancing in specifc areas, often alone, driven, as they often claimed, by supernatural visions.The monks who served as missionaries used the name of God, Egzia beher, in their evangelistic endeavors to battle against the spirits associated with traditional religions to demonstrate His superior power.8 It is a model of mission which recognizes and takes the existence of spirits seriously while claiming the preeminence of the Christian God. This is a very important element of the EOC, which reveals signifcant resonance between some aspects of its practices and those of African indigenous religions. The monastic model of the missionary enterprise seems to have abated in the succeeding years. For one thing, religious controversies that rocked the Church in the succeeding centuries of the Jesuit interlude sapped their energy, and secondly the evangelistic zeal of many of the monastic centers subsided as they started to receive land grants from kings and provincial governors. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Christian state of the Solomonic Dynasty experienced serious diffculties, mainly resulting from the traumatic wars of Ahmad Gragn (1527–1543), and to a certain extent the migration of the Oromo that accompanied it.The wars of Gragn continued for well over 15 years and affected almost the whole empire. One major consequence of these wars germane to the subject under review is the relative decline of the infuence of the EOC, especially in the recently incorporated and Christianized regions of the central and southern Ethiopia. Another major consequence of this development relates to the Jesuit interlude. Following the end of the wars, the Jesuit missionaries came to Ethiopia for evangelization.The positive attitude and friendly reception accorded to the Portuguese missionaries by the kings allowed them to spread the Catholic faith, initially within the court circle and to a slight degree among the populace. Emperor Susenyos (1607–1632) offcially espoused Catholicism and even tried to impose it by the decree he passed in 1622.This precipitated a widespread civil war in 1632 ending up in the emperor’s abdication of power and the expulsion of the Jesuits from Ethiopia. A major ramifcation of the Jesuit interlude was the development of a xenophobic attitude that the Ethiopian society, the rulers, and the people alike have generally evinced toward foreigners, and Western missionaries in particular.The event also had immediate repercussions, isolating both the state and the church from the outside world. Emperor Fasiledes and succeeding kings chose to seal off the country from any external infuence.This relative loss of contact with the outside world accounted for the church to be grounded on local settings, gradually assuming a more indigenous identity in practice and orientation. The other toxic legacy of the Jesuit interlude is the Christological debate and the concomitant theological controversy that came out of the encounters of the two Christian traditions that wrecked the church for centuries.The Jesuits, being part of the Catholic Church tradition, maintained the two-nature doctrine of the Chalcedon, which clashed with the one nature of monophysite doctrine (anti-Chalcedon) of the EOC. Susenyos’ decision to enforce the Catholic theological position infuriated the clergy and the people and as such was vehemently resisted as it infringed the tradition of their ancestors.9 268

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

The mysterious spiritual conundrum later manifested itself in the formation of two major schools of Christology, namely, wold qib (also known as Qibat unctionists or Hulet Lidet, two birth) and Yestegalij (Sost Lidet, three birth).The former position affrms that Christ being divine had no need to be anointed at his incarnation or during baptism, whereas the latter insists that Jesus has the eternal birth from the Father, the genetic birth from Mary, and the birth from the Holy Spirit after incarnation or during baptism.10 This theological controversy not only affected the position of the church, but it also impinged on national unity. Different monasteries located in different geographical and ethnographic locations took differential positions to advance their sectarian political agendas. For example, the famous Debre Libano monastery in central Ethiopia stood for the position of Sost Lidet while the monastery of Ewoasteous in the north adopted that of Hulet Lidet.Tragically, this was very keenly felt during a crucial period in Ethiopian history known as the Zemene Mesafnt “Era of the Princes.”The power of the monarch was at its lowest nadir during the years 1769–1855.11 During this period, unsettled theological disputes took on new regional subtleties and vernacular nuances to foster disguised local interests. Ethiopia experienced political chaos during the Era of the Princes, at which time both the monarchical and church authority suffered considerable loss in their power and infuence over regional affairs. Realizing the danger of the factional strife, Emperor Tewodros (1855–1868) set out to bring together the torn empire and unify the church by putting an end to religious hullabaloos in the country. It was to this end that he offcially decreed the Tewahido doctrine, which stresses the indivisibly united nature of Son-ship and God-ship of Christ, to be the cardinal creed of the EOC. Emperor Yohannes IV, who came to the throne following the end of the short-lived but momentous reign of Tewodros, called the meeting of theologians at the Council of Boru Meda in 1878 to further cement the unity of the church. He ended the controversy by outlawing the Sost Lidet doctrine. The rise of Emperor Menelik in Shoa signifcantly changed the history of Ethiopia. Menelik’s strong desire to reunify Ethiopia and restore its glorious heritage led him to conduct extensive military and diplomatic campaigns into areas that had even remotely been connected with the central authority previously.The result was the creation of a large empire that brought a motley collection of diverse ethnic and socio-linguistic groups under one state umbrella. As had been the case in the earlier period, the church gave ideological and functional backing to Menelik in his territorial expansion and his nationalistic endeavor. In the newly conquered territories, the church became an indispensable political ally and institutional tool facilitating the pacifcation process and securing the allegiance of local rulers in their conveyance of loyalties to imperial power.The church’s missionary work involved converting key local elite, religious or secular, baptizing people, and building churches patronized either by the king or his dignitaries.12 Emperor Haile Selassie I, who came to power in 1930, sought to give the church a modern face.This was especially true after the restoration of Ethiopia’s independence in 1941, following the brief period of the Italian occupation. Emperor Haile Selassie tried to reform the church both at the national and local level.The Emperor’s position vis-à-vis with the national church, for most of his reign, was problematic and undefned. It appears that he sought to introduce the reforms by holding the stick rather than allowing the church to cultivate a sense of autonomy to initiate them. His paternalistic infuence is demonstrated in the fact that the 1955 Constitution declares him to be the Head of the Church.The Constitution required the name Haile Selassie to be mentioned in all religious services. It was also amplifed in the power he exercised in appointing or approving upper-level ecclesiastics working at the Patriarchate Offce and provincial bishops. Upon ordination, the Patriarch had to express a pledge of loyalty to the Emperor. The emperor also maintained a strong infuence over the church by promulgating decrees, edicts, 269

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

and public regulations as the case required, and creating various overlapping departments such as the Department of Religious Affairs in his private cabinet to serve as a check and balance.13 Whatever the degree of control Haile Sellassie sought to have over the church, he made sure that he did not lose its backing since the institution played a vital role as a source of political legitimization. It was to this end that he fought hard to secure its independence, as will be seen below. In the succeeding years, the church had to make considerable adjustments to negotiate the space between modernity and tradition, albeit poised in an entangled position.This particularly makes sense in the contexts of rising secular forces and the growing presence of Western missionaries. In 1961, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church made some institutional innovations as the Patriarch created various departments and councils to cater for various programs. Among the offces created were: Scholars Council, Educational Department, and Literature Department. In the same year, the theological school was upgraded and integrated to Haile Sellasie I University to enhance its capacity and profle. The Emperor seems to have keenly realized that modern education had outstripped knowledge of religious faith. Possibly that was one of the main reasons why he launched the imitative of translating the Bible into Amharic in 1961. This had a very serious implication as it provided the occasion for a shift of the knowledge center of the source of the Christian faith from a special privileged elite to the ordinary people. The Emperor played an instrumental role in the setting up of the Department of Mission and Evangelism in 1963.The Department was created basically to engage the church in bringing new adherents and helping the existing members to stay strong in their faith as the country was gradually going through social and economic transformations.The main avenues employed to achieve the aims of the department were radio programs and preparation and distribution of literature, training, and social services. It is interesting to note that though the EOC did not seem to be enthusiastic about having a mission and evangelism agenda in the continent of Africa, it planted several churches in the Caribbean islands, in places like Trinidad and Tobago, Guinea, and Jamaica, since 1951.14 According to Christine Chaillot, the phenomenon of mission abroad started in an unexpected way when some descendants of African people in the Caribbean islands and particularly from the Rastafarian background requested the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.15

Post-monarchy developments The EOC came under attack during the military regime that seized power in 1974.With the declaration of scientifc socialism as the offcial doctrine of the Marxist state, the new ideology came into direct collision with the EOC. Separation of the church and the state occurred by a proclamation of the government in 1975, which marked a signifcant blow to the national church. Furthermore, church and state relations went through a rocky phase which eventually led to the execution of Patriarch Tewfos in 1979, and his replacement by Patriarch Telke Haymanot, dubbed as the peasant monk.16 The state’s attempt to co-opt the church through a debut patriarch was counterintuitive as the latter did not succumb to their political machination. It was claimed that the Abuna’s eventual death in 1988 was one of progressive suicide through food and other deprivations, a covert form of political strike and insubordination.Though the church encountered decentering or disestablishment, its spiritual infuence did not abate. More people turned to religion as a way to demonstrate their distaste of communism. The new government that took power in 1991 gave religious freedom to all—coupled to that, the new administration, which was based on ethnic federalism, posed a new challenge to the EOC, especially in the areas outside its traditional ambit, for instance, southern Ethiopia. 270

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Among the new challenges that EOC is facing is meeting the demands of the people of the south, particularly the Oromo, one of the largest ethnic communities, who would like to be preached to in their language at their local churches with their clergy.

Theology and doctrine of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church The EOC accepts the teachings of the frst three ecumenical councils of Christendom: Nicea (325); Constantinople (325), and Ephesus (431).17 Doctrinally, the EOC belongs to the group of Orthodox Churches popularly but wrongly termed “monophysite.” This group prefers the epithet “non-Chalcedonian churches.” The other members of this doctrine family are the Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syria Orthodox, and India Orthodox. Historically, all these churches had theological unity together until the division arose on account of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. Historically, the teachings of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are centered in the faith of the fathers as expounded by the great theologians of the Alexandrian tradition, especially St. Cyril and his followers.The Ethiopian Orthodox Church abides by the theological formula “the one incarnate Nature of God the word,” thus the designation “monophysite” came into being! It seems to be grossly unfair for the church to be pigeonholed as “monophysite” by those faithful who adhere to the Chalcedonian formula of “two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ.” The Ethiopian Orthodox Church uses the term Tewahido, meaning made or turned into one.According to the EOC, Tewahido is the term or the concept that best expresses the faith of the church, since it establishes the indissoluble unity of the God head or divinity and mankind or humanity of Jesus in the person of Christ. Thus the church’s offcial title is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. The church is anchored in the crucial dogmatic principles such as: God is the Eternal Creator and Sovereign Ruler of the universe; the original creation of God was good but corrupted through the Fall; God sent His Son to deliver man from eternal damnation; Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Though the church believes in the redemption of sin through the sacrifce of Jesus, it insists that salvation comes through faith and work demonstrated by good deeds which entail keeping the law, that is to say, compliance with the Ten Commandments.The faithful should exemplify the law, in essence, the way of the Christian life, through their good conduct (megabr) based on the notion of Feriha Egzihaber, literally the fear of God, and commensurate actions.18 Hence this explains the reverential place assigned to the Tabot and the centrality of its role in all Ethiopian churches.

The sacraments of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Church sacrament is the foundation for the doctrine and theological faculty in the EOC. In Christian tradition, the sacraments were instituted by Christ and were historically part of the liturgical tradition of the early Christian Church.The Latin word “sacrament” originates from the Greek word “mystery,” which the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has adopted as what is referred to as Mistir, roughly meaning enigma, which is to imply the impenetrable nature of the miracles and teachings of Christ.The sacraments of the EOC are the channels by which believers receive the graces and blessing of the Holy Spirit.The sacraments are sacred actions by which the believers receive invisible graces through material or visible signs. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church observes seven sacraments. We shall cite below the most important ones with insertions of brief descriptions. The sacrament of Baptism (Timket) takes place 40 days after birth for boys and 80 days in the case of girls. The rite is performed by a 271

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

priest, who pours water over the baby, with church name conventionally known as yekerstina sem—church name provided in the presence of the family and the God father or the God mother. The sacrament of Confrmation (Kiba kidus) is administered immediately following baptism. After bestowing the anointing to the child, the priest places a neck-chord of cotton called mahtab over the neck as a distinguishing mark of his or her Christian identity.19 The sacrament of the Holy Communion (Kidus Kurban), or the sacrament of the Eucharist as it is also known, is the crowning service of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the culmination of the worship, and the summit of Christian experience. It is considered to serve as an indication of the ultimate union with the Lord.The church through the ages has regarded this sacrament as the utmost act of sanctity and the supreme feature of communal worship. The sacrament of Unction of the sick (Mister Kludil) is administered to those who are sick or approaching death.The rite involves anointing with either water or oil, confession, and absolution of sin. The sacrament of Penance (Nisiha) constitutes an integral part of the Ethiopian spiritual life. Christian families have spiritual fathers (yenefs abat).The spiritual father is supposed to visit the family periodically to do a kind of check of their spiritual walk, assist or prepare family members to make confessions of known sins, and bless the house through the sprinkling of water (tebel). The sacrament of Ordination (Kihent) refers to the Abuna’s installing of priests and deacons for the various churches in the country and the distribution of his blessings for the effective fulfllment of their services. The sacrament of Matrimony (mainly Teklil) is solemnized with a mass to lend the ceremony an aura of holiness. Crowns are placed upon the couples who wear kabba, a kind of nuptial cloths.This type of wedding arrangement is believed to bring perpetual bonding between the husband and the wife. The couples are expected to keep the pledge of marriage unless either party is deceased.

Liturgy, worship, and hymnology EOC distinguishes itself from the rest of the Christian world in many of its ecclesiastical practices, and is considered by many scholars of religion as one of the Christian traditions that has preserved the ancient proverbs of early Christianity. Some noted Ethiopian Orthodox scholars attribute this feature largely to the Ethiopian geological position that led to the virtual isolation of both the nation and the church from the rest of the Christian world. As a result, the church has maintained the form and practices of worship that it has received since the 4th century AD. Ethiopian Church buildings have unique ecclesiastical architectures. The internal structure of the circular and octagonal churches consists of three concentric wings.The frst part, which is the innermost section of the church, is referred to as Mekdes. It is also known as the kidiste kidusan, literally, the Holy of Holies. This is the most sacred space where the Tabot or the Ark rests, and only priests and deacons have access to this part of the church. The second chamber of the church is called Keddist, which is reserved for the faithful who are ready to receive the sacrament of the communion.The third division of the church is the altar ambulatory, which is referred to as Kine Mahlet, reserved for the priests, the deacons, and the Detbteras. The Detbteras or cantors are a highly educated group in the church, who perform duties like singing hymns in praise of God in synchronized movements accompanied by musical instruments such as drums, player sticks, and sistrums.The highly specialized songs are sung in different modes and rhythms.This sophisticated line of hymnology is believed to have

272

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

been created by Yared (501–576), a scholar and highly celebrated musician of the Axumite kingdom. One part of the ambulatory is reserved for women only and one part for men. There are three doors to the church—east, north, and south. The southern entrance is used as the only entrance for women.The other two entrances are used exclusively by men. It is interesting to note that those of the congregation who for various reasons feel particularly unclean ritually stand in the church yard throughout the service.The church precincts and the surrounding walls are considered sacred. That is why it is common for believers to exercise the ritual of kissing the wall as a token of communion with God, symbolic submission, and making prayer requests known even outside the regular church services. One of the distinguishing features of the church services in the tradition of the EOC is the administration of the liturgy. The liturgy is conducted in a very meticulously organized ritualistic succession of intense and very solemn activities. It consists of two parts, namely, Mahelet (praise) and Qedase (mass). It is conducted for more than six hours continuously with no interruptions. The celebration of the Ethiopian liturgy pretty much resembles that of the Catholic Mass.The liturgy will be conducted using one of the anaphoras (a solemn section of the liturgy and mass in Ethiopian Church in which the elements of the eucharist are consecrated) selected for the day.The EOC traditionally has 14 anaphoras.Anaphoras are authored and composed by renowned theologians, depicting a particular saint, a holy day, or a particular religious discourse. The primary focus of the anaphoras is Christ’s incarnation and resurrection. In principle and the long tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the mass is conducted in the Ethiopic language Geez, the offcial language of the liturgy of the Ethiopian Church. Another very distinguishing element of the hymnal practices of the EOC is what is called the Seatat, the Horologium, a series of songs scheduled at various times or hours of the day, communicating signifcant events of a particular holy day.The Horologium was composed by a distinguished 15th-century scholar Abba Giorgis of Gascha. In big churches, priests and deacons conduct the Seatat of the respective day in the northern part of the outer division/chamber of the church, while the Debteras are simultaneously conducting a different service called the Mahlet. Mahlet is a highly sophisticated hymnological service conducted by highly educated Debteras who have to go through a very rigorous form of training usually lasting from 10 to 15 years. The Debteras constitute a unique feature of the Ethiopian church. They serve varied and complex functions such as scribe, dancers, poets, diviners, all at the same time. Not only do they form the literati of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, as an order of professional singer that corresponds to the choirs in other churches; they go through rigorous educational training to perform an intricate system of the musical prelude. Their ecclesiastical dance performed with deep solemnity makes their role in the Ethiopian church very unique.Their performance always adds to the beauty and elegance of the worship service that makes the Ethiopian Orthodox Church distinct.

Ecclesiastic autonomy Since Aba Selama, the frst Abuna or bishop of Ethiopia, the EOC had been under the spiritual suzerainty of the Coptic Church of Alexandria.The bishops were selected among the monks of St.Anthony and sent to Ethiopia.There had been about 110 of them sent to Ethiopia, the last one being Abuna Qerlos. This tradition continued for several centuries, even though Ethiopians are known to be lovers of their freedom and proud of their independence.The church and the nation’s

273

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

leaders sought to keep the friendship and harmony, perhaps not only to honor a long tradition, but for security reasons, considering the fact that Ethiopia is a nation surrounded by Islamic powers. Following the incorporation of Egypt into the expanding Islamic empire in the 7th century AD, the government had to provide expensive gifts and slaves to the Muslim rulers in Egypt and the Coptic Patriarchs to get bishops continually.20 The Abuna was subordinate to the king and played more of a symbolic role and was not invested with power as such. He was largely responsible for ordaining priests and deacons, crowning new emperors, and placing the altar stone when new churches were erected.The Abuna lived an extravagant life because he received land grants and gifts upon consecrating altars and offciating businesses. In 1929, the Coptic Church reluctantly consented to consecrate four Ethiopian bishops for the frst time to episcopal offces, which is a landmark in the history of the church. It was an important step in organizing the frst national hierarchy and the development of an episcopal diocesan structure. This was achieved through a protracted process that involved two-tiered engagements, the court, and church delegates.21 In the following years, the effort to obtain full-scale autonomy continued, and EOC was fnally able to break its spiritual bondage from the Coptic Church of Egypt in 1959. This is a signifcant event for the mere fact that having a foreign patriarch bereft of the knowledge of culture and political dynamics had a crippling effect on the development of the nation’s spiritual life and overall progress of the society. The road for the EOC to obtain its autocephalous status was not easy.There needed to take place a protracted and complicated negotiation between 1941 and 1959. In 1951, an Ethiopian archbishop was appointed with authority to consecrate bishops, and though this affrmed the autonomy of the church, it did not grant the autocephalous church status. Abuna Basilious became the frst Patriarch of Ethiopia enthroned in Cairo, and he presided over the consecration of Ethiopian bishops. He was later elevated from the status of the archbishop to that of patriarch.When the second patriarch,Tewfos, was appointed in 1971, the Coptic Church played no role at all.The consecration was made in Addis Ababa with the Ethiopian bishops, signaling the complete break and independence.

Authority and hierarchy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church The organizational and administrative hierarchy of the EOC is by the episcopal tradition of the Universal Church of the Savior Jesus Christ as practiced by the early church. The hierarchy of the Ethiopian Church consists of the traditional three orders of the episcopate: bishops, and archbishops or presbyterate (priests), and diaconate (deacons). Of these three orders, the episcopate is the most central.The episcopal community is the primary factor in the apostolic succession of the church. As noted above, the EOC began to have its Patriarch when it secured its full national autonomy by 1959.The church started developing its ecclesiastical hierarchical system.There are three major layers of offces within the EOC.The Abuna or the Patriarch is the head of the church. The powers of ordination and pastoral supervision belonged to the Abuna. The Itcehge, usually a monk from the famous monastery of Debre Libanoss, is another signifcant force in the EOC that holds the administrative authority of the church. Nebureed, who comes from the sacred city of Axum, is the third infuential fgure in the ecclesiastic of the Ethiopian church who enjoys a rare privilege of combining secular and religious authority. Next to the Abuna come the regional bishops, followed by local priests, who cater for their respective village parishes by conducting services such as baptism, holding funeral rites, and formalizing wedding ceremonies.22 274

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

The monastic tradition Another important face that historically constitutes a very signifcant element of the EOC is the monastic system. Monastic centers served as focal points of evangelization and still serve as hubs of teaching, mostly in the rural parts of Ethiopia.According to Ephraim Isaac, the Ethiopian monks comprise a group of unmarried deacons or priests, widowed priests, and widowed or aged laymen coming from all walks of life, who have renounced worldly life and vow to live a life of seclusion and asceticism.23 Those entering into the monastery order consider themselves to be dead to the moorings of the world.Ascetic life would include, among other things, eating wild plants, depriving oneself of any kind of bodily comfort, long prayers, fasting, minimum level clothing, and the wearing of heavy chains in some cases.The rationale is to mortify the body to achieve spiritual proximity to God. Nuns and monks live in the same monastic order but lodge in different locations.They also differ in the style of clothing and other qualifying markers. Monks are respected in Ethiopian society purportedly because of their high ethical standards. This is especially true of the hermits known as Bahetawis, who, though affliated with the monastery, enjoy a relative autonomy of mobility.They are known for wearing yellow clothes and skins around their chest.They may be likened to the friars of the Middle Ages.There are looked upon with a high degree of admiration for their ascetic life, moral integrity, and prophetic messages. Often they serve as moral voices in critiquing the people, the government, and the church when necessary or when they see inexcusable faws. Consequently, they are both feared and awed. There are several monasteries in Ethiopia, mostly located in the north.The oldest one is the monastery of Debra Damo believed to be established in the AD 5. The monasteries of Debre Haiq and Debre Libanos are said to have played major roles in the evangelization of the central regions of Ethiopia.The Itchege, who was largely responsible for the administration of the church and handling property in the past, was centered in the Monastery of Debre Libanos.

Educational foundations of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church The EOC occupies a unique position in Ethiopian society by dint of its role in becoming the foci of worship, center for education, center for culture, and social life. It is a multifaceted institution that has played a conspicuous role in the history of the nation. Crucially, it has played a pivotal role in fostering high-level church and secular education before the introduction of modern secular education.The church schools were the only educational institution in Ethiopia that delivered to young people skills in reading, writing, critical and creative thinking, and the inquiries of philosophical discourses. In traditional church education, there are roughly four levels of education. First, there is the nebab bet, the house of reading where students receive basic reading and writing skills. Zema bet, the house of melody/chant, is the next step in the educational ladder. It is the stage where students learn singing and dancing as related to the liturgical practice of the church.Within Zema, there are several parts, and students can study lessons at different levels with different aims in mind. Gene bet, or the house of poetry, forms the third phase of learning.This is the phase where students learn sophisticated ways of articulating ideas by having words assigned to different levels of meanings in a typical Ethiopian tradition called sem ena worq, literally wax and gold.The last stage is known as Meshaf bet, house of books, which represents a school of literature and history. Mature students at this stage are tasked to engage in the systematic study and the various interpretations of biblical passages involving the exercises of hermeneutics and exegesis.24 Traditionally, every church compound served as a place of education, as a village school. The Ethiopian Church, having its written language and literature, has been able to develop a 275

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

long tradition of ecclesiastical scholarship and elaborate networks of schools across the nation. Witness the enormous amount of literature deposited in major monasteries which have become focal points for scholars interested in studying the nature of non-Western Christianity broadly. Overall, it can be noted that the church educational system is an inherent part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that has enabled the unique institution to exert a powerful infuence over the social and political life of the country.

Church, culture, and society EOC has played an enormous role in shaping the Ethiopian culture and the social life of the Ethiopians in many ways; here an attempt is made to underscore only the salient aspects. The church has instituted fasting as one of most cardinal tenets of its belief systems.There are many days and occasions set aside for fasting and adherents are expected to observe them strictly. Members of the EOC are expected to fast on Wednesdays (in remembrance of the betrayal and arrest of Jesus) and Fridays (in remembrance of his crucifxion) regularly every week. During Lent, season fasting is strictly enforced for 40 days, during which period members of the church abstain from eating any kind of food for half a day while maintaining the restriction that applies to Wednesdays and Fridays. Fasting involves abstentions from eggs and animal foodstuffs such as meat, milk, and related dairy products.These apply to the general populace who are followers of the EOC.There are strict versions of fasting that concern select members of the clergy such as the priests and the Debteras. The other important element that needs to be borne in mind concerning the EOC’s societal role is the numerous days that it has put in place for its members to commemorate either saints or those who have been canonized as saints because of their epic spiritual deeds.This situation mostly affects the rural population.There is virtually not a single day left without a saint, or it’s like not being remembered.To cite some selective examples, Lideta is observed on the frst day of the month to honor the birth of Mary. Baata, to honor the presentation of Mary to the Temple of Jerusalem, is observed on the third day of the month. Abo is earmarked to remember a local saint Abune Gebre Menfese Qedu on the ffth day. Selase is reserved to honor Holy Trinity on the seventh day of the month. Going all the way through the month, Medhane Alem is observed on the 27th to honor the Holy Savior. In most cases, people stay out of work for most of the day during the observances.Though it is designed to keep the spiritual unity of the believers and to sustain constant spiritual harmony with God, its economic downside is not hard to fgure out.25 Finally, one should note that the EOC has several religious holidays in place. The most important ones are Enqutatash, new year; Gena, Christmas; Fassika, Easter; Meskel, the founding of the Cross; and Timket, Epiphany—commemoration of the baptism of Jesus. Followers of the EOC celebrate the festivals felicitously at home by slaughtering animals depending on their incomes but enjoying the meals communally with family members and neighbors.The public feature of the colorful nature of the celebration is especially displayed when Meskel and Timket are observed accompanied by large processions and songs. In the latter case, the holy relic, the tablet, is taken out from the church and is carried by the chief priest in the procession where it is temporarily rested in a tent. In rural areas, priests carry societal and moral functions as well.They are custodians of moral values, national virtues and respect, and love for the nation.They serve as mediators when social conficts, including marriage, unfold. In some extreme cases, when some people tend to show deviant behaviors that affect the community, they can exercise their spiritual authorities by condemning the person for his act. Gezichalehu, literally you are tied under my spiritual oath/ authority, is the last word that someone wants to hear from priests. 276

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

The role of the priests as men who bring some semblance of the moral and legal order is crucial in rural areas where the presence of the state is weakly felt or non-extinct. It should, however, be noted that the priests in the EOC tradition are not expected to lead an ascetic life to be a uniquely endowed moral example and different from the people; they are part of the people in their ordinary daily lives, doing mundane things like cultivating lands and sharing local beer, unlike the monks or the Bahitawi. Overall and historically, the EOC has kept harmonious relations with the state and as such has rarely encountered rancorous relations with the state. Priests pray and encourage their congregations to obey rulers, respect offcials, and defend the nation against foreign aggressions. However, they are reserved from dictating dogmatic doctrines to the community, as the teachings of the faith are enmeshed with the social customs of the society.The church maintained a religious attitude that “permits both deep spiritual fervor and a sense of duty and obligation to the state.”26

Concluding remarks The EOC is deeply rooted in the culture of Ethiopia. It was not only the offcial religion of the empire but was considered to be the most profound expression of the national existence and the most important cultural force in the lives of many Ethiopians. As Haggai Erlich has aptly summarized its role, the Church has become “the comprehensive prescription for the Ethiopian state, culture and life style.”27 The EOC has experienced quite a considerable change over the last four decades. Under Haile Sellaisie, the nation was associated with a Christian king, an Orthodox church, and Amharic—the offcial language. The decentering of these elements gradually occurred frst with the coming of the communist dictatorship and later with the government that replaced it, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPDRF). During the communist era, the separation of the church and state came into effect with a proclamation in 1975.The nationalization of land deprived the church of its economic base, but its spiritual sway did not decline. Under the current regime, the religious freedom obtained in the country is both a boon and a bane. Internally, there are perplexing developments following the appointment of the Patriarch Paulos, who was ethnically related to the ruling elite. There is also a plethora of lay movements that have sprung up, the most robust one being Mahebere Qidusan—the society of the righteous founded in 1991. Mahebere Qidusan, like its predecessor Haimonote Abew formed in 1957, drew membership and support from the elite, mainly students and professionals with huge intellectual and spiritual infuences. The association represents an adaptive response to changing socio-political dynamics. It seeks to combine a traditional approach to faith with a modern form of presentation.Though the association is recognized by the Patriarchate in 1992 and duly incorporated into the Sunday School Department, as a new trend supported by lay people with growing infuence among the populace, it is received with mixed reactions from the top echelon of the clergy. Another unfortunate occurrence that befalls the church is its being split into the national and the diasporic church. The church is also experiencing another challenge from within. This is mostly related to the springing of myriad of splinter groups under the generic name of Tahdiso, literally renewal. To cite but a few: the Mahabere Bukuran traces its spiritual genealogy to the Istifnites, a reform movement brutally crushed by Zara Yacob in the 15th century.Another example would be that of the Emanuel group that started in Nazareth in the1990s, which is increasingly attracting the urban youth.The latter has successfully re-appropriated traditional Orthodox practices such as 277

Eshete Tibebe and Tadesse W. Giorgis

singing and using instruments with elements of modern evangelical Christianity in its teachings/preaching as well as the theology of salvation. The religious freedom the constitution guaranteed in 1991 opened up opportunities for the rapid expansion of the evangelical Christian faith, particularly in its strain, Pentecostalism, which is drawing its pull from the traditional church.This has placed the EOC under a considerably huge challenge. Islam in Ethiopia is going through a process of revitalization, as cultural Islam typical to Ethiopia is giving way to a more aggressive and radical form of religion with a fundamentalist orientation. In some societies, African traditional religions are experiencing their version of resurgence, which some scholars dub as neo-traditionalism.The EOC has, in the past, assumed an integrative force playing the role of what can be described as a harmonic religion. But the new trends and developments witnessed in Ethiopia in the past few decades not only present a challenge but pose a test to its capacity to navigate new avenues of survival and progress.The church is adjusting and responding to the trends in many creative ways. It appears that the EOC did not venture to keep pace with the country’s tumultuous changes, including the secularization that was engulfng it since the emperor launched his modernization policy. A signifcant factor contributing to this is the expansion of modern education, particularly since the 1950s. The nationalist intelligentsia, substantially alienated by the church’s rigid posture, either chose to be indifferent or opted for alternative lifestyles, which in some cases meant joining other denominations.This was only a precursor of the exodus that transpired in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the rise of the Pentecostal movement. The church has not been able to perfect its tradition and, as a result, it could no more successfully navigate through the new social force that was springing within her fold. It is appropriate to quote John Mbiti, a noted African theologian in this regard: For many centuries the Church in Ethiopia was cut off from constant contact with the rest of the Christendom, which partly helped it to acquire a uniquely African expression, but which also reduced its spirituality and left it with a conservatism extremely diffcult to overcome in adjusting itself to modern times.28 Isaac captured the existential predicament of the church broadly when he noted that, during care for stability by one and enthusiasm for change by others, very little time is found for a dialogue between the priests of tradition and the prophets of modernization. This being said, it should be emphasized that the long presence of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, no matter its shortcomings and however uneven its infuences, makes it occupy a unique place in the religious history of Africa. Arguably, it can also be posited that its long presence and religious activities constitute an important cultural and spiritual backdrop against which the remarkable spread of the evangelical movement proceeded in a relatively short period. Adrian Hastings, stressing the global importance of the EOC, noted the roots of the African church should be looked for in Ethiopia, rather than in Europe.29

Notes 1 Ephariam Isaac, The Ethiopian Orthodox Tawhaido Church (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2013), p. vii. 2 For further details, see ibebu Teshale, The Making of Modern Ethiopia: 1896-1974 (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1995). 3 John Binns, The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia:A History (London: I.B.Tauris & Co, 2017), p. 19. 4 Isaac, p. 17. 5 Isaac, p. 19. 6 For further details, see Isaac, pp. 27–47.

278

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church 7 Isaac, p. 168. 8 Binns, p. 34. 9 Archbishop Yesehaq, The Ethiopian Orthodox Church: An Integrally African Church (New York: Vantage Press, 1989), p. 54. 10 Yesehaq, p. 66; See also Binns, p. 134. 11 For more on the period, see Mordochai Abir, The Era of the Princes (London: Landon Group Ltd., 1968). 12 For further, see Tibebe Eshete, The Evangelical Movement in Ethiopia (Waco: Baylor University, 2009), pp. 30–34. 13 Wudu Tafete Kassu, “The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian State and the Alexandrian See: Indigenizing in the Episcopacy and Forging National Identity, 1929-1991.” PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006, p. 240. 14 Yesehaq, pp. 197–217. 15 Christine Chaillot, The Ethiopian Ortodox Tewahedo Churc (Paris: inter-Orthodox Dialogue, 2002), pp. 54–55. 16 Binns, p. 236. 17 Isaac, pp. 49–50. 18 Ibid. 19 Chailot, pp. 125–127. 20 Isaac, p. 109. 21 Kassu, pp. 69–70. 22 For further, see Isaac, pp. 113–116. 23 Isaac, p. 118, Chaillot, p. 151. 24 For more, see Isaac, pp. 94–97; Binns, pp. 171–190. 25 For more, see Haile, my book. 26 Isaac, p. 118. 27 Haggai Ehrlich, The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt and the Nile (London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2002), p. 16. 28 John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (New York: Frederick A. Prager, 1969), p. 230. 29 Adrian Hastings, History of African Christianity, 1950-1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 272–274.

279

17 EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY James Nkansah-Obrempong

Introduction Theology is central to the Christian faith, and it shapes the doctrinal affrmations and practices of Christians. It is a discipline that seeks to understand God and how he relates to humanity and creation.There are different forms of theology, depending on what is the focus of that theological discourse. For example, we have systematic theology that provides concise and systematic teaching on various subjects of the Christian faith such as God, revelation, creation, Christ, atonement, the Church, and end times, just to name a few.There are other forms of theology that deal specifcally with certain themes and subject matters such as liberation theology, feminist theology,African theology,Wesleyan theology, and so forth. Evangelical theology is one such theology.This chapter addresses evangelical theology as it is understood in Africa. In doing this, I will defne evangelical theology. I will look at a brief history of evangelicals in Africa, then elucidate the central tenets of evangelical theology, innovations, and contributions to African Christianity, spiritual growth, development, and improvement of the social, political, and economic lives of African Christians, as well as the challenges posed to the evangelical faith in the midst of secularism and religious pluralism.

What is evangelical theology? There are two key words here that need to be defned, namely evangelical and theology. The term evangelical derives from the Greek word for the Gospel evangelion, which means “good news” or “Gospel.” Precisely, evangelical refers to a person, church, or organization that is committed to the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ as the only means and Savior of humanity. Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the “good news,” that Jesus loved humanity enough to enter our world to die to bring healing and to reconcile humans to God. Similarly, the word theology comes from two Greek words: theos and logos. Theos means God and logos means “discourse or study.”Theology simply means discourse on God or the study of the nature of God.Theology is an attempt to understand God as he is revealed in the Bible. What then is evangelical theology? Evangelical theology is simply the study of God from an evangelical perspective. Evangelical theology affrms the centrality of the Cross and Jesus Christ as the only Savior of humanity from sin, biblical authority, personal conversion, and missions. 280

Evangelical theology

Evangelical theology fnds its grounds in the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary to deliver humanity from the power of sin and evil and the commitment to share this faith with a lost world. Who is an evangelical? An evangelical is a person, church, or organization that is committed to the Christian message that Jesus is the only Savior for humanity’s sin and they are committed to proclaiming the same through word and deed.They believe the Bible, in the authority of the Bible, in matters of faith and conduct, and they are eagerly expecting the return of Jesus Christ to usher in the Kingdom of God. African evangelicals are vibrant, diverse groups of believers found in many African churches, denominations, and Christian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). African evangelicals form a part of a larger Protestant group from the Reformation tradition. They comprise of Reformed Presbyterian Churches, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, African Inland Churches, Assemblies of God, and many Pentecostals and Charismatics of both indigenous and missionary Churches. Most of these evangelical churches may have different Church governments, worship styles, and liturgy; they, however, hold unifed doctrinal views on the basic doctrinal affrmations of the Christian faith.

The history of African evangelicals African evangelicals are growing every day.There are about 100 million evangelicals in Africa.1 The roots of African evangelicals are linked to two important eras in African Christianity and history. The early origins of African evangelicals are linked to the 2nd and 3rd centuries of African Christian churches in Ethiopia (Acts 8:26–38), Egypt, Alexandria, and Libya as early as AD 200.2 Jonathan Hildebrandt, in his book History of the Church in Africa:A Survey, makes a case for African evangelicals. He argues that African Christianity had its foundation on the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the answer to the human predicament. Christians in this era committed themselves to the faithful preaching of the Gospel in word and deed. By the end of AD 200, they were unreservedly committed to living in obedience to God’s word.3 Some of the early African evangelicals include the Ethiopian eunuch, Anianus, the cobbler, Clement of Alexandra, Origen, and Tertullian. These men were committed to the Gospel, defended its central place in the salvation of humanity and the importance of God’s word as the basis of the Christian faith and life.They developed some of the fundamental Christian doctrines that have shaped evangelical theology and Christianity today.4 More recent roots of African evangelicals come from the missionary agencies and the revival movements in Europe and North America that came to Africa in the 17th century onward to evangelize Africa. Different mission agencies came to different African countries, and through their evangelistic activities, some indigenous Africans responded to the Gospel, and they were baptized. In their efforts to disciple the new believers, they established churches in the colonies. These churches were established to nurture and train the new Christians to grow in their new faith. However, with time, most of these churches became nominal in their faith. The Gospel was not central to the mission of the church, but rather, the church was more concerned about the social reforms and numbers. People became members of the church through baptism, without having a personal faith in Jesus Christ.This affected both the spiritual life of the churches as well as the place they gave to the proclamation of the Gospel as the only means of salvation for humanity. Although most of these churches were formed as a result of the revival movements in Europe and North America, the churches, later on, became nominal. Nominal Christians flled most of the historical churches and works of the fesh, especially among the laity, and the absence of conversion among many clergies profoundly affected the spiritual life of the Church and the 281

James Nkansah-Obrempong

Christians.5 Gehman gives at least three reasons for the state of the church at this time. There were social upheavals which made life very diffcult for many people, ecclesiastical problems and dissatisfaction of the laity, which resulted in conficts and a gradual change in theological perspective—that salvation was through baptism.6 These problems destroyed the spiritual atmosphere of the church, and many of the believers “desired a higher Christian life,” to overcome their spiritual lethargy through the power of the Holy Spirit.This led to the East African revival in 1936,7 which became a critical part of the evangelical movement in Africa. These evangelical believers from the revivalist traditions were a concern for “true religion” and stood against the nominalism and the incipient universalism and syncretism that emerged in African Christianity in the postcolonial era. African evangelicals stood against nominalism found in most of the mainline Protestant churches.Through the preaching of the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit and the proclamation of the word and deed, a revival in the mainline churches was brought about.This spiritual revival in most of the traditional Protestant churches explains why we have many evangelical believers in these churches today. The latter group of evangelicals from the revivalist movements in Africa share the same theological convictions as their counterparts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.The Gospel was very central to their theology and life.They emphasized the personal experience of salvation through the Cross of Christ and lived a victorious Christian life through the power of the Holy Spirit; they were committed to spreading the Gospel by proclaiming, for example, preaching, teaching and sharing their faith with others through visits and public witness. African evangelicals share the same theological affrmations of the Triune God enshrined in the Apostolic and the Nicene creeds of the Church. An elaborate version of their theological affrmation is found in the Statement of Faith of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa (AEA)—a continental evangelical body that brings African evangelicals together. AEA was formed in 1966.The AEA affrms: THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, as originally given by God, divine, inspired, infallible, entirely trustworthy, and supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. ONE GOD, eternally existent in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, God manifest in the fesh, His virgin birth, His sinless human life, His divine miracles, His vicarious and atoning death, His bodily resurrection, His ascension, His mediatorial work, and His personal return in Power and Glory. THE SALVATION of lost and sinful humans through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, by faith apart from works, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. THE HOLY SPIRIT, by whose indwelling the believer is enabled to live a holy life, to witness and work for the Lord Jesus Christ. THE UNITY of all those who, having believed in Jesus for their salvation, have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and compose therefore the Church, the Body of Christ of which He is the Head. THE PERSONAL EXISTENCE OF SATAN, whose intent is to oppose God and frustrate His purpose, and whose ultimate end is consignment to eternal punishment. THE BODILY RESURRECTION of all the dead; of the believers unto everlasting blessedness and of the unbelievers unto judgment and everlasting punishment.8 As an Association of Evangelicals in Africa,AEA organizes and unites the “Body of Christ to promote evangelical unity, fellowship, and Christian witness in Africa”9 and to extend the Kingdom of God by making disciples of all nations through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. 282

Evangelical theology

So far, I have defned evangelical, what it means, and its history in African Christianity. It is appropriate now to explore more fully the themes in evangelical theology.To do this, I will draw more on the Statement of Faith of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa as I elucidate African evangelical theology.

Evangelical theology in Africa: its themes and innovations I stated earlier that African evangelicals have their origin in early African Christianity. It goes as far back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In the same vein, the origins of African evangelical theology can be traced to the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the African Christian churches. Hildebrandt outlines some important features of evangelical theology at the time: frst, their theology showed unreserved loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. The early Christians were loyal to Jesus Christ by “remaining true to the gospel and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”10 They did not “compromise on the teachings of Jesus concerning salvation and eternal life.” They were willing to die for their faith in Christ, and many gave up their lives that way.They resolved in their minds to stand up for the truth at whatever cost. Second, their theology was missional.The early African evangelical Christians were committed to the proclamation of the Gospel through evangelism and missionary outreach.They shared the good news by telling others about their faith in Jesus Christ. Evangelism was a priority for them. Third, their theology was trinitarian. The trinitarian nature of their theology originated from great African Church father Tertullian, who helped the Christians to “express our understanding of the Godhead.”11

The Gospel: central theme of evangelical theology The center and unity of evangelical theology is the “evangel,” the Gospel.This is the most distinguishing mark of evangelical theology. The Gospel, which is God’s solution to the human predicament of sin, is the boundary of evangelical theology.The Gospel is God’s good news to humanity, that through faith in his Son Jesus Christ, humanity can receive forgiveness of sins and be reconciled to God.The essence of Jesus coming to the world was to save humanity from their sin.This is the message of the Angel Gabriel to Mary and Joseph.According to Gabriel, the name Jesus means “He will save his people from their sin” (Matthew 1:21).The Gospel, therefore, is the most salient theme in evangelical theology. The good news of the Lord Jesus Christ was the one central mark in preaching and teaching of the Apostles.This is one thing Jesus committed to his disciples to do in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16–20, where Jesus charged his disciples, saying, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing then in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (NLT). The essence of the Gospel which the apostles preached relates to Jesus Christ, Cross, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ. This Gospel was what they lived for. It was their sole vocation. Consequently, African evangelicals are committed to proclaiming the Gospel, which is the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The evangelical churches in Africa have played a seminal role in the spiritual growth and spread of Christianity in Africa through the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only Savior of the world. Through their unrelenting 283

James Nkansah-Obrempong

zeal to preach the Gospel and to evangelize Africa, Christianity has been growing by leaps and bounds on the continent, and today, Africa boasts of being one of the leading continents with the majority of Christians. Evangelical theology in Africa, like its counterpart in the West, has been expressed primarily through “mission and proclamation. Its theology has been chiefy kerygmatic, preached in sermons, proclaimed in songs, and announced in testimonies.”12 Associated with the proclamation of the Gospel is the concept of salvation. Evangelical theology emphasizes personal conversion and accountability regarding the Christian faith. Every human being is responsible for making a personal decision to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.This happens when an individual confesses his or her sin to God and asks for forgiveness of sin. Conversion takes place when a person is born again, and he becomes a new creation through the power of the Holy Spirit in response to the Gospel (2 Corinthians 5:17, John 1:12, 9, Romans 1:16). Being a member of a church does not make one a Christian or save a person.To be saved, each person must exercise personal faith in Jesus Christ.African evangelical theology emphasizes the centrality of the Gospel and faith in Jesus as a criterion for salvation, as the Bible affrms that “there is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (NLT) except by the name of Jesus. By insisting on the centrality of the Gospel as God’s only way of salvation for humanity, through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, evangelical theology has helped to affrm Jesus Christ’s uniqueness as the only Savior of humanity. Most of the contemporary world religions claim to provide salvation to their followers.This is not true, for no religion can provide salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Through evangelical theology’s insistence of salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus, Christians have been given assurance of salvation. The Bible affrms and guarantees the certainty of the believers’ salvation if they continue to obey and live their lives according to God’s word (1 John 5:6–12). This is an assurance that all the other religions of the world cannot guarantee their followers. In their desire to proclaim the Gospel through word and deed, evangelicals have not only brought spiritual renewal and salvation to many, but they have also initiated many development activities that have transformed many communities and enhanced the lives of many destitute people.They, through their social actions and engagements, have, in a sense, become the extended feet and hands of Jesus.

The Bible as the supreme authority for faith and practice The second theme in evangelical theology is about their view of the Bible. African evangelical theology upholds the authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures as God’s word and revelation to humanity.They see the Bible as the primary source for faith and practice, as stated clearly in 2 Timothy 3:16.This high view of the Scripture is in line with the African heritage of the 2nd and 3rd centuries and in tandem with the AEA Statement of Faith as well as the Reformation principle of sola scriptura. African evangelical theology affrms biblical inspiration and inerrancy or the infallibility of the Bible. Evangelicals may reject all forms of oral or written traditions in the Church that go contrary to the teachings of the Bible. In understanding and interpreting the Bible, “evangelical hermeneutics generally relies on a literal interpretation of the Bible.” Evangelicals interpret the Bible “literally, historically, grammatically and contextually.”13 Evangelical theology stresses the importance of faithfulness and obedience to the Bible; acceptance of its authority for doctrine and practice. As Bruce Hindmarsh observes of evangelicals in general, the Bible is “not only supreme authority for belief and practice but [it is] all the object of their affection and instrument of their devotion.”14

284

Evangelical theology

African evangelicals’ high view of Scripture is very important in a world where there are no absolute moral laws or truth, and everything is relative.This is dangerous for humanity and society. Relativism opens the door for people to disregard the demands of God’s word for their moral behavior and how they live and relate with his world. Evangelical theology has helped the Christian Church to put God’s word at the center of life as a yard stick to shape their faith and practice.Their love for God endears them to obey his word.

The Trinity: a core evangelical belief The third characteristic and theme of African evangelical theology is its Trinitarian character. African evangelical theology affrms the historic Christian faith expressed in the creeds of the Church.They believe in the triune nature of God who exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each distinct and divine, and they are all involved in the redemption of humanity and creation.The signifcant roles of the Father, initiating and planning redemption, the Son, dying to make redemption possible, and the Holy Spirit, applying the effects of redemption personally to an individual and sustaining him or her in the faith, are very important for the Christian. In a world of relativism and plurality of religions, this understanding of God is critical for the salvation of humanity and God’s creation.This is because each of the persons of the Trinity has a unique role to play in human salvation. Evangelical theology’s emphasis on the triune nature of God, therefore, helps the Church to uphold the biblical teaching about the nature of God and thus helps to prevent any misunderstanding of the nature and character of God that might undermine the Christian faith.There are many voices in the world today who deny the divinity of Jesus as God.The Trinitarian understanding of God is important to challenge the erroneous views held by other religions that Jesus is just a prophet and not God. If Jesus is not God, then He cannot be the Savior of humanity and the creation. Contrary to the position of other religions, the Bible affrms the divinity of Jesus Christ.15

Christ and the cross The fourth theme in evangelical theology is Christological; it centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ. African evangelicals affrm Jesus Christ as God’s fnal revelation to humanity (Hebrews 1:1–3).The person and work of Christ are central to the Gospel. His nature as both human and God, through the virgin birth, His sinless life on earth, and His divine miracles are explicated in evangelical theology. This makes Jesus unique in terms of God’s salvifc plan for humanity. Jesus’ uniqueness is in His atoning death, resurrection from the dead, ascension to heaven, and His coming back to judge both the dead and the living at His second coming, when all of humanity will stand before the judgment seat of God and the Christ. His unique nature as God-Man qualifes him as the only Savior of the world.The Bible affrms His uniqueness as the only Savior of the world when it says: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12, NLT). Jesus is the only Savior of the world. No religion or any other person can bring salvation to humanity.This is the essence of the Gospel. Christ Jesus came to save sinners and gave them hope of eternal life.The evangelicals’ view of the person and work of Jesus helps the Church to safeguard the centrality and the uniqueness of the Gospel and Jesus in the Christian faith. This understanding of Jesus will help preserve the integrity of the Gospel and affrm its universal relevance for humanity and God’s entire creation.This means all human efforts through the various religions are not essential for human salvation.

285

James Nkansah-Obrempong

The second coming of Christ The ffth theme in African evangelical theology is its eschatological nature.African evangelicals are looking forward to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.The Kingdom of God is a central feature in African evangelical theology. It is said that, at the end of all things, salvation will be actualized where all humanity will stand before God and Christ to give an account of all that they have done in this life. At the judgment, the righteous and the wicked would be separated; the righteous will enjoy eternity with God while the wicked will spend eternity in hell or the lake of fre.The fact of human destiny is what drives evangelicals to missions. Humanity’s destiny is tied to the Gospel. Humanity can escape eternal destruction only if they respond positively to the Gospel.

Dynamism and spiritual sensitivity The Pentecostal and charismatic wing of evangelicals have brought many innovations to African Christianity through new forms of worship, power encounter, and a new spirituality in African Christianity. Pentecost is the central symbol in Pentecostal theology. African Pentecostals have infuenced the church in so many ways. It has brought renewal to many of the denominational churches in Africa and caused spiritual growth in these churches. Because of its focus on the work of the Holy Spirit and the power he gives to believers to live a victorious Christian life, many Africans are drawn to the Pentecostal brand of Christianity. Pentecostals are addressing and giving hope to the African’s deepest yearning, which is to overcome his or her fears in a world infested with demonic and evil powers that are working against their prosperity and well-being. Moreover, African Pentecostal Christianity appeals to popular religious sensibilities of Africans because it resonates with the pragmatic and poweroriented nature of African indigenous spirituality. It also allows individuals to construct new identities for themselves and overcome the dilemma of dual allegiance.The belief in the effcacy of prayer as a weapon to overcome the challenges that humanity faces in this world is fostered. In summary, African evangelical theology emphasizes the Bible as the authoritative word of God, personal conversion of the individual through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Cross of Christ as means to atone for humanity’s sin, and active Christian service—missions and engagement in society.As Bruce Hindmarsh asserts,“These sources remain a perennial fountainhead of a dynamic spiritual life that will never run dry.”16

Evangelical theology: its contributions and challenges Evangelical theology: its contributions Spiritual and economic transformation of communities

African evangelical theology affrms most of the doctrinal beliefs central to the teachings of the Bible and the historical church. Evangelical theology, due to its contextual nature, is raising many socio-economic, cultural, religious, and political issues facing society by attempting to speak to them. Consequently, evangelical theology is providing a prophetic voice, challenging the status quo, and demanding a high moral standard for society. Their commitment to evangelism is helping to free people from sin, and demonic and evil forces that are holding many as captives.Their active service to communities and their advocacy for equity and social action are helping many African communities to develop and therefore enhancing the well-being and the fourishing of the people. 286

Evangelical theology

These tenets of evangelical theology have social, political, and economic implications for Christian engagement in society.17 Evangelicals’ understanding of the Gospel as good news and as the power of God to break the power of sin and to bring liberation from oppression (Luke 4:18) has played a seminal role in fghting for social, religious freedom and economic and democratic space in many African countries where there have been injustice, religious oppression and bondages, economic exploitation, and political oppressions. Besides fghting for human dignity and freedom from oppression, evangelicals have engaged in transformative projects such as schools, hospitals, vocational training centers, and community development projects that have empowered many marginalized communities in Africa. These projects have benefted and enhanced the lives of many people. Evangelicals will continue to engage in these activities by proclaiming the Gospel and engaging in developmental activities, hoping and trusting these communities will come to experience the love of Christ, and many marginalized people will experience economic and social transformation in their lives. Advocacy for political and religious freedom

So evangelical theology has contributed to the African evangelical Christians and churches’ roles in advocacy for just economic and social order, religious freedom, and political and democratic space for citizens to engage the government and participate in the governance of a nation’s resources for the common good and initiate transformative community development project that improves the living conditions of marginalized communities in Africa.

Evangelical theology: its challenges The problem of context

Having mentioned some of the contributions evangelical theology has made to African Christianity and society, it will be good now to address some challenges that evangelical theology in Africa is poised to face or is facing. For example, since the 1970s,African theologians have tried to develop an African evangelical theology that is truly biblical and truly African.This has been a rewarding phenomenon, but a very diffcult project.The challenge lies in being faithful to the Scriptures, maintaining our loyalty to Jesus Christ, and being faithful to the Gospel and the faith that is passed on to us by the apostles as we take seriously the African cultural, religious, socio-economic, and political contexts. As society and culture change, our desire to make the Gospel relevant to address the existential issues and the questions being asked by people in relation to the Christian faith will always be a challenge.We must always commit ourselves to be loyal to the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ. There will be pressure from the world to conform to the patterns of the world. Evangelicals must stand frm and defend the faith that God has “entrusted once and for all time to his holy people” (Jude 1:3). Evangelicals today can learn from the Apostles and the early Church Fathers, whose commitment and loyalty to the integrity of the Gospel, the Word of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ were uncompromising. Evangelicals today must keep that legacy. The problem of diversity in evangelicalism

Another challenge with evangelical theology is the different perspectives that exist in the evangelical faith that emerge in the actual practices of evangelicals. Gabriel Fackre gives six perspectives on evangelical faith18 that tend to divide evangelicals into fundamentalists, who tend to be polemical and conservative, or separatists, who hold the strictest form of beliefs; old evangelicals 287

James Nkansah-Obrempong

who emphasize personal conversion and mass evangelism; the new evangelicals who acknowledge social responsibility and apologetics; justice and peace evangelicals who are socio-political activists; charismatic evangelicals who stress the work of the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, healing, and worship; and ecumenical evangelicals who are concerned with unity and cooperation. These diverse perspectives of the evangelical faith pose a great challenge to evangelical Christianity, and it can become a source of confict and division within the evangelical community.This, if it is not handled with care, can create tension and disunity within the evangelical movement and weaken our witness to the world.There are accusations, competition, and disunity within the evangelical community. Because of these different perspectives, cooperation with other evangelical bodies is often elusive. Competition among evangelical churches is threatening the unity of the body of Christ in Africa.This has frustrated our effort to work together and present one voice or a strong Christian witness on the continent.There is tension between the ecumenists and evangelicals. In many African states, this tension is real, and it has fragmented the voice of the Church. Evangelical Christians in Africa must work hard to overcome our disunity if we want to see a powerful and effective witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the continent of Africa. The problem of postmodernism

The distinguishing characteristic of postmodernism is an approach to scholarship that critically questions received traditions that have dominated discourse in different felds, making the case that there are no “master narratives” that offer uncontested truths. Scholars have pointed out that postmodernism offers a critical method of questioning past claims. However, some evangelicals tend to think that it might lead to a denial of truth claims, especially if one takes the Biblical Scriptures as the foundation for faith and practice. Some Evangelicals argue that the full meaning of postmodernism for some might pose problems for Christians who want to address questions on human sexuality. A case in point is the fact that in the African Evangelical theological context, some leaders have opposed same-sex relations because biblical teachings condemn it. These scholars and leaders then fear that a postmodern understanding that might undermine the authority of the Bible would reject the Evangelical position on same-sex relations. Evangelicals are also concerned by the position of some Governments who have linked foreign and development aid to the fact that recipients of aid would support alternative sexualities. Evangelicals argue that such views of the postmodern that would insist that churches accept same-sex relations are a misrepresentation of the idea of the postmodern, which broadly understood is a theoretical approach that recognizes the multiplicity of thought, ethics, and practice. The evangelical Christian community’s response to human sexuality in Africa is very critical. The cultural and sociological issues associated with homosexuality and the HIV/AID pandemic in Africa, and the resultant socio-economic impact on society, are a few of the challenges facing the evangelical church. Evangelical theology must address human sexuality in Africa. The Church should not shy away from this issue any time it comes up.To foster balance in ensuring and upholding biblical moral values and those of society can cause some tension. Often evangelical Christianity has been accused of not being sensitive to the human plight; they are dogmatic when it comes to human sexuality. Evangelicals must hold frm to the integrity of God’s word as the source and foundation for humanity’s moral discourse and practice. The problem of poverty and economic exploitation

Poverty and unemployment on the continent are critical issues for the church, whose members are very poor. For example, national statistics in Kenya show the youth form 70 percent of the Kenyan population.The majority of the youth in Kenya are unemployed.This is true of many 288

Evangelical theology

African nations. This poses a challenge for the church. Evangelical theology must also strive to balance the proclamation of the Gospel by word and deed. This means African evangelical theology must remain contextual by addressing the existential issues facing Christians and the communities they are preaching the Gospel to. Questions of development and holistic mission will always be a challenge for evangelical Christianity. Evangelical theology must always engage in holistic ministry. Speaking prophetically to the social, economic, political, and environmental concerns the African continent is facing would not only give a powerful witness to the Gospel, but it would also give credence to the nature of the Gospel, which is good news.Taking social justice issues seriously in evangelical theology will always be a challenge because evangelicals hold diverse views regarding social engagement. The problem of church and state relations

The question of the church and its involvement with politics has come to the fore in recent years in many African nations.This was true in many African countries where evangelical Christians are getting actively involved in politics by either seeking an elected position or campaigning for a political party. For the frst time, Christian leaders, bishops, pastors, and others vied for political positions.The nature of the Gospel demands that evangelicals must give leadership in matters relating to social justice, liberation, empowerment, and economic emancipation for the poor and the marginalized by maintaining its prophetic voice in denouncing exploitation and injustice in society, just as the Old Testament prophets spoke forcefully to denounce the inappropriate behavior of the leaders in exploiting the poor and the weak and the marginalized in the community.The evangelical community knows they need to do this, but they do not know how to do it. Evangelical Christianity wants to engage civil society and advocate for good governance.What informs how such engagement should be is always a problem. Consequently, evangelical Christianity has not given clear direction in this area. This can be frustrating for many. Dealing with dictators and national leaders who have lost their moral authority will always be a challenge because African leaders do not want to be criticized. One can lose his or her life by criticizing a political leader. Evangelicals should not lose their prophetic voice. The problem of spiritual and theological depth

Another critical challenge of evangelical theology is to ensure that the faith is passed on to faithful men and women who will teach it to future generations (2 Timothy 2:2). Although evangelical Christianity is growing in Africa, there is a lack of theological depth and understanding of the Gospel and its implication for our daily life.This speaks to the question of Christian discipleship.The challenge comes when the majority of African Christians living in rural communities do not read and write. Many of our young people do not like reading things that could challenge them to rethink their beliefs or theological positions.They like listening to things.This will require that we think of innovative ways of passing on the faith to the next generation of believers.This will require doing theology in vernacular language and making audio for those Christians who cannot read or write.This will be a diffcult task, since most theologians are not fuent in speaking and expressing themselves in their vernacular languages.We must fnd a way of doing this if the faith is to be transmitted to the future generation. African church does not have many well-trained pastors and teachers in the church. They pose a big challenge for the church in Africa. We need to take theological training seriously. Theological education is fundamental in training pastors and Christian educators to engage in the work of equipping Christians in the faith. We should fnd ways of training pastors where 289

James Nkansah-Obrempong

they are taught with solid theological materials like the ones used by Theological Education by Extension (TEE), to help our rural pastors to get some good theological training to be able to teach and pass on the faith to the next generation. Lack of discipline in Christians can lead to a lack of genuine Christian commitment on the part of the believer. In addition to training, we need to develop good teaching materials that are context-relevant to discipleship. We lack good discipleship materials written in Africa and that address some of the social, cultural, political, and economic issues that would help us live as followers of Christ. The materials available are not often helpful for our context. The problem of theology and culture

Issues relating to theology and culture have moved to the center stage of evangelical theological refection on the continent.The issue of Gospel and culture is always a challenge when the Gospel encounters any culture. In order to address the Christian faith so that it is not seen as a foreign religion, serious attention must be given to the context and culture into which the faith is planted. For Africans to contextualize or inculturate the Gospel in another culture, clear guidelines must be given to make sure the process is faithful to biblical Christianity.The dilemma African evangelicals are facing is to develop an African Christianity that is authentically African and truly biblical. The concern to relate theology to culture without accommodating or losing the essential core of evangelical theology can be a challenge if this is not done with care and integrity in handling God’s word. It is important we give theological direction on the complex issues culture raises for theology. The desire to develop a theology that is relevant as well as truly biblical and theologically sound is a challenge.African evangelical theologians must do work that addresses some of the key theological subjects in Christian theology. The problem of globalization

It is important for evangelical theology to foster unity, integrity, and faithfulness to the evangelical faith in a pluralistic religious society so that the evangelical faith is not lost. In this case, evangelical theological institutions can play a critical role in ensuring the purity of the evangelical tradition.This requires that care must be taken to hire professors who are committed to the essential tenets of the evangelical faith, as we have outlined earlier.Along with globalization come the incipient materialism and the consumerism culture creeping into the church. The evangelical community must respond to these cultural values of the West that are gaining deeper roots in the African church. Theological responsibility

Christianity in the West is declining, and the evangelical church in Africa has a role to play in preserving evangelical Christianity for future posterity. There are not many institutions in African to train Christian leaders and workers for the future Church. Where such training is taking place, there are no adequate resources for the training to be credible. There should be cooperation between the West and African institutions to help with resources for them to be successful in this mission. African evangelicals and others from the “south” must live up to this theological responsibility. Religious pluralism, liberal secularism, prosperity Gospel, issues of postmodernity philosophy raised, new theological hermeneutics, and other issues developing on the continent would be challenging for evangelical Christians.We must refect, think, and provide guidance for evangelical Christians to respond to the issues raised by these ideologies.We must contend for the faith. 290

Evangelical theology

Conclusion African evangelical theology is evangelical, trinitarian, revelatory, Christological, and eschatological.The Gospel is central to evangelical theology. It stresses the place of the Cross and the need for personal conversion or personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to receive forgiveness of sins. It upholds the Bible as the supreme authority for faith and practice. It is missional. It advocates for an active sharing of the Gospel through evangelism.Although evangelical theology has many benefts and has contributed to African Christianity, it also has many challenges which African evangelicals must address to sustain the gains of evangelicalism in Africa.

Notes 1 http://www.aeafrica.org/about/. 2 Jonathan Hildebrandt, History of the Church in Africa:A Survey (Achimota, Ghana:Africa Christian Press, 1987), 1–8. 3 Hildebrandt, History of the Church in Africa, 1–8. 4 Hildebrandt, History of the Church in Africa, 6–10. 5 Richard Gehman, “The East African Revival.” Accessed from https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/ajet/ 05-1_036.pdf., 36. 6 Gehman,“East Africa Revival,” 37. 7 Gehman,“East Africa Revival,” 43. 8 http://wwww.aeafrica.org/about/. See James Nkansah-Obrempong, “Evangelical Churches and Movements in Africa,” in Anthology of African Christianity (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2016), 425–430. 9 Nkansah-Obrempong,“Evangelical Churches and Movements in Africa,” 426. 10 Hildebrandt, History of the Church in Africa, 38. 11 Hildebrandt, History of the Church in Africa, 39. 12 Bruce Hindmarsh, “Evangelicalism,” in Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1984, 291. 13 “What is Evangelical Theology?” https://www.gotquestions.org (accessed January 05, 2019). 14 Hindmarsh, “Evangelicalism,” 291. 15 Chicago: Rel212week7.docx – Running Head Christianity 1 .., https://www.coursehero.com/fl e/27170657/REL212WEEK7docx/ (accessed June 08, 2019). 16 Hindmarsh, “Evangelicalism,” 292. 17 Nkansah-Obrempong,“Evangelical Churches and Movement,” 427. 18 John Stott, Evangelical Truth:A Personal Plead for Unity, Integrity and Faithfulness (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999), 22–23.

Bibliography Gehman, Richard. “The East African Revival.” East Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology, Issue 5.1 (1986): 36–56. Hildebrandt, Jonathan. History of the Church in Africa: A Survey (Achimota, Ghana: Africa Christian Press, 1987). Hindmarsh, Bruce. “Evangelicalism.” In: Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1984), 102–118. Nkansah-Obrempong, James. “Evangelical Churches and Movements in Africa.” In: Isabel Apawo Phiri, Dietrich Werner, Chammah Kaunda, and Kennedy Owino, eds. Anthology of African Christianity (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2016), 425–430. Stott, John. Evangelical Truth: A Personal Plea for Unity, Integrity, and Faithfulness (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1999). “What Is Evangelical Theology?” https://www.gotquestions.org.Accessed March 10, 2020

291

18 (HOW) ARE WE DOING ECOTHEOLOGY IN (SOUTH) AFRICA? SOME HERMENEUTICAL REFLECTIONS Ernst M. Conradie

This essay addresses the question in the title of this contribution by focusing on each of the terms employed. It offers some hermeneutical refections on the ways of doing ecotheology. It raises the counterintuitive question of whether what is done under the name of ecotheology could indeed be regarded as constructive contributions to address contemporary ecological concerns theologically. Is that commensurate to the gravity of the challenge? Is that theologically adequate in the sense that it helps us to discern what God is doing at this point in history, in this place? Or does ecotheology as it is studied and debated today masquerade for something else in the sense that it extrapolates positions adopted elsewhere (e.g., in confessional theologies but also in particular theological schools, including black, African, feminist, or liberation theologies) in what amounts to be a colonizing way to ensure the proper scope, viability, and sustainability of such discourses but does not actually address the gravity of ecological concerns theologically? This discussion is made relevant to the African and, more specifcally, the South African context. There are arguably as many views on theological method (meta hodos = about the way) and methodology (the logic of fnding a way) as there are theologians contributing to such discourse. Most would agree with some form of the Methodist Quadrilateral, namely that “we” have to somehow juggle the biblical roots of the Christianity, the subsequent Christian tradition in all its forms, contemporary experience within a particular context, and some form of rationality/ critical refection.This entails the hermeneutical task of correlation, interpretation, and appropriation. As I will discuss below, there is no consensus on how such sources of doing theology should be related to each other. The term “doing theology” is derived from the recognition that all forms of theology are necessarily contextual, that attempts to relate the Christian faith to the contemporary context are not the prerogative of scholars and experts only but are done also and perhaps especially by the laity in their everyday lives, that a distinction is therefore needed between “studying theology” and “doing theology,” and that the rhetorical context within which theology is “done” matters.1 Who is speaking to whom (i.e., who are the interlocutors)? Whose interests are at stake and what is the intended impact of such theological discourse? If all theologies are 292

Some hermeneutical refections on ecotheology

necessarily contextual, then that also applies to apartheid theology, Christian Zionism, and other colonizing theologies that serve the interests of the ruling classes.2 The question is therefore whether theological positions are liberating or oppressive, enhancing peace or inciting confict, sustainable or not (to use the categories of the Conciliar process toward “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation” as three relevant criteria). Also, there is the recognition that doing theology is a mode of refection on prior action. Such refection needs to be critical but also constructive while the action is always already informed by theory (i.e., praxis). Such praxis results from prior ways of relating text with context, Gospel and culture, faith and reason, church and society, Christians symbols and (human) situatedness, God, and world. This leads to a defnition of theology as a critical refection on Christian (or ecclesial, but also theological) praxis. Gustavo Gutiérrez added that such critical refection takes place “in the light of God’s Word,” but other criteria for adequacy also come into play.3 In the South African context, “doing theology” is often explained in terms of the so-called See-Judge-Act model, where “seeing” entails social analysis and “judging” entails theological discernment, while the emphasis is on constructive responses (acting). This model is widely adopted, despite at least two concerns: frst, there is the question of whether social analysis can/ should be done prior to theological discernment (since the analysis can then predetermine the discernment, leading to a form of inverse hermeneutics4). At the same time, there is the danger of addressing theological problems that no one raises, so that the refection becomes irrelevant to (human) needs within a particular context. Secondly, there is a need to refect upon such refection and the criteria employed in critical refection. How do prior praxis and thus existing power relations shape the critical refection? Following an action-refection model, it may, therefore, be best to speak of a spiral that involves acting, seeing, judging, and acting anew, with the recognition that such refection will not always make the subsequent action more adequate.5 There is no need here to elaborate further on the theoretical clarifcation of the term “doing theology.” It should be clear that ecotheology is one mode of doing theology, also within the South African context. It does refect critically on Christian/ecclesial/theological praxis. And it does relate the biblical texts, the Christian tradition, social analysis (including human experience), and various sciences to each other in some or other way.As I have argued elsewhere, ecotheology involves both a Christian critique of ecological destruction and an ecological critique of Christianity.6 It also has a constructive dimension in seeking adequate theological responses for the sake of a sustainable future. In short, despite many methodological and theoretical caveats and widely diverging emphases, I think it is fair to say that, overtly at least, we are indeed “doing” ecotheology in South Africa. In the previous section, I noted that in doing ecotheology one has to somehow juggle the biblical roots of Christianity, the subsequent Christian tradition in all its forms, contemporary experience within a particular context, and some form of rationality or critical refection. How is this done? I cannot offer a comprehensive survey of the available literature here, so three generalized observations will have to suffce, including but also going beyond (South) African forms of ecotheology. A frst observation is that there are claims for the relative priority of each of the four sources in the Methodist Quadrilateral. Methodists, together with other evangelicals, Lutherans, and Reformed theologians would typically argue for the priority of Scripture so that references to tradition, experience, and reason are subject to Scripture as the “only” norm. Whether or not such priority is indeed maintained, also in ecotheology, is contested by others who eagerly demonstrate how, in practice, Scripture is read through the lens of particular confessional traditions (i.e., doctrines, ecclesial structures, rituals, etc.) or theological schools (which constitute new traditions). There are marked differences between, let us say, the evangelical emphasis on 293

Ernst M. Conradie

responsible stewardship and the ecofeminist critique of such stewardship.7 In short, tradition may well be the decisive factor. Many exponents of African, black, feminist, and liberation theology who are open to ecotheology would give weight to “experience” in the form of social analysis and the critique of neo-colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and Empire. Some scholars working in ecotheology draw inspiration from not only contemporary science (viz. “reason”), including climate science and, in the Anthropocene, also earth systems science, but also a range of other natural sciences, so that their positions are shaped by an evolutionary worldview, while others seek to retrieve a more traditional African (or “primal”) worldview.8 A second observation is that methodological divides between the various theological subdisciplines continue to characterize contributions to ecotheology. Contributions from within biblical studies, the history of Christianity, systematic theology, Christian ethics, practical theology, and missiology approach the subject matter in diverging ways.This is not merely a matter of giving weight to one of the four sources mentioned above.To put this crudely: biblical scholars may well seek to relate the biblical texts with contemporary ecological concerns without reference to doctrine but employ doctrinal concepts (e.g., “liberation”) to enable such correlations.9 Church historians may unearth interesting case studies of environmental destruction and earthkeeping praxis, but hesitate to approach such matters theologically and withdraw to the “safer” ground of a history of religions approach. Systematic theologians draw on biblical texts to legitimize their positions but often fail to do justice to biblical scholarship on such texts. Ethicists need to relate social analysis of environmental issues with Christian beliefs, but often draw on philosophical categories in establishing such correlations. Practical theologians are methodologically required to do justice to “experience” (e.g., addressing environmental racism or concerns over poverty and ecology) but seek to legitimize their positions theologically concerning text and tradition in ways that do not satisfy their colleagues in such disciplines. Missiology may well be the “storm centre” within which such methodological disputes wage, but the discipline itself remains deeply disputed in the contexts of postcolonial and decolonial critique, inter-faith dialogue and multi-faith collaboration, not least on issues such as climate change. A third observation is that there remains a deep divide within ecotheology on the relationship between Christian theology and religious studies. In short, some see earthkeeping as a form of Christian witness, while others see Christianity as one (deeply contested and contaminated) form of religion alongside others.10 Often religion itself is treated as an aspect of culture or civil society, so that the role of faith-based organizations (FBOs) may be recognized as one signifcant role player, alongside many others, in addressing complex ecological concerns, not least climate change. Such differences are obvious, for example, when the work of A Rocha (an evangelical alliance of earthkeeping initiatives) is compared to that of the South African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI, a multi-faith FBO).11 There is a rapidly expanding corpus of literature in the feld of ecotheology, also within the (South) African context.Arguably, such contributions can be classifed into three groups, namely (a) those that purport to contribute to ecotheology explicitly and as a form of self-identifcation; (b) those that demonstrate a more or less explicit ecological awareness while the theological focus is on something else (e.g., biblical interpretation, Christian doctrine, or the liturgy); and (c) those where ecology is rightly regarded as one dimension (or transversal) of something else, e.g., issues around poverty, development, or gender (and vice versa). Given these varied contributions, it is rather hard to say what counts as ecotheology and what not.This is another reason why ecotheology has become so amorphous—so that no survey would capture the state of the debate.12 One now has to say that everything is ecological while ecology is (perhaps) not everything—in the same way that everything is political, but politics is not everything.13 The same 294

Some hermeneutical refections on ecotheology

applies to language, hermeneutics, gender, culture, space, and the like (each constituting a “turn” in the social sciences). A more pertinent question is what constitutes such an environmental awareness?14 What issues are recognized to require theological attention? One may expect that the kind of issues addressed in ecotheology mirror discourse in the wider public sphere.A few very general observations will again have to suffce.Arguably, one may classify the issues addressed in four clusters. First, there are issues related to nature conservation (e.g., wildlife preservation, animal welfare, resistance to rhino poaching, trade in animal artifacts, protection of biomes against encroaching industrial, mining or urban “developments,” overfshing, biodiversity, etc.), which are often the focus of evangelical earthkeeping initiatives, but also of indigenous theologies. Second, there are issues related to sustainable livelihoods and commercial agriculture (deforestation,15 soil depletion, food and nourishment, the use of biotechnology, the plight of animals on commercial farms), often the focus of contributions with “African theology” as self-description. Third, there is a wide range of issues related to social justice (land access, fresh water supplies, sanitation, housing conditions, noise pollution, waste management, overcrowding, the plight of farmworkers, factory workers, mine workers, etc.), often the focus of contributions emerging from the perspective of feminist, liberation, or black theologies. Fourth, there are issues related to the national economy in the context of a critique of globalized neo-liberal capitalism (oil extraction, fracking, mining, and, if put together, climate change), often the focus of decolonial or postcolonial critiques. Of course, there are many possible overlaps, but it is at least noteworthy that ecological awareness does not mean the same to all people. This shapes theological debates in the sense that some are fully aware of issues that others are not. It is rather surprising that in the South African context there are virtually no contributions on the ecological impact of mining, while there is also a marked absence of (South) African writings in the feld of ecotheology on the Anthropocene.16 The debate between the so-called “green agenda” (nature conservation) and the “brown agenda” (social justice) remains unresolved but also does not capture the full range of positions.17 As suggested above, Christian ecotheology entails both a Christian critique of ecological destruction and an ecological critique of Christianity. This cannot be done in isolation from other academic disciplines or other religious traditions. Insofar as Christians can contribute to addressing ecological concerns, they need to collaborate with others, not necessarily taking the lead.They need to realize that such others may well be suspicious of the ecologically destructive impact of Christianity. In collaborating with others, there will often be a need to echo what others have to say, to refrain from Christian distinctiveness.18 The question will at some stage emerge as to what Christians can contribute to addressing ecological destruction that may be distinctive. The frst task will be an ecological reformation of Christianity itself,19 but such a contribution cannot be restricted to that. In purely functional terms, the allegiance to Christianity indicates that the impact of churches (for better or worse) cannot be ignored, not least in the African context. However, the question is also whether Christians can contribute something in terms of their traditions, beliefs, sacred texts, famous fgures, rituals, and institutions that no other tradition can.This also applies to Christian ecotheology: Can it contribute something distinctive to environmental awareness, praxis, ethos, and spirituality?20 It would amount to a failure of courage to merely reiterate what others say. It will suggest that Christians no longer believe in their message.21 It is not all too obvious how this question may be addressed. In an earlier typology,22 I identifed four approaches to ecotheology in the (South) African context, namely (a) an apologetic approach that focuses on nature conservation through responsible stewardship; (b) a retrieval of 295

Ernst M. Conradie

a pre-colonial African past in order to restore the sacredness of ancestral land and to retrieve an indigenous ecological wisdom; (c) an emphasis on sustainable development, if need be, with the blessing of the prosperity Gospel; and (d) the quest for environmental justice and ecological liberation in order to resist colonial exploitation of the land and its people, often from an ecofeminist perspective. None of these approaches are really distinctively Christian. The core concepts, namely responsibility on the basis of a social contract (covenant), sacredness, blessing, and justice are found in many other religious traditions and in secular discourse too.The temptation is therefore to adopt a position on the basis of external considerations and to then clad that in Christian terminology for the sake of rhetorical impact given a particular audience. This need not be an inappropriate strategy but it may amount to a missed opportunity. The danger is also that ecological concerns will remain marginal for Christians unless they can be related to the soteriological core of the Gospel, the whole story of God’s work, from creation to consummation, and the Trinitarian heart of the Christian faith.23 Framed more narrowly, there are opportunities to explore the ecological signifcance of soteriological concepts such as the confession of guilt, conversion, cross, justifcation, kenosis, penance, re-creation, reformation, regeneration, sanctifcation, sin, and vocation.24 Such explorations are few and far between, especially in the (South) African context. Who is doing ecotheology? The term “doing theology” deliberately and explicitly includes the theological refection of the laity. It would also include theological refection in each of the six manifestations of the church, i.e., in the form of the worshipping community; the local congregation; the denomination; the ecumenical structures; the Christian organizations; and the fellowship of believers in families, in homes, at work, etc.25 It also includes whatever is taught in sermons, Christian education, pastoral care and counseling, and so forth, and the popular literature that may be produced in the process, including articles in church magazines, electronic media, sermon outlines, liturgies, etc. It does not exclude formal theological education or the scholarly production of research in the feld of ecotheology, but this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Even so, ecotheology is often reduced to scholarly output—which may well be understood as “producing” theology, rather than “studying” or “doing” theology. In South Africa, the factory-like production of research outputs is shaped by government subsidy formulas that award quantity above quality. Given such comments, it is scarcely possible to talk in any meaningful way of a collective “we” who are doing ecotheology. It immediately poses the full range of ecumenical divisions related to (a) Christian unity, (b) Faith and Order, (c) Life and Work/church and society/ ecclesiology and ethics, (d) mission and evangelism, (e) worship and liturgy, and (f) theological education.26 It also cannot and does not hide deep underlying divisions over differences of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.This is especially the case in South Africa with its history of apartheid and sharp economic inequalities. If Sunday 11h00 remains the most divided hour of the week, then this is probably also true of doing ecotheology. There is one pertinent comment that has to be added here, enforced by the very subject matter. Is it possible to do adequate ecotheology without such a collective “we” in the “whole household of God”? This household is in several respects an attractive metaphor that includes ecological, economic, and ecumenical connotations, since these English terms are all derived from the Greek root “oikos” (household).27 However, it remains contested insofar as the inclusivity of a “wider ecumenicity” is concerned—including the elect only, all baptized members, also Christian sects, people of other living faiths, other animals, and/or the whole cosmos.28 There is a growing corpus of literature in the feld of ecotheology produced in Africa by Africans for African readers.This is often done in the form of postgraduate theses.This suggests a 296

Some hermeneutical refections on ecotheology

widespread environmental awareness that is hardly surprising given the many forms of ecological destruction and its impact on rural communities and urban areas alike. It is hard to gain an adequate overview of such literature precisely because it is so widespread. Is there something distinctive about ecotheology in the African context, if compared to other contexts and regions? This question is hard to answer because “producing” theology in the African context is dominated by South Africa with its many academic journals and academic publishers, while the same does not apply to “doing” theology or “studying” theology. It is of course also diffcult to generalize about the different African regions, not least because the environmental problems are different. Deforestation is a common concern, but rainfall patterns vary.Waste management is a common concern, but pollution varies to the extent that it is infuenced by oil extraction, mining, and industries.The impact of fertilizers, pesticides, and biotechnology on food production are common, but that depends on the extent of commercialized farming. Climate change is a common concern, but this affects regions in very different ways, depending on rainfall patterns and water usage. Given these caveats, and short of empirical investigations, any observations would need to remain educated guesswork. Four brief comments may suffce: (a) I think it is fair to suggest that retrieval of indigenous ecological wisdom may be more prevalent and widespread across the African continent than elsewhere in the world simply because of demographic patterns.29 (b) The religious landscape in Africa is dominated by only two religious traditions, namely Christianity and Islam, while African Traditional Religion and culture is practiced, typically in a non-institutionalized way, across the continent.This religious situation is also refected in ecumenical statements that address environmental concerns (also see below). (c) One would fnd a decolonial critique of the environmental impact of colonialism and neo-colonialism across the African continent—for the simple reason that most of Africa was colonized in a way that is comparable only to South America.30 The continued exploitation of Africa’s natural resources (to use a utilitarian, if not capitalist concept) by countries that are expanding their economies (especially China) remains an obvious concern. Such an environmental critique of the legacy of colonialism is best evident in ecumenical statements on climate change coming from the African continent.31 (d) The most vibrant form of ecotheology may well be the many ecofeminist contributions, especially emerging from the Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians.32 In the previous section, I commented that it is hard to generalize about ecotheology in the African context because this feld is dominated by South Africans, at least as far as “producing” theology is concerned. Is the (content of) ecotheology in the South African context therefore quite distinct from the rest of Africa? Are South Africans writing/talking about something else when compared to scholars from other African countries? There is the obvious danger here of South African exceptionalism.The rationale for such exceptionalism is related to somewhat different demographics—given the presence of people of predominantly European descent since the advent of the colonial period and people of mixed descent. It may also be related to the role of mining, industry, and infrastructure. More pertinently, it may be a function of tertiary education and the publishing industry associated with that. When the focus is on “doing theology,” none of these factors are necessarily dominant. However, when the focus is on “producing” ecotheology, I think that some distinct differences can be identifed. One would need to provide empirical evidence, but I guess that a signifcant majority of publications where “ecotheology” is a form of self-description are produced by Euro-Africans (“whites”) in South Africa. Moreover, there is only a smallish group of scholars that dominate the scene—in which the present author’s role may well distort statistics and perceptions in this regard. 297

Ernst M. Conradie

Three rather vague impressions may suffce here: (a) One may presume that such EuroAfrican contributions to ecotheology in South Africa would draw more extensively than elsewhere in Africa on Western conversation partners and sources. This should not be taken for granted, though, given the locations of theological education and prescribed textbooks across Africa. (b) I suspect that the methodological divides between the various theological subdisciplines play a more signifcant role in the South African context than elsewhere. (c) Such divides enable scholars to focus on themes, theories, and scholarly sources not overtly related to ecological concerns to make it relevant for theological refection. For example, one may fnd an exploration of particular biblical texts, historical fgures in the history of (Western) Christianity, doctrines, liturgies, and sermons.This is less typical in the felds of contextual Bible studies (e.g., in the context of the Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians), Christian ethics, or missiology, where a more integrated hermeneutical approach may be found. The sting of this contribution lies in its tail: Are we doing ecotheology—not only in South Africa but also within the wider African and even global contexts? The challenge is indicated in the creative tension embedded in the term ecotheology. Is the outcome of doing ecotheology commensurate with ecological destruction, for example, in the South African context? Is the outcome theologically adequate? In short, is it recognizably Christian? There are two obvious dangers here. On the one hand, one may fnd theological constructs that merely reiterate the gravity of ecological destruction and make extensive use of insights derived from other disciplines. How the quite incredible “story of the universe” is employed as a de facto replacement of the Christian story may serve as one example, while the secular discourse on climate change or the Anthropocene may serve as another. On the other hand, one may fnd theological constructs that merely reiterate Christian symbols (or theological positions) in such a way that such symbols are made relevant to ecological concerns without coming to terms with what is at stake. One example is the use of the notions of the covenant and the responsibilities that follow from that (stewardship). Another, more controversial example is the extension of categories such as liberation, emancipation, dignity, development, and (cultural) authenticity to recognize the environmental dimension of positions taken up in other theological discourses. None of these are inadequate per se, but whether they are commensurate to ecological challenges is another matter. Let me state as clearly as possible what I regard as the challenge:The task is not merely one of hermeneutics, namely to relate text with context, Gospel with culture, a church with society, God with the world, and human needs with the message of salvation.The task is the prophetic one of reading the signs of the time. This is not merely an exercise in social analysis or social diagnostics, expressing what has gone wrong with the world—although that is quite necessary.33 The theological question is what God is doing in our times, what is this specifc God, with a particular identity and character, doing in this place at this time? How should the story of what the Triune God is doing now be told? Indeed, what is God up to? This requires a theological discernment of the movement of God’s Spirit.34 It may be shaped by a life of prayer, but then the question has to be what we are praying for.35 My impression is that most contributions to ecotheology, also from within the (South) African context, shy away from this task.There is a failure of courage to address this question, while novelists and flmmakers in their secular ways do respond to the question, often with apocalyptic imagery. This theological failure is all too understandable given the complexity of the task and the disastrous track record of former attempts to discern the “fnger of God” in the history of nations—often to legitimize imperialism, colonialism, and other forms of structural violence.To make this specifc to the (South) African context is even harder. For example, does one see the hand of God in the frst democratic election in 1994 or is the interim constitution, 298

Some hermeneutical refections on ecotheology

in terms of which that election took place, based on a controversial negotiated settlement between big business and African National Congress (ANC) leaders that failed to ensure “radical economic transformation”? To illustrate the diffculty of this challenge, refect for a moment on multi-disciplinary climate change discourse. Consider the scenarios produced by natural scientists and policy makers alike—where some say that a disastrous 4°C rise in average global surface temperature may well be “optimistic.”Take into account how a changing climate affects the perceptions of the future amongst ordinary citizens. Browse through catalogs of new movies, novels, and science fction to recognize the apocalyptic imagery employed and how that instills a paralyzing fear on people— even when this is aimed at entertainment.What can ecotheology contribute to such discourse? Here are some possible responses to the question of what God is doing amidst climate change: • •

•

•

•

•

God is waiting upon humans to change their hearts, habits, and minds through massreligious awakenings.Thus God will create a new humanity, one that has acquired a revised set of ecological virtues, enabling a sustainable ethos and praxis. God will punish the world’s human population for their folly through a deadly plague that will wipe out at least 90 percent of the population.This will allow God to start again with a small remnant in the 22nd century.This will follow the pattern of destruction and desolation of Jerusalem, the exile and the return from exile. More pertinently, it will follow the dialectic of the Cross and resurrection, where all the followers of Jesus of Nazareth abandoned him but learned to follow the way of the Cross, inspired by the Spirit at Pentecost. God is asking Christians to do our best, in collaboration with others, to help address climate change through mitigation and adaptation efforts, and especially to show solidarity with those struggling to cope with the adverse effects of climate change.We should not seek any higher purpose but live our lives before God in the world as long as that may last.The most profound virtue amidst looming catastrophe is to follow the biblical injunction in Matthew 6:34—not to worry too much about what tomorrow may bring. God is asking humans to exercise responsible stewardship of God’s good creation. We, humans, have been entrusted a habitable planet and are the heirs of the rich heritage bestowed on us through the Jewish-Christian-Muslim tradition.We are now called to safeguard human civilization (in every one of its major forms) and should utilize the technologies available to adjust the earth’s thermostat through geo-engineering.We need to attend to our God-given duty to “rule” over the earth. It is now clear, more than ever before, that God is not the God of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. It is not the meek who will inherit the earth. God is favoring the brave and the clever, and will help them to re-engineer themselves to escape from the doomed earth through colonizing other habitable planets. God has decided to abandon the covenant with Noah and will allow the human species to become extinct; but like in the past, God will start again to renew God’s creation with previously despised species such as rats and cockroaches taking the lead.This is, after all, just punishment for irresponsible human destruction.

Given these diverse but rather inadequate options, it would not be surprising that some would simply refrain from answering the question at all.That may amount to acknowledging that God is not doing anything, that God is absent, presumably dead. Nevertheless, it may be noted that God-language is not required to express any of these options.They arise no matter how secular one’s orientation may be and are perhaps best expressed by script writers (the false prophets of our times?). 299

Ernst M. Conradie

For Christians, this need not be of any concern. They do not believe in God for the sake of believing in any available god. The question is which of these options is in line with the character of the triune God in whom they say they put their trust. If this question is not even addressed, I think it would be fair to say that we are not yet doing ecotheology, not in South Africa, not elsewhere in Africa, nor in the rest of the world.

Notes 1 See, especially, the methodological refections in a document produced by the Institute for Contextual Theology entitled Ten Years of Struggle (Braamfontein: ICT, 1991). It states:“Theology is the attempt to answer questions people ask about their faith. We do theology to clarify, nourish and strengthen our faith so that we can act more effectively, correctly and boldly as Christians … Contextual theology could be defned quite simply as the conscious attempt to do theology within the context of real life in the world” (22–23). 2 For a trenchant critique of the assumptions of contextual theology, see the volume edited by McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann (eds.), Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster, 2001), and especially the essay by James R. Cochrane therein, “Questioning Contextual Theology” (67–86). 3 See Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1973), also the discussion in Ernst M. Conradie, Christian Identity:An Introduction (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2005). 4 See the discussion in David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), 420–432. 5 See Ernst M. Conradie, Angling for Interpretation:A First Introduction to Biblical,Theological and Contextual Hermeneutics (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2008). 6 This emphasis may be found in many of my contributions, e.g., Ernst M. Conradie, “Contemporary Challenges to Christian Ecotheology: Some Refections on the State of the Debate after Five Decades,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 147 (2013): 106–123. 7 See my early overview of such debates in Ernst M. Conradie,“Stewards or Sojourners in the Household of God?” Scriptura 73 (1999): 153–174. See also the contributions in Fulata Moyo and Martin Ott (eds.), Christianity and the Environment (Blantyre: Christian Literature Association in Malawi, 2002);Yaw Adu-Gyamf,“Indigenous Beliefs and Practices in Ecosystem Conservation: Response of the Church,” Scriptura 107 (2015): 145–155. 8 There is a wealth of literature here. See, for example, Anthony Balcomb, Journey into the African Sun: Soundings in Search of another Way of Being in the World (Pretoria: Unisa, 2014), also Ernst M. Conradie, “Views on Worldviews: An Overview of the Use of the Term Worldview in Selected Theological Discourses,” Scriptura 113 (2014): 1–12. 9 See my discussion of an ecological biblical hermeneutics in Ernst M. Conradie, “What on Earth Is an Ecological Hermeneutics? Some Broad Parameters,” in David G. Horrell et al. (eds.), Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Perspectives (London:T & T Clark, 2010), 295–314. 10 For a discussion of such debates, see also the volume by Clive W.Ayre and Ernst M. Conradie (eds.), The Church in God’s Household: Protestant Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ecology (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2016). 11 Compare their respective homepages at http://www.arocha.org/en/ and https://safcei.org. 12 See again Conradie,“Contemporary Challenges to Christian Ecotheology.” 13 The phrase is derived from Harry M. Kuitert, Everything Is Politics but Politics Is Not Everything: A Theological Perspective on Faith and Politics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986). 14 See the discussion in chapter one of Ernst M. Conradie and David N. Field, A Rainbow over the Land: Equipping Christians to be Earthkeepers, edited by Rachel Mash (Wellington: Bible Media, 2016). 15 For one example, see Ben-Willie Kwaku Golo, Towards an African Earth Theology of Liberation: A Study of deforestation in Ghana in a Globalised World, D.Phil. thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. 16 This is a point that I raised in a recent contribution on galamsey mining in Ghana. See Ernst M. Conradie, “To Cover the Many Sins of Galamsey Mining,” Missionalia 46, no. 1 (2018): 109–30. See also Kuzipa Nalwamba,“Mineral Resources and Multinational Corporations and Its Impact on African People,” in Vuyani Vellem, Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth, and Philip Vinod Peacock (eds.), Bible and Theology from the Underside of Empire (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2016), 175–184.

300

Some hermeneutical refections on ecotheology 17 See especially Steve de Gruchy, Keeping Body and Soul Together: Refections by Steve de Gruchy on Theology and Development (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2015). 18 This is the core argument adopted to structure a forthcoming volume entitled the T&T Clark Companion on Christian Theology and Climate Change (edited by Ernst M. Conradie and Hilda P. Koster). 19 See Ernst M. Conradie, Elizabeth Tsalampouni, and Dietrich Werner (eds.),“Manifesto on an Ecological Reformation of All Christian Traditions:The Volos Call,” http://www. oikoumene.org/en/resources/ documents/other-ecumenical-bodies/manifesto-on-an-ecological-reformation-of-all-christian-traditions/ (accessed 13 April 2016). 20 This emphasis on spirituality is a common theme in many African contributions to ecotheology. See, for example, Kuzipa Nalwamba, “‘Spirited Bodies’ as a Prerequisite for an Earthkeeping Ethos: A Juxtaposition of the First Creation Story of Genesis with Ubuntu Cosmogony.” M.A. thesis, University of Pretoria, 2013. 21 This argument on self-secularization was developed by Wolfgang Huber in Kirche in der Zeitenwende: Gesellschaftlicher Wandel und Erneurung der Kirche (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 1988). 22 See, Ernst M. Conradie,“Approaches to Religion and the Environment in Africa,” in Elias K. Bongmba (ed.), Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa (New York: Routledge, 2016), 438–453, with detailed references to the available literature. 23 For this argument on a distinctively Christian theological rationale for earthkeeping, see especially Ernst M. Conradie, Christianity and Earthkeeping: In Search of an Inspiring Vision (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2011). 24 This soteriological focus prompted an extensive research project on the relatedness of God’s work of creation and salvation, also captured in the phrase “saving the earth.”This question is also of particular concern in the African context as expressed in the haunting question raised by Mercy Amba Oduyoye, “Is the God of our redemption the same God of our creation?”This question is born from the African quest for identity.What is the continuity between a pre-Christian African notion of the Creator God and the Christian message of redemption that has taken root in Africa following the work of Western missionaries? See Oduyoye, Hearing and Knowing:Theological Refections on Christianity in Africa (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2000), 75.The project produced three edited volumes and culminated in Ernst M. Conradie, The Earth in God’s Economy: Creation, Salvation and Consummation in Ecological Perspective (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015). 25 This analysis builds on work done by Dirkie Smit. For the signifcance of this analysis, see, e.g., Ernst M. Conradie, Church and Climate Change (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2008). 26 For an overview,see Ernst M.Conradie (ed.),South African Perspectives on Notions and Forms of Ecumenicity (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2013). 27 The power and limitations of this root metaphor are discussed in The Earth in God’s Economy, 221–246. 28 See again Conradie, South African Perspectives. 29 I have often referred to the following examples in this regard: Emanuel Asante, “Ecology: Untapped Resource of Pan-vitalism in Africa,” African Ecclesial Review 27 (1985): 289–293; Marthinus L. Daneel, African Earthkeepers Volume 2: Environmental Mission and Liberation in Christian Perspective (Pretoria: Unisa, 1999); Samson K. Gitau, The Environmental Crisis: A Challenge for African Christians (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2000); Gabriel Setiloane, “Towards a Biocentric Theology and Ethic – via Africa,” Journal of Black Theology in South Africa 9, no. 1 (1995): 53–66; Harvey Sindima, “Community of Life,” The Ecumenical Review 41, no. 4 (1989): 537–551; Eugene Wangiri, “Urumwe Spirituality and the Environment,” in Mary N. Getui, and Emmanuel A. Obeng (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 1999), 71–89. 30 This is most evident in the many essays by Jesse Mugambi on environmental issues, especially climate change. See also the early contributions in Bryan MacGarry (ed.), Waste or Want? Environment and Poverty Seminar Papers (Harare: Silveira House, 1995), also Jesse N. K. Mugambi and Mika Vähäkangas (eds.), Christian Theology and Environmental Responsibility (Nairobi: Acton, 2001) and the so-called Machakos statement entitled “The Earth belongs to God,” Bulletin for Contextual Theology in Africa 8, no. 2&3 (2002): 112–113. Perhaps the most signifcant example of such a critique is the Accra confession adopted by the former World Alliance of Reformed Churches at its 24th General Council in Accra on October 13, 2004, “Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth – The Accra Confession,” http:// warc.jalb.de/warcajsp/ side.jsp?news_id=181&part_id=0&navi=1 31 Amongst the available ecumenical statements on climate change, see the document produced by the Climate Change Committee of the South African Council of Churches entitled Climate Change – A Challenge to the Churches in South Africa (Marshalltown: SACC, 2009), signed by more than 200 Christian

301

Ernst M. Conradie

32

33 34

35

leaders.The addenda to this document include a “Resolution on climate change adopted by the 2007 triennial national conference of the South African Council of Churches” and the “Declaration of the Fellowship of Christian Council in Southern Africa (FOCCISA) on ecological debt and climate change” (July 27–29, 2009). In preparation for the 17th Conference of the Parties held in Durban (November 28–December 9, 2011), an inter-faith statement entitled “Climate Justice for Sustainable Peace in Africa” was released following a meeting of religious leaders in Nairobi, June 7–8, 2011.This is available at http://cdn.agilitycms.com/wacc-global/resources/climate-justice/20.%20GlobethicsReligions-for-Climate%20Justice(2014).pdf (accessed 3 July 2017). There is a rapidly growing corpus of such literature, especially from within the Circle. See the many essays collected in volumes such as David G. Hallman (ed.), Ecotheology: Voices from South and North (Geneva:World Council of Churches, 1994); Rosemary Radford Ruether (ed.), Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism and Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996); Musimbi Kanyoro and Nyambura J. Njoroge (eds.), Groaning in Faith: African Women in the Household of God (Nairobi: Acton, 1996); and Mary N. Getui and Emmanuel Obeng (eds.), Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 1999); Mary N. Getui and Matthew Theuri (eds.), Quests for Abundant Life in Africa (Nairobi: Acton, 2002); Isabel Phiri and Sarojini Nadar, On Being Church: African Women’s Voices and Visions (Geneva:World Council of Churches, 2005). I have developed such a notion of “social diagnostics” in a current research project on “Redeeming sin.” See, especially, Ernst M. Conradie, Redeeming Sin? Social Diagnostics amid Ecological Destruction (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017). For this Pneumatological emphasis, see Ernst M. Conradie,“What Makes the World Go Round? Some Reformed Perspectives on Pneumatology and Ecology,” Journal of Reformed Theology 6 (2012): 294–305, building on Jürgen Moltmann’s hermeneutics of nature in Sun of Righteousness, Arise: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010). See the collection of answers to this question in Ezra Chitando and Ernst M. Conradie (eds.),“Praying for Rain? African Perspectives on Religion and Climate Change,” The Ecumenical Review 69, no. 3 (2017): 311–435.

302

19 ABUNDANT LIFE— HOLISTIC SOTERIOLOGY AS MOTIVATION FOR SOCIOPOLITICAL ENGAGEMENT A Pentecostal and missional perspective1 Martina Prosén

Introduction In a world plagued by terrorism and global catastrophes, when the news media is often flled with reports of wars and human suffering—where does the Christian Church stand? What does it mean to preach salvation in a world of such widespread tragedy? In what way can Christian theology contribute to an increased involvement for justice, peace, and sustainable living? For me as a Pentecostal theologian,2 daughter of Swedish Pentecostal missionaries, raised in Rwanda, and deeply affected by the horrors of ethnic cleansing that occurred in the country, the question of salvation and its relation to good and evil, society and justice has become central to my theological thinking. In this chapter, I will propose a holistic model for understanding salvation as “abundant life” (John 10:10) and suggest that such a model would promote our involvement—as Christians and Pentecostals—in societal reform.To reach that conclusion, I will present insights and examples from the Swedish Pentecostal movement, African Pentecostal theology, and Latin American liberation theology from the 1960s. Finally, the argument ends with an effort to portray Jesus, the Savior Himself, the King of Peace, He who is Life and gives life.

Socio-political engagement3—theologizing on existing practice Actively working to improve society—especially for “the least of these,”4 those with little or no power to improve their living conditions—has been central to the Swedish Pentecostal movement5 since its inception at the beginning of the 20th century. Its early leader Lewi Pethrus was renowned for his social pathos and for his determination to infuence society using Christian values. For example, he founded the newspaper Dagen, the radio station IBRA, and the Christian Democratic political party “KDS.”6 Swedish Pentecostal missionaries were sent to many different parts of the world, and it was clear early on that mission work needed 303

Martina Prosén

to include basic education and medical care alongside the spiritual ministry. Later, social work became one of the missionaries’ primary tasks, and much energy and money were invested in building schools and medical facilities. Educating medical staff and teachers, digging wells, and supporting agricultural projects and orphanages were also major investments by Pentecostals. Most recently, media education and production have become an important tool through which the Gospel can be spread alongside democratic values. At the same time, many development projects continue to be supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) in cooperation with PMU Interlife7 and Swedish Pentecostal churches.8 Here in Sweden, the LP Foundation’s work with addicts has been an important contribution, as well as the help provided to children in need by the child rights organization Erikshjälpen. However, most of the social work has been done directly by local congregations, usually organized as democratically governed associations. Many of the early members of these churches were from the working class, and often women. Membership in the congregation gave them a way of participating in social reforms as equals in their own right and provided them with a form of democratic training.9 Today, the Pentecostal movement in Sweden attracts its members from the middle class, but their dedication to helping those in need remains strong. In recent years, many congregations have devoted themselves to helping migrants integrate into society. Examples of these efforts are language cafés and homes for refugee children arriving without parents. Secondhand shops are also a way for the congregations to raise money for social work while offering people a place to get together and contribute to environmental efforts like sustainability.Among Swedish Pentecostals, particular stress has been put on the role of the individual in socio-political engagement. On both the giving and receiving end of the equation, individuals play key roles, as politicians, missionaries, or believers engaged in social work on the one hand, and as people in need on the other. Less often, the focus has been on societal structures, or on the collective responsibility of all believers (as Christians and citizens) to improve them.10 However, for the last ten years, there has been a trend toward more active social change through developing social awareness by certain groups of Swedish Pentecostals, especially via PMU Interlife and international work, but also through specifc debaters and ecumenical cooperation. It seems, however, that human rights and environmental and sustainability efforts have been more pronounced on the national and international level than on the local level among individuals and congregations. Perhaps the local congregations have not quite been able to keep up with the trend toward a more structural way of looking at society and social reform. On the other hand, it also seems that the refugee question, including the rights of the children coming to Sweden without their parents, is creating enormous involvement in various communities as they reach out via social media, public protests, and similar efforts. These are just a few examples showing that engagement for social progress is not lacking among Pentecostals in Sweden. Political activism has also been part of the movement, at least in certain areas.Why then is there a need for a Pentecostal motivation for socio-political engagement? My impression is that much of this activism has been rooted theologically in the church’s mission in the world; missiology, as well as the concept of discipleship. Just as Christ devoted his life to the less fortunate and weak in society, so should we.This is central to the Christian life and life of congregations. Bearing witness to Jesus’ teaching is meaningless if not combined with efforts refecting those teachings. Also, Jesus has specifcally encouraged us to care for those less fortunate and consider it our calling:“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”11 Dedication to serving those less fortunate in society has traditionally been considered essential to the “mission” of living as a Christian and spreading the Gospel.12 304

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

But is this theological reasoning enough? I don’t think so, partly because it can be rather weak in its effect on social change. Social work as described above is about efforts to alleviate the suffering of the weaker members of society and work to preserve Christian values, but these efforts do little to change oppressive social norms that create poverty and suffering and infuence the type of society we want to build for everyone. This way, socio-political engagement tends to be placed at the outer edge of theology and risks being considered just one option of several that an individual or a congregation might choose to focus on. Therefore, I would propose a model where socio-political engagement is inherent in the concept of salvation and is then placed at the center of what it means to be a Pentecostal Christian. In other words—in theological terms—the question of engaging in socio-political efforts is moved from missiology to soteriology. I don’t consider this to be especially controversial; it is more a matter of creating new connections based on established ideas and religious practice.The inclusion of social work (and to some extent political efforts) in one’s religious practice is not unusual.And the theology of salvation, which includes the individual’s entire worldly and eternal being (“fullness of life”), is also established, as we shall see. Connecting the two provides me a chance to “theologize” on existing practice and so create a more well-founded theological motivation for socio-political engagement. It is, of course, possible to develop a “holistic missiology” rather than a “holistic soteriology,” and in this way, motivate socio-political engagement. Sunday Aigbe does this in his Theory of Social Involvement: A Case Study in the Anthropology of Religion, State and Society in which he discusses the lack of social engagement in the Assembly of God Churches in Nigeria. He proposes a missiological model where prophetic evangelism within the state (personal level) is combined with prophetic evangelism to the state (structural level).13 Further, one might disagree and point out that missiology and soteriology are very closely related in classical missiological theology, especially in elaborations on Missio Dei (God’s mission).14 However, in a Swedish Pentecostal context, the mission has been considered a hands-on international effort, rather than elaborated upon as a theological concept of “sending forth.” In this context, it is worth noting that in church historian Ulrik Josefsson’s thesis on the early Swedish Pentecostal movement, he includes social work (“diakoni”) and international mission (“mission”) as part of Pentecostal core practices, while salvation is included as part of the Pentecostal core doctrines.15 Even though doctrines and practices were integrated, this division still gives an idea of how Christian involvement in the world was regarded. It was a self-evident part of religious practice, but relatively unexplored as theological teaching. To elucidate further, let us consider the different dimensions of theology as found in Talking about God in Practice, in which the authors present “The Four Voices of Theology.” It is not a matter of trying to establish that one perspective may be a more “true theology.” Rather, one should recognize that the term “theology” includes several dimensions, and these can exist together in any given context of faith.Theology’s four dimensions (“voices”) are (1) normative theology (Scripture and tradition), (2) formal theology (of academic theologians), (3) espoused theology (embedded in a group’s articulated beliefs), and (4) operant theology (embedded in a group’s actual practices).16 Pentecostal theology in Sweden has for many years been expressed mostly as the latter two of these four voices. The frst voice, normative theology, has never been challenged (the Bible) and the second voice has been very weak due to the resistance to formal theological education.This situation is now changing as more and more formally educated theologians remain in the Pentecostal movement.As far as the theology of socio-political engagement is concerned, this has been inherent for Pentecostals in their operant theology, but not always found in the espoused or offcial theologies, as expounded by congregations. Social engagement is still mostly based on implicit or unarticulated theology. People do what they feel 305

Martina Prosén

is right, but rarely search for a deeper understanding of why.Therefore, theologizing on existing practice is needed in order for this type of mission to become a central, inherent part of modern Pentecostal theology.

Pentecostal soteriology as potentially holistic In a Christian revival environment, as well as in congregations in the Swedish Pentecostal tradition, salvation is critically central, especially the personal experience of salvation. Ulrik Josefsson says: “Salvation with related questions was decisive for the spirituality of the Pentecostal Movement. Its concept of salvation was largely dependent on pietistic revival preaching and was held in common with much of the revival movement.”17 Pentecostal soteriology can be summarized in this way:18 Jesus won an eternal victory on the Cross for all mankind, in all times. He defeated Sin and Death,19 thereby opening the way to salvation and atonement with God. Every person who is aware of his or her sin is also in need of being born again and is offered salvation through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.This salvation is understood as something that a person can accept through conversion and faith, and it leads to a personal experience of transformation—a “new life.” Often the moment of salvation—rebirth—is emphasized in a revivalist environment so that the point in time when one receives salvation sometimes takes precedence over the process itself, diminishing interest in the person’s actual journey in faith. Also, an expectation of sanctifcation and spiritual empowerment often accompanies regeneration, helping the believer to mature into a moral and just way of life and enabling her to see God’s miracles in daily life. This new life is a foretaste of that which will come and is far better—heaven and eternal life.Therefore, salvation has several time aspects: it is founded in Christ’s suffering on the Cross, it can be received here, and now, it can be lived in this life, and it exists for the future.A well-known defnition of the Kingdom of God is often used to describe this situation.This perspective is similar to that of New Testament scholar G.E. Ladd, who describes it as the experience of living right now in God’s salvation, but not yet knowing it entirely.20 When Church historian Douglas Jacobsen describes Pentecostal/charismatic soteriology, he emphasizes its similarities to the orthodox tradition where salvation is considered a future deifcation. Even if Pentecostals use other words, the underlying meaning is similar—salvation is all-encompassing and future-oriented. It brings about personal growth in God’s fullness and in the life He has promised,“moving ever deeper and higher into the fullness of God and the fullness of life that God intends for all people.”21 Instead of focusing on sin, guilt, and forgiveness as in the Protestant and Catholic traditions—even if this is also included—the emphasis is more on the new life and the ways this is experienced in the here and now, for example through the healing of physical ailments, material abundance, and rewarding relationships.22 In other words, the emphasis is on what a person is saved to, rather than what he or she is saved from.This description concurs well with Josefsson’s description of the faith of the Swedish Pentecostals in the 1950s as a complete entity—an all-encompassing life. He writes,“This life is not just any life, but rather a life lived about God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, an abundant life.”23 Salvation was for them both the foundation of Christian life and the way that life should be lived. Every detail in life could be seen about one’s salvation. Salvation was so closely bound to faith and life that the word “frälst” (saved/born again) became synonymous with a “true Christian.”24 Thus, there are good reasons to regard Pentecostal soteriology as—at least to some extent—holistic in its all-inclusiveness and complete integration in a believer’s life. I have used the term “potentially holistic” above because there are many examples in Pentecostal theology showing how salvation embraces the entirety of human life, here, now, and in the future, although socio-political 306

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

aspects are often forgotten. In the following, I discuss the question of the meaning of salvation as “abundant life,” and relate this to the question of socio-political engagement, specifcally human rights and sustainability.

Salvation as abundant life: insights from African Pentecostalism25 My previous studies on Pentecostal theology in sub-Saharan Africa,26 which focuses on the doctrine of salvation and socio-political engagement, includes a model of salvation as holistic, completely all-encompassing, and integrated. This study was based on several interviews with community leaders, as well as research on African Pentecostalism.27 Based on a broad defnition of the term theology, both the espoused and operant theology of salvation and liberation were analyzed.The model is built around the term “abundant life,” which was often used in my sources and is found in John 10:10.The verse is from one of Jesus’ sermons: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”28 Just as in the Swedish context described by Josefsson, this abundant life seemed to be central to the understanding of salvation in an African context, as it brings together all other aspects of the Pentecostal faith.29 If abundant life is at the center, then holistic salvation would fow into all areas of a person’s life.As an image, it looks like this: At the core of the image is LIFE, both the usual experiences that people have and the Life that God gives to all who believe in Him: the born again life, eternal life, the Savior’s life. In the New Testament, “life” (Greek: “zoe”) is often mentioned when life in Christ is explained. Similarly, “death” and “Death” are described as the result of sin and living without God. Even in the Old Testament, life is central. God gives life to His creation, and He promises life and blessings to those who follow His commandments. Life is at the core of both God’s creation and salvation itself. On a certain level, life is something we share with all mankind “In this world.” It is also a gift which can be received on a supernatural level and which infuences both the visible world and the invisible one.“The unseen world” is an umbrella term for that dimension of reality in which the eternal and spiritual are experienced. In Pentecostal theology, it is evident that a person does not only have a spiritual dimension within, but also lives in a spiritual world just as real as the visible world. Concepts of the extent of the spiritual world and its power over the visible world can vary, but most Pentecostals would agree that Satan is real and powerful,

Figure 19.1 Salvation as “abundant life”.

307

Martina Prosén

and both angels and demons exist which can infuence our lives. In addition, a person receives freedom and protection from the evil in the spiritual world when one is saved.This worldview includes not just that which we can see before our very eyes, but also a spiritual reality both within and all around us. On the left side of the model, aspects of life that are more or less supernatural are found (other-worldly aspects). Opposite them are aspects of a more general kind—life in the visible world (this-worldly). Salvation through Jesus Christ has infuenced both sides of life. On one side there is eternal life (a central theme in this context) and spiritual life.The latter is divided into an internal spiritual life (a person’s spirit awakens to life through salvation) and an external spiritual life (a person is freed from the infuence of evil spiritual powers). Dimensions of life in the visible world that are affected by salvation can be found on the right side of the image.These include a physical dimension (bodily and economic effects), a psychological dimension (feelings and thought patterns), a relational dimension (personal and congregational relations), and lastly, a socio-political dimension (the person as part of a collective, of society). The model can be understood as a map of what a potentially holistic view of salvation includes. Of course, other ways of graphically illustrating “Life” are possible, and other aspects may be added to the whole. In some contexts, certain parts are emphasized more than others, and in other contexts they are left out. However, in my opinion, a truly holistic soteriology should include both this-worldly and other-worldly aspects, as well as all the dimensions of these wider aspects. Only then may we speak of salvation as abundant life. When I was researching the material available on African Pentecostal soteriology, I discovered that salvation was seen to include the visible and invisible worlds, as well as life in the present time and the world to come. First, salvation was considered a gift of eternal life in the world to come.This seemed to be an obvious premise, not needing special emphasis.What was more signifcant was the fact that both their espoused and operant theology depicted salvation as something that affects everyday life in the visible world.Witness statements of different forms of physical healing and economic or material blessings (including getting a job or being accepted to a school) were very common. Even records of witnessing reconciled relationships, new ways of thinking, and a restored self-image were common.This refected how salvation—to a great extent—was about living here and now in the visible world. On the other hand, salvation was just as relevant to one’s current situation, though in the invisible world. Salvation meant free-

Figure 19.2 African Pentecostal soteriology.

308

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

dom from sin and guilt—cleansing, forgiveness, and a born-again spirit. But perhaps even more important was the deliverance from evil spirits and demonic infuences. The latter is particularly apparent in the African context, but not by any means foreign to the Swedish Pentecostal movement.The part barely mentioned at all was the societal aspect of a person’s life. It seemed as though salvation (abundant life) had nothing to do with a person’s socio-political situation. In short, an individual was regarded as an eternal, spiritual, physical, economic, relational, and psychological being but hardly an active member of society. Using the model as a graph, their soteriology may be illustrated thus.

The relation between salvation and evil, church, and power One’s view of salvation is closely related to how one regards sin and evil. In other words, what is it people need saving from? What is causing their problems? If Death is primarily a state of being which has a bearing on people’s eternal fate, then the salvation needed is eternal life. But if Death also infuences the physical body and material world, then salvation needs to bring healing and economic blessings. If Sin is primarily disturbing a person’s interior life or spirit, then his or her need is for spiritual awakening. If, on the other hand, a person’s problems are seen as rooted in guilt and moral decay, then forgiveness and moral cleansing are needed. If instead, Evil is thought to manifest itself as demonic—a work of evil spirits and the Devil himself—then the person needs deliverance from spiritual bondage. If the evil is thought to consist of widespread violence, oppression, and injustice in society, then political change is needed. And so on.These are all examples of how one’s view of salvation is dependent on how one regards sin and evil.A multidimensional view of salvation requires a multifaceted view of evil. In the African Pentecostal environment, there is a multifaceted understanding of people’s problems. It includes both this-worldly and other-worldly explanations, where every specifc situation can be explained on different levels. For example, a disease can be caused by a virus, and at the same time, be the result of a curse.A cure can be the result of good medical treatment, as well as prayers.30 However, a certain type of explanation is blatantly missing, namely that which includes societal and political structures.The problems of an individual are rarely explained in terms of the power structure, oppression, or political systems in the communities I have studied. Rather, social ills were seen as spiritually rooted and should, therefore, be opposed through prayer rather than political change. Prayer was regarded as a powerful way to change things because it focused on the fundamental problems, those that powers in the unseen world had caused.Worldly leaders were considered to be tools, rather than capable people who could take responsibility for social ills.A common strategy among Pentecostal pastors and congregations was to remain as closely allied as possible with those with political power, rather than criticizing them. Politicians were gladly invited to church services so that prayers of intercession could positively infuence spiritual dynamics around them. Another strategy was to simply stay out of politics because it was considered much too corrupt and therefore an immoral sphere to take part in.This can be compared with the three attitudes toward power that theologian Amos Yong describes in Pentecostal groups worldwide: an apolitical stance, a political stance, and a kind of indirect political stance, where the group is regarded as a counterculture, an alternative society.31

The challenge from liberation theology During my earlier research, I put African Pentecostal theology in dialogue with Latin American liberation theology, especially in its early years, as found in the writings of Gustavo Gutiérrez. This might seem rather far-fetched; what does Africa have to do with Latin America? And what 309

Martina Prosén

can a theology that arose among Catholic priests offer Pentecostals? These are good questions. In many ways, the theologies differ and can be seen as contrasts. On the other hand, there are also many similarities. Both theologies emphasize faith as something lived in everyday life, a praxis rather than an intellectual argument. Both traditions recognize the stories of the Old Testament as guidance for one’s faith.They are both grounded in the grassroots level of society rather than in academia (although for liberation theology this is perhaps truer in theory than in practice). Both forms of theology emphasize freedom as central to salvation, even if one uses the term liberation and the other deliverance. Despite the many differences, the similarities can present a valuable challenge to Pentecostal theology.32 Liberation theology arose in Latin America during the 1960s when several Catholic priests, especially Gustavo Gutiérrez, felt growing despair as they realized how poorly their European theological education prepared them to serve the needy in their parishes. Their theological training seemed to have very little relevance to life in Latin America, especially as regards the most impoverished and exploited groups.The Church in Latin America had become more and more a part of the power structure and played a role in the oppression exercised by the ruling classes. Gutiérrez believed the Church must admit its participation in oppressing the poor and change sides to preach the Gospel credibly. He also believed that theology’s primary goal was to free the oppressed and return human dignity to those living a marginalized existence, not to give people intellectually convincing arguments. Only when the Church struggles against social oppression and contributes to giving the poor a chance to build better lives is it possible to fully convey God’s love and salvation. Deane Ferm explains Gutiérrez’s position like this:“The church, as the agent of Christ, has the heavy obligation to enter the political arena on the side of the needy.”33 Gutiérrez insists that involvement in the political process is a deeply spiritual experience, for it opens up the believer to a new awareness of what it means to be human.34 What did salvation mean to Gustavo Gutiérrez and the liberation theologians that have followed his vision? First, liberation and salvation are closely related. Gutiérrez would refer to the Hebrew exodus narratives to show how God is our liberator and how liberation has a political dimension, as well as a social and spiritual one. He believes that at their deepest root, salvation and liberation are the same. “Salvation is not something to be achieved in another world. It embraces the fullness of life in this world. Salvation is not ‘pie in the sky by and by.’ It is the eradication of injustice, violence, and oppression.”35 Gutiérrez stresses the point that liberation is an “all-embracing process that ‘leaves no dimension of human life untouched.’”This process starts with a life of constant prayer—a life in the Holy Spirit—but according to Gutiérrez, it must also include a political dimension. Secondly, one must understand that Gutiérrez uses the term “liberation” in three different ways, all interdependent.The frst meaning is “political and social liberation,” where the emphasis is on eliminating the causes of poverty, especially in the form of inequality in socio-economic structures. Instead, society should be built on respect for “the other” and especially for the weakest and poorest in society.The second sense is “human liberation,” which is freedom from all hindrances that may limit a person’s chance to develop, and which rob them of their dignity and autonomy.The third meaning is “liberation from selfshness and sin,” which is regarded as the root of all injustice in society.This liberation can only be reached through God’s mercy and Christ’s atonement. It must occur for a new, liberated life to be lived and “for friendship with God and with other people”36 to be re-established. It is worth noting a couple of the terms used above. “The fullness of life” is very close to “abundant life,” which is the basis for African Pentecostal soteriology.Also, the emphasis on salvation for the here and now, and for one’s entire life, and not just for certain times in life or after death, captures the notion of abundant life.There is a sort of common core, but different inter310

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

pretations of what this “all-encompassing” “fullness of life” means. It is also interesting to note that in Swedish the same term “befriend”37 is used for both the Pentecostal phrases,“deliverance from evil spirits” and the liberation theologians’“liberation from economic and political exploitation.” In English, the terms “deliverance” and “liberation” are used, which makes their close relationship less apparent. If African Pentecostal soteriology rarely mentions salvation as integral to individuals on the societal level, and almost entirely lacks structural and political explanations for the problems in people’s lives, then Latin America’s liberation theology tends to emphasize the other end of the spectrum. Here, salvation is for all aspects of life, but the focus is on social and political aspects, as well as personal (the psychological and relational aspects in my model) and inner spiritual life.The perspective of eternity is included in the Latin American theology but is less emphasized than in the Pentecostal view. What exactly is the challenge that liberation theology presents to Pentecostal soteriology? If the Pentecostal movement has emphasized caring for “the least of these” and being responsible for showing these people the love of Christ, then the call from liberation theology is also to regard the poor and weak from the perspective of power relations.Who are “the least of these” in society? What does the prevailing power structure look like? What about structural and collective sins? In what way are we, as individuals and as a church, part of them? How do we contribute to oppression—or liberation? Many new questions arise when the needy are viewed as part of their society, rather than in isolation. When the individual is not only regarded as someone sinning but also as someone struck by sin, then the Gospel needs to be presented as involving more than repentance and forgiveness.That is, it must also include actively working to change a person’s life situation. Liberation theology helps us see the importance of taking care of the causes that are socio-political, “to loosen the chains of injustice” (Isaiah 58:6) and not just in a spiritual or fgurative way, but also concretely, through political channels. If evil is structural, then salvation must also be structural. Not only, but also.The challenge is then to speak about salvation in a way that truly includes the entirety of life, even its social and political dimensions. Also, the challenge is to not only speak but also act to create a society where respect for every individual, dignity, and friendship are guiding principles, and where liberation includes societal structures and not only individuals. In essence, liberation theology brings us back to the question of framing holistic soteriology as motivation for socio-political action.

Figure 19.3 Liberation theology soteriology.

311

Martina Prosén

The right way of fasting—“doing both” To frmly ground our discussion in Scripture, the entire text about fasting from Isaiah 58 is provided here.This text shows how one’s relationship with God is very integral to life in society and caring for the needy. Here, God is speaking through the prophet about false fasting, how it is like a religious drama with all the “right” ingredients, but without relevance to daily life.This kind of fasting does not affect, He says, and continues: Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your fesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing fnger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58:6–11, NIV) The right kind of fasting is driven by both the needs of the individual, as well as attention to oppressive social structures. It means to give bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked— just as Pentecostals have traditionally done. But also to loosen the chains of injustice and end oppression—as liberation theology inspires us to do.This is not a matter of giving up one way in preference for the other, but rather doing both. It means working holistically for a better world, and doing it as an expression of faith and a life with God, as when one fasts.The blessings that come from this kind of fasting—the correct practice of faith—are remarkable in all their poetic beauty; the light of dawn will break forth for you, sores will heal immediately, the night will be as day, and you will become an oasis where water is plentiful. Above all,The Lord will answer, 312

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

“Here am I” when you call out to Him.Who would not want to experience that? There is surely no congregation that doesn’t long to see the splendor of the Lord and know His presence during prayer.There is no contradiction in longing for the presence of God, praying to receive it, and working for a more sustainable and just society—both on the individual level and structural level. Rather, the opposite is true, as the text above explains to us. Both levels of involvement are intimately connected, making up a complete entity.

Holistic soteriology—back to the Savior In this section of the chapter, I highlight the term “holistic soteriology” and what it means to say that salvation is “abundant life.” Previously I have discussed different aspects of salvation and how a person’s view of evil is integral to how he or she regards salvation.Also, I have presented lessons from African Pentecostalism and Latin American liberation theology. Finally, I have turned to Isaiah for guidance on how all these threads can come together as one. Before I summarize the chapter, I would like to deepen the discussion even further. I now use a Christological focus, and in a classic revivalist theological manner, allow the person of Jesus Christ to take center stage. Salvation is not just about what or whom God saves when He saves the world. Nor is it just a question of from what or to what He saves us. Rather, the question that must be asked is: Who is He who saves the world? The essence of soteriology is not about the results of salvation, cause or effect, but rather about He, Himself, because no salvation is possible without a Savior. Who is He then, this our Savior? In John 1:1–5, we fnd: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.Through him, all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (NIV) Note that Jesus (the Word) was at the beginning with God and all that was made was made through Him. He is both the Creator and our Savior.There is no contradiction in this; rather, it creates a complete entity in both the visible and invisible worlds.They both belong to Him, and He is the same now as then. Note also that the Word was life, and the life was the light of mankind.This can be compared to John 14:6, where Jesus says,“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (NIV). Salvation means abundant life for us, because the Savior is Life itself.Without Him, there is no creation, no salvation, no life. But with Him, life fows in us and through us to other people because He lives in us. He is the source of our life, because He gave His life for us.This is the mystery of the Gospels, through death to Life, from Him to all humanity. In this way, Jesus Christ is our very Life, the core of salvation. In classical Pentecostal theology, one talks about the “Fivefold Gospel” where Jesus is presented as Savior, Sanctifer, Spirit-baptizer, Healer, and the coming King. Some believe that this is the heart of the Pentecostal faith, while others see it as central, but not most essential.38 In any case, the term indicates a theological perspective that regards Jesus and salvation as the starting point for faith. But it is this fundamental core which is rich and complex, where the image of Jesus is multifaceted, and salvation occurs on many levels. As Amos Yong would have it, in the Fivefold Gospel, both Christology and soteriology are “pluriform and polyphonic.”39 In this last section, the focus is on two of these terms, “Savior” and “King,” using the songs of musician and Pentecostal pastor Niklas Hallman because his inspired expressions of faith through music convey central truths in the Bible uniquely and poetically. If one considers theology to be truths 313

Martina Prosén

that are not only of a formal and normative nature but also a way of life as articulated in religious fellowship, then Hallman is one of the Swedish Pentecostal movement’s most important theologians. As he says, songs can “paint Jesus in famboyant colors” so that we can grasp “who He is”40 through the Holy Spirit. So, who is He, Jesus Christ, our Savior? A classic revivalist song from one of Hallman’s records, which reminds us of Jesus and His salvation, goes like this: Det är så underbart, diet name Jesus. Det är så underbart det namnet Jesus För evigt ska det bli min melodi

(“It’s so wonderful, the name Jesus.”) (“It’s so wonderful, the name Jesus”) (“For all eternity, this will be my melody”) (“It brings me full and blessed salvation”) (“It freed me from the slavery of sin”)

Det borgar för en full och härlig frälsning Det löste mig från syndens slaveri Det skänker tröst i sorgens dystra stunder

(“It comforts me in times of darkest sorrow”) (“When all is night and darkness”) (“Though things appear as if all would perish”) (“It brings me hope and confdence anew.”)

Då allt i natt och mörker är förbytt Där det ser ut som ginge allting under Det ger mig hopp och tillförsikt på nytt41

This song reminds us that it is the very name “Jesus” that brings us “full and blessed salvation.” Jesus is the one who frees us from the chains of sin, and His name offers comfort in times of sorrow and light in times of darkness. He is the one who gives us hope and an assured, comforted spirit—exactly what the revivalist movements have always preached. But it is not less true because it is timeless teaching. On the contrary, in our times we need hope more than ever. Even in our times, we need to preach of freedom from Sin—in this case, I refer to the sins we commit as well as those committed against us because both kinds are a form of slavery. Even in our times, we need “full and blessed salvation”—an abundant life—because even in modern times and modern societies, there is darkness, sorrow, and misery. Another of the Jesus-songs that I fnd relevant from Hallman’s broad music production is Här kommer Kung Frid (Here Comes King Peace): Här kommer Kung Frid Här kommer Kung Frid Släpet på Hans mantel fyller rummet Kronan blänker på Hans huvud Fram till dig Han går Framför dig nu Han står Böjer sig intill dig, hör Han viskar “Ta emot min frid”

(“Here comes King Peace”) (“Here comes King Peace”) (“His mantle’s train flls the room”) (“Crown shining on His head”) (“Straight toward you, he goes”) (“Right before you he stands”) (“Bends down to whisper”) (“ ‘Receive the peace I offer’ ”)

Det som gömts i det förfutna kan Han komma åt Han hör din gråt när du ber förlåt Ta emot Hans frid

(“The hidden past, He can retrieve”) (“He hears your cries when you pray forgive”) (“Receive the peace He offers”) 314

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

Var inte rädd för morgondagen, Han är redan där Genom allt Han bär. När din ångest tär ta emot Hans frid

(“Be not afraid of what’s ahead. He’s there now”) (“Through all He bears.When your anxiety tears”) (“Receive the peace He offers”)

Han sveper in dig i sin mantel Han trycker dig intill sitt hjärta Han kysser dig och viskar:“Frid”42

(“He wraps you in His mantle”) (“He presses you to His heart”) (“He kisses you and whispers ‘Peace’”)

The image of Jesus as King—clad in a mantle and crown, radiant and majestic—someone who bends down over a troubled, regretful, and anxiety-ridden person and whispers “Peace,” while He sweeps her into His mantle and embraces her—this captures the moment when the Savior arrives and what salvation He provides. He is King—not just any King but King Peace—and He comes to us with forgiveness, love, warmth, and security. He sees our past, He sees into our future, and He meets us exactly where we are, with all the worry and anxiety we may be feeling. This is the Gospel for the modern man amid his daily life, as well as for people throughout the ages. He is King Peace. No societal wrongdoings, no environmental destruction, no injustices, no power shifts in the world can change that. He is who He is, the Prince of Peace, as Isaiah 9:6 calls Him.And according to Philippians 4:7,“the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (NIV).That peace and protection are empowering when we meet the evil of the world and consider how to best contribute to making it better. Holistic salvation is, frst of all, about Jesus the Savior.At the same time, it is also about us. It is about how we can live together with Him. Something vital happens the day a person accepts Jesus for the frst time, but living our daily lives with Him—alone and together in a congregation—is just as empowering. In this relationship, we can be more and more transformed by His person, and become a bearer of His kingdom.When he becomes King Peace in our hearts, not just in general, He can also reign as His peace fows through us and out to others. As Hallman describes in another of his songs: Du valde mitt hjärta som tempel för dig (You chose my heart as Your temple) En viloplats (A place of rest) Där din Ande kan bo (Where Your Spirit can live) Välkommen min Konung På dig vill jag tro Så att du kan regera från mig

(Welcome my King) (In You will I believe) (So You reign through me)

Låt ditt rike komma Låt din vilja ske I mitt hjärta Som den sker i himlen43

(Thy Kingdom come) (Thy will be done) (In my heart) (As in heaven)

When we welcome Jesus as King, we also welcome Him to reign through us. He reigns with the power of love, not with hate and violence. He lives in us, we become tools for His light and His life. Through the Holy Spirit in us, peace and tranquility can come to others, both on a structural level and a personal one. However, this does not happen automatically. It happens only 315

Martina Prosén

if we pray for it and strive to surrender ourselves in our daily lives. Jesus as King has import for both the future and the here and now. Thus, considering the perspective presented above, several critical questions arise: If King Peace reigns through us, how should we act in a time of militarization and war? Or in a society plagued by mental illness and stress? If this King is also Savior and Creator of the universe, how should we live in a time of climate change and environmental destruction? If every human being is a “masterpiece,” a “Creator’s jewel, bought by the blood of the King”44—how should we act in the face of oppression, poverty, and global injustice? In other words, what does “full and blessed salvation” mean in this the new millennium? Does it matter? I believe it does. Each generation needs to fnd their answers, their way of living with Jesus as Savior and King. In our generation the question of sustainability is a critical challenge to take on. Consider our ethical stance, our patterns of consumption, how we vote in general elections, how we comment and react on social media, which opinion trends we latch onto and which are ignored, what our work environments look like, how we take care of natural resources, what kind of relationships we build—and with whom, etc. We, as believers, need to strive for a more sustainable lifestyle and never become apathetic in the face of global social injustice.This is at the very core of the Christian faith, precisely because it relates to Jesus.

Conclusion Starting by establishing the Swedish Pentecostal movement as socially and politically engaged—though the motivation for socio-political involvement is seldom articulated in theological terms—I have used examples from African Pentecostalism, Latin American liberation theology, and a few Swedish Pentecostal songs, to point to the possibilities inherent in Pentecostal soteriology for such engagement. I have argued that Pentecostal soteriology is potentially holistic in the sense that it offers salvation as abundant life in all areas of human existence: eternal life, spiritual life, physical, psychological, and relational life. However, Pentecostal soteriology has seldom referred to salvation as something that can affect political and social structures.Traditionally, it has been centered on a more spiritual understanding of “abundant life” (John 10:10), and Jesus as Savior and coming King. Using examples from the Latin America, African practices as well as Swedish texts, I have tried to present a clear vision of how these central theological threads can be reinterpreted to become the nexus of a politically and socially engaged Pentecostalism. By bringing together questions of social structures and the struggle for a more just world, with questions of salvation and life, the idea of social activism is a shift from what some would call “theology’s outer edge;” missiology, to its center; and soteriology or even Christology.This means that working for peace, global justice, sustainable living, and the environment becomes central to the life of every believer and every congregation. God would use every one of us who has received His life to share this abundant life in all aspects of our lives.We become instruments for showing Christ’s love to all we meet, and at the same time, that love is allowed to transform life from a larger perspective. My dream is that we, as Christians, are able to live our salvation in a more holistic and integrated way.A way that precludes considering some actions as more or less spiritual, various needs as more or less important, and certain individuals as more or less worthy. Instead, we need to return to the revivalists’ insight that each one of us is in need of grace. Each one of us needs Jesus. He is the only one who can give Life in all areas of our lives. He is the one who reigns in us and through us so that we can truly make a difference in the world. It is this insight that leads us closer to Him, He who is our Savior. 316

Abundant life: holistic soteriology

Notes 1 This text has previously been published in Swedish with the title,“Överfödande liv: Holistisk soteriologi som motivation för socio-politiskt engagemang,” in U. Josefsson and M.Wahlström (eds.), Teologi för hela skapelsen: En studie om teologiska grunder för engagemang i miljö och samhälle (pp. 21–49). (Research reports from the Institute for Pentecostal Studies; No. 7).Alvik: Institutet för Pentekostala Studier.The English translation was made by Janet B. Runeson. 2 I consider Pentecostal theology to be based on a charismatic and revivalist understanding of Christian faith, including but not restricted to the theology of classical Pentecostalism. 3 “Socio-political engagement” is used here as in a broad sense, including different types of social initiatives, such as those that are found on the political level, as well as those designed to infuence those in power, or public opinion on a certain question, as well as those that are focused on a more concrete societal level, e.g. improving the living standard of a local community or for a specifc group.As a society cannot really be split up into separate social and political factors because these interact with each other, I use the term “socio-political.” Engagement can be local, regional, national, or global.The important thing is that it is not an effort just for one’s own group, like a congregation, but improves society at large. 4 Matthew 25:40. Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission.All rights reserved worldwide. 5 The term “Swedish Pentecostal movement” (“svensk pingströrelse”) refers here to the Free Church movement that collaborated with Filadelfakyrkan in Stockholm after 1913, and today is organized in a network of self-governing congregations under the umbrella of “Pingst fria församlingar i samverkan.”“Pingst ffs” represents approximately 380 congregations and 80,000 individual members (https:// www.pingst.se/om-pingst/, accessed July 19, 2018). 6 Alvarsson, 2014, 11–19. 7 PMU Interlife is an international aid agency belonging to the Swedish Pentecostal movement. 8 Alvarsson, 311–376. For a discussion of the Nordic Pentecostal mission’s infuence on Pentecostal groups in Eastern Africa, see Prosén, 2016. 9 Alvarsson, 199–230. 10 Compare Josefsson, 2005, 277. 11 Matthew 25:40 (NIV). 12 Josefsson, 274–278. 13 Aigbe, 1993, 185–223. 14 Bosch, 1991, 389–395. 15 Josefsson, 2005. 16 Cameron, et al., 2010, 53–56. Sometimes the term “implicit theology” is used to identify the fourth voice, as opposed to “explicit theology” (combining the other three). However, I fnd this model of four voices to be the most clear and helpful in this discussion. 17 Josefsson, 2005, 414. 18 I have discussed the meaning and experience of salvation in depth in Prosén 2012,“Barnet och frälsningen” in Alvarsson, ed. Pentekostal Barn- och familjeteologi. The article presents a systematic theological perspective on salvation in relation to children, using the triad “creation—sin—redemption,” as well as a discussion of original sin, which is not included here. Further, I have discussed salvation from a Kingdom perspective in Prosén, 2010, “Fridsriket som börjat” and “Guds rike och mänskliga relationer” in Alvarsson and Boström, ed., I Ljuset av Återkomsten. 19 I have chosen to capitalize “Sin,” “Death,” “Life,” and other words in this text in order to signal that they denote more than their common defnitions. Sin and Death are seen from a Pentecostal perspective, as spiritual powers similar to how St. Paul uses these terms in his letters (e g Romans 5:12, 6:9, 1 Corinthians 15:55). 20 Ladd, 1993. 21 Jacobsen, 2011, 55. 22 Jacobsen, 2011, 55–56. 23 Josefsson, 2005, 13–14. ”Detta liv var inte vilket som helst, utan ett liv i relation till Gud genom Jesus i den Helige Ande, ett överfödande liv.” 24 Ibid, 87. ”en verkligt kristen” 25 The term “African Pentecostalism” is used here in a very general way to denote Pentecostal churches and movements on the African continent south of the Sahara.To get a deeper understanding of African Pentecostalism and African Christianity, I recommend Ogbu Kalu’s African Pentecostalism:An Introduction and The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa edited by Elias Bongmba.

317

Martina Prosén 26 Master’s thesis (2003) presented at the University of Gothenburg, Abundant Life—Soteriology and Sociopolitical involvement in African Pentecostal Theology. Since this was written, the amount of literature on Pentecostal churches in Africa has grown considerably.This subsection is based on the material available 15 years ago, while in general agreement with current research. 27 Sources include: Sunday A. Aigbe (1993), Allan Anderson (2000), John Baur (1994), Kwame Bediako (1995), André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (2001), Harvey Cox (1996), Paul Gifford (1998), Emmanuel K. Larbi, Lawrence Nwankwo (2001), Matthew A. Ojo (1996) and John Parratt (1997). For full references consult the bibliography. 28 John 10:10 (NRSV), New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.All rights reserved. 29 “Abundant Life” or “Fullness of Life” is a common theme in texts about traditional African religion and spirituality, as well as African theology in general, not just in reference to Pentecostalism. For example: Kalu, 2008, Laurenti Magesa, 1998 and John Mbiti, 1969.The expression is also found in the World Council of Churches ecumenical missions document from 2012: “Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes”; https://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/ commissions/mission-and-evangelism/together-towards-life-mission-and-evangelism-in-changing -landscapes (accessed July 19, 2018). 30 A recent example is given by Alison F. Climenhaga, 2018, writing about Catholic charismatics in Uganda. 31 Yong, Amos, 2010. 32 See for example Douglas Petersen, 1996, who uses liberation theology’s hermeneutic circle to develop a Pentecostal theology for social responsibility. 33 Ferm, 1986, 21. 34 Ibid., 21 35 Ibid., 20. 36 Gutiérrez, 1999, 26. 37 Literally “to set free.” 38 Yong, 2010, 95. 39 Ibid, 97. 40 Hallman, Niklas.“Måla Jesus” (“Paint Jesus”) from the album: Smyckad (“Bejeweled”), David Media AB, 2007. http://www.davidmedia.se/sang/mala-jesus_7320 (accessed September 19, 2017). 41 Originally written by Oscar C. Eliasson, Swedish text by Daniel Hallberg, 1946. Included on the record Om min Jesus produced by David Media AB, 2011. 42 Hallman, Niklas. “Här kommer Kung Frid” from the record: Jag dansar ändå, David Media AB 2016. http://www.davidmedia.se/sang/har-kommer-kung-frid_20327 (accessed September 19, 2017). 43 Hallman, Niklas,“Du valde mitt hjärta,” from the collected recordings: Ett mästerverk, David Media AB, 2013. http://www.davidmedia.se/sang/du-valde-mitt-hjarta_7319 (accessed September 19, 2017). 44 Hallman, Niklas,“Ett mästerverk,” from the collected recordings: Ett mästerverk, David Media AB, 2013. http://www.davidmedia.se/sang/du-valde-mitt-hjarta_7319 (accessed September 19, 2017).

References Aigbe, Sunday A. (1993) Theory of Social Involvement. A Case Study in the Anthropology of Religion, State and Society. Lanham: University Press of America. Alvarsson, Jan-Åke (2014) Om Pingströrelsen… Essäer, översikter och analyser. Skellefteå: Artos & Norma Bokförlag. Anderson, Allan (2000) Zion and Pentecost:The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa. Pretoria: UNISA Press. Baur, John (1994) 2000 Years of Christianity in Africa: An African History 1962–1992. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa. Bediako, Kwame (1995) Christianity in Africa.The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bongmba, Elias K. (ed.) (2016) The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa. New York: Routledge. Bosch, David J. (1991) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

318

Abundant life: holistic soteriology Cameron, Helen, Bhatti, Deborah, Duce, Catherine, Sweeney, James, and Watkins, Clare (2010) Talking About God in Practice.Theological Action Research and Practical Theology. London: SCM Press. Corten,André and Marshall-Fratani,Ruth (ed.) (2001) Between Babel and Pentecost:Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. London: Hurst & Co. Ltd. Cox, Harvey (1996) Fire from Heaven:The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. London: Cassell. Climenhaga, Alison F. (2018) “Pursuing Transformation: Healing, Deliverance, and Discourses of Development among Catholics in Uganda.” Mission Studies 35(2), 204–224. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. Ferm, Deane W. (1986) Third World Liberation Theologies:An Introductory Survey. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Gifford, Paul (1998) African Christianity: It’s Public Role. London: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd. Gutierrez, Gustavo (1999) “The Task and Content of Liberation Theology.” In: Rowland, Christopher (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hallman, Niklas.“Songs from the Record: Smyckad (2007), Om min Jesus (2011), Ett mästerverk (2013), and Jag dansar ändå (2016) all produced by David Media AB.” See links above. Jacobsen, Douglas (2011) The World’s Christians Who They Are, Where They Are, and How They Got There. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Josefsson, Ulrik (2005) Liv och över nog. Den tidiga pingströrelsens spiritualitet. Skellefteå: Artos & Norma bokförlag. Kalu, Ogbu (2008) African Pentecostalism:An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Ladd, George E. (1993) A Theology of the New Testament. Revised edition. Edited by Donald A. Hagner. Cambridge:The Lutterworth Press. Larbi, Emmanuel K. (2001) Pentecostalism:The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity.Accra: Center for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies. Magesa, Laurenti (1998) African Religion.The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa. Mbiti, John S. (1969) African Religions and Philosophy. London/Ibadan/Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. Nwankwo, Lawrence (2001) “‘You Have Received the Spirit of Power…’ (2 TIM.1:7) Reviewing the Prosperity Message in the Light of a Theology of Empowerment.” Paper Presented at the 10th EPCRA Conference in Leuven, Belgium. Unpublished paper (www.epcra.ch). Ojo, Matthews A. (1996) “Charismatic Movements in Africa.” In: Fyfe, Christopher and Walls, Andrew (eds.), Christianity in Africa in the 1990s. Edinburgh: Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. Parratt, John (ed.) (1997) A Reader in African Christian Theology. SPCK International Study Guide 23. London, UK: SPCK. Petersen, Douglas (1996) Not by Might nor by Power:A Pentecostal Theology of Social Concern in Latin America. Oxford: Regnum Books International. Prosén, Martina (2003) Abundant Life. Soteriology and Socio-Political Involvement in African Pentecostal Theology. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. (Gothenburg University). Prosén, Martina (2010a) “Fridsriket som börjat.” In: Alvarsson, Jan-Åke and Boström, Martin (eds.), I ljuset av återkomsten – En bok om tro och liv. Örebro: Libris förlag and Pingstförsamlingarnas Skol- och Kursverksamhet. Prosén, Martina (2010b) “Guds rike och mänskliga relationer.” In:Alvarsson, Jan-Åke and Boström, Martin (eds.), I ljuset av återkomsten – En bok om tro och liv. Örebro: Libris förlag and Pingstförsamlingarnas Skoloch Kursverksamhet. Prosén, Martina (2012) “Barnet och frälsningen.” In:Alvarsson, Jan-Åke (ed.), Pentekostal barn- och familjeteologi. Rapport från ett forskningsprojekt på IPS 2011–2012. Uppsala: Institute for Pentecostal Studies. Prosén, Martina (2016) “Pentecostalism in Eastern Africa.” In: Bongmba, Elias (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa. New York: Routledge. Yong, Amos (2010) In the Days of Caesar. Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

319

20 WE CREATE THE PATH BY WALKING Evolving an African narrative theology Joseph G. Healey

We create the path by walking,1 goes a well-known universal saying.The same can be said about the development of African narrative theology in its many forms. Africans are writing a narrative contextual theology of inculturation and liberation out of their own experiences and lives.

Two concrete examples of African narrative theology Using the theological method or process of “See,” Judge, and “Act,” let us start with two concrete examples of African narrative theology from grassroots experience:

“The Parable of the Two Brothers” Listen to a true story of the Sukuma people in northwestern Tanzania called “The Parable of the Two Brothers” as collected by the Sukuma Research Committee in Bujora, Mwanza,Tanzania: Two brothers wanted to go to a distant country to make their fortune. They asked their father for a blessing saying:“Father, we go on our way to make our fortune.Your blessing please.”Their father agreed saying,“Go with my blessing, but on your way, put marks on the trees lest you get lost.”After they received the blessing, the two brothers started on their safari.The older brother entered the forest and cut down some of the trees as he passed and made marks on other trees. He did this for his whole journey. The younger brother took another route.While on the way, he arrived at the house of a certain person. He knocked on the door. He was invited in and made friends with the children of that family.The younger brother continued on his journey and made friends wherever he passed. Finally, the two brothers returned home. On their arrival, their father gave them a warm welcome saying,“How happy I am to see you back home again, my sons, especially since you have returned safely. Wonderful! Now I would like to see the marks that you have left on the trees.” So the father went with his frstborn son. On the way, the older brother showed his father all kinds of trees that he had cut down and others with the marks that he had put on. They traveled a long distance without eating on 320

We create the path by walking

the trip. Finally, they returned home empty-handed.Then the father set out with his second born son. During the journey, the younger son and his father were warmly received by different friends. They were treated as special guests at each place they visited.A goat was slaughtered to welcome them.They were very happy.They brought home many gifts, including meat. Then the father summoned his two sons and said:“Dear sons, I have seen the work that you have done. I will arrange a marriage for the one who has done the best.” He turned to the frstborn son and said,“My son, I think you are foolish.You cannot take care of people. I told you to put marks on the trees wherever you passed.You have cut down many trees.What is the proft of all these trees?”Turning to the second son, he said:“My son, you are clever. I am happy you have put such important marks wherever you have gone. Wherever we passed, we received a very good welcome. This came from your good personal relationships with the people we visited.”Then he said:“My dear children, now it is good for me to give my reward. I will arrange a big feast for my younger son.We will slaughter a cow for him. For my younger son has made good and lasting marks wherever he passed.”2 From this Sukuma parable comes the Sukuma proverb: To make marks on the trees.The theme of the story and the proverb is “Good Personal and Family Relationships in Life.”The meaning is that building good relationships with people is a very important priority in our lives as the younger son did.Western people can learn a great deal from Africans on how to be present to other people and to relate to them in a life-giving and positive way. Africans are deeply aware of the presence and needs of other people in their lives.To pass by a person without greeting is un-African, but is considered a normal way of relating in the Western world. In Africa, everything is done to maintain good personal and communal relationships, harmony, and peace at all costs.Anger and confrontation are looked down on. Among the Kuria people in Kenya and Tanzania, the greatest sin is to strike a parent. For African people, one of the main purposes of existence is to bless and not to curse. A related African interpretation of this Sukuma story is found in the “Elaboration” section of the book Wasukuma Hutangaza Injili (the English translation is The Sukuma People Proclaim the Gospel). Using the I Corinthians 13: 1–13 passage on “love,” the commentary on this “Two Brothers” parable says: The goal of life is the love of neighbor and love of Almighty God.The sign that we have succeeded in this goal is that we count our riches in our neighbors and friends. It is these riches that we will carry to heaven when all other activities are for this earth only. For a story of African origin, this “Parable of the Two Brothers” has interesting parallels with “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” (Luke 15:11–32). There is mutual illumination and mutual enrichment when African stories and biblical stories are used together. As a Uganda proverb says, One hand washes the other. It is not that the biblical parallels validate the Sukuma examples. Rather the Sukuma stories are meaningful and part of African Christian narrative theology in their own right. Tanzanian theologian Laurenti Magesa states: If we take inculturation/incarnation seriously, the biblical truth, the Christic reality, is already present in these stories by the values they contain in themselves.The task of the theologian, it seems to me, is to articulate these values, to bring them out as clearly as possible as salvifc values, as the reality of divine revelation present differently.3 321

Joseph G. Healey

Some universal values taught in these two stories are forgiveness, love, reconciliation, inclusiveness, personal and family relationships, and close bonds and joy within the family. Both these stories have three main characters: a father and two sons. At the end of each story, the younger son gets the glory and the reward. But the African story has several different twists. Both sons go on a long journey.Then the father himself accompanies them on their second trips.The younger son does not waste his life but cleverly builds up personal relationships.The theme of the African story is “Good Personal and Family Relationships in Life,” which is central to the African worldview.The biblical story has its own twist that brings a unique depth. The theme of the biblical story is “Forgiveness,” which is central to the Christian worldview. Forgiving love is the heart of God’s relationship with humankind and the heart of Jesus Christ’s teaching right up to and including his death on the cross.The biblical story illuminates the African story by a dramatic reversal.The prodigal or bad son is restored to the family and rewarded with gifts.The wastrel is given a feast.The father says:“But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found” (Luke 15:32). An African interpretation of “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” offers an additional insight related to the African values of community and unity. Due to his wild and dissolute living, the younger son is outside the unity of his family circle. This creates separation and incompleteness. When the older son complains that he has not been rewarded for being faithful, he fails to understand his father’s explanation that he is already part of the family community, that he is already on the “inside.” “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31).The love and compassion of the father are so great that he wants immediately to bring his marginalized younger son back inside the family circle. An Oromo (Ethiopia) and Kipsigis (Kenya) proverb says, No matter how skinny, the son always belongs to the father. Here the core values of community and forgiveness come together. An added African touch is found in the painting of this prodigal son story in the “Life of Jesus Mafa” Series from northern Cameroon in West Africa. Against the background of traditional Mafa huts and hills, the whole family runs out to welcome the younger son when he returns. Both the father and the mother warmly embrace the almost naked boy. The emotion-flled mother expresses special joy and excitement.The son is welcomed back with “prodigal” love by both of his devoted parents.The family circle is complete again.

“Peacebuilding in Tegeti Parish, Kenya” Listen to a true story of “Peacebuilding in Tegeti Parish, Kenya.” In 2008 Kenyan layman and evangelist Simon Rurinjah, a member of our Eastern Africa Small Christian Communities (SCCs) Training Team, was invited to the new Parish of Tegeti (that had been divided from Longisa Parish) in Kericho Diocese, Kenya by Father Daniel, the Parish Priest, to be a mediator in a dispute between the Kalenjin and Kikuyu Ethnic Groups. This dispute involved the Kalenjin people burning the houses and stealing the cattle of the Kikuyu people during the January– February, 2008 post-election crisis in Kenya.The Kikuyu fed from the area and then later came back to their homesteads. In April 2008 with the elders (both men and women) present, there was a week of mediation on the parish and outstation levels of the families of the two ethnic groups concerned that had intermarried over the years. On the last day, seven Small Christian Communities (SCC) gathered to participate in a forgiveness and reconcili322

We create the path by walking

ation ceremony. Prayers were said by each ethnic group. As part of the compensation and restorative justice, the Kalenjins rebuilt the houses and returned the cattle of the Kikuyu as a fne for their original wrongdoing. Then nine months later in 2009, there was a special Reconciliation Mass with prayers in both the Kalenjin and Gikuyu languages. Everyone in the SCC participated in a communal meal of reconciliation with both Kalenjin and Kikuyu food served and eaten by the whole community. Everyone agreed that this violence and wrongdoing should never happen again. Until today (October 2017) the peace continues and the local people forget the past disputes.4 Many threads weave together in this African narrative theology of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace. African Storytelling plays an important part in sharing the painful experience of tribalism (negative ethnicity), violence, war, and broken relationships. SCC members share their painful stories.This storytelling can lead to a healing of memories, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Stories are not just anecdotal. African Storytelling is a way of living, a way of listening, a way of being a theologian.Thus, real storytelling is story listening. Creative listening is deeper than just hearing. It is listening on a more fundamental level. It internalizes our experience.We participate in theology of listening. This involves a critical analysis of our society and the Catholic Church.The creative African solution in this tribal clash between these Kalenjin and Gikuyu people was restorative justice rather than retributive (punitive) justice. The Second African Synod Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortative Africa’s Commitment in Number 83 under “The Good Governance of States” states that “pastoral workers have the task of studying and recommending restorative justice as a means and a process for promoting reconciliation, justice and peace, and the return of victims and offenders to the community.” When disputes and conficts arise, SCC members use a Palaver style of conversation, discussion, and dialog to resolve the problems. It involves establishing the right relationships and the healing of all parties. Sometimes this process uses symbols and signs of African culture as well as songs, role plays, and skits. A clear challenge to Africa is found in the famous quotation from No. 6 of Justice in the World, the fnal document of the 1971 World Synod of Bishops: Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of preaching the Gospel or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation. An example of responding to the signs of the times: In January 2013, I began teaching a tenweek seminar on “Small Christian Communities (SCC) in Africa Today” at Hekima University College in Nairobi. The aim was to examine how Small Christian Communities (SCC) are a new model of church and a new way of being church in promoting justice, reconciliation, and peace in Africa today. The class discussions were a type of African Palaver Theology. One of our most interesting discussions was on the best order of words in the reconciliation and peacemaking process.We discovered that the word order used in the process of peacemaking/ peacebuilding is very important, yet varies.The theme of the 2009 Second African Synod was “Reconciliation, Justice, and Peace.”The theme of the 2008 AMECEA5 Plenary Assembly was “Reconciliation through Justice and Peace.” The theme of the 2009 Kenya Lenten Campaign was “Justice, Reconciliation, and Peace.” The word order depends on the specifc context and circumstances and the local interpretation. 323

Joseph G. Healey

In general, we seminar participants felt that this is an ongoing process in which real justice comes frst.Then this leads to genuine reconciliation and fnally to more lasting peace.This is refected in the name of the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission in Kenya.We agreed that after any kind of violence in the “Justice Stag,” the wrongdoer/offender/perpetrator has to admit his or her mistake and make some kind of compensation/amends where appropriate.This is part of restorative justice where stolen cattle have to be returned, a burned house repaired, etc. The person wronged/the victim has to genuinely forgive the wrongdoer while a slow process of dialog, healing, and reconciliation takes place.This is solemnized by some kind of offcial ritual/ ceremony and the use of local African symbols.All of this can lead to lasting peace. How SCCs participate in this process is found in the story of Tegeti Parish described earlier.

Searching for a genuine, authentic African method of theology For many years African theologians have searched for a genuine, authentic African method of theology. At the Padua Conference on Theological Ethics in Padua, Italy, in July 2006, the Ugandan theologian and historian John Waliggo emphasized the importance of African narrative theology and said: Africans can now stimulate theological development. We refuse to leave our cultures and traditions behind. We have much to say about inculturation, offering new models for theological refection. Our theological style is very concerned with narrative, expressing teachings in the story. Our people listen better when you give them a story. This means using local expressions and rituals, linking the Gospel to their story.6 Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongole emphasizes that African theologians listen to the real-life stories of the African people. It includes oral theological conversation. Importantly, storytelling honors women’s stories and experiences. Stories give texture to theology. They illustrate the lives of people living the theology, preventing theology from being just a series of propositions.Africans are writing a narrative contextual theology of inculturation and liberation out of their own experiences and lives.Thus, the African Church is enriching the World Church. Another dimension of African narrative theology as part of African Christian theology can be found in Magesa’s essay, “Endless Quest:The Vocation of an African Christian Theologian,” in a book by the same name. His theological journey in Africa and the stories connected with it could be described as autobiographical narrative theology. He places his and other theologians’ experience in an African context: Jesus’ practical oneness with humanity, his solidarity with the everyday life of the people “in the village,” as Efoe Julien Penoukou put it, is the point. Here Jesus is seen as one with the people: he walks with them, knows every one of them, and is concerned about their successes and failures.As an Ancestor, he can be reached when people need him. Many of the relational qualities of this Jesus of the village, the Elder Brother and Proto-Ancestor of humanity, were incarnated by theologians, albeit imperfectly, by persons who embodied the spirit of human solidarity from different parts of the world. So African Theology became also narrative, bio- or auto-biographical theology.7 In explaining the theological method and process of the Practicing Reconciliation, Doing Justice, Building Peace: Conversations in Catholic Theological Ethics in Africa seminar and book, Nigerian theologian Emmanuel Orobator, SJ states: 324

We create the path by walking

Reconciliation, justice, and peace concern concrete situations that affect the continent … Instead of simply enunciating principles and creating scenarios, theological ethics has a narrative task: to give voice to the stories of victims and articulate in uncompromising terms the gospel virtues and the principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) that offer hope of redress and healing.8 Orobator also points out that a useful lesson on the nature and method of theological refection in Africa emphasizes the necessity of taking experience (an inductive starting point) and context seriously. This means It is repositioning theological refection within the context of the community called the church and the wider society. Consequently, it becomes clear that it is not enough to theologize exclusively based on the intellectual acumen of the theologian, while he or she comfortably ensconce himself or herself in the protected milieu of academia. “The work of theologizing,” or, according to Tutu, the “exhilarating business” of theological refection, must spring from the forthright observation and experience of the situation in the life of the believing community wherein echoes the strong but gentle wind of the Spirit.9 Nigerian scholar of religion Afe Adogame points out that an important element of “doing theology” in Africa today is a dialog that is not confned to the seminary or the academy. African churches offer spaces of dialog that are empowering in themselves: They engage in theological refection with grassroots men, women, and even children in Bible study groups, house-cell fellowships,10 seminars, and workshops.Thus African churches, through their numerous programs based on the specifc socio-cultural and political contexts in which they operate, are developing, writing and accessing a theology of their own.11 This shift away from the theology of the Academy, of the Library, of the Ivory Tower, and “Laboratory Theology” to African contextual theology on the grassroots and to lay people involved in local theologies is signifcant.The emphasis is on praxis not principles. American theologian Robert Schreiter, CPPS, points out that local theologies can be constructed with the local community as a theologian: The experience of those in the Small Christian Communities who have seen the insight and power arising from the refections of the people upon their experience and the Scriptures has prompted making the community itself the prime author of theology in local contexts.The Holy Spirit, working in and through the believing community, give shape and expression to Christian experience. Some of these communities have taught us to read the Scriptures freshly and have called the larger church back to fdelity to the prophetic Word of God.12 South African Bishop Kevin Dowling, CSSR of Rustenburg Diocese, describes contextual theology in South Africa as “doing theology at the coal face,” that is, the dialog on grassroots issues with people on the local level such as coal miners and day laborers.This means listening to victims of systemic violence and refecting on the structural causes of poverty, war, and violence.13 325

Joseph G. Healey

Doing participatory theology with local people on the ground, such as SCC members, can lead to practical, pastoral solutions. Waliggo calls this “contextual theologies from below.” Malawian theologian Patrick Kalilombe, MAfr, calls this “doing theology at the grassroots.”14 It involves ordinary people who are not professional or specialist theologians. Members of the believing community actively engage in refecting on their faith in the context of their everyday life. Following the “See,”“Judge,” and “Act” methodology, people use social analysis and the light of the Gospel to transform society.They take responsibility in making their faith bear fruit on the challenges of their personal life and their mission in society.The less formally educated refect upon and give relevant shape to their faith commitment and then search for appropriate ways of putting it into practice. In this communitarian theology, they question the status quo and work to change it. Nigerian Scripture Scholar Teresa Okure, SHCJ emphasizes the importance of African women theologians’ dialog with people on the grassroots. When someone described Teresa’s method or process of reading the Bible with people who were not Bible experts (especially circles of African laywomen who connect the Bible to daily life) as “marketplace hermeneutics,”15 she considered it the “highest compliment” because this was the very method that Jesus used. An interesting Case Study of how an African theologian has helped to develop the narrative theology of SCCs is described as follows: In June 2011, I lived at Michael Kirwen, MM’s house near Langata, Nairobi, Kenya while participating in an AMECEA Meeting at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Another house guest was Father Laurenti Magesa who was teaching in the Maryknoll Institute of African Studies (MIAS) at the Tangaza University College. At the time I was writing the book that eventually became Building the Church as Family of God: Evaluation of Small Christian Communities in Eastern Africa, Eldoret: AMECEA Gaba Publications—CUEA Press Double Spearhead Nos. 199– 200 (2012).The Digital Version updated as of October 17, 2016, is 976 pages and is available as a free Ebook on the Small Christian Communities Global Collaborative Website at http://www.smallchristiancommunities.org/images/stories/pdf/Build _new.pdf I would write drafts of the theological sections of this book in the early morning and then discuss them with Laurenti in the late afternoon. It was a stimulating and enriching experience of theological conversation and dialog—what we now frequently call African Palaver Theology. Laurenti explained that the starting point is the grassroots experiences themselves.Then the theologian refects on them and articulates them in a more systematic theological way. Laurenti suggested a process in which I would describe specifc Small Christian Communities (SCC) activities, events, and case studies—a kind of summary of SCCs praxis on the grassroots, local level.Afterward he would theologize on these experiences.We discussed both the theological implications and practical applications.We were using the steps in the Pastoral Spiral (better known as the Pastoral Circle).Then I would enter the fruit of our conversations in the updated draft of my book the next day. To take a specifc example, we discussed the growth of the justice and peace outreach of SCCs in Eastern Africa in the last ten years. SCCs have been actively involved in reconciliation in Kenya after the 2008 post-election violence both within individual SCCs and as part of wider reconciliation services and ceremonies especially due to the annual Kenyan Lenten Campaign. The use of the “See,” “Judge” and “Act” Process/ 326

We create the path by walking

Methodology of the Pastoral Spiral made a signifcant difference in helping to analyze the local situation and to decide on practical solutions. Magesa theologized on these new justice and peace outreaches of SCCs in Kenya. For example, he took the true story “Peacebuilding in Tegeti Parish, Kenya” that used a palaver style of conversation, discussion, and dialog to resolve local problems to develop elements of an African Theology of Reconciliation and Peace.16 Evolving an African method of narrative theology is closely connected to pastoral ministry and the challenge of Pope Francis in No. 33 of The Joy of the Gospel: Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says:“We have always done it this way.” I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style, and methods of evangelization in their respective communities. A proposal of goals without an adequate communal search for the means of achieving them will inevitably prove illusory. I encourage everyone to apply the guidelines found in this document generously and courageously, without inhibitions or fear.The important thing is not to walk alone, but to rely on each other as brothers and sisters, and especially under the leadership of the bishops, in a wise and realistic pastoral discernment. We tell the story of solidarity and accompaniment in our journey together.

African narrative theology of inculturation One type of inculturation theology is an African narrative theology of inculturation.The starting part is African culture, but specifcally African oral literature and the wide range of narrative and oral forms: proverbs, sayings, riddles, stories, myths, plays, and songs explained in their historical and cultural contexts. These oral forms, especially proverbs and sayings, are a very natural and very popular form of African palaver, conversation, and speech. There is a famous Igbo, Nigerian saying, Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten.They are a way of life for Africans, especially on the local level. Kenyan theologian Anne Nasimiyu, LSOSF, states:“The oral literature of the African people is their unwritten Bible. This religious wisdom is found in African idioms, wise sayings, legends, myths, stories, proverbs, and oral history.”17 Kenyan Anglican theologian John Mbiti adds: “Proverbs are a rich source of African Religion and philosophy.They contain and point to deep spirituality, as well as theological and philosophical insights. In this case, they form a bridge between traditional African religiosity and biblical teaching.”18 American theologian and storyteller John Shea and others19 have popularized story theology, but narrative theology is broader and more inclusive of all narrative forms.20 This is a relatively new type of African theology. Ghanaian Anglican theologian John Pobee states: The urgent task is the collection of myths, proverbs, invocations, prayers, incantations, ritual, songs, dreams, and so on.The collections made so far are rather haphazard and are part of sociological and anthropological studies. We are asking for the specifc theological mind to be brought to bear on the vast materials of the sources of African Traditional Religion.21 Another important type of African contextual theology is oral theology. 327

Joseph G. Healey

Mbiti points out: African oral theology is a living reality. We must come to terms with it. We must acknowledge its role in the total life of the church. It is the most articulate expression of theological creativity in Africa. This form of theology gives the church a certain measure of theological selfhood and independence … Oral theology is produced in the felds, by the masses, through song, sermon, teaching, prayer, conversation, etc. It is theology in the open air, often unrecorded, often heard only by small groups of audience, and generally lost as far as libraries and seminaries are concerned. Symbolic theology is expressed through art, sculpture, drama, symbols, rituals, dance, colors, numbers, etc.22 Mbiti also reminds us that art is a signifcant part of theology. It is called visual theology or symbolic theology.The Jesus Mafa paintings mentioned above are genuine theology. Various books and booklets of African stories, myths, parables, proverbs, sayings, riddles, and other types of African oral literature, the art and symbols, and grassroots oral experiences are part of the rich cultural history and the contemporary praxis of the people of Africa.Through African stories, proverbs, and art, the African Church is enriching the World Church. In 1998 we started the African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Website (www.afriprov.org) The “Welcome Message” states: With the marvels of the new information technology, we can use this internet website to: 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

Share our work (collections, research, writings, applications, experiences) and enthusiasm for “African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories” with other people with similar interests. Two main focuses are Endangered African Proverbs Collections and African Proverbs and Stories Legacy Projects. Ask questions of, and obtain materials from, other people with similar interests. Compile an ongoing collection of a wide variety of resources (in the form of an Annotated Bibliography, Book Reviews, and News Archives) related to “African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories.” Support and encourage different people involved in this wonderful world of “African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories.” Develop and expand a worldwide network of people interested in “African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories.” Publish articles and books on African Proverbs, Sayings, and Stories. Use African Proverbs, Sayings, and Stories as the source of writing articles and books on African Narrative Theology.23,24

The website has 228 “African Proverbs and Sayings of the Month” in 136 different African Languages from 48 African countries by 203 different contributors. The “African Stories Database” (www.afriprov.org/resources/storiesdatabase.html) contains 586 African Stories in a searchable, user-friendly collection including folktales, historical fction pieces, myths, parables, poems, prayers, riddles, song-proverbs, and true stories.This search feature enables users to fnd African stories for a wide variety of interests and occasions.The content of this database is made of up stories containing over 140 different themes and sub-themes. The African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/afriprov) is much more than just casual and superfcial social networking.This page is a forum for conver328

We create the path by walking

sation, discussion, exchange, sharing analysis and an important “space” (“place”) for spiritual, pastoral and theological conversation, questions, discussion, and sharing, including: 1. Faith sharing.

2. Discussion on the content (themes and topics) of articles, theses, booklets, and books on African theology. 3. African Christian Palaver Theology or African Christian Conversation Theology. 4. Discussion on the process or methodology of theology. The Video Page of the African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Website has a short eight-minute video on Donald Sybertz, MM, and the Ndoleleji Research Committee in Shinyanga,Tanzania, called “Opening a Door on African Theology and Music” (http://www.afriprov.org/resources/ videos.html).This is grassroots contextual theology.

African Christian Conversation Theology There is a connection between African Christian Palaver Theology, African Christian theology as conversation, and African Christian narrative theology.They are part of each other.They form a union. African theologians are developing African conversation theology, or more specifcally African Christian Conversation Theology, as a “New Way of Doing Theology.” In Africa, we prefer the term African PalaverTheology, but we realize that the word Palaver carries a lot of negative baggage in the Western world. For us, it is both the name of a method or process of theology and the name of a type of content of theology (much like liberation theology). Method heavily infuences and determines the content and vice versa. It is a two-way process that illuminates and enriches African values and Christian values. It is similar to Mango Tree Theology and Storytelling Theology. Orobator describes this distinctive method or process very clearly in the preliminary papers for the theological colloquium and books The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III. This is African Theology as Conversation,25 Active Dialog, Intensive Listening, and Learning from Each Other (described as “listening in conversation”) and Consensus. This new way of doing African Christian Theology is participatory, collaborative, democratic, cross-disciplinary, and multigenerational.26 Orobator adds: Doing theology is not an isolated enterprise, particularly in Africa, where doing theology is a community event. At Hekima University College in Nairobi, where I teach, one of my favorite classes is called simply “Palaver Session.” This is the time when students sit in a round hut and talk about God, faith, and their religious experiences in an African context. Sometimes we have something to drink and munch on as we dialog, debate and converse.27 He expands this conversational theological methodology by saying: Strong, dynamic currents are shaping the fow of theological discourse in Africa. A unique characteristic of this discourse is the widening circle of conversation part329

Joseph G. Healey

ners. African theologians are no longer content with talking to like-minded theologians; they engage bishops, civil society groups and government representatives as conversational partners in rational dialogue and critical analysis within society and the [Catholic] Church.This conversational methodology breaks new ground in theological scholarship in Africa and represents a new way of doing theology in which collaboration and conversation win over confrontation and adversarial positions. The result is a process of mutual listening and learning, a vital ingredient for constructing what veteran African theologian Elochukwu Uzukwu designates “the listening church.”28 Nigerian theologian Elochukwu Uzukwu published his important Orbis book A Listening Church, Autonomy and Communion in African Churches in 1996.To use a play on words, perhaps Pope Francis “listened” to him when the Pope emphasizes that the Catholic bishops and other leaders today must be a Listening Church frst and a Teaching Church second. Thus, the starting point of this kind of African Christian theology is both context and experience.This theology draws on grassroots experiences and practical “on the ground” research. In the spirit of Pope Francis,African theologians try to listen to the cries of the poor, the marginalized, and those on the peripheries of society. This method draws on the ideas and writings of Bénézet Bujo, Jean-Marc Ela, Katongole, Okure, Uzukwu, and others. Local, contextual theologies can be constructed in Africa with the local communities as “theologian.” Orobator developed this distinctive method or process in convening the three international Theological Colloquia on Church, Religion, and Society in Africa (in short, TCCRSA) from which the essays of the above book are taken. This “Three-year Theological Research Project in the Currents of the 50th Anniversary of Vatican II” took place in Nairobi in 2013, 2014, and 2015.These conversation-style theological research seminars used Palaver sessions, baraza sessions and informal, interactive roundtables on African theology to provoke conversation, discussion, and dialog. Over the three years, there were 60 participants from very diverse backgrounds.The 20 writers in this present volume include ten priests, fve lay women, three religious sisters, and two bishops. Signifcant is the contribution of the eight women. I would like to illustrate this method by using my essay called “Beyond Vatican II: Imagining the Catholic Church of Nairobi I.” Orobator frst invited writers to draft papers on specifc themes. I invited many African pastoral workers, including members of grassroots Small Christian Communities and theologians such as Magesa into the “conversation” on my paper and incorporated their comments and insights. Then the papers were circulated to the colloquium participants to read and refect on ahead of time. Some gave feedback to the presenters. For example, one priest from South Africa gave me a very helpful and detailed written commentary on my paper with many practical suggestions. At the colloquium itself, I presented a summary of my paper in a plenary session. Here is the opening paragraph under the heading “Be Bold and Creative” taken from No. 33 of Pope Francis’ The Joy of the Gospel: The editor of this volume, Orobator, Jim Keane, the Acquiring Editor of Orbis Books, and I met to discuss a book that could evolve out of TCCRSA. In brainstorming about a possible title and cover, we tried to think outside the conventual box.We drew a line through the words “Vatican III, Rome” on the cover and wrote “Nairobi I.”We could have as easily written “Kinshasa I” or “Lagos I.” Going further afeld, we could have written “Manila I” or “Sao Paulo I.” The idea was to challenge the natural assumption that the next ecumenical council has to take place in Rome. If the center of gravity of the Catholic Church is moving from the West to 330

We create the path by walking

the Global South, why not have the successor to Vatican II meet in one of the great cities of the Southern Hemisphere?29 My co-presenter was Nontando Hadebe, a lay woman theologian from South Africa, which in itself shows the rich diversity of the participants.Afterward, a half-hour plenary session combined comments from the foor and questions and answers on our papers. Orobator, a man of many talents, simultaneously recorded this “conversation” on my paper on his computer and “miraculously” handed me a half page summary at the end of the session. During the coffee breaks and meals, I dialogued further with participants on my paper. In the spirit and practice of this colloquium, using the method or process of African Christian Conversation Theology, I incorporated the comments and insights of the participants in the fnal draft of my chapter for this book. Following the title of this present essay—“We create the path by walking: evolving an African narrative theology”—my chapter in the book The Church We Want describes the journey and story of African Catholics. In the spirit of the pastoral challenges of Pope Francis, the fnal section of my chapter proposes pastoral solutions to the “Two Meanings of the Eucharistic Famine in Africa:” 1. Ordination of Married Community Elders or Locally Ordained Ministers (Married Priesthood). 2. African Stages of Marriage. As we continue to walk together and share our stories, let our conversation, discussion, and discernment on these pastoral and theological challenges in Africa evolve and grow. In the spirit of the collaborative, collegial, and synodal style of African narrative theology, let us follow the well-known African proverb: If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.

Notes 1 The Spanish is caminante no hay camino based on the words “make the road by walking it” of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875–1939). 2 Healey, Joseph, “Three Case Studies of African Christology among the Sukuma People in Tanzania,” Tangaza Journal of Theology and Mission, 2011, no. 1 (June 2011): 10–12. African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Website, accessed October 17, 2017, http://www.afriprov.org/images/afriprov/books/Thre e_Case_Studies_of_African_Christology.pdf 3 Laurenti Magesa in an email message to the author dated October 30, 2010. 4 Joseph Healey, “We Create the Path by Walking: Small Christian Communities (SCCs) Involvement in Peacebuilding in Eastern Africa.” The Journal of Social Encounters (JSE), August 2017, College of St. Benedict (CSB)/St. John’s University (SJU) Digital Commons, Small Christian Communities Global Collaborative Website, accessed October 17, 2017, http://www.smallchristiancommunitie s.org/images/stories/pdf/path_walking.pdf Joseph Healey, “Seven SCCs Participate in a Forgiveness and Reconciliation Ceremony in Kenya,” SCCs Story No. 6 in the “SCCs Stories Database.” Small Christian Communities Global Collaborative Website, 2012, accessed October 17, 2017, http://www .smallchristiancommunities.org/sccs-stories.html?task=display2&cid[0]=630 5 AMECEA is an acronym for “Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa.” It is a service organization for the National Episcopal Conferences of the nine English-speaking countries of Eastern Africa, namely Eritrea (1993), Ethiopia (1979), Kenya (1961), Malawi (1961), South Sudan (2011), Sudan (1973), Tanzania (1961), Uganda (1961), and Zambia (1961). The Republic of South Sudan became independent on July 9, 2011, but the two Sudans remain part of one Episcopal Conference. Somalia (1995) and Djibouti (2002) are Affliate Members. AMECEA is one of the eight Regional Episcopal Conferences of SECAM (Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar).

331

Joseph G. Healey 6 John Waliggo quoted in Joseph Healey, “African Conversational Theology: A New Way of Doing Theology,”Talk during the “Africa Matters Book Discussion:The Church We Want,” at the Center for African Studies, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 22, 2016, 2. 7 Laurenti Magesa,“Endless Quest:The Vocation of an African Christian Theologian,” in Jesse Mugambi and Evaristi Magoti (eds.), Endless Quest: The Vocation of an African Christian Theologian. Essays in Honor of Laurenti Magesa (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2014), 18–19. 8 Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator (ed.), Practicing Reconciliation, Doing Justice, Building Peace: Conversations on Catholic Theological Ethics in Africa (Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013), 20. 9 Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, “The Sky Is Wide Enough: A Historical-Critical Appraisal of Theological Activity and Method in Africa,” Hekima Review, 40 (May 2009): 41. 10 The Anglican (Episcopalian) name for SCCs. 11 Afe Adogame in African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations. Edited by Diane Stinton (London: SPCK International Study Guide 46, 2010), 170. 12 Robert Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), 16. 13 See Ellen Teague,“Bishop Kevin Dowling: How Do I Tell the Poor that God Loves Them?” Independent Catholic News (ICN) Website, June 29, 2014, accessed on September 27, 2014, http://www.indcathol icnews.com/news.php?viewStory=25048 14 This theological method is described at length in Patrick Kalilombe, Doing Theology at the Grassroots: Theological Essays from Malawi (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1999). 15 Also called “local community hermeneutics.” 16 Joseph Healey,“The Future of Small Christian Communities in Africa,” Endless Quest, 109. 17 Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike, “Feminism and African Theology,” African Christian Studies, 9, no. 2 (June 1993): 22. 18 John Mbiti, “Children Confer Glory On a Home,” in Draft Introduction to African Proverbs Series (Burgdorf: Unpublished Paper, 1993), 2. 19 See John Shea, Stories of God: An Unauthorized Biography (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1978) and Stories of Faith (Chicago:Thomas More Press, 1980). See also books by John Aurelio,William Bausch, Frederick Buechner, John Dominic Crossan, Anthony de Mello, Joseph Donders, John Dunne, John Navone, Basil Pennington,Terrence Tilley, and Elie Wiesel. 20 Narrative forms of theology are also found in the novels, short stories, plays, and poetry of African writers. It is signifcant that the novels and plays of the Nigerian writers Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka contain many African proverbs and sayings. 21 John Pobee, Toward an African Theology (Nashville:Abingdon, 1979), 21. 22 John Mbiti,“Cattle Are Born with Ears,Their Horns Grow Later:Towards an Appreciation of African Oral Theology,” in All African Lutheran Consultation on Christian Theology and Christian Education for the African Context, edited by Alison Bares (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1978), 49–50. 23 Examples under “Bibliography” under “Resources” accessed on October 15, 2017, are: 1. “Three Case Studies of African Christology Among the Sukuma People in Tanzania,” by Joseph G. Healey, MM, http://www.afriprov.org/images/afriprov/books/Three_Case_Studies_of_African _Christology.pdf 2. “The Sukuma Sacrifcial Goat and Christianity: A Basis for Inculturation in Africa,” by Joseph M. Lupande, Joseph G. Healey, MM and Donald F. Sybertz, MM, http://www.afriprov.org/images/stor ies/sukuma.pdf 24 Donald Sybertz, Joseph Healey and the Ndoleleji Research Committee in Shinyanga Diocese in Shinyanga,Tanzania, continue to write a lengthy theological interpretation of the creation myth Tears of Joy:African Story about Heroes and Monsters, the Sukuma myth of the young man Masala Kulangwa and the monster Shing’weng’we that is part of a long Sukuma song. Presently they are comparing Masala Kulangwa and Jesus Christ and the Mother of Masala Kulangwa and the Mother of Jesus Christ. So far different versions of the myth have been published as follows: Donald Sybertz,Tears of Joy:African Story about Heroes and Monsters. Dar es Salaam (Tanzania: Mathews Bookstore & Stationers, 2006).The Swahili version is Machozi ya Furaha: Hadithi za Mashujaa na Majitu and the Sukuma version is Shisoji ja Buyegi: Jigano ja Lishing’weng’we (Sukuma Legacy Website), accessed on October 15, 2017, https://sukumalegacy.fles.wordpress.com/2017/04/shisoji1.pdf

332

We create the path by walking

25

26 27 28 29

Max Tertrais, The Clever Young Man and the Monster:The Sukuma Myth of Shing’weng’we and Masala Kulangwa (Paulines Publications Africa, 2000).The Swahili version is Kijana Mwerevu na Shing’weng’we: Hadithi ya Kisukuma ya Shing’weng’we and Masala Kulangwa. With accompanying eight-page booklet The Clever Young Man and the Monster: Comments on the Book. In the meetings and writings of theologians worldwide, the idea of Catholic theology as “conversation” is becoming more and more common. A report of the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Association in Durham, England, in September, 2013, states:“All the members seem to like the idea of Catholic theology as a ‘conversation.’” Brendan Walsh,“Meet the Glums,” Tablet, 21 (September 2013): 15.We can ask:“Is the West fnally learning from Africa?” See Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, “Preface: About a Research Project,” in Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator (ed.), The Church We Want:African Catholics Look to Vatican III (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016; Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2016), xi–xiii. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008), xi. Orobator, Practicing Reconciliation, 130–131. Joseph Healey, “Beyond Vatican II: Imagining the Catholic Church of Nairobi I,” in The Church We Want, 189.

Bibliography African Proverbs, Sayings, and Stories Website, 2017. http://www.afriprov.org. African Proverbs, Sayings, and Stories Facebook Page, 2017. https://www.facebook.com/afriprov. Francis. Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation,The Joy of the Gospel. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazio ne-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html, http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_ex hortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.pdf. Healey, Joseph. African Conversational Theology:A New Way of Doing Theology. Talk during the Africa Matters Book Discussion: The Church We Want. Pittsburgh, PA: Center for African Studies, Duquesne University. September 22, 2016. http://guides.library.duq.edu/c.php?g=590460&p=4082522. Healey, Joseph. African Stories for Preachers and Teachers. Paulines Publications Africa, 2006. Swahili Edition: Hadithi za Kiafrika kwa Wahubiri na Walimu. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2006. Healey, Joseph. “Beyond Vatican II: Imagining the Catholic Church of Nairobi I.” Nairobi: Privately Printed, 2015. In: Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator (ed.), The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016 and Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2016. Healey, Joseph. Building the Church as Family of God: Evaluation of Small Christian Communities in Eastern Africa. Eldoret: AMECEA Gaba Publications – CUEA Press. Double Spearhead Nos, 199–200 (Print Version 2012 and 1st Reprint 2014).The Online Digital Version, regularly revised and updated from the 2012 print version, is available as a free, online Ebook containing 972 pages as of October 17, 2017, on the Small Christian Communities Global Collaborative Website at http://www.smallchristiancommu nities.org/images/stories/pdf/Build_new.pdf. Healey, Joseph. A Fifth Gospel:The Experience of Back Christian Values. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books/London: SCM Press, 1981. A Special Edition (32nd Anniversary Edition Printed Digitally) was Published by Orbis Books in 2013.The Swahili Version is Kuishi Injili (Living the Gospel), and the German Version is Auf Der Suche Nach Dem Ganzen Leben: Kleine Christliche Gemeinschaften in Tanzania. Healey, Joseph (compiled). Once Upon a Time in Africa: Stories of Wisdom and Joy. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004.Available as an Ebook on Amazon (for Kindle), Google and Barnes and Noble (for Nook). Also available in different editions in French, Polish, Spanish and Swahili. Healey, Joseph. “Three Case Studies of African Christology Among the Sukuma People in Tanzania.” Tangaza Journal of Theology and Mission, no. 1 (2011): 5–26. Healey, Joseph, and Donald Sybertz, eds. Towards an African Narrative Theology. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1996 and Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997. Available as an Ebook on Amazon (for Kindle), Google and Barnes and Noble (for Nook). Mugambi, Jesse, and Evaristi Magoti, eds. Endless Quest:The Vocation of an African Christian Theologian. Essays in Honor of Laurenti Magesa. Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2014.

333

Joseph G. Healey Orobator, Agbonkhianmeghe E., ed. The Church We Want: African Catholics Look to Vatican III. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016. Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 2016. Orobator, Agbonkhianmeghe E. Theology Brewed in an African Pot. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 2008. Pobee, John. Toward an African Theology. Nashville:Abingdon, 1979. Small Christian Communities Global Collaborative Website. http://www.smallchristiancommunities.org. Uzukwu, Elochukwu A. Listening Church, Autonomy, and Communion in African Churches. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996. Reprinted: Eugene, OR:Wif and Stock Publishers, 2006. Wijsen, Frans, Peter Henriot, and Rodrigo Mejia, eds. The Pastoral Circle Revisited:A Critical Quest for Truth and Transformation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005.

334

21 POSTCOLONIAL THEOLOGY IN AFRICA Looking back and looking forward Tinyiko Maluleke

The deep roots of African theology Modern African Christian theology as we have come to know it is a postcolonial phenomenon. More accurately, it was one of the spiritual and intellectual harbingers of postcolonial thought on the African continent. In the mid-1950s, the frst stirrings of formal African theology emerged (Maluleke 1997). At that time, the winds of change were blowing across the continent.Already in the mid-1930s emerged the philosophy of Negritude—a philosophy of pride in and affrmation of blackness.1 Though later criticized for being too elitist and too theoretical to become a material force, Negritude and its antecedents were an important milestone in the development and formalization of postcolonial thought in Africa. Negritude had a massive infuence on Frantz Fanon (1961, 1965, 1967), one of the most infuential postcolonial theorists in Africa.2 But even before Negritude writings erupted into Africa, Sol Plaatje (1930) and Chinua Achebe (1958) had published their pioneering works of fction (the frst English full-length novels by Africans). In the case of Plaatje (1916), he also wrote great non-fction—detailing the tragic human condition in which black South Africans were left, after the promulgation of the Land Act of 1913, apportioning 87 percent of the land to the white minority, leaving only 13 percent to the black majority. Though it was not “Christian” theology as such, refection on religion, culture and the African condition was an important backdrop and motif for the earliest English and French publications by Africans, including the works of the Negritude writers. In its emphasis on black pride, Negritude sought to rehabilitate every dimension of the black life, especially the cultural, linguistic, philosophical, and spiritual resources for resilience in spite and in the face of the ravages of slavery and colonialism. Already then, it was recognized that the religious domain was one of the important domains in the struggle against dehumanizing colonialism. In a sense, these were the domains of black life, least contaminated by colonialism and for that reason domains most crucial for the struggle against colonialism. Almost instinctively, the foundational African authors who wrote outside the frame of devotional literature (a genre tightly controlled and monitored by the missionaries in those days) invoked and freely engaged with the spiritual, religious, and cultural domains—a territory somewhat pejoratively referred to as the animist worldview by both colonialists and missionaries alike. 335

Tinyiko Maluleke

In that territory, seemingly inanimate things were thought to have life and meaning trapped inside them so that nothing is merely and only what it outwardly seems to be. In terms of the animist cosmology, nothing is without life. The mountains, the trees, the lakes, the forests, and the seas are pregnant with life such that they are capable of becoming responsive. In other words, the “natural” (as opposed to “cultured”) world, alleged to be inanimate by colonialists and missionaries, was considered as a living and historical presence in the world according to African cosmology. How valuable that insight might have been in the face of the Eurocentric extraction view of the world, which has not brought the world to the brink of ecological disaster and climate change. When Ghana became the frstborn of independent African nations, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah (1964) on March 6, 1957, it was soon realized that liberation entailed much more than the freeing of the political domain. Therein lay the broader role of Negritude, the burgeoning African literature, and African cosmology.The postcolonial process had only begun. Nkrumah was under no illusion about the task at hand. He crafted his vision for both Ghana and Africa under the motto—“Seek ye frst the political kingdom, and all these things shall be added unto you”—a clear paraphrasing of Matthew 6:33, with clear political intentions.The “political kingdom” was therefore never seen as an end in itself, only a beginning that should lead to many ends.Therein lay the critical role of culture, language, and religion.

The importance of African religions All major African theologians have recognized the importance of African religious and cultural systems as interpreters and hosts of Christianity from its earliest arrival on the continent, especially in the frst seven centuries of Christianity up to and including colonial and postcolonial times (Bediako 1992, 1995, 2004, Mbiti 1986, Mbiti 1970, Appiah-Kubi and Torres 1979).This is remarkable because most missionary and colonial researchers paid little attention to precolonial African religions. Instead, in the same way that secular historians tended to imply that proper African history started with the discoveries and arrivals of European explorers, through their silence on African religions, religion scholars tended to imply that there was no religion (to write home about) before the European settlers brought Christendom. David Chidester (1996) has observed that when it comes to (the existence of) African religions, imperial and colonial interests seemed to interfere with the judgments of colonial actors, observers, and writers. In his research, Chidester found that there was a pattern by which notyet-conquered people were almost always found to have no religion and sometimes no souls. They were often described as savages who were as wild as the “virgin” territories in which they lived. However, once their countries were conquered, their religions and cultures would conveniently be discovered—suddenly. But no sooner would these religions be discovered than they would be put under pressure to make way for the settler Christianity of the variety of the colonial home country. And yet, Christianity would probably not have taken root, certainly not with the seeming speed that it did, had it not been for the pre-existence of African religions—a point which many African theology scholars have made in various ways. However, this point is often made and meant differently, to different ends.The most conservative view suggests that African religions were not full systems in and of themselves, but a mere rehearsal for the real thing, namely, EuroAmerican Christianity. In terms of this view,African religions deserve positive recognition only to the extent that, like John the Baptist, they “prepared the way” for imperial Christianity. An even more ruthless approach is one in terms of which Christendom never needed African religions, not before, not during, and certainly not after the arrival of Christianity in Africa. 336

Postcolonial theology in Africa

For this reason, those who espouse this position may also believe that the introduction, growth, and maintenance of Christianity in Africa is premised on the elimination of all traces of African religions. Ironically today, those strands of Christianity in Africa which consider all African religions an enemy to be eliminated are also the closest to African religions in terms of worldview and basic beliefs about the world. Few churches on the African continent are more “superstitious” than the ultra-Pentecostal charismatic types. However, there are those like Kwame and Gillian Bediako who positively argue that if African primal religions did not exist, Christianity might have never taken root in Africa. For Bediako, primal religions not merely prepared the way, but rather provided the spiritual and theological foundations that made it possible for the necessary interreligious dialogue to take place in a mutually intelligible manner. In other words, if Africans had no religion, it would be diffcult for some of them to take up Christianity at all. After the evangelization and missionary periods,African religions have remained the benevolent host of Christianity in Africa.They should be accorded the kind of respect and honor often reserved for hosts in human societies everywhere.There ought to remain, between Christianity in Africa and African religions, a relationship of deference, dialogue, and mutual respect, not one of mutual elimination.There is another reason why this should be so.We may never understand Christianity in Africa until we understand not only the historical but also the ongoing role of African religions in shaping the unique character of Christianity in Africa. Examples of the infuence of African religions on African Christianity are numerous, and they range from its general exuberance to the musicality of the faith.

The importance of pre-colonial theology in Africa As outlined above, to understand the postcoloniality of theology in Africa, one has to appreciate its pre-colonial roots. In our view, therefore, postcolonial African theology did not start either with or after colonialism. The adjective “postcolonial” is more than a temporal indication (de Jong-Kumru 2013). It should mean more than “since colonialism,” “after colonialism,” or “in reaction to colonialism.” One of the discursive intentions of postcolonial thought is to be anticolonial by, among other things, judging the colonial against the pre-colonial, valorizing the non-colonial, and envisioning, in all spheres of life, a past, a present, and a future that is free from the logic of colonialism. Postcolonial theology in Africa traces its roots to pre-colonial thinking and times—where the real reference point of theology in Africa resides. It is a dogged attempt to retrace and to recover the beginnings of the “song” that was interrupted by colonialism, a refusal to let an interruption become a beginning, a refusal to let colonialism continue to defne the present and the future of its victims.3 As Kwame Appiah (1992) had argued, even when colonialism came,Africans did not experience it in the same way or to the same extent across the continent. Some territories were hardly touched by colonialism. Of all the “territories” colonialism thought it had conquered, it was resisted most fercely in the sphere of religion and spirituality. It is a gross (perhaps deliberate?) exaggeration to portray colonialism as a total system that covered every inch of African life and land. Nor was colonialism ever not resisted. Missionaries did not have to introduce notions of “God,” the sacred, or life after death among Africans—thanks to the theological foundations laid by African religions.Whereas the missionaries had assumed to bring God to Africa, when they arrived, they found God waiting for them in Africa. More importantly, the missionaries and colonialists found people with an integrated rather than a compartmentalized view of life. In that life, religion was not something reserved only for certain times and certain places. Instead, religion was both private and public, personal and communal, the sacred was everywhere, and good and bad were not abstract concepts. 337

Tinyiko Maluleke

African society was organized into great kingdoms made up of an intricate system of tribes and clans as well as a ubiquitous religious system. When they eventually tried to evangelize Africans—for Christian evangelization was neither the initial nor central intention of colonialism (Chidester 1996; De Gruchy 1979)—the message of the missionaries and colonialists was met with resistance and vigorous reinterpretation (Peires 1989).This is understandable because Africans were not a clean religious slate on which missionaries and colonialists could freely write new religious grammars and languages, without challenge or contestation. In some colonies, colonialists responded to African resistance by targeting African religious systems and worldviews for summary dismissal and derision. In this context,“animism” became shorthand for all African religions and a pejorative label for the lowest and most backward form of religious consciousness.4 But for some, the derision of African religions was not enough, and sometimes physical violence was used to put down African religious and cultural resistance (Achebe 1958). In the zeal to eradicate African religious traditions, many good practices and knowledge were also targeted for elimination. Although there was no elaborate theology as such, Africa was not a theological vacuum before, during, and after colonialism. There was a clear and unmistakable sense of the reality, the existence, and the presence of the Divine. Similarly, there was an elaborate system for the pursuit of proximity, connectivity, and alignment with Divinity.This system was theorized and explained by the elders, the seers, and the sages. In this sense, theology in Africa predates Christian theology in Africa.5 Africans may not have known about Jesus Christ as such, but because they knew about suffering, they understood the message of the cross, the need for representation, atonement, and vicarious suffering (Mofokeng 1983).

Postcolonial Christian theology in Africa: indigenous, protesting, reluctant, and tragic The question as to why we are still in the Christian fold can be answered in different ways. For myself, frst, I am like someone who has been bewitched, and I fnd it diffcult to shake off the Christian witchcraft with which I have been captivated. I cannot say I necessarily like where I am. (Gabriel Setiloane 1979: 64). Postcolonial Christian theology is an important milestone, albeit a latecomer in African “theologizing.” For this and other related reasons, the advent and meanings of postcolonial theology in Africa can only be properly understood in the light of the picture, which we attempted to paint in the previous sections.With Setiloane, Christian theology in Africa stems from a complicated place, fraught with ambivalence and trepidation. In this sense, Christian theology in Africa is by defnition indigenous, protest orientated, reluctant, and tragic. Insofar as it entails an African refusal to respond to the Gospel in ways set and dictated by others, it is protesting theology. Insofar as it seeks to mediate a genuinely African response to the Gospel—in an authentic and truthful manner—Christian theology in Africa is indigenous. Insofar as Christian theology from Africa proceeds from a place of tremendous, historic, and oxymoronic contradictions, where the “victims” of ruthless evangelization by agents of Christendom embrace the Christian faith, in joyful irony, Christian theology in Africa is and will always be a reluctant form of Christian theology.The tragedy of Christian theology in Africa stems from the violence of some of the methods with which it was transmitted, the violence of the colonial legacies, and the violence of the resulting conditions in which Africans fnd themselves. 338

Postcolonial theology in Africa

It was in this context that Jesse Mugambi (1995) wondered why and how it is that one of the most religious continents on the earth is also one of the poorest. In this manner, Mugambi provoked the question of whether the link between religion and poverty is causal or casual.6 A similar kind of question is one that is raised in an often used fable about the Bible in Africa: “When the white man came to Africa he had the Bible, and we [Africans] had the land. The white man said to us:‘let us pray.’After the prayer, the white man had the land, and we [Africans] had the Bible” (West 2016: 318.).This fable became a foundational inspiration in the emergence of South African black theology. From it, it becomes clear that neither imperial Christendom nor the Bible (and how it was used and interpreted) was exempted from critique.Thus emerged the question of whether it was possible either to lose the Bible to regain the land, to regain the land without losing the Bible, or even to use the Bible to regain the land, and more.These permutations summarize, in part, the various strands in black and African theologies.

The pre-colonial roots of Christian theology in Africa The contents of the preceding section notwithstanding, Christian theology in Africa predates colonialism by several centuries. Postcolonial Christian theology in Africa must proceed from the acknowledgment of the non-originality of colonial Christendom in both the installation and the sustenance of Christianity in Africa. For some the pre-colonial roots of Christian theology in Africa date back to Biblical times, given the numerous references to Africa and Africans in the New Testament itself—e.g., Simon of Cyrene and the Ethiopian Eunuch. And yet Christian theology, not only in Africa but also in the Graeco-Roman world, owes a debt to North Africa—“Coptic, Nubian and Ethiopian” (West 2016: 12ff). In the frst few centuries, North Africa became an important center of Christianity—with some of the leading thinkers and frst theologians such as Augustine, Tatian, Tertullian, Justin the Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria (Bediako 1992) located there, to mention but a few. In the frst seven centuries of the Christian era, the northern third of Africa, as well as Ethiopia and much of Sudan, became predominantly Christian. The evangelist Mark is said to have established the church in Egypt in the year AD 42. There were, undoubtedly, many people from northern Africa who had already been exposed to the Christian faith in one form or another.The list of nations mentioned at Pentecost in Jerusalem, in Acts 2, includes Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene. (Mbiti 1986: 1) Today both the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Coptic Church of Egypt bear witness to the longevity and the deep-rootedness of Christianity in Africa, way before the rise of colonial and imperial powers. This historical reality means that Christianity in Africa is neither merely nor only a product of the more recent colonial era or the 18th-century missionary era. It also means that both Christianity in Africa and Christian theology in Africa are legitimate realities which do not owe any apology to former colonial or missionary powers for their existence. Nor should these be allowed to set the agenda or dictate the standards of Christian theology in Africa.

Postcolonial theology in Africa in the 21st century In 1989, Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist working in the US state department, published his article “The End of History?” He meant the end of history as Americans had known it. He imagined that with the collapse of the USSR, the ideological alternative to liberalism was being 339

Tinyiko Maluleke

eliminated—just as fascism was defeated in World War II. As communism was imploding, history had supposedly reached the end toward which it had been working: fnally, the world was adopting a single political and economic model: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s [sic] ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the fnal form of human government.This is not to say that there will no longer be events to fll the pages of Foreign Affair’s yearly summaries of international relations, for the victory of liberalism, has occurred primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run. (Francis Fukuyama 1989: 1) Fukuyama was most aware even then that the victory of Western liberal democracy was incomplete: Our task is not to answer exhaustively the challenges to liberalism promoted by every crackpot messiah around the world, but only those that are embodied in important social or political forces and movements, and which are therefore part of world history. For our purposes, it matters very little what strange thoughts occur to people in Albania or Burkina Faso, for we are interested in what one could in some sense call the common ideological heritage of mankind [sic]. (Fukuyama 1989: 7) For a moment Christian theology in Africa, as well as Latin American Liberation theology, had to pause and consider how they were implicated in the kind of change that the likes of Fukuyama were envisaging. It was in this context that Maluleke published several articles (Maluleke 1997, 2000a, 2000b) in which he reviewed the prospects of Christian theologies in Africa within the context of Fukuyama’s “end-of-history.” In his analyses, several things stood out. He cautioned against a hasty celebration of the end-of-history narrative, especially for those on the underside of history. To this end, we have been wary of the new theologies that were being proposed as a response to the new reality (cf. Mugambi 1995).Though the works of Lamin Sanneh (1989) and Kwame Bediako (1995) were not explicitly inspired by the advent of the “new world order,” they were caught up in the spirit of the times. For them, the 21st century promised to be a century in which African Christianity would eventually come of age and be recognized for what it is, namely, a non-Western religion. Central to the work of Bediako and Sanneh was what they described as the shift of Christian gravity from the North to the South so that Asia and Africa became the great centers of Christendom. Maluleke’s sense then, as it remains now, was that neither Bediako nor Sanneh took serious note of the tragic nature of Christianity in Africa. To this date, Christian theology in Africa continues to speak of hope (Katongole) but not of the tragic nature of Christianity in Africa as well as its implications in the violence7 that has torn the continent apart for hundreds of years. Seeking to produce a largely unitary narrative of Christianity in Africa, such African theologians8 as Emmanuel Katongole, Bediako, and Sanneh have not always taken suffcient note of the nuances and the differences between various strands of Christian theologies in Africa.

340

Postcolonial theology in Africa

Similarly, the appellation “postcolonial theology in Africa” should be used advisedly. Not all theology done in Africa since colonialism should summarily be called postcolonial merely out of historical chronology. Postcolonial theology is that which intends to critique the foundations of colonial thought and theology. When theology in Africa proceeds merely based on the mimicry of colonial-era European and American theologies, it is giving up on the importance of its roots and its origins in the early centuries of Christianity. The decolonization of Christian theology in Africa must necessarily include reclamation of its earlier roots as well as demonstrate a refusal to conform to recent European frameworks and standards sheepishly. Thus, convinced of the sovereign character of theology in Africa, we seek to survey African theological thought, looking backward, sideways, and forward. We must resist the temptation for the discussion to be locked either in a diachronic or a synchronic vault.The intention is to look both backward and forward: backward to the approaching century of African theology and forward to the next century.This multidirectional approach (Michael Rothberg 2009) escapes a Western, linear conception of progress. It does not follow the logic that there must be a single point of departure, one constitutive moment (Althaus-Reid 2000: 13). Its ambiguity allows us to make up a colorful inventory of a century of theology from Africa. We are deliberately using the appellation Christian theology in Africa rather than the African Christian theology.This approach allows us to critically review the presence of Christian theology as a guest in Africa. It also opens up the possibility of looking at how Christianity in Africa has been impacted not only by African culture but by African religions. Thirty years later, we know for sure that history has not quite ended and that liberalism and the market economy have not been wholly successful, not even in Europe and North America. China has not become a democracy. Nor has it become weaker.What happens in Burkina Faso still matters to two billion people on earth. The hypothesized end of history, in which all countries would convert themselves to liberal democracies one by one, has, in reality, become a world full of authoritarian leaders, in which poverty and inequality have grown. In his latest book, Fukuyama (2018) effectively revises his 1989 thesis. History has neither ended nor reached its end, he now realizes. Instead, a new form of politics—which postpones the end of history—has emerged. In terms of these politics, at the remotest corners of the world, Fukuyama has noted that instead of moving toward one global goal, people are demanding dignity and the recognition of their unique identities.

The main tenets of postcolonial Christianity in Africa If we were to characterize the nature of postcolonial Christianity in Africa, the following would stand out. Firstly, properly considered, postcolonial theology in Africa is at once pre-colonial, postcolonial, and futuristic in outlook. In this sense, for theology in Africa, postcoloniality is more than merely chronological—it is ideological and focused on notions of salvation that include liberation and social justice. Postcolonial theology in Africa intends to dethrone, not entrench, coloniality. It intends to bury all the foundational pretenses of colonialism on the African continent—so that colonialism is seen for what it is, namely a violent interruption. Secondly, following the lead of South African and North American black theology, postcolonial theology in Africa takes hermeneutics seriously.This means that all the key sources of theology—Bible, Reason, Experience, Tradition—are not regarded as merely given and received; rather, it is understood that successive generations must interpret and critique them and keep seeking the mind of God in such interpretations.

341

Tinyiko Maluleke

Thirdly, social justice is an important consideration in the discussion of both soteriology and Christology.The Missio Dei—mission of God—is to save the world in all its totality, starting here and now up to and beyond life as we know it on earth. Fourthly, if God is the author of the mission, then it is incorrect to confne either theology or religion in Africa to the moments of the Graeco-Roman Empire and less so the moment of European colonialism—as if God depended on either to carry out His mission of saving the world. Fifth, postcolonial theology in Africa cannot proceed without taking seriously the infuence of African religions and traditions as past and present hosts of Christianity in Africa.To miss this reality would be to fail to understand the active agent in African Christianity. For a theology practiced in the face of the current climate change crisis, the pervasive violence between human beings and the environment, the insights of African cosmology are an invaluable alternative to an extractionist, Eurocentric view of the world. Sixthly, the notion of imago Dei—the image of God—is a key category for Christian theology in Africa. It links up powerfully with the African philosophy of Ubuntu—which puts human beings and their relationality at the center of life. It is based on the imago Dei that racism, gender, and class discrimination are considered heretical and inimical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Infuriatingly, since the birth of Negritude, the dehumanization of black and African people, as displayed by European colonialism, is ongoing. Current European dehumanization of Africans is most apparent in the refusal of Europe to welcome refugees from Syria and Africa, leading to untold suffering and unnecessary deaths in the Mediterranean Sea. Seventh, the tragic nature of both Christianity and Christian theology in Africa must never be airbrushed. For too long. attempts have been made to paint a mostly junior but mainly triumphal picture of Christianity in Africa.The time has come to bid farewell to such approaches. Neither Christianity nor Christian theology in Africa is a junior partner of the global Christian enterprise. But then again, careful and meticulous account of its tragic nature should always be given—something that is yet to be done properly and honestly. As much as it speaks to agency and responsiveness, Christian theology in Africa, like Christianity in Africa itself, also refects the effects of the extractionist relationship which both the Graeco-Roman and the Euro-American worlds have had with it. It also speaks to the crucial but also uneasy relationship between Christianity and African religions. Eighth, if African religions, culture, racism, and hermeneutics have dominated Christian theological Africa, gender has now become an important additional category.The establishment of the CIRCLE for concerned women theologians in the late 1980s has given a tremendous impetus to the issues of gender justice in the discourses of Christian theology in Africa.

Conclusion In the 21st century, Christian theology in Africa must stop looking over its shoulders.The question which Christian theology in Africa must respond to is no longer how to measure up to European and American standards.That was a question for another time—a wrongful question posed in error even at those times.The greatest question faced by Christian theology in Africa at this time is: how Christian theology in Africa is in the world, that which only Christian theology in Africa can be? To conclude his book on hope in Africa, Katongole (2017: 265) tells the story of how on October 20, 2002, two Ugandan catechists, Daudi Okello and Jildo Ilwa from Gulu North, were canonized as martyrs by Pope John Paul II. In the process of signing up their canonization documents, the Pope’s pen ran out of ink. He then borrowed a pen from Archbishop Odama 342

Postcolonial theology in Africa

of Gulu to fnish signing the documents. From this anecdote, Katongole concludes that perhaps the contribution of Christianity in Africa to global Christianity is one of providing ink, energy, and vitality to reinvigorate global Christianity during our times. Our view is slightly different. Christianity and theology in Africa ought to have more ambition than merely to revive the fortunes of Euro-American Christendom. The time has come for Christianity in Africa to speak in its name and to assert its right to be, in faithful witness and its unique response to God.The time has come for theology in Africa to engage its continental interlocutors more vigorously, more meticulously, and more consistently. What would a fairly representative profle of an African Christian today look like? She is a young woman. Her Bible is permanently in her handbag. She is a member of the church that meets in a particular coach of the train in which she travels to work. In the 50 minutes from her departure to arrival, a complete church service, sometimes with Holy Communion, is held inside the moving train. Out in the open veldt, she meets with fellow members of her church every Sunday, all dressed in white, to worship and to receive faith-strengthening water and anointing oils. Maybe she attends Pastor Chris’s Christ Embassy Church in Randburg. After much loud singing accompanied by musical instruments, she joins her fellow worshipers to watch Pastor Chris preach to them … as his picture is beamed via satellite on a big screen … But perhaps the young woman is rural and poor … She sings choruses as she carries water from the local fountain and collects frewood from the forest nearby. Her hope is to go to heaven. But before that, she plans to go to University. … And yet the South African young woman continues to believe deep down what her grandmother used to tell her, namely, that rivers are alive, lakes are sacred, animals are like humans and the skies can talk back when upset. (Maluleke 2017: 53–54)

Notes 1 Among the founders of the philosophy of Negritude were Léopold Sédar Senghor (1964)—poet, cultural activist, and the frst president of Senegal—and Aimé Cesaire (1969)—author and politician from Martinique, as well as Léon-Gontran Damas (2011)—also a poet and cultural activist from French Guyana. Meanwhile, various ideas similar to Negritude were being propagated in the United States since the turn of the early 1900s by black thinkers and leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B Dubois. Although the three were not agreed on methodology, they had enough common ground in their resolve to assert the humanity of black and African people, at a time when Africans were roundly treated as God’s step children in the colonial empires of Europe, in Europe itself, and in North America. 2 Senghor, Damas, and Cesaire were some of Frantz Fanon’s most important interlocutors. 3 The aim of postcolonial thought is to bury colonialism, not to praise or entrench it. Postcolonial thought is a rejection of colonialism’s pretense to be some foundational beginning. Therefore, properly understood, postcoloniality is more than a mere protest against colonialism.That is the essence of postcoloniality. In this sense, therefore, the beginnings of postcolonial theology in Africa lie not only outside but beyond the colonial moment. Indeed, the tags “postcolonial” and “pre-colonial” are gravely inadequate and grossly misleading. While the colonial was a violent interruption, it does not defne African reality. 4 According to Harry Garuba (2003) animism, or more precisely, the “animist materialism” writing style is the key to understanding certain genres of African literature, such as the works of Wole Soyinka and Ben Okri of Nigeria. 5 Nor were Africans not involved in the establishment of the latter (Bediako 1992). Some of the key players in the establishment of formal Christian theology were people based in Africa such as Origen, Augustine of Hippo, and Tertullian, to mention but a few. There is therefore a sense in which Africa did not only have a theological system before colonialism, but (North) Africa could be said to be the

343

Tinyiko Maluleke birthplace of modern Christian theology.This is hugely signifcant in that not only is theology in Africa foundational to theology in Africa, but African Christian theology is not the step child of Christian theology. 6 Tinyiko Maluleke, 2015. “Africa’s Opium Is the Religion of Others.” https://mg.co.za/article/201504-01-africas-opium-is-the-religion-of-others Accessed April 2, 2019. 7 Tinyiko Maluleke, 2014. “The Prophet Syndrome: Let Them Eat Grass.” https://mg.co.za/article/ 2014-10-23-the-prophet-syndrome-let-them-eat-grass Accessed April 7, 2019. 8 Tinyiko Maluleke, 2017.“Between ‘Descriptive Haste’ and ‘Prescriptive Haste.’”A review of Katongole’s Born From Lament. http://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/descriptive-hast e-prescriptive-haste/http://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizing-modernities/descriptive-hast e-prescriptive-haste/Accessed March 28, 2019.

Recommended reading Achebe, Chinua. 1958. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann. Appiah-Kubi, Kof and Sergio Torres, eds. 1979. African Theology en Route, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Appiah, Kwame. 1992. In My Father’s House.Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: University Press. Althaus-Reed, M. 2000.Indecent Theology:Theological Pervasions in Sex, Gender and Politics. London: Routledge. Bediako, Kwame. 1992. Theology and Identity. The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and Modern Africa. Oxford: Regnum. Bediako, Kwame. 1995. Christianity in Africa.The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion. Maryknoll: Orbis. Bediako, Kwame. 2004. Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Cesaire, Aimé. 1969. Return to My Native Land. New York: Penguin Books. Chidester, David. 1996.Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Damas, Léon-Gontran. 2011. Black Label et autres poemes. Paris: Gallimard. De Gruchy, John. 1979. The Church Struggle in South Africa. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. de Jong-Kumru,Wietske. 2013. Postcolonial Feminist Theology: Enacting Cultural, Religious, Gender and Sexual Differences in Theological Refection. Münster: Lit Verlag. Fanon, Frantz. 1965. L’An Cinq, de la Révolution Algérienne. Paris: François Maspero. [Published in English as A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1959]. Fanon, Frantz. 1965. Les Damnés de la Terre. Paris: François Maspero. [Published in English as The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1961]. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Peau Noire, Masques Blancs. Paris: Editions du Seuil. [Published in English as Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1952]. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Pour la Révolution Africaine. Paris: François Maspero. [Published in English as Toward the African Revolution, trans. Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1964]. Fukuyama, Francis. 1989.“The End of History” The National Interest 16, 3–18. Fukuyama, Francis. 2018. Identity:The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Garuba, Harry. 2003.“Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, Culture, and Society.” Public Culture 15(2), 262–285. Katongole, Emmanuel. 2017. Born from Lament. The Politics and Theology of Hope in Africa. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Maluleke, Tinyiko. 1997. “Half a Century of African Christian Theologies: Elements of the Emerging Agenda for the Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99, 4–23. Maluleke, Tinyiko. 2000a. “The Rediscovery of the Agency of Africans: An Emerging Paradigm of PostCold War and Post-Apartheid Black and African Theology.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 108, 19–37. Maluleke, Tinyiko. 2000b. “Black and African Theology After Apartheid and After the Cold War: An Emerging Paradigm.” Exchange 29(2), 193–212. Maluleke, Tinyiko. 2017. “South Africa.” In: Kenneth R. Ross, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, and Todd M. Johnson (eds.), Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Edinburgh: University Press, 43–54. Mbiti, John. 1970. African Religions and Philosophy. New York:Anchor Books. Mbiti, John. 1986. Bible and Theology in Africa. Oxford: University Press.

344

Postcolonial theology in Africa Mofokeng, Takatso. 1983. The Crucifed Among the Cross-Bearers. Towards a Black Christology. Kampen: JH Kok. Mugambi, J. N. K. 1995. From Liberation to Reconstruction:African Christian Theology after the Cold War. Nairboi: East African Educational Publishers Ltd. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1964. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution. London: Heinemann. Peires, Jeff. 1989. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement of 1856–7. Johannesburg: Ravan. Plaatje, Sol. 1916. Native Life in South Africa. Johannesburg: Ravan. Plaatje, Sol. 1930. Mhudi:An Epic of Native Life. Johannesburg: Quagga. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Sanneh, Lamin. 1989. Translating the Message.The Missionary Impact on Culture. Maryknoll: Orbis. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1964. On African Socialism. New York/London: Frederick A. Prager. Setiloane, Gabriel. 1979. “Where Are We in African Theology Today.” In: Appiah Kubi and Sergio Torres (eds.), African Theology en Route. New York: Orbis, 59–65. West, Gerald. 2016. The Stolen Bible: From Tool of Imperialism to African Icon. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster.

345

22 THE THEOLOGY OF THE AFRICAN INITIATED CHURCHES Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa

Introduction The encounter between Christianity and African traditional religions (ATRs) has given rise to a new religious phenomenon, namely, African Independent/Initiated/Instituted/Indigenous Churches (AICs). The plurality of terms that seek to capture and express this phenomenon confrms its complexity.1 In this chapter, the abbreviation AICs is deployed as it covers all the dimensions emphasized by the different labels. Allan Anderson has highlighted the diversity within the AIC movement.2 What is clear, however, is that the rapid spread of AICs in many parts of Africa has demonstrated their vitality and relevance. As scholars seek to understand the factors that have infuenced the growth of AICs, on their part, the AICs have mutated and taken on new identities.This confrms the challenge of studying a fast-changing phenomenon. Labels and ideas that were fxed a decade or two ago are no longer applicable as AICs continue to change and transform. The African religious map has been altered decisively by the appearance of AICs on the scene. Across different African contexts, traversing the rural–urban divide and appealing to adherents from various social classes, AICs have become a major player on the African religious market. Seeking to ensure that Africans can convert to Christianity without losing their Africanness,AICs have been characterized by boldness and creativity.While some of their claims might leave those who uphold the notion of a “pure and standard Christian faith” stunned,AICs have demonstrated that they are a force to reckon with.Their theology has contributed toward the emergence of African theology in mainline churches and African theological institutions. According to the Nigerian theologian, Justin Ukpong: The third development has to do with the rise of African independent churches which seek to employ African expression in Christian worship.The mode of worship of these churches as well as their theology have been highly attractive to African Christians in the mainline churches, and gradually the exodus of such Christians into the independent churches has become so great as to be of much concern to the authorities of the mainline churches.This has made church authorities and theologians of the mainline churches in Africa think in terms of transforming their modes of worship to be culturally meaningful to their members. For the successful and enduring achievement of 346

The theology of the African Initiated Churches

such endeavor, a great need has been felt for the backing of a theology that is authentically African as well as Christian.3 This chapter outlines the key features of the theology of AICs. Recognizing that there are some works that have sought to highlight the theology of AICs,4 this chapter seeks to elaborate on those dimensions that are critical for an appreciation of the ongoing transformation of the theology of AICs.Whereas the ideology of most religions, including AICs, is to insist that they are rooted in non-changing and permanent truths, this chapter illustrates how the changing realities have brought with them some shifts within the theology of AICs.To locate the theology of AICs in its proper context, the chapter opens with an overview of the history of AICs. It then proceeds to highlight the key dimensions of the theology of AICs.The chapter has selected the Holy Spirit and African culture for in-depth analysis. However, it also refers to the Bible and experience as sources of AIC theology. In conclusion, the chapter maintains that AICs remain signifcant players in the African religious market.

A brief history of African Initiated Churches It is not surprising that AICs have sometimes been classifed under the term “New Religious Movements” (NRMs). As with most academic labels, the term “NRMs” has its strengths and weaknesses, particularly when applied to AICs. The term “NRM” has value when applied to AICs because it recognizes their novelty.While there may be debates on how best to interpret AICs, it is clear that they represent a new religious phenomenon on the African religious market. Principally, the AICs represent a creative attempt by Africans to convert Christianity to Africa.Whereas many missionaries were keen to convert Africans to Christianity,AICs highlight the attempt by Africans to generate a “theology cooked in an African pot.”5 The limitation of the term “NRM,” however, lies in that it can suggest that AICs are not consistent with the character and identity of Christianity. In such a set-up, AICs become “new and different,” thereby supporting those who do not regard AICs as bona fde Christian movements. The quest to highlight the history of AICs must be understood within the context of the debate over the status of this movement. Gaining momentum within the colonial period and responding to racism, failure to have leadership opportunities, Western denominationalism, theological differences, translation and varied interpretations of the Bible, and other factors,6 AICs have struggled for acceptance within the formal ecumenical structures in Africa. For example, the World Council of Churches (WCC), the world’s biggest ecumenical body, has very few members from within the AIC movement. Most Councils of Churches in the different African countries have not fully embraced AICs, with AICs in many countries forming their umbrella bodies.At the continental level, the Organisation of African Instituted Churches (OAIC), formed in 1978 and headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, seeks to bring together AICs. It is crucial to concede that the study of AICs, like that of any other religious phenomenon, has not been neutral.Various categories of writers, including missionaries, missiologists, anthropologists, and others, have tended to present negative images of AICs.The net effect has been to present AICs as “other,” arising from confusion, dominated by the poor and disenfranchised and as a poor synthesis of Christianity and ATR. However, the situation has been changing, with more balanced descriptions and appreciation of AICs becoming more pronounced.Writing in a South African context, Sibusiso Masondo argues: The historical development of the AICs in scholarship can be traced as follows. Firstly, in the earliest studies, they were seen as not only an ecclesiastical but also a political 347

Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa

threat and, as such, they were called separatist.The next development was the recognition that the phenomenon was religious but that it mixed Christian and African practices.The process of mixing was called syncretism.The third stage was the determination that the AICs were African movements.The last stage is located within sociohistorical and anthropological studies in which AICs have come to be understood as being both African and Christian.7 The historiography of AICs includes earlier protest movements that occurred in Central Africa in Angola. Kimpa Vita, to be renamed Donna Beatrice upon baptism to the Roman Catholic Church, could be regarded as having ignited the spirit of independency in 1700. Aged 20, she maintained that she had received revelation that had the hallmarks of AICs that would arrive on the scene much later: Christ coming as an African, having black apostles, and the restoration of the ancient Kongo Empire.8 Here, it is signifcant to note that it was a young African woman who initiated the breakaway from the Catholic Church. Her example would be followed by many other women in different African contexts who became leaders of AICs in their own right.While in the earlier period, many women leaders were replaced by men, there is an emerging trend where women leaders are succeeded by women.9 As Christianity encountered African culture, particularly during the colonial period, AICs provided their followers with “a place to feel at home,”10 especially as they sought to address the key question in African theology: how one can be truly African and Christian at the same time. Across the diverse geopolitical regions of the continent, churches that were led by Africans, for Africans, and addressing issues felt as pressing by Africans emerged. AICs emerged in different African settings, becoming a widely proliferated phenomenon.Thus: Coming on the heels of mission Christianity and the earliest traces of indigenous appropriations in the form of Ethiopian churches and revival movements,AICs started to emerge in the African religious center-stage from the 1920s and 1930s. The AICs now constitute a signifcant flament of African Christian demography. In an evidently contemporaneous feat, this religious manifestation came to limelight ostensibly under similar but also remarkably distinct historical, religious, cultural, socio-economic and political circumstances particularly in the western, southern and eastern fringes of the continent.11 It is in the AIC history that nuggets of the AIC theology can be identifed. The contestation that missionaries and Africans had over the status of African culture has infuenced the dominant AIC theological approach toward African culture. Whereas most missionaries demonized African culture and sought to preach the message of radical conversion, where Africans would be expected to abandon almost all of their indigenous beliefs and practices, many AICs sought to uphold African culture and accused missionaries of insensitivity and arrogance. The subsequent growth of AICs over time has meant continuous engagement and re-examination of some of the key theological positions that they held at the time of their formation many decades ago. For example, although many AICs restricted their membership to black Africans, the expansion of such movements into the diaspora has led to a renegotiation of this position.Through globalization and missionary work, AICs have gained a foothold beyond the continent.12 In Zimbabwe, radical movements such as the African Apostolic Church (AAC) of Paul Mwazha, who is believed to be God’s Apostle to Africa, have begun accommodating some whites at their gatherings.This is a result of the ACC’s expansion into the diaspora, where members of other racial groups (admittedly, few) have been attracted by their preaching and lifestyle. 348

The theology of the African Initiated Churches

Understanding the history of AICs is also important for appreciating the signifcance of the translation of the Bible into African languages. As the late doyen of the history of African Christianity, Lamin Sanneh demonstrated so ably,13 having the Bible in African languages had a major impact on the continent. When Africans “heard God’s voice in their languages,” new possibilities emerged. New interpretations of the Bible emerged, and established theological positions were challenged as Africans brought their religious imagination into play. AICs were able to formulate their theologies in tandem with their interpretations of the Bible. Accepting that AICs have undergone rapid change across different historical periods is important, as it guards against the fossilization of this highly signifcant religious phenomenon. Even as there is a growing shift toward prophetic Pentecostalism, with younger and more stylish prophets grabbing the attention of scholars, AICs remain vibrant.Their creativity regarding theological positions across the different historical periods has enabled them to remain relevant to the struggles of the majority of Africans.

Sources of African Instituted Church Theology One of the challenges of formal academic theology and scholarship is the emphasis on order and being systematic. All formulations and presentations that do not appear to ft into this template are dismissed as haphazard. The Zimbabwean politician and liberation/black theologian, Canaan S. Banana, protested against the trend. Responding to the critique that his theology was “unsystematic,” he wondered why theology needed to be systematic as if hunger was systematic.14 In this section, we refect on the sources of AIC theology.Although we have divided them sharply for analytical purposes, it is critical to note that, in practice, AICs (like most adherents of the different religions) do not always have the opportunity to refect on the ranking of these sources.

The Holy Spirit The contemporary debate on whether there is a qualitative difference between the older,“white garment” AICs and the younger prophetic Pentecostal churches is mainly motivated by the centrality of the Holy Spirit to both movements. Although we do not subscribe to the school of thought that seeks to combine the two phenomena,15 we do accept that the Holy Spirit plays a central role in both expressions of African Christianity. As we shall elaborate below, the Holy Spirit is a major source of AIC theology.According to Anderson: The doctrine of the Spirit, or pneumatology, occupies the central place in the majority of the so-called African independent churches, especially in Southern Africa, where their church members constitute up to 40% of the black population, a very signifcant proportion. Some researchers have even suggested that the doctrine of the Spirit is emphasized to the almost total exclusion of other Christian doctrines, resulting in a weak or impoverished theology.16 Negative valuations of the key place of the Holy Spirit in AIC theology emerge from the fxation with Western theology, where the Bible occupies pride of place. In AICs, the Holy Spirit is central, and this has led to the dynamism of the movement. Being led by the Holy Spirit ensures that ongoing revelations enable the movement to grow and achieve new insights. For AICs, revelation is not a closed matter.According to their scheme, the Holy Spirit continues to guide the founders and leaders of the movement regarding any matter. Unlike the mainline churches 349

Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa

that tend to operate with a rather closed sense of revelation, in AICs, the Holy Spirit serves to provide constant guidance. The Holy Spirit (variously translated as per the local languages where particular AICs are found) features prominently in the beliefs and practices of AICs.To begin with, the emergence of various AICs is attributed to the agency of the Holy Spirit. Across different contexts, men and women of faith have asserted that they were led by the Holy Spirit to initiate new churches. They believe that the Holy Spirit communicates with them through dreams, visions, and other channels. Out of the three persons of the Trinity, as articulated in traditional theology, namely, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit receives more emphasis. Different AICs have a way of explaining the prominence of the Holy Spirit, as well as the interaction among the three of the Trinity.The Ghanaian scholar, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, cites Harold W.Turner’s identifcation of two theological emphases of the AICs.Thus: The frst is a pneumatological emphasis in which God is envisaged as present and powerful through the Holy Spirit, who reveals the will of God and the destiny of the individual, guides through dangers and flls people with new powers of prophecy, utterance, prayer, and healing. The second is a soteriological emphasis that calls people to turn away from the traditional spirits and deities and traditional medicine men and women, with their magical powers and techniques. They then turn towards the Christian God for their salvation, interpreted in very practical terms, including protection from the host of evil forces that inhabit the African universe.17 In the theology of AICs, all activities that particular churches engage in are directed by the Holy Spirit.We have already drawn attention to the role of the Holy Spirit in the emergence of AICs. Other activities, such as prophecy, are believed to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Prophecy in AICs is a broad phenomenon that includes forth-telling, identifcation of sinners, as well as equipping adherents to negotiate the challenges that they face in life.The Holy Spirit is central to the operation of AICs. From a theological perspective, all the activities in the movement are guided by the Holy Spirit. Three key observations can be made regarding the status of the Holy Spirit in AIC theology. First, some critics charge that there is no clear demarcation between the Holy Spirit and ancestral spirits in AICs.This critique has the effect of questioning the Christian character of AICs. This question has been applied with particular reference to the role of the prophet in AICs. The argument is that it is diffcult to separate inspiration by the Holy Spirit from inspiration by the ancestral spirits.18 Such an argument, however, fails to do justice to the very clear approach adopted by most AICs.The Holy Spirit is understood as belonging to a higher realm than the ancestral spirits.Therefore, the contention that the AIC prophet is the traditional healer/diviner in uniform is unfair, contends Anderson.According to him: The similarities between the healer/diviner and the prophet arise precisely because both provide answers to the same questions. In combating evil forces, both will seek to neutralize the harmful use of sorcery. Radical differences emerge in the solutions offered to these problems.Whereas the diviner points to maintaining ancestor rituals, the prophet’s solution is usually aimed at confronting beliefs in witchcraft and providing an acceptable alternative to facilitate a deepening of Christian commitment.The source of God’s power is found in the Holy Spirit. Prayer and speaking in tongues during prophetic consultations serve to establish the presence of the Holy Spirit. Instead

350

The theology of the African Initiated Churches

of pre-Christian rituals and medicines, the prophet lays on hands, exorcises evil spirits, and uses ritual objects, symbolic representations of the healing power of God.19 Second, the emphasis on the Holy Spirit has facilitated women’s participation in leadership in AICs.To say this is not to suggest that gender justice has been attained in AICs. However, the centrality of the Holy Spirit in both AICs and African Pentecostalism has ensured that women attain leadership positions with both movements. Writing on AICs and women, Chammah J. Kaunda and Isabel A. Phiri contend that the Holy Spirit challenges patriarchal monopolization of leadership. Thus, “[a]s a practical consequence AICs pneumatology symbolically critiques gender injustice as the Holy Spirit does not segregate according to gender.”20 The emphasis on the Holy Spirit gives women in AICs a fghting chance in terms of accessing leadership position. However, the more balanced perspective might be the one that acknowledges the ambivalent position of women within AICs. On the one hand, patriarchal traditions continue to prevent women from exercising their gifts fully. On the other hand, the role of the Holy Spirit enables women to express themselves to a large extent.21 Third, the role of the Holy Spirit in AICs brings to the fore the discussion on the sources of African theology. There is a trend in African theology where AICs are themselves regarded as a source of African theology.This is alongside other sources such as the Bible, African culture, and personal experience. In this regard, therefore, the Holy Spirit is regarded as animating AICs. Consequently, AICs are deemed an integral part of African Christianity. On the other hand, however, AICs are often regarded as “spiritual and theological juniors” who need tutoring by their “seniors” in the African Catholic and Protestant traditions. In such a scheme, AICs need “help” in their interpretation of the Holy Spirit.Whichever paradigm is adopted, it has become clear that mainline churches need to respond to the role of the Holy Spirit and the theology of AICs in general.

African culture AICs have a complex relationship with African culture. Many AICs have sought to defend African culture against the attacks by the multiple forms of expansionist and arrogant ideologies, colonialism, and globalization. In this regard, AICs have provided African culture with a sacred canopy under which it could thrive. Some AIC beliefs and practices have provided a platform where indigenous beliefs and practices have persisted. For example, the contestation over polygamy led some AICs to question why the missionaries were so critical of this practice when some leading personalities in the Bible, such as Solomon, had many wives.As a result, some AICs uphold the practice, charging that it is both “biblical” and “African.” However, other AICs have a confrontational approach to African culture. The phenomenal growth and expansion of AICs are attributable to their generally positive approach toward African culture.Whereas the dominant stance of many missionaries was to dismiss everything African as not being consistent with the Gospel, AICs have tended to be more accepting of African beliefs and practices.According to the late Obed Kealotswe from Botswana, “[T]heir growth was made possible by their inclusion of many aspects of African culture in their expressions of the Christian religion and its practices.”22 The appeal of AICs has been predominantly due to their willingness to engage with the “African map of the universe,” to evoke the phrase popularized by the late doyen of African Christianity, Ogbu Kalu.23 Unlike the older churches that were planted by the missionaries that

351

Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa

tended to minimize the impact of beliefs in spirits (both benevolent and malevolent) and witchcraft,AICs have sought to come to terms with these.Thus, it could be argued that the AICs have adopted a more realistic approach toward the spiritual beliefs of the Africans that approach the universe as intensely spiritual. AICs refect a Christianity that blends with African culture. The AICs blend Christianity with African culture. Mary N. Getui observes African names, traditional singing and dancing styles, instruments and rhythms, understanding the Bible teaching within the context of African culture, and using cultural symbols that are compatible with Christianity; governance structures that are in line with African tradition, such as the council of elders; social family practices such as polygamy; and healing rituals.24 AICs, therefore, primarily assimilate indigenous African religion-cultural beliefs and practices. We highlight some of these below.

Holistic approach to the situation affecting the person In line with African culture, AICs are holistic healing movements.They have sought to uphold the indigenous interpretation of health and healing. Unlike the mainline churches that have adopted a Western perspective where the body is treated at a medical facility, and one’s spiritual needs are attended to by religious specialists, AIC theology taps into the African paradigm of a holistic approach to the situation affecting a person. In Christian terms, sin/wrongdoing “was seen basically as a wrong relationship between the individual and God, leading to disease and frustration.”25 Hardly any sickness is treated without a fellow human being coming into the picture in the African context. The pertinent question is, “Who is the cause of my illness?”26 Sickness and disturbed human relationships are bound together. Thus, the traditional approach to the diagnosis of the disease is important. It is not a matter of diagnosing the illness. The main task of the diviner in African society is to restore and to create harmonious relationships.27 Within AIC theology, this task is taken up by the prophet, who is believed to be guided by the Holy Spirit, as outlined above.

Emphasis on the present reality AIC theology taps into the African emphasis on the present reality. AICs explain and control the immediate experiences of human existence here and now.28 They do not promise personal salvation in the afterlife, and they do not proclaim the end of the world in some distant future. “They are concerned with the life of the individual and the community in the present plane of human life in which case punishment and salvation are considered as present realities.”29 So several rituals and ceremonies are carried out to effect salvation to those who are afficted by sickness, natural disasters, and other misfortunes.They believe that people are the architects of their misfortunes.As a result, the blame for misfortune is placed on people’s misdeeds.The misdeeds offend ancestors who punish the offenders. The presence of religious specialists or intermediaries in the form of diviners, traditional healers, herbalists, rainmakers, and spirit mediums characterizes African culture. These mediators provide healing services. Healing in Africa has to do with the preservation and restoration

352

The theology of the African Initiated Churches

of human vitality in the context of community as a whole. So the chief function of religion in Africa is the healing of physical, spiritual, and psychological diseases, which affect the lives of many people.30

Perception of the ultimate cause of illness AIC theology taps into ATR’s perception of the ultimate cause of illness involving the supernatural. First, AICs draw on the belief that illness is brought about through the behavior of the individual or his/her relatives.This rests on the assumption that traditional African life is characterized by closely knit communities in which people are in numerous obligations toward one another and toward the ancestors, gods, and spirits.These obligations are sanctifed by tradition. Generally, these misfortunes are individual, but sometimes the violation of a taboo will threaten an entire community; if a person is ill as a result of his/her behavior, it is regarded as punishment.The patient has offended the supernatural powers by ignoring his/her ritual duties, by breaking taboos, or by exhibiting anti-social behavior.31 In the case of taboos, the issue is that a taboo is a kind of supernatural “no-no” and if violated will lead to retaliation by the world of the supernatural.This comes as a form of illness or a run of bad luck.32 This type of explanation prevails in the divination rituals of the AIC prophets. Second, in the case of illnesses that come as a result of the behavior of other human beings, ATRs believe that the instigators of the disease are witches and sorcerers. The explanation also touches on strained social relationships.The tensions could be between co-wives and also between brothers. So there is an emphasis by the ATR healer on frst and foremost locating the human source of evil—to identify the witch or the sorcerer.33 In healing, the healer may attempt to purify the patient, counter the evil infuences, and send the magic power back to the sorcerer by reversing the spell. Third,ATR believes in illness brought about by evil supernatural powers. Supernatural powers can attack a person without provocation and make that person ill. So the blame falls on the supernatural powers alone.This can be spirit intrusion, which is the presence in the body of evil spirits. In this case, curing will take the form of exorcism or pacifcation by forms of sacrifce or other material concessions.34 The spirit may be bribed into leaving the body; good spirits may be placed in the patient’s body to drive out the evil spirit.The spirit may also be transferred into the body of the healer, who is capable of dealing with it. Fourth, the prophets employ the African recognition of disease concept as a disease–object intrusion.This is based on the idea that illness is caused by some kind of object in the body of the sick person. The foreign object may be a hair, splitter bone, a small grub, or the like. The supernatural essence contained within that object is responsible for the cause.The disease object enters the body of the victim either by human agency sent by a sorcerer or by a supernatural act of spirit being. In curing the patient, the object is commonly sucked out by the lips of the healer or through a special tube and is disposed of ritually. What the AIC prophets practice, therefore, is consistent with the African thinking that disease has a spiritual cause where it is ascribed to witchcraft or the anger of neglected ancestors and ancestral spirits or possession by alien spirits. So, like the traditional Africans, the prophets tend to assume that healing cannot merely be a secular affair performed in a purely scientifc way in the hospital.35 Asamoah-Gyadu rightly notes,“it is here that African revitalizations movements—both spiritual churches and neo-Pentecostal churches—connect most closely with African religion-cultural worldviews.Within African cultures, concepts of illness and health are usually more social and cultural than biological.”36

353

Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa

The Bible The status of the Bible in AIC theology is also a point of scholarly debate. However, space considerations prevent us from engaging in a more detailed discussion of the role of the Bible in AIC theology. It must be highlighted, though, that many AICs regard the Bible as the main source of their theology, with many arguments being settled through an appeal to the Bible. As we have noted earlier, the translation of the Bible into African languages enabled many Africans to access it more directly than had been the case previously. In particular, the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament is a key theological resource for many AICs. One of the leading voices in African theology, John S. Mbiti (2004), has provided a detailed account of how AICs “mine” the Bible for their theology. He highlights how the Hebrew Bible is particularly attractive to AICs. He illustrates how the creation stories, taboos, and customs, worship and spirituality, as well as the quest for protection, health, and success in the Bible all serve to inspire theological creativity within the AIC movement. Further, he discusses how the Bible’s description of mountains, sacred places, and the land fnds resonance with and justifcation for the approach that AICs have adopted.37 Although the Bible has a central place in the theology of many AICs, some AICs have contested its privileged status. This is not surprising, as even within the mainline churches, there are ongoing negotiations with the Bible. Therefore, it would be folly to dismiss the Christian identity of some AICs simply on the basis that they do not regard the Bible as fully inspired or as being immediately relevant to their struggles. For example, some AICs in Zimbabwe regard the Bible as an “old and stale” text that must be replaced by new revelations that are “live and direct.”38

Experience As with other forms of Christianity (and other religions in general), experience is taken as a legitimate source of AIC theology. Indeed, this is one factor that has been responsible for both the rapid multiplication of the AIC phenomenon, as well as for its dynamism. In many instances, the experience is utilized alongside the Holy Spirit and the Bible to justify specifc theological standpoints. Furthermore, experience has enabled AICs to remain vibrant and to meet changing circumstances. For example, experience has been a valuable resource to account for the acceptance of biomedicine, formal education, participation in the formal economy, challenging child marriage and polygamy, and other practices that projected AICs in a negative light. Also, revelations by the Holy Spirit and progressive biblical interpretation have been utilized to support experience. However, it must be conceded that the status of experience as a source of theology remains contested. According to Lee Snook, “The doing of theology can be analyzed as a game played with scripture, doctrine, history and, eventually, experience.”39 As in black theology, AICs also emphasize the black African experience as a legitimate source of theology. Thus, the African experience of colonialism, cultural oppression, responses to globalization, and other contemporary developments serve to inform AIC theology.

Conclusion AIC theology continues to transform, as AICs respond to new and emerging challenges. Some of the relevant factors include the changing character of politics (AICs interacting with black African governments), economics, and exposure to other theological models through training 354

The theology of the African Initiated Churches

and interaction. It would, therefore, be misleading to imagine AIC theology as frozen in time. Existing in space and time and reacting to external stimuli,AICs are constantly transforming as they seek to address the existential needs of their adherents and clients (including those from mainline churches). Due to their ability to deliver contextually relevant and appealing theological formulations, AICs remain key players on the African religious market. Even as they undergo constant transformation due to multiple forces, AICs continue to be a signifcant and abiding feature of the African religious scene, which is characterized by radical pluralism.They have managed to hold their own against various threats and competitors, principally due to their commitment toward ensuring that Africans converting to Christianity become African Christians, with all the complexities that accompany this label.

Notes 1 Ezra Chitando, “Naming the Phenomena: The Challenge of African Independent Churches,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 31(1), 2005, pp. 85–110. See also Paul Kollman,“Classifying African Christianity: Past, Present and Future: Part One,” Journal of Religion in Africa 40(1), 2010, pp. 3–32. 2 Allan H. Anderson, “Types and Butterfies: African Initiated Churches in European Typologies,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 25(3), 2011, pp. 107–113. 3 Justin S. Ukpong, “The Emergence of African Theologies,” Theological Studies 45, 1984, p. 509. Italics original.The other two sources that Ukpong identifes are “the theological renaissance that had started to brew” early in the previous century and theological pluralism (Ibid., pp. 507–508). 4 Obed N. Kealotswe,“The Theology of African Independent Churches in Southern Africa:The Case of Botswana,” in J. N. Amanze, F. Nkomazana and O. N. Kealotswe, eds., Biblical Studies,Theology, Religion and Philosophy:An Introduction for African Universities (Eldoret, Kenya: ZAPF Chancery, 2010). 5 Klaus Fiedler, Paul Gundani and Hilary Mijoga, eds., Theology Cooked in an African Pot (Zomba, Malawi: ATISCA, 1998). 6 See, for example, M. Daneel, Quest for Belonging: Introduction to a Study of African Independent Churches (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1987). 7 Subusiso Masondo,“The History of African Indigenous Churches in Scholarship,” Journal for the Study of Religion 18(2), 2005, p. 94. 8 Kealotswe, “The Theology of African Independent Churches in Southern Africa,” 231–232. See also John K. Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684–1706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 9 See, for example, Bridgid M. Sackey, New Direction in Gender and Religion:The Changing Status of Women in African Independent Churches (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). 10 F. B.Welbourn and B. A. Ogot, A Place to Feel at Home: A Study of Two Independent Churches in Western Kenya (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). 11 Afe Adogame and Lizo Jafa, “Zionists, Aladura and Roho: African Instituted Churches,” in Ogbu U. Kalu, ed., African Christianity: An African Story (Pretoria: University of Pretoria Press, 2005), p. 309. 12 See, for example, Afe Adogame, The African Christian Diaspora: New Currents and Emerging Trends in World Christianity (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 13 Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message:The Missionary Impact upon Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989). 14 Canaan S. Banana, Come and Share:An Introduction to Christian Theology (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1991), p. xi. 15 Operating from within the phenomenology of religion, we seek to take into account the point of view of the believers. Followers of AICs and newer Pentecostal churches insist on their unique and separate identities. 16 Allan Anderson, Moya:The Holy Spirit in an African Context (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1991), p. 1. 17 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Get Up … Take the Child … and Escape to Egypt’: Transforming Christianity into a Non-Western Religion in Africa,” International Review of Mission 100 (2), 2011, pp. 347–348. 18 See, for example, Tarisayi A. Chimuka, “Afro-Pentecostalism and Contested Holiness in Southern Africa,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 42(1), 2016, pp. 124–141.

355

Ezra Chitando and Nisbert Taisekwa Taringa 19 Allan Anderson, “African Initiated Churches of the Spirit and Pneumatology,” World and World 23(2), 2003, pp. 180–181. 20 Chammah J. Kaunda and Isabel A. Phiri, “African Instituted Churches Pneumatology and Gender Justice in the Work of GC Oosthuizen: An African Feminist Pneumatological Perspective,” Scriptura 115(1), 2016, p. 5. 21 See, for example,Tapiwa P. Mapuranga,“AICs as Gendered Space in Harare, Zimbabwe: Revisiting the Role and Place of Women,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 39(2), 2013, pp. 303–317. 22 Obed Kealotswe, “The Nature and Character of African Independent Churches (AICs) in the 21st Century: Their Theological and Social Agenda,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 40(2), 2014, p. 228. 23 See, for example, Ogbu Kalu, “Preserving a Worldview: Pentecostalism in the African Maps of the Universe,” Pneuma 24(2), 2002, pp. 110–137. 24 Mary N. Getui, “Faith and Culture,” in Kenneth R. Ross, J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu and Todd M. Johnson, Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), p. 333. 25 G. C. Oosthuizen,“Diviner Prophet Parallels in the African Independent and Traditional Churches and Traditional Religion,” in Oosthuizen, G.C. and I. Hexham, eds., Empirical Studies of African Independent Churches/Indigenous Churches (New York:The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), p. 167. 26 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Sighs and Signs of the Spirit: Ghanaian Perspectives on Pentecostalism and Renewal in Africa (Eugene:Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015), p. 6. 27 Oosthuizen, p. 168. 28 N.J.Amanze,“African Traditional Religion in Contemporary Africa: Challenges and Prospects,” in J.N. Amanze, et al. Biblical Studies,Theology, Religion and Philosophy:An Introduction (Eldoret: Zapf Chancery, 2010), p. 299. 29 Amanze, p. 299. 30 Amanze, p. 301. 31 M.A. de Waal, Religion and Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Religion (London: CollierMacmillan Ltd, 1970), p. 248. 32 J.J. Collins, Primitive Religion (New Jersey: Littlefeld,Adams and Company, 1978). 33 de Waal, p. 249. 34 de Waal, p. 249. 35 M. Martin, “The Mai Chaza Church in Zimbabwe,” in D. B. Barrett, ed., African Initiatives in Religion (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971), p. 115. 36 Asamoah-Gyadu, Sighs and Signs of the Spirit, p. 6. 37 John S. Mbiti,“The Role of the Jewish Bible in African Independent Churches,” International Review of Mission 93(369), 2004, 219–237. 38 See, for example, Matthew Engelke, A Problem of Presence: Scripture in an African Church (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007). See also David Bishau, Reign with Him for Thousand Years (Rev 20 6): A Socio-Hermeneutical Exposition of Biblical and Contemporary Millenarian Movements as Radical Responses to Deprivation (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2010). 39 Lee E. Snook,“The Uses of Experience in Recent Theology,” Word and World 1(3), 1981, p. 290.

356

23 FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN AFRICA AND THE OPTION FOR THE POOR Rapid diagnostic and insights from the theology of Father Joseph Wresinski Quentin Wodon1

Introduction Faith-based organizations (FBOs) play an important role in the provision of education and health services in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of these organizations are Christian. One prominent illustration is that of the Christian Health Associations which provide healthcare, especially in East and Southern Africa (Dimmock, Olivier, and Wodon, 2017). Another illustration is that of the large networks of schools managed by dioceses and other religious groups in various countries. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, more than two-thirds of primary school students study in primarily Catholic faith-based schools that beneft from support from the state (Backiny-Yetna and Wodon, 2009). FBOs and their staff are driven in part by a desire to serve the poor, which itself is informed by faith.The preferential option for the poor has long been a core principle of Catholic social teaching. But the concern for the poor is also present in other Christian denominations, as well as among Islamic organizations, as illustrated more generally by the importance for Muslims of zakat, one of the fve pillars of Islam. While many FBOs active in Africa profess to serve the poor, is this indeed the case in practice? What do household survey data say about who benefts from the services provided by these organizations? What can we learn from qualitative data such as in-depth interviews and focus groups on their efforts to reach the poor? And, most importantly, if FBOs do not reach the poor, or at least the poorest, as much as they would like, how could they do better and thereby fulfll their calling? The objective of this chapter is to explore these questions. The chapter is organized into three complementary parts. The frst part provides a rapid diagnostic of the extent to which FBOs in Africa reach the poor. This diagnostic is based on both household survey data and qualitative data collection (Wodon, 2015).The analysis suggests that while many FBOs do make efforts to reach the poor, they (more often than not) serve better off households proportionately more.This is not surprising given that reaching the poor is 357

Quentin Wodon

hard.Also, in the absence of state funding for the services provided, cost recovery constraints for FBOs may make their services not affordable for the very poor. How could FBOs better reach the very poor? The second part of the chapter focuses on the experience of the late Father Joseph Wresinski and his organization, the International Movement ATD Fourth World (ATD hereafter), in implementing projects with families in extreme poverty (for a biography of Father Joseph Wresinski, see de Vos van Steenwijk, 1996). Lessons from ATD’s experience on how to reach the poorest are outlined. The last part of the chapter considers the role of faith and spirituality in informing and sustaining a commitment to reach the poorest. Based on his own life experience, Wresinski understood extreme poverty to be a multidimensional issue that led to the violation of human rights and an inability to fulfll one’s responsibilities (Wresinski, 1987). Wresinski also knew that apart from suffering from extreme poverty, the poorest were socially excluded. Because extreme poverty and social exclusion result from human action, he was convinced that they could be eradicated only with the active engagement of individuals from all faiths and backgrounds. Enabling individuals from all faiths to put their life in service of the poor was a core component of his vocation (de Vos van Steenwijk, 1991; Lecuit, 2006). This is why, from its inception, he created an inter-denominational as opposed to a Catholic organization. In short, this chapter provides three simple messages. First, while many FBOs engaged in education and health in Africa try to reach the poor, they serve better off households more than the poor. Second, lessons can be learned from ATD’s experience on how to reach the poorest. Third, faith and spirituality have a role to play in fghting poverty.

Do FBOs reach the poor in Africa? How can we assess whether FBOs serve the poor, as they often profess? Many FBOs are likely to have poor households in their clientele. But do they serve the poor proportionally more than public and private secular service providers? Do they serve the poor more than better off households? And do they make special efforts to reach the poor? These are three different questions.The frst two can be answered with data from nationally representative household surveys. For the third question, it is best to rely on qualitative feldwork (in-depth interviews and focus groups) to provide tentative answers. Nationally representative multi-purpose household surveys cover the whole territory of nations, often with large sample sizes. It is common for 5,000 to 10,000 households to be interviewed, and in some cases, sample sizes are larger.The surveys include a roster of household members, and ask questions on the types of schools and health services that households rely on to educate their children and seek care when sick or injured. Many survey questionnaires include questions on the type of service providers—that is, whether households rely on public, private secular, or faith-based facilities.The surveys also include detailed data on the consumption patterns of households, which can be used to assess standards of living. A household is considered poor when its total consumption is not suffcient to meet its basic needs. Statistics can alternatively be constructed by quintiles of well-being, from the poorest 20 percent of households (frst quintile) to the richest quintile (ffth quintile).With these data, one can assess whether FBOs, as well as other service public or private secular providers, serve mainly the poor or rather the households that are better off. So do FBOs serve the poor proportionally more than public and private secular facilities? Table 23.1 from Wodon (2015) provides data on the average beneft incidence by quintile of FBOs in comparison to public and private secular facilities in Africa.The statistics are the share of students for a school or patients for a health facility that comes from the various quintiles in 358

FBOs in Africa and the option for the poor Table 23.1 Beneft incidence of service providers by welfare quintile (%) Welfare quintile Quintile 1(Poorest) Quintile 2

Quintile 3

Quintile 4

Quintile 5(Richest)

Public Faith-inspired Private secular Total

Healthcare—average for 14 countries 14.5 17.0 19.7 17.3 17.0 18.4 14.1 16.3 18.2 14.5 16.9 19.0

23.0 24.6 21.3 22.5

25.8 22.7 30.2 27.1

Public Faith-inspired Private secular Total

Primary education—average for 16 countries 21.7 21.8 21.6 16.0 17.7 19.5 8.5 11.8 14.2 20.0 20.7 20.8

19.9 21.5 21.6 20.3

15.0 25.3 43.9 18.2

Public Faith-inspired Private secular Total

Secondary education—average for 16 countries 12.3 15.7 19.0 10.4 10.9 20.7 4.5 8.2 13.2 11.2 14.6 18.1

23.8 23.1 19.1 23.3

29.2 34.9 54.9 32.8

Source: Estimation from household surveys. See Wodon (2015).

the distribution of household (per capita or equivalent adult) consumption, from the poorest to the richest. For example, the value of 14.5 for the bottom quintile for public healthcare facilities signifes that 14.5 percent of the patients using these facilities belong to the poorest 20 percent of the population. For healthcare, the statistics are based on data from 14 different countries. For primary and secondary education, estimates from 16 countries are used to compute the average values for the region as a whole. For healthcare, the beneft incidence estimate for FBOs in the poorest quintile is slightly higher than is the case in the public and private secular sectors, but differences in estimates between public facilities and FBOs tend to be small.This suggests that in comparison to public providers, the reach to the poor of FBOs is similar. By contrast, private secular providers tend to be more tilted toward higher quintiles of well-being, as expected. How do FBOs compare to public and private secular facilities on average across the 16 countries for education? For both primary and secondary schools, the beneft incidence by quintile for FBOs is less pro-poor than that for public facilities. However, the services provided by FBOs are more pro-poor than is the case for private secular schools. A second question that can be explored with the same data is whether FBOs serve the poor more than better off households? The answer is also provided in Table 23.1. Although poverty estimates vary between countries, in most countries the bottom two or three quintiles can be considered as representing the poor. If the share of users of FBOs in those quintiles is above 20 percent in the bottom quintiles, this suggests that they tend to serve the poor more than other households. Consider the frst quintile. On average, 15.3 percent of students in primary schools operated by FBOs are from the bottom quintile. The proportion is 9.6 percent for secondary schools. FBOs serve the poor, but probably less than better off households, as is also the case for public and private secular facilities.The only exception to this rule is for students in public primary schools where the frst quintile is overrepresented. 359

Quentin Wodon

Why do FBOs as well as other education and healthcare service providers often serve the poor less than other households? The main reason is the cost of the services being provided. By defnition, the poor are less able than wealthier households to afford these costs. In the case of schooling, these costs can include not only various enrolment fees but also indirect costs for uniforms and transport as well as opportunity costs, since when children go to school, they are not available to help with domestic chores and other types of work. Furthermore, the fact that many FBOs operate without fnancial support from the government forces them to recover their cost from patients or students. They are for this reason often more expensive for clients (students or patients) than public facilities, even if they are still typically cheaper on average than private secular facilities. Other factors can also play a role apart from the cost of services for households. For example, in the case of healthcare, some FBOs—providers associated with the Christian Health Associations come to mind—operate facilities that provide advanced care such as hospitals and clinics.These facilities are often more expensive, which may reduce the ability among the poor to use them. But also, they may be located in urban or semi-urban settings where the poor are less likely to live, or at least may not represent the majority of the population.These geographic, as well as other, constraints are such that overall, statistically speaking, FBOs may not be strictly “pro-poor” in education and healthcare provision. Finally, a third question is whether FBOs make special efforts to reach the poor. This is probably the most important question to account for the constraints in which FBOs and other service providers must operate.The good news is that there are clear indications that efforts are indeed made to reach the poor. One example is provided by Reinikka and Svensson (2010) in work on Uganda. The authors tested for altruistic behavior by faith-based healthcare facilities that received untied small grants from the government. Facility managers could have used the grants for their beneft or the beneft of their staff by raising salaries or providing them with perks. Instead, analysis suggests that the funds were used to provide more services at a lower cost to the population, with clear benefts for the poor. Another illustration suggesting that FBOs often make special efforts to reach the poor is provided by Gemignani,Tsimpo, and Wodon (2014) for Burkina Faso. Respondents in qualitative feldwork described the marginalization of the poor that may take place in some public health centers due to the inability of the poor to pay the cost of care. When asked about the main advantage of FBOs as compared to public facilities, a majority of respondents mentioned the lower cost of care.There was a perception—valid or not—that some public facilities are affected by petty corruption, with prices for consultations or drugs infated for the beneft of staff. It was also perceived that FBOs were more attentive to patients, respecting their dignity, and going the extra mile to provide them with appropriate services.This was not always the case in public facilities which seemed to simply function as sellers of services in a market, without as much attention paid to patients and especially the poor.

How could FBOs better reach the poor(est)? The previous section was devoted to a rapid multi-country diagnostic of whether FBOs reach the poor in the delivery of education and healthcare. It was suggested frst that as other providers, FBOs do typically not reach the poor in absolute terms more than other household groups. This is not surprising given the barrier for affordability that the (necessary) fees charged by FBOs represent. Second, it was suggested that on average, FBOs do not reach the poor more than public facilities, but they do so more than private secular facilities. Finally, it was suggested 360

FBOs in Africa and the option for the poor

that even if FBOs may not reach the poor more in absolute terms or relative terms as compared to public facilities, they still make efforts to reach the poor as well as other vulnerable groups within the constraints they face. How could FBOs do better? There is, of course, no magic bullet or simple solution. Reaching the very poor with services that respond to their needs and aspirations is hard work. But insights from the late Father Joseph Wresinski, a Catholic priest who spent his life working with the extreme poor, including in Africa, may help.The purpose of this section, which is adapted from Wodon (2001), is to share such insights. Born in France,Wresinski experienced the hardship of poverty as a child. In his late 20s, as a Catholic priest, he worked as a “worker-priest” among coal miners. He later served as a parish priest in a rural area. Sent by his bishop to a camp for homeless families near Paris, he founded ATD one year later with the families living in the camp in 1957 and a small group of volunteers.Today, ATD is active in more than two dozen countries, including several African nations (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Tanzania).Wresinski is also at the origin of the United Nations’World Day for overcoming poverty on October 17, 1987, and ATD has been granted consultative status 1 with the Economic and Social Council at the United Nations. Redegeld (2001), a member of ATD’s volunteer corps, nicely summarized some of the core principles guiding the projects implemented by ATD and how the organization manages to reach the very poor.The analysis is based on a study carried for UNICEF to identify factors that can enable development agencies to reach the poorest and allow the poor to be full partners in the agencies’ programs (ATD Fourth World and UNICEF, 1999). Seven grass-roots projects were investigated in Burkina Faso, Haiti, Guatemala,Thailand, Peru, Canada, and Uganda.While the analysis was not specifc to Africa, the region was well represented, and the insights provided by the study seem to be broadly valid for the region. In her synthesis of the study, Redegeld discusses topics which have not received much attention in the literature on poverty, such as how cultural and artistic programs may help in breaking the vicious circle of deprivation that prevents the poorest from fully participating in society. Redegeld’s starting point is that identifying the poorest members of a community is diffcult. Moreover, even when they are identifed, there is no guarantee that the poorest will actively participate in programs that could improve their living conditions and prospects. More specifcally, Redegeld highlights six points or principles of action that should be taken into account when trying to reach the poorest. First is the need to build and share knowledge with the very poor. Often the poorest are excluded and out of reach.This exclusion and the poor’s own efforts to emerge from poverty may not be known to an outsider. For the outsider to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the very poor, some basic conditions are required. Proximity for suffcient time to build trust with the very poor may be necessary to acquire knowledge of their aspirations. But for proximity to work, the very poor need a clear understanding of the intentions of those who want to help. That is, reciprocity and mutual understanding are some of the basic conditions to establish trust on which knowledge can be built and shared. Second, actions should be based on the aspirations of the poorest instead of their problems. The projects that are the most successful in reaching the poorest tend to be those based on their deepest aspirations. In Guatemala, the poorest families in a village were the hardest hit by malnutrition and the death of young children. A project initially dealing solely with malnutrition failed in part because it accentuated the parents’ feeling of failure. Reorienting the project around a pre-school helped rescue it because it did send parents a strong message that others had, like them, faith in the future of their children. 361

Quentin Wodon

Third, the value of cultural actions (and indeed spiritual actions, although Redegeld does not discuss this point) must be recognized. Human beings require beauty and creative expression as much as they require food, clothing, and shelter. Artistic and cultural projects emphasize each person’s natural creativity.Through them, the poorest may be able to discover their capabilities and their potential.They may gain the confdence necessary to dare speak up and to contribute to the well-being of their communities and broader society. Cultural activities may also provide an atmosphere allowing people from different backgrounds, poor and non-poor, to express and share experiences as equals. Fourth, the family unit must be strengthened.Threats to family life are serious because the family is the frst line of resistance of the poorest to deprivation and social exclusion. While extreme poverty is destructive to the family as well as to social life, a poor person’s family remains a powerful means of personal and social identifcation. Because human beings tend to care frst and foremost for the well-being of those closest to them, family life is also important for the poor to be able to assume their responsibilities (and to show to society that they can do so). Hence a basic question to be put forth when evaluating programs is whether this or that action is reinforcing the family or breaking it apart. Fifth, it is essential to provide a role for the poor in identifying others poorer than themselves. People living in precarious conditions are aware of the existence of others around them who are poorer than themselves.They can lead outsiders to the most hidden and downtrodden families. They can act as the bridge that will build confdence and trust, leading to mutual respect and partnership.This role for the poor is unique, and it constitutes a key element in the development of actions aimed at reaching the poorest. Finally, projects should build on the potential for communities to unite around the poorest. Within each community, there are people who consistently express their solidarity with the poorest. These people are not necessarily leaders, but they are essential in establishing a consensus within a community to help those who are left out. They are also indispensable actors in the development of specifc programs. One project with children living in the street in Ouagadougou illustrated the role of those who already have relationships with the children. Rather than helping the children, project staff asked them who they could rely on for help.This led staff to uncover an existing network of support upon which they later built their project. Such existing networks of solidarity should be sought before starting new projects because they constitute a strength on which to build. Redegeld also highlights several other considerations. Reaching the poorest requires an investment in terms of time. Building trust and confdence takes time.This must be recognized at the onset by institutions aiming at reaching the poorest, and it implies that extra fnancial resources must be made available. Beyond time and fnancial resources, fexibility and the ability to question one’s actions, values, and knowledge are important as well. Now, recognizing the fact that reaching the poorest takes time does not imply that no time constraints should be introduced in projects. On the contrary, it is important to set intermediate goals which can be evaluated as projects move along. Another point relates to the implications for training people on the importance of building projects on the values and aspirations of the people who are poorest and the communities. Reaching the poorest requires a signifcant human investment not only from outsiders but also from the poorest themselves. In the same way that outsiders require training, so do the poorest, a fact that is rarely recognized in traditional projects. As for the mobilization of local communities, it often begins with the detection of local groups such as community centers and schools.The dialogue with the persons and institutions that will support a program for the poorest must make it clear from the beginning that partner362

FBOs in Africa and the option for the poor

ing with the poorest does not mean entering in short-term cooperation. Since the poorest have an important role to play, they must not only be reached but also empowered. Hence project evaluations should be anchored in a simple question: did the poorest have, through this project, the opportunity to advance toward more autonomy and freedom rather than remaining in a cycle of deprivation and dependency? Similar principles are mentioned in more recent publications by ATD. One example is the handbook on implementing the United Nations’ principles on extreme poverty and human rights (International Movement ATD Fourth World and Franciscans International, 2015). The handbook highlights six principles for implementing successful projects with people in extreme poverty: (1) gaining people’s trust; (2) understanding the different dynamics and relationships within the community; (3) assessing and mitigating risks to persons, groups, and the community; (4) making sure that objectives are clear; (5) defning and ensuring confdentiality; and (6) involving people as much as possible in the process. These principles emphasize the importance of recognizing the poor as the primary actors of the fght against extreme poverty, instead of considering them as benefciaries of assistance.The principles also emphasize the need to build sustained alliances around the poor in communities. In turn, this leads to a specifc understanding of the role that faith and spirituality may play in the fght against extreme poverty, as discussed in the next section.

What role may faith and spirituality play? Faith plays an important role in FBOs, providing education and health services in Africa. For education, parents often choose to send their children to religious schools in part because of the religious education that these schools provide.This is especially the case for Islamic schools but is also a consideration for Christian schools (Gemignani, Sojo, and Wodon, 2014). For healthcare, faith and spirituality are important motivations for staff working at faith-based facilities. Faith may also affect the services being provided (or not) by facilities.The very role that FBOs play in service delivery, including for the poor, is often justifed by their religious doctrine and practice. The objective of this section is, however, not to discuss how FBOs consider their role within the framework of their faith. Since the emphasis is on learning from the experience of Wresinski and his organization, the focus is on whether faith and spirituality may play a role in efforts by FBOs to serve the very poor independently of the particular religious doctrine of each specifc FBO. Given this focus, three roles for faith and spirituality in service delivery are highlighted. They relate to (i) the commitment imperative, (ii) the ultimate rationale for providing services, and (iii) the ability to allow individuals from all socio-economic backgrounds and faiths to serve the poor.Table 23.2 provides a simple mapping of these three potential roles for faith and Table 23.2 Principles for reaching the poorest and role of faith and spirituality Principles of action for reaching the poorest

Role of faith and spirituality

Building and sharing knowledge with the very poor Basing actions on the poor’s aspirations Recognizing the value of cultural actions Strengthening families A role for the poor in identifying others poorer Potential for communities to unite around the poorest

Sustained long-term commitment The rationale for providing services

Source: Author.

363

Opportunities to serve the poor

Quentin Wodon

spirituality and how they relate to the principles highlighted by Redegeld (2001) on how to reach the poorest. Consider frst the issue of commitment and how it relates to the principle of building and sharing knowledge with the very poor.Wresinski emphasized that the poorest are on the frontline of the fght against extreme poverty. Their efforts to emerge from poverty need to be supported. They should be at the center of programs aiming to reach them, and we should learn from them what it takes to end extreme poverty and social exclusion instead of simply “extracting” knowledge from them as is too often done in traditional research. None of this is easy. It takes time, effort, and indeed a sustained commitment in the face of adversity. We are not talking of populations that are equipped to quickly beneft from external interventions.The risk of falling back into poverty after a brief reprieve is high for the very poor. Without basic securities and support networks to rely on, the very poor are highly vulnerable to shocks. It is often necessary to hit the reset button when working with the very poor, which in turn requires a long-term commitment. FBOs are by no means the only organizations with the long-term commitment required to succeed. But for staff working with FBOs, faith and spirituality are often essential to sustain commitment over time, especially when programs do not seem to work initially. Sustained commitment is also essential to build trust without which the risk of failure or not achieving progress is high. Consider next the rationale for providing services. Faith and spirituality matter for sustaining a commitment to reach the poorest. But they also matter more fundamentally. The principles emphasized by Redegeld such as basing actions on the poor’s aspirations instead of their diffculties, recognizing the value of cultural (or even spiritual) actions, and strengthening families as the frst line of defense against extreme poverty are all about the ultimate aims of serving the poor.The provision of basic services matters in and by itself, but the aim is broader. In Catholic thought, for example, the aim is to contribute to “integral human development” defned by Paul VI in Populorum Progressio as development that is not limited to merely economic growth but promotes the good of every man and the whole man.The concept is intuitive for many Catholic FBOs (see, for example, Heinrich, Leege, and Miller, 2008). In 2016, Pope Francis even created a new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, but more generally, FBOs across faiths recognize or even affrm that their mission is not solely (or principally) to provide education, health, or other services. Rather, it is to help benefciaries fulfll their aspirations in a holistic way. This approach helps in promoting behaviors that are respectful of the dignity of individuals, with an emphasis on building relationships and empowering the poor toward more agency. Consider fnally the importance of providing opportunities for others, including the poor themselves, to serve those in extreme poverty.As mentioned earlier,Wresinski believed that the very poor needed the support of others to emerge from extreme poverty. He used to state that since extreme poverty and social exclusion are the work of men, only men could destroy them. But beyond the instrumental value of calling on all men and women of good will to serve the poor, he had a deeper objective in mind. He argued that we could rediscover anew the meaning of their ideals through an engagement with the very poor. Enabling all men and women to serve the poor, and learn from them, was part of his vocation.As he explained it in an interview: From the start, the movement chose to be interdenominational, interpolitical … not a-denominational, a-political … It was a right of justice to allow any man, no matter his faith, his ideas, his culture, to move down to the lowest echelon of the social ladder. Any man must be able to transform the poorest family into a center of connection, a liberating agent of other men, a family that saves its brothers. (Anouil, 1983: 18) 364

FBOs in Africa and the option for the poor

Faith and spirituality play a role again here, but not about any specifc religion. The ideal was broader, namely to enable people from all faiths and backgrounds to live their ideals to the fullest through long-term engagement with the very poor. Perhaps the importance of faith and spirituality for Wresinski can be illustrated through the fact that when he founded ATD in a camp for homeless families, one of his frst actions was to build a chapel with beautiful stained glass created by a renowned French artist.This may have been part of his role in the camp as a priest, but it was also meant more fundamentally to bring hope and beauty to all of the camp’s residents beyond their immediate material needs.Wresinski believed that a commitment to the poorest should ideally extend to the spiritual, whether spirituality was tied to a specifc religion or not.A few days before his death, he wrote a letter to all permanent members of his organization from the hospital where he was to undergo surgery. In this letter, he emphasized that It is crucial that we fnd ourselves in a climate of spirituality … I am not … talking of belonging to one religion or another, although it is important for us to believe, if not in God, at least in men. But it is imperative that we create a climate of spirituality because the spirit must inhabit us.The spirit is … some kind of communion to the other, ensuring that the smaller and the weaker the other is, the more important, the larger he is for us. (Wresinski, 1988)

Conclusion This chapter aimed to convey three simple messages. First, we must recognize the challenge that we face in reaching the poorest in Africa as elsewhere.While many FBOs do make efforts to reach the poorest, they still tend to serve better off households more than the poor.This is not surprising, but it must be acknowledged, and the same holds for many other types of organizations aiming to provide services to the very poor. Second, once we have acknowledged the limitations of our work in reaching the very poor, we must fnd ways to do so. In this regard, lessons can be learned from the experience of the International Movement ATD Fourth World, which was created in 1957 by the late Father Joseph Wresinski.Third, and this is probably the most important message for the readers of this book on African theology, we should also affrm that faith and spirituality have a role to play in fghting extreme poverty.This is true not only for FBOs, but also for other organizations. Spirituality need not necessarily be related to a particular faith. It can simply be founded in a faith in men and in the ability of the extreme poor to build a better life for themselves and contribute to their community. But it helps in reminding us that beyond the duty to respond to the immediate material needs of the poor, there is a deeper call, which is to enable the very poor to fulfll their aspirations.Wresinski often explained that the deepest suffering among the poorest is not necessarily due to their material deprivation. It is due to social exclusion and the fact that they are often seen—and therefore feel—as a burden on society, or, even worse, as individuals who have nothing valuable to contribute. Challenging these perceptions is essential, and necessary if we are to build a collation of men and women from all faiths to join in the fght against extreme poverty and for dignity. If this small chapter encourages you to read Wresinski’s works, several of which have been translated into English, it will have performed its role.

Note 1 The author is with the World Bank, but this chapter was not written in the author’s capacity as World Bank staff. It may not refect the views of the World Bank, its Executive Director, or the countries they represent.

365

Quentin Wodon

References Anouil, G., 1983, Le Pere Joseph: Les pauvres sont l’Eglise—Entretiens du Pere Joseph avec Gilles Anouil, Paris: Le Centurion. ATD Fourth World and UNICEF, 1999, Reaching the Poorest, New York: UNICEF. Backiny-Yetna, P. and Q. Wodon, 2009, Comparing the Performance of Faith-Based and Government Schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In: F. Barrera-Osorio, H. A. Patinos, and Q. Wodon, editors, Emerging Evidence on Vouchers and Faith-Based Providers in Education: Case Studies from Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Washington, DC: The World Bank. de Vos van Steenwijk,A., 1991, Le Pere Joseph: Un Chemin d’unité pour les hommes, Baillet-en-France: Maison Joseph Wresinski. de Vos van Steenwijk, A., 1996, Father Joseph Wresinski:Voice of the Poorest, Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship Publishing. Dimmock, F., J. Olivier, and Q. Wodon, 2017, Network Development for Non-State Health Providers: African Christian Health Associations, Development in Practice, 27(5): 580–598. Gemignani, R., M. Sojo, and Q. Wodon, 2014, What Drives the Choice of Faith-Inspired Schools by Households? Qualitative Evidence from Two African Countries, Review of Faith and International Affairs, 12(2): 66–76. Gemignani, R., C. Tsimpo, and Q. Wodon, 2014, Making Quality Care Affordable for the Poor: FaithInspired Health Facilities in Burkina Faso, Review of Faith and International Affairs, 12(1): 30–44. Heinrich, G., D. Leege, and C. Miller, 2008, A User’s Guide to Integral Human Development (HD): Practical Guidance for CRS Staff and Partners, Baltimore: Catholic Relief Services. International Movement ATD Fourth World and Franciscans International, 2015, Making Human Rights Work for People Living in Extreme Poverty: A Handbook for Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, New York: International Movement ATD Fourth World and Franciscans International. Lecuit, J., 2006, Jésus misérable: La christologie du Pere Joseph Wresinski, Paris: Desclée. Redegeld, H., 2001, Reaching the Poorest: What Does It Take? In: Q. Wodon, editor, Attacking Extreme Poverty: Learning from the Experience of the International Movement ATD Fourth World,World Bank Technical Paper No. 502,Washington, DC:The World Bank. Reinikka, R. and J. Svensson, 2010,Working for God? Evidence from a Change in the Financing of Notfor-Proft Healthcare Providers in Uganda, Journal of the European Economic Association, 8: 1159–1178. Wodon, Q., editor, 2001, Attacking Extreme Poverty: Learning from the Experience of the International Movement ATD Fourth World,World Bank Technical Paper No. 502,Washington, DC:The World Bank. Wodon, Q., 2015, The Economics of Faith-Based Service Delivery: Education and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wresinski, J., 1987, Grande pauvreté et précarité économique et sociale, Report Presented on Behalf of the Conseil Économique et Social, Paris, February 10th and 11th Sessions. Wresinski, J., 1988,Aux Volontaires, Unpublished letter, downloaded on April 15, 2018, available at http:// www.joseph-wresinski.org/fr/aux-volontaires/.

366

24 AFRICAN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND SEXUALITY Some considerations Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

Introduction The question of human sexuality has been a troubled and troubling topic in Christian theology, more so in African Christian theology.This chapter seeks to highlight how sexuality has been tackled in African theology, as well as providing some key insights into how African Christian theology could further research on the subject. Besides, a key focus on theology and sexuality, this chapter will also highlight some of the attendant problems that impinge on the substance of this chapter, such as the challenge on the appropriate nomenclature.The development of a systematic or academic Christian theology in Africa for Africans can be “traced since its beginning in more or less the frst half of the twentieth century” during which time it “was mostly reactive and apologetic” (Van Eck 2006: 679). The development of a Christian theology in Africa by Africans was itself a realization that all theologies, no matter how they are named, are by nature contextual, socio-historically, even economically conditioned.Whereas African Christian theologians did question a lot of the theologies that were brought by Western missionaries, they largely adopted, without question, the missionary teaching on human sexuality. As observed by Kapya Kaoma (2018: 9), “religion plays a critical role in people’s comprehension of reality and the context of this study, sexuality.”The myth of “Africans do not speak about sexuality” is being widely attested by scholars now, a creation of Victorian Christianity that was brought to Africa by Western missionaries (Arnfred 2004: 59); otherwise “African traditions publicly celebrated sex—something missionaries found appalling, vile, flthy, and unspeakable” (Elphick 2012: 77; Kaoma 2018: 37). If sexuality was so regarded by Africans, it is surprising that of all the strands of African Christian theologies, none of them attempted to rehabilitate the celebration of sexuality as truly the African understanding of sexuality. In attempting to achieve the goals set for this chapter, the chapter will be presented in sections, with the frst section focusing on the nomenclature of the theology done by Christians on the African continent.This section will be followed by a section on sexuality or sexualities that tries to highlight the key ideas around the concept or construction called human sexuality and how this was possibly understood among African communities, especially pre-colonial communities, without ignoring the contemporary African communities. A brief analysis of Gen. 1 as a base upon which a theology of sexuality has been based in Christian history follows.After artic367

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

ulating the biblical basis we will then focus on how sexuality has been addressed in Christian theology in Africa.The conclusion will sum up some of the key ideas identifed in this work.

African theology or African Christian theology? The introduction of Christianity in Africa, especially south of the Sahara, was mediated by Western or European missionaries from the Catholic Church as well as Protestant denominations.As Africa was considered to be without religion, by implication, it had no way of knowing or thinking about God; hence, even theology was mediated through European experiences. In the middle of the 20th century, African theologians and biblical scholars started questioning the relevance and legitimacy of European theologies in addressing the existential problems that were being faced by Africans. From the mid-1970s, two ways of reading Scripture crystallized: the inculturation approach and liberation theology (Ukpong 2000: 7; see also Gibellini 1994b: 6; Du Toit 1998: 378–380), in which the main emphasis was the desire to make Christianity relevant to the African religio-cultural context (Ukpong 2000: 7) focusing “on two methods of reading Scripture, namely, Africa-in-the-Bible studies and evaluative studies” (Van Eck 2006: 682). According to Ukpong (1984: 501), of the various strands of Christian theologies done by Africans, inculturation theology was the oldest and was simply referred to as African theology. This is possibly the main designation for Christian theology done by Africans in Africa, yet it is a name that claims much more than is done by this theology. Besides this African theology, there emerged other theologies, such as black theology in South Africa, liberation theology in many other African countries, and feminist theology through the Circle for Concerned African Women Theologians. The so-called African theology concerned itself particularly with a desire to rehabilitate Africa and Africans in the light of centuries and decades of concerted attacks on the humanity of Africa and Africans. It was meant to rectify the negative images about Africa and its people that are embedded in certain traditional readings of some biblical texts, and the identifying of the presence of Africa and its people in the Bible and their contribution in biblical history (Ukpong 1999a: 284–286).The evaluative approach, which produced the other variant theologies, sought to “facilitate the communication of the message of the Bible within the African context, from which a new understanding of Christianity can evolve that is both Christian and African” (Ukpong 1999a: 286, 2000: 9). “This method characteristically makes use of the historicalcritical method to analyze the Biblical text and anthropological and sociological approaches to analyze the African context” (Van Eck 2006: 682–683). Interestingly, in the observations of Ukpong, these theologies wanted to develop a Christian theology that was also African, in the sense that it responded to the lived realities of African peoples. In other words, theologians were not simply going to do liberation theology or black theology. Instead, they were going to do African Christian liberation theology or African Christian black theology.The inclusion of Christian and African in the naming and understanding of the theology is critical in that it claims without monopolizing the feld of theologizing in Africa. One of the enduring aims of African Christian theology, in its inculturation model, was to identify resources for knowing God from traditional religious and cultural lives of African people, and with it came ideas about Christology in an African context, and a reappraisal of the Old Testament narratives that appeared closer to African traditional life than hitherto accepted, especially by European missionaries. It is surprising, though, that among the many aspects of traditional life that were considered for rehabilitation, human sexuality appeared to have been ignored. There was nothing said about the way African sexuality or sexualities were roundly condemned by Western mediated Christian faith and theology. It was this 368

African Christian theology and sexuality

failure to address lived experiences that gave rise to evaluative theologies such as liberation, black, and feminist theologies, which “show[ed] concern for secular issues” (Ukpong 2000: 7), arguing that “theology, if it wants to be African, has to say something about oppression, poverty, and marginalization” (Van Eck 2006: 685, Ukpong 1999a: 292, 2000: 12; According to Mushete (1994: 20):“African theology [must be] a theology that responds to the questions posed by African society.” While African women theologians did tackle patriarchy and gender imbalances, it would appear that deliberate focus on theology and human sexuality were minimal if not non-existent. In essence, African Christian theologians have acknowledged that “understanding (and knowledge) is always contextually (and socially) based and related to specifc social circumstances” (Van Eck 2006: 692, Du Toit 1998: 378–381). In the words of Mushete (1994: 19): “All theology is culturally and socially situated.” We understand and interpret the way we do because “we are we.” African theology, therefore, is no different from Western theology in the sense that both theologies are contextually and ideologically driven (Van Eck 2006: 692). For this chapter, we will use African Christian theology, so that we do not imply there is only one way of theologizing on the continent where Islamic theologies and traditional African theologies are equally present, not to mention various other theologies from several religious traditions present on the continent. I think qualifying theology as Christian is critical in a religiously plural continent, something the pioneers of African theology overlooked.

Overview of sexuality or sexualities (with focus on early Christian ideas and pre-colonial African ideas) The concept of sexuality is one that emerged in Europe in the post-enlightenment era and must be distinguished from sex, which has always been present from the beginning of time. As correctly observed by David Halpern (1989: 257), “unlike sex, sexuality is a cultural production: it represents the appropriation of the human body and of its physiological capacities by an ideological discourse. Sexuality is not a somatic fact; it is a cultural effect.” Human sexuality, therefore, is a combination of biological sex and societal uses of the human body for the goals set by society.“Sexuality,” defned as “the constitution or life of the individual as related to sex” or “the possession or exercise of sexual functions, desires, etc.,” frst appears in English only in 1800, and its use signals the beginning of “modern sexuality” (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 3, see BenNaimah 2013: 35).1 Sylvia Tamale (2004: 2) avers that human sexuality encompasses a wide array of complex elements, including sexual knowledge, beliefs value, attitudes and behaviors, as well as procreation, sexual orientation, and personal/ interpersonal sexual relations. It touches a wide range of other issues including pleasure, the human body, dress, self-esteem, gender identity, power, and violence. It is an all-encompassing phenomenon that involves the human psyche, emotions, physical sensations, communication, creativity, and ethics. Due to its overarching reach in all spheres of human life, European powers, both political and religious, became so obsessed with the desire to control sexuality that systems were put in place to control it. No one has done a more thorough job in this regard than Michel Foucault in his volumes on the history of sexuality.The ideas emerging during this period in Europe became central to Christian teachings and understanding of human sexuality, where a strict morality was put in place to control sexuality. However, the association of Christian understanding of sexuality with the post-enlightenment developments must not make us forget that some aspects 369

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

of human sexuality had already posed several challenges to Christianity from its early decades. Major concerns centered on the uncontrolled use of sexuality in sexual relationships where theologians, lawmakers, rulers, courts, and private individuals all wrestled with issues of identity and difference in sexual matters: Should a Jew be allowed to marry a Christian, a Protestant a Catholic, a Native American a Spaniard? What were the children of such unions’ ethnic, religious, or racial identities? … What sexual practices made one a sinner (a common “identity” in Christianity)—prostitution, masturbation, homosexuality, bigamy, premarital sex, lust for one’s spouse—and which were the more serious sins? (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 9–10) These are questions that troubled Christians from the early days of the faith and became more challenging when Christianity became an ally of European empires. By the 2nd century CE, leading Christian leaders began issuing out directions on a Christian understanding of sexuality, and key ideas emerged from the works of Clement of Alexandria, who taught, that husbands and wives should feel affection for one another:“So there is every reason to marry—for patriotic reasons, for the succession of children, for the fulfllment of the universe … For the rest of humankind, marriage fnds concord in the experience of pleasure, but the marriage of true lovers of wisdom [i.e., Christians] leads to a concord derived from the Logos [i.e., the Word of God, or Christ]. (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 27) This appears to have been the dominant, orthodox position of the Church going from the 2nd century CE; however other leading voices in the Church were not as defnitive and clear as Clement, and various positions emerged within Christianity ranging from moderate to extreme perspectives.Tertullian (ca. 150–ca. 240), even though saying marriage was not prohibited, however, “regarded virginity as preferable” and complained and reproached the women who had clothes he thought were fancy and the unmarried women who did not cover their faces with veils (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 27). Augustine characterized sexual desire as dangerous to both “reason and will” and regarded sexuality negatively as the source and vehicle through which original sin was transmitted to all human beings. He also regarded women as intellectually, morally, and physically inferior to men, who were fully created in the image of God, and was possibly one of the early proponents of an acceptable sexual position, the woman underneath facing upward and the man on the top. (This later came to be called the “missionary position.”) Marriage was generally good as long as sexual intercourse was for procreation (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 30). Even though there was no absolute teaching on sexuality, as such, the views of these leading men became instructive to ordinary Christians who looked up to them. While these early teachings had focused mostly on sexual practices, trying to establish which practices were acceptable and which were not, it is also interesting to note that questions of dress and demeanor of women were already being considered as an area of interest.The way women dress was being linked directly to sexual practices, especially as a form of temptation.The sexuality of women was being singled out as dangerous for men, thereby in need of being checked! With time, decrees forbade any sexual activity between husband and wife which did not involve penetration of the vagina by the penis, cross-dressing was proscribed, adultery became a crime for men as well as women, and homosexual activity between men was condemned in harsh language. Prostitution largely escaped imperial or church prohibition, despite all the denunciations of 370

African Christian theology and sexuality

“harlots,” and Augustine regarded prostitution as a necessary evil which should be tolerated to keep “honorable” women and girls safe from male lust (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 31–32). Clearly, while Christianity used the ideas that also emerged with the Enlightenment, the Christian ideologies on human sexuality had been developing through the ages and were on the whole not very positive and were already skewed against the sexuality of women, who were seen as a major challenge to men. Pre-colonial African communities south of the Sahara had ideas about sex and sexuality contrary to the missionary propaganda and contemporary suggestions that seem to suggest missionary-imposed ideas about sex and sexuality were similar to pre-colonial African ideas about sexuality. Before the infuence of Christianity: Most cultures of Africa south of the Sahara accepted polygyny, with families living in house-compounds in which each wife had her own house, cattle, felds, and property. Marriage was an agreement between families, and in areas where there were larger states, rulers used marriage to cement political and military alliances; as a result, they might have a very large number of wives and concubines. (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 181) Considerations to the needs of society were central in understanding the ideas surrounding sex and sexuality in these pre-colonial communities, giving weight to the view that sexuality is not simply a biological matter but a combination of biology and social needs, hence as Africans, how we “do” and experience sexuality is heavily infuenced by society and culture. How and with whom we have sex, what we desire, what we take pleasure in, how we express that pleasure, why, under what circumstances and with what outcomes, are all forms of learned behavior communicated, inter alia, through the institutions of culture, religion, and law. (Tamale 2014: 155, see also Gunda 2010: 164) The control and regulation of sexuality in pre-colonial African societies should not be equated with a fear and repression of sexuality; it was a control and regulation that was coupled with the celebration of sexuality, marking pre-colonial ideas of sexuality as different from European ideas of sexuality. In the pre-colonial context, it appears that sexuality was not a private matter but rather a public matter that concerned the larger group. In pre-colonial times, barrenness was opposed to the societal needs of producing a strong labor force and growing the group, but that does not imply that sexuality was limited to procreation and was secured and limited to procreation (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 181).Tamale is right when positing that Traditional African cultures were full of rich sexual expression, especially by women through dance, dress, song, folklore, poetry, art, and other aesthetics. Far from being prudish and coy, African sexuality was relatively liberal and was generally celebrated. Moreover, expressions of sexuality were not necessarily confned to the “private” realm because of the fuidity between the “public” and “private” contexts typical of precolonial African societies. Men and women enjoyed greater body freedom and body dignity. Female nudity was not necessarily always associated with sexuality. Sexual expression and eroticism was exhibited overtly and subtly through metaphors, idioms, signifers, and symbols. (Tamale 2004: 2) 371

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

Through euphemisms and metaphors, sexuality was publicly celebrated among most African communities; there was nothing flthy or dirty about sexuality and its most troubling manifestation for Christianity, that is, sexual practices. In the eyes of African men and women, celebrating sexuality did not entail being immoral; society was still interested in knowing whether members were using sexuality appropriately because of the other benefts that accrued to families and society at large when sexuality was not abused. In fact, this appears to have been the major problem when Christian missionaries failed to grasp and understand the African conception of sex and sexuality; hence “many sexual practices that were acceptable in pre-colonial, pre-Islamic and pre-Christian Africa were encoded with the distinctive tags of ‘deviant,’ ‘illegitimate’ and ‘criminal’ through the process of proselytisation and acculturation” (Tamale 2014: 154).Among such practices, for example, were practices such as widow inheritance, widow cleansing rituals in some communities (see Heald 1999: 499; Arnfred 2004: 68–69), nudity of women, virginity testing among girls (Tamale 2014: 157–158), and the public celebration of sex and sexuality through dance and song. Besides these aspects, African sexuality also allowed for cross-generational non-penetrative relationships between brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, in which the younger ones were initiated into human sexuality without going all the way, what the Shona call chiramu. Cross-dressing was not proscribed; in short, sexuality was highly fuid among precolonial African communities, many practices were accepted, others were tolerated, or society was simply indifferent to many practices as long as they did not disrupt the equilibrium of the society. Same-sex practices were among those aspects of sexuality that were tolerated and toward which society was indifferent (Gunda 2010, see also Kaoma 2018: 39). It is Christianity, therefore, that took sexuality and sex out of the public sphere. It is Christianity, not African tradition, that imposed a silence on sexuality and sex. The European missionaries and settlers, armed with ideas of sexuality emerging in their own contexts, and their obsession with female sexuality, which they feared, are the ones who began the sexual objectifcation of the female African body.The bodies of African women were now understood as the most primitive and therefore the epitome of sexuality to the point that White Parisian prostitutes were depicted in painting and drawing with remarkably large buttocks … that in so far as the white woman is sexual—she is black.A prostitute, of course, is an icon of a sexualized woman (cf. the Madonna/whore dichotomy), and thus a prostitute is imagined as similar to the black woman.The shared large buttocks are the proof. (Gilman 1989: 303;Arnfred 2004: 66) The nudity and scant dressing by African women, which never caused problems with African men, became an area of concern for the newly introduced Christian religion.These ideas also fed into the civilizing propaganda of Imperial Europe because African sexuality needed to be tamed. If society was going to appease God properly, society had to address issues of female chastity and passionlessness: Female sexuality was everywhere a danger, it seemed, but the enlightened early-twentieth century male medic saw that female sexuality in “civilized” countries had been successfully tamed. Only when female passions had been brought under control was it possible to grant women greater freedom without endangering the whole society.Thus, the very mark and emblem of civilization is female chastity, and conversely, uncontrolled “free” female sexuality is the root of evil, sin, and disease. (Vaughan 1991: 133;Arnfred 2004: 67) 372

African Christian theology and sexuality

It became an objective of the evangelizing missionary and colonizing settler to tame African female sexuality. But, as African men had no problems with the sexuality of African women, they did not escape censure from the foreigners. Possibly due to their indifference to what the white European saw as detestable female sexuality, “African males were presented by Arab and Christian writers as essentially sexually promiscuous leading to the theories such as Black Peril” (Epprecht 2009: 1261). Sexuality, therefore, became one of the key indicators of proper conversion to Christianity. According to Ahlberg (1994: 229, 231), conversion to Christianity was measured by the extent to which the Africans abandoned their customs, and various forms of “safe (i.e., non-penetrative) sex” were broken down. A new morality was being implanted among the African communities that reduced sexuality to an issue of individual morality and something more dangerous than good, hence something to be feared and not celebrated.African women had to model themselves on Victorian European women, who “were not expected to express their sexuality and were required to be sexually frigid.Their dress, behaviour, and mores were all geared toward erasing any hint of sexuality.Women who acted otherwise would immediately be branded prostitutes or courtesans” (Tamale 2004: 3).This Victorian ideology brought by Christians was also responsible for bringing the “missionary position” as the only appropriate sex position for “good people,” and this was coupled with a regulation of the female dress to cover the female body as much as was possible. The paradox of this Western onslaught on African sexuality is that it was also responsible, especially the colonizing project, for introducing transactional sex or prostitution among African women (Jeater 1993; Epprecht 2009: 1263). There was nothing permissiveness or loose about the African sexual mores as suggested by Westerners with their obsession with the dangers posed by sex and sexuality. Africans simply acknowledged the goodness of sex and sexuality and had systems and fora within which sex and sexuality were celebrated. Pre-colonial Africa did not attach shame to sexuality, as was the case in Europe (Epprecht 2009: 134. 2014). Indeed, the association of sex with shame and the criminalization of homosexuality are of colonial and Christian origin (Kaoma 2018: 21).

Considering the basis of a theology of sexuality in creation (Gen. 1:1–2:4a) The preceding section clearly shows that what is celebrated currently as African sexuality is nothing more than Victorian sexuality imposed on Africans by European missionaries and colonizers and is indeed far removed from what pre-colonial African societies understood by sexuality. Attempts at developing an African Christian theology of sexuality must have sought direction from pre-colonial customs and ideas as well as from the Christian manual, that is, the Bible. The creation narrative in Genesis is part of the corpus running through the frst three chapters of Genesis and has been foundational in the construction of Christian understanding of sexuality and gender (Gunda 2011: 93;Tobler 2000: 36).According to Davidson (1988: 5), The frst two chapters of the Bible deal directly with the question of human sexuality. Not only is human sexuality presented as a basic fact of creation, but an elucidation of the nature of sexuality constitutes a central part of the Creation accounts. These opening chapters of Scripture, coupled with the portrayal of disruption and divine judgment presented in Gen 3, have been described as of seminal character and determinative for a biblical theology of sexuality. A re-reading of the creation narratives shows that male and female, in this context, essentially represent the two extremes on a continuum of the sexes and do not necessarily mark the only sexes. In vs. 26–27, God decides to create “man” in God’s own image; God created him—male and female, 373

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

he created them.This text suggests the creation of humanity, and in this regard, femaleness pertains to the image of God as fully as maleness. God is neither male nor female since God is neither a physical nor a sexual being. God transcends both genders as they are both comprehended within God’s being (Gunda 2011: 104). Davidson (1988: 6) is right in observing that In the clause concerning man’s creation as male and female (Gen 1:27c) we note, frst of all, that sexual differentiation is presented as a creation by God, and not part of the divine order itself. This emphasis upon the creation of sexual distinction appears to form a subtle but strong polemic against the “‘divinisation’ of sex” so common in the thought of Israel’s neighbors. While God is not a sexual being, God created human beings in His own image and gave them sexuality, which meant that even though God does not rely on sexual intercourse to create, sexuality would allow human beings, like all other created animals, to regenerate their species and to enjoy companionship, which is part of their sexuality.“The holistic picture of humankind is only complete when both male and female are viewed together. Such a description points to the individuality and complementarity of the sexes” (Davidson 1988: 8), and I would add that the complementarity of the sexes pertains to procreation while companionship is not limited to the complementarity of the sexes. Based on the frst chapters of Genesis, we are left with no option but to agree with Davidson (1988: 11) when he avers that Sexuality (including the act of sexual intercourse) is part of God’s creation, part of his crowning act. And God’s creation is very good.Therefore, declares the frst chapter of Genesis, sex is good, very good. It is not a mistake, a sinful aberration, a “regrettable necessity,” a shameful experience, as it has so often been regarded in the history of Christian as well as pagan thought. Rather, human sexuality (as both an ontological state and a relational experience) is divinely inaugurated: it is part of God’s perfect design from the beginning and will as a fundamental aspect of human existence. However, early Christians, among them Paul, regarded sexual relationships as not very benefcial because they are earthly; hence they valued virginity and abstinence for strong Christians, and only recommended sex for those weak to avoid “burning with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9) (WiesnerHanks 2000: 22). This low regard for sexual practices was not far removed from the Jewish understanding in which, unlike her neighbors, ancient Israel did not understand her God as a sexual deity, while human sexuality was not entirely frowned upon, but it also made those partaking in sexual practices unclean or impure (Lev. 12, 15, 18, 20). But sexual practices were not intrinsically evil, and, interestingly, pre-marital sex appears not to have been proscribed in the Hebrew Bible, though it may have been discouraged due to the low regard given to children born out of wedlock. Prostitution appears to have been tolerated though Jewish women were prohibited from becoming prostitutes. Another interesting point is that Judaism considered “chastity” to be refraining from illicit sexual activities, not from sex itself (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 22–23). In this context, we can argue that the Christian followers and missionaries’ ideas on sexuality were already beginning to deviate from traditional Jewish understanding, but that innovation must be attributed to the expectation of the Parousia by these early Christians, who saw no point in procreating or pleasure if Christ was coming back in their lifetime; hence it was better to devote the little remaining time to making themselves ready for Christ rather than being occupied by things of this world. 374

African Christian theology and sexuality

It is surprising that the pioneers of African Christian theology did not fnd a lot of the precolonial African ideas about sex and sexuality to be in tandem with the initial understanding of sex and sexuality as contained in the creation myths of Genesis. Africans celebrated sex and sexuality, and it involved not simply the act, but it included relationships, values and attitudes, and rights and obligations; it was a full or holistic understanding of how sexuality pervades the lives of human beings.These ideas were closer to the biblical understanding of sex and sexuality as good because God created them. If the Bible is not entirely negative about sex and sexuality, how does this become a sustainable Christian attitude toward sex and sexuality?

Situating sexuality in African Christian theology If the Bible is not entirely negative about sexuality, where do we situate sexuality in African Christian theology whose basis is the Bible? Based on the goal of African Christian theology, which was to recover and rehabilitate what was truly African and juxtapose it with the Bible to produce a truly African Christian theology, it is implied that “there are things in African culture that point to Christ and can be used to serve him and his church.There are others that must be rejected” (Quarshie 2013: 27).To begin with, African sexuality celebrated the human body; the body that would eventually die was one to be adorned and to be cherished and was used not only for the sexual act but to communicate various other aspects of human sexuality. African Christian theology picked on this dimension, like its Western mentors, and undermined it instead of rehabilitating it for Christian use. While sexuality was life-giving and pleasurable and therefore celebrated, the Christian mores brought about a contradictory perspective in which sexuality was roundly presented as negative, not positive; it was regarded as the route to sin (Hawkes 2007: 1–2). People who once celebrated their bodies were now supposed to fear, even detest, their bodies because their sexuality was now a thing of evil, not of good. It appears this Victorian-inspired Christian idea of sexuality as the gateway to all evil has been allowed to permeate African Christian theology, even if there is very little written directly on sex and sexuality in Africa. The Christian understanding is that female sexuality is one to be wary of: women are often challenged in churches because of their dressing, which is supposed to be “decent” so as not to tempt men; women are challenged to acknowledge the superiority of men and to acquiesce to their sexual demands in marriage; women are the ones who are supposed to make the church asexual by hiding their sexual bodies. While it was always assumed in African Christian theology that heterosexual, monogamous marriage was the only legitimate institution within which sexuality could be expressed, and sexual intercourse partaken in, the emergence of sexuality discourses championed by women empowerment movements and sexual minorities have caused African Christian theology to be more explicit in this pronouncement. According to Mutahi (2013: 12), “An important foundational argument in my church is that God designed marriage as a heterosexual union and the following Scriptures are quoted; Genesis 1: 27; 2: 24; Matthew 19: 4ff.” If African Christian theological teachings are to be searched for within churches, then it will come as no surprise that the missionary legacy continues unabated.As Gunda (2009: 247) contends, The “abstinence and faithfulness” doctrine is well attested to in the Bible, which is at the center of the dichotomization of sexual relationships in Christianity as licit and illicit … Even in marriage, sexual conduct is heavily censored with many practices being made taboo. Some churches in Zimbabwe are known to actively teach against contraceptives because of the continued belief that sex is only licit when meant for 375

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

procreation; hence, people must be prepared for the consequences of sexual intercourse. Pre-marital sexual relationships, whether they involve penetration or not, are heavily censored in Christian communities, and dress codes continue to divide churches, with churches in rural communities more particular about what women and girls can put on in their everyday lives but especially when they attend church.Within urban settings, churches in high-density suburbs also tend to be more conservative when it comes to women’s clothing than their counterparts in low-density suburbs. Generally, however, Christianity in Africa continues to show greater concern toward the female sexual bodies and female sexuality than with the male bodies and male sexuality.The celebration of sex and sexuality that was commonplace in pre-colonial communities is now proscribed even by a Christianity that claims to be at home on the continent.There is confusion among African Christians as they seem to struggle to negotiate a clear understanding of sex and sexuality because of the apparent existence of multiple resources from which they could develop their understanding and ideology of human sexuality. [There are] four moral realms or regimes of sexuality control; an African has four sources of sexual authority.The Christian conception of sex as taught by missionaries/ church, the traditional African perspective, the legal frame left behind by colonialism, and fnally the young generation preferred secular “romantic regime,” publicized by global sexual cultures. Since the adult world considers the frst three frames legitimate, it employs them to police sexuality. (Kaoma 2018: 31) These regimes are similarly employed in African Christian theological discourses on sexuality, confning it to the private sphere, an issue for those who have been permitted the blessing of the ordained minister of religion; otherwise, sexuality is to be feared and avoided.With procreation becoming the sin qua non of legitimate sexuality, any other manifestation of sexuality, including those that were celebrated or acknowledged or treated with indifference in pre-colonial African communities, is now theologically proscribed for Christians on the continent. It is through this insistence on the monopoly of heterosexuality that homophobia has been nurtured within the Church on the continent and has been sustained through arguments and discourses in African Christian theology. Homophobia, born and bred within the church, has been termed “protective homophobia” by Kaoma (2018: 28) who argues that Regardless, protective homophobia is a product of many forces. The growth of Christianity, democratization, human rights cultures, and globalization, for example, introduced a new political dispensation, in which militant protective homophobia would play a role. Aptly stated, politically and religiously motivated homophobia is a new development in Africa’s socio-political history. In this regard, non-heterosexuals can be said to be caught up in the postcolonial politics of the time. African Christian theology is struggling with articulating an African Christian sex and sexuality ideology based on an appropriation of the Bible and indigenous knowledge on sex and sexuality. Instead, what dominates African Christian theology is the sex and sexuality ideology that emerged in Europe and was propagated as part of the Victorian mores that were exported alongside Christianity, colonization, and commerce during the heyday of imperial Europe. The negativity associated with Africans when it comes to sexual minorities is simi376

African Christian theology and sexuality

larly not derived from indigenous knowledge systems of pre-colonial Africa, which appeared to have been indifferent and tolerant of sexual diversity. Instead, that is also part of the legacy of Christian domination of the continent, which it tried to transform to mirror Victorian England and its mores. The challenge that faces African Christian theology in the present is how to engage with sex and sexuality in a way that acknowledges the role of the Bible in the life of the church on the continent as well as recovering the indigenous ideas on sex and sexuality to create an African Christian theology of sexuality, without having to be restrained by Victorian morality.The key question for African Christian theology when it comes to sexuality and sexual diversity is one stated fair enough by Ritchie (2013: 17): How can we have a conversation within Ghanaian/African context that is not simply reacting to actions by partner denominations, one that is not forced upon us by pressure from a US president, one that is not channeled through predictable western theological lines? Since, as stated earlier, African Christian theology must, of necessity, address the lived realities and experiences of African people, being silent on sexuality is a misnomer. The use of labels to stigmatize those who are considered to be veering off the narrow path is itself un-African because there was greater lee-way in pre-colonial communities for diversities to co-exist without being explicitly accepted or rejected but all persons being respected. Even though there is so much propaganda against sexual diversity and what is considered to be unacceptable manifestations of sexuality, especially among globally in sync young generations, with their public show of affection always a cause for concern for the Church and the state, the proscriptions of samesex relationships from colonial times have not succeeded in eradicating sexual diversity. “Like respect for ancestors, homosexual relationships exist amidst the post-independence silence on sexuality.This observation explains the absence of politicized sexual discourses in Africa before the 1990s” (Hassett 2007; Kaoma 2009). African Christian theology has failed to address not only sexual diversity but aspects of heterosexuality that continue to confuse Christians on the African continent. Among the areas that certainly need to be addressed are the multiple marriages an African Christian is supposed to go through even if they are marrying just one spouse.There is the traditional-cultural marriage, involving dowry payment, then there is the state marriage in which one has to register with the state, and then there is church marriage in which one has to be blessed by the minister of religion. In some cases, those traditionally married are considered as not married until they have sought the blessing of the clergy.What is marriage for an African Christian? Another element that continues to be ignored or not adequately addressed has to do with the reality of pre-marital sex among the youths, where African Christian theologians continue to propagate the gospel of abstinence even where it has failed. Pre-colonial African sexuality allowed sexual practices and relationships that avoided penetration, hence was successful in addressing the consequences of unwanted pregnancies. Failure to come up with an adequate sexuality education has seen many youths, especially young women, graduating into single motherhood, something that African Christian theology also has not adequately prepared Christians on how to handle. Single mothers are some of the most stigmatized individuals within Christian communities, not trusted by fellow women, especially married women because they are suspected of being “husband snatchers,” not trusted by young single women because they are suspected of going after single men to be their “Ben 10s.”They are excluded from leadership roles and other assignments in the community. 377

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda

Among the single mothers are widows, divorcees, and those who were simply impregnated and never got married; their sexuality is roundly suspected and they are constantly placed under surveillance by the community.Then, there is also the question of “chastity or celibacy,” something that is now widely associated with Roman Catholic clergy and nuns, but among whom several sexual scandals continue to rear their ugly heads. How did pre-colonial African communities understand chastity or celibacy? How does Christianity fully integrated into the African worldview respond to this religious commitment? “Can a life of chastity and celibacy be a freeing option, or is it always an example of repression?” (Wiesner-Hanks 2000: 7). These are questions that African Christian theology must grapple with as it seeks to develop a holistic theology of sexuality. The most baffing trajectory in African Christian theology is its negativity toward sexuality in general, but sexual diversity has been singled out for the greatest attack and condemnation in a continent that was tolerant of sexual diversity or at best indifferent to it.Two central arguments have been advanced by African Christian theologians to justify this condemnation of sexual diversity, that is, African culture and the Bible and an understanding that sexual diversity and Christian faith are mutually exclusive, implying that one cannot be lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or intersex (LGBTI) and a Christian at the same time (Laryea 2013: 15, Quarshie 2013: 27).African Christian theology presents the question of sexual minorities in the house of God as a question of either/or! The truth is that the majority of sexual minorities are highly religious and spiritual individuals who have many great talents that could enrich the family of God, but they are never given a chance because the church and theologians say to them either/or (see Kaoma 2018: 49). The rise of a visible movement of LGBTI activists, both members and allies, has exposed the unreadiness of African Christian theology to address this real fact of life on the continent, with most theologians regurgitating the age-old arguments from Christian history and PanAfrican anti-colonial sentiments, without really considering the exigencies of contemporary life or even pre-colonial African ideas on sexuality. It is the church, not African communities, that has imposed a veil of silence and secrecy on sexuality (Chitando and Mapuranga 2016: 173–174; see also Chitando 2007). Without downplaying the outcasting of sexual minorities in African Christian theology, there are several sexualities that have been outcast by the same. Many manifestations of sexuality that need to be understood have been met with blanket condemnations from African Christian theologians and Christian communities.According to Tamale (2014: 158), The “master frames” (or scripts) of sexuality that law, culture, and religion construct for African people push many who do not conform to the very margins of society—sex workers, rape survivors, the youth, homosexuals, widows, single mothers, people are living with HIV, and so forth.Their bodies become sites for political inscription even as they are constituted as the sexual “other.” For example, the use of the term “corrective rape” or “curative rape” to describe sexual violence against African lesbians (to force them into heterosexuality) suggests that: (a) one’s sexual orientation needs correcting; and (b) there are circumstances when rape can be warranted. Where one expects African Christian theology to be leading in the acknowledgment of the image of God in all persons, and where one expects African Christian theology to lead in making the faith community a place of refuge for all persons, African Christian theology has been inciting and cheerleading persecution and discrimination against all those persons who do not conform to the Victorian sexual mores that are mistakenly presented as African sexual mores. 378

African Christian theology and sexuality

Conclusion In concluding this chapter, it is pertinent that we reiterate some key points on a theology of sexuality within the subject of African Christian theology.To begin with, African Christian theology has not done enough in exhuming African understanding of human sexuality from pre-colonial African communities and has instead adopted Victorian ideas of sexuality and appropriated them as if they were African in origin.This has had the effect of making what exists as African Christian theology of sexuality into a foreign imposition on the continent. It is also telling that African Christian theology has not done enough to articulate the challenges faced by a multitude of African Christians who are either single, widows, single parents, living with HIV, living with disability, LGBTI, and those who choose celibacy.All these are manifestations of human sexualities in contemporary African communities, and one would expect African Christian theology to address these aspects of human sexuality, but they have been met with deafening silence, or off-hand dismissal based on Victorian sexual mores that have been adopted without critique by African Christian theologians. African communities traditionally celebrated human sexuality and did not consider sexuality to be a burden but a gift through which they could enjoy and at the same time propagate their lineage.African bodies were not simply sexualized, and female sexuality was not a threat to the community but was an asset to the community.These are elements that are missing completely in what currently exists as African Christian ideas of human sexuality.There is more that can be done to rehabilitate African Christian ideas of sexuality if pre-colonial African ideas on human sexuality are adopted and appropriated for a truly African Christian theology of sexuality.

Note 1 See also Christianity and Sexuality—Zodml.org, https://zodml.org/sites/default/fles/%5BWies ner-Hanks%5D_Christianity_and_Sexua (accessed June 9, 2019).

References Ahlberg, B. M. 1994. Is There a Distinct African Sexuality? A Critical Response to Caldwell. Africa Journal of the International African Institute 64(2): 220–242. Arnfred, S. 2004.‘African Sexuality’/Sexuality in Africa:Tales and Silences. In: S.Arnfred (ed.), Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 59–76. Ben-Naimah, B. 2013.A Biblical Survey of Sexuality and Cultural Perspectives that Inform Hermeneutical Interpretation in the Ghanaian Context. Journal of African Christian Thought 16(2): 35–39. Chitando, E. 2007. Living with Hope: African Churches and HIV/AIDS, Vol. 1. Geneva: World Council of Churches. Chitando, E. and Mapuranga,T. P. 2016. Unlikely Allies? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) Activists and Church Leaders in Africa. In: Ezra Chitando and Adriaan van Klinken (eds.), Christianity and Controversies Over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa. New York: Routledge, 171–183. Davidson, R. M. 1988. The Theology of Sexuality in the Beginning: Genesis 1–2. Andrews University Seminary Studies 26(1): 5–24. Du Toit, C. 1998.African Hermeneutics. In: S. Maimela and A. König (eds.), Initiation into Theology:The Rich Variety of Theology and Hermeneutics. Pretoria:Van Schaik, 373–398. Elphick, R. 2012. The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Epprecht, M. 2009. Sexuality,Africa, History. American Historical Review 114: 1258–1272. Gibellini, R. 1994.African Theologians Wonder … and Make Some Proposals. In: R. Gibellini (ed.), Paths of African Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1–8. Gunda, M. R. 2009.The Sexuality of Women in an HIV/AIDS Era:The Pastoral Challenge in Zimbabwe. In: Maria Elisabeth Aigner and Johann Pock (eds.), Geschlecht quer gedacht Widerstandspotenziale und Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten in kirchlicher Praxis.Wien: LIT Verlag, 243–260.

379

Masiiwa Ragies Gunda Gunda, M. R. 2010. The Bible and Homosexuality in Zimbabwe A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Political, Cultural and Christian Arguments in the Homosexual Public Debate with Special Reference to the Use of the Bible, BiAS Vol. 3. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press. Gunda, M. R. 2011. Gender Prejudice in the Use of Biblical Texts Against Same-Sex Relationships in Zimbabwe. Journal of Gender and Religion in Africa 17(2): 93–108. Halpern, D. M. 1989. Is There a History of Sexuality? History and Theory 28(3): 257–274. Hassett, M. 2007. Anglican Communion in Crisis: How the Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hawkes, G. 2007.The Problem of Pleasure and the Making of Sexual Sin in Early Christianity. The Society for the Scientifc Study of Sexuality, in Cooperation with The Kinsey Institute 50th Anniversary: Honoring Our Past and Envisioning Our Future, November 7–11th 2007, Hyatt Regency, Indianapolis, IN. Heald, S. 1999. Manhood and Morality: Sex,Violence, and Ritual in Gisu Society. London: Routledge. Jeater, D. 1993. Marriage, Perversion, and Power:The Construction of Moral Discourse in Southern Rhodesia, 1894– 1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaoma, K. 2009. Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives,African Churches, and Homophobia. Somerville, MA: Political Research Associates. Kaoma, K. 2018. Christianity, Globalization, and Protective Homophobia Democratic Contestation of Sexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Laryea, P. 2013. Homosexuality:A Discussion on the Position of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG). Journal of African Christian Thought 16(2): 15–16. Mushete, A. N. 1994. An Overview of African Theology. In: R. Gibellini (ed.), Paths of African Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 9–26. Mutahi, P. T. 2013. Human Sexuality from the Perspective of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA). Journal of African Christian Thought 16(2): 12. Quarshie, B. Y. 2013. Bringing the Case Before the Lord: An African Response to a North American Perspective on the Bible and Human Sexuality. Journal of African Christian Thought 16(2): 25–29. Ritchie, J. 2013. Response to Philip Laryea Refections on the Stance of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana with Regards to Homosexuality. Journal of African Christian Thought 16(2): 17–18. Tamale, S. 2004. Women’s Sexuality as a Site of Control & Resistance: Views on the African Context. Keynote Address Delivered at the International Conference on Bride Price Under the Theme, “Coalition and Action to Safeguard Women and Children in the Family,” under the auspices of the Mifumi Project, February 17, 2004, at Makerere University, Kampala. Tamale, S. 2014. Exploring the Contours of African Sexualities: Religion, Law, and Power. African Human Rights Law Journal 14: 150–177. Tobler, J. 2000. Beyond a Patriarchal God: Bringing the Transcendent Back to the Body. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 106: 35–50. Ukpong, J. S. 1984. Current Theology: The Emergence of African Theologies. Theological Studies 45: 501–536. Ukpong, J. S. 1999. Models and Methods on Biblical Interpretation in Africa. Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft 55: 279–295. Ukpong, J. S. 2000. Developments in Biblical Interpretation in Africa: Historical and Hermeneutic Directions. JTSA 108: 3–18. Van Eck, E. 2006. The Word Is Life: African Theology as Biblical and Contextual Theology. HTS 62(2): 679–701. Wiesner-Hanks, M. E. 2000. Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice. London/New York: Routledge.

380

25 THEOLOGY AND PEACEMAKING IN AFRICA Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

in Rwanda, as we had never seen anywhere before, churches were intimately associated with the genocide. A man named Adalbert recalls … “We sang hymns in good feeling without Tutsi compatriots, our voices still blending in chorus” … “We left the Lord and our prayers inside to rush home” … “We changed from our Sunday best into our workaday clothes, we grabbed clubs and machetes, we went straight off to killing.” Brothers and sisters who had sung together the day before were suddenly mortal enemies.1 When I was doing my doctoral research in eastern Congo, every Sunday we went to church, sang and danced even when we had spent sleepless nights. Often, on our way to church we encountered groups of soldiers with their AK-47s and snake-like chains of bullets covering them from head to toe. Some bullets were arrayed as a crown on a soldier’s head. In some instances, a soldier could carry two to four guns and pistols whose grips protruded from the soldier’s pockets. Strong preaching, vibrant singing, and dancing echoed from Catholic, Pentecostal, and other Protestant churches. Christianity has spread very quickly in Africa, but rampant is the violence and injustice committed by many who bear Christian names. “If peace, security and development depended on praying, dancing and singing, Congo would be the most peaceful and prosperous nation.We are giants in making war but pygmies in making peace,” said one of my friends. Such a dichotomy of faith failing to do peace and justice is what Katongole expresses in the epigraph.As we prayed, I was always nagged by the questions:Who is God for the people who have endured wars and armed conficts for the last 20 years? Where does the preacher fnd the audacity to speak of God’s love, mercy, and protection when along the way to church we had witnessed mutilated bodies? As I write this chapter on peacemaking theology in Africa, I pose similar questions: what is the role of theology in Africa’s milieu? How can theology create peace for those in warzones, and the majority battling with violence, poverty, insecurity, poor governance, hunger, unemployment, climate change, ill health, and corruption? What is Christianity for women who feel isolated even by the Church? How does theology respond to the plight of women raped during war, children orphaned by war, and the unemployed youth for whom the Mediterranean Sea has become their cemetery? How can theology make peace in Africa when the continent remains isolated in global policy making and international relations, yet plundered of her natural resources? And the list could continue. 381

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

This chapter aims to envision a theology of peace for Africa.The Kingdom of God that Jesus initiated and wanted believers to become leaven (Mt. 13:33; Lk. 20–21), salt, and light in the world (Mt. 5:13–16) remains dismal. Although there are some exceptions, like Adalbert in the epigraph, Christians have blood on their hands.Why? Christians in Africa embraced a violent religion.2 Christianity was introduced along with colonialism.The followers have not fully made Christianity a life-giving faith that does justice. Christians have promoted war, destructive conficts, and injustice more than they have promoted peace.Aware of the discrepancy, the Catholic Bishops 2009 Second African Synod was about “reconciliation, justice and peace in Africa.”Ten years after the synod, violence, wars, and injustice remain rampant.The chapter argues that there is a need and urgency for the African Church to transit from a statistical Church (that takes pride in the increasing number of Christians) to the quality of believers. If the efforts of 12 apostles contributed to spreading the Gospel to the whole world, what prevents millions of African Christians from transforming the structural, socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-cultural realities of oppression, corruption, injustice, wars, and protracted conficts on the continent? Perhaps it is because faith has not led to conversion. Today, when life is threatened by endogenous and exogenous violence, ecological damage, and exploitation, it is urgent that theologians re-examine faith and establish a theology of peace rooted in Africa’s reality. Fortunately, there are pillars in biblical and Christian theology from which we can draw to establish an inculturated theology of peace in Africa. After this introduction, the chapter highlights the conceptual framework of violence and peace, followed by classic and biblical frameworks of peace theology. It then traces peace theology in the Church traditions and briefy analyzes violence in Africa. Finally, the chapter suggests possibilities and the nature of peace theology.

Conceptualizing violence and peace To discuss the idea of peace, we shall begin by delineating violence. The World Health Organization (WHO) defnes “violence” as: “The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”3 This defnition underscores intentionality and the use of power or physical force to harm, to neglect, or to omit an act that could prevent violence. For the peace scholar Johan Galtung, violence is when “human beings are being infuenced so that their actual somatic and mental realization are below their potential realization.”4 The actual represents “what is” and the potential is for “what could have been.” Galtung identifes six dimensions of violence: (1) physical and psychological violence; (2) the positive and negative approaches to infuence; (3) the existence or absence of an object that is hurt; (4) whether there is an actor (a person); (5) intended or unintended violence; and (6) whether the violence is manifest or latent. Galtung further provides a typology of violence as personal or direct and structural. Direct violence could have objects or exist without objects, it could be physical and psychological, intended or not intended. On the other hand, structural violence can occur with or without objects, can be physical and psychological, manifest or latent. Galtung further identifes other forms of violence as cultural, referring “to any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form.”5 Cultural violence may not kill like direct or structural violence but is used to legitimize “either or both,” making them “look, even feel, right or at least not wrong.” Dictators, for example, consider state violence as legitimate. The causes of armed conficts and wars include a reaction toward direct, cultural, and structural violence, leading to frustration, insecurity, unsatisfed basic needs, threat over individual 382

Theology and peacemaking in Africa

and collective identity, resource scarcity, and unequal distribution of life opportunities.6 Some scholars also point to poverty, rough topography, state weakness, and previous instability.7 Others emphasize ethnicity, inequality, and political and economic exclusion.8 In Africa, Nathan Laurie identifes four causes of conficts which he calls “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” namely (1) authoritarian rule, (2) exclusion of minorities from governance, (3) socio-economic deprivation that reinforces inequality, and (4) weak states with dysfunctional institutions.9 Violence is context-based.The applicability of generic defnitions has to be scrutinized to establish contextually based categories. Absence of violence is peace. Galtung categorizes peace into two: negative peace, which is the absence of war, hostilities, and violence, and positive peace, which is the absence of structural, cultural, economic, and political violence and injustice.10 National and international Realpolitik tend to concentrate on negative peace and neglect structural violence—“those factors that cause people’s actual physical and mental realizations to be below their potential.”11 For example, international geopolitical, socio-political, cultural, and economic systems and institutions have failed to consider Africa as an equal player at the global stage. Such exclusions dictate injustices and unequal distribution of power, resources, rights, and duties.12 The implications of positive and negative peace are within and between states.13 Negative peace may also refer to the violence and tensions from global structural capitalism propagated by the powerful states at the core of society, tactfully destroying periphery states. For example, international meddling in Africa’s politics and economics and the longue durée of exploiting Africa’s natural resources are structural and cultural forms of violence to which negative peace in the form of international peacekeeping has always been the response. Oppressive structures and systems are resistant to change because their benefciaries do not want them to change. They settle for “minimalist peacebuilding,” which does not address the structural root causes.14 Minimalist peace leads to negative peace. What is required instead is maximalist peacebuilding which addresses systemic structural, cultural, and direct violence causes that lead to war and confict.

Violence in Africa Africa experiences cultural, structural, and direct violence.There are numerous causes of Africa’s wars and structural violence that are beyond the coverage of this chapter, albeit very important to peace theology.These include institutional weakness of the African states, corruption, and the politics of the Belly; human rights violations; state violence; and the suppression of dissent.15 A thorough analysis of each African nation is important to establish contextualized sources of all the different forms of violence. In May 2016, the Assembly of the Catholic Bishops of Bukavu Archdiocese wrote: The growing insecurity and acts of violence have reached an unbearable intensity. Every day the killers imagine and put into action practices that are more cruel … As in a jungle, predators continue to act as dreadful enemies of the people abandoned for far too long.They burn villages with impunity, causing massive demographic displacement towards the cities, where the people are subjected to famine and misery. The criminals kill brutally, with machetes, knives and axes. Some of their victims have their throats slit, the arms of many children are mutilated, pregnant women are disembowelled and entire families are decimated.These are truly genocidal acts … The highest authorities remain silent in the face of large scale massacres, while in other nations who respect human rights the murder of one citizen touches the entire nation 383

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

and mobilizes the highest political authorities. Even the international groups, such as MONUSCO, remain silent.16 In 2015, the bishops wrote: We have diffculty understanding the ambiguities, paradoxes and procrastination of our government. After each crisis, missions fail because the authorities listen without taking concrete action in response to the dangers and expectations clearly expressed by the population … Therefore, we ask ourselves … is the government and MONUSCO unable to protect the people, have they resigned to the situation or are they accomplice?17 Congo is not alone. Violence, injustice, and conficts are increasing on the continent. Often Africa’s wars are dubbed “ethnic wars” by marauding warlords “fghting over minerals in the ruins of a failed state.”18 What factors, political and economic systems, created failed states and consequent violence? Violence on the continent refects the colonial ghosts and “a paradigm of all that was wrong with post-colonial Africa.”19 Patrick Bond sums up Africa’s tragedy: Trade by force dating back centuries; slavery that uprooted and dispossessed around 12 million African; land grabs; vicious taxation schemes; precious metals spirited away; the appropriation of antiquities to the British (and Belgium) museum and other trophy rooms; the nineteenth-century emergence of racist ideologies to justify colonialism; the 1884–5 carve up of Africa, in a Berlin negotiating room, into dysfunctional territories; the construction of settler-colonial and extractive—colonial systems … the Germany occupation of Namibia … King Leopold Belgian Congo … Cold War battlegrounds—proxies for US/USSR conficts-flled with millions of corpses; other wars catalysed by mineral searches and offshoot violence such as witnessed in blood diamonds and coltan; poachers—stripped swathes of East, Central and Southern Africa now devoid of rhinos and elephant whose ivory became ornamental material or aphrodisiac … and the list could continue.20 Colonialism and slavery fractured the African identity and cultures. Africa was considered terra incognita without religion, epistemology, axiology, philosophy, or culture. Africans were conditioned to consider themselves and their cultures as inferior.21 When the collective identity and culture are threatened or destroyed, conficts are inevitable.Ali Mazrui trenchantly opines:“The seeds of the postcolonial wars themselves lie in the sociological mess which colonialism created in Africa by destroying old methods of confict resolution without creating effective [substitutes] in their place.”22 It is the colonial conditioning of the Hutu as inferior that contributed to the Rwandan genocide.The waters of baptism did not transform the colonial wounds. The parceling of Africa during the Berlin conference disregarded sociological and political realities since it was not intended for the well-being of the Africans.The unilateral borders divided communities to facilitate colonial administration, resource plundering, and hegemony. Arbitrary borders and strangely shaped constellations such as the sprawling giant Congo and neighboring mini-states of Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda were created with convergent or dissonant values, attitudes, ideation, and worldviews.23 “The wider the value dissonance in contending groups … the more violent the internal process of the post-colonial African state.”24 Daily, millions of Africans are victims of statelessness, denied citizenship, forced expulsion, and landlessness in the absence of documentary proof, which governments “deliberately make diffcult or even impossible to obtain.”25 384

Theology and peacemaking in Africa

Recently I came across the Economist magazine of May 25–31, 1996. The pages were torn and I won’t be able to quote them.The page described the phenomenon of deliberately looting and impoverishing the Global South as follows: For years the North wrung its hands about poverty in the developing countries, and asked what could be done to relieve those countries’ misery. Now, for the most part, the North no longer feels guilty about its wealth, or anxious to see the South do better; rather, it feels anxious about its wealth, and would prefer on the whole (but off the record) that the South stayed poor. The former president of France, Jacques Chirac, admitted,“We have to be honest and acknowledge that a large amount of money in our banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.Without Africa, France will slide down in the rank of a third world power.”26 For centuries, looting from Africa has enriched Western nations. Stealing from Africa appears to be a sacred duty, and not a crime that requires prosecution. In an international system where poor nations must be poorer for the rich to become richer and maintain their affuence, disenfranchised people are resorting to terrorism, forming or joining armed groups. As of August 2019, seven of the ffteen UN peacekeeping operations are in sub-Saharan Africa, spread among western Sahara, Mali, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),Abyei, South Sudan, and Darfur.A closer examination of these conficts suggests their connection to natural resource looting. War continues to be the modus operandi for accessing and exploiting Africa’s resources. Multinational corporations (MNCs) with the support of their home governments continue to violently plunder Africa’s resources with impunity.They often collaborate with political elites. During the Second Congo War,Archbishop Kataliko wrote: Foreign powers in collaboration with some of our Congolese brothers, organize wars using the resources of our country. These resources, which should be used for our development, for the education of our children, for healing the sick, in short, so that we may live more humanely, are used to kill us. Moreover, our country and ourselves have become objects of exploitation worse than the colonial era … Everything of value has been looted, wrecked and taken abroad or simply destroyed. … Our brothers and sisters in the countryside are massacred at a large scale … The moral decline of some of our compatriots has reached such an absurd level that they do not hesitate to betray their brothers for a bill of ten or twenty dollars.27 Foreign governments and MNCs collaborating with militias and indigenous elites beneft from both war and resource exploitation. As Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Žižek has put it, Beneath the façade of ethnic warfare, we … discern the workings of global capitalism … Each of the warlords has business links to a foreign company or corporation exploiting the mostly mining wealth in the region.This arrangement suits both parties: the corporations get mining rights without taxes and other complications, while the warlords get rich … forget about the savage behavior of the local population, just remove the foreign high-tech companies from the equation and the whole edifce of ethnic warfare fueled by old passions fall apart … There is a great deal of darkness in the dense Congolese jungle but its causes lie elsewhere, in the bright executive offces of our banks and high-tech companies.28 385

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

There is also civil unrest and armed conficts in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria. Instability is rife in Burkina Faso, South Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi, Uganda, Burundi, Senegal, and Zimbabwe. Nations such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Rwanda, and Uganda that are considered to be in the post-war reconstruction phase are embroiled in various forms of structural and cultural violence, including the suppression of dissent and corruption. Terrorism is also rife on the continent. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Shabab, Boko Haram, and the Lord’s Resistance Army are among the prominent terrorist groups on the continent. Under the pretext of suppressing terrorism,Africa is being militarized by super and emerging powers waging proxy wars.The U.S.Africa Command (AFRICOM) has more than 34 military bases across the continent.29 Since AFRICOM began operating in 2008, violence has escalated in Africa.30 Other nations, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France, Japan, India, and Italy, also possess military posts. Africa’s wars and violence are a business that combines the selling of arms, looting of resources, and securing employment to international actors. International peacekeeping in Africa is monopolized by the UN Security Council (UNSC). Permanent members with the veto power (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) at the UNSC are Africa’s former colonizers, old and new natural resource exploiters. Are these nations interested in Africa’s sustainable peace? They are also the world’s largest arms exporters.Their arms industries proft only when there are wars.Africa is a lucrative market for weapons. Peacemaking and peacebuilding on the continent remain a prerogative of Western technocrats, in collaboration with indigenous political elites who are often insulated from the violence and social injustices.Technocrats harbor the colonial mentality that grassroots violence survivors are ignorant. They do not consult them. As L. Magesa argues, Western and Africa’s political elites’, INGOs’, and peacekeepers’ cultures, ideology, rules, standard procedures, and modus operandi are not contextualized. Political elites “cunningly smother reform initiatives but without completely suffocating them,”31 to guarantee cash fow and not distress donors. Peacekeepers and technocrats are employed as long as wars and instability persist. Do they want the wars to end? As wars rage and resources are exploited, the environment is destroyed, leading to climate change and environmental wars as livelihood resources become scarce. In the words of the environmentalist Bassey Nnimmo, the continent is “being cooked.”32 Yet, with the advancement of technology and the insatiable demand for technological devices, resource looting, wars, and ecological damages are increasing rather than reducing. Heat waves, droughts, famine, foods, and disease are increasingly concomitant with desertifcation and deforestation. Africa, though rich in natural resources and human capital, is grappling with wars, human and national security issues, corruption, poor leadership and governance, climate change, poverty, and unemployment. The tragedy is that Africa continues to suffer from an engraved inferiority complex, leading to mistaken beliefs that modernity is tantamount to discarding the African identity, what we are or have been and the values that sustain our well-being. We are abandoning African values, including those pertaining to peacemaking.Values such as Ubuntu (humanism) and care for the common good have been replaced by individualism, greed, material obsession, bigotry, and selfshness. Corruption is rampant in African governments and institutions. Development is hampered because national coffers are emptied and foreign aid swindled to beneft the few corrupt offcials at the expense of the majority.As the epigraph at the beginning of this section illustrates, in many countries crime and violence are increasing, as well as poverty. Millions of children in Africa die of preventable and curable diseases, while military expenditures are soaring. Millions of people are starving and children are malnourished, while the rich few are dying of obesity-related diseases. Local hospitals are lacking medicines, and the politicians responsible 386

Theology and peacemaking in Africa

seek medical treatment abroad. Western cultures and practices are applauded more than what is African. Speaking Western languages is considered as belonging to a high class, while local languages are considered as backward. In Africa’s cities, people forego hours of work or sleep to watch Manchester United, Man United, and Chelsea football games, more than the local games. Africa faces a crisis of identity, morality, and values which worsens as modernity and globalization advance. War and structural violence refect the loss of values and lack of respect for the “black” other. Since violence is context-based, every society has its understanding and indicators of peace.33 Therefore, the need for an Africanized and decolonized theology of peacemaking, peacebuilding, and peacekeeping is urgent. It should be rooted in African cultures and the challenges facing the continent. In the Catholic Church, inculturation was one of the major themes of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and the 1994 African Synod of Bishops embraced the theme. Similarly, the theology of peacemaking in Africa needs to be inculturated because the continent faces unique problems that require an Africanized peace architecture.Yet peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and security remain politicized, following the liberal and neoliberal discourses from the global north. Classical and biblical foundations of peace theology are imperative to the creating of an Africanized peace theology.

Classic and Biblical framework of peace theology The classic and simplest defnition of theology is attributed to St.Anselm who defned theology as “faith seeking understanding.” In contrast, Peter Abelard, a medieval French philosopher and theologian, insisted on understanding before believing.Theologizing tends to fall between these two categories, that is, theologizing in order to understand God and using one’s faith to grow deeper in relationship with God, other human beings, and the world at large.There is nothing alien to faith. As Magesa notes, in African spirituality everything is sacred.34 The challenge for Christians is to broaden spiritual life to the wholeness of life in the African worldview.35 Amid world violence, injustices, dehumanizing relationships, and ecological damages, what do we mean by a theology of peace? Peace theology “refers to and refects upon God’s relationship and transformation of that violence, and our participation in God’s transforming nonviolence. Our theology seeks to pinpoint God’s way out of violence and enter into that struggle.”36 Peace theology implies bringing God’s principles into the world.And since no one has ever seen God, Christians derive those principles from the Bible. Shalom (peace) is the essence of the Hebrew Scripture. Cluse Westermann provides three meanings of shalom:37 (1) “Wholeness or wellness in a comprehensive sense—that is, the wellbeing or welfare of the person in community, including all areas of human existence, a healthy human existence in all its possibility” (p. 21). (2) Peace carries a political implication as a “contrast between war and peace as an alternative condition” (p. 32). (3) Shalom has a messianic and eschatological sense (pp. 35–36).The Messiah is the prince of peace (Is. 9:6).The Suffering Servant is the culmination of wholeness, that is, the shalom that redeems humanity from sin.“He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed” (Is. 53:5).The liturgical prayer on Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) reads: “We turn to You once more to cry out our longing and the longing of all men and women for a beginning of that wholeness we call peace.”38 Shalom is the fullness of life in God (see Gen. 6:1–4). Early in His public ministry in Galilee, Jesus provides the peace rationale in His Sermon on the Mount, also known as the “Beatitudes.” He declares “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” (Mt. 5:9).There are conficting interpretations of the 387

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

Sermon on the Mount. Since Jesus’ preaching combined the eschatological framework with the present, the Sermon concerns personal and communal ways of living as a preparation for the afterlife.39 As Jesus was preparing for his passion, he said to His disciples:“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn. 14:27). He later declares,“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33). Jesus came to lead believers into the way of peace (Lk. 1:79). After the resurrection, peace was the frst gift Jesus bestowed upon His disciples—“peace be with you” (John 20:19). He further reiterates the peace statement in connection to mission. “Peace be with you. As the father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21). Eight days later, He meets the disciples and says again:“Peace be with you” (Jn. 20:26). Peace is an empowerment to counteract the fears of living in the violent world. In Pauline theology, all letters begin with “grace and peace” (Rm. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3: Eph. 1:2; 1 Thes. 1:1; 2 Thes. 1:2; Titus 1:4; Phil. 1:3; 1 Pt. 1:2; 2 Pt. 1:2). Jesus is the fullness of peace. For He is our peace; in his fesh he has made both groups (Jews and Gentiles) into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. (Eph. 2: 14–17) Christianity is therefore a reconciling ministry of human beings and the whole of creation toward the universal peace intended by God eternally. The biblical delineation of peace goes beyond the absence of physical violence. Peace is justice, righteousness, compassion, right relationships, care for the weak, and meeting their basic needs.

Ecclesiological dimensions of peace theology Religion and Christian denominations have a history of violence.40 But churches including the Catholic, Protestant,Anabaptist, Evangelical, and the Quakers have all committed to peace. John Howard Yoder, the American Mennonite theologian and ethicist, argues that pacifsm is the calling for all Christians. He wrote: We must proclaim to every Christian that pacifsm is not the prophetic vocation for few, but that every member of the body of Christ is called to absolute non-resistance in the discipleship and to abandonment of all loyalties which counter that obedience, including the desire to be effective immediately or to make oneself responsible for civil justice.41 The Anabaptists (now Mennonites and Hutterites), the Quakers, and the Brethren are popularly called the “historic peace churches … because they refused to take part in war.”42 The Quakers believe that war is contradictory to the spirit and teachings of Christ. Starting with the apostles, the Church’s commitment to justice and peace has led to persecution by the state. Walter Klassen notes that the Church’s refusal to obey the government led the Anabaptists to be considered as rebels.43 He explains how “their seriousness about conforming with all their force to the perfect example of Christ as they saw it that brought them into confict with the prevailing order at so many points.They adopted a radical, uncompromising discipleship.”44 The Anabaptists instructed their followers that fghting 388

Theology and peacemaking in Africa

and killing were contrary to the law of love,“no matter how much the situation might seem to demand it.”45 The Catholic Church’s commitment to social justice, peace, and reconciliation is articulated through the Social Teachings and the Catholic magisterium. The Church involves itself with issues pertaining to peace, human dignity, care for creation, justice, capital punishment, capitalism, the common good and community, development, duties and rights, solidarity, family, immigration, option for the poor, and workers’ rights. Popes, local bishops, and national and regional episcopal conferences express the commitment to peace through encyclicals and apostolic exhortations available on the Vatican’s website and actions to transform violence and injustices.The encyclicals written since 1891 and others written by recent Popes, namely John Paul II, Benedict IV, and Pope Francis, are as follows: 1. Rerum Novarum (on the Conditions of Labor, 1891) which addressed the plight of industrial workers in the early stages of the industrial revolution. Pope Leo XIII stressed the dignity of work, the right to private property, and the right to form and join professional associations. Workers must be liberated from the savagery of capitalist greed that uses fellow human beings for proft. 2. In Quadragesimo Anno (after 40 years, 1931) Pope Pius XI calls for the establishment of a social order based on the distribution of wealth among people. 3. Mater et Magistra (Mother and Teacher, 1961) affrms the role of the Church as teacher and guardian of the poor and the oppressed. Pope John XXIII calls on national and international leaders to understand and practice the principle of the common good by caring for the well-being of all people so that they may live their lives to the full. 4. Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth, 1963) calls on governments to acknowledge, respect, reconcile, promote, and protect the rights and duties of all people. Pope John XXIII stated that “if any government does not acknowledge and violates the rights of the human person, it not only fails in its duty, but its orders lack juridical force” (p. 61). In other words, the leadership becomes illegitimate. 5. The Second Vatican Council document Gaudium Et Spes (The Church in the Modern World, 1965) focuses on people’s griefs and anxieties, especially the poor in the modern world. Highlighted are the modern problems that create wars and conficts including arms race, capitalism, unequal distribution of wealth, the lack of justice, and peace. In order to build up peace above all the causes of discord among men, especially injustice, which foment wars must be rooted out. Not a few of these causes come from excessive economic inequalities and from putting off the steps needed to remedy them. Other causes of discord, however, have their source in the desire to dominate and in a contempt for persons.And, if we look for deeper causes, we fnd them in human envy, distrust, pride, and other egotistical passions. (p. 83) 6. Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples, 1967). Pope Paul VI emphasizes that development is not mere economic growth. Authentic development must be integral and promote the well-being of all people.Theology is crucial to foster liberation from injustices and create human conditions rooted in genuine human values. 7. Octagesima Adveniens (A Call to Action, 1971). Aware of the need for renewing local and international social structures, Pope Paul VI calls on Christians to participate in social and political reform as a vivid form of living out the Gospel. He wrote: 389

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

Let every person examine themselves, to see what they have done up to now, and what they ought to do. It is not enough to recall principles, state intentions, point to crying injustice and utter prophetic denunciations; these words will lack real weight unless they are accompanied for each individual by a livelier awareness of personal responsibility and by effective action. It is too easy to throw back on others the responsibility for injustice, if at the same time one does not realize how each one shares in it personally, and how personal conversion is needed frst. (p. 48) 8. In Justicia in Mundo (Justice in the World, 1971) the world Synod of Catholic Bishops draws the attention of believers to injustices affecting human relations. The bishops declare that actions in pursuit of justice and participation in transforming the world are key elements to the Church’s mission of preaching the Gospel. The bishops noted that the new industrial and technological order that concentrates on wealth, power, and decision making in the hands of a few political or private groups creates economic injustices as they deny the majority of people’s human and political rights of participating in governing their nations. 9. Pope John Paul II wrote four encyclicals on peace and justice. (1) Solicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concerns, 1987), which expands on Populorum Progression, emphasizing that development should be moral to enable people to realize their full potential. (2) Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year, 1991), where the Pope stresses “love for others and especially the poor,” is concretized “by promoting justice” (p. 58). (3) Evangelum Vitae (The Gospel of Life, 1995) emphasizes that threat to human dignity (poverty, hunger, disease, violence, and war) affects the Church.The Pope condemned attacks on human life such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction—whatever violates the integrity of the human person such as mutilation, torments indicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself—whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children—as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere tools for proft, rather than as free and responsible persons … all these things and others of their kind are infamies indeed. (p. 3) (4) Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason, 1998), where the Pope underscores the importance of reason in discovering the truth about the fundamental questions such as:Who am I? Where did I come from and where am I going? What is there after this life? Ignorance or negation of these questions leads to illusions of keeping one’s treasure in material possessions even when it entails direct and structural violence such as corruption. 10. Pope John Paul’s successor Pope emeritus Benedict XVI wrote Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love, 2005) and Caritas in Veritate (In Charity and Truth, 2009), emphasizing the Church’s role to help societies purify reason by attaining what is just according to the golden rule of doing for others what one would have others do for oneself. 11. Finally, Pope Francis continues to speak emphatically about social justice and the need for a paradigm shift in economics and politics. His encyclicals on peace include Lumen Fedei (On the Light of Faith, 2013); Evangelii Gaudium (Apostolic Exhortation on the Joy of the Gospel, 2013); Laudato Si (Apostolic Exhortation on Care for Our Common Home, 2015), and Amoris Laetitia (Apostolic Exhortation on the Call to Holiness in Today’s World, 2016). 390

Theology and peacemaking in Africa

The biblical sources, encyclicals, exhortations, and other Christian teachings on peace have existed for centuries, but violence, conficts, and wars are increasing.The lack of implementation makes peace theology an urgent need. Biblical and ecclesial teachings have to be interpreted and applied according to Africa’s reality. In the following text we examine some of the violence that characterizes Africa’s milieu.

The possibility and nature of peace theology in Africa It is impossible to accept that in evangelization one could or should ignore the importance of the problems so much discussed today, concerning justice, liberation, development, and peace in the world. How then are we to understand the coming of God’s kingdom as Reconciliation, Justice, and Peace?46 How can we shift from militarization, arms races, corruption, the politics of the belly, and injustice to peace, justice, and reconciliation? Taking stock of the many Church peacemaking services related to education, healthcare, and mediation in wars and armed conficts, there are still numerous conceptual and practical fronts for peace theology in Africa. Using the light of faith and reason, peace theology also needs to embrace the daily issues that prevent individuals and communities from realizing their full potential. It is crucial and urgent for theologians to proceed ecumenically and in collaboration with religious, political, and cultural leaders to create a more just, prosperous, and humane Africa. Inclusion of various categories of people is necessary to address the moral concerns that curtail peace.The moral fabric of African societies is being eaten away by modernity and greed, contributing to armed conficts, wars, and corruption. Physical, structural, and cultural violence has to be addressed at interconnected personal, national, regional, and international levels. I suggest the following steps toward a sustainable and Africanized theology of peace. 1. Building on existing efforts: Concretize the mission of justice and reconciliation for sustainable peace. Aware of the myriads of political, economic, cultural, religious, structural, and security challenges facing the continent, peace theology needs to start by building on the First and Second African Synods of Catholic Bishops. Emmanuel Orobator notes: The movement from the First African Synod in 1994 to the Second African Synod in 2009 traces the trajectory of a steadily maturing theology of the nature and the mission of the Church in Africa. The continuity between both synods refects the vitality of theological refection in Africa and its implication for the self-understanding of the community called Church. While the earlier synod identifed this community as the family of God, the later synod assigned it a new mission, namely to work toward reconciliation, justice and peace.47 In 2009, the Second African Synod (Catholic) presented the Church as a beacon at the service of reconciliation, justice, and peace following Jesus’ teaching: “You are the salt of the earth … You are the light of the world” (Mt. 5, 13–14). Ten years after, justice, peace, and reconciliation are wanting in many places. Political, economic, and social structures and systems that generate injustices are rampant. African theologians need to revisit the theme and engage in a common discernment on what justice, reconciliation, and peace mean for those at the periphery, the youth, women, and men.The poor at the margins of society are brutalized by war and corruption, which engender poverty, are excluded from governing their countries, and the majority lack the basic needs. The mission of justice, peace, and reconciliation remains a prerogative of Church ministers and rich elites. Perhaps it is high 391

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

time for theologians and Church leaders to become humble, learn from those they claim to serve (survivors of war, refugees, migrants, internally displaced people, survivors of sexual violence and human traffcking, the poor of all categories), yet often exclude from conversations believed to respond to their needs. 2. Researching to understand prevalent direct, cultural, and structural violence. In order to create a sustainable theology of peacemaking required for a culture of peace to ensue in Africa, research-based understanding of structural, direct, and cultural violence is crucial. Transforming violence requires a clear understanding of the types and causes of violence.48 3. Healing the healer.A theology of peace must begin with healing the healers (theologians and Christian ministers), so that they may become witnesses of peace. The classic saying “actions speak louder than words” is suggestive. Peace theology is reflected strongly when Christians, starting with leaders, are healed and exude God’s love, mercy, and goodness; respect human dignity; hold themselves at people’s disposal; and prioritize people’s well-being before personal power and prestige. Gregory of Nazianzus, the great doctor of the Church, wrote: A man must himself be cleansed, before cleansing others: himself become wise, that he may make others wise; become light, and then give light: draw near to God, and so bring others near; be hallowed, then hallow them; be possessed of hands to lead others by the hand, of wisdom to give advice.49 Conficts, injustices, and wars traumatize and wound survivors physically, psychologically, mentally, and emotionally. When I did my research in Congo, several participants noted, “We are hurting.We are all traumatized.”Theologians and Christians in Africa are wounded and traumatized. I am aware of those wounds, trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder that at times take me by surprise. Sounds of fre crackers trigger memories of gunshots, let alone dreams of screaming and remembering jumping over dead bodies while running for safety. Healed Church leaders should renounce structural, cultural, and direct violence. Renouncing corruption by refusing cars and other donations from political leaders should become a church’s stand. Not engaging with ethnic politics and polarization is long overdue. In Rwanda, many Hutus perished in Churches. 4. Decolonize and Africanize peace theology.The theology of peace needs to be genuinely African, rooted in African self-esteem and values and truly Christian. A sustainable peace theology needs to address colonial residues and create an Africanized peace theology rooted in African cultures. Fundamental to peace theology are the questions:Who am I as an African? Who are we as Africans in a world that exalts “whiteness”? Even after achieving the normative independence of African nations, these questions remain problematic. As Diagne observes, when “who am I?” has to be translated as “who are we?” everything changes, especially when the “we” have to defne themselves against a world which leaves no room for who and what they are because they are black folks in a world where “universal” seems to naturally mean “white.”50 We worship God as we are and not with fake identities.The politician and writer Léopold Sédar Senghor’s concept of “Negritude” or self-affrmation of the African people and their values remains key to peace theology. Related to values, Senghor observed that the basic problem we face is “to discover how we are going to integrate African Negro values into the world … It is not a question of resuscitating the past, of living in an African Negro museum; it is a question of animating the world, here and now, with the values of the past.”51 392

Theology and peacemaking in Africa

The struggle for “Africanness” has been expressed with the yearning for an inculturated Christianity. The philosophical and political movement of renaissance that was frst articulated by Cheik Anta Diop is also about Africanism as a means of ending violence, corruption, and poverty by returning to African values, particularly Ubuntu (humanism) and care for the common good.52 Modernity and globalization should not be allowed to rob us of our morals and life-giving values such as care for the common good, the poor, and the needy. It should not make us blind to the suffering of the vulnerable in our midst. African conception of a person and African traditional approaches to peace and security need to inform the theology of peace. Peace theology needs to be inclusive and inculturated. Pope Paul VI’s letter Africae Terrarum encourages a return to African values.The Pope said: The church views with great respect the moral and religious values of the African tradition, not only because of their meaning, but also because she sees them as providential, as the basis for spreading the gospel message and the beginning of establishment of the new society in Christ.53 5. Engage politics and economics. Peace theology in Africa needs to be very strategic. It is paramount that the Church is represented and plays an advisory role at the African Union (AU), Regional Economic Communities (RECs), and individual nations which is in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.The Church’s moral vision “‘rests on the threefold cornerstone of human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity’ … which aims to encourage governments, institutions and private organizations to shape a future consonant with the dignity of every person.”54 The AU committed to silencing the guns by 2020 to ensure that Africa becomes peaceful, secure, and prosperous.Article four of the AU’s Agenda 2063 states:“We redirect ourselves to the enduring Pan African vision of ‘an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena.’”55 The Symposium of Episcopal Conference of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) needs to spearhead the Church’s representation at the AU and regional constellations such as the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in East Africa (AMECEA) to ensure their presence and role at the RECs. National episcopal conferences must be a people’s voice for peace and justice in national politics and economics. Modalities such as creating strategic plans for peace and security with state leaders and the legislative assemblies are long overdue. Church collaboration with the AU and RECs for sustainable peace and security is urgently required as the AU plans for 2020 and 2063. At the national level, where the government fails to practice participatory democracy, peace theology requires engaging governments to implement the subsidiarity principle. Subsidiarity obliges governments to ensure that citizens participate in governance, political, economic, and cultural matters of their society. Pope Benedict writes, “We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.”56 Pope Francis emphasizes the subsidiarity principle, stating that “no actual or established power has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty.”57 Legitimacy depends on how a state enables people to practice their social, political, and economic rights and not coercion. Many conficts in African nations such as Burundi, Uganda, Malawi, and Zimbabwe are about state legitimacy. African leaders have failed to differentiate political legitimacy from political authority, and resorted to coercion and intimidation.58 393

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

6. Halt the looting and ensure that Africans beneft from their resource. Collaborating with the AU, RECs, and individual states, peace theology should halt the militarization and looting of Africa. If the looting of Africa’s resources is not halted, the Church’s development and poverty eradication efforts are failing and will continue to fail. We know that resources such as gold, diamond, coltan, timber, and petroleum are not renewable. Today even land and sand are exploited. In 2017, African outfows totaled $203 billion, where $32.4 billion was through MNC fraud.59 In 2010, MNCs avoided $40 billion in taxes and cheated $11 billion through trade mispricing.60 In the absence of a leadership that cares for the common good, the Church must concertize the population to demand accountability for their resources. 7. Ensure that peace and civic education become mandatory in the elementary and high schools. 8. Make a preferential option for women and youth. 9. Ecological conversion and care for the planet.The environmental destruction caused by capitalist greed is unsustainable. The theology of peace needs to heal the wounds inficted on the planet and to prevent further destruction.African traditional values for protecting the environment must be researched and included in the peace theology. The chapter has highlighted the conceptual framework of violence and peace followed by classic and biblical frameworks of peace theology. It has also traced peace theology in Church teachings and analyzed violence in Africa. Peace theology is a sine qua if the Church is to remain relevant and fulfll its mission. Emphasis should be on addressing direct, structural, and cultural violence and injustice at the national and international levels. The Church’s effectiveness requires that theologians and church leaders are healed from psychological complications inherent to violence so that they may become healers themselves.

Notes 1 E.M. Katongole and J.Wilson-Hartgrove, Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda (Michigan: Zondervan, 2009), 33. 2 Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 2014). 3 Etienne G. Krug, et al., The World Report on Violence and Health (New York:WHO, 2002), 5. 4 Johan Galtung,“Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 168. 5 “Cultural Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291. 6 Ho-Won Jeong, Peace and Confict Studies: An Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Celia CookHuffman,“The Role of Identity in Confict,” in Handbook of Confict Analysis and Resolution, ed. Dennis Sandole, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2009); John W. Burton, Confict: Human Needs Theory (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1990); James A. Schellenberg, Confict Resolution:Theory, Research and Practice (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996). 7 Hegre Håvard and Nicholas Sambanis, “Sensitivity Analysis of the Empirical Literature on Civil War Onset,” Journal of Confict Resolution 50, no. 4 (2006): 508–535. 8 Andreas Wimmer, Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Confict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2002); Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug, Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 9 Nathan Laurie,“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:The Structural Cause of Violence in Africa,” Peace & Change 25, no. 2 (2000): 189. 10 Galtung,“Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” 11 Ibid., 168. 12 Johannes M. Botes, “Structural Transformation,” in Confict: From Analysis to Intervention, ed. Sandra Cheldeline, Daniel Druckman, and Larissa Fast (New York: Continuum, 2003); Roger Mac Ginty, No War, No Peace : The Rejuvenation of Stalled Peace Processes and Peace Accords, Rethinking Peace and Confict Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 13 Oliver P. Richmond, Failed Statebuilding : Intervention and the Dynamics of Peace Formation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). 14 J.D. Dennis Sandole, Peacebuilding (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010).

394

Theology and peacemaking in Africa 15 Ayittey George B. N., Indigenous African Institutions, 2nd ed. (Nijhoff: Brill, 2006). 16 Message of the Assembly of the Bishops of Bukavu Archdiocese, “Mets de l’ordre dans ta maison,” Kindu, May 23, No. 8, 2016 (Translation from French by me). 17 Message of the Assembly of the Bishops of Bukavu Archdiocese, “Notre cri pour le Respect Absolu de la Vie Humaine,” Butembo, May 23, no. 10, 2015 (Translation from French by me). 18 Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters:The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 327. 19 Michael Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living in the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001), 10. 20 Patrick Bond, Looting Africa:The Economics of Exploitation (New York: Zed Books, 2006), 2. 21 Thairu Kihumbu, The African Civilization: Utamaduni Wa Kiafrika (Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1975); Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Prenceton, NJ: Prenceton University Press, 1996). 22 Ali A. Mazrui, “Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Violence,” in A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. W. E. Abraham, et al. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2007), 480. 23 Araoye Ademola, Sources of Confict in the Post Colonial African State (Lodon:African World Press, 2014). 24 Ibid., 41. 25 Ibid., 43. 26 Voice of Africa, “Jacques Chirac: Without Africa, France Will Slide Down into the Rank of a Third [World] Power,” http://www.voiceofafrica.tv/en/jacques-chirac-without-africa-france-will-slide-d own-into-the-rank-of-a-third-world-power-d129 27 Emmanuel, Kataliko. Christmas message. 1999 (Retrieved from Bukavu Archdiocese archives). 28 Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (New York:Verso, 2010), 163–64. 29 Nick Turse, “Us Military Says It Has a “Light Footprint” in Africa. These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases,” The Intercept, https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/u-s-military-says-it-has-a-li ght-footprint-in-africa-these-documents-show-a-vast-network-of-bases/. Tomorrow’s Battlefeld: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015). 30 “Violence Has Spiked in Africa since the Military Founded Africom,” https://portside.org/2019-08-0 3/violence-has-spiked-africa-military-founded-africom. 31 Theodore Trefon, Congo Masquerade:The Political Culture of Aid Ineffciency and Reform Failure (New York: Zed Books, 2011), 9. 32 Nnimmo Bassey, To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2012). 33 Roger Mac Ginty,“Routine Peace:Technocracy and Peacebuilding,” Cooperation and Confict 47, no. 3 (2012): 287–308. 34 Laurenti Magesa, What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality,Theological Studies (New York: Orbis Books, 2013). 35 John S. Mbiti, African Religions & Philosophy (Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya Ltd., 1969). 36 John Dear, The God of Peace:Toward a Theology of Nonviolence (New York: Orbis Books, 1994), 15. 37 James E. William, A Contemporary Theology for Ecumenical Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2014). 38 Ibid., 20. 39 Daniel J. Harrington, Sacra Pagina:The Gospel of Matthew (Collegeville, MI:The Liturgical Press, 1991). 40 Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. 41 Howard J.Yoder, Peace without Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 158. 42 Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace:A Historical Survey and Critical Re-Evaluation (Nashville:Abington, 1960), 152. 43 Walter Klaassen, Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant, 3rd ed. (North Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2001). 44 Ibid., 23. 45 Ibid. 46 John Paul II, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa, no. 68 (Vatican Web site, September 14, 1995), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_ exh_14091995_ecclesia-in-africa_en.html (accessed April 13, 2019). 47 Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, ed. Reconciliation, Justice and Peace:The Second African Synod (MaryKnoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 1. 48 Galtung,“Cultural Violence.”

395

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja 49 Kevin Knight, “Oration 2,” in New Advent Encyclopedia, ed. Kevin Knight (2017). http://www.newa dvent.org/fathers/3102.htm. 50 Diagne, Souleymane Bachir, "Négritude", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/negritude/. 51 Wole Soyinka, Of Africa (New Haven:Yale University Press 2012), 19. 52 Wadada D. Nabudere,“The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization,” African Journal of Political Science/Revue Africaine de Science Politique 6, no. 2 (2001): 11–28. 53 Raymond Hickey, Modern Missionary Document and Africa (Dublin: Dominican Public, 1982), 179. 54 John Paul Pope, II 1999. Ecclesia in America. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exho rtations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_22011999_ecclesia-in-america.html. no.55. 55 African Union Commission 2015. Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. https://au.int/sites/default/f iles/documents/36204-doc-agenda2063_popular_version_en.pdf (Sept. 2015). 56 Benedict Pope., XVI 2005b. Deus caritas est #28. 57 Francis Pope. 2015c. Address to the second world meeting of popular movements, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. July 9. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/july/documents/ papa-francesco_20150709_bolivia-movimenti-popolari.html.#3:2. 58 Allen Buchanan, “Political Legitimacy and Democracy.” Ethics 112, no. 4 (2002): 689–719. Arthur Ripstein, “Authority and Coercion.” In Immanuel Kant. Philosophy and Public Affairs (Routledge, 2017), 119–152. 59 Mark Curtis, Honest Accout 2017: How the World Profts from Africa’s Wealth (Global Justice Now, 2017). 60 OXFAM, Africa: Rising for the Few (OXFAM, 2015).

References Ademola, Araoye. Sources of Confict in the Post Colonial African State. London:African World Press, 2014. Armstrong, Karen. Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. Autesserre, Séverine. “The Responsibility to Protect in Congo: The Failure of Grassroots Prevention.” International Peacekeeping 23(1) (2016): 29–51. Avruch, Kevin. “Culture.” Chap. 9. In: Confict: From Analysis to Intervention, edited by Sandra Cheldelin, Daniel Druckman, and Lisa Fast, 167–180. New York: Continuum, 2003. Bainton, Roland H. Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-Evaluation. Nashville: Abington, 1960. Bassey, Nnimmo. To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa. Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2012. Black, Peter W. “Identities.” Chap. 8. In: Confict: From Analysis to Intervention, edited by Sandra Cheldelin, Daniel Druckman, and Lisa Fast, 147–166. New York: Continuum, 2003. Bond, Patrick. Looting Africa:The Economics of Exploitation. New York: Zed Books, 2006. Botes, Johannes M.“Structural Transformation.” Chap. 20. In: Confict: From Analysis to Intervention, edited by Sandra Cheldeline, Daniel Druckman, and Larissa Fast, 358–379. New York: Continuum, 2003. Burton, John W. Confict: Human Needs Theory. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Cederman, Lars-Erik, Kristian Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug. Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Cook-Huffman, Celia. “The Role of Identity in Confict.” Chap. 1. In: Handbook of Confict Analysis and Resolution, edited by Dennis Sandole, Sean Byrne, Ingrid Sandole-Staroste, and Jessica Senehi, 19–31. New York: Routledge, 2009. Curtis, Mark. “Honest Accounts 2017: How the World Profts from Africa’s Wealth.” 12. Global Justice Now, 2017. http://www.cadtm.org/Honest-Accounts-2017-How-the-world. Accessed March 10, 2020. Dear, John. The God of Peace:Toward a Theology of Nonviolence. New York: Orbis Books, 1994. Diagne, Souleymane Bachir.“Négritude.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010. https://plato.stanfo rd.edu/entries/negritude/.Accessed March 10, 2020. Galtung, Johan.“Cultural Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 27(3) (1990): 291–305. Galtung, Johan. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Confict, Development and Civilization.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996. Galtung, Johan.“Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6(3) (1969): 167–191.

396

Theology and peacemaking in Africa Harrington, Daniel J. Sacra Pagina: The Gospel of Matthew. Collegeville, MI:The Liturgical Press, 1991. Håvard, Hegre, and Nicholas Sambanis. “Sensitivity Analysis of the Empirical Literature on Civil War Onset.” Journal of Confict Resolution 50(4) (2006): 508–535. Hickey, Raymond. Modern Missionary Document and Africa. Dublin: Dominican Public., 1982. Jeong, Ho-Won. Peace and Confict Studies:An Introduction. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Katongole, E. M., and J.Wilson-Hartgrove. Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith After Genocide in Rwanda. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009. Kihumbu, Thairu. The African Civilization: Utamaduni Wa Kiafrika. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1975. Klaassen, Walter. Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant. 3rd ed. North Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2001. Knight, Kevin.“Oration 2.” In: New Advent Encyclopedia, edited by Kevin Knight, 2017. http://newadvent. org/.Accessed March 10, 2020. Krug, Etienne G., James A. Mercy, Linda L. Dahlberg, and Anthony B. Zwi.“The World Report on Violence and Health.” 346. New York:WHO, 2002. Laurie, Nathan.“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:The Structural Cause of Violence in Africa.” Peace and Change 25(2) (2000): 188–124. Mac Ginty, Roger. No War, No Peace :The Rejuvenation of Stalled Peace Processes and Peace Accords. Rethinking Peace and Confict Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Mac Ginty, Roger.“Routine Peace:Technocracy and Peacebuilding.” Cooperation and Confict 47(3) (2012): 287–308. Magesa, Laurenti. What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality. Theological Studies. New York: Orbis Books, 2013. Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Mawuna, Koutonin. “14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax for the Benefts of Slavery and Colonization.” Silicon Africa. http://siliconafrica.com/france-colonial-tax/. http://the londonpost.net/14-african-countries-forced-by-france-to-pay-colonial-tax/. Accessed March 10, 2020. Mazrui, Ali A. “Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Violence.” Chap. 39. In: A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by W. E.Abraham,Abiola Irele, Ifeanyi Menkiti, and Kwasi Wiredu, 472–482. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007. Mazrui, Ali A. “The Re-Invention of Africa: Edward Said,Vy Mudimbe, and Beyond.” Research in African Literatures 36(3) (2005): 68–82. Mbiti, John S. African Religions & Philosophy. Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya Ltd., 1969. Nabudere, Wadada D. “The African Renaissance in the Age of Globalization.” African Journal of Political Science/Revue Africaine de Science Politique 6(2) (2001): 11–28. OXFAM.“Africa: Rising for the Few.” 17. London: OXFAM, 2015. Richmond, Oliver P. Failed Statebuilding: Intervention and the Dynamics of Peace Formation. New Haven:Yale University Press, 2014. Sandole, J. D. Dennis. Peacebuilding. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Schellenberg, James A. Confict Resolution:Theory. Research and Practice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996. Soyinka, Wole. Of Africa. New Haven:Yale University Press, 2012. Stearns, Jason. Dancing in the Glory of Monsters:The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa. The Decolonization of the Mind:The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey, 1986. Trefon, Theodore. Congo Masquerade: The Political Culture of Aid Ineffciency and Reform Failure. New York: Zed Books, 2011. Turse, Nick.“Tomorrow’s Battlefeld: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa.” 232. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015. Turse, Nick. 2018. “Us Military Says It Has a “Light Footprint” in Africa.These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases.” The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/u-s-military-says-it-has-a-li ght-footprint-in-africa-these-documents-show-a-vast-network-of-bases/. Turse, Nick. 2019. “Violence Has Spiked in Africa since the Military Founded Africom.” https://portsid e.org/2019-08-03/violence-has-spiked-africa-military-founded-africom.

397

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja Voice of Africa.“Jacques Chirac:Without Africa, France Will Slide Down into the Rank of a Third [World] Power.” http://www.voiceofafrica.tv/en/jacques-chirac-without-africa-france-will-slide-down-into-t he-rank-of-a-third-world-power-d129. William, James E. A Contemporary Theology for Ecumenical Peace. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Wimmer, Andreas. Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Confict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2002. Wrong, Michael. In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living in the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001. Yoder, Howard J. Peace Without Eschatology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994. Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. New York:Verso, 2010.

398

PART IV

Biblical and doctrinal theology

26 BIBLE AND THEOLOGY IN AFRICA Lovemore Togarasei

Introduction As African Christianity continues to grow,1 the place of the Bible in African Christian theology requires close attention.This chapter is a contribution to this goal.The chapter reviews the place of the Bible in theology in Africa.This is indeed a very general area that covers a long historical period, almost from the beginning of the Christian religion if one considers the role played by African theologians such as Origen, Tertullian, and others in the development of Christian thought (Ngong 2017). A work of this nature, therefore, cannot afford to give an exhaustive treatment of this subject. What I intend to do therefore is to consider the place of the Bible in theology in Africa from sources of Christian theology in Africa. Specifcally, I problematize claims by some sections of African Christianity that their theology is solely derived from the Bible. Systematic theologians discuss several sources of Christian theology. Some of the sources they discuss are the Bible, reason, philosophy, religious experience, tradition, revelation and culture, and context (e.g., McGrath 2001). Most theologians, however, limit the sources to four: Bible, reason, religious experience, and tradition, referring to these as the Wesleyan quadrilateral (Oden 1992: 332). But in some sections of African Christianity that we will focus on in this chapter, the rest of the sources are underplayed in rhetoric as they claim sola Scriptura. For this chapter, I take seriously John Mbiti’s (1979) observation that there are three areas of theology in African Christianity, namely: written theology, oral theology, and symbolic theology. Whereas written theology is articulated by the learned in books and journals, oral theology is produced by the people in the daily practice of Christianity through songs, preaching, and their general day to day lives, and symbolic theology is expressed through art, rituals, and other artistic practices such as dance. Considering this view of theology in Africa, in this chapter, I want to show that although many Christians in Africa claim to base their theological views on the Bible, particularly in Pentecostal and African Initiated Churches (AICs), other sources of theology are quite infuential if not dominating.2 As these two types of churches are increasingly dominating the African Christian landscape, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, I will pay more attention to them. Employing a historical–theological methodology, the chapter will show how the Bible is used in the development of Christian theology and the challenges faced in claiming sola Scriptura. Using examples of some specifc African churches, the chapter will show how other sources of 401

Lovemore Togarasei

Christian theology are employed by these churches and the ensuing problems associated with the over-emphasis of other sources of theology even as they claim sola Scriptura. In the end, the chapter will argue that some of the problems faced in African Christianity are a result of the way Christians use the various sources of Christian theology.To resolve them, I conclude that the Bible needs to remain the key source of Christian theology but with full acknowledgment of the infuence of other sources.

The Bible in Christian theology A close relationship exists between the Bible and Christian theology. G.Wainwright (1995: 640) states, “the Holy Scriptures are generally recognized, and not by Protestants alone, … to reside at the heart of Christian tradition and an authentic Christian culture as the source and norm around which the other elements cluster.” David H. Kelsey (1980: 392) makes the same point in different words, In a Christian community it is precisely the biblical writings which, as used in a great variety of activities that comprise the common life of the community, provides the images, concepts, principles, parables, etc., that serve to evoke, nurture and correct, the dispositions, beliefs and policies, emotions, etc., that are basic to the identities of the members of the community and to the identity of the community itself. The Bible is Christian scripture and therefore is used to defne who the Christian community is, what they believe in, what their values are, etc.This is because Christians believe that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is therefore authoritative and is used to “authorize theological proposals” (Kelsey 1980: 390). Its authority is derived from the fact that, though authored by human beings, such human beings are believed to have been inspired by God, and so, the Bible is the Word of God. The above view of the Bible would imply that, in doing theology, Christians should simply follow what the Bible says. It implies that when they ask theological questions, Christians will fnd them answered in the Bible. Unfortunately, as shall soon become apparent, things are not as easy as this.The Bible is not a systematic theology text with ready-made answers for Christians’ questions. Rather, the Bible is composed of different and sometimes unrelated books that arose over a long period and in different social contexts. There are also different bibles for Catholic and Protestant Christians.When we consider the different versions in which the Bible (even just the Protest) exists, the picture becomes even more complicated. Thus, to make theology from the Bible, Christians have to engage in interpretation so that the Bible can provide the answers to the questions they ask. This brings about more complications in the use of the Bible as a source of theology. Because the Bible is in itself a library, different Christians express different attitudes over the same books of the Bible. Some prefer some books over others. In order to interpret the biblical books, different methods come into play. Looking at the different methods that have been used to interpret the Bible, David McGregor (1997) discusses three different epistemologies infuencing the way the Bible is used in Christian theology: premodern, modern, and post-modern. Following Walter Truet Anderson (1990), the pre-modern approach sees reality as cast in one specifc truth. Considering the Bible to be the inspired, infallible Word of God, the task of theology then would be to provide a systematic order of what the Bible says on various themes such as salvation, sin, eschatology, and so on.Apparent discrepancies within the Bible have to be harmonized to produce one simple truth.This approach to the use of the Bible in Christian theology, as we discuss below, has its problems.The modern approach 402

Bible and theology in Africa

subjects the meaning of the Bible to one’s experiences and perceptions.There is, therefore, no one biblical truth according to this view. McGregor gives the feminist approach’s hermeneutic of suspicion as an example of a modern approach to the use of the Bible in theology. Feminist theology approaches the Bible fully aware of the patriarchal infuence of the Bible and biblical interpretation. It therefore seeks to highlight only those biblical texts that promote human diversity. Instead of harmonizing divergent biblical texts as the pre-modern approach advocated, the modern approach says,“to absolutize any one form of dogmatic theology is to be guilty of idolatry” (McGregor 1997). Lastly, the post-modern approach questions all truth claims; there is no one truth but several truths.When it comes to the use of the Bible in theology, then, truth is not only limited in the Bible but is found even in other religions according to this last approach. When these approaches are considered, it becomes clear that using the Bible as a source of theology is not an easy task that can be undertaken by any Christian. With these varying approaches to the use of the Bible as a source of Christian theology, other sources come to use in various Christian traditions. Revelation, reason, church tradition, experience, culture, and context are some of the sources that are used together with the Bible for Christian theology. In light of this, how then is the Bible used in Christian theology in Africa?

Bible and theology in Africa In the above section, we made a general and brief overview of how the Bible is used in Christian theology. In this section, we now focus on how the Bible is used in African Christian theology. We will consider the general approach as advocated by African theologians before we consider how some specifc churches are using the Bible. Writing in the 1970/1980s, Mbiti would, as early as this time of African Christian theology as a discipline, observe that “African Christianity is biblically grounded” (Mbiti 1979).The infuence of the Bible in African Christian theology is seen in its widespread acceptance by the people. Jonathan Draper (2012) refers to how the Bible is referred to as incwadi yabantu (the people’s book) among the Zulu in South Africa. At least one copy of the Bible is likely to be found in every home. Mugambi (1995: 142) is right to consider it the most infuential book on the continent.Whether open or closed, to paraphrase the words of Gerald West (2003), the Bible is infuential in Africa.The common statement attributed to different people, from Jomo Kenyatta, the founding President of Kenya, to Desmond Tutu of South Africa, concerning the value Africans place on the Bible goes,“When the white men came to our country he had the Bible, and we had the land. The white man said to us, ‘Let us pray.’ After the prayer, the white man had the land, and we had the Bible.”Although the statement is sometimes interpreted to show how the white man disenfranchised the Africans, often Desmond Tutu adds,“And we got the better deal” (West 2016: 142) to show that Africans benefted. Gerald West (2016: 141–155) discusses with relation to black theology in South Africa that the Bible was considered trustworthy,“the Bible is considered to be a primary source of Black Theology” (2016: 142). Black theology accepted the existence of other forms of biblical interpretation that could even be used against the blacks, but considered these to be misinterpretations as the general theological trajectory of the Bible is considered liberational. He cites scholars who were critical of this position and took the position of “a hermeneutic of suspicion.” Here West discusses works such as those of Takatso Mofokeng and Itumeleng Mosala, who considered the Bible a problem for black liberation or rather for liberation of the oppressed in general, since the “authors” of the Bible themselves were oppressors. But even these scholars, in the absence of alternative ideological resources, said that what is needed is an interpretation of the Bible with a hermeneutic of suspicion. Discussing three phases of South African black theology, West shows that the Bible plays a central role in theological 403

Lovemore Togarasei

refections. Looking at the work of Maluleke, who highlights how AICs read the Bible for their liberation, he observes that generally African theologians advocate for a biblical based theology, highlighting the need for proper tools of biblical interpretation. Of course, the chief advocate for a biblical based theology is John Mbiti. Mbiti (1979) reviews literature produced then in the area of Bible and theology in Africa, concluding that African Christian theology, if it is to remain Christian and universal, has to be based on the Bible. And indeed this has been the case from the inception of African Christian theology.Whether discussing inculturation, liberation, or black theology,3 African theologians have to interact with the Bible, in praise or in criticism. West (2017: 123) says a continuum can be identifed on the use of the Bible by the different forms of African Christian theology shifting “from a hermeneutic of trust, where the Bible is interpreted as ‘on the side’ of African struggles, to a hermeneutic of suspicion, where the Bible is interpreted as ambiguous at best for African struggles.”4 But what makes the Bible attractive to African Christians? How is the Bible used in formulating African Christian theologies? What are the challenges faced in using the Bible as a source of Christian theology in Africa? These questions can be answered by looking at how some specifc African churches use the Bible in their theology.

Examples of the use of the Bible in some African churches Three, sometimes four, types of churches are identifed in Africa: mainline/missionary churches, African Independent/Initiated/Instituted Churches (AICs), and Pentecostal and Evangelical churches. The use of the Bible for theology varies from one type of church to the other (in the general sense, although in reality, it varies even from one Christian to the other). Generally, the use of the Bible in the mainline churches in Africa follows the general use elsewhere these churches are found.These churches use the Bible as one source of theology, together with other sources. I will, therefore, focus on the use of the Bible in AICs and Pentecostal churches since theologies emanating from these churches are typically African. It is also from these churches that we fnd those who claim sola Scriptura. Masiiwa Ragies Gunda (2014) gives an elaborate discussion of the use of the Bible by AICs. Gunda gives three reasons why AICs’ Christianity can be called “biblical” Christianity. First, he observes these movements’ heavy reliance on biblical traditions.An example of this reliance is seen in the names and the call narratives of most of the founders of these movements. A number of the church founders assume names of biblical and prophetic fgures such as John, Ezekiel, and Moses, and their life stories are told in ways that closely resemble those of the biblical fgures. Second is these movements’ use of the Bible as a manual to guide their daily lives (Gunda 2011: 131–155).This is seen in their attempts to live as closely to the teachings of the Bible as possible: observance of food and other Levitical laws, adoption of Levitical practices and taboos, and even observations of certain rituals that are not observed in mainline Christianity.Third, Gunda argues that AICs present “biblical” Christianity especially through their embrace of the Holy Spirit, which plays an active role in the life of these churches. AICs’ use of the Bible for their theology does not only come from the reading of the Bible. Even unopened, the Bible plays a signifcant role in the lives of the members of the AICs. Several African scholars attest to the use of the Bible as a magical talisman. Mercy Amba Oduyoye (1996: 33–38) refers to its use as a protective talisman against witchcraft, and Obed Kealotswe (1999) refers to its use for divination. As a result of Africans’ revolt against missionary Christianity’s demonization of African culture, AICs respect African culture in their interpretation of the Bible. The African worldview, therefore, features prominently as they interpret the Bible to guide their theological formulations and practices.Appeal to African culture for interpreting the 404

Bible and theology in Africa

Bible has been partly a result of African Christians’ realization that the biblical culture, especially as found in the story of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible, shares a lot with African culture. In short, for AICs, the Bible is the Word of God that guides their Christian life. It should be noted that theology in these churches is not an armchair exercise. Most of them (including the church leaders) do not have formal biblical or theological training. However, taking advantage of the presence of the Bible in their indigenous mother tongues, the Bible is their manual for the daily Christian life. Gunda (2014: 158) captures this spirit accurately, saying,“In these churches, the question is not on whether the Bible can be applied today or not. The question is how adherents should apply the Bible in their lives.” J. Punt (1998: 266) adds that Bible reading, in this case, does not consider the historical contexts of texts. Pentecostal churches are another type of African church that requires a close look at how they use the Bible in their theology. Of late, there are now various types of Pentecostal churches and Togarasei (2016) attempts a typology of the churches.5 I consider here the use of the Bible in modern or charismatic Pentecostal churches, sometimes called “fre” churches.Whereas classical Pentecostal churches have their roots in missionary Christianity, the majority of Charismatic Pentecostal churches are a product of African initiatives in Christianity. Signifcant effort has been put into analyzing how these churches are making use of the Bible for the theological enterprise. I will briefy highlight some of the fndings. Allan Anderson (2004) observed that Pentecostal biblical hermeneutics is not based on formal methods of biblical hermeneutics but the experience, needs, and context of the interpreter as well as the driving of the Spirit. Generally, Pentecostals hold the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God and the primary source of God’s communication with believers. According to Sarojin Nadar (2009: 141), they consider the Bible to be the indisputable, infallible Word of God leading to its literalist reading, an observation also made by LenkaBula (2008), writing in the same South Africa context as Nadar. LenkaBula captures the spirit of Pentecostal biblical interpretation quite succinctly, For them, the Bible is not a collection of inspired books that refect the spirit of their authors or speakers … the Bible is an unsystematic anthology of individual verses or short passages that are unrelated to their context and to the larger works in which they are embedded.The Bible is a storehouse of proof texts into which the believer may dip when seeking a biblical warrant for his or her own views on current issues. Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori (2007) even point out the Pentecostal position that, unlike other churches that rely on tradition and reason in addition to the Bible, Pentecostals claim to solely rely on the Bible.This is an interesting claim for this chapter, and we shall revisit it in the next sections. For J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (2004: 390), the authority of the Bible and the experience of the Holy Spirit form two of the sources of Pentecostal theology. Paul Gifford (2008) has studied Pentecostal use of the Bible both in Ghana and in Kenya. He says that the Pentecostal use of the Bible involves performance and declaration. This way, Pentecostals do not see the Bible as an ancient book but as a record of covenants, promises, pledges, and commitments of God to His people.The Bible tells stories of contemporary believers as they deal with day to day issues such as employment, visas to travel to developed countries, health, fnances, and so on (Gifford 2008: 285). Studying Zimbabwean Pentecostal churches, Lovemore Togarasei (2018) fnds Pentecostal use of the Bible as guided by what Nadar calls the “four I’s” of the Pentecostal view of the Bible. These four I’s refer to the Bible as “inspired,” “inerrant,”“infallible,” and “immediate.”This leads Pentecostals to interpret the Bible in literalist, fundamentalist, and biblicist ways concerned with the life meaning of texts (Togarasei 2018: 216–218). 405

Lovemore Togarasei

Challenges with “the Bible as the only source of African theology” approach Although literacy levels have risen in Africa and the Bible has now been translated into several African languages, allowing African Christians to read the Bible in their mother tongues (Sanneh 1989), most of the theology produced in Africa comes from the people’s experiences, songs, personal stories, and so on.6 The claim by many in Pentecostal churches and AICs that they only base their theology on the Bible does not represent the reality on the ground. Comparing African Christians in Africa and those in Britain, Chike (2007: 21) quotes one African church minister who noted, In Britain, people do not believe in taking the Bible word for word … most of what we do in Africa is Biblically based. But here there is a lot more Reason, and people want it to be explained in contemporary terms, which is good. This statement by the church minister represents the view among many African Christians from the AICs and Pentecostal churches, that is, that their theology is only based on the Bible, not reason or other sources of theology. In this section, I want to show that many African Christians only mouth sola Scriptura7 but in practice take more from other sources of theology than the Bible itself. Maluleke (1997: 19) is right when he observes that “African Christians are far more innovative and subversive in their appropriation of the Bible than they appear.” They possibly do that without recognizing. As we have seen above, AICs, for example, have relied heavily on the African worldview in their interpretation of the Bible. Matthew Michael (2013: 55) notes, for example, that Africans’ magical treatment of the Bible comes from the traditional African background where words were conceived as portents for a magical effect. As observed by Jeremy Punt (1998: 266), suggesting that the Bible can be approached tabula rasa is not only misleading but ethically irresponsible and an ideological hijack. Thus one problem of sola Scriptura, according to Schwartz (1996), is that it cannot solve the problems that arise from different interpretations of the same biblical texts.This has resulted in some of the problems that African Christianity is currently facing as we discuss in the next section.

Problems with the sola Scriptura claim (especially in Africa) From its beginning with the Reformists, sola Scriptura has not been without problems. Its one obvious consequence was the division of Christianity into several denominations.This is because it denies anyone (church leaders, theologians) or anything (reason, experience, tradition) other than the Bible the authority to infuence Christian theology. Considering that the meaning of the Bible is derived from interpretation, the argument for sola Scriptura gives every believer (or reader of the Bible) the freedom to formulate their theology.This creates serious problems, a few of which we shall discuss in this section.As indicated above, one global problem of sola Scriptura is the explosion of Protestant churches. Disagreeing on various theological doctrines such as infant baptism, glossolalia, eschatology, salvation, and so on, the Christian church has been divided into numerous denominations.A.Walls’ (1981: 43) argument that, due to their differences, Christians of different times and places may be unrecognizable to others or themselves as manifesting a single Christianity, is true of Christians of the same time and place but belonging to different denominations. Among African Christians, for example, you fnd one denomination teaching that food laws (e.g., Deut. 14) must be observed by contemporary Christians, while another denomination teaches that “Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defle him” (Mark 406

Bible and theology in Africa

7:18).With both teachings being derived from Scripture, it becomes diffcult to reconcile two Christians who believe in sola Scriptura. But in Africa, the problems of sola Scriptura have of late been multiplying. Among other reasons, it has contributed to the rise of what scholars on African Pentecostalism have come to call “gospreneurs”—men and women who manipulate the gospel for self-aggrandizement and enrichment. Basing their theology on sola Scriptura, they manipulate people, taking advantage of their gullibility in light of Africa’s socio-political and economic problems. Emphasizing that the Bible is the Word of God, they have abused Africa’s tradition of valuing the “oral word,”8 especially that of those in authority. In a context where the Bible has become a sacred text replacing the sacred objects of the traditional religion, it has been “pragmatically employed to confront the problems of African society” (Michael 2013: 56).The gospreneurs assume the roles of biblical fgures like prophets calling people to eat grass, to drink sewage, to eat snakes and rats, and to empty their pockets in the offering baskets for solutions to their problems. Because of their claim that this is written in the Bible, no one can challenge their interpretations. The problems of sola Scriptura have gone beyond the precincts of the church. As it makes no one and no institutions more authoritative to formulate doctrines, even secular leaders dig into the texts of the Bible to justify certain actions. Politicians, for example, have resisted the church’s prophetic voice, often telling the church to “keep to the pulpit,” believing themselves to have been “instituted” by God (Romans 13:1).Thus, sola Scriptura has, by and large, promoted proof-texting for every reader who wants to legitimize a certain “theological” view.This is seen in both liberational and oppressive readings of the Bible. Oppressive readings have been seen in proof-texting against women (Oduyoye 1995) and sexual minorities (Togarasei and Chitando 2011), for example. J. Punt (1998: 75–76) perfectly describes the problems of sola Scriptura we have highlighted here, When the Bible is ascribed a legitimating or “sacralizing” function in Church and society, and particularly when it is used as “revelatory”Word of God in conjunction with a literalist hermeneutic, it admittedly opens the door to abuse these texts to inscribe and maintain unjustifable positions and with no recourse to question or revision.

The Bible and other sources of Christian theology There is all the evidence that those Christians who claim sola Scriptura also draw their theology from other sources. Proving that all biblical reading is contextual and showing therefore that the phrase “But the Bible says …” means nothing, Gerald West (2012: 399) declares,“the Bible itself says nothing. A reader is required before the Bible says anything … Readers always bring their concerns and questions to their readings of the Bible.” As they bring these concerns and questions, they engage other sources of theology. Revelation, for example, is often appealed to by those who claim sola Scriptura. Many founders of AICs and Pentecostal churches claim some revelation in the form of dreams and visions. Members also claim such revelations in their lives, and their Christian lives are guided by such revelations. In some AICs like the Johane Masowe of Zimbabwe, the revelations supersede the Bible (Engelke 2007).This presents a problem because, whereas the Bible provides a point of convergence for all Christians (Mbiti 1986: 32), the same cannot be said about revelatory claims. Another source of Christian theology is experience. Although African Christians claim sola Scriptura, the experience is apparent in their theological enterprise. Life is a journey from which all who walk it learn. It would be misleading, therefore, to claim that experience does not affect one’s theology. Those who claim sola Scriptura therefore just do not realize that their 407

Lovemore Togarasei

understanding of such Scripture is infuenced by their experiences of life. This experience should ft within other sources of theology, especially the Bible because there is always the danger of being misled by our own experiences. The infuence of tradition as a source of theology should not be doubted. To start with, Paul confrms that he had received specifc Christian traditions that he was also passing on to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:1–4).Thus the Bible itself has received tradition. Doctrines such as that of the Trinity are not mentioned in word in the Bible but have been passed on through Christian tradition.Tradition guards against false teaching because there can be as many interpretations of a text as the number of people reading it.Tradition should rather not be stagnant. It should continuously be interpreted in light of the changing circumstances of the church.The Bible should guide the reinterpretation of the traditions, and contemporary use of the Bible should learn from the mistakes in tradition. Although there have been debates on the place of reason in theology,9 there can be no theological explanation without reason.Theology has been defned as faith seeking understanding by Anselm of Canterbury. As such, one cannot do theology without reasoning as it would be diffcult to comprehend the Christian teaching let alone explain it for a potential believer. Reasoning provides thinking and refection structures.Thus, we use reasoning when we organize the Christian belief into such themes as salvation, eschatology, etc.As stated above, the Bible is not a systematic theological treatise. Christians read it and develop doctrines through reasoning, and it is simply misleading to claim not to use reason in theology. Lastly, culture and one’s context infuence theology. Biblical scholars have already noted the infuence of social location in biblical interpretation (Dube 2003). Christianity itself originated in a specifc political, religious, and social context that then defned it.The same is true of the Bible and those who continue to read it today.To claim sola Scriptura is therefore misleading as all people read the Bible “from where they stand.”

Conclusion and way forward: the Bible and theology in Africa Notwithstanding the above, the claim to base theology on the Bible only is, in my opinion, a good starting point for African theology if it is to maintain Christian theology universality.This is because, as this chapter has established, the Bible is generally considered to be the foundational document of Christian theology. Because it is the Bible with the stories of the origins and early development of Christianity, Christian identity must, to a large extent, be based foundationally on the Bible. And Christians generally agree on this fact. As many Bible and theology scholars would agree, differences are at the interpretive stage.Whereas some believe that to fully understand and effectively use the Bible for Christian theology, we need to be guided by specifc biblical methodologies, reasoning, tradition, and individual and community experience, others claim that theology should simply derive from a simplistic, literalist reading of the Bible. This is a position this chapter has challenged and demonstrated that it creates problems in African Christian communities. In this concluding section, I therefore suggest a way forward in the use of the Bible in African theology. I am of the view that the Bible still needs to continue playing a central role in the formulation of Christian theology.This is because I consider the Bible to promote both unity and diversity. The Bible provides unity through its status as the Word of God, its authority as Christian canon, and its “closedness.”This “closedness,” which is discussed by Samartha (1994) and Punt (1998), limits modern Christians from coming out with their own theologies unrelated to the early Christian theologies.This promotes some sense of unity among all Bible believers and the connection between contemporary Christians the early Christians.As Mbiti (1986: 33) has observed,“The Bible is then the one book and the most central book that 408

Bible and theology in Africa

breaks down the walls that separate us, and brings us closer to one another.” In other words, the Bible is or should be the common denominator of the Christian faith.Whereas African theology has to engage African issues if it is to be relevant, it also requires the Bible to be Christian.10 The Bible provides diversity through its different theologies as found in its various books.As has been long observed, the Bible is a library with various types of books from different authors who lived in different historical times.These authors lived in and wrote to address different people, situations, cultures, contexts, and needs. The Bible therefore provides a strong foundation for guarding against contemporary excesses.The different varieties of authors and the subjects they addressed mean that contemporary Christians can walk the same path walked by the founding Christians. By understanding how God addressed the Christians of old, they can learn what God is saying in their situation. Although it is diffcult to prescribe how the Bible should be used to develop a theology, it is important to note the danger that often comes with the Bible-is-the-only-source-of-theology formula. As we have seen above, African theology has emphasized different texts of the Bible. For example, black theology “focuses on those themes within the biblical corpus that promote liberation and affrm the personhood of individuals of African descent” (Brown 2012: 169).This selective use of the texts can be dangerous when used by those who may intentionally decide to distort the Word of God for their selfsh reasons. It is therefore important to get a holistic picture of the Bible on a particular subject by studying as many texts on the subject as is possible. In using the Bible as a source of theology, it is also important that African Christians acknowledge their reading interests and biases. New biblical methodologies like social location should, therefore, be used so that readers can accept that their readings are subjective.Above all,African Christians need to openly acknowledge the other sources of Christian theology in their theologizing business. As T. Maluleke (1996: 12–14) cautioned, African theologians must distinguish theology from bibliology. It appears to me that sola Scriptura leads to bibliology, while the use of all sources of theology leads to theology.Thus, “the way out of biblical entrapment (what I have called sola Scriptura) is not to take fight, but to confront, not only the Bible but all other sources and interlocutors of theological discourse precisely at hermeneutical level” (Maluleke 1996: 14). Elsewhere (Togarasei 2008), I have proposed that biblical interpretation should be guided by four principles: to save a life, to seek justice for all, to promote love, and to liberate the marginalized. Here I conclude that such biblical interpretation cannot be done in isolation as claimed in sola Scriptura, but should openly work together with other sources in developing African Christian theology.

Notes 1 According to the Pew Research Centre (2011), Christian population in sub-Saharan Africa grew from 9 percent in 1910 to 63 percent in 2010. 2 Like Tinyiko Maluleke (1997: 8) I believe that “the phenomena of African Christianity and African theology are closely related that the two terms may be used interchangeably. African theologies exist because of African Christianities and without African theologies we would not have sustainable African Christianities.”This is in line with Mbiti’s defnition of African theology “as theological refection and expression by Africans” (Mbiti 1979: 90). 3 For Laurenti Magesa (2017) liberation and inculturation are the two motifs that make up African theology. Gerald West (2017) adds to these two Ujamaa theologies, contextual theology and African women’s theology. 4 West’s analysis of the use of the Bible in Africa theology focuses on scholarly works, while this article goes down to the use of the Bible to formulate theology at grassroots level. 5 Lovemore Togarasei. 2016. “Historicicsing Pentecostal Christianity in Zimbabwe,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 42: 1–13.

409

Lovemore Togarasei 6 In fact, according to Henry Okulu (1974: 54) African theology is in the felds, the village church, the Christian homes in prayers before people go to bed, schools, and the singing and dancing of independent churches. 7 Members of these churches do not use the term sola Scriptura in its Reformation sense. Rather I use it here with reference to what Maluleke (1999: 13) calls “the Bible-is-equal-to-the-Word-of-God formula.”Thus their claim is that since the Bible is the Word of God, it is their only source of theology. 8 Matthew Michael (2013: 54–57) talks about the oralization of the Bible in Africa, noting, “It seems African Christian folks have put the Bible back in orality, consequently using oral means to spread its message.” 9 As far back as the time of the Apostolic Fathers, debates were on the role of philosophy in theology (Gonzalez 1984). 10 According to Ernest van Eck (2006),African theology should be biblical and contextual.

Bibliography Anderson, Allan. 2004. An Introduction to Pentecostalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, Walter T. 1990. Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be, San Francisco: Harper and Row. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. 2004.“Mission to Set Free: Healing, Deliverance and Generational Curses in Ghanaian Pentecostalism,” International Review of Mission 95:370–371, 389–406. Brown, Michael J. 2012. “Black Theology and the Bible,” in Dwight N. Hopkins and Edward P. Antonio (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 169–183. Chike, Chigor. 2007. African Christianity in Britain, London:Author House. Draper, Jonathan. 2012. “Africa,” in John F. A. Sawyer (ed.), The Bible and Culture, West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing, 176–197. Dube, Musa W. 2003. “Social Location as a Story-Telling Method of Teaching in HIV contexts,” in Musa W. Dube (ed.), HIV/AIDS and the Curriculum: Methods of Integrating HIV/AIDS in Theological Curriculum, Geneva:WCC Publications, 102–112. Engelke, Matthew. 2007. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church, Berkeley: University of California Press. Gifford, Paul. 2008. “Trajectories in African Christianity,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 8:4, 275–289. Gonzalez, Justo. 1984. The Story of Christianity Vol. 1:The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, New York: Harper Books. Gunda, Masiiwa R. 2014. “African ‘Biblical’ Christianity: Understand the ‘Spirit-Type’ African Initiated Churches in Zimbabwe,” in Ezra Chitando, Masiiwa R. Gunda, and Joachim Kuegler (eds.), Multiplying in Spirit:African Initiated Churches in Zimbabwe, Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 145–160. Gunda, Masiiwa R. 2011.“The Old Testament and Daily Life:Turning the Bible into a Manual of Living, the Case of African Initiated ‘Apostolic’ Churches in Zimbabwe,” in Gunda, Masiiwa R. (ed.), From Text to Practice:The Role of the Bible in Daily Living of African People Today, Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 9–20. Kealotswe, Obed. 1999. “The Rise of the African Independent Churches and Their Present Life in Botswana,” Studies in World Christianity 10:2, 205–222. Kelsey, David H. 1980.“The Bible and Christian Theology,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48:3, 385–402. LenkaBula, Puleng. 2008. “The Shift of Gravity of the Church to Sub-Saharan Africa: Theological and Ecclesiological Implications for Women,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 8:4, 290–304. Magesa, Laurenti. 2017. “Inculturation Theology in Africa,” in David T. Ngong (ed.), A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo, New York/London: Routledge, 109–121. Maluleke,Tinyiko S. 1996.“Black and African Theologies in the New World Order:A Time to Drink from Our Wells,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 96, 3–19. Maluleke, Tinyiko S. 1997. “Half a Century of African Christian Theologies: Elements of the Emerging Agenda for the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 99, 4–23. Mbiti, John. 1979. “The Biblical Basis for Present-Day Trends in African Theology,” in Kof Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres (eds.), Africa Theology En Route, Maryknoll: Orbis Book, 26–30. Mbiti, John S. 1986. Bible and Theology in African Christianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

410

Bible and theology in Africa McGrath,Alister E. 2001. Christian Theology:An Introduction, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. McGregor, David. 1997. “Prioritising Sources for Christian Theology,” Unpublished Paper Presented to the Tabor College Combined Faculty Meeting in June 1997. Michael, Matthew. 2013. Christian Theology and African Traditions, Eugene:Wipf and Stock Publishers. Miller, Donald E., and Yamamori, Tetsunao. 2007. Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Mugambi, Jesse N. K. 1995. From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology After the Cold War, Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Nadar, Sarojini. 2009. “‘The Bible Says!’ Feminism; Hermeneutics and Neo-Pentecostal Challenges,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 134, 131–146. Ngong, David T. 2017. A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo, New York/London: Routledge. Oden,Thomas C. 1992. The Living God, New York: HarperCollins. Oduyoye, Mercy A. 1995. Daughters of Anowa:African Women and Patriarchy, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Oduyoye, Mercy A. 1996. “Biblical Interpretation and the Social Location of the Interpreter: African Women’s Reading of the Bible,” in Fernando F. Segovia and Mary A. Tolbert (eds.), Reading from This Place,Vol. 2: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 33–51. Okulu, Henry. 1974. Church and Politics in East Africa, Nairobi: Uzima Press. Pew Research Centre. 2011. “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec, accessed 20 June 2018. Punt, Jeremy. 1998. “The Bible, Its Status, and African Christian Theologies: Foundational Document or Stumbling Block?” Religion and Theology 5:3, 265–310. Samartha, S. J. 1994. “Religion, Language and Reality: Towards a Relational Hermeneutics,” Biblical Interpretation 2:3, 340–362. Sanneh, Lamin. 1989. Translating the Message:The Missionary Impact on Culture, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Schwartz, R. M. 1990. “Introduction: On Biblical Criticism,” in Schwartz, R. M. (ed.), The Book and the Text:The Bible and Literary Theory, London: Blackwell, 1–15. Togarasei, Lovemore. 2018. “Biblical Interpretation in Pentecostal Christianity,” in Lovemore Togarasei (ed.), Aspects of Pentecostal Christianity in Zimbabwe, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 211–222. Togarasei, Lovemore. 2008. “Fighting HIV and AIDS with the Bible: Towards HIV and AIDS Biblical Criticism,” in Ezra Chitando (ed.), Mainstreaming HIV in Theology and Religious Studies: Experiences and Explorations, Geneva:WCC Publications, 71–82. Togarasei, Lovemore, and Chitando, Ezra. 2011. “Beyond the Bible: Critical Refections on the Contributions of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies on Same-Sex Relationships in Africa,” Journal of Gender and Religion in Africa 17:2, 109–125. Van Eck, Ernest. 2006. “The Word Is Life: African Theology as Biblical and Contextual,” HTS 62:2, 679–701. Wainwirght, G. 1995. “Towards an Ecumenical Hermeneutic: How Can All Christians Read Scripture Together?” Gregorianum 76:4, 639–662. Walls, Andrew F. 1981. “The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture,” Faith and Thought 108:1–2, 39–52. West, Gerald. 2003. The Academy of the Poor: Towards a Dialogical Reading of the Bible. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications. West, Gerald. 2012. “Contextuality,” in John F. A. Sawyer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture,West Sussex:Wiley Blackwell, 399–413. West, Gerald O. 2017. “African Liberation Theology,” in David T. Ngong (ed.), A New History of African Christian Thought: From Cape to Cairo, New York/London: Routledge, 122–135. West, Gerald O. 2016. “The Bible in an African Christianity: South African Black Theology,” in Elias K. Bongmba (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa, New York/London: Routledge, 141–155.

411

27 CHRISTOLOGY IN AFRICA Martin Munyao

Introduction For most of Jesus’ life, his ministry on the earth was marked with a sense of obscurity. The Gospels tell a story that after Jesus calming the storm in the presence of his disciples, they asked, “Who is this man? That even the winds and waves obey him!” (Matt 8:27). On an occasion where Jesus was anointed by a sinful woman upon whom Jesus pronounced words of forgiveness, the guests at the table exclaimed: “Who is this man, who even forgives sins?” (Lk. 7:49). After beheading John the Baptist, King Herod made a similar statement:“I beheaded John.Who, then, is this I hear such things about?” (Lk. 9:9).Thus the origin, identity, and even the role of Jesus Christ were for most of his earthly ministry obscure to the Christians (disciples), the religious establishment (the Pharisees and Sadducees), and the political elites (King Herod). On one occasion in the district of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus, very much aware of his obscurity, tossed out a seemingly random but deliberate question regarding people’s perception of himself. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt. 16:13). What seemed like a random question was a very central Christological question that conversations in global Christian theology have wrestled with ever since. However, the disciples’ response gives hints of the notions of Christ in contemporary Africa. These notions mostly agree on a diversity of Jesus’ role in their various contexts. The disciples responded: “Some say John the Baptist” (representing the Levitical Nazarene order),“others say Elijah” (representing the pre-exilic prophetic order),“and others Jeremiah” (representing the exilic prophetic order). The fact that the people had all these various perceptions about Jesus mirrors every society’s varying theologies about his origin, identity, and ministry role. Put in a very simplistic and generalized way, these were varying Christologies of the First Century Ancient Mediterranean world. However, amid these Christologies is a Christological question that this chapter would like to prod further about historical and contemporary African context.Alluding specifcally to the disciples, Jesus asked,“But who do you say that I am?”This question is directed to the believing community of faith represented by the disciples. Peter responded by saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied that the declaration made by Peter was revealed to Peter by God. Just as he did to Simon Peter, the Father has since been revealing to his Church in different epochs about who Jesus is. Douglas Waruta opines that “if Peter understood Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah of his contemporary Jewish thought, the African response to the above 412

Christology in Africa

question must refect African consciousness.”1 Therefore, in the history of African Christianity, just who is Jesus Christ? This chapter will defne Christology from a historical perspective and then proceed to outline a brief historical background on the study of Christology in Africa. It will also provide various perspectives on Jesus from the vantage point of different denominational theological formulations, scholars, and church traditions, as well as from multiple contextual realities. Finally, the chapter will look at how Jesus is appropriated in contemporary African realities.

Defnition Christology is the study of Christ over a historical period. It is worth noting that the earliest debates about Christology began in Africa. A series of early Christological controversies occasioned these. One of the famous earlier theological controversies is the Arian controversy. This is considered by most Church historians to be one of the greatest doctrinal controversies in the history of Christianity which started on the African soil, in Alexandria, Egypt (318AD), led by an African theologian, one Arius (256–336), an ascetic presbyter from Libya.The Arian controversy was centered on the most fundamental of all questions:“who is Jesus Christ? Is He God in the fesh? Or is He just a created being like us?”2 By implication, Arius’ Christology meant that there was a time when the Son never existed. He, however, did not deny that all things were created in Christ by the Father, but he also added that “Christ was the frstborn of all that was created, implying therefore that only the Father is God.”3 Contemporary African Christological understanding of Arius would suggest that Christ is among the divinities after God, the Supreme Being. At the opposing camp was Alexander, a senior bishop of Alexandria (313–328) who challenged Arius’ Christology. In his argument, Arius was closer to Alexander than Origen, whose standpoint was that the Son was inferior to the Father. “Alexander was challenging this Origenist tradition by saying that the Son was equal with the Father in possessing the full divine nature.”4 For Arius, Jesus’ equality with the Father bordered on polytheism. This was not just a Christological debate but also a historical one. It backdated to Origen’s theology in the 3rd century. Origen had spoken of “the Son as being of the same essence or substance (ousia) as the Father, but he had also said that the Son was eternally begotten.”5 However,Arius had misunderstood Origen for he was teaching that “the Son was a created being.”6 The issue of contestation here was the origin, status, and future of Jesus. This Christological controversy signifcantly impacted the faith of the early church and monotheistic Judaism. Christians worshiped Jesus Christ as God. They called upon him as Lord and Savior and in all aspects, entreated him as a divine fgure. Was Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Logos, the same God who made heaven and earth?7 The response to this question divided the church. Some theologians agreed to say, “the Father became incarnate in the fesh and died on the cross.”8 This position was dismissed on the accusation of undermining the doctrine of divine transcendence. Other theologians agreed but, far different from the previous ones, held that the divine had to be differentiated from the human person of Jesus.That is to say that the divinity and humanity of Jesus must be distinguished.This position was also dismissed on the grounds of impiety toward Christ. In 325, Emperor Constantine convened and presided over a council in AD 325, known as the Council of Nicaea, which was attended by 250 bishops. This council ended up excom413

Martin Munyao

municating Arius. Eventually, the Church was split between the Western and the Eastern. The problem of how these theological dilemmas were solved was partly because the Western Church provided ecclesial leadership solutions without a consideration of the Eastern Church, in which Africa belonged. Therefore, historically, earlier in the theological formulation of the church, Christological discourses did not emanate from Africa, even though controversies came from the continent.

Various perspectives on Jesus As much as Western missionary enterprise had good intentions to spread the Gospel to Africa’s unreached people groups, it had its drawbacks. Western missionary initiatives could not separate themselves from their cultural footing. They thus carried with them a view of a masculine, patriarchal, and white Jesus. Unfortunately, over the years of missionizing the world by the West during the development of World Christianity, this view was universalized. Not only was Christology universalized through the missionary work in Africa, but it also domineered over the prevailing local Christologies that were living and authentic but not formalized in the African context.This section will explore insights that have shaped the Christological discourse in Africa over the long history of Africa’s encounter with Western Christianity.These will include ideas from the Catholic, evangelical, and liberal versions of Christianity.

Roman Catholic Church As a result of the previously discussed issue of Arianism, the Western Church had already forged a Christology that trumped over dissenting views.The Western Church had already embraced the doctrine of the Trinity formulated by the great theologian Tertullian.Therefore, frstly, most of the bishops from the Western Church frmly held that the Logos had eternally preexisted with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Secondly,“among the Greek-speaking churches, there was a general tendency to regard the Logos as divine, without pushing for a more exact defnition of what exactly this entailed.”9 That meant that coming from the Greek philosophy background, the Greek theologians could compromise in favor of the council since to them, the Son was divine.Thirdly, to the remaining groups, which were used to distinguishing between the divinity and humanity of Christ, “the question did not pose itself as a direct problem to them.”10 Therefore to many, even in their error, Jesus was God incarnate.That posed severe problems for Arius and his supporters. Constantine himself coined the word homoousios, meaning “of the same substance” in a bid to defne the relationship between Father and Son. This word had occupied theological discussions for quite some time before and after the Arian controversy. “At Nicaea, it was accepted as into the fnal version of the creed as being a faithful explication of apostolic teaching.”11 The decision at the Council of Nicaea resulted in the cutting of the Church’s statement of faith in what is popularly known as the Nicene Creed.The Nicene Creed established the relationship between the person of Jesus Christ and God the Father, stating that Christ is “from the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not created, of the same essence as the Father.”12 Therefore, the bishops at the Council of Nicaea agreed that the Logos could be as equal as the Father, eternally coexisting and not created, but all things were created through Christ. Arianism was condemned, and Arius himself was banished and went to exile. Headed by Emperor Constantine, “the government was intervening not just in the Church’s administration affairs, but in theology.”13 Therefore, it was witnessed for the frst time in the history of Christianity the state infuencing a major theological church decision by banishing Arius for refusing to sign the Nicene Creed. 414

Christology in Africa

The theological controversies of this time and the involvement of the state ought not to be removed from the African Christian experience since the northern part of Africa was at the center of it. Numerous Christological controversies have rocked the African church in the past. However, the church is not in a position to handle them as a unit due to two reasons. One is the complexity of the division that is existent in some that are competing with the indigenous notions of Christ’s existence and divinity.The other is that the earlier mentioned Western theological developments dominated church teachings and were universalized through the spread of Christianity to other parts of the world. Developments in modern missionary movements and ecumenism created a broad context for theological dialogue.

Efforts to Africanize Christology in the Roman Catholic Church While conversations about Christ’s personality and deity dwelt on His unity with the Father, in the Roman Church, Western debates were not really the main focus. Timothy Tennent has argued: The frst African thinkers are not focused on the ontology of Christ and the relationship of his deity and his humanity as Western theologians have been. Africans do not invest a lot of time discussing precisely how the two natures of Christ become united into one the anthropic person. They rarely discuss how the two wills of Christ confrm him as the God-Man without confusion or compromise.These were all central concerns of the ecumenical councils that tended to focus on the person of Christ.14 One must see this as an indication that the growing African church was not interested in theological formulation for debate’s sake, but was interested in the meaning of Christ for the church.Africans were deeply religious people who had their ideas about God before the arrival of missionaries. Sanneh suggests that “theologically, God had preceded the missionary in Africa, the fact that Bible translation clinched with decisive authority.”15 Therefore the frst Roman Catholic Fathers in Africa had to grapple with African traditional religion and gain the understanding of Africa’s views on divinities, among whom one of them was “Christ,” or was he? By estimation, one of the biggest mistakes of the White Fathers was their failure to see Christ in the African indigenous cultures. It is for this reason that Robert Schreiter is correct in arguing that “the development of local theologies depends as much on fnding Christ already active in the culture as it does on bringing Christ to the culture.”16 According to Schreiter, a Roman Catholic Scholar, Christ is already in local cultures; it’s upon the missionaries to seek for him and see him. He adds that “The great respect for culture has a Christological basis. It grows from out of a belief that the risen Christ’s salvifc activity in bringing about the kingdom of God is already going on before our arrival.”17 By implication, the risen Jesus Christ was already present in Africa long before the missionaries and was working among the African people. The question is, in what ways did they perceive him? One could argue that it is this realization that led Holy Ghost Fathers to focus on and stress the notion of inculturation to see and preach Christ through African eyes.

Evangelical church To the evangelicals, there is no more important question than this of “who is Jesus?”According to evangelical theology in Africa, the answer to this question determines your eternity but also defnes your life. More so, it tells a lot about one’s approach to issues such as sin, suffering, 415

Martin Munyao

sinners, and salvation. Such views of Christ in Africa among the evangelical church are not a surprise considering that it is an import of Western theology from the 19th- to 20th-century missionary enterprise in Africa. In a nutshell, for evangelicals in Africa, Christianity is Christ! Jesus is understood to be fully God and human (especially during his presence on earth). Some of the titles for Jesus’ divinity are Messiah (Christos), Emmanuel (God with us), Lord (Kyrios), Son of God, Logos (Word), and the Resurrection. These titles of Jesus are synonymous with the images of Christ according to evangelical Christianity.To African evangelicals, the titles and images are taken seriously, albeit with a reservation on their meaning for an African Christian. For example, Jesus is the “door.” From an evangelical perspective, this is the door to eternal life, meaning any person who doesn’t go through that door has no access to salvation. However, to an African Christian, even though the idea of “evangelical” could mean a few more other things, it could be the door to success, favor with God, wealth, healing, etc.This aspect of the imagery of Christ will be explored further in this chapter. Evangelicals also believe that Christ is a Mediator.The idea that only God can stand before God to mediate for man is not a matter of further debate because only God can stand in the gap between God and humanity to mediate for the salvation of all humanity.Also, Christ’s deity means that Christ lives in the lives of his followers and gives them power and authority over sin (Gal. 2:20). It also means that Christians have power and authority over Satan (Col. 3:1–3; Eph. 1:19–22). One of the unique aspects of Jesus’ deity as per evangelical Christianity that stands out from the rest is the idea that the followers of Christ are given the power to become like him through a process known as glorifcation (Phil. 3:20–21).While this is welcome in the African concept, it leaves a lot of room for navigation.This is because for an African religionist, transacting ideas of “likeness” between the self and the divine ought to be treated with a lot of caution. Nonetheless,African evangelical Christians abstractly believe it even when it doesn’t concretely make a lot of sense as to what that means. Jesus the Messiah is the Mediator between God and humanity, the One who brings salvation to humankind. Access to His salvation is limited to only those who accept Him as a personal savior. Salvation cannot be communal in the evangelical sense. It is a personal gift which all the persons who have accepted Jesus receive.There has to be that defnite moment that one has to choose to accept Jesus and believe that He is divine and has the power to save from sin. Christ’s salvation in this sense is strictly from sin, and not inclusive of non-living things like power structures and environments.

Liberal Christianity The word “liberal” carries connotations of “freedom” and “liberality.”The person and work of Christ according to liberal Christology goes beyond the limited views of Catholicism and evangelicalism.To liberal Christianity, Jesus is still the mediator between God and humanity, but his mediatorship includes all people regardless of their socio-economic, racial, and sexual orientations. Here, knowledge and invitation of Jesus transcend any human limitation and it is inclusive. Quite often, Jesus is perceived to be the Mediator between God and humanity who welcomes all people, including those who are socially, racially, and sexually marginalized. Biblical images of Christology are taken from narratives such as Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, the meeting of Jesus with the Pharisee and the publican, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Jesus and the poor, sick, and oppressed, and Jesus and children. Among liberal Christology, Jesus is perceived as One who identifes with the lowly, and those downtrodden by the society’s might. However, He comes down to identify with them, and the entire discourse on Jesus in the Gospels is a confrontation with the religious and political establishment that was against the people. 416

Christology in Africa

In its expression, liberal Christology sees salvation as extending to power structures (religious and political) that are oppressive to humankind. Salvation, according to liberal Christology, can salvage non-living things since it sees wholeness in the world. This is a Christology that accommodates people from all walks of life regardless of their sexual orientation.Therefore, it accommodates the LGBTQ proponents, a move which is highly criticized by Catholic and evangelical mainstream counterparts. Here, Christ is seen as One who comes with open arms with the invitation to come as you are, without necessarily changing who you are, and He will receive you.Therefore, salvation, according to this Christology, is very inclusive. Not only does it liberate members of the society who lack necessities, but it also has the power to save the oppressive structures that make people poor. While liberal Christology positions favor oppressed and suppressed Africans, there remains a debate on the continent about the tenets and theology of the progressive churches. For the past decades, African Christianity has wrestled with some of the socio-cultural values such as pro-choice, and LGBTQ, which are generally associated with liberal Christianity. Some African Christians, especially those of the evangelical persuasion, continue to argue that Christians who follow the teachings of Jesus cannot support such lifestyles. But progressive Christians on the continent call for an openness to dialog on these contentious issues by pointing out that the love of Christ which all Christians share is limitless.Their opponents argue that these positions refect postmodernism and post-Christian error, a view which mistakenly associates postmodern thinking as necessarily post-Christian, thus ignoring some of the subtleties of postmodernism which are about a critique of the dominant Western narrative. The African struggle with foreign Christologies is real. On the one hand, we have the Catholic and evangelical Christianity whose images of Christ still retain some colonial and racial undertones manifested in domination, exclusivism, and oppression. In these, the power of the state and even the images of the cross of Christ symbolize older versions of Christianity.While on the other hand, you have liberal Christianity, whose Christology is associated with images of degradation of African moral values, which have struggled to fnd a place in African society. This has necessitated a call for an African Christology from among the Africans themselves. In the next section, we turn to a Christology in Africa.

Christology in Africa A Christological lacuna

Mutisya, a church elder who through kwitikila (belief) became a Christian, is a faithful Christian. He attends his local African inland church meetings every Sunday. Unfortunately, one of his sons is taken ill and passes away. A week later his cattle contract a strange disease from an epidemic which wipe out half of his livestock. He shares these misfortunes with his local pastor and fellow elders, and all they can do is pray for and with him. A month later his niece is involved in a horrible road accident and is hospitalized, while his son in the city is laid off from work following a departmental retrenchment.These misfortunes become so overwhelming for elder Mutisya. Following consultation on these adverse events with his wives, he opts to visit a nganga (diviner) for intervention.Word gets to the church leadership that Mutisya has consulted with a nganga who spat on him and his entire family and exorcised evil spirits.The local church leadership, upon confrming these matters, not only removes Mutisya from his leadership role but also excommunicates him from the fellowship, claiming that they are taking these actions per the teachings of the Bible. The actions taken by the church devastate Mutisya and even the other members of the church who are left wondering what is wrong with consulting another medium for his life’s misfortunes. Is there a possibility that Mutisya wanted to see Jesus imaged in another way than his church had taught him? 417

Martin Munyao

This fctional story is the closest it can get to describing a Christological lacuna that exists in most African societies today. There seems to be a faith in Christ among African believers, which is devoid of their particular culture, identity, and beliefs. As Nasimiyu-Wasike puts it, “Many African Christians have developed a dual personality. They have the Christian identity for Sunday worship and when things are going well, whereas their African identity is active in times of crisis, illness, and misfortunes.”18 This dualism of faith is in the backdrop of a continent that has been studied to have the largest Christian population in the world. It is in moments of crisis that the relevance of Jesus’ ministry as told by the Western missionaries is questioned. Such is the example of one Enyi Ben Udoh, while a refugee during the Biafran war in Nigeria sparked his quest for the image of Christ in Africa. In his doctoral work that was later published as cited by Stinton, Guest Christology: An Interpretive View of the Christological Problem in Africa, the Presbyterian minister recounts: The traditional way in which Christ was introduced in Africa was largely responsible for the prevailing faith schizophrenia among African Christians. He further defnes the problem as a “religious double-mindedness” or a dilemma of combining the Christian principles with African traditional religion without being fully African or completely Christian.19 One can emphasize here that the prevailing Christology in Africa is still dominated by a Western worldview brought by Euro-American missionaries, which encouraged Africans to abandon their cultural beliefs and practices.As a result,Africans approached and received the Gospel as a tabula rasa and had to take it all in uncritically. Hence the question,“why is there a qualifer before all other modern Christology and no one for Western Christology?” There is African, LatinAmerican, and black Christology. But there is never an American or European Christology. It can only be assumed that the Euro-American Christology has been universalized and dictates the norm in the global scope of things.Their images of Jesus Christ, which are mostly foreign to most Africans, are pushed to the local people as “the theology” (systematic theology). “The marginalized persons were co-opted into believing and perpetuating these images as universal images of Christ.Thus, the theology of the person of Jesus tended to be philosophical and abstract.”20 This is what might have caused the Christological lacuna.What was left out from the African concept of Christology after the Western missionary enterprise is the historical, existential Jesus of the New Testament. For decades this is the one that African scholars have sought to fnd in their Christological discourses. Due to this Christological lacuna, African Christologies are seldom discussed by Africans. This is because the foreign Christologies are still dominant in both the academia (theological institutions) and praxis at the parish (church) level.Theologian Nyamiti explains the reason for this Western theological dominance in the most elaborate way possible: Many of these Christologies are still unknown to the majority, and even where they are known, they are seldom taken seriously.White theology still dominates in Africa, and in most seminaries and other theological institutes,African Christologies are either unknown or simply ignored.When known they are at best treated as an appendix— in summary, form—to Christologies from abroad. This may also be because many African Christologies are still rudimentary; none of them could be taken as suffciently profound and comprehensive to answer to the needs for Christological teaching in seminaries. But the same could be said about many of the Christologies from abroad— which are, nonetheless, usually taken more seriously.21 418

Christology in Africa

However, there are multiple African Christologies practiced in the local African churches that are not part of academic discourses and theologies published by African theologians. However, these Christologies exist in very latent, unsystematic, and mostly in oral forms.What follows is an analysis of various African Christologies from various African scholars and church traditions. All these are attempts to answer the initial question posed earlier in this chapter:“who do people say that I am?” Before an analysis of African Christologies from various scholars and church traditions, it is essential to pause and look at four methodologies of doing African Christology as outlined by Tennent’s esoteric view as an outsider. In his seminal work, Theology in the Context of World Christianity,Tennent outlines four methodologies. 1. “A Theology from Below”22—as opposed to their Western counterparts, African theologians are not preoccupied with the ontology of Christ, His union with the Father, and His nature. Rather, on the contrary, African Christology is holistic in integrating Christ’s person and work. Its view of Christ is constantly informed and related to the historical Jesus of Nazareth who walked on water, healed the sick, fed 5,000 people, cast out demons, etc.Thus, Christology in the African mind is what Jesus did and is still doing. It emanates from what is happening in the various African contexts and how Jesus’ work in the Gospels can be replicated in these instances.This is the main point of departure from the Western Christology, whose “Jesus Christ who was preached was often a truncated Christ, not measuring up fully to the biblical picture of Jesus’ life, work, and ministry.”23 2. “Conscious Awareness of Traditional Christological Formulations”24—unlike their Western counterparts, African Christological theologians respect and are in touch with the prevailing historical formulations about Christ.They attach their discourses on the historical Western formulations but ground their conclusions in the souls of people to make sense of Jesus, hence stressing the importance of Christologies of older churches. 3. “Connecting Christ to Africa’s Pre-Christian Past”25—linking this methodology with the earlier story about Mutisya, Africans have wrestled with the question of how to be a Christian and at the same time be authentically an African.Therefore, African theologians are interested in methods that drive them to know how Christ connects with Africa’s preChristian past.This is in negation of the idea that Africans should approach the Christian faith as tabula rasa—with a blank slate in their minds devoid of the African past and present experience. 4. “An Emphasis on the Power and Victory of Christ”26—all of the African Christologies are built on a common underlying theme of the “power and victory of Christ.”27 This is very evident in the names of churches, especially in the Pentecostal church movement in Africa. These names communicate the power and victory of Jesus over the devil, sicknesses, and poverty. Having overcoming faith in a victorious Christ is the key to tapping into his power. There are six major Christological themes in the African context that are known. Some of them are pervasive in the African ecclesiology, while others are not. Some are tied to the theologizing of some particular African theologians, while others are tied to specifc church traditions.These themes are Christ as Healer, Liberator, Chief, Mediator, Master of Initiation, and Ancestor/ Elder/Brother. These themes will be weaved into the Christologies of the following African scholars as well as African Church traditions. The remaining segment of this chapter will highlight some leading scholars in African Christology and various Church traditions. Some of the leading Christological scholars in Africa that this chapter will highlight are Kwame Bediako, Charles Nyamiti, Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike, 419

Martin Munyao

and Laurenti Magesa. Of the many church traditions in Africa, this chapter will focus on the perspectives of Christ from three dynamic ones. These are namely the East African Revival movement, which was also known as Balokole (the saved ones), the African Instituted Churches (AICs), and the Pentecostal movement.

Kwame Bediako Put on the continuity-discontinuity continuum, Bediako would fall somewhere halfway on the continuum, as he emphasizes what he refers to as the uniqueness of Christ amid a plurality of religions in Africa.Addressing the evangelical church tradition, he argues that: We cannot avoid serious engagement with the religious and spiritual issues that African Traditional Religions raise for us since they form the cultural background of the Christian faith of most African Christians.Also, the necessities of theological apologetics require that we make sense of our Christian affrmations only about whatever alternatives are found in the contexts in which we make those affrmations.28 According to Bediako’s Christology, faith in Jesus does not come to an African mind without backdrop cultural experience.The cultural and religious backdrop informs faith in Christ of the Africans.Therefore, Christ is among other deities (lords) as the unique one. He also emphasizes Christ’s affrmations—as recognition, not an assertion of other religions, such as the African traditional religion. In the context of religious pluralism, this view of Christ deals with the earlier mentioned exclusivity of Christianity in Christ. Bediako claims that “This is the understanding of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:5–6, where his very affrmation that there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, is made about the other ‘so-called many lords.’”29 Therefore, the affrmation that Christ is Lord for evangelicals in the African context is a recognition that Africans view Jesus among other lords, only that he is the superior lord. This kind of notion is helpful in discipleship as an African worshipper, when in crises of faith, will default to Jesus’ Lordship rather than other deities.This does not necessarily mean that the deities are obliterated from the African’s concept of reality. Denying that is self-deceptive and often insincere to oneself and the community within which that person lives.This recognition makes Jesus accessible to an African worshipper among other lords who pale in comparison to Christ.

Charles Nyamiti Nyamiti’s Christology has primarily been an examination of two approaches.The frst approach is from the Bible to African reality, whereby we “fnd out the Christological subjects which have particular interest for the African and to confront the New Testament teaching about Christ with the traditional African worldview.”30 With this view, which is heavily borrowed from Mbiti’s Christology, Christ is viewed as the Christus Victor, the one who works miracles and conquers evil powers that are feared by the African person. Some of these images of Christ view Him from the Scripture in cultural terms as the Son of God, Servant of God, Redeemer, Conqueror, Lord, and Christ. The second approach is from African reality to Christology. In this approach, “the author examines the mystery of Christ from either the perspective of the African worldview or from the angle of some particular theme taken from the African worldview or culture.”31 This is the thematic approach, which is commonly employed in Africa by most church traditions. This approach is used to make sense of Christ during essential rituals in life, especially during 420

Christology in Africa

transitional rituals. For example, when dealing with death, “death among the Ewe-Mina tribe of Togo … is seen understood as a necessary passage to life.”32 Due to the strong belief in life after death for such African communities, there is a need to believe in Christ, the Ancestor who guarantees life in that realm.“Christ as the Joto-Ancestor means that He is the Ancestor who is the source of life and the fulfllment of the cosmotheandric relationship in the world.”33 This is the most commonly used approach to doing Christology in Africa. It looks into African reality with its Christological themes such as Mediator, Chief,Ancestor/Brother, etc. Lately, some of the previously renowned themes are losing their power and popularity. For example, images such as Chief are losing power and infuence. “Chiefs have never been readily accessible to the ordinary [person]: they had to be approached through the middlemen. Chiefs generally live in walled settlements and are therefore not exposed to ordinary contacts of their subjects.”34 This counters the Biblical notion of Christ, who is supposed to be approachable at all times and is aware of the plight of ordinary people. Thus, an alternative image of Christ is preferable in some African societies. That is, “the image of elder Brother taken from the passage of ‘the frstborn among many brethren who with Him form the Church’ in which there is no distinction of race, sex, color or social condition.”35 This is a more transformative image in the sense that elder brothers are respected yet approachable. Unlike chiefs, whose homesteads are surrounded by fences, elder brothers are born in the same home like everyone else, and they themselves experience the challenges in life that people go through. Nyamiti’s Christology seems to be at the end of continuity as he reads the passages literally.

Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike African Christology is not complete without a discussion about Christ’s relationship with women. Woman theology is central to Africa’s understanding of Christology, which centers Christ’s work among women as of great signifcance. People have generally ascribed the qualities of nurturing and protecting life to women because of their gender. Nasimiyu-Wasike views Jesus Christ as one who protected and nurtured life during his earthly ministry.“He is the nurturer of life, especially that of the weak and the marginalized.”36 Attributing Jesus’ motherly and nurturing or protective characteristics to personality and ministry is the missing piece in the Western Christology where Jesus is presented as a masculine Jewish male segregationist. Jesus’ appearance is the counterculture of the Jewish traditions where unmarried men did not interact with single or married women.The male dominance in the Jewish culture (and later in the world) had to be divinely broken.“Here, we realize that Jesus does not endorse male virtues or masculine approaches to human existence to the exclusion of feminine approaches. Rather, he legitimizes stereotypically female virtues.”37 Hence he challenged both men and women to be converted and realize a new way of being human. In this view of Christology, Christ did not become a man to teach us to be divine but to teach us to be truly human. The African woman can identify with Jesus’ ministry because, like Palestine, African life and culture are equally male-dominated.The family and social disconnect witnessed in modern-day Africa could be as a result of a broken or warped Christology that is missing the contribution of Jesus as a nurturer and protector of life. The African woman’s primary experience about other people is that of the mother, a nurturer of life. Here we would like to invite the African man to follow Jesus and take on the character of life nurturing, so that all women and men Christians in Africa may nurture one another and all of life on the African continent.38 421

Martin Munyao

This approach to Christology of ascribing to Jesus the femininity that he espoused in his ministry is the only Christology that has the power to penetrate the world’s social, economic, and political structures that have plundered Africa. The capitalistic economic systems that rule the world are mostly white, dominantly male, and necessarily Christian. Africa continues to experience dehumanizing and racist policies concerning trade, enforced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which have created Structural Adjustment Programmes and the heavy economic debts. These have reduced women, men, and children in Africa to a vulnerable and diffcult situation.39 This is neo-colonization taking place in Africa.While colonization ensured that Africans were subjugated within their land, and their wealth became plunder for overseas countries, neocolonization plunders through oppressive foreign policies. Gospel narrative such as that of Jesus feeding the 5,000 people (Jn. 6:10–13) because he pitied their having stayed an entire day without food and their weariness is the antidote to the oppressive economic systems that are led by men in collaboration with African politicians who are also predominantly male. Africans must learn to see and name their pain and oppression that is hidden in the structural evils of society. Christianity in Africa, therefore, must create methodologies with which to utilize Christ’s motherly nature to penetrate and destroy (exorcise) the evil spirits in the social, economic, and political structures that have dehumanized vulnerable people. “This brings us to another Christological model, which is much closer to the African reality and which speaks to many.And that is the model of Christ, the healer.”40 Jesus healed through exorcism and calling upon one’s faith to believe that God can perform the miracle. Jesus’ healing was from both physical and spiritual diseases and suffering.Therefore, Christ as the healer is what Africa needs to restore, not just for individuals and groups, but also for structural evils to be exorcised when individuals are delivered.

Laurenti Magesa Liberation theology is a hallmark for Africa, and Magesa is one of the strongest proponents of Christ as the liberator of Africa. Jesus’ inaugural speech in the reading of the scroll at the synagogue as captured by St. Luke sets the tone for his liberative ministry. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (Lk 4:18–19) Christology cannot be disassociated with Jesus’ mission, which is freedom of the masses from poverty, and spiritual and physical oppression. That is why Magesa opines that To consider Jesus Christ as the liberator in the African situation is therefore much more than just a metaphor. It is an attempt to present the only Jesus that can be comprehensible and credible among the African rural masses, urban poor, and idealistic youth.41 Only liberation Christology can give the Church in Africa the prophetic voice to say no to the social, economic, and political ills that have scourged Africa. Magesa gives such an example of the church’s prophetic voice empowered by liberation Christology. 422

Christology in Africa

He (Jesus) does this through God’s continual self-revelation in history, the Christian God being a God of revelation. In the process, He gives voice to the voiceless so that farmers, for example, can demand fair prices for their produce. He instills courage to the weakhearted so that industrial workers, domestic servants and casual laborers can say no to the arbitrary exploitation of their person and labor.42 In other words, liberation Christology comes to Africa as the only hope of restoring dignity to a very debased and dehumanized lot in the continent. It is in the liberation that dehumanization of prostitutes, street families, and the sick and lame will be considered and addressed.This can only happen when the historical Jesus is concretely brought to the visibility of the African Church by removing the abstractness with which the “colonial” Jesus was introduced in the continent. According to Magesa, “When we speak of Jesus as Liberator, then we refer to His assurance of solidarity with us, particularly but not exclusively as Church, in the struggle—His struggle—to diminish poverty among the masses of the people.”43 According to Magesa, a liberating Christology is thus one that gives the Church the responsibility of being the healing balm to the nations.Therefore, the Church is not only a liberating agency but also a healing one. Therefore,“Our Christology is thus also concretely ecclesiology.”44

African Christology in church traditions African Independent Churches

With the gaining of political independence in most African nations in the 1950s and 1960s, the Church in Africa also sought to emancipate itself from the dominating white leadership and administration. The African Churches were left free to do the commonly known three selfs: self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting. It is said that the Church left out one “self,” that is, self-theologizing. That can be said of the missionary churches, but not of the African Independent Churches. The AICs are African instituted churches that sought to decolonize theology of the white domination.The AICs’ Christology was among the frst to self-theologize. In the 17th century, a woman in the kingdom of Kongo (present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC) named Kimpa Vita became a nganga (a medium). About 1703, in a dream, she received a vision from St. Anthony, one of the most beloved saints in Kongo, who warned her that the colonial churches were deeply in error. Jesus, she now learned, was a Black Kongolese, as were the apostles and popular saints like Saint Francis.45 In fact, according to Kimpa Vita, “Jesus had been born in the Kongo capital of Sao Salvador. Kimpa Vita’s overarching message was that African Christians needed to fnd their way to God, even if that meant using traditional practices condemned by the White priests.”46 That introduced Africa to a stream of many prophets and prophetesses who, through dreams and visions which involve the New Testament mysticism, were called apart to deliver their people.These were people like Harris of Liberia and Simon Kimbangu of Kimbanguist movement in Belgian Congo. Simon Kimbangu took up the personalities of Jesus as a prophet and healer at a time when the worldwide infuenza epidemic in 1918 had devastated Africa. “Kimbangu preached an orthodox puritanical Christianity, but was distinctively Africa in his invocation of the help of the ancestors and his focus on himself as a charismatic leader and mediator between God and the people.”47This is to show that in the entrance of AICs, Christology was seen as 423

Martin Munyao

embedded in certain individuals who took up the role of mediatorship and political saviors. Many of Kimbangu’s followers saw him as the African savior. In Africa, formalization of AICs was achieved in the formation of Organization of African Independent Churches (OAIC) in Cairo, Egypt, in 1978. The OAIC, whose headquarters is in Nairobi, Kenya, is now found in various African regions, for example, in West Africa, South Africa, Eastern Africa, Madagascar, and Central Africa. This institutionalization of the AIC through OAIC has also formalized theology within the Church. Under OAIC, the AICs are churches that acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, which has either separated by secession from a mission or an existing African Independent Church. AICs are formed under the Christological premise that Jesus Christ is the protector of African values, from moral erosion of the West. Hence, besides preaching the Gospel, the other role of AICs is to protect the African values and forms of society against the impact of colonialism, and the overly restrictive aspects of the missionary founded churches. There are three types of AICs, and in each is a unique Christology that guides their operation and worship expression. First are the nationalist churches, whose broader function was a movement formed to seize political power from the Europeans.They saw Christ as the liberator and who frees people from colonial oppression. Second are the spiritual (also known as Roho churches in East Africa) churches. They view Jesus as the alternative “counter” community maker who brings the Holy Spirit to the Church.They were formed in opposition to missionary models of society.They are also called Aladura, prayer or prophetic churches (in West Africa); Akurinu (East Africa); and Zionist or Apostolic (Southern Africa).They see Jesus’ role as the prophet who comes to announce the Kingdom of God formed in the African society.Third are the African Pentecostal Churches, which are founded after political independence, infuenced by the global Pentecostal movement, and strongly oriented toward the future while retaining roots in African culture.They see Christ in a more comprehensive sense, in that their Christology fts well in a globalizing world. The primary image of Christ in modern-day AICs is the healer.“Having faith in Jesus Christ and trusting the directives of the healer is another important theological element of the healing process.”48 Thus, AICs healers acknowledge that Jesus heals, “yet he uses those with the gift of healing to effect healing.”49 The role of Jesus as a healer in AICs has made the church followers shun modern medicine, which is considered Western and with evil intent. East African Revival Movement

The East African Revival “was a movement of spiritual renewal which started in a small way at Gahini mission station in the early 1930s.”50 The movement started in Ruanda and quickly spread to Uganda and other parts of East Africa. Before spreading to the rest of the region, it was known as the Ruanda Revival.The revivalist movement was started as a response to the rapid secularization of Europe, from where most mission churches such as the London Church Missionary Society (CMS) had originated from.Thus, from the name, the African Church was seeking a re-awakening of Christianity by Christ or often referred to as awakening the sleepy church. Since evangelistic and preaching ministry was at the center of the revivalist movement, a Christology of Christ crucifed was central.According to Kinoti,“the Church was beginning to discover certain truths about the Christ he had come to Africa to preach:”51 1. Jesus was the one who came into the burning furnace to be very near us and to walk with us (Dan. 3:25). 2. Jesus is real and satisfes any circumstances. 3. Jesus is the place of rest, in a deeper place of understanding of the victorious life. 424

Christology in Africa

4. Jesus never lets His loved ones have more than they can bear. 5. Sin hinders communion with the Lord. 6. Jesus is the Truth, the Victory, and a personal living Savior. The assumption was that the East African region was going through a period of spiritual drought and needed to experience Jesus anew. But for that to happen, sin had to be gotten rid of to allow Jesus to move in the region with a massive revival.“Focus on Christ, and the Cross meant a fresh understanding of sin, repentance, salvation, Christian fellowship, evangelism, and daily victorious living.”52 Christology in the East African Revival was centered on the victory of the cross, and hence carried the image of the victorious Christ who conquers sin and death.The cross of Christ was viewed as one that breaks all the social, racial, and regional barriers to make the Church as one united in love and humility.Thus, through this imaging of Christ, the revivalist movement is known to be inter-ethnic, inter-racial, inter-denominational, inter-territorial, and now international. The Pentecostal movement

Much of the praised vast spread of Christianity in the Global South, particularly in Africa, can be attributed to the rise and spread of the Pentecostalism in the continent.You cannot talk about Jesus in Africa and fail to mention the Pentecostal movement. This is the only Church tradition that carries with it a heavy Christology in its defnition and main emphasis.The Pentecostal movement is associated with four main emphases: “belief in Jesus Christ as Savior; belief in Jesus Christ as Baptizer in the Holy Spirit; belief in Jesus Christ as Healer; and belief in Jesus Christ as the King who will soon to judge the world.”53 Therefore, Pentecostal Christology in Africa carries four images of Christ: Savior, Baptizer, Healer, and King. Jesus’ healing and deliverance are witnessed. Even though Pentecostalism is not only continental but also present in the diaspora, it still carries these themes with it.While most of its theology is expressed orally and not in the reading of creeds, its Christology is lived out practically, with Christ seen as literally healing people of sicknesses. While the movement of the Holy Spirit is key to Pentecostalism in Africa’s worship, it is seen to be Christ Himself working among His people. Therefore, quite often, Jesus, Lord, and Spirit are referenced interchangeably. Even in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, it is the Lord, Jesus Himself, who baptizes people after their experience of salvation, which is accompanied by speaking in tongues.The Pentecostal movement seems to be a follow up of revivalist and AICs in that they continue with their work of destroying the works of Satan through witchcraft and diseases, and many other ills that bring about human suffering. However, they are distinct from AICs. Newer Pentecostal Churches (NPCs) see Jesus in the heart of prosperity Gospel, a Christ who doesn’t want anyone to be poor. However, the irony is that most of the NPCs in Africa are physically located near slums and informal settlements with low-income earners. It has been suspected that extortion and manipulation of the poor take place in NPCs through giving and tithing, a fact that counters the initial Christology of the main Pentecostal movement. Because of this warped Christology, some of the NPCs are considered to be pathologies.

African Christology and the situation in Africa A student once asked in a class on Doing Theology in the African Context that I was recently co-facilitating: “How does African Christianity live side by side with all the socio-economic and political dysfunction in the continent?”The guest lecturer, Agbonkhiameghe E. Orobator, responded by saying that, in any proselytization process, something is lost. While transitioning from African theology and practice to missionary Christianity, Africans lost connection with 425

Martin Munyao

their mystical images. Orobator grew up with the traditional religious altars and shrines in his home that represented a divine presence of deities and ancestors.Thus, in his experience at an early stage in his life, religion was not an experience you needed to step out of to engage in life; instead, you lived it on a day to day basis. In African ontology, religion is not separable from life.These altars and shrines were religious icons that were tangible evidence of divine presence. That connection to mysticism brought a sense of awe and honor for the gods and so shaped morality in the social structures and public spaces. Missionary Christianity demystifed African mysticism, hence dismissing the African experience of worship to God as pagan and animist. Therefore, they removed those icons and demonized the religious experience of the African people. That was when Africans lost connection with their deities. Now enter African Christianity, which is somewhat a translation of a foreign religion but mostly a rejection of Western Christianity and civilization. In trying to renew itself, African Christianity has made some wrong turns that have led to pathologies of Christianity and theologies. These Christianities have enabled oppressive structures (if not oppressing the people by themselves).They have misrepresented Christ in the process. What we need now is a renewal of African Christianity that will restore the awareness of mystical powers so that Africa can be reconnected to the Deity and restore her soul.This will happen when we restore a Christology that is rooted in the historical Jesus as well as applicable to the African experience. Then Christ will begin to heal, be Savior, be the Brother that has been coveted in the history of Christology, as has been seen in this chapter. For that to happen, a few things need to happen: 1. A restoration of tangible evidence of Christ in various Church traditions and experiences is required. Physical symbolism of Christ needs to be returned in sacred places of worship as an aid to African worshippers to concretize what is often abstract.This will help to return the place of mysticism in Africa’s Christology. It is in the mystics that the fear of God is restored that respects humanity. 2. A Christology that can permeate socio-economic, religious, and political structures is needed. Such a Christology in Africa will revive Churches to play their prophetic role in calling social and economic ills as they are. It will teach Africans to name their oppressor and hold him/her accountable. Such a Christology is capable of confronting corruption, bad healthcare systems, agents that are deteriorating our environment, etc. 3. I propose an honor Christology that dignifes and humanizes the African person.This was the sole reason for the incarnation of Christ, to humanize people who had been dehumanized. For Africa, this will call for a Christology that is livable in public and private spaces of our experience. 4. Lastly, I call upon a mainstreaming of African Christology in the theological institutions and institutions of higher learning.African Christology cannot continue to be a subservient unit under Western theologies that are marginalized and less discussed here in Africa. If Christ is going to be lived out in Africa as He seeks to be, then gatekeepers in African seminaries must mainstream African Christology as central to theological discourses in the continent.

Notes 1 Douglas W. Waruta, “Who Is Jesus Christ for Africans Today? Prophet, Priest, Potentate,” in Jesus in African Christianity; Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology (Nairobi, Kenya:Acton Publishers, 2003), 44. 2 Nicholas R. Needham, 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power: Part One:The Age of the Early Church Fathers, vol. 1 (London: Grace Publications Trust, 2002), 211.

426

Christology in Africa 3 Needham, 1:211. 4 Needham, 1:203. 5 Scott Sunquist and Irvin Dale, History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453, vol. 1 (New York, NY: Orbis Books, n.d.), 174. 6 Needham, 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, 1:203. 7 Needham, 1:174. 8 Needham, 1:174. 9 Needham, 1:176. 10 Needham, 1:176. 11 Needham, 1:176. 12 Needham, 1:204. 13 Needham, 1:204. 14 Timothy C. Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Infuencing the Way We Think about and Discuss Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 113. 15 Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity?:The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 32. 16 Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), 29. 17 Schreiter, 29. 18 Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike, “Imaging Jesus Christ in the African Context at the Dawn of a New Millennium,” in Challenges and Prospects of the Church in Africa;Theological Refections of the 21st Century (Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications, 2005), 103. 19 Diane B. Stinton, Jesus of Africa:Voices of Contemporary African Christology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 10. 20 Nasimiyu-Wasike, “Imaging Jesus Christ in the African Context at the Dawn of a New Millennium,” 103. 21 J. N. K. Mugambi and Laurenti Magesa, eds., Jesus in African Christianity; Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology (Nairobi, Kenya:Acton Publishers, 2003), 34. 22 Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity, 113. 23 Tennent, 113. 24 Tennent, 114. 25 Tennent, 115. 26 Tennent, 115. 27 Tennent, 115. 28 Kwame Bediako, Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (New York: Orbis Books, 2004), 37. 29 Bediako, 38. 30 Mugambi and Magesa, Jesus in African Christianity, 17. 31 Mugambi and Magesa, 18. 32 Mugambi and Magesa, 18. 33 Mugambi and Magesa, 19. 34 Mugambi and Magesa, 20. 35 Mugambi and Magesa, 20. 36 Nasimiyu-Wasike,“Imaging Jesus Christ in the African Context at the Dawn of a New Millennium,” 107. 37 Nasimiyu-Wasike, 108. 38 Nasimiyu-Wasike, 108. 39 Nasimiyu-Wasike, 109. 40 Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike, “Christology and an African Woman’s Experience,” in Jesus in African Christianity: Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology (Nairobi, Kenya: Initiatives Publishers, 1998), 133. 41 Mugambi and Magesa, Jesus in African Christianity, 85. 42 Mugambi and Magesa, 85. 43 Mugambi and Magesa, 87. 44 Mugambi and Magesa, 87. 45 Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom:The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 47–48. 46 Jenkins, 48. 47 Jenkins, 50.

427

Martin Munyao 48 49 50 51 52 53

Diane B. Stinton, ed., African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations (Great Britain: SPCK, 2010), 49. Stinton, 49. Mugambi and Magesa, Jesus in African Christianity, 60. Mugambi and Magesa, 62. Mugambi and Magesa, 67. Stinton, African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations, 57.

Bibliography Bediako, Kwame. Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience. New York, NY: Orbis Books, 2004. Guthrie, Donald. New Testament Theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981. Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom:The Coming of Global Christianity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002. Mugambi, J. N. K., and Laurenti Magesa, eds. Jesus in African Christianity: Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology. Nairobi, Kenya:Acton Publishers, 2003. Nasimiyu-Wasike, Anne. “Christology and an African Woman’s Experience.” In J. N. K. Mugambi and Laurenti Magesa, eds. Jesus in African Christianity: Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology, 125–35. Nairobi, Kenya:Acton Publishers, 1998. Nasimiyu-Wasike,Anne.“Imaging Jesus Christ in the African Context at the Dawn of a New Millennium.” In Nahashon W. Ndungu and Philomena Mwaura, eds. Challenges and Prospects of the Church in Africa: Theological Refections of the 21st Century, 102–118. Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications, 2005. Needham, Nicholas R. 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power: Part One:The Age of the Early Church Fathers.Vol. 1. 3 vols. London: Grace Publications Trust, 2002. Sanneh, Lamin. Whose Religion Is Christianity?:The Gospel Beyond the West. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003. Schreiter, Robert J. Constructing Local Theologies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985. Stinton, Diane B., ed. African Theology on the Way: Current Conversations. London: SPCK, 2010. Stinton, Diane B., ed. Jesus of Africa:Voices of Contemporary African Christology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004. Sunquist, Scott, and Irvin Dale. History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Vol. 1. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. Tennent, Timothy C. Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Infuencing the Way We Think About and Discuss Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007. Waruta, Douglas W. “Who Is Jesus Christ for Africans Today? Prophet, Priest, Potentate.” In J. N. K. Mugambi and Lauranti Magesa, eds. Jesus in African Christianity: Experimentation and Diversity in African Christology, 32–42. Nairobi, Kenya:Acton Publishers, 1989.

428

28 RUMORS OF SALVATION Perspectives of salvation in African Christian thought David Tonghou Ngong

Taxonomies of salvation Discourses on salvation in African Christian theology have often focused on the various understandings of salvation in sub-Saharan Africa, as African theology is often understood as subSaharan African theology. Thus, in his insightful classifcation of perspectives of salvation in African theology, the South African theologian, Gerrit Brand, focuses on sub-Saharan African theology to argue that, from an African perspective,Western discourses on salvation have mostly paid attention to the means and how of salvation rather than on the content of salvation.The focus on the means and how of salvation has led Western Christian theology to emphasize the various theories of atonement and debates on the question of who is saved. In Africa, however, the focus on the content of salvation has led many to seek to see evidence of salvation.They seek to see evidence of salvation not in the Calvinistic or puritanical sense of transformed morality and church life but the sense of the overall transformation of human life—spiritual, personal, social, political, economic, ecological. This focus on the evidence of salvation has led some to see the Christian view of salvation as elusive.To them, the Christian understanding of salvation is like “a fabulous ghost,” which constantly evades people as they try to grasp it.The typology of an African theology of salvation which Brand presents, therefore, focuses on the content or nature of salvation and thus suggests an African Christian contribution to the idea of salvation in world Christianity. In other words, for Brand, an African contribution to the understanding of salvation in world Christian theology is the view that salvation must be made tangible and verifable in this life rather than perpetually remaining an unfulflled or postponed dream. Brand classifes African theology of salvation into fve types: anthropological, social, cultural, ontological, and vitalistic.1 Anthropological understandings of salvation are those that see salvation as the restoration of the person to full humanity. In this case, the loss of full humanity is not often orchestrated by individual sins but rather by the sins of others and other impediments, such as sickness and lack of opportunity. Examples of this view of salvation include the understanding of salvation in black theology, the concepts of ubuntu and ujamaa, the view of salvation in African religions as including elements such as healing, and the prosperity gospel. These views of salvation aim to see the overall transformation of the human person (individual) for the better.The social vision of salvation sees salvation as a communal good; that is, salvation is not just about the betterment 429

David Tonghou Ngong

of the person but that of the community.This view of salvation is connected to the frst in that it includes the concepts of ubuntu and ujamaa, but the focus is on the community rather than the individual.The goal is, therefore, to seek communal well-being rather than mainly the well-being of the individual.An example of this view of salvation is the understanding of salvation as societal reconciliation, especially seen in countries like South Africa and Rwanda, and represented in the recent theology of Desmond Tutu and Emmanuel Katongole, among others.2 Cultural accounts of salvation see salvation as cultural transformation or the revitalization and revalorization of culture.This is especially seen in inculturation theology that attempts to rehabilitate elements of African cultures that had been condemned by Western missionary Christianity.What is sought here is the salvation of African cultures. The ontological view of salvation seeks to understand whether what is, is what should be. It seeks to understand whether it is possible to attain the fullness of life within reality as we know it. In this view of salvation, reality, as it is, does not make possible the human good. For the human good to be attained, God would need to change reality as we know it.The theologies of liberation and reconstruction would ft this mode of salvation, for they see God as interfering in reality to change the nature of what is. It is also found in elements of the theology of inculturation that posit the intervention of the unseen world into the physical world. Finally, the vitalistic understanding of salvation focuses on the African reverence for life, captured in the idea of vital force that was introduced into African Christian theology by the Belgian missionary Father Placide Temples. Here,“life itself is the highest good to which humans can aspire.”3 This reverence for life is captured in the often-quoted text from the Gospel of John:“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10, New Revised Standard Version). Brand sees this vision of salvation as found in African women’s theology, that sees the quest for survival as salvifc, and in the theology of John Mbiti, whose spiritual understanding of salvation sees salvation as the transmission of spiritual life to believers. Whatever quarrel one may have with Brand’s taxonomy, his classifcation has nevertheless done signifcant service to African theology by, frst, giving a framework within which the theology of salvation in sub-Saharan Africa may be understood. His is arguably the only attempt to provide a framework within which salvifc discourses in African Christian theology may be understood. Other discourses of salvation in Africa have focused on single ways of thinking about salvation in Africa, such as from the perspective of indigenous religions, black theology, African women’s theology, Pentecostal theology, and evangelical theology, among others. The focus has hardly been placed on accounting for the different ways of thinking about salvation in African Christian theology. Brand’s work is therefore immensely relevant as a starting point for any understanding of salvation in African Christian theology. One may quarrel with his classifcation, but his work is the single most elaborate attempt to account for the different ways of thinking about salvation in African Christian theology. Second, Brand has shown that sub-Saharan African Christian theology makes a signifcant contribution to global Christian theology through its emphasis on the content of salvation rather than on the means and how of salvation.4 This is signifcant because it alerts us to the important point that African Christian theology may, by and large, be understood as soteriology, that is, discourses about the possibility of salvation in Africa and around the world.Thus, it can be argued that the different forms of theology in Africa are different ways of thinking about what it means to be saved in Africa.They ask whether it is possible to say that Africa or African society is saved today, given massive evidence to the contrary.They ask what the Christian faith could offer with regard to the possibility of salvation for Africans in various predicaments.This puts the idea of salvation at the core of any theological discourse in Africa; in fact, it makes African Christian theology soteriology.The claim that African Christian theology is soteriology is central to this chapter. 430

Rumors of salvation

Even though salvation has been recognized as central to constructive theology in the West, Western theology has generally not seen salvation as its starting point.With few exceptions, the starting point for much of Western Christian theology has often been the prolegomenon that attempts to justify the possibility and conditions under which Christian theology may be carried out in the context of the challenges of modern thought, or an attempt to think about God frst before thinking about the product of God’s relation with the world.We see elements of this in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Frederich Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith, and Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics 1/1. Few Western theologians have begun their theology from the perspective of salvation,5 but African theologians generally begin theological refection by focusing on what the Christian faith offers in the African context characterized by many travails.6 This chapter, however, provides a different taxonomy of salvation based on the view of salvation as health. As the Cambridge theologian David Ford points out, understanding salvation as health is faithful to the root word for salvation (which is health) and provides an expansive way of thinking about salvation, considering that “health can be physical, social, political, economic, environmental, mental, spiritual, and moral.”7 Seen from this perspective, no other theme is as central to African Christian theology as the theme of salvation. One limitation of Brand’s taxonomy, however, is that its conception of African theology is limited to sub-Saharan African theology.This prevents him from seeing that some of the ways of understanding salvation which he designates as Western, such as the idea of theosis or deifcation, are also African and are still found in the Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox Churches today. By providing a continental reading of the understanding of salvation in African Christian theology, this chapter hopes to expand the understanding of salvation in African theology. It expands the understanding of salvation in African theology by engaging ways of conceptualizing salvation that consider ancient and contemporary perspectives, bringing in voices that are not accounted for in Brand’s taxonomy.This way of understanding salvation in African Christian theology will, methodologically, be historical and constructive. In this regard, salvation in African Christian theology would be conceptualized in two broad but intersecting categories, namely, the spiritual and traditional and the modern and empirical. Like Brand’s taxonomy, these categories are not mutually exclusive but are rather interconnected. Differences exist in terms of where the accent is placed in each of these broad ways of thinking about salvation. Spiritual and traditional views of salvation would include understandings of salvation that are rooted in ancient African Christianity and African indigenous religious systems.These views of salvation are traditional because they are historically valid ways of thinking about salvation in either African indigenous religions or Christianity.The view of salvation as union with God or deifcation, as found in the early African and contemporary Coptic Christianity, or as spending eternity with God in the afterlife, as is the case with contemporary African evangelicalism, are traditional because Christians have historically held these views as valid ways of conceptualizing salvation.The view of salvation as wholeness, as seen in popular African theology such as that of the African Initiated Churches (AICs) and contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, is traditional not because it has been historically accepted in Christianity but rather because it is rooted in African indigenous (traditional) religions. In this context, tradition should be thought of in two ways: as connected to the tradition of the church as honed, for example, in the early church, and as connected to indigenous African religions traditions, as handed down from generation to generation. Because these ways of thinking about salvation are steeped in certain spiritual worldviews and practices, the traditional views of salvation are also spiritual in nature. Alternatively, the modern and empirical ways of understanding salvation deal with how the concept of salvation is brought to bear on the various challenges that have developed in Africa 431

David Tonghou Ngong

under the modern condition of colonialism, slavery, racism, the nation-state, and ecological concerns, among others. An example of this is the various forms of liberation and political theologies in Africa that address issues of racism and the crises brought about by the modern nation-state.These forms of salvation are also empirical because they hope to address a perennial issue in African Christian understanding of salvation—that of the elusiveness of salvation (salvation as “a fabulous ghost”): can we see and grasp how Africans are saved today? Is it possible to say that a person or a community has been saved in Africa today? If so, how do we know this? The goal of the empirical understanding of salvation is to ensure that salvation does not remain a rumor. Empirical knowledge of salvation would, therefore, include the knowledge of salvation in black theologies,African women’s theologies, and theology of reconstruction, given that their goal is to see visible cultural, socio-political, economic, and environmental changes for the better.The empirical understanding of salvation is connected to the traditional and spiritual views of salvation because the changes that they seek are rooted in a traditional and spiritual imagination.The intimate intersection among the traditional and the spiritual, the modern and the empirical, indicates that salvation in African Christian theology has a holistic ring, seeking the overall health of humans and the world.

Spiritual and traditional views of salvation It has recently been argued that Africa has played a signifcant role in shaping the Christian imagination.8 This is even more true with respect to the spiritual and traditional understanding of salvation.The spiritual understanding of salvation emphasizes salvation as eternal life understood as ultimate life with God, especially after death. In this scheme of things, the focus of the Christian life is on its eternal destiny, which is its ultimate calling.This view is especially seen among many early and contemporary African Christians. One of its early church proponents was Clement of Alexandria, who saw salvation as characterized by ridding the self of all the passions or desires that hold back the soul from reaching perfection and deifcation.9 It was this form of salvation Clement stressed especially in his “Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?” In that text, Clement reinterpreted riches not as material wealth but rather as the ridding of the desires or passions that inhibit the soul from achieving perfection and deifcation. Thus, for him, the rich person who shall be saved is not the one who clings to wealth or rejects it, but rather the one who is bereft of the passions or desires that hold back the soul, thus enabling them to make wise use of their material wealth.10 “He then is truly and rightly rich,” writes Clement,“who is rich in virtue, and is capable of making holy and faithful use of any fortune; while he is spuriously rich who is rich, according to the fesh, and turns life into outward possession, which is transitory and perishing.”11 The spiritual view of salvation focuses on things that last, such as the virtues, and not on the present, feeting material life.The present, ephemeral material life, in this scheme of things, is a training ground for this ultimate salvation which lasts forever.12 A similar understanding of salvation can be seen in the work of Clement’s successor, Origen of Alexandria, who understood the whole of the Christian life in spiritual terms. Drawing from 2 Corinthians 3:6, Origen notes how the letter kills but the spirit gives life. (This is a biblical text which is also central to St. Augustine’s understanding of reality.) The Christian life, for Origen, was directed toward life with God which is life in the Spirit. Origen’s tripartite anthropology in which a person’s spirit, intellect (nous), and soul (psuche) combine to show how human life was spiritual in nature and aimed at union with God.The Nigerian theologian Elochukwu Uzukwu has shown how Origen’s spiritual understanding of the person is like West African anthropology, demonstrating that pneumatology is central to thinking about how the world participates in divine life both in Origen and in West African Christianity.13 A main difference between 432

Rumors of salvation

Origen and West African spirituality, however, is that for Origen human wholeness appears to be projected into the future where the human spirit will ultimately be united with the divine Spirit, whereas in West African pneumatology, wholeness largely focuses on present material and spiritual existence. The spiritual view of salvation is also found in the life of the desert ascetics, such as Anthony of Egypt, and the early African Christian martyrs, such as the Scillitan Martyrs, whom we fnd at the opening of ancient Christianity in North Africa, and Perpetua and Felicita. Anthony submitted his body to the discipline of the desert, as St. Athanasius reports, to rid himself of the passions or desire that keep one focused on enjoying earthly things rather than God. St. Anthony’s life mission appears to have been to overcome the passions so that he may be found righteous to spend eternity with God. Commenting on Anthony’s spirituality, Athanasius notes how Anthony often kept to himself in “his cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in heaven, having his desire fxed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man’s life.”14 This vision of eternal bliss also captured the imagination of the martyrs.We are told that when the penalty of death is pronounced upon the Scillitan Martyrs for their refusal to renounce the Christian faith, their collective response is,“Today we are martyrs in heaven.Thanks to God.”15 This also appears to be the disposition of the Ugandan martyrs who were murdered by their king in the 19th century. It is reported that they went to their deaths joyfully because they knew that the death they were to suffer paled in signifcance to the joy they were to experience with God.When the Ugandan Christians were sentenced to death, one of them is reported to have observed that there is no need to be sad at the cruel sentence because what they suffered now was “little compared with the eternal happiness” they anticipated.16 In other words, they were prepared to dispense with this life for a better, spiritual life which they hoped to experience.The reported attitudes of the martyrs may be the stuff of hagiography. However, such hagiographies at least make a case for the spiritual understanding of the salvation of those who wrote them. African Christianity continues to generate many martyrs even in our own time, especially in the case of Coptic Christianity, whose history of martyrdom began from early Christianity to our own time. However, to die a martyr’s death does not necessarily indicate that one adheres to the spiritual understanding of salvation. The spiritual understanding of salvation is not limited only to the above cases but can also be found in other early African theologians such as St. Athanasius, Arius, Cyril of Alexandria, among others. It has been argued that the central issue in a critical controversy of the early church which largely took place in Africa, the Arian Controversy, was the question of salvation, especially the understanding of salvation as deifcation.17 The central issue appears to have been how Jesus Christ made access to God possible. In ancient North Africa, the spiritual understanding of salvation especially came to the fore with the work of St.Augustine, whose spiritual view of reality led him to see material things as signs that point beyond themselves to the ultimate spiritual, immaterial reality, which is God.This is especially seen in his book on biblical interpretation, On Christian Doctrine, where he sees Christians as pilgrims on their way back home to God.While not discounting material things, his understanding of salvation is spiritual in that the focus is not on the things of this world but on the life with God which Christians are called upon to anticipate.18 This spiritual understanding of salvation has continued to this day in the life of many African Christians, especially as seen in the Coptic Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and some African evangelicals. It animates the monastic versions of Coptic Christianity, as it did in the earliest century, and is also visible in the theology of Ethiopian Orthodoxy, which has been accused of buying into a dualistic spirituality that focuses on the spiritual rather than the physical 433

David Tonghou Ngong

world, thus failing to address issues of political and economic import effectively.19 In the Coptic Church, spiritual salvation has especially been demonstrated in the life of the ascetic popularly known as Matthew the Poor (Matta El-Maskeen), whose prayer life is said to have lifted him to ecstatic heights.20 Matthew the Poor’s story is very similar to that of St.Anthony in that, just like St.Anthony, Matthew the Poor shunned wealth for the monastic life in the desert. For Matthew the Poor, the critical issue is not so much the satisfaction of material desires as it is the disciplining of the body to experience the bliss engendered by ecstatic union with God.21 This transcendence of material life in the understanding of salvation has also been important in African evangelical Christianity, especially the version represented by the Byang Kato and Tokunbo Adeyemo.22 Recently, evangelicalism in Africa has been redefned to include much of African Christianity so that the boundary between evangelicalism and other forms of African Christianity does not appear quite clear. In this case, some African Independent Churches and leaders have been described as evangelicals. The effect of this has been that the stress on the transcendent or spiritual found in the salvifc discourses of scholars like Kato and Adeyemo has been attenuated, making way for the evangelical understanding of salvation to signifcantly embrace the material world also.23 About 30 years ago, African evangelical understanding of salvation saw the practice of Christian spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, and others as necessary in fostering Christian character and eventual attainment of eternal life or heaven. That emphasis has since shifted as these spiritual disciplines are often seen as intended to satisfy material needs, thus becoming increasingly connected to the African indigenous understanding of salvation—a development Kato and Adeyemo had feared.24 While the spiritual understanding of salvation is traditional in that it is rooted in the understanding of salvation in the early African church, the traditional understanding of salvation discussed here is also connected to African indigenous understanding of salvation, so that the Christian understanding of salvation in Africa is not divorced from how the same is understood in indigenous religions. While indigenous religious understanding of salvation seeks spiritual and material balance, the emphasis has been placed on the material side of the equation. Unlike in Christianity, the goal is not to spend eternity with divinity but rather to foster what has been described as “cosmic balance” or wholeness here in the world.25 In this light, African Christian theology takes seriously the understanding of salvation in African indigenous religions because it is the understanding of the salvation of most ordinary African Christians. It is believed that failure to engage this way of understanding salvation properly would alienate most African Christians. It is this understanding of salvation that has formed the basis of salvifc discourses in what have variously been described as African Independent Churches or African Initiated Churches. These AICs are said to have captured the imagination of many Africans because they seek to address issues that are critical to Africans who live in indigenous contexts. These issues include the quest for good health, bumper harvest, offspring, cattle, and the protection from malevolent spiritual forces that may prevent a person or community from experiencing these elements of the fullness of life.26 Because the spirituality of African indigenous religions is aimed at making these things possible, it is believed that, for African Christianity to take root in African indigenous contexts, these issues have to be engaged. Popular African Indigenous Christian leaders such as William Wade Harris, Garrick Braide, and Simon Kimbangu were leaders who engaged these issues and so led many Africans to the Christian faith.27 It is this understanding of salvation that animates the spirituality of the Ghanaian woman, Afua Kuma, recently popularized by the Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako.28 It is also this understanding of salvation that animates the life of the Aladura churches and is critical to the new Pentecostal and Charismatic churches that are now sweeping across the continent, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.While these churches do not neglect the view that salvation is eternal life, their focus is 434

Rumors of salvation

often on the beneft of salvation that accrues in the present life. Thus, their understanding of salvation is traditional not only in the sense that some of its elements, such as the claim that the Spirit of Jesus Christ overcomes all other spirits to enable a fourishing life, may be traced to the early church in Africa, but also because it is connected to African indigenous understanding of salvation. Here, salvation is directed at addressing problems that arise in the African indigenous context. Also, this way of conceptualizing salvation is spiritual not in the sense of privileging the immaterial over material life, as is the case with the privileging of the soul or spirit in some versions of early and contemporary African Christianity, but rather because its material understanding of salvation is funded by an imagination rooted in engagement with the spirit world. In other words, the fullness of life sought in traditional society can only be realized through appropriate engagement with the spiritual realm.This traditional or indigenous way of thinking about salvation is connected to the modern and empirical understanding of salvation, which we address next.

Modern and empirical views of salvation The modern and empirical views of salvation aim to address questions thrust upon Africans by the vagaries of life in the modern world. The modern world is the world of the intersection between Christianity and colonialism, racism and ethnic conficts, gender and ecological issues, and the state and neoliberalism, especially as seen in the now contentious notion of globalization. These are issues from which and in which Africans in general, and African Christians in particular, seek wholeness. In this context, the salvation sought is one where the problems generated by these phenomena are addressed, and human and ecological fourishing assured. The salvation sought under these circumstances is therefore based on developments in modern thought, such as the quest for human rights, environmental justice, and human well-being captured in the contentious language of “development.”29 Africa came into the modern world through its encounter with Europe that began in the 15th century with the Portuguese circumnavigation of the continent. This event would lead to the enslavement, colonialization, and missionization of African peoples. These are all events that seem to have upended other possible futures for the people of the continent while opening up others that were often problematic. The modern story of the quest of salvation in African Christianity focuses signifcantly on how to interpret, understand, and proceed with the fateful encounters not only of Africa and the West but of the encounters between Africans, Arabs, and Asians, especially as recently demonstrated with the expansion of China. Against this background, many, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, see the Christian faith as holding possibilities for a better future for their people. They see Christianity as holding the promise of personal, social, political, economic, and ecological transformation that would lead to wholeness. From this perspective, the indigenous (or traditional) and modern understanding of salvation coincide as salvation is understood to include the cultivation of wholeness but this time not only from the machination of indigenous contexts but also from those of modernity. It is from this perspective that the young Kongolese woman, Kimpa Vita, could be seen as one of the precursors of the modern understanding of salvation in Africa when she attempted to appropriate her Christian vision to restore the ruined capital city of the Kongo, San Salvador. When she claimed that Jesus and his Apostles were Africans born in San Salvador, she continued the vision that saw the city as a holy city and made its restoration central to the wholeness of the Kongolese people.30 The appropriation of the Christian faith to address some of the pressing problems many African societies face continues into the context of the postcolonial nation-state in Africa today. One can see this in the black theology of South Africa and the various forms of 435

David Tonghou Ngong

political theology in other parts of Africa. Desmond Tutu, for example, drew from the Christian faith to preach against the iniquitous apartheid regime in South Africa and worked for the reconciliation of a divided people after the fall of apartheid. The claim that all human beings are created in the image of God and so should be treated with dignity and respect became a central theme in the salvifc discourse of Desmond Tutu. His faith in the power of God to intervene in the struggles of oppressed peoples fueled his pastoral ministry. After apartheid ended, he came to focus not only on the language but on the acts of reconciliation as a vital means of doing the work of God in the world. Other South African theologians such as Charles Villa-Vicencio and Tinyiko Maluleke are also engaging the process of reconciliation in their theological work. Forms of African liberation theologies such as those of Jean-Marc Éla and Engelbert Mveng have drawn from the Christian faith to denounce internal political machinations and international economic exploitations that continue to suck the life out of most African peoples, calling for the appropriation of the Christian faith to enable African fourishing rather than its dehumanization.31 Proposals have also been made about what to do if African societies are going to experience the reconstruction or renaissance that they need to fourish in the modern world. While some, such as Elias Bongmba, seek to work within the framework of the nation-state to address these issues, others, such as Emmanuel Katongole, see the nation-state itself as the problem and thus urge African Christians to work around it rather than through it.32 Others use the language of reconstruction and renaissance to suggest that the Christian faith may be appropriated for the reconstruction and renewal of the continent.33 In all this, it is important to pay particularly careful attention to the language of liberation, reconstruction, renaissance, reconciliation, transformation, and others that are central themes in soteriological discourses in Africa. Recently, the issue of gender equality has been brought to the fore with the emergence of African women’s theology and gay liberation theology in Africa. Given that salvation seeks human fourishing, the voices of African women have recently alerted us to how much of the thinking about the salvation of African societies has been about the salvation of men rather than women. For women, salvation is sought in the form of equality, inclusion, and the discontinuation of certain abhorrent cultural practices, among others.34 The gender question has also included issues of masculinity and homosexuality, especially in the context of HIV and AIDS.35 The criminalizing and problematizing of same-sex relationships in Africa has led to calls for the re-evaluation of gender issues that deal with masculinity and femininity.36 Here it is argued that the salvation sought in Africa cannot be holistic if certain segments are excluded because of a faulty understanding of gender and human sexuality.What is clear from the above is that the salvation sought is the salvation that includes human and ecological wholeness in the present and the spirituality that the Christian faith provides is seen as holding the potential to make this salvation possible. These ways of thinking about salvation are empirical in that their goal is to see positive changes in human and environmental life, especially in African contexts.They are modern in that the changes sought are connected to the modern conditions in which Africans fnd themselves. However, the changes sought have, in many cases, not come to pass. Even though some positive changes have been made, such as the offcial end of apartheid in South Africa and the end of the confict in some African countries, most Africans still languish in poverty in a neo-liberal, global political economy that seems intent on eliminating them from the face of the earth. Even though reconciliation has been achieved in some African societies, signifcant discords remain, often evidenced by wars and rumors of war.There are still secessionist movements in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and Morocco, to name only a few.There are still wars and famine in South Sudan, Central African Republic, and even parts of Nigeria. In South Africa, wealth is being corruptly transferred from white people to the hands of a few black people, even as

436

Rumors of salvation

many languish in misery. Xenophobia continues to jeopardize the lives and livelihood of many Africans, not only on the continent but also around the world. Questions of racism and ethnicity are still eating at the fabric of many African societies.The environment continues to suffer severe strain from an increasing population, deforestation, and general environmental degradation. Women are still being marginalized, and being gay is still criminalized in many African societies. The persistence of these issues has led some to wonder whether the Christian faith possesses the balm to salve these wounds, especially given that some of the wounds are even being exacerbated by the Christian faith itself.The diffculty of getting a handle on these issues has, as we have seen, led some to think of salvation as a “fabulous ghost.”The rumors are rife that it is possible for these critical issues to be addressed and for Africans to experience signifcant wholeness of life. However, the possibility of achieving this wholeness appears to be perpetually postponed, leaving some with critical questions about whether it is possible for Christianity to serve as an instrument of salvation in Africa.37

Whither, African soteriology? What is the future of African theology of salvation? So far, we have seen that there are different perspectives in African Christian soteriology. These different perspectives include the spiritual and the traditional, the empirical and the modern.While the spiritual perspective focuses on the soul or spirit’s eternal participation in the life of God, the traditional focuses on how Africans may achieve wholeness as understood in indigenous religious contexts.The empirical and modern understanding of salvation is aimed at enabling Africans to fnd respite from the diffculties that plague life in the modern world. Central to the understanding of salvation in indigenous, empirical, and modern perspectives is the view that there should be material evidence of salvation.The lack of material evidence of salvation in African Christianity has led some to wonder whether the Christian faith possesses the potential for salvation in the continent. However, do these perspectives of salvation in African Christianity provide an adequate theological understanding of salvation? The view that Christians are destined to spend eternity with God is central to the traditional Christian understanding of salvation, and so this spiritual understanding of salvation should not be ignored. This understanding of salvation also helps Christians to understand that life in this world is not fnal and so grasping after material things does not hold ultimate signifcance.The ultimate signifcance lies in making proper use of things for the glory of God both now and eternally.This view of salvation may have a revolutionary effect in many African societies where modernity has been accompanied by rapacious greed and iniquitous chasing of the material. However, this spiritual understanding of salvation should not be used as an opiate of the people, as Karl Marx saw long ago.Thus, the view that there should be evidence of salvation, as we fnd in the traditional, modern, and empirical perspectives, needs to be taken very seriously. In the end, it would make little or no sense to talk of salvation when we do not have any evidence of its existence. It is from this perspective that some versions of Western evangelicalism that see people as saved irrespective of the misery they experience in this life ultimately look like a sham. Further, given that some of the issues that African theologians seek to heal, poverty and health, occasioned by the persistent lack of opportunity for Africans in the modern world, may be addressed through the development of science and technology, it makes signifcant sense for African Christian soteriology to engage these disciplines. Much of African soteriological discourses have focused on engaging the humanities and the social sciences. It is mostly discourses on health and healing, especially dealing with HIV and AIDS, that have engaged issues of science

437

David Tonghou Ngong

and technology. In the modern world, however,African soteriological discourse must engage the salvifc signifcance of science and technology.

Notes 1 Gerrit Brand,“Salvation in African Christian Theology:A Typology of Existing Approaches,” Exchange 28, no. 3 (July 1999): 196. For a longer version of his engagement of the doctrine of salvation in African and Western theology from the perspective of philosophical theology, see Gerrit Brand, Speaking of a Fabulous Ghost: In Search of Theological Criteria,With Special Reference to the Debate on Salvation in African Christian Theology, Contributions to Philosophical Theology (Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften: Peter Lang, 2002). 2 Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999); Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008). 3 Brand,“Salvation in African Christian Theology,” 220. 4 In this sense, sub-Saharan Christian theology of salvation is similar to the view of salvation in Latin American liberation theology. See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation,Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988). 5 Beginning theology with ethics, as James McClendon does, is a way of beginning theology with salvation. See James Wm. McClendon, Systematic Theology I: Ethics, revised edition (Nashville,TN:Abingdon Press, 2002). Robert Jensen, on the other hand, follows Thomas Aquinas in beginning his systematic theology with the Triune God. See Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology I: The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 6 It can be argued that from ancient to present time, African theological intervention has often begun with soteriology. See, for examples, Jean-Marc Éla, African Cry, trans. Robert Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986); Idem., My Faith as an African, trans. John Pairman Brown and Susan Perry (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988); F. Eboussi Boulaga, Christianity Without Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984); Desmond Tutu, Hope and Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984); Idem, No Future Without Forgiveness. 7 David F. Ford, Theology:A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 103. 8 See Thomas C. Oden’s infuential but controversial book, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007). 9 W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 370. 10 Clemens Alexandrinus, “Who Is the Rich Man That Shall be Saved?” Books IX-XIX, in The AnteNicene Fathers, Vol. II: Fathers of the Second Century, American edition, Alexander Roberts and James Donadson, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI and Edinburgh: Eerdmans and T&T Clark, 2001) 11 Clemens,“Who Is the Rich Man?” Book XIX. 12 Some have put this view of salvation down to the infuence of Platonism or neo-Platonism. See, for example, Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 368–388. However, the early Christian writers who held this view did not, like Platonism or neo-Platonism, disparage materiality. For the claim that someone like Origen, for example, was infuenced by the Bible to see the material world as good, see Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 136–178. 13 Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness, 136–178. 14 St. Athanasius, “Life of Anthony,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. iv (Grand Rapids, MI and Edinburgh: Eerdmans and T&T Clark, 1991), section 45. 15 Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, available online at Livinus: Cultuur, geschiedenis en literatuur, http://www.livi us.org/sources/content/acts-of-the-scillitan-martyrs/translation/. 16 See the brief narrative of the events by Bob French, “The Uganda Martyrs: Their Countercultural Witness Still Speaks Today,” The Word Among Us (August 2015), available at: https://wau.org/archives/ article/the_uganda_martyrs/. For more on the Uganda Martyrs, see John F. Faupel, African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs (Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications Africa). 17 Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, “The Centrality of Soteriology in Early Arianism,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977): 1–8. 18 See Saint Augustine, Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana), trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996), Book I.

438

Rumors of salvation 19 Girmah Muhammed, “Ethiopian Conceptions of the Human Person and their Implications for Development: Covenant Revisited,” International Journal of Public Theology 3 (2009): 484. 20 See Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life:The Interior Way (New York, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003). 21 For more on the life and work of Matthew the Poor, see James Helmy, Words for Our Time:The Spiritual Words of Matthew the Poor (Chesterton, IN:Ancient Faith Publishing, 2012), Introduction. 22 See, especially, Byang H. Kato, Theological Pitfalls in Africa (Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1975); Tokunbo Adeyemo, Salvation in African Tradition (Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1997). 23 For this recent redefnition of evangelicalism in Africa and its effect on the view of salvation, see A. O. Balcomb,“Evangelicalism in Africa:What It Is and What It Does,” Missionalia 44 no. 2 (2016): 117–128; Tite Tiénou, “Evangelical Theology in African Context,” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, Cambridge Companions to Religion, eds.Timothy Larsen and Daniel J.Treier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 213–224; Matthew Michael, “African Evangelical Thought: Its History, Trends, and Trajectories,” in A New History of African Christian Thought, ed. David Tonghou Ngong (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 149–174. For a recapture of the spiritual understanding of salvation in African evangelicalism, see Matthew Michael, Christian Theology and African Traditions (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2013), 167–187. 24 See Balcomb,“Evangelicalism in Africa.” 25 This way of thinking about salvation is however not limited only to African indigenous religions as it is found in indigenous religions around the world and even in what may be described as historical religions, that is, those religions that have historical founders, such as Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.Adherents of these religions seek to be spiritually and materially whole. For the African understanding of salvation as wholeness, see Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and human Wholeness; David Tonghou Ngong, “In Quest of Wholeness: African Christians in the New Christianity,” Review and Expositor 103 no. 3 (August 2006): 519–540. 26 See, for example, Laurenti Magesa, African Religion:The Moral Tradition of Abundant Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997). 27 See Allan H. Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century (Asmara, Eritrea and Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001); J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics: Current Developments Within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana (Leiden: Brill, 2005); David Tonghou Ngong, The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology: Imagining a More Hopeful Future for Africa (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010). 28 Kwame Bediako, Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 3–19. 29 See, for example, Stan Chu Ilo, The Church and Development in Africa: Aid and Development from the Perspective of Catholic Social Ethics, second edition (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014). 30 David Tonghou Ngong,“African Christianity in Precolonial Times,” in Anthology of African Christianity, Isabel Apawo Phiri and Dietrich Werner, and Chammah Kaunda and Kennedy Owino, eds. (Oxford, UK, and Geneva, Switzerland:World Council of Churches and Regnum, 2016), 26–28. 31 Engelbert Mveng, “Third World Theology—What Theology? What Third World? Evaluation by and African Delegate,” in Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to Theology, eds.Virginia Fabella and Sergio Torres (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983); Idem,“Impoverishment and Liberation:A Theological Approach for Africa and the Third World,” in Paths of African Theology, ed. Rosino Gibellini (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 154–165; Éla, My Faith as an African. 32 See Elias K. Bongmba, The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2006); Emmaunel Katongole, The Sacrifce of Africa:A Political Theology for Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). 33 Charles Villa Vicencio, A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); J. N. K. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction:African Christian Theology After the Cold War (Kenya: East African Educational Publishers, 1995); Kä Mana, Christians and Churches of Africa: Salvation in Christ and the Building of a New African Society (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2004). 34 See Saad Michael Saad,“Iris Habib El-Masry:A Pioneer of Coptic Feminine Theology,” Coptic Church Review 30 no 2 (Fall/Winter 2009): 51–56; Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Introducing African Women’s Theology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2001); Idem., Beads and Strands: Refections of an African Woman on

439

David Tonghou Ngong Christianity in Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004); Musimbi R.A. Kanyoro, Introducing African Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002). 35 Adriaan S.Van Klinken, Transforming Masculinities in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of AIDS (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). 36 The urgency of addressing the issue of sexuality in African theology was demonstrated by the fact that the Journal of Theology of Southern Africa, for example, published a special issue in July 2016 that focused only on the issue of “Sexuality in Africa.” Also see Ezra Chitando and Adriaan van Klinken, eds., Christianity and Controversies over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 3; Masiiwa Regis Gunda,“Contemporary African Christian Thought and Homosexuality: Issues and Trajectories,” in A New History of African Christian Thought, 204–220. 37 See, for example,Tinyiko S. Maluleke,“What If We Are Mistaken About the Bible and Christianity in Africa?” in Reading the Bible in the Global Village: Cape Town, eds. Justin S. Ukpong et al. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 151–172.

References Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, available online at Livinus: Cultuur, geschiedenis en literatuur, http://www.livius.or g/sources/content/acts-of-the-scillitan-martyrs/translation/. Adeyemo, Tokunbo. Salvation in African Tradition. Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1997. Alexandrinus, Clemens. “Who Is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved?” In The Ante-Nicene Fathers,Vol. II: Fathers of the Second Century. American edition. Alexander Roberts and James Donadson, eds. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 2001. Anderson, Allan H. African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 20th Century. Asmara, Eritrea/ Trenton, NJ:Africa World Press, 2001. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. African Charismatics: Current Developments Within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana. Leiden: Brill, 2005. St. The Life of Anthony. Translated by Caroline White. London: Penguin Books, 1998. Augustine, Saint. Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana).Translated by Edmund Hill. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996. Balcomb,A. O.“Evangelicalism in Africa:What It Is and What It Does.” Missionalia 44, no. 2 (2016): 117–128. Bediako, Kwame. Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004. Bongmba, Elias K. The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa. New York, NY: Palgrave, 2006. Boulaga, F. Eboussi. Christianity Without Fetishes:An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1984. Brand, Gerrit.“Salvation in African Christian Theology:A Typology of Existing Approaches.” Exchange 28, no. 3 (1999): 194–223. Brand, Gerrit. Speaking of a Fabulous Ghost: In Search of Theological Criteria,With Special Reference to the Debate on Salvation in African Christian Theology. Contributions to Philosophical Theology. Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften: Peter Lang, 2002. Chitando, Ezra and Adriaan van Klinken, eds. Christianity and Controversies Over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. Éla, Jean-Marc. African Cry.Translated by Robert Barr. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986. Éla, Jean-Marc. My Faith as an African.Translated by John Pairman Brown and Susan Perry. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988. Faupel, John F. African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs. Nairobi, Kenya: Paulines Publications Africa, 2013. Ford, David F. Theology:A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. French, Bob.“The Uganda Martyrs:Their Countercultural Witness Still Speaks Today.” The Word Among Us (August 2015), available online at: https://wau.org/archives/article/the_uganda_martyrs/ Frend,W. H. C. The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984. Gregg, Robert C. and Dennis E. Groh. “The Centrality of Soteriology in Early Arianism.” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977): 1–8. Gunda, Masiiwa Regis. “Contemporary African Christian Thought and Homosexuality: Issues and Trajectories.” In A New History of African Christian Thought, David Tonghou Ngong, ed., 204–220. London/New York: Routledge, 2017.

440

Rumors of salvation Gutierrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Twentieth Anniversary Edition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988. Helmy, James. Words for Our Time: The Spiritual Words of Matthew the Poor. Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2012. Ilo, Stan Chu. The Church and Development in Africa:Aid and Development from the Perspective of Catholic Social Ethics. Second edition. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014. Jenson, Robert W. Systematic Theology I:The Triune God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Kanyoro, Musimbi R. A. Introducing African Feminist Cultural Hermeneutics. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002. Kato, Byang H. Theological Pitfalls in Africa. Kisimu, Kenya: Evangel Publishing House, 1975. Katongole, Emmanuel. The Sacrifce of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. Katongole, Emmanuel and Chris Rice. Reconciling All Things:A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008. Magesa, Laurenti. African Religion:The Moral Tradition of Abundant Life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997. Maluleke, Tinyiko S. “What If We Are Mistaken About the Bible and Christianity in Africa?” In Reading the Bible in the Global Village: Cape Town, Justin S. Ukpong et al., eds., 151–172. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002. Mana, Kä. Christians and Churches of Africa: Salvation in Christ and the Building of a New African Society. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004. Matthew the Poor. Orthodox Prayer Life:The Interior Way. New York, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003. McClendon, James Wm. Systematic Theology I: Ethics. Revised edition. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002. Michael, Matthew. Christian Theology and African Traditions. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2013. Michael, Matthew. “African Evangelical Thought: Its History, Trends, and Trajectories.” In A New History of African Christian Thought. David Tonghou Ngong, ed., 149–174. New York, NY/London: Routledge, 2017. Mugambi, J. N. K. From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology After the Cold War. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Educational Publishers, 1995. Muhammed, Girmah. “Ethiopian Conceptions of the Human Person and Their Implications for Development: Covenant Revisited.” International Journal of Public Theology 3 (2009): 480–497. Musurillo, Herbert Anthony, compiler. The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. Mveng, Engelbert. “Third World Theology—What Theology? What Third World? Evaluation by and African Delegate.” In Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to Theology.Virginia Fabella and Sergio Torres, eds., 217–221. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983. Mveng, Engelbert. “Impoverishment and Liberation: A Theological Approach for Africa and the Third World.” In Paths of African Theology. Rosino Gibellini, ed., 154–165. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994. Ngong, David Tonghou.“In Quest of Wholeness: African Christians in the New Christianity.” Review and Expositor 103, no. 3 (2006): 519–540. Ngong, David Tonghou. The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology: Imagining a More Hopeful Future for Africa. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010. Ngong, David Tonghou. “African Christianity in Precolonial Times.” In Anthology of African Christianity. Isabel Apawo Phiri, Dietrich Werner, Chammah Kaunda, and Kennedy Owino, eds., 23–30. Oxford, UK/Geneva, Switzerland:World Council of Churches/Regnum, 2016. Oden,Thomas C. How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Introducing African Women’s Theology. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2001. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Beads and Strands: Refections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004. Saad, Saad Michael.“Iris Habib El-Masry:A Pioneer of Coptic Feminine Theology.” Coptic Church Review 30, no. 2 (2009): 51–56. Tiénou, Tite. “Evangelical Theology in African Context.” In The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier, eds., 213–224. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Tutu, Desmond. Hope and Suffering. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984.

441

David Tonghou Ngong Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1999. Uzukwu, Elochukwu Eugene. God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012. Van Klinken, Adriaan S. Transforming Masculinities in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of AIDS. London/New York: Routledge, 2013. Villa-Vicencio, Charles. A Theology of Reconstruction: Nation-Building and Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

442

29 PATRISTIC ECCLESIOLOGY IN AFRICA Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

In this chapter, I will attend to the ecclesiological developments in the patristic times because most of that theology was written on African soil. Emphasis will be laid on the contributions of the patristic fathers, for example, Clement of Alexandria, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, Origen, Bishop Agrippinus, Cyprian, Pope Victor, Pope Miltiades, Pope Gelasius, Agrippinus, Cecilian, Augustine, Athanasius, Aurelius, etc., on the ecclesiology of the Christian Church with regard to its polity, its discipline, its governance, and the status of baptism administered by heretics. The church in Africa infuenced the ecclesiological discourse of the churches on the continent and abroad.Among others the church in Africa dealt with ecclesiological issues, for example, how should the Church be governed, how much authority the bishop of Rome had over other major bishops, the role of the Church in the world, whether salvation was possible outside of the institutional Church, and the relationship between the Church and the State. In this chapter, the role of the Synod of Carthage in the discourse on the Trinity, re-baptism, the discipline of the church, Donatism, and Pelagianism will be highlighted. This chapter will concentrate on the church in North Africa. According to Schaff the inhabitants of the provinces of Northern Africa were of Semitic origin, with a language similar to Hebrew, but became Latinized in customs, laws, and language under the Roman rule.1 The church in Africa played a leading part in early Christian history.

Clement of Alexandria (AD 150–215) Clement of Alexandria, Latin name Titus Flavius Clemens, was born in AD 150 and died between AD 211 and AD 215.2 According to Ferguson, his place of birth could be Athens instead of Alexandria.3 Ferguson argues that the tradition of his birth in Athens relies on an independent and reliable source.4 Eric Osborn asserts that Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city where Greeks, Jews, Romans, Egyptians, and other native Africans lived near each other.5 Clement of Alexandria was a Christian philosopher.6 Wilson rightly observes that Clement was originally a pagan philosopher.7 In about AD 189, Clement succeeded Pantaenus, his mentor, as a teacher of the catechetical school of Alexandria.8 Clement introduced to the church the notion of the visible and invisible church.9 This distinction helps him accommodate sinners and the righteousness in one church.10 Clement wrote several ethical and theological works and biblical commentaries.11 Wilson is also of the opinion that Clement’s three great works, The Exhortation to the Heathen, 443

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

The Instructor, The Miscellanies, and Stromata, are an attempt to systematize Christian theology.12 The object of Exhortation is to win “pagans to the Christian faith.”13 Wilson continues by saying that the Paedagogus, or Instructor, is about Christian morals and manners.14 According to Wilson, the Miscellanies or Stromata is a collection of gnostic notes bearing upon the true philosophy. Clement of Alexandria is known for his teaching on faith and gnosis, the Logos, the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, creation, anthropology, original sin, Christology, the redemption, the Church, baptism, the Eucharist, penance, matrimony, and eschatology.15 Clement combated heretical Gnostics.16 Wilson argues that the aim of Stromata is, in opposition to Gnosticism, to table what true gnosis is. He understands true gnosis as a Christian philosophy as the basis of faith.17 Clement illustrates in his Stromata the ideal Christian Gnostic, namely “the wise man enriched with knowledge, yet established in the Faith.” According to Foakes-Jackson, the Gnostics tried to reconcile Christianity and philosophy and endeavored thereby to provide a religion for educated men.18 Clement bases his antagonism to the Gnostics on their denial of man’s free will and consequent perversion of the moral relation of man to God and on their condemnation of the material creation.19 Clement maintains that God can be known only through the Son.20 Clement calls baptism by heretics “foreign water” and deemed it, therefore, as non-valid.21

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (AD 155–240) Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian was a priest from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. By profession, he was an advocate in the law-courts of Carthage.22 Tertullian was a pagan lawyer who converted to Christianity. He authored numerous apologetic, theological works and wrote numerous treaties in defense of orthodoxy. He was the frst theologian to write in Latin. Phillip Schaff describes Tertullian as “the father of Latin theology … and one of the greatest men in Christian antiquity.”23 According to Harnack, Tertullian was “the founder of Western Christianity in its present form and the father of orthodox Trinitarian and Christological belief.”24 “West” refers here to the western half of the Roman Empire as Gratian reorganized it in 379, which includes, among others, Africa.25 In AD 206 Tertullian joined the Montanist sect.26 In AD 222 he separated from the Montanists and founded a sect of his own.27 In his book, De Baptismo,Tertullian also indicated that he did not believe in the validity of baptism conferred by heretics.28 Tertullian very famously said that the baptism of heretics was not valid.29 This notion of Tertullian affected the discourse majorly on re-baptism in the church in Africa. Tertullian formulated the doctrine of the Trinity and the Personhood of Christ. Against the Docetistic Gnostics,Tertullian “advocates the entire yet sinless humanity of Christ.”30 He coined nearly a thousand new words to explain Christian truths.Tertullian is accredited for coining the word “Trinity” (Trinitas) to translate the Greek word “hypostasis.”31 Expressions like not one person but one nature—“tres personae, una substantia,” three persons, one substance;“trinitas unius divinitatis, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus,” a trinity of one divinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost—were new theological terms coined by Tertullian.32According to Tertullian, the God Christians believe in is one substance and three persons (una substantia, tres personae).33 The word concilium, concerning ecclesiastical gatherings, is also attributed to Tertullian. The word is found for the frst time in Tertullian’s work. According to Helefe the two concepts, namely concilium and synods, signify primarily any kind of assembly, even secular assemblies.34 In the case of church assemblies, it refers to the “regularly convoked meeting of the Church for the discussion and decision of ecclesiastical business.”35 Tertullian was the frst who asserts

444

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa

“sacerdotal claims on behalf of the Christian ministry, and calls it sacerdotium;”36 according to Schaff, Tertullian emphasized in his earlier writings “episcopal succession as the preserver of apostolic tradition and guardian of orthodox doctrine.”37

Origen (AD 185–254) Origen was born in AD 185 and was reared in Alexandra.At the age of 18 (AD 203), he became the head of the catechetical school in Alexandria, where Clement had taught at the end of the 2nd century.38 Bernard J. F. Otten observes that Origen succeeded in synthesizing theology. Origen wrote the frst Summa Theologica.39 In AD 216, upon the request of the bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea, he preached in the churches in Palestine.While passing through Caesarea on his journey to Athens, he was ordained priest without the sanction of his bishop, Demetrius.40 Bishop Demetrius accused Origen of insubordination and excommunicated Origen.41 Therefore, in AD 231 Origen moved, at the age of 46, to Caesarea where he lived for the next 23 years until his death in AD 254. The First Principles or Peri Archon contains Origen’s system of theology.42 Origen emphasized in the Peri Archon the following themes: The existence of God, creator of all things, The divinity of the Son, His incarnation, virginal birth, His death for our redemption, His resurrection and ascension into heaven. The existence of the Holy Ghost, associated with the Father and the Son, who is the inspirer of the Old and New Testament, and the sanctifer of souls. The immortality of the soul, man’s free will, future reward, and punishment according to each one’s deeds. The existence of good and bad angels, the former assisting man in the work of salvation and the latter tempting him to evil.The creation of the world, it’s beginning in time, and its future ruin.The inspiration of Scripture, and its having both a literal and spiritual meaning.43 According to Schaff, Origen is the frst to apply to Christ the term “God-: man,”44which ultimately led to the view of the relation of the two natures of Christ, namely fully God and fully human.According to Origen, God is essentially one, unchangeable and good.45 Origen intended his treatise as a counterpoise to the teaching of the Gnostics;46 Origen produced the Hexapla, comparing six versions of the Bible.47 Foakes-Jackson asserts that Origen divides humanity into three classes, in a manner which shows his presumption that the Son occupied a subordinate position.48 According to Origen, the frst class was those “who were capable of understanding the autotheos, then came those who knew Him by the Logos, and lastly those who know God by recognizing the divine essences which animate the planets.”49

The African Popes The Roman Church was governed by three African popes, namely Pope Victor AD 189–199, Pope St. Miltiades AD 311–314, and Pope St. Gelasius I AD 492–496. All three are honored in the Roman Catholic Church as saints. They played a huge role in the ecclesial contributions of the Church in Africa. For example, Pope Victor played an important role in establishing the celebration of Easter on a Sunday. During the pontifcate of Victor, the dispute over the celebration of Easter grew more acute. The Christians at Rome, who had come from the province of Asia, were accustomed to observe

445

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

Easter on the 14th day of Nisan, whatever day of the week that date might happen to fall on. Pope Victor decided to bring about unity in the observance of the Easter festival and to persuade the Quartodecimans to join in the general practice of the Church that Easter was observed on Sunday.50 Pope Victor called the frst Roman Synod in history, which attended to the issue of when Easter should be observed.51 Pope Victor is the one who called on the entire church to conform with his decision on the Easter controversy.52 He called upon the bishops of the province of Asia to abandon their custom and to accept the universally prevailing practice of always celebrating Easter on Sunday. In case they would not do this, he declared they would be excluded from the fellowship of the Church.53 Pope Victor also “branded the Asiatics as heretics, and threatened to excommunicate them.”54 He changed the language of celebrating Mass to Latin, which was spoken in North Africa. During his pontifcate, Latin became the offcial language of the Church.55 In doing so he popularized Latin as the common language of the church.According to Kroeger, this was being done to make “Christianity more democratic and accessible to ordinary people.”56 Pope Melchaides (AD 311–314), known as Miltiades, was persecuted before his reign as pope. He is considered as one of the African Christian martyrs.57 Before he was elected pope, there was an outcry to banish the Bishops of Rome.To stop this, Governor Maxentius elected Miltiades, who at the time was a priest in Africa. It was Miltiades who led the church to fnal victory over the Roman Empire. During his papacy, Emperors Galarius, Licinius, and Constantine put an end to the persecution of Christians. Christians were permitted to embrace their faith and to reconstruct their places of religious worship. Pope Miltiades was also given back all the ecclesiastical buildings and possessions that had been confscated during the persecutions. Constantine’s wife later let him stay in the Lateran Palace in Rome. In doing so, he became the frst pope to have an offcial residence. He is also known for having been granted permission by Constantine to build the Lateran Basilica, which would become the principal church of Rome and the residence of every pope for over 1,000 years. Miltiades decreed that none of the faithful should fast on Sunday or the ffth day of the week (Thursday) because this was the custom of the pagans. Regarding the issue of Donatism, Pope Miltiades condemned the practice in Africa to re-baptize apostolate bishop and priests.This, however, did not stop the growth of Donatism in Africa. Pope Gelasius I was the third Catholic pope born in Africa. Pope Gelasius was born in Rome to African parents and was a member of the Roman clergy from his youth.58 He was appointed in AD 492 as pope. Pope Gelasius I affrmed the primacy of Rome over the entire Church, both east and west, throughout his tenure. Gelasius exiled the Manicheans from Rome and burned their books before the doors of the Basilica of the Holy Mary. His presentation of doctrine set the model for later popes when they asserted claims of papal supremacy. Pope Gelasius believed that “both civil and sacred powers are of divine origin, and independent, each in its sphere.”59 Pope Gelasius, in his writing to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I, emphasized the consecrated authority (auctoritas) of the priesthood and the power (protestas) of the rulers.60 Gelasius emphasized the separation of the Church and the State. He developed the two sword theory. His premise was that the pope and the emperor had equal authority but only in their respective territories.The pope was the authority over all ecclesiastical matters and the emperor over secular matters.61 His letter, the Duo sunt, established a distinction between two powers, the “holy authority of bishops” and the “royal power.”This articulation of the separation of the church and the state would dominate for over a millennium, and it remains a force in international law. Gelasius I is the frst pope to propose a model for the church–state interaction.62

446

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa

Agrippinus and re-baptism During the episcopate of Bishop Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, an inquiry emerged in the African Church regarding what should be done to converts from schism or heresy. As stated by Burns, and Jensen “in the wake of the Decian persecution, a controversy regarding re-baptism broke out in Carthage.”63 The issue was also about ecclesiastical discipline. Former Catholics were subjected to ecclesiastical discipline.Another query which Bishop Agrippinus attended to was whether baptism for those who had been baptized outside the Church should be viewed as legitimate?64 Bishop Agrippinus “called the bishops of Numidia and proconsular Africa to the synod in Carthage” to attend to these issues.65 The Synod of Carthage occurred in the time of Pope Callistus in the vicinity of AD 218 and 222.The Synod of Carthage rejected the validity of baptism by heretics.66 The synod was, therefore, the “frst who introduced the custom of rebaptism.”67 Tertullian’s book, De Baptismo, affected massively the conclusions of the Synod of Carthage.

Cyprian (AD 248–258) Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, died a martyr in 258. He possessed a profound knowledge of Scriptures, wrote important theological works, fought heresy, and insisted on the unity of the Church.68 During AD 248 Cyprian was elected Bishop of Carthage. Cyprian’s views on the Church government are important to take note of.The Church, as conceived by St. Cyprian, is made up of the ordinary faithful, and its ordo orderus.The constitution of the ordo is hierarchical. At the head, in each particular community, stands the bishop. His authority descends in everdiminishing degrees to priests, deacons, and sub-deacons.There are also other persons entrusted with various ecclesiastical functions, as acolytes, exorcists, and lectors.The chief bond of union in this collective body is the governing authority derived from Christ. Cyprian emphasizes the close connection between the bishop and the presbyters. Cyprian undertook no important matter without the advice of the presbyters.69 Cyprian states that for the better government of the Church, and to meet special diffculties that may arise, it is expedient that councils be held from time to time, which bishops from the same region attend and at which they act as one body. His premise was that the decrees passed in these councils have a binding force and must be observed even by the bishops.70 Cyprian emphasizes the episcopal authority.71 Cyprian goes still further than Tertullian and applies all the privileges, duties, and responsibilities of the Aaronic priesthood to the offcers of the Christian church, and constantly calls them sacerdotes and sacerdotium. According to Schaff, he may be called the “father of the sacerdotal conception of the Christian ministry as a mediating agency between God and the people.”72 Cyprian’s premise was that the Holy Ghost governed the assemblies of the Church (Placuit nobis, Sancto Spiritu suggerente).73 Cyprian attended to the issue of whether priests could receive the apostates (lapsi, libellatici) back into communion. In his 66th letter, Cyprian refers to an assembly of his colleagues (the bishops of Africa), and of the presbyters of Carthage and of a Carthaginian Synod (AD 249), “which had to decide upon a particular case of ecclesiastical discipline.”74 A Christian named Geminius Victor, of Furni in Africa, appointed a priest named Geminius Faustinus as guardian to his children before his death.75 It is important to take cognizance that an earlier synod under Bishop Agrippinus had forbidden that a priest should be a guardian. Agrippinus’ presumption was “that clergy ought not to occupy them with such temporal business.”76 The Synod of Carthage, held under Cyprian, renewed this prohibition and ordained that no prayers should

447

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

be said or sacrifces (ouationes) offered for the deceased Victor.77 In his 66th letter, Cyprian gave an account of this decision to the Christians of Furni.78 Cyprian was accused of exaggerated severity against the lapsi (lapsi).79 At the end of AD 250, or the beginning of AD 251, a deacon, namely Felicissimus, opposed the envoys of Cyprian to take care of the poor.80 Felicissimus’ presumption was that the care of the poor as “an exclusive right of the deacons.”81 Felicissimus had been “ordained deacon by the priest Novatus unknown to Cyprian, and without his permission, probably during the retreat of Cyprian.”82 Cyprian wrote his book De Lapsis as a preparation for the Synod which he assembled in May AD 251.83 Cyprian excommunicated Felicissimus and fve other priests after having heard them. He also laid down the principles to be followed about the lapsi.84 All the separate decrees upon this subject were collected into what may be considered as the “frst penitential book which had appeared in the Church.”85 Unfortunately, this book is lost. In his 52nd letter, Cyprian refers to the principal rules in this book, namely: a. That all hope must not be taken away from the lapsed, that, in excluding them from the Church, they may not be driven to abandon the faith, and to fall back again into a life of heathenism. b. That a long penance must be imposed upon them. c. That they must be punished proportionally to their fault. d. That as for the bishops and priests, they must also be admitted to penance but not again permitted to discharge any episcopal or sacerdotal function.86 Jovinus and Maximus, who had been reprimanded before by nine bishops for having sacrifced to the gods, and for having committed horrendous blasphemy, appeared before the Synod of Carthage on behalf of Felicissimus.87 The Synod of Carthage in AD 251 excommunicated Felicissimus and fve other Novatian bishops, and declared that the lapsi should be dealt not with indiscriminate severity, but according to the degree of individual guilt. Cyprian sends the synodical decisions of AD 251 to Rome, to Pope Cornelius, in order to obtain the Pope’s consent about the measures taken against the lapsi.88 Pope Cornelius assembled at Rome in October AD 251.89 The Synod confrmed the decrees of the Synod of Carthage and excommunicated Novatus and his adherents.90 Other Carthaginian Synods concerning the lapsi were held in AD 252 and AD 254. Cyprian assembled a fresh council at Carthage during May AD 252, which 66 bishops attended.91 At this council, two points were discussed which were brought forward by the African bishop Fidus.92 Fidus complained that Therapius, Bishop of Bulla (near Hippo), received the priest Victor too soon into the communion of the Church, and without having frst imposed upon him the penance he deserved.93 The Synod, however, did not declare invalid the reconciliation of the priest Victor. Fidus thought that infants should be baptized not in the frst days after their birth, but eight days after, to observe, about baptism, the delay formerly prescribed for circumcision.94 The Synod unanimously condemned this opinion, declaring that they could not delay conferring grace on the new-born.95 About the lapsi, the Synod decided to “reconcile all those who showed signs of repentance.”96 The deposed bishops, namely Bishop Privatus, Bishops Jovinus and Maximus, followers of Felicissimus, and Bishop Felix, appeared at the council but were not admitted.97 Cyprian assembled a council composed of 37 bishops to depose Bishops Martial and Basilides and to declare the election of their successors to be legitimate and regular.98 Bishops Martial and Basilides who had spoken in favor of the deposed bishops were censured, and the people were instructed to enter into ecclesiastical communion with their successors.99The Synod of 448

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa

255 attended to the issue of re-baptizing those who had been baptized by heretics or schismatic when they entered the Church.100 The Synod declared that the opinion of the 18 bishops of Numidia regarding the baptism of heretics is perfectly right, namely that “no one can be baptized out of the Church, seeing there is only one baptism which is in the Church.”101 About AD 256, Cyprian assembled a second and larger council at Carthage with 71 bishops present. The synod attended to the issue regarding the baptism of heretics. The questions the assembly attended to include, among others: AD

What about the baptism administered by that outside, either by those heretical, or schismatic, or both? Does their baptism give life, does it incorporate into Christ, does their repetition of the Name give the blessing of the Name? If so baptism need not be repeated; if not, all baptized by heretics or schismatics must be baptized again, their former baptism not being a real baptism at all.102 The synod reiterated the assertion that those who had abandoned a sect ought to be re-baptized.103 The Synod decided that those priests and deacons who had abandoned the Church for any of the sects, as well as those who had been ordained by the sectarian false bishops, on reentering the Church, could only be admitted into lay communion (communio laicalis).104 At the synod held during September AD 256, Cyprian declared that baptism given by heretics was invalid, and that it was necessary to re-baptize those who had been baptized by heretics.105 Cyprian’s presumption was that it was not the ancient custom to re-baptize those who had been baptized by heretics.106 “When he explained his position to Pope Stephen, in order to solicit his approval, the latter not only refused to sanction the African custom but sent a peremptory order to discontinue it in future.”107 Pope Stephen appealed to tradition. He emphasized the “objective nature of the sacrament, the virtue of which depended neither on the offciating priest, nor on the receiver, but solely on the institution of Christ.”108 He, therefore, considered heretical baptism valid; Cyprian diminished the value of tradition by calling it “a human tradition, and not legitimate Qiiimana traditio, non legitima).”109 According to Cyprian, “in spiritual things the church should observe what the Holy Spirit has (afterward) more fully revealed (id in spirituality sequendum, quod in melius fuerit a Spiritu sancto revelatum).”110 Cyprian states that the Roman Church also had in other points swerved from the practice of the primitive Church—for example, in the celebration of Easter. According to Hefele, Tertullian’s book, De Baptismo, perhaps exerted an infuence upon the resolutions of the Synod of Carthage.111 The Synod of Arles in AD 314, as well as the Council of Trent, taught that the baptism of heretics was valid only when it was administered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.112 In AD 303 Emperor Diocletian issued an edict that all churches and sacred scriptures of the Christians were to be destroyed. He also issued another edict about the burning of incense to the idol gods of the Roman Empire. Diocletian ordered: i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.

The demolition of churches. The destruction of the Scriptures. The degradation of Christian offcials. The servitude of ordinary believers. Torture as a method of coercion. The inficting of the penalty of death.113

The distinctive feature of the edict Diocletian ordered was the order for the destruction of the Sacred Books. The edict, according to Sparrow Simpson, affected the whole course of North 449

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

African Christianity. According to Sparrow Simpson, during the Diocletian prosecution the African Christian had to attend to the following questions: Could a Christian conscientiously yield the Scriptures at Diocletian’s order? Was surrender of Sacred Writings consistent with fdelity to Christ, or was such conduct equivalent to apostasy?114 African Christians were divided on this issue. Donatism developed as a result of the persecution of Christians ordered by Diocletian.The Donatist controversy called into question both the authority of the church and the validity of the sacraments and the ministers who would carry them out. [They believed that] corruption and evil infected only one church, while the other, the Donatist church, was without spot or wrinkle … anyone in communion with a traditor was “a (spiritually) dead man,” notwithstanding the legitimacy of his baptism or ordination … and [a minister’s] association with traditores and their heirs and defenders made him an accomplice in their fraud. Consequently, he was equally culpable and equally incapable of administering effective sacraments.Whoever receives baptism and remission from a traditor or an accomplice receives nothing.115 The Donatist emphasized high morality and re-baptism as necessary for church membership and considered invalid a sacrament celebrated by an immoral priest. During the time of the controversy, people who gave up the Sacred Books and delivered up the sacred vessels and even betrayed other Christians to the Romans became known as traditores.116 The schismatics called themselves Donatists, from the name of Donatus Bishop of Casse Nigrae. Donatus, bishop of Casae Nigrae, taught that the effectiveness of the sacraments depends on the moral character of the priest. Several synods took place in Carthage at the beginning of the 4th century to attend to the schism of the Donatists.117 Mensurius was the bishop of Carthage during the Diocletian’s persecution.118 He blamed certain Christians of Carthage, who had denounced themselves to the heathen authorities as possessors of sacred books, to obtain martyrdom by their refusal to give up the Holy Scriptures.119 Mensurius died in AD 311. The death of Mensurius brought on a crisis in the African Church.120 Galerius from Nicomedia issued an edict of toleration in AD 311, in connection with Constantine and Licinius.121 He furthermore instructed the Christians to “pray to their God for the welfare of the emperors, of the state, and themselves, that the state might prosper in every respect, and that they might live quietly in their homes.”122 In Mensurius’ place, Cecilian was consecrated as bishop of Carthage.123 His consecration led to a schism in the African Church which lasted for more than a hundred years.124 During the time of Cecilian, permission was granted to Christians to hold their religious assemblies, provided they did not disturb the order of the state.125 Although the edict of religious tolerance “virtually closes the period of persecution in the Roman empire,” the Church in Africa struggled afterward with the acceptance of those who surrendered copies of the Scriptures to Roman persecutors.126 The church in Africa was deeply divided on the issue. The consecration of Cecilian gave rise to the question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. One of the three bishops involved in the consecration of Cecilian as bishop of Carthage was Felix of Aptunga, who surrendered copies of the Scriptures to Roman persecutors and was considered a traditor. Secundus Bishop of Tigisis of Numidia (a Roman province in North Africa) sent a commission to Carthage to appoint a mediator for the reconciliation of the parties.127 Secundus Bishop of Tigisis and 70 bishops of Numidia arrived in Carthage to discipline Cecilian.128 The presumption of the Numidian bishops was that the consecration to the See of Carthage should have taken place in their presence. Ordinarily, the Numidian bishops were subject to the Bishop 450

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa

of Carthage as Metropolitan.Their approbation therefore was necessary for Cecilian’s selection as Bishop of Carthage.129 The objection to Cecilian’s consecration was that a primate should be consecrated by a primate (princeps a principe ordmaretur) and not by inferior bishops.130 Cecilian refused to attend the Numidian Council.131 The Numidian Council forwarded a circular letter to all the churches of Africa, in which they required that the churches in Africa should cease from all ecclesiastical communion with Cecilian. The Numidian Council considered Bishop Felix to be unft for offce because of his betrayal; their presumption was that since Felix was unft, the consecration of Bishop Cecilian should be declared invalid. The Numidian Council therefore deposed Cecilian and consecrated Majorinus. Hence Carthage had two bishops, and two churches, for the city was divided.132 The debate over Cecilian expanded to include the validity of the sacraments administered by Felix and other traditores.133 During AD 313 Constantine with Licinius issued a new edict of toleration.The second edict paved the way for the legal recognition of Christianity as the religion of the empire.Among others, it ordered the “full restoration of all confscated church property to the Corpus Christianorum, at the expense of the imperial treasury.”134 This was the frst declaration regarding freedom of religion. Hence everyone had the “right to choose his religion according to the dictates of his own conscience and honest conviction, without compulsion and interference from the government.”135 Ironically the confessors and traditores struggled to tolerate each other. Cecilian’s consecration was therefore challenged. Constantine recognized Cecilian as the lawful bishop of Carthage.136 It was to him Constantine addressed letters of communion (epistola communicaiorice).137 Constantine wrote to Cecilian, sent him a large sum of money to distribute among his priests, and added “that he had heard that some unruly spirits brought to trouble the Church; but that he had already charged the magistrates to restore order, and that Cecilian had only to apply to them for the punishment of the agitators.”138 In another letter Constantine asserted the proconsul of Africa,Anulinus, to exempt the “clergy of the Catholic Church of Carthage, whose president was Cecilian, from all public taxes.”139 Constantine also orders the local authorities to execute the dispossession of the Donatists where they were in power. The Donatists requested Anulinus to send two letters drafted by them to Constantine.140 The frst letter attended to the account of the divisions among the African bishops and requested Constantine to send judges from Gaul to decide between them and Cecilian.141 The Donatists call for the intervention of the civil power in a purely ecclesiastical case.142 Constantine wrote in a letter addressed to Pope Melchiades (Miltiades) informing him that Cecilian of Carthage was accused by his African colleagues of ecclesiastical offenses.143 Constantine charged three bishops of Gaul—Maternus of Coin, Eeticius of Autun, and Marinus of Aries—to make arrangements with the Pope and 15 other Italian bishops to assemble in a synod to hear the case and decide it by Christian principles.144 This synod was held in Rome in AD 313.145 Pope Miltiades presided the synod.146 Cecilian, with ten of his bishops, was invited to be present at the synod at Rome AD 313.147 His opponents were to send an equal number, and at their head stood Donatus of Casae Nigrse.148 The conferences began at the Lateran Palace belonging to the Empress Fausta, on October 2, AD 313, and lasted three days.149 Donatus and his friends were not able to prove their accusations against Cecilian, because they could produce neither witnesses nor documents.150 On the contrary, it was proved that then Cecilian was only a deacon, Donatus had excited divisions in Carthage, that he had re-baptized Christians who had been baptized before, and, contrary to the rules of the Church, had laid hands on fallen bishops to reinstate them in their offces. Due to the absence of witnesses of the accusations of the Donatists, Cecilian was declared innocent, and Donatus was found guilty on various ecclesiastical offenses.151 No judgment was pronounced on the other bishops of his party. The Synod declared that in every place where there was a 451

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

Cecilian and a Donatist bishop, the one who had been the longest ordained should remain at the head of the Church, while the younger should be set over another diocese.The Pope sent two bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, to Africa, to promulgate the decisions of the Synod of Rome. The two bishops entered into communion with Cecilian’s clergy at Carthage, but the Donatists prevented the bishops from accomplishing their mission.152 Upon the return of both Donatus and Cecilian to Carthage, the Donatists again brought complaints of Cecilian before the Emperor.153 At frst, Constantine simply referred them to the decision of the Synod of Rome.The Donatist protested that the Synod of Rome did not attend to their accusation that Felix, the consecrator of Cecilian “was a betrayer of the Scriptures.”154 Constantine recognized the justice of their complaint, deciding that a minute inquiry should be made as to whether Felix of Aptunga had given up the Holy Scriptures, so that the whole controversy should be settled by a great assembly of the bishops of Christendom.155 Constantine consequently called the bishops of his empire together on August 1, AD 314, to the Council of Arles in Gaul.156 Cecilian and some of his friends, as well as some deputies of the party of the Donatists, were invited to the Council of Arles and the offcials of the empire were charged to cover the expenses of the passage of these bishops.157 All the provinces of Constantine’s empire were represented at the Council.Approximately 600 bishops assembled at Arles.158 Pope Silvester was represented by two priests, Claudianus and Vitus, and two deacons, Eugenius and Cyriacus. Marinus of Aries, one of the three judges, who had been appointed beforehand by the Emperor, presided over the assembly.159 At the Synod of Arles AD 314 Cecilian was acquitted. Three of its 22 canons (Nos. 13, 14, and 8) approved at the Synod of Arles refer to the schism of the African Church.160 The Synod of Arles did not merely examine and judge the schism of the Donatists.161 It also tried to solve the paschal controversy, namely the question of the baptism of heretics, and to promulgate various rules for discipline.162 The Synod, convinced that it was acting under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, used the formula Placuit ergo, prcesente Spiritu sando et angelis ejus, and begged the Pope to promulgate its decrees universally.163 The Synod also sent to the Pope the complete collection of its 22 canons.164 Several African synods, held under Agrippinus and Cyprian, ordered that whoever had been baptized by a heretic was to be re-baptized on re-entering the Church.165 The Council of Arles abolished this law (lex) of the Africans, and decreed that one who had received baptism from heretics in the name of the Holy Trinity was not to be again baptized, but simply to receive the imposition of hands, ut accipiat Spiritum sanctum.166 The imposition of hands on those converted was ad poenitentiam and ad confrmationem.167 The law promulgated by the Council of Arles was adopted and renewed by the 19th canon of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.168 In AD 315 Majorinus died and was succeeded by Donatus of Casae Nigrae.169 The term “Donatism” comes from his name. Bishop Donatus continued to advance the idea that any traditor who administered a sacrament polluted the sacrament to such an extent that it was no longer a conveyor of grace. Not only was a traditor to be excommunicated, but also all those who held fellowship with a traditor. The Donatist practice to re-baptize lapsed Christians was offensive to the Orthodox. While the established church would accept lapsed clergy back to serve after a period of penance, the Donatists declared that they were ineligible to perform the sacraments.The Donatist practices were condemned at the Orthodox Synod of Arles in AD 314 and by Emperor Constantine.

Augustine (AD 354–430) Augustine was born on November 13, AD 354, Tagasta in the modern-day Souk Ahrasv in Algeria.170 He was ordained in AD 391, and in AD 396 he became the Bishop of Hippo (within 452

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa

modern-day Annaba,Algeria). His mother Monica (AD 331–387) was a Christian and his father, Patricius, a pagan.171 Augustine’s writings, for example, infuenced the development of Western Christianity. Augustine attends to his conversion and the philosophical basis for Christianity.172 He dealt with three heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism.173 Augustine maintained the doctrine of a Visible Church. He also emphasized the universality of the Catholic Church. He sees the Church as the Body of Christ. For Augustine, this Institutional Church, visible and Catholic, is also One.174 According to Augustine, whoever is outside this unity is outside the Church. In the frst chapter of his book De Trinitate, Augustine indicates that the Trinity is the one and only true God, and also how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are believed and understood to be the same substance or essence.175 About the relations between Church and State, Augustine deems the State and civil society to be necessary and willed by Divine Providence. In AD 411 the Conference of Carthage was held by the command of Emperor Honorius to terminate the Donatist schism; while not strictly a synod, it was one of the most important assemblies in the history of the African Sees, and of the whole Catholic Church. It was presided over by Marcellinus of Carthage. This conference led to the violent suppression of the Donatists.176 The Donatist issue was raised at several church councils, including the Council of Nicaea. In every council, the Donatist position was rejected.Augustine of Hippo wrote a series of books, letters, and sermons that refuted the Donatist movement and argued that the effect of a sacrament is independent of the moral character of the minister. Donatism eventually died out in the 5th century.

Athanasius (AD 296–373) Athanasius becomes bishop of the orthodox at Alexandria. His consecration took place on June 8, AD 328.177 Eusebius of Nicomedia raised objections to the lawfulness of the election and consecration of Athanasius.178 Athanasius was a major theologian and writer.179 He was repeatedly exiled and persecuted,180 but his principles ultimately prevailed at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381.181 He was the chief upholder of the doctrine that Christ was both man and God and was the principal opponent of the Arian doctrine that Jesus was man rather than God.182 Athanasius was zealous in his endeavors to bring the whole of Egypt into Church unity, and, in virtue of the Nicene decrees, to recall the rest of the Meletians and Arians into communion.183 Athanasius was accused of Sabellianism by the Eusebians. From their standpoint, he inclined too nearly to Sabellianism by overstepping the bounds of the Nicene faith, and thereby frightening back the converted Arians, and so proving himself a hindrance to the unity of the Church.184 Among others,Athanasius was questioned about the practice of holding church services in unconsecrated churches.185 An Arian Pseudo-Bishop Gregory had begun to transform the temple of Hadrian into a church.The building was not yet quite completed, and the church still unconsecrated, but at Easter, at the request of the people, Athanasius held divine service in it, because on the preceding days the regular cathedral had heretics who may not enter the churches of the orthodox.186 It was not admissible to heretics, so long as they continued in heresy, to set foot in the house of God.187 Athanasius was deposed at the Egyptian Synod of Tyre.188 The Synod pronounced the deposition of Athanasius and forbade him to return to Alexandria.189 Athanasius presented himself to the Constantine in the year AD 335.190 The Synod of Constantinople exiled Athanasius. Fresh accusations against Athanasius from the Eusebians include among others that after the return of 453

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

Athanasius he caused several executions, imprisonments, and other ill-treatment of his opponents, and that Athanasius had, contrary to the canons, resumed his See without being reinstated by an ecclesiastical decision.191 Athanasius sent envoys for his defense to Rome. He was declared innocent at Sardica.192

Bishop of Carthage (AD 391–430) Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, presided at the Synod at Hippo Regius in AD 393. Possidius, in his Life of S. Augustine, called this Synod a plenarium totius Africa Concilium under Aurelius, at Carthage, in the Basilica of Regio Secunda, on August 25, 403, under the consulate of the Emperors Theodosius and Eumoridus.193 The acts of this Synod are preserved in the African Codex, Nos. 90–92.The decisions of these synods were incorporated into the great collections of ecclesiastical rulings and became the basis of Canon Law for the Western Church.194The two decrees, 91 and 92 of the African canons, refer to the Donatists and rule that every bishop shall in his city, either alone or in union with a neighboring colleague, enter into communication with the heads of the Donatists, and, with the assistance of the secular judges and magistrates, command them to choose on their side also deputies for a religious discussion.The letter to be addressed to the secular judges shall be signed by the Bishop of Carthage in the name of all.195 Pelagius (c. AD 360–418) opposed the idea of predestination and proclaimed a strong version of the doctrine of free will. He denied Augustine’s theory of original sin. Pelagius was declared a heretic by the Council of Carthage AD 418. His interpretation of a doctrine of free will became known as Pelagianism. On May 1, AD 418, a synod which assembled under the presidency of Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, to take action concerning the errors of Celestius, a disciple of Pelagius, denounced the Pelagian doctrines of human nature, original sin, grace, and perfectibility, and it fully approved the contrary views of Augustine. Regarding the reinstatement by the bishop of Rome of a deposed African priest, Apiarius of Sicca, the Synod enacted that whoever appeals to Rome may not again be received into communion by anyone in Africa (Canon 17).196 Two synods, one in AD 419 and another in AD 424, met regarding the question of appeals to Rome. In AD 418 the African General Synod took place in the Secretarium of the Basilica of Faustus at Carthage, under Aurelius.197 Bishops were present not only from all the provinces of Africa but even from Spain; in all they numbered no less than 200.198 The Synod composed eight or nine canons against Pelagianism, and 11 others, partly directed against the Donatists and partly concerning general matters.199 For example, the African General Synod composed the following canons regarding original sin: i. Can. 1 (109 in the Codex canonum ecclesiae Africanae/The Code of Canons of the African Church). “If any man says that Adam, the frst man, was created, mortal, so that whether he sinned or not he would have died, not as the wages of sin, but through the necessity of nature, let him be anathema.”200 ii. Can. 2 (110). “If any man says that new-born children need not be baptized, or that they should indeed be baptized for the remission of sins, but that they have in them no original sin inherited from Adam which must be washed away in the bath of regeneration, so that in their case the formula of baptism ‘for the remission of sins’ must not be taken literally, but fguratively, let him be anathema.”201 454

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa

The Synod pronounced as rule of faith (regulam fdei) that even infants, who could have committed as yet no sin themselves, should be baptized for the remission of sins.202 The Synod decided, due to the disputes among the Donatists and the Catholics, that if in any place a Donatist and a Catholic community have existed side by side and belonged to different dioceses, both shall be made over to the diocese to which the Catholic section belonged, whether the conversion of the Donatists took place before or after the publication of those Imperial decrees (Can. 9 (117)).203 The Synod decided that if the Donatist bishop has himself become Catholic, the two bishops (he and the Catholic one) shall divide equally between them the two communities now united so that one portion of the towns shall belong to one, and the other to the other bishop.The Canon Law makes provision for how the bishops, as well as the Catholics who have been converted from the Donatists, are to divide between themselves the dioceses.204 Canon 10 further states that the senior bishop shall divide, while the junior bishop may choose the dioceses he wishes to lead. The bishop who has been longest in offce shall divide, but the other shall have the choice. If there is only one township of this description, then it shall belong to whichever See is nearest to it; but if there are two equally near, the people shall decide it by the majority of votes. If the votes are equal, the elder bishop has the preference. If, however, the towns to which both parties belonged are of the unequal number, so that they cannot be equally divided, the remaining one shall be dealt with as was prescribed above, in the preceding canon, about a single town. (Can. 10 (117))205 About appeals, the Synod states clearly in Can. 17 (125) repudiated transmarine appeals, and made ample provision for correcting any miscarriage of justice by the primates of Africa or African Councils.206 If priests, deacons, and inferior clerics complain of a sentence of their bishop, they shall, with the consent of their bishop, have recourse to the neighboring bishops, who shall settle the dispute. If they desire to make a further appeal, it must only be to their primates or African Councils. But whoever appeals to a court on the other side of the sea (Rome), may not again be received into communion by any one in Africa.207 The Church in Africa put with this provision in their canon law an embargo on all transmarine appeals.

Conclusion For two centuries Donatism divided the North African churches into two camps.The question was about the restoration of the lapsed. The Donatists refused to acknowledge Cecilian as the bishop of Carthage.They questioned the validity of his ordination, seeing that it was performed by Bishop Felix of Aptungis, or Aptunga, whom they declared to be a traditor. Schaff states it categorically that the Donatist controversy was a confict between separatism and Catholicism; between ecclesiastical purism and ecclesiastical eclecticism; between the idea of the church as an exclusive community to regenerate saints and the idea of the church as the general Christendom of state and people. It revolved around the doctrine of the essence of the Christian church, and, in particular, of the predicate of holiness. It resulted in the completion by Augustine of the Catholic dogma of the church. 455

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel

Notes 1 Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church.Ante-Nicene Christianity.A. D. 100–325,Vol. II. Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York. Page 26. 2 Saint Clement of Alexandria Christian theologian. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from https://ww w.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Clement-of-Alexandria 3 Ferguson, John. 1974. Clement of Alexandria.Twayne Publishers: New York. Page 13. 4 Ibid. 5 Osborn, Eric. 2005. Clement of Alexandria. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Page 1. 6 Ferguson, John. 1974. Clement of Alexandria. Page 13. 7 Wilson, William. 1867. The Writings of Clement of Alexandria.T. & T. Clark: Edinburgh. Page 11. 8 Saint Clement of Alexandria Christian theologian;Wilson,William. 1867. The Writings of Clement of Alexandria. Page 11. 9 Livingstone, Elizabeth A. 1983. Critica, Classica,Ascetica. Liturgica Peeters Press: Leuven. Page 101. 10 Ibid. 11 Saint Clement of Alexandria Christian theologian. 12 Wilson, William. 1876. The Writings of Clement. Page 12. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Otten, Bernard JF. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas Volume I.The Development of Dogmas during the Patristic Age. St. Louis University: London. Pages 192–197. 16 Foakes-Jackson, FJ. 1924. The History of the Christian Church. George H. Doran Company: New York. Seventh edition, Page 149; Saint Clement of Alexandria Christian theologian. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Clement-of-Alexandria 17 Wilson, William.1876. The Writings of Clement. Page 12. 18 Foakes-Jackson, FJ. 1924. The History of the Christian Church. Page 148. 19 Ibid., Page 149. 20 Ibid., Page 149. 21 Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils.T. & T. Clark: Edinburgh. Pages 106–107. 22 Chapman, J. 1912. Tertullian. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company: New York. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14520c.htm 23 Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 819. 24 Otten, Bernard J. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas.Volume I. B Herder Book Co: London. Pages 160–161. 25 Hughes, Philip E. 1979. History of the Church:Volume 2:The Church in the World. Sheed & Ward: London. Page 1. 26 Chapman, J. 1912.Tertullian. 27 Hinson, E. Glenn. 1995. The Church Triumphant:A History of Christianity up to 1300. Mercer University Press: Georgia. Page 67. 28 Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Pages 106–107. 29 Ibid., 87. 30 Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 557. 31 Boora, Kulwant Singh. 2009. The Oneness of God and the Doctrine of the Trinity. Author House: Bloomington. Page 101. 32 Otten, Bernard J. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas Volume I. Inter-varsity Press:Westmont, IL. Page 163. 33 Olson, Roger E. 1999. The Story of Christian Theology:Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform. Page 96. 34 Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 1. 35 Ibid., Page 1. 36 Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 126. 37 Ibid., Page. 150. 38 McGuckin, John Anthony. 2004. The Westminster Handbook to Origen. Westminister Knox Press: Louisville, KY; Law,Timothy Michael. 2013. When God Spoke Greek:The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible. Oxford University Press: New York. Page 140. 39 Otten, Bernard J. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas.Volume I. Page 198. 40 Ibid., 198. 41 Law,Timothy Michael. 2013. When God Spoke Greek. Page 140.

456

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Otten, Bernard J. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas Volume I. Page 199. Ibid., 99. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 559. Otten, Bernard J. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas Volume I. Page 201. Ibid., 203. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000.“Hidden Africans of the Bible,” Priscilla Papers 14: 1. Page 21. Foakes-Jackson, FJ. 1924. The History of the Christian Church. George H. Doran Company: New York. Seventh edition. Page 163. Ibid., 163. Chapman, J. 1912. Pope St. Victor I. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from New http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/154 08a.htm Black World/Negro Digest Feb 1967. Page 38. Ibid. Chapman, J. 1912. Pope St.Victor I. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page XXX. Black World/Negro Digest Feb 1967. Page 38, 217. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans of the Bible. Page 22. Ibid.; African Popes, Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www.stbensparishmilwaukee.org/ about-us/history/black-history-profles/african-popes Retrieved from https://www.mic.com/articles/29018/cardinal-peter-turkson-wouldn-t-be-the-frstafrican-pope; see also African Popes, Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www.stbensparishmi lwaukee.org/about-us/history/black-history-profles/african-popes Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans of the Bible. Page 22. Witte, John, Alexander, Frank S. 2010. Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Page 278. Lawler, Jennifer. 2011. Encyclopedia of the Byzantine Empire. McFarland Company Publishers: Jefferson. Page 133. Demacopoulos, George E. 2013. The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia. Page 73. Burns, J. Patout and Jensen Robin M. 2014. Christianity in Roman Africa:The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs.Wim B. Eerdmans: Cambridge. Pages 186–187. African Popes, Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www.stbensparishmilwaukee.org/about-us /history/black-history-profles/african-popes Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 87. Ferguson. Everett. 2009. Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Century.WB Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI. Page 403. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 87. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans of the Bible. Page 22. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 151. Otten, Bernard JF. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas. Page 174. Ibid., 173. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 126. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 2. Ibid., 92. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 93. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 94. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 94–95.

457

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

Ibid., 96. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 94–96. Ibid., 96. Ibid., 97. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 98. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 100. Ibid. Faulkne, John Alfred. 1906. Cyprian:The Churchman. Jennings and Graham: Cincinnati, OH. Page 176. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 100. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 105. Otten, Bernard J. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas.Volume Ip181. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 263. Hefele, CJ. 1894. A History of Christian Councils. Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark. Page 105 Ibid., 105. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 108. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Longmans Green Co: London. Page 2. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 5. Kaufman, Peter Iver. 1990. Augustine, Evil, and Donatism: Sin and Sanctity before the Pelagian Controversy. Theological Studies, no. 51 (1990) Page 117. Donatist Schism in North Africa, Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www.newadvent.org/ cathen/05121a.htm Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 172. Ibid., 172. Ibid. Sparrow Simpson, W. J. 1810, St. Augustine and African Church Divisions. Longmans, Green, and Co: London. Page 10. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 71. Ibid., 71. Hughes, Philip E. 1935. History of the Church:Volume 2:The Church in the World. The Church Created Sheed and Ward: London. Page 3. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions Page 10. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 71. Ibid., 72. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 175. 1893. The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences.Volume 7 Werner Company: Chicago. Page 359. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 14. Ibid., 14. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 176. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 18. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 175. Schaff, Phillip. 1914. The History of the Church. Page 72. Ibid., 72–73. Gender specifc term of the period retained in the quotation. Hughes, Philip E. 1935. History of the Church:Volume 2:The Church in the World.The Church Created Sheed and Ward: London. Page 5.

458

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 177. Ibid., 178. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 21. Ibid., 22. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 178. Winstanley, Edmund. 1846. An Outline of Ecclesiastical and Civil History.Volume 2.T Jones Publishers: London. Page 16. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 179. Ibid., 179. Ibid. Ibid. 1893. The Encyclopædia Britannica. Page 359. Ibid., 180. Ibid. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 24. Hefele, CJ. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 180. Ibid. Ibid., 181. Ibid. Ibid., 182. Ibid., 183. Ibid., 184. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 188–189. Ibid., 188–189. Ibid., 189. Ibid. Otten, Bernard JF. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas. Page 324. Decret, Francois. Early Christianity in North Africa.Wipf and Stock Publishers: Eugene. Page x. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans. Page 22. Ibid., 22. Sparrow Simpson,WJS. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 3. Ibid., 70–72. Otten, Bernard JF. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas. Pages 270–271. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans. Page 22. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils.Volume II. A.D. 326 to A.D. 429. T. & T. Clark: Edinburgh. Page 4. Ibid., 6. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans 14:1, Page 22. Hefele, CJ. 1894. A History of the Christian Councils. Pages 281–284. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000. Hidden Africans. Page 22. Ibid., 22. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils.Volume II. Page 429. Ibid., 18–19. Ibid., 203. Ibid. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils.Volume II. Page 494. Hefele, CJ. 1894. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 5. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 45–46.

459

Mary-Anne Plaatjies-Van Huffel 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207

Ibid., 105, 163. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils.Volume II. Page 439. Sparrow Simpson,WJS. 1810. St.Augustine and African Church Divisions. Page 92. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils. Pages 439–440. Ibid., 458. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Schaff, Phillip.The Canons of the CCXVII Blessed Fathers Who Assembled at Carthage. Commonly called the Code of Canons of the African Church. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www .ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.html. Page 719. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils. Pages 459–460. Schaff, Phillip.The Canons of the CCXVII Blessed Fathers Who Assembled at Carthage. Page 724. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils. Pages 459–460. Kidd, BJ. 1922. A History of the Church.Volume III A.D. 408–461. Oxford University Press: London. Page 162. Hefele, CJ. 1876. A History of the Christian Councils. Page 461.

Bibliography African Popes, Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www.stbensparishmilwaukee.org/about-us/hist ory/black-history-profles/african-popes. Black World/Negro Digest, February 1967. Founded in 1942 by John H. Johnson to serve as a magazine for African Americans, it was later called Black World. https://www.nbccongress.org/african-popes.html Boora, Kulwant Singh. 2009. The Oneness of God and the Doctrine of the Trinity. London: AuthorHouse. Burns, J. Patout, and Jensen, Robin M. 2014. Christianity in Roman Africa:The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 186–187. Chapman, J. 1912.Tertullian. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14520c.htm Decret, Francois. 2009. Early Christianity in North Africa. Eugene:Wipf and Stock Publishers. Demacopoulos, George E. 2016. The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Donaldson, Terence L. 2000. Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Caesarea Maritima. Waterloo, ON:Wilfrid Laurier University Press. DePuy, W. H., ed., 1896. The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Volume 7. Chicago: Werner Company. Ferguson, Everett. 2009. Baptism in the Early Church: History,Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Century. Grand Rapids, MI:WB Eerdmans. Ferguson, John. 1974. Clement of Alexandria. New York:Twayne Publishers. Foakes-Jackson, F. J. 1924. The History of the Christian Church. Seventh edition. New York: George H. Doran Company. Hefele, C. J. 1883. A History of the Christian Councils. Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark. Hinson, E. Glenn. 1995. The Church Triumphant: A History of Christianity up to 1300. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. Kathleen Hunker, “Cardinal Peter Turkson Wouldn’t be the First African Pope,” Retrieved September 2, 2018, from https://www.mic.com/articles/29018/cardinal-peter-turkson-wouldn-t-be-the-frst-afric an-pope. Hughes, Philip E. 1935. History of the Church:Volume 2:The Church in the World:The Church Created. London: Sheed and Ward. Kaufman, Peter Iver. 1990. “Augustine, Evil, and Donatism: Sin and Sanctity Before the Pelagian Controversy.” Theological Studies 51: 117. Kidd, B. J. 1922. A History of the Church.Volume III A.D. 408–461. London: Oxford University Press. Kroeger, Catherine Clark. 2000.“Hidden Africans of the Bible and Early Church.” Priscilla Papers 14: 1.

460

Patristic ecclesiology in Africa Law, Timothy Michael. 2013. When God Spoke Greek:The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible. New York: Oxford University Press. Lawler, Jennifer. 2011. Encyclopedia of the Byzantine Empire. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Reprint. Livingstone, Elizabeth A. 1983. Critica, Classica, Ascetica. Leuven: Liturgica Peeters Press. Fredericksen, Linwood. Saint Clement of Alexandria Christian Theologian. Britannica, Retrieved September 2, 2018, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Clement-of-Alexandria. McGuckin, John Anthony. 2004. The Westminster Handbook to Origen. Louisville:Westminister Knox Press. Olson, Roger E. 1999. The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Academic. Osborn, Eric. 2005. Clement of Alexandria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Otten, Bernard J. F. 1922. A Manual of the History of Dogmas,Volume I:The Development of Dogmas During the Patristic Age. London: St. Louis University, 192–197. Percival, Henry R. 1900. The Canons of the CCXVII Blessed Fathers Who Assembled at Carthage. Commonly Called the Code of Canons of the African Church. In Schaff, Philip and Henry Wace, eds., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,Vol. XIV The Seven Ecumenical councils, New York: Charles Scribners’s Sons. Retrieved September 2, 2018, from http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/ npnf214.html, page 724. Schaff, Philip. 1914. The History of the Church.Ante-Nicene Christianity.A. D. 100–325,Volume II. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Sparrow Simpson,W. J. 1810. St.Augustine, and African Church Divisions. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Trigg, Joseph W. 2002. Origen. New York: Routledge. Wilson, William. 1876. The Writings of Clement of Alexandria. Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark. Winstanley, Edmund. 1846. An Outline of Ecclesiastical and Civil History,Volume 2. London:T Jones Publishers. Witte, John, and Alexander, Frank S. 2010. Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction. London: Cambridge University Press.

461

30 BIBLICAL AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY ON PERSONHOOD Application to Africa’s milieu Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Who is the other person? Who is a human person? What is it to be human? When does personhood begin? What is the destiny of a human person? What should the person do to achieve that destiny? These are primordial questions asked by philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and a social anthropologist, among others.The personal and interpersonal contexts of personhood are associated with existential and relational realities. Every human being comes into existence at a certain point in time, lives in a state of fux in relationships with others, and dies without certainty about the fnal destination. There is a human personhood characteristic to every human species, but also the personhood beyond the “bodily” being.A Christian view of the fall of the human person from Grace or sin complicates personhood further. Should we conceptualize personhood from the sinful nature or as restored personhood redeemed by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection? The struggle of wanting to do good and instead of doing the opposite is real. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rm. 7:5).The shift in perceptions, debates, confusions, and conficts around personhood abound.Theologizing is a faith search to understand God,1 but also the search to understand self in relationship with God, others, and the entire creation. Humans and creation are groaning as we wait for our redemption and conceptualization of the fullness of our personhood (Rm. 21–23). From the onset, we discover that personhood entails a human and divine mystery. This chapter is about the natural and divine personhood and the quest for an Africanized theology of personhood.The quest derives from the feeling of discontentment that led to the 1994 Synod of African Bishops’ salient search for inculturating Christianity in Africa.That is, the Africanization of Christianity because “A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not fully lived out.”2 Equally, being, and the essence of personhood, cannot be imported. Colonialism and globalization condition Africans to appreciate the Euro-American worldview as superior and to believe that whatever is African is uncivilized and must be relegated. Like Christianity, Personhood, as rendered by Western cultures, is alien. An enculturated theology of personhood requires integration with African worldview. Failure to conceptualize the human person from the African perspective has created situations where those who profess faith in Christ engage in practices that violate the dignity and rights of the human person, practices that are not condoned by an authentic African 462

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

worldview. An Africanized theological framework for personhood is essential to being Christ’s witness in contemporary complex socio-political and socioeconomic systems that put proft, money, and power above the dignity of the human person. The chapter sets out to achieve three goals. (1) Highlight the philosophical, biblical, and doctrinal foundations of personhood, to identify and assess a genuinely African theological understanding of personhood free from (neo)colonial contamination or burdens, and explore how that understanding could contribute to authentic Christian living and incarnation of the Gospel in Africa.Who is a person in African thought? How can the African3 perspectives of personhood be applied to the contemporary socio-political and socioeconomic conditions where followers of Christ are called to be leaven? (2) After analyzing the African philosophical conceptualization of personhood, the chapter argues for the reintegration of the positive elements of African personhood into the Christian theology and the evangelizing mission. (3) Finally, it suggests creating approaches of reorienting personhood to complex socio-political and economic systems and structures of injustice.

Philosophical foundations of personhood Theological perspectives on personhood originate from the Classical Greek philosophy; the Hellenistic-Roman thought;4 and Hebrew and Jewish thought and practices.The term “person” originates from the Greek prosópon derived from Latin persona, which referred to the mask that was used in the Roman theatre during the goddess festivals to play the theatrical role that portrayed certain characteristics and to communicate the words of the goddess.5 Persona derives from the Etruscan phersu which appeared in ca. 550 BC in the tomb of the Augurs of Corneto-Tarquinia, north of Rome.As a role, it is not an ontological feature.There is a discrepancy between the inner person playing the role and the public person appearing on the stage. Later, persona came to refer to any mask that was used to portray any role in the Roman theatre and the public role an individual played in the Roman society.6 When persona was used to personify one with civic Roman rights and responsibilities, it was not attributed to women, slaves, and foreigners. Thus, Cicero deploys persona about the bearer (man) of social or civic role who should possess or cultivate the virtues of prudentia (prudence or wisdom), Justitia (justice), temperantia (temperance), and fortitudo (courage).7 However, Aristotle used prosópon to denote a man’s face.8 In philosophical and biblical terms, the face represents a spiritual reality. For example, God showed his back to Moses because whoever sees His face dies (Ex. 33:17–23). Only Jesus has seen the face of the Father (Jn. 1:18; 4:12). Stoic and Epicurean philosophy viewed the human person as a “holistic and naturalistic” being.9 Holism implies that the human person is not dichotomized as body and mind or soul as sources of distinct and sometimes competing motivations, but as an integrated psychophysical and psychological whole. Gill (2006, p. xvii) highlights three types of naturalism connected to holism: (1) the natural birth-to-death process; (2) the belief that all humans are capable of natural development that shapes personality and capacity to attain “perfect wisdom;” (3) the understanding of nature as rooted in combining and synthesizing ideas from ethics, physics, and logic. Gill combines holism and naturalism with Socratic ideals and draws up three conclusions: • • •

A person attains happiness through “virtue and rational refection” regardless of nature and nurture. Happiness entails gradual perfection of character in the measure that the person frees oneself from passion and “contingent circumstances.” Only the “fully rational and virtuous or wise” person is fully coherent, while the non-wise person is “relatively incoherent” and lives incoherently (p. xvii). 463

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

However, Socrates dismisses the idea of holism and concentrates on personality as the immortal soul with “divine or god-like nature” as the source of virtue, wisdom, and knowledge (Gill 2006 p. 5). Plato noted that when Socrates was asked about how he wanted to be buried, he answered, “However you wish, provided you catch me … When I drink the poison, I shall no longer remain with you, but shall go off and depart for some happy state of the blessed.”10 Socrates distinguishes between the psyche in its embodiment in the body and “in its truth” when it will be united with the divine.The soul realizes its true nature by ridding itself of the bodily encumbrances. Plato complements Socrates’ argument for personhood as the psuchē (psyche or soul) and its immortality, non-materiality, and uniqueness.11 He argued that “But if you will listen to me, and believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure all evil and all good, we shall always hold to the upper road, and in every way follow justice and wisdom.”12 Plato elucidates further that when a person dies, the soul exists because it shares in the divine nature. Grube (1958) explicates Plato’s understanding of the soul as follows: In life, the soul is both active and complete. Its function is the fusion of the intelligible with the physical. It alone can apprehend the universal; it alone can initiate the harmonious and rhythmical motions that are life.The Forms do not depend, it is true, upon it for their existence, but without it, they can be neither apprehended nor realized to any extent at all. Without the soul, the physical world, on the other hand, could not even exist.13 The psyche realizes its relationship to the non-material forms and attains pure knowledge and immortality after the death of the body ends inherent conditions of pain, fears, illusions, pleasure-seeking, and desires. Responding to the debate about a philosopher and death, Socrates concludes that it is unreasonable for the philosopher to fear death because it leads to attaining the wisdom that the psyche seeks throughout life (Ibid). At death, a soul that is purifed from worldliness easily proceeds to the divine dwelling and joins the company of the gods, while the impure soul encumbered in worldly pleasures wanders and is incarnated in donkeys or similar animals, while an unjust soul becomes a wolf or hawk, and those without philosophical wisdom become social creatures (Ibid.).To prepare for the psuchē/body separation, Socrates proposes that the philosopher abhors bodily pleasures and seeks true knowledge beyond the senses.The key element is the distinction between psuchē and the body. These philosophical views infuenced biblical teaching and Western Church doctrine. For example, the dichotomy between body and soul, and how a virtuous soul proceeds to heaven while the unvirtuous is sent into the eternal fre, (Mt.25:31–46) remains a strong biblical message. Lk. 16:19–31 narrates the relationship between Lazarus who suffered on earth enjoying eternal life and the unvirtuous rich man ending up in Hades where he is tormented. Consequently, Mat. 5 suggests the “Be Attitudes” for virtuous souls. Until recently, Christians perceived the body as evil to be chastised to purify the soul. I remember stories of missionaries who used to fog themselves, besides the saints such as Francis of Assis rolling in the snow and Benedict throwing himself into thorn bushes. St. Paul prays for the Thessalonians’ spirits, soul, and body to be preserved blameless until the coming of Christ (I Thess. 5:23).

Biblical and doctrinal perspectives on personhood The heart of biblical and doctrinal theology on personhood is that “God created a man (and woman) in His own image” (imago Dei) (Gen. 1:26–27). A bearer of the imago Dei is entitled to dignity and respect regardless of race, gender, social, or economic status.The divine image dif464

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

ferentiated humans from other creatures, transforming what is biological into spiritual or divine, from Homo sapiens to Homo divinus14 At this point, the Bible does not separate the body from the soul. Gen. 2:7 constructs the construction of personhood.“Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”The physical form, made from the dust of the ground which is “adam’ in Hebrew is imparted with life and personhood.According to Westermann 1997:1:34 The Old Testament does not use adam for the creature Homo sapiens without differentiation, but primarily for this creature in relation to its creatureliness or to a particular aspect of its creatureliness.Adam is not the human being in any family, political, every day, or communal situation: instead, adam refers to the human being aside from all of these relationships, as simply human.Above all else, however, God’s special salvifc activity, God’s history with his people, does not concern the adam.15 The breath of life is conjoined to the physical body. It is the spirit of life, Hebrew ruach, which sets the person apart from other creatures (Mt. 12:12); from angels (1 Cor. 4:49); from Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:12); and from God (Mk 11:30). It is the supernatural catalyst of the physical man/ woman.The person at this level is subject to physical weaknesses (James 5:17); sinfulness (Rom. 3:4; 5:12); prone to human errors (Gal. 1:1, 11; Col. 2:8, 22); loving fattery (Lk. 6:26); and death (Heb. 9:27).The breath of life is the force,“the principle of vitality … and life is viewed as the fullness of power, the pleasure which accompanies the exercise of vital functions, integration with the world and with one’s society. Loss of these is a diminution of life, and the approach of death.”16 At death, the body returns to dust, and the spirit returns to God as Jesus cried on the cross “Father into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk. 23:46). Endowment with the metaphysical element of life or ruach constructs a soul, nephesh in Hebrew, is the core of personhood. McKenzie notes that nephesh “is distinguished from the fesh, but not precisely as noncarnal in the sense in which spirit [ruach] is opposed to the fesh” … a totality with a peculiar stamp … [whose] basic meaning can be best understood, it seems, in those uses where nephesh is translated by self or person, but it is the concrete existing self.17 Except for the body, other elements are divine characteristics, the imago Dei that God bestowed upon a human person. Bewildered by the wonder of a human person, the Psalmist posed a transcendental question:“What is the man that you think about him? You have made him (her) little less than a God and crowned him with glory and majesty” (Ps. 8:4–8; 139:14). Even the atheist Darwin recognized the wonder of a human person in the universe and asserted Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight … I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind is some degree analogous to that of man.18 In Hebrew theology, nephesh, which is translated as soul, is the core of personhood. However, McKenzie argues that nephesh “is distinguished from the fesh, but not precisely as noncarnal in the sense in which spirit [ruach] is opposed to the fesh … it is the existing concrete self;”19 that it refers to life with all its emotions, passions, appetites;20 and that it does not refer to life in general but to life, dynamism, and vitality when contrasted with death.21 Jesus told his disciples 465

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

to fear only those who destroy the body but cannot destroy the soul (Mt. 10:28), but when he dies on the cross, he commends his spirit (not soul) to the Father (Lk. 23:46). It appears that the soul and spirit overlap as key components of the bodily physical form. The body without the Spirit is dead (Jm. 2:26). It is the body that is dead without the immortal soul.The soul returns to the creator and body to the earth from which it was made (Gen. 2:7; Eccle. 12:7). However, others consider the body as the Holy Spirit’s temple (Jn. 2:21; 1Cor. 6:19), created to glorify God (Icor. 6:20; Phil. 1:20; Icor. 10:31), and it must not be defled (1Cor. 3:17).This implies that the body needs to be treated and cared for. In other instances, the body or personhood is used analogously to the Church as the body of Christ (Icor. 12:27).The mystery of the human being calls for awe and respect even when we do not understand. The human person is a relational being. “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 1:28). Personhood entails relationality with God, others, and creation. Absolute freedom is the quest of every person. Only God fulflls the human longing for freedom, peace, and wholeness. St. Augustine acknowledged,“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”Various biblical texts express that longing:“My soul is yearning for you my God” (Ps. 42:1) and “O God you are my God for you I long” (Ps. 63:1). Jesus was aware of that emptiness and lack of freedom that only God fulflls and said,“I came that they may have life and have it to the full” (Jn. 10:10).The fulfllment of personhood is in relationship with God, other humans in the Mystical body, people of good will, and the whole creation that is groaning for its liberation. To explicate the human tendency to divert from God’s image, biblical and theological teachings deploy the original sin argument and its consequence, that is, the souls struggle to do good amid the bodily cravings for what’s ungodly. The waters of Baptism cleanse the person from original sin, although the effects and inclination to concupiscence and the struggle for congruency between body and soul desires linger on until death, when the soul is believed to separate from the body, and the true is reconciled to God. Believers are baptized into Jesus’s death and are “buried with Him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rm. 6:1–4). Biblical theology presents even Jesus struggling for harmony between the body and soul as he uttered,“The spirit is willing, but the fesh is weak” (Mt. 26:41; Mk. 14:38). In the letter to the Romans 7:23;19 we read:“I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members;” “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” In the Old Testament, prophets and psalmists alluded to the struggle. For example, Jeremiah asked,“More tortuous than anything is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9.) Jeremiah was also cognizant of the evil in the human person: “evil thoughts” (4:14); and “stubborn and rebellious heart” (5:23). The Psalmist expresses the struggle of the human person where “Sin directs the heart of the wicked man; his eyes are closed to the fear of God” (Ps. 36:2) and the cry for God’s mercy,“I have been mortally afficted since youth” (Ps. 88:16). In Jesus’ saving love, there is the grace that makes the yoke easy and the burden light (Mt. 11:30) if the struggler goes to Him (Mt. 11:28–30). In heaven, sin will be no more. Just as we bear the image of the earthly man, we shall bear the image of the heavenly man (1 Cor. 15:49). Eschatologically, personhood shares and bears the likeness of Christ.The human person is transformed into God’s image through the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18) according to God’s purpose (Rom 8:29). At the ascension, Jesus promises to send the Spirit to his disciples (Jn. 14:15–31) who transforms personhood as it is written:“Though our outward we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). Doctrinal or dogmatic theology on personhood is constructed around the biblical imago Dei, and the philosophical foundations of body and soul as separate elements, with the soul as the 466

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

core of life or personhood. According to St. Augustine, personhood is “that principle within us by which we are like God, and which is rightly said in Scriptures to be made ‘after God’s image.’”22 However, for St. Thomas Aquinas, a person is comprised of “soul, fesh, and bones.” The soul is the core element of personhood whereby “the sensitive soul, the intellectual soul, and the nutritive soul are numerically one soul.”23 Accordingly, “the body is necessary for the action of the intellect,” but “the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from the body,”24 given that the intellect is both “incorporeal and subsistent.”25 For Aquinas, prayer and contemplation are indispensable for one to realize the image of God.26 Pope Benedict XVI noted that what distinguishes a human person from other creatures is the capacity of “thinking and praying”27—that is, the capacity to acknowledge one’s creator, and connect with the supernatural through prayer and service to other humans and nature. The dignity and rights of the human person should not be violated.Vatican II document on The Church and the Modern Word expressed:“Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions … where men and women are treated as mere tools for proft, rather than as free and responsible persons … are infamies indeed” (no. 27).Thus, personhood should not be violated by societal structures and systems. Equally, the human person must fulfll duties that reinforce other people’s respect and justice. In other words, the society and the state need to respect the imago Dei and individuals have a responsibility toward others to guarantee mutual respect and the common good. Pope John XXIII notes, Any well-regulated and productive association of men [women] in society demands the acceptance of one fundamental principle: that each man is truly a person. His is a nature, that is, endowed with intelligence and free will. As such, he has rights and duties, which together fow as a direct consequence from his nature.These rights and duties are universal and inviolable, and therefore, altogether inalienable.28 Accordingly, John XXIII emphasized the demand that respect for the dignity and rights of personhood requires action from society, starting with the recognition that an individual has the right to life and bodily integrity, and thereby fostering holistic development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and fnally the necessary social services … the right to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his [hers] is deprived of the means to livelihood.29 The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that the human person “must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception,” and must be recognized as having inalienable and inviolable rights including the right to life (Article 2270), because the person is incommunicable—that is, the existential personhood that is unique and distinct with non-transferable features, dignity, and unity of body and soul.These teachings are the foundations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes the dignity and rights of all human beings without distinctions on race, gender, or other isms.30 John Paul II condemned the moral uncertainty, the indifference of relativism and utilitarianism as “a culture of death.” Fostered by powerful cultural, economic, and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with effciency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war or the powerful 467

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love, and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another.A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favored tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated.31 The Church concurs with Aristotle that there is a profound unity of body and soul (Corporate et anima unus), because neither the spiritualism that despises the reality of the body nor the materialism that considers the spirit a mere manifestation of the material do justice to the complex nature, the totality, or the unity of the human being.32 Doctrinal theology underscores the dignity of the human person and the Christian calling not just to ameliorate suffering through charity but to address the systemic and structural injustices to propagate social, political, and economic policies for change.33 Personhood is the core of who we are and what we should do on earth.The existential element of personhood is not conditioned on societal constructs but rests in the being of imago Dei.

Key derivations Philosophy, biblical, and doctrinal teachings reserve personhood to men and ignore women. Greek philosophy, and especially Platonic philosophy, presents dichotomies in a human person, the inner and outer or masked manifestation, the body (physical and mortal) and soul (spiritual and immortal). The real person is the soul, spirit, or mind. Death liberates the soul from the body. The dualistic perception of the person in Greek and Hebrew teachings infuenced early Judeo Christians and early Christian theologians, and some exist to the present era. For example, only man has the dignity leading him to public services, including priesthood in the Catholic Church.While Gen. 2:23; 27 illustrates the complementarity and equality of man and woman, for centuries, the personhood and inherent dignity of the woman has been suffocated. The Church is not an exception. Encyclicals and pastoral letters about women’s dignity and role in the salvation history abound, without concrete actions. The person is a social being both in the secular world and in the corporate Body, the Church where Baptism and sharing in the Eucharist implies a mission to transform and draw the world to Christ. In Christian theology, persona acquires a new sense of the Trinitarian and Christological content. The persona receives dignity only in relationality with the Trinity, others, and creation. Biblical and dogmatic theologization of personhood is derived from the Greek, Roman, and Hebrew cultures, but is still used as a framework for theologizing and proclaiming the Gospel in Africa. Despite the perennial cry for Africanization and decolonization religion, understanding of personhood, and the undeniable fact that “the key crisis in the African world is the profoundly disturbing decentering of African people from a subject position within their narrative,”34 African theology and doctrines have not established an Africanized conceptualization of personhood.The late theologian John Mary Waligo stated in the preface to Magesa’s book that, “One of the root causes of the many anti-life forces, systems, and problems in Black Africa has been our failure to embark on the movement of re-awakening our own moral and religious values and to construct the future on them. No sane society chooses to build its future on foreign cultures, values, or systems.”35 This quest presupposes a search into African cultures, history, worldview, religion, morality, and ethics to rediscover core elements of personhood necessary to establish new theologies, politics, and economics that center on the human person. Failure to do so implies “communal suicide” and betrayal of Africa’s self-determination and spiritual maturity.36

468

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

African conceptions of personhood African philosophers have attempted to codify the concept of personhood,37 and they guide us in theologizing personhood. A recourse to African personhood does not seek to claim universality among all Africans. Africa has hundreds of communities with the diverse conceptualization of “personhood, and what makes human being work.”38 However, “beneath the deceptive appearance of cultural heterogeneity, there is homogeneity” leading to a profound unity of African culture and knowledge.39 The study banks on the homogeneity of Africanness that has led to concepts such as African theology, African philosophy, Pan-Africanism, Afrocentricity, Negritude, and African personhood. Unlike Western philosophy and theology that dichotomize the person, African personhood doesn’t ensue from the separation of the sacred or the theological and the secular. As Magesa observes, in the African worldview, there is no separation between the sacred and the secular—“what is not sacred?”40 According to Mbiti, Africans are notoriously religious41 with no separation between the secular and the profane.42 Following Western theology has led to dichotomizing a person’s life, leading to a scenario of being a Christian in Church on Sunday and a corrupt individual who dehumanizes others the rest of the week. An African perspective on personhood centers on the wholeness of life. There is no single phrase or defnition that captures the essence of personhood in Africa. Several factors need to be assembled to “hypothesize” personhood. I use “hypothesize” because the intricacy of the human person, where we even fail to fully understand ourselves, can only lead to conjectures.

The metaphysical conception of personhood The person, commonly referred to as Umuntu or Omuntu among the sub-Saharan Africa Bantu people, is an ontological living force.Tempels explicates:“The Bantu sees in man a living forces; the forces or the being that possesses life that is true, full and lofty. Man is the supreme force, the most powerful among the created forces.”43 Tempels appears to assert the Western argument that “man” differs from and is superior to other creatures because man possesses an immortal and immaterial soul which other creatures do not possess, and thus man was accorded dominion over other creatures (Gen. 1:27). However, Alexis Kagame asserts that what differentiates the person from other creatures is neither the body (obuzima) nor the soul, but the possession of intelligence or wisdom (amagara) and the heart as the center of emotions and the will.44 Taking the Akan people’s case, Gyekye notes that a human person is comprised of three elements: okra (the essence of the person, where okrateasefo refers to the living soul, the spark of the Supreme Being, Onyame), sunsum (what gives one personality or character), and nipadua (body).45 At a deeper level, the person (Umuntu) possesses humanness or humanism (ubuntu), which defnes the human person or humanity and connects individuals with fellow humans and other beings. Ubuntu bears ethical and moral imports.Tutu notes that (2000, p. 31) When you want to give high praise to someone we say, “Yu, u nobunto,” “Hey so and so has Ubuntu.” Then you are generous; you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate.You share what you have … A person with Ubuntu is open and available to other, affrming of others, dos not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self–assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or

469

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they are less than who they are … What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanize me.46 Ubuntu ontology is the core of being human and how practically one lives out his or her life. Personhood is not biological but a process that one attains gradually through the rites of passage. Africa’s ills emanate from the failure in humanness and humanizing others. In this regard, the inculturation of personhood requires that Ubuntu becomes the essence of the Gospel message and African theologies. If Ubuntu was concretized by the Church, in line with the biblical principle of doing for others what you would have them do unto you (Mt. 7:12), the Church would have leavened Africa’s politics and economics.Tutu is cognizant that “Ubuntu is very diffcult to render into a Western language.”47 It is also hard to render into today’s Africa, where colonialism, slave trade, missionary Christian teachings, neocolonialism, globalization, and capitalist imperialism infuence Africans’ minds to value a person’s worth in terms of their material possessions and status. The dignity of the human person is consistently disfgured by dehumanizing structural and systemic injustices, wars, corruption, and the exclusion of women from governance in many institutions, including the church. As Mbefo noted, “exposure to other infuences has made us cultural hybrids.”48

Processual nature of personhood African personhood is not a fait accompli, achieved by being a biological organism with human features.Attaining personhood is a process.The organism goes through “a long process of social and ritual transformation until it attains the full complement or excellencies seen as truly defnitive of a man.”49 Rituals of incorporation or the rites of passage teach social-communal rules to enable “what was initially biologically given can come to attain social self-hood” (Ibid). Although Menkiti does not explicate the nature of the “excellencies,” the rubric for realizing personhood and moral worth is known to community members. Menkiti emphasizes, The various societies found in traditional Africa routinely accept this fact that personhood is the sort of thing which has to be attained and is attained in direct proportion as one participates in communal life through the discharge of the various obligations defned by one’s stations. It is the carrying out of these obligations that transforms one from the it-status of early child-hood, marked by an absence of moral function, into the person-status of later years, marked by a widened maturity of ethical sense—an ethical maturity without which personhood is conceived as eluding one.50 Mbiti makes a similar assertion: Physical birth is not enough: the child must go through rites of incorporation so that it becomes fully integrated into the entire society. These rites continue throughout the physical life of the person, during which the individual passes from one stage of corporate existence to another.The fnal stage is reached when he dies, and even then he is ritually incorporated into the wider family of both the dead and the living.51 One could fail to achieve personhood, be “competent or ineffective, better or worse.52 The individual is responsible for his or her learning.The rituals of incorporation and leaning the socio-community can transform what was initially biologically into a person.This argument 470

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

alludes to the fuidity of personhood, or to treating a human being as non-person when one fails to adhere to community standards and rules. An immoral, self-centered, and evil being who contributes nothing to the common good is not worthy of personhood, while a moral, generous, loving individual is a person. While in Western theology and philosophy, personhood is fxed regardless of one’s morals, African spirituality is serious about being or not being a person.This can be linked to some of the biblical teachings on belonging to the Kingdom: “He who is not with me is against” (Mt. 12:30); “No man can serve two masters” (Mt. 6:24). The community plays an irreplaceable role in attaining personhood. “The community must, therefore, make, create, or produce the individual; for the individual depends on the corporate group.”53 Menkiti adds that “persons become persons only after a process of incorporation … And during this long process of attainment, the community plays a vital role as a catalyst and as a prescriber of norms.”54 As the proverb states, “it takes a village to raise a child,” a person belongs to the whole community. This does not negate personal efforts and responsibility to attaining moral and ethical excellence. Gykye notes, “structure is never to be conceived as reducing a person to intellectual or rational inactivity, servility, and docility;” the individual, by one’s mental feature and freedom, is responsible for the learning process.55 Gyekye quotes Akan proverbs that stress individuality and personal responsibility:“The clan is like a cluster of trees which, when seen from afar, appear huddled together, but which would be seen to stand individually when closely approached. Life is as you make it yourself. It is by individual efforts that we can struggle for our heads.”56 In Tanzania, a person who fails to behave according to one’s age is referred to as Mzee kijana, meaning biologically an old person who behaves like a youth. A respectable elder is one who attains excellence in personhood, which is excellence in morality and virtues, fosters the common good, and observes communal norms. He or she is respected as a repertoire of wisdom, believed to be moral, and is the one who achieves the ancestral status. It appears that personhood comes with age and community contributions.Among the Akan, one who is morally disgraceful is considered a non-person, and only the morally worthy individual is mourned while the opposite is mocked.57 This understanding comes closer to Jesus’ developmental journey in “wisdom and stature, and in favor with God” (Lk. 2:52) and with people. Equally, in the Body of Christ, an individual grows into a relationship with God and others in the community through the initiation processes starting with Baptism. However, in Christianity, there is no state when one is said to achieve full maturity, except after death or in life when others consider him or her as a “saint” to be emulated by others. It is also vital to examine the effectiveness of the Christian rituals of incorporation. How do they transform one baptized as a baby or a catechumen into Christian self-hood? If that incorporation were authentically transformative,Africa would be heavenly.A study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life constantly indicates soaring numbers of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa and predicts that “Christianity’s future lies in Africa,” where by 2060, more than four in ten Christians will be in sub-Saharan Africa.58 What needs to change in the rituals of incorporation to ensure that the being of Christians transforms the ills that beset African persons? In African tradition, one who failed to achieve personhood by living according to the demands and expectations of each ritual was treated as non-person, with no dignity or respect in the community, was not an elder, and did not become an ancestor. Consequently, everyone endeavored to live an exemplary life through moral integrity, with the hope of dying well and qualifying as one among the ancestors. Also of concern was the celebrant of the rituals and the processes he followed. Exemplary leadership was crucial for any elder who offciated during the rituals. 471

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

Personhood and community rootedness Personhood entails belonging and rootedness in the community. Mbiti summarizes the sociocentricity of personhood with the aphorism:“I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am.”59 Personhood is realized through a corporate existence where each one as a force refects personal energy and draws energy from the community stream. Mbiti argues that the person “owes his existence to other people, including those or past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole.”60 Rootedness in the community starting with one’s family is an integral part of the African worldview of personhood.Tutu observes,“We belong in a bundle of life … A person is a person through other persons … It is not I think therefore I am, but I am a person because I belong, I participate, I share.”61 The relational perspective recognizes and affrms the humanness and dignity of others.The muntu is expected to observe communal values, norms, ethics, and morals as a means to affrm one’s humanity, grow in self-knowledge, belonging, rootedness, and care for the common good.Tempels cites the example of the Baluba’s (the Democratic Republic of Congo) linguistic references to muntu. The Baluba speak of “muntu mutupu” to indicate a man of middling importance devoid of real forces; while the “muntu mukulumpe” indicates the powerful man who has his part to take in the community.The word “muntu” inherently includes an idea of excellence or plenitude.And thus the Baluba will speak of “ke muntu po,” this is not a muntu, of a man who behaves unworthily.62 The community comprises hierarchies of beings: God who possesses the ultimate force, the ancestors, the living dead, the living humans, the unborn and nature (animals and inanimate objects).Tempels notes that “The living muntu is in a relation of being with God, with his clan brethren, with his family, and with his descendants. He is in a similar ontological relationship with his patrimony, his land, with all that it contains or produces, with all that grows or lives on it … The human being apart from the ontological hierarchy and the interaction of forces has no existence in the conceptions of the Bantu.”63 A person has to be born as a member of a certain community. Family and tribal membership are immutable. No one can be converted from one family, community, tribe, or clan, let alone African traditional religion, to another, although through marriage, a woman could become a member of another family and community. Personhood is frst realized in an extended family that includes the living, the living dead, ancestors, and the unborn. On rare occasions, an individual could be ritually adopted into another tribal group, but this was seldom, leading to a scenario where tribal identity is a powerful force even in modern African statehood and after embracing Christianity, “although that feeling of tribal identity varies like temperature, from time to time, depending on prevailing circumstances.”64 The community enables the individual should see the self as a person,“and it is by frst knowing this community as a stubborn perduring fact of the psychophysical world that the individual also comes to know himself … It is in the community which defnes the individual as a person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will or memory.”65 The community takes precedence and enjoys an ontological priority over the individual. Menkiti notes,“the reality of the communal world takes precedence over the reality of the individual life histories, whatever these may be.”66 However, the community does not take away one’s individuality and responsibilities. Mbiti’s assertion of communal belonging recognizes the individual “I am” before moving to “we are.” Each person is known by his or her unique name, which “expresses the individual character of the being.The name is not a simple external courtesy; it is the very reality of the individual.”67 472

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

Community relationships and interactions in African spirituality can be understood in connection with the Trinitarian community, comprising of distinctive persons whose nature of being is realized through the constant relationship of the three persons in one ousi, but three distinct hypostaseis. To refect the Trinitarian personhood to the world, Jesus prayed for the unity of his followers: “may they all be one as You, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in Us” as a sign for the world to believe (Jn. 17:21). Baptism and other rituals initiate and orient the person to the community of believers, the Church. Thus, the frst African synod adopted the family as a model to be a church. However, being and belonging to the Church as Body or family is fraught with challenges. How strong is the Christian sense of belonging to the community of believers? How do the marginalized feel the sense of belonging to a church that is gradually becoming a club of the rich and the infuential? These questions suggest that theologizing personhood requires a return to the sources of African wisdom where belonging to a community was not dependent on material wealth and status. It also necessitates the authentic following and imitation of Jesus, who never excluded the vulnerable.When Jesus was faced with contradiction of the Scribes and Pharisees, who could be equated with today’s Church leaders, he warned that prostitutes and tax collectors would be the frst in heaven (Mt. 21:31) and not those who “appear” to be the doers of the Father’s will, yet are lost in power and prestige games while excluding others from the community. Tribal membership and identity remain very strong in Africa, thicker than the waters of Baptism and belonging to the Church.Tribal blood is the Rwandan genocide, where 99 percent of the population were Christians, but within less than 100 days, over 800,000 Christians were massacred by fellow Christians sometimes in the very Churches where they had worshipped together, providing a watershed to this disturbing reality. Emanuel Katongole interviewed one of the genocidare named Adalbert who remembered that on the Saturday of Easter week,“‘We sang hymns in good feeling with our Tutsi compatriots, our voices still blending in the chorus’ … We left the Lord and our prayers in (the Church) to rush home … grabbed clubs and machetes, we went straight off to killing (the Tutsi brothers and sisters).”68 The Rwandan genocide is not history.What happened in Rwanda continues to happen in Southern Sudan, Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Mali, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and many other African nations. The dichotomy between life and adherence to Christianity provokes anyone concerned about the present and future of the Church and of the African societies to pause and ask diffcult personal and corporate questions: How is the sub-Saharan Africa, with a substantial number of Christians, being marred in endless violence, ethnic hatred, political unrest, unbridled corruption, poverty, and diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, which disfgure the dignity of the human person? Who am I as a Christian? How has Christianity impacted my personhood? Who is my community, my “we?” How does my belonging to the Church community relate to other communities to which I belong? Has Christianity made any difference to uplifting the dignity of the human person? Why, for the majority, does the sense of belonging to the Church appear to remain cosmetic? Does Christianity make any difference in our relationships, politics, economics, and life at large? Why doesn’t there seem to be any sustainable sign of the situation getting better concomitant with the numbers of believers? These questions are crucial toward an inculturated theological conceptualization of personhood.

Personhood and eschatological issues Africans believe that every person has a destiny, either predetermined or that can be altered on earth given that a person has the freedom to choose between good and bad. For example, the Akan people hold that every person has a predetermined destiny.The soul is the bearer of that 473

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

destiny.69 Gyekye provides proverbs supporting the destiny beliefs:“There is no bypass to God’s destiny. No living man can subvert the order of God … If you are destined to die by the gun, you will not die by the arrow.What is destined to prosper or succeed cannot be otherwise.”70 However, the Yoruba hold that the person has a fuid destiny that can be altered depending on the person’s qualities. Gbadegesin asserts that “persons are what they are in virtue of what they are destined to be, their character and the communal infuence on them … The meaning of one’s life is, therefore measured by one’s commitment to social ideals and communal existence.”71 Death ends a person’s life.According to Tempels, in Bantu ontology, one can grow by increasing one’s force by becoming more accomplished, or one could lose the vital forces gradually or completely, rapidly or slowly, which is death. He asserted, “man can come to an end in the complete annihilation of his very essence, the paralysis of his vital force, which takes from him the power to be an active force.”72 Rituals are important to keep the force of the living dead, to accompany the dead into the ancestral world. Boon argues that A critical base to traditional African philosophy is known as seriti (Sotho) isithunzi (Nguni).The origin of seriti in its form moriti, means shade or shadow, but it is seen as the vital life-force identifying an individual. It is part of all life, but it is also personal, intimately affected by and affecting other forces.73 Both Boon and Tempels appear to believe that death means losing the vital life force and full personhood because the person is incapacitated from interacting with other forces. However, Mbiti opines that the living dead (recently departed) continue to communicate with the living, are still remembered by the living, are talked about, and are believed to appear and mediate between the living and the spiritual world.74 Among the Baganda and Bakiga of Uganda, libation is poured and food is taken to the tombs of the living dead, believed to return to their families to feed. There cannot be a genuine witness to Christ without rootedness in historical and indigenous frameworks of African individual and corporate personhood.

The quest for an Africanized theology of personhood Slave trade and colonization disfgured the dignity of the African person. Movements such as “Black lives matter,” “white supremacy,” and so on allude to the dehumanization of personhood that the black race has been enduring for centuries. When Christianity was introduced to sub-Saharan Africa in the 15th century, it was connected to the colonization project.While the Gospel that missionaries preached considers all people to be created in God’s image and likeness, its application maintained the colonial status quo that considered the African person as a savage, barbaric and inferior to the colonial masters.75 Global scientifc and technological advancements, including those that illustrate the naturalness of races and how no one chooses the race they belong to, have not contributed to liberating African personhood. Africa, rich in human and natural resources, continues to face tragic situations of refugees, abject poverty, disease, hunger, wars, and protracted conficts.The Synod Fathers compared Africa to the “man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him and departed, leaving him half dead” (cf. Lk. 10:30–37). Countless Africans “are lying, as it were, on the edge of the road, sick, injured, disabled, marginalized and abandoned.”76 We need to question: what has changed in the theological, theoretical, and practical consideration of African personhood since the introduction of Christianity in Africa? How has 474

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood

Christianity transformed Africa’s socio-politics and socio-economics that continue to negatively impact the majority of African people? What has changed since the ending of the African synods? Those who followed the teaching of the missionaries inherited a dichotomous life, where faith does not transpire into actions and witness to the Gospel values that respect human dignity. The 1994 Rwandan genocide testifes to that dichotomy. Rwanda was more than 90 percent Catholic. Due to the identity struggles where colonizers and missionaries’ narratives indoctrinated the Tutsi to consider themselves superior to the Hutu, Christians massacred fellow believers with whom they had sung the Easter Alleluias and celebrated the Eucharist.77 Rwanda’s genocide is not history. Christians in Africa continue to disfgure the dignity of the human person. Faith is not doing justice. The entire continent is grappling with challenges that disfgure the human person, including: (1) the crisis of leadership and bad governance responsible for rampant corruption and unjust systems and structures that deprive the poor of the basic needs, including access to food, medical care, and education; (2) the scourge of protracted ethnic and resource-based wars such as in Congo, Mali, Central Africa Republic, and South Sudan; (3) the enduring scourge of poverty and unemployment; (4) the scourge of HIV/AIDS and related illnesses, where access to treatment and ARVs remains a dream for many, and those who access ARVs cannot afford nutritious food necessary to achieve the medical benefts and cope with the side effects of the strong medications; (5) the scourge of the orphans of HIV/AIDS and of war loitering the streets of many African cities and towns; (6) the perennial marginalization of women in the Church, in politics and decision-making forums; (7) globalization and capitalism that reinforce the marginalization of the African person. As a result, the Mediterranean Sea has become a cemetery for thousands of youth who try to escape Africa’s misery thinking to fnd greener pastures in Europe, while others are sold into slavery in Libya. The context demands a new theological conceptualization of personhood in Africa to refect the challenges that face the African person and, consequently, the Church. Pope John Paul II in the encyclical Centesimus Annus noted, “Today more than ever, the Church is aware that her social doctrine will gain credibility more immediately from witness of action than as a result of its internal logic” (no. 57). Concretely, the following areas need to be strategized: (1) Christian faith needs to do justice toward human dignity. This necessitates training all believers in refecting biblical teaching into social justice, which for Catholics is what is referred to as the Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Unfortunately, CST remains the Church’s “best-kept secret.” (2) Engagement in political and economic decision-making, given that these are the key areas that impact human life. (3) Training of leaders in good governance, political responsibility, respect for the rule of law, human rights, and establishing stable democratic institutions based on the rule of law.African leaders are famous for dictatorial tendencies and using national resources and even foreign aid for personal benefts instead of fostering the common good. (5) Ensuring that education at all levels trains leaders to be responsible citizens who respect themselves, others, and the planet.

Conclusion Without the inculturation of personhood, the Gospel message continues to remain alien to the African people.The Church risks remaining a powerful institution, following Western theology on personhood and consequently becoming obsolete like in the West, if it does not renew its conceptualization of personhood, the salvation of the individual, communities, and respond to the complex systems of politics, economics, and injustice that affict the human person.While the Church is always on the forefront to understand the human person and his dignity, Africa’s 475

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja

situation calls for inculturated and renewed approaches to an evangelization centered on personhood. This would be a new and challenging paradigm to witnessing and teaching the Gospel message. If the Church embraces it, it will not only be a more credible prophetic voice in a world where the African person is respected neither at home nor abroad; it will also breathe new air in today’s world fraught with threats toward personhood.The new approach requires that the Church collaborates with leaders at various levels of society in humility and not confrontation.

Notes 1 William,Thomas, “Saint Anselm,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/anselm/. 2 Ezechi, Joe C., The Dead Never Gone: Odo Masquerade and Contemporary Realities (New Haven, CT: Monrovia Street, 2011), p. 221. 3 The usage of Africa in this chapter is limited to sub-Saharan Africa. 4 The Hellenistic period is often used in reference to the “epoch during which Alexander and his successors spread the Greek culture over the Mediterranean prior to the unifcation of the whole region under the Roman Empire” between 323 BC and 31 BC. Gill, C. (2006). The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, p. xvii. The great thinkers of the Hellenistic period include Plato, who in his dialogue, speaks about the “role (ex persona) of a particular god or interlocutor and Pythagoras.” However, with the establishment of the Roman Empire, it became diffcult to distinguish between later Hellenistic and Roman philosophers. Roman thinkers such as Cicero, Seneca, and Lucretius contributed to Hellenistic philosophy. 5 J. J. Oosten,“A Few Critical Remarks on the Concept of Person,” in Concepts of Person in Religion and Thought, ed. H. G. Kippenberg,Y. B. Kuiper, and A. F. Sanders (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), 26. 6 Philip A. Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans, 2007), p. 12. 7 Marcus Tullius Cicero and Patrick Gerard Walsh, On Obligations (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Marcus Cicero and Michael Winterbottom, De offciis (Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis) (Oxonii: New York: E Typographeo Clarendoniano; Oxford University Press, 1994). 8 Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God. 9 Gill, C. The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. xvii. 10 Plato, Phaedo, trans. and ed. D. Gallop. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 70a. (Original work published ca. 380 BC), pp. 115C–115D. 11 Plato, Phaedo, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3a 12 Plato, Republic, 621c, trans. A.D. Lindsay (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992) (Original work published ca. 380 B.C.). 13 Grube George Maximilian Anthony, Plato’s Thought (London: Hackett Publishing Company, 1958). pp. 148–149. 14 Berry R. J., “Creation and evolution, not creation or evolution,” The Faraday Papers, paper 12 (April 2007), 3–4. 15 Westermann, C., Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (3 vols), (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997). 16 McKenzie 1996: 507. 17 McKenzie 1996: 836–837. 18 Darwin, C., “Religion,” in The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005, 1887, repr.), pp. 63–73. 19 John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (Chicago: Bruce, 1996), pp. 836–837. 20 Bruce Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (2 Vols) “‫( ”שפנ‬Chicago: Mood, 1980).Vol. 2., p. 589. 21 Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (3 Vols), trans. Mark E. Biddle (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004),Vol. 3, p. 1208. 22 Outler, C. Albert, ed., Augustine: Confession & Enchiridion. MCMLV. Book 3: Chapter 4:12, 1993. https ://www.ewtn.com/library/SOURCES/CONFENCH.TXT 23 Ibid., I, Q. 76,Art. 3. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., I, Q. 75,Art. 2.

476

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood 26 Aquinas Thomas, On Prayer and the Contemplative Life, trans. Hugh Pope (London:Aertena, 2009). 27 Pope Benedict XVI, “In the Beginning…” A Catholic Understanding of the Creation and the Fall, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Hantington, IN: Our Sunday Visitors, Inc. 1990; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1995) p. 48. 28 John XXX, Pacem in Terris (April 11, 1963), n. 9, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encycli cals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html 29 Ibid. n. 11. 30 Article 1 of the UDH states that “all human being are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”Article 2 states that “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration without distinction of any kind.” https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ 31 John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) (1995), n. 12. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-p aul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html 32 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, No. 129. 33 Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, An Introduction to Catholic Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 34 Molef Kete Asante,“The philosophy of Afrocentricity,” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, ed.Afolayan Adeshina and Toyin Falola (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 231. 35 Laurenti Magesa, African Religion:The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), p. xi. 36 Ibid. 37 Menkiti, Ifeanyi A, “Person and community in African traditional thought,” African Philosophy: An Introduction, ed. Richard A. Wright (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 171–182; Kaphagawani, Didier N, “African conceptions of personhood and intellectual identities” In P. H. Coetzee & A. J. P. Roux, eds. Philosophy from Africa: a Text with Readings, (London: Routledge, 1998); Weridu, Kwasi & Gyekye, Kwame, “Person and community in African thought,” Person and Community: Ghanaian Philosophical Studies 1 (Washington DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992): 101–122; Masolo, Dismas A., Self and Community in a Changing World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010). 38 Appiah, K. A., “Akan and Euro-American concepts of the person,” in African Philosophy: New and Traditional Perspectives, ed. Brown, L. M. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 21–34. 39 Cheikh Anta Diop, The Cultural Unity of Black Africa (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1962), p. 7 40 Laurenti Magesa, What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality,Theological Studies (New York: Orbis Books, 2013). 41 Unlike Christianity or Judaism, in Africa we have religions and not religion. 42 John S. Mbiti, African Religions & Philosophy (Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya Ltd., 1969). 43 Tempels, Placide, Bantu Philosophy,Translation into English from La Philosophie Bantoue, the French Version (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959), p. 64. 44 Alexis Kagame, La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise De L’etre (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966); Alexis Kagame, “The problem of ‘Man’ in Bantu Philosophy,” African Mind: Journal of African Religion and Philosophy 1, no. 1 (1989). 45 Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Refections on the African Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 85. 46 Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 31. 47 Ibid., p. 31. 48 Mbefor, L. N., Towards a Mature African Christianity (Enugu, Nigeria: SNAAP Press Ltd., 1989), p. 8. 49 Menkiti, Ifeanyi A., “Person and community in African traditional thought,” in African Philosophy: An Introduction, ed. Richard A.Wright (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), p. 172. 50 Ibid., p. 176. 51 Mbiti, p. 141. 52 Menkiti, p. 173. 53 Mbiti, p. 141. 54 Menkiti, p. 172. 55 Gyekye, pp. 55–56. 56 Ibid., p. 40. 57 Ibid. 58 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,“Sub-Saharan Africa Will Be Home to Growing Shares of the World’s Christians and Muslims,”April 19, 2017.Available on http://www.pewresearch.org.

477

Namakula Evelyn B. Mayanja 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77

Mbiti, p. 141. Ibid. Desmond Tutu Peace foundation, http://www.tutufoundationusa.org/desmond-tutu-peace-foundation/ Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Presence Africanine, 1959, p. 67. Placide Tempels, 1959, pp. 66–67. Mbiti, p. 135. Menkiti, p. 172. Ibid., p. 171. Placide, p. 70. Katongole Emmanuel, Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda (2009), p. 33. Gyekye. Ibid., pp. 104–105. Gbadegesin Segun, African Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary African Realities (New York: P. Lang, 1991), p. 367. Placide, p. 66. Boon Michael, The African Way:The Power of Interactive Leadership (Sandton: Zebra, 1996), p. 35. Mbiti. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996); Thairu Kihumbu, The African Civilization: Utamaduni Wa Kiafrika (Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1975); E. Bọlaji Idowu, African Traditional Religion: A Defnition (London: S.C.M. Press, 1973). Pope John Paul II (1995) Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa. No. 41. Emmanuel.

References Asante, Molef Kete. “The Philosophy of Afrocentricity.” Chap. 16. In The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, edited by Afolayan Adeshina and Toyin Falola, 231–44. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Cicero, Marcus Tullius, and Patrick Gerard Walsh. On Obligations. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. Diop, Cheikh Anta. The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1962. Emmanuel, Katongole. Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith After Genocide in Rwanda. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009. Gill, C. The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, xvii. Grube, George Maximilian Anthony. Plato’s Thought. London: Hackett Publishing Company, 1958, 148–149. Gyekye, Kwame. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Refections on the African Experience. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. Hornsby-Smith, Michael P. An Introduction to Catholic Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Idowu, E. Bọlaji. African Traditional Religion:A Defnition. London: S.C.M. Press, 1973. Jenni, Ernst, and Claus Westermann. Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (3 Vols).Translated by Mark E. Biddle. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004. Kagame, Alexis. La Philosophie Bantu-Rwandaise De L’etre. New York, NY: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966. Kagame, Alexis. “The Problem of ‘Man’ in Bantu Philosophy.” African Mind: Journal of African Religion and Philosophy 1, no. 1 (1989):35–40. Kihumbu, Thairu. The African Civilization: Utamaduni Wa Kiafrika. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1975. Magesa, Laurenti. African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997. Magesa, Laurenti. What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality.Theological Studies. New York, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Mbiti, John S. African Religions & Philosophy Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya Ltd., 1969.

478

Biblical and dogmatic theology on personhood McKenzie, John L. Dictionary of the Bible. Chicago, IL: Bruce, 1996. Menkiti, Ifeanyi A. “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought.” In: African Philosophy: An Introduction, edited by Richard A. Wright, 171–82.Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1984. Placide,Tempels. Bantu Philosophy,Translation into English from La Philosophie Bantoue, the French Version. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959. Rolnick, Philip A. A Person, Grace, and God. Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans, 2007. Segun, Gbadegesin. African Philosophy:Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary African Realities. New York, NY: P. Lang, 1991. Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York, NY: Doubleday, 2000. Waltke, Bruce. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (2 Vols)“d C.” Chicago, IL: Mood, 1980. Westermann, C. Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (3 Vols). Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997.

479

31 LITURGICAL THEOLOGY— AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

Introduction In the life of each differentiated human, community, performance, doing, and action display and give sense to being; they embody the beliefs and priorities of the community. In performance, the patterns mediating insight into the origins and destination, hopes and fears, successes and failures, and the transformation or reinvention of the community are declared and displayed. Indeed, performance reiterates the foundational crust of the community’s memory. Marcel Jousse characterizes this as originary tri-phase “unconscious” performance, a mimesis of the impact of the universe on the human agent (Anthropos). It is mimesis, passive-active, dominated by action-reaction: l’agent agissant l’agi (the agent acting the acted)—the threephase foundational memorialization or performance of each human community’s story, of its reaction in gestures to the overall impact of the universe upon the community.This is its life.1 In this tri-phase performance of Anthropos-community, I locate the core of liturgical action. At its very core, the liturgy as ritual, like gesture, dramatizes bodily what carries the community. The performance is embedded in deep memory—a mimesis of valuational encodings. As Edgard Richard Sienaert stresses, inspired by the thought-fow of Jousse, “Memory is the reactivation of gestures previously internalized, shaped, played in us with the cooperation of our body.”2 Liturgy could accurately be called “body language,” the language of the social body. Consequently, liturgical studies and liturgical theology insert one into the arteries of the church’s foundational values, unconsciously embodied and consciously articulated. Monica Wilson is therefore right to argue that the study of the rite of any social group, such as the Nyakyusa of Tanzania/Malawi in East Africa, is the window to what matters most to them:“I hold that rituals reveal values at the deepest level.” For her, the priority of the rite is indisputable:“There is much woolly talk,” she continues, of values and of how to study them, of how to achieve system and objectivity in the observation of them. Surely men express in ritual what moves them most, and since the form of expression is conventionalized and obligatory, it is the values of the group which are revealed. I see in the study of rituals the key to an understanding of the essential constitution of human societies.3 480

Liturgical theology—African perspective

In liturgical parlance, it is the priority of “supplicandi” (prayer) over “credendi” (belief). Liturgists quarrel, agree to disagree, over which came frst: “liturgical studies” (analysis, history, the study of texts, etc.) or “liturgical theology” (practiced in liturgical performance). And in the study of liturgical theology, the debate is still popular as to whether one should be more attentive to “performance,” the “rite,” the “ordo,” the so-called theologia prima,4 or to the declamation of the faith of the community, which is clarifed by or testifed to in the sumptuous liturgical celebration (this is captured in the statement attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi: “that the law of praying establishes the law of believing”). Proponents of liturgical theology as theologia prima demur at the view that there are liturgical dimensions in theology or theological dimensions in the liturgy. Rather theology is the “secondary” act, the refection on the primary performance in the community of the “Paschal Mystery.”5 This is a fascinating debate. My refections in this chapter on liturgical theology, from the African perspective, presume or are inclined toward the priority of the rite.6 But at the same time I do not underestimate the impact of correct doctrine/belief on the ritual performance of the community. It appears incontrovertible that doctrinal imperatives perhaps led to the establishment of obligatory liturgical texts.The frst port of call for the abandonment of free creation or extemporization in liturgical texts, in the Western Church, is North Africa.7 This short chapter navigates between liturgical studies and liturgical theology. I start by recalling the impact of North Africa in establishing exact texts for the public worship of the church. In this way, the rule of belief interlaces with the community’s performance of the Paschal Mystery. Then I examine the power of ancestral memorial undergirding liturgical celebration in general (from Jewish roots) and controlling liturgical renewal and inculturation in African Christianity. Finally, I close with the witness of life, the lex vivendi (the rule of faith embodied in the ethical witness with one’s life) as the epiphany of the church. In the Christian martyr, liturgical memorial, as the death of the martyr, challenges the taken-for-granted-ness of life in church and society. Liturgical theology is concerned with the sumptuous celebration of the faith. But the martyrial performance, acting the acted, in the footsteps of Jesus the martyr (Rev. 1:5), as liturgical theology (from Stephen the protomartyr,Acts 22:20, to the Ugandan martyrs), dramatizes the community’s deep memory (of the Paschal Mystery) that articulates, reinvents, and challenges existence in the world. But frst, the rule of prayer interlaces with the rule of faith.

Doctrine and the need for obligatory liturgical texts—3rd Council of Carthage (397 CE) One of the earliest documented texts of the usages of the Christian Church, The Apostolic Tradition,8 a 3rd century (c. 215 CE) anonymous church order, whose authorship is unclear (though attributed to Hippolytus), provided texts for worship. The Apostolic Tradition, however, did not oblige the presider to use the exact words of the proposed text (it was not editio typica before the name).9 It is not altogether necessary for him [the presiding Bishop] to recite the very same words which we gave before as though studying to say them by heart in his thanksgiving to God, but let each one pray according to his own ability … Only let his prayer be correct and right [in doctrine].10 Latin North Africa, at the end of the 4th century, reversed the extemporaneous pattern of prayer. It is well known that from Tertullian, frst to write theology in Latin, Latin Africa profoundly 481

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

infuenced the development of Western theological language and thought. But liturgical and canonical usages of Carthage or Hippo are not known to have infuenced Roman or Italian practice.11 The change in usages came in one of the earliest legislations that imposed limits to extemporization and fxed liturgical texts (a practice that subsequently became the rule, perhaps arising from the experience of controversies over doctrine). Canon 21 of the Council of Hippo Regius (393 CE), which was inserted without substantial emendation into the acts of the 3rd Council of Carthage (397 CE, Canon 23), ruled:12 In prayers, let no one name (address) the Father instead of the Son, or the Son instead of the Father. And when one stands at the altar, let prayer always be directed to the Father. If anyone copies out prayers for himself from elsewhere, these should not be used unless he has frst discussed them with more learned brethren.13 What is at stake is a preoccupation with doctrinal unity. It is important to note the reversal of the normal fexibility that was obtained in the formulation of prayers at the altar; in particular, the fexible composition of Eucharistic Prayers.The fexibility in composition derived from the elasticity and suppleness of the parent Jewish berakoth (blessing, i.e., prayer) tradition, which highlighted dominant themes to be followed by the presider, without fxed or obligatory texts. The Jewish prayers were transmitted orally and are generally adaptable while maintaining the themes.This is the rule of the Grace (birkat ha-mazon) that provided the template for the Christian Eucharistic Prayers. The frst Jewish prayer book, Seder Rav Amram Gaon, dates to the 9th century of the Common Era.14 While one may not follow the claim of Louis Bouyer that liturgical (Eucharistic) practice in later centuries might have lost track of the dominant themes of (Eucharistic) prayers, it could be argued with Bouyer that distance from the original themes could well have led presiders of Christian liturgies to become “side-tracked” and even to indulge in “prattle and fancy.”15 The legislation of the Council of Hippo Regius (393), where Augustine was serving as a priest (and where Augustine possibly infuenced conciliar formulations), that was inserted into the canons of the Council of Carthage 397 CE, was followed by the more restrictive Canon 103 of the General Council of Carthage in 407 CE. Preoccupied with presidential prayers (Of the Prayers to be Said at the Altar), it stated: This also seemed good, that the prayers which had been approved in synod should be used by all, whether prefaces, commendations, or laying on of the hand, and that others contrary to the faith should not be used by any means, but that those only should be said which had been collected by the learned.16 It is arguable that doctrine and the desire for orthodoxy preoccupied the North African canons. These explain the earliest evidence of written obligatory texts. Margriet Vos believes that perhaps the presence of untrained clergy (sharply criticized by Augustine as mumbling words they did not understand) and the effects of the struggle with schismatics (Donatism?) increased the need for uniformization. The result of or fallout from the very strict regulations was the drying up of liturgical creativity—proved by the absence of euchological texts in Latin North Africa compared to sermons and homilies. It is unfortunate that the extraordinary production in Christian thought (Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine) is not replicated in liturgical theology, apart from indirect references to the use of texts similar to Roman usages.17 One regrets this famine of euchological creativity in Latin North Africa. Compared to the greater freedom in the practice 482

Liturgical theology—African perspective

of Rome, the difference is clear. Gregory the Great’s (d. 604 CE) correspondence with Augustine of Canterbury on altars and liturgies to be adapted to Anglo-Saxon Christians provides the classic example of liturgical “liberalism” that some liturgical scholars doubt to be authentic. Augustine of Canterbury asked: “Since there is but one faith, why are the uses of Churches so different, one use of Mass being observed in the Roman Church, and another in the Churches of Gaul?” Gregory responded: Your Fraternity knows the use of the Roman Church, in which you have been nurtured. But I approve of your selecting carefully anything you have found that may be more pleasing to Almighty God, whether in the Roman Church or that of Gaul, or in any Church whatever, and introducing in the Church of the Angli, which is as yet new in the faith, by a special institution, what you have been able to collect from many Churches. For we ought not to love things for places, but places for things. Wherefore choose from each several Church such things as are pious, religious, and right, and, collecting them as it were into a bundle, plant them in the minds of the Angli for their use.18 Louis Bouyer, among others, believes that Letter 64, Book XI, is an authentic letter of Gregory the Great.19 As a rule, creativity and fexibility were the principle in Italy (Milan, the Ambrosian rite), Gaul (Gallican rite), and Spain (Mozarabic rite).20 The Ethiopian Church, despite being tied to Alexandrian, Coptic, and Syrian apron strings, was noted for extraordinary euchological compositions. While fexibility in compositions continued in the West, except Latin North Africa, before and after the 7th century (Muslim invasion), strictures in the Byzantine East became the rule due to the imperialistic infuence of Byzantium, permitting only the Byzantine rite as the legitimate one.21 The Eastern rite that fourished in North Africa is the Alexandrian Greek and Coptic Egyptian liturgies of St. Mark. South of the Sahara, the Ethiopian liturgy, belonging to the Eastern liturgical family, displays extraordinary creativity.The manuscripts testifying to this liturgy date to the 16th century and after.While following the ancient Coptic or other borrowed (Syrian) traditions, the compositions bear the imprint of Ethiopian specifcity. The Ethiopian Church, practicing a national religion, protected by the state, was from origin very close to Judaic practices. In Ethiopia, the Sabbath and the Sunday are of equal standing. For example, the anaphora of Athanasius devotes part of its Thanksgiving to the praise of the Christian Sabbath.22 The Ethiopian Church also displays unique devotion to Mary Mother of God. There are Eucharistic Prayers, like the Anaphora of Mary Mother of God composed by Cyriacus of Behñasa, that are expansive in praise of Mary.23 Only in Ethiopia does one fnd such Christian Eucharistic Prayers hymning the Mother of God.24 The specifc Ethiopian euchological production demonstrates the freedom that should continue to impact liturgics and liturgical theology in Africa.The Roman Missal for the use of the Dioceses of Zaire (the Zaire-Congo rite, 1988),25 embodies texts suffused with themes drawn from the human and geographical zone of the central African country.The offcial recognition of this Zairian liturgy shows the creative evolution of liturgical studies and liturgical theology in Africa. The North African regulation on obligatory texts has the added consequence of opening the debate, in liturgical studies (since the last century), on the Trinitarian orientation of presidential prayers in the liturgy. One is familiar with the discussion generated by the 1925 book by Josef 483

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

Jungmann: The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer.26 Was liturgical (public) prayer of the Church (Of the Prayers to be Said at the Altar) directed only to God the Father, through Christ the Son, and in the Holy Spirit? Jungmann, commenting on Origen’s volume On Prayer, composed around 232 CE, insists that Origen of Alexandria (that man of steel, whose model of theological thought and whose spirituality of ascent were followed by the great and small in the patristic period27), taught that “a prayer should begin, and also in some cases end, with ‘Praise and glory to the Father of all and through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit’; we must begin with the ‘glorifcation of God through Christ, who is co-equally glorifed, in the Holy Spirit, who is co-equally praised’ (c.33.1,6).”28 Jungmann has a point about the addressee of liturgical prayer following the Councils of North Africa and Origen (though he deplores Origen’s subordinationism). But Jungmann exaggerated, as many of his critics have noted, in his interpretation of the New Testament usages and the evidence provided by liturgical history. The resolution of Canon 21/23 of the Council of Carthage notwithstanding, and however the various versions of the Canon are interpreted, it is safe to state (with Bryan Spinks and Balthasar Fischer) that “sound liturgical piety depends on both the per Christum and the ad Christum.”29 Finally, the discussion of the North African church, its preoccupation with liturgical performance (Of the Prayers to be Said at the Altar, Cn. 103, Council of Carthage 407 CE) controlled by orthodoxy, introduces caution in evaluating the priority of either the rule of prayer or the rule of faith in liturgical theology. One must acknowledge the interlacing and the non-separability of both. It is not surprising that Vatican II (1962–1965), a pastoral council, realized its primary concern was to bring the People of God back to the liturgy and the liturgy back to the People of God, with its frst document, Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963).The orientation of the reform and renewal of Vatican II in the Catholic Church of the West and its spheres of infuence was not lost on the Churches of Africa. It constitutes part and parcel of the deep memory, the self-defnition of the Church of Africa, in being fully Christian and fully African. Every performance, every liturgical action, is a function of memory from deep ancestral encoding.

Liturgical memorial as ancestral memorial, the perspective of memory, and tradition in African Christianity Developments in contemporary African theology must respond to the question “Who do you say that I am?” Christology necessarily involves evaluating the position of ancestors in the practice and discourse of the Christian faith.30 Liturgical texts (accessible through liturgical studies) and liturgical theology, as performance and refection, engage ancestral memory. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the community’s action is a mimesis of the acted, an anamnesis of founding or originating performance.The Christian liturgical memorial, emerging from the parent Jewish heritage, celebrates/performs creative actions of “The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod. 3:15). It celebrates the God of the ancestors whose actions culminated in the death-resurrection of Jesus. In the Sedah Abodah (Order of Sacrifcial Service) of the liturgy of the holiest Jewish festival, Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), liturgical performance memorializes the ancestral encounter with God, binding the community to its creating-redeeming and forgiving God, from Adam to Aaron. Christian Eucharistic memorial follows a similar pattern. Eucharistic Prayers praise and memorialize (anamnesis) the wonders of God that peaked in the death-resurrection of Jesus. Some Eucharistic Prayers copied more closely the naming of the Jewish ancestors—the “Praise of the Fathers of Old” of Sirach 44:1–15.The liturgy of the 8th Book of the Apostolic Constitutions (the so-called Clementine Liturgy, 4th/5th century CE) in its Eucharistic prayer, 484

Liturgical theology—African perspective

pre-Sanctus section (before the Trisagion), not only memorializes creation but also the covenant from Adam to Moses-Aaron-Joshua.31 Liturgical scholars have noted that this West Syrian liturgy copied the commemoration of the ancestors as contained in the Sedah Abodah (Order of Sacrifcial Service) of the liturgy of Yom Kippur.32 I refer to the ancestral memorial in the West Syrian liturgical tradition to introduce narrative of liturgical theological creations in African Christianity. The West Syrian model justifes the historic liturgies (Christian liturgies, Eastern and Western)33 for the African Christian mimesis pattern that interlaces indigenous African ancestral memorial and Jewish-Christian memorial. This, in my view, is liturgical theology, truly Christian and truly African. Two examples, one from the African Initiated Churches (AICs) and the other from the post-Vatican II Catholic theological reinventions, will suffce to clarify this. From the AICs, I present the ordination liturgy of prophets-seers or visionaries in the Celestial Church of Christ in Benin Republic, West Africa. The Celestial Church was founded by the prophet-visionary Samuel Oschoffa in 1947.The other example is drawn from Eucharistic liturgies from the Catholic Church in East Africa based on ancestral rhetoric and from the ancestral memorial encoding of the Zaire liturgy approved by the Catholic Church in 1988 (Notitiae of the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments).34

Celestial Church of Christ: approach to ancestral memorial in the ordination rite The founder of the Celestial Church of Christ (Samuel Oschoffa), like many that belong to the “galaxy of founders and prophets” of the African Initiated Churches (e.g. Simon Kimbangu of Congo, Simão Toko of Angola,William Wade Harris of Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire), embodies features associated with leading Hebrew prophets like Elijah and Elisha.35 In the same breath, they embody the choice features of initiated medicine women and men of the African indigenous religions: diviners, healers, seers-visionaries, those that the World Health Organization collectively calls “traditional medical practitioners.” In his study of some Bantu peoples of East Africa, Frans Wijsen argued that the nganga (traditional medical practitioners) at conversion to Christianity could easily transition into Christian prophets.36 They have the facility to enter into the diffculties and problems of people, discern the causes, and prescribe remedies.These very important African practitioners of indigenous medicine are better referred to with the indigenous appellation: nganga (Bantu world), bokono (Adja-Fon of Benin Republic), Babalawo (Yoruba of Nigeria), dibia (Igbo of Nigeria), and so on.37 Highly gifted at navigating the boundaries between the land of spirits and the human world, they use their gifts positively for the good of the community and individuals, but they could also use the gifts negatively (selfsh intention) to harm people—the domain of witchcraft.38 The creative integration of their social ministry into the ritual/liturgical-medical repertoire of AICs like the Celestial Church reinvents ministry that is at the same time Jewish-Christian and African. This makes the liturgical performance of the appointment or ordination of the prophets-seersvisionaries within the Celestial Church of Christ in the Benin Republic an interesting illustration of liturgical theology and liturgical memorial that is an ancestral memorial (the intimate fusion of African ancestral and Jewish-Christian ancestral memorial encodings). In the Celestial Church, the candidates for ordination are carefully chosen through dreams and visions as sanctioned by the Holy Spirit. Selected, presented to the community, and lying prostrate on the foor, in the liturgical setting, the presider invites God’s Holy Spirit to descend into the ordinands (the language of “descent” is continuous with vodhun spiritual theology of “descent” or “possession” that is creatively made to coincide with the Christian theology of the descent of the Holy Spirit).39 Through visions, auditions, or dreams, their 485

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

choice by the Holy Spirit was made known. From the liturgical text (of ordination) recorded by Albert de Surgy, the prayer of consecration to this important ministry addresses God who saves from evil powers: God, save us for we are your children. Save us from evil spirits. Save us from evil people. And help us to worship you, as we should unto our death … You that spoil the works of Satan come and show your laborers (those who through suitable intercessions contribute to the extension of the kingdom of God) the plan to be followed. Come and stay with your laborers. Your servants (the visionaries) are prostrate on the foor in your name. Descend and enter into them.40 The rhetorical device of the address to God is a liturgical theological performance that justifes the establishment of the ministry and realizes the ministry of visionaries in the Church: Vision is the most important thing in your Church.Vision is the basis of her glory. Put it into your Church [Response of the assembly—Nishé or atché—“so be it”!]. You spoke and said that vision gives weight to your Church.You said that a Church that has no vision is lost.This is why we put into your hands your laborers who provide accurate predictions.41 The descending Holy Spirit, that penetrates and lives in (or possesses) the candidates, reinvents or recreates the prophetic gifts in the candidates being ordained for the good of the community. Consequently, establishing the ministry of prophets-visionaries intimately connects African ancestral repertoire with the Hebrew prophetic encoding. It is of interest to underline this liturgical theological reinvention of the Christian community: the Celestial Church draws its ancestral commemorative inspiration from the Jewish prophetic tradition. The consecratory prayer memorializes the desired impact prophetism should have in the community through the encoded mimed actions of beloved Hebrew prophets: This is why we put into your hands your laborers who provide accurate predictions. Come and watch over them. Put Ezekiel into them [Nishé or atché—“so be it”]! Put Jeremiah into them [Nishé or atché]! Put Isaiah into them [Nishé or atché]! Put Amos into them [Nishé or atché]! Put Obadiah into them [Nishé or atché]! God of glory [Assembly response—wiwe—“holy one”], come down and penetrate/ remain for our sake in our Church.42 What is at play in this ancestral memorial that realizes the complex dimensions of liturgical theology is the passive-active reception of ancestral African foundations of ritual/religion (vision for the health of the community) and at the same time the ecclesial reception of Hebrew prophetic function fully integrated within the Christian practice. The ritual action effectively creates and empowers the ministers. Similarly, the commemorative practice of central and eastern Africa adopts the indigenous ancestral, and the received Jewish-Christian encodings into a unique African Christian memorialization that keeps the rule of prayer and the rule of faith interlaced. 486

Liturgical theology—African perspective

Ancestral memorial in Central and Eastern African Catholic Liturgy after Vatican II The mimesis of the acted is foundational to every rite; it is the foundation of liturgical theology understood as originary performance. But, as in North Africa, it is not every passive-unconscious mimesis in an active performance that is welcome to the community. Performance must be attentive to the received rule of faith. It is interesting that Augustine’s mother, St. Monica, who prayed for her son into the Catholic faith, was restrained with diffculty by order of Ambrose of Milan from the mimetic continuation of the rituals around the dead (refrigeria) and gravesides. In Confessions,Augustine wrote about his mother: In Africa, she had been accustomed to make offerings of pottage, bread, and wine at the tombs of the martyrs. When she attempted to do the same here [in Milan], she was prevented by the doorkeeper; but as soon as she learned that it was the bishop [Ambrose] who had forbidden the practice she complied in so devoted and obedient a spirit that I marveled at the attitude she had so readily adopted: criticizing her custom rather than sitting in judgment on his prohibition.43 Further, in the same paragraph, Augustine clarifed the disciplinary and doctrinal basis of the prohibition: Once she had ascertained, however, that Ambrose, illustrious preacher and exemplar of piety as he was, had forbidden the celebration of these rites even by those who conducted them with restraint, lest any opportunity might be given to drunkards to indulge in excess, and also because the custom resembled the cult of ancestors, and so was close kin to the superstitious practices of the pagans, she most willingly gave it up.44 What Augustine said about “cult of ancestors” or “superstitious practices of the pagans” should be taken with a pinch of salt. For it is well known that in North Africa, Rome, Milan, and Italy, the ancestral practices preceded and informed the gradual reinvention of Christian funerary customs. The true, episcopal authority did transform “funerary banquets.” However, the transformation was a reinvention: “the early Christian community drawing on the classical cultural repertoire and transforming it.” Not only did banquets transform into the charity to the poor, but the practice of giving communion to the dead (corpse) en route to paradise (viaticum) led to celebrating the Eucharist during funerals.45 What was created in the Eucharistic celebrations of Congo and eastern Africa follows the same North African principle as those that were obtained in the Western Church.

Bantu/Kongo ancestors in the Eucharistic banquet It is from the perspective of the intercultural/interreligious encounter, inculturation, or interculturation, that liturgical theology weighs in to evaluate the performance of ancestral memorial in central and eastern Africa (Zaire/Congo and Kenya). Firstly, what Ambrose, and perhaps Augustine, feared as the “cult of ancestors” in the performance of Augustine’s mother, the practice of the Church of Carthage, is not disguised in the liturgical performance of the Congo. Does performance in the name of Christ make the ritualinvocation of the ancestors redundant in African Christianity? Or does Christ as proto-ancestor 487

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

canonize (Christianly) the corporate body of ancestors?46 Kabasele, among the best informed and creative of Congo liturgical theologians, makes the ambiguous suggestion, Since my ancestors did not bear witness to the Christ, I do not include them among the examples about the Christian faith; but they constitute ideals of Bantu life; they are “with me,” as a tree carrying its branch; it is important for me, and I do not need to canonize them (i.e., in order to appreciate their importance).47 The choice made by the Zairean liturgy corrects or updates the liturgical theology of Kabasele. What makes the Zairean liturgy different, and its liturgical theological assumptions captivating, is that not only are the themes drawn from the ancestral understanding of religion and ritual performance (vision and visionaries, healing and healers as in AICs) integrated within the liturgical performance. But the corporate body of ancestors who are pure of heart is collectively named.They are integral to Christian worship.They “constitute ideals of Bantu life” that are performed and have become integral to the Christian life, particularly in the liturgical celebration.This prolongation of ancestral memory in the Christian liturgy, like the prolongation of the Sedah Abodah of the liturgy of Yom Kippur in the liturgy of the 8th Book of the Apostolic Constitutions, does not constitute a threat to the Christ, the proto-Ancestor, the originary source of ancestorship that gives ancestral energy to Congo ancestors.48 In the approved Zairian liturgy (Roman Missal for the use of the Dioceses of Zaire), the celebration begins with opening invocation:49 Celebrant: Brothers and sisters, behold, we are assembled on God’s mountain; Behold we stand before the sun that one cannot stare at directly … Let us be united to all the disciples of Christ who have left this world, resting with God from their labors. Let us be united to those who, even if they did not know Christ in this life, were nevertheless seeking God with a sincere heart. Then the ancestral naming: Holy Mary, Mother of God; R/ Be with us You are Mother of the Church; R/ Be with us Come, together let us glorify the Lord; R/ with all who celebrate mass at this hour Holy Patriarchs and Prophets; R/ Be with us You, who are the Fathers of Believers; R/ Be with us Come, together let us glorify the Lord; R/ with all who celebrate mass at this hour. After the invocation of Apostles and Evangelists, and all the Saints come the Congo/Bantu ancestors. And you, our ancestors, pure of heart; R/ Be with us You who, with God’s help, served God faithfully; R/ Be with us Come, together let us glorify the Lord; R/ with all who celebrate mass at this hour The alternative invocation used in some Congo dioceses fuses the ministry of ancestors and the new role of Jesus the Christ.The invocation justifes the interrelationship between Christ and the ancestors: 488

Liturgical theology—African perspective

Celebrant: And you our ancestors, you whose life we prolong, you who have encouraged communion and understanding among humans, you the example of whose life has marked our society! See, Jesus, Son of God, is come to our home, and we received him! He made our life increase; the life in which you are ever present! So, be with us now that we celebrate this event. Be with all our people who celebrate it at this moment. People: Be with us, be with them all.50 It is interesting that Kabasele, whose liturgical theology does not see the need to Christianize his Bantu ancestors, nevertheless quotes with approval the above invocation, stating that “Jesus, Son of God, is come to our home, and we received him! He made our life increase; the life in which you are ever present!” Calling upon the Bantu ancestors to “be with us now that we celebrate this event,” does not affrm the “anonymous Christianity” hypothesis of Karl Rahner.51 But it is not too distant from it. There is always unavoidable messiness in inculturation theology, or the normal Catholic endorsement of “la paganité” of each group (similar to North African and Italian funerary rituals).The mimesis of indigenous ancestral memorial encodings preserves and celebrates the same for the common good and communal fourishing, for the reinvention of Christianity in context, and the overall fourishing of the treasury of human inventiveness.52

Ancestral memorial in AMECEA Eucharistic Prayers One sees the same mimetic performance played out in the remarkable euchological productions of the Gaba Pastoral Institute of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA).Though the Eucharistic Prayers exist on “paper,” celebrated ad experimentum only within the confnes of the experimental Institute, they constitute local Christian liturgical theological site. In contradiction to Kabasele deeply involved in creativity, John S. Mbiti, the celebrated doyen of African religions and philosophy, expressed surprise (in a private conversation I had with him) that one of the prayers of his work, Prayers of African Religion, was copied and transformed into the opening praise of a Eucharistic Prayer at the Gaba Pastoral Institute, Eldoret, Kenya. He confessed that as an Anglican priest, he would not have the courage to introduce such modifcations into the Book of Common Prayer. Tied to the apron strings of Anglicanism, African Anglicans could do with being attentive to the 6th-century conversation between Gregory the Great and Augustine of Canterbury. Despite the familiarity with the usages of the Roman Church, the Pope approved “selecting carefully anything you have found that may be more pleasing to Almighty God, whether in the Roman Church or that of Gaul, or any Church whatever, and introducing in the Church of the Angli.”53 The local must be the place of the confession and celebration of the one faith.According to Augustine of Hippo, people do not abandon their geographical space or their lands to come to the Lord, but they confess the faith in the Lord in their lands.“But how will that prophecy otherwise be fulflled? All the nations whom you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord (Ps 86:9)? For they will not come by migrating from their places but by believing in their places.”54 The liturgical creativity in East Africa captures the patristic wisdom and the fexibility of the Roman Church as enunciated by Gregory the Great. East Africa combines Christian Eucharistic themes with indigenous ancestral rhetoric and mimetic encodings, and unabashed straightforward copying of the texts of the Prayers of African Religion. It is not dissimilar from the West Syrian Apostolic Constitutions copying the texts of the Sedah Abodah of the liturgy of Yom Kippur. 489

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

The clearest text that was copied (that I have used as an illustration in many articles) is a prayer Mbiti identifed as having been pronounced by the eponymous ancestor of the Kikuyu. The composers of the Eucharistic Prayers at the Gaba Pastoral Institute acknowledge their debt to the ancestral rhetorical device and texts.They simply converted the text of praise from the frst-person singular to the frst-person plural: Kikuyu Ancestral Prayer

Kenyan Christian [Catholic] Eucharistic Prayer

O, my Father, great Elder, I have no words to O Father, Great Elder, we have no words to thank thank you, but with your deep wisdom, I am you, But with your deep wisdom We are sure that sure that you can see how much I prize your you can see How we value your glorious gifts. O glorious gifts. O my Father, when I look Father, when we look upon your greatness,We are upon your greatness, I am confounded with confounded with awe. O Great Elder, Ruler of all awe. O great Elder, ruler of all things both on things earthly and heavenly,We are your warriors, heaven and on earth, I am your warrior, and I Ready to act by your will.56 am ready to act by your will.55

There is a careful discernment of the place of this poetic verse in its original context (Praise of God, Ngai, by the eponymous Kikuyu ancestor) and its suitability as opening praise for Christian Eucharistic Prayer. In this liturgical theology, the praying Kenyan community does not dispute continuity-discontinuity between indigenous African religions and Christianity. But as Christians, they assume with relative ease the old into the new, and it is wonderful.This adoption of the ancestral poetic tradition reinvents the Christian Eucharistic Prayers. It rhymes with the theological position of Pope John Paul II (in Zaire and Kenya, May 2–12, 1980) that Christ in the members of his body is African.57 The creativity and reinvention of Christianity in the Benin Republic (sampling AICs), ZaireCongo and eastern Africa (Catholic) correspond, with the inculturated Church of Ethiopia, as the display of the Christ that his body is truly African. The 20 Eucharistic Prayers of the Ethiopian Church, some of which are still in use in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, continue but also depart from the rhetorical device of the historic liturgies.58 The testimony of Patristic Latin and Greek North Africa, the survival of the Coptic Egyptian Church, and the vibrant subSaharan experiences represent the “fesh of the church” in Africa that lives in ritual performance, the memory of the Lord that comes (Maranatha). But the “joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties” (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 1) of the “fesh of the church” were painfully carved/tattooed and continue to be written with the blood of the martyrs that sowed the seed of liturgical theology on African soil.

“Blood of martyrs,” throbbing heart of the “fesh of the church,” the seed of liturgical theology I argued in Worship as Body Language that the clearest positioning of liturgical theology in the “fesh of the Church,” the church in a particular human and geographical location (Augustine; Tillard59), is in the “blood of the martyrs.”This is clear not only from the theology of Tertullian but also that of Origen. The ritual performance of Christians was open only to the initiates. Tertullian compared the secrecy shrouding the Christian celebrations to that of the mystery religions: “If we always keep our secrets, when were our proceedings made known to the world? … Not, surely, by the guilty parties themselves [i.e., Christians]; even from the very idea of the thing, the fealty of 490

Liturgical theology—African perspective

silence being ever due to the mysteries.The Samothracian and Eleusinian make no disclosures” (Apology VII).60 When Pliny the Younger (in Letter to Emperor Trajan) was constrained to flter from among the detained those that were Christian and those that were not, he applied the test: make the detainees call upon “the gods at my dictation and [do] reverence, with incense and wine, to your image which I had ordered to be brought forward for this purpose, together with the statues of the deities.” Next, the detainees who were not Christian “cursed Christ, a thing which, it is said, genuine Christians cannot be induced to do.”61 On the other hand, those who failed Pliny’s test, and rejected his order, were executed.They were martyrs. One is led to conclude that the ritual bodily performance of martyrdom, as public proclamation (exemologesis) of the Lord Christ, is the “seed” that indicates the location of the “fesh of the Church.” It is liturgical theology at its best.The narrative style of liturgical performance of the Christian martyrs followed that of the Maccabean martyrs.62 The performance of the Scillitan martyrs (180 CE: frst uncontested witnesses of the implantation of Christianity in North Africa), the Abitinian martyrs (304 CE), rounded up while celebrating the Eucharist in the house of Emeritus (“it is impossible for us to live without celebrating the Lord’s Supper” said Emeritus) confrm the liturgical theological principle articulated by Tertullian: Semen est sanguis Christianorum – “The blood of the martyrs is the seed [of the Church].”63 In Worship as Body Language, I followed Willy Rordorf ’s study of Origen and the Church Fathers, to conclude that the “sacrifce of the martyrs,” which embodies expiatory value like the Sacrifce of Jesus on the Cross, is indeed its reenactment.Through both the Eucharist and the bloody sacrifce of the martyr,“God wishes to reenact the sacrifce of his Son in time and for a specifc community.”64

Blood of Ugandan martyrs seed of national and Christian revolution The powerful African illustration of the martyrial liturgical theological performance in modern African history is the witness and open confession of the Ugandan martyrs (1885–1887).While European powers were partitioning Africa among themselves (Berlin conference, 1884–1885), a crop of new converts were transforming the Christian religion, enmeshed within the Ganda concept of fortitude or heroism, into an instrument of reinventing the nation. Though neophytes, their unfinching preference for the new Christian faith, nourished and strengthened by the moral rectitude drilled into them by their indigenous upbringing (royal pages from the Ganda nobility chosen to serve in court, with ambitions to be promoted to chieftaincies in different locations of the kingdom), aroused the admiration of all (Christians and traditionalists). According to Waliggo, they effectively fused, in their death, the new Christian ethics and the Ganda indigenous virtues.65 Thanks to the fundamental document that guided the Christians in the absence of the clergy, the special catechism of the White Fathers, and the teaching of the Protestant missionaries, the martyrs took the ultimate step of boldly and “by the mercies of God” presenting their “bodies as a living sacrifce, holy and acceptable to God,” which is their “spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1–2: paraesthesia ta somata human thysia zosan euareston theō logikēn latreian).The common or communal bodily self-presentation, the highest ethical-liturgical Christian performance, is, according to Paul,“thysia” and “latreia:” it is living liturgical theology. All were lay Christians and neophytes; they rejected the biddings of the Kabaka, Mwanga, and the traditionalists of the Buganda court.They fearlessly embraced death in Christ on Ascension Day, June 3, 1886. On the eve of the holocaust, it was reported that they prayed, “sang hymns and comforted one another in the face of impending death.” The narrative of their martyrdom reminds one of the foundational template of martyrdom in the Hebrew tradition, the 491

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

Maccabean martyrs, and in the deep memory of the Hebrew heritage, the holocaust of Isaac that did not take place: Abraham said to his young men,“Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.”Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he carried the fre and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said,“Here I am, my son.” He said,“The fre and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?” Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together. (Gen. 22: 5–8) On the day of martyrdom, the Uganda martyrs presented themselves before God-Christ (cf. Rom 12:1–2) and the Ganda nation as “a lamb for a burnt-offering.” Each Martyr prepared his pyre with courage and confdence that soon he would be entering heaven together with Jesus.The burning, as the custom was, began from the feet moving slowly to the heart to cause maximum pain. Eyewitnesses, both confessors, and traditionalists, bore similar testimony that the young Martyrs died while singing, uttering prayers and calling on the name of Jesus. Both in life and death, they manifested singular heroism.66 Martyrdom became for them a public ritual-liturgical proclamation of faith in Christ—faith that is ecumenical (Catholic and Protestant pages collaborated in an interdenominational way to the displeasure of their English and French mentors) and even open to interreligious collaboration (Muslim pages, ten years earlier, preceded Christians in challenging the Ganda worldview and taking their new religion to exceptional level.They were martyred under Mutesa I).67 Writing on the occasion of the centenary celebration of their martyrdom (1986) and at a time when apartheid, racial discrimination, and prejudice were thriving, John Waliggo introduced a vibrant liberation theological interpretation of the martyr’s liturgy: the Ugandan martyrs performed not only the open proclamation of the Lord.They dramatized (black) liberation theology in a world that demeaned all that is black.Their liturgical theological performance, as Christian ritual, becomes labor in “the regeneration of Africa and of all black people everywhere in the world.”68 Waliggo goes lyrical: By the nobility of their culture, the virtue of their Christian living, the leadership of their Christian communities, the perseverance in their faith, the unity of their comradeship, the courage of their public confession of their belief in Christ, and above all the heroism of their death, the Martyrs dealt a decisive blow to the myths, the pseudoscientifc theories, the racial superiority with which many foreigners regarded the Africans, their colour, defective religion and “savage” manners.69 The liberation motif was also part of a political-theological performance that “beneftted Christianity” more than the Ganda traditionalists (nobility) or Kabaka Mwanga.The subsequent victory of Christians in the power struggle (1888–1890) could justify the interpretation of their martyrdom as inaugurating a Christian revolution against the pretensions of Islam in Buganda.70 The martyrs’ liturgical theology, a “prophetic and revolutionary” following of the Christ, challenges “every follower of Christ to work for the authentic transformation of the world”71 to make dehumanization and oppression history in renewed Africa and the world. 492

Liturgical theology—African perspective

The power of the ethical, of intention, in repositioning martyrdom as Christian protest for the renewal of the Kongo The political dimension to liturgical theological expression was there from the earliest performance of the Christian martyrs.The revolt against Rome by the martyrs (like the Maccabean revolt) was political theology at its best.The most arresting, though controversial, illustration of political-liturgical theology in the fesh of the martyrs at the dawn of modernity is to be found in the Church of the Kongo kingdom (16th/17th/18th century). Through the turmoil that accompanied the collapse of the Kongo kingdom in the 17th/18th century (after the battle of Ambuila, 1665),72 there emerged a dissident and prophetic movement led by Kimpa Vita or Dona Beatriz. The voice of the movement breathed political theology. It called for an end to endless Kongo civil wars, an end to the exploitation of the common people by the nobility, but, in particular, an end to the evil use of kindoki or spiritual-religious powers.73 The ritual of her condemnation as heretic or agent of the Demon, and her public burning at the pyre (martyrdom), was liturgical theological performance—the domain of lex vivendi.This interpretation of Kimpa Vita’s execution was sharply contested by Italian Capuchin Fathers Bernado da Gallo and Lorenzo de Lucca, who considered her “possessed” by agents of the Devil. To ensure that the “remains of Dona Beatriz and Barro [her consort]” could not be used as relics, the royal offcials “carefully reburn[ed] all that was left.”74 Kimpa Vita was born into the Kongo nobility, and initiated early in life as nganga mirinda (expert in knowledge of otherworldly affairs, endowed with the ability to infuence positively or negatively, in particular, public affairs, and alleviate the private needs/affairs of individuals). Besides training as nganga, she was also initiated into the socially benefc association of kimpasi. About the kimpasi congregation, John K.Thornton wrote: In Kongo, at least, the kimpasi congregation sought to regulate and control problems related to an overabundance of hatred and its cognate witchcraft in a region. The purpose of the congregation, which propitiated the territorial deities, was to create a new generation of people who had been cleansed of this and were now prepared to live better lives.75 The kimpasi association was focused on the reduction of suffering in the Kongo society. Kimpa Vita laid aside the indigenous religious pedigree (nganga mirinda and kimpasi) to practice the dominant Kongo Catholicism. However, she was unable to be weaned of their impact on the sociopolitical and theological interpretation of the devastated Kongo kingdom. This is demonstrated in the liturgical and political theology espoused by the Antonian movement she founded. The movement championed a radical socio-religious praxis to entrench socially benefc use of religious power (kindoki) and to put an end to its negative use (ndoki or witchcraft). Kimpa Vita claimed to have died (following a severe illness) and been resurrected as the visible embodiment of (possessed by) St.Anthony. For her, nourished by the ethics and spirituality of Kongo, only the right intention counted. It is by the intention that one could distinguish between positive kindoki as opposed to its negative deployment. The scandal of a disunited Kongo and the civil wars that exacerbated social dislocation, exploitation, and slavery (that included enslavement of Christians) would end, according to Kimpa Vita and other visionaries (such as Mafuta), through rebuilding and repopulating the Kongo capital, Mbanza Kongo (or San Salvador), and renewing and reestablishing the Kongo Kingdom. Thanks to dreams/revelations from St. Anthony (of Padua/Lisbon), she endorsed the local reinterpretation of the Christian religious symbols that would make a new social, 493

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

economic, and political impact on a reunited and modernized Kongo. Her movement was aligned to an ongoing revision of Kongo Christian history to enhance the sacredness of the Kongo and the surging of Kongo (black) saints. Historically, culturally, and geographically, Jesus and Mary were Kongo by origin. The place of Jesus’ crucifxion-death and glorifcation was also relocated to the Kongo. Besides the revisionism, what sharpened the confict between her movement and the offcial church was the insistence on the priority of ethical performance over the Catholic rites supervised by the Capuchin priests.76 In the process of reinvigorating the Kongo, Kimpa Vita and the Anotinians were reinventing Christianity. The liturgical theological debate shifted from the priority of lex orandi over lex credendi, to the intentional or ethical (lex vivendi) trumping all other performance.Thornton traces the origin of the ethical choice to the foundations of indigenous Kongo theology, where the evaluation of contact with the Other World or Another Worldly gift, kindoki, is judged by the intentions of the acting person (acting the acted: good or evil).77 The Antonians that Kimpa Vita initiated were unbending about the priority of intentions. All religious symbols or objects (nkisi: whether Christian holy objects or indigenous sacred objects called charms by Christians) must be destroyed. Kimpa Vita went as far as challenging the Crucifx (a major symbol of Kongo Catholicism).This and other external symbols of Catholicism and Kongo religion fell into the registry of nkisi, and were to be burned.The symbols accounted for nothing; only the intention mattered: Protestant Reformation without knowledge of the 16th-century reformation.78 The Kongo cross, Santa Cruz, and the Kongo catechism transmitted by lay teachers and catechists formed the bedrock of Kongo lay Catholicism.Adrian Hastings states, Kongo Christianity never had its village priest or Eucharist, but it had its Santa Cruz, the Christian symbol standing in the middle of the village in place of the fetish which had been torn down, and many a village had to itsmaestro [catechist] treasuring and passing on across the generations his single tool of trade, Cardoso’s catechism.79 But Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement could not be deterred from their reform or renewal project. Only the performance of the ethical could save the Kongo kingdom and assure the progress of the Kongo and the Catholic Church. These Kongo reinventions in Christian theology are captured in the Salve Antoniana, which replaced the popular Salve Regina: Salve you say, and you do not know why. Salve you recite, and you do not know why. Salve, you beat, and you do not know why. God wants the intention; it is the intention that God takes. Baptism serves nothing; it is the intention that God takes. Confession serves nothing; it is the intention that God takes. Prayer serves nothing; it is the intention that God wants. Good works serve nothing; it is the intention that God wants. The Mother with her Son on her knees. If there had not been St. Anthony, what would they have done? St.Anthony is the merciful one. St.Anthony is our remedy. St. Anthony is the restorer of the kingdom of Kongo. St.Anthony is the comforter of the kingdom of Heaven. St. Anthony is the door to Heaven. St. Anthony holds the keys to Heaven. St. Anthony is above the Angels and the Virgin Mary. St. Anthony is the second God.80 This meshing of political-liturgical theology with popular 17th/18th-century piety deepened the confict with the offcial church under the direction of Italian Capuchin missionaries. For the offcial church, it is not the intention that matters; rather, it is the decision of the government of the Church (the hierarchy led by the Capuchins) that gives value to the intention. Kimpa Vita 494

Liturgical theology—African perspective

was declared an agent of the Devil and a heretic. She was condemned to death by the inquisitorial Portuguese-style Church dominant in the Kongo, supervised by da Gallo and assisted by da Lucca. She died with her consort as the martyr of the Kongo burnt on a pile of pyre (July 2, 1706). The Antonian movement, after the martyrdom of Kimpa Vita, continued generating a deeply rooted anti-missionary (offcial church) attitude that impacted on ritual performance, including, according to de Lucca, avoiding missionaries as demons (witches, ndoki) and invoking the help of Jesus and Mary against the Capuchin presence as these visited the villages. People were persuaded to refrain from presenting their children for baptism or taking the marriage vows of Christians from the missionaries. Only Anthony, regarded as a second God, counted. Only the intention mattered.81 Kimpa Vita and her movement were correct in their social and political analysis.The endless civil wars continued and created victims and prisoners of war including numerous Antonians among the captured commoners.These were enslaved. Sold in Luanda (Angola) mainly to the Catholic Portuguese, and, through Kabinda, Soyo, and Loango, to the Catholic French and the Protestant Dutch and English, they swelled the population of Kongo slaves in Bahia (Brazil), South Carolina (USA), Santo Domingo, and Haiti. The familiarity with warfare (many of the enslaved were war prisoners) perhaps nourished/facilitated slave revolts in South Carolina and Haiti.82 Much later (colonial, postcolonial Congo), in the 1960s, a Catholic nun, Sr. Anwarite Clementine, added her voice, bodily, to Christian ritual performance.This was during the political turmoil of post-independence Congo Kinshasa. Sr. Anwarite embraced death rather than give in to sexual violation during the Congo civil war in 1964.83 Since then, the Congo and the central African region have been traumatized by ongoing wars and genocide.These peaked with the Rwandan genocide that occurred in a dominantly Christian and Catholic country.The barbarism is rightly called the “sacrifce of Africa” (Katangole).84 It blurs the visage of Christian ritual performance and liturgical theology in the affected communities, and the whole of Africa. The sacrilegious performance of genocide challenges and even blunts speaking theologically about life in Africa.This opens an important chapter to the taken-for-granted-ness of liturgical theology. If not urgently and cogently addressed, it could render obtuse all we have claimed for liturgical theology in this chapter.The interlacing of the rule of prayer, the rule of life, with the rule of faith, has the potential of transforming behavior and changing society.

Afterword The ongoing diminishment of human life in the Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa commands liturgical theology to move beyond ritual performance, beyond the sumptuous celebrations to challenge violence, and to say “No” to the “useless suffering”85 of the butchered of Africa and the world. Liturgical theology must show its ethical teeth, its sharp cutting edge, to display the ministry or the service of love as true leitourgia (cf. Rom 15:5). For Paul, the indicative (Paschal Mystery) is inseparable from the imperative in liturgical theology: I appeal to you; therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifce, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect … Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection. (Rom 12:1–2; 9–10) 495

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

Presenting “bodies as a living sacrifce, holy and acceptable to God,” the community’s “spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1–2), must take the intention, the ethical, fully into account (Kimpa Vita and the Antonians). This fusion, and-Vivendi-credendi, as liturgical theology is the route to the full transformation of the Christian community and the wider society to rid society of structural evil. Christian ritual performance is self-referential (autotelic) and justifes itself only in ethical consistency. It transforms the human because deeply rooted in the transformative originary mimed event is the Paschal Mystery, the death-resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The original mimed event entrenches suffering with and for the other as liturgical theological performance, the correct response to “useless suffering.”This reinvention of society is Christian leitourgia (cf. Rom. 12:1–2). Performed in the passive-active mimesis of the saving event of the Man-God unjustly crucifed at the Place of the Skull, liturgical theology entrenches hope that surges from the Crucifed-Risen One, the life-giving beacon among the innumerable cross-bearers86 of Africa and the world.

Notes 1 Marcel Jousse, L’anthropologie du geste (Paris: Resma, 1969). 2 Edgard Richard Sienaert, “Marcel Jousse: The Oral Style and the Anthropology of Gesture,” Oral Tradition 5, no. 1 (1990), 95. 3 Monica Wilson,“Nyakyusa Ritual and Symbolism,” American Anthropologist 56, no. 2 (1954), 240. 4 The most popular contributors to the discussion are Aleksandr Shmeman, Introduction to liturgical theology, 3rd ed. (Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986) and Aidan Kavanagh and SeaburyWestern Theological Seminary, On liturgical theology: the Hale memorial lectures of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, 1981 (New York: Pueblo Pub. Co., 1984). 5 See David W. Fagerberg, Theologia prima: what is liturgical theology? (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publication, 2012). Joris Geldhof evaluates critically the views of Fagerberg, who relied on the works of Alexander Schmemann and Aidan Kavanagh, Joris Geldhof,“Liturgy as Theological Norm Getting Acquainted with ‘Liturgical Theology,’” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 52, no. 2 (2010). 6 This informed my earlier study, Uzukwu, Worship as body language: introduction to Christian worship: an African orientation. 7 See the careful study of the matter by Margriet Vos, “A la recherche des normes pour les textes liturgiques de la messe,” Revue d’histoire ecclesiastique 69, no. 1 (1974). 8 See Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, L. Edward Phillips, and Harold W.Attridge, The apostolic tradition: a commentary, Hermeneia—a critical and historical commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002). 9 The offcial liturgical texts of the Roman rite appear in typical editions (editio typica). 10 From the translation of Hippolytus, Gregory Dix, and Henry Chadwick, The treatise on the apostolic tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, bishop and martyr = [Apostolikē paradosis] (London; Ridgefeld, Conn.: Alban Press; Morehouse Pub., 1992), X: 4–5, p. 19. 11 The difference in liturgical usage is described by Vos:Vos, “A la recherche des normes pour les textes liturgiques de la messe,” 15–16,Vos highlights the style of Gregory the Great in regions under Roman infuence. Unfortunately, apart from general comments, liturgical sacramentaries from Latin North Africa are unavailable. 12 Following Edward Kilmartin, Canon 21 is found in the Breuarium Hipponense composed by the bishops of the province of Byzacena who arrived too early and departed before the council opened; it was adopted by the council and inserted in the Canon of the 3rd Council of Carthage 397 without substantial changes. Edward J. Kilmartin,“The Liturgical Prayer in Early African Legislation,” Ephemerides liturgicae 99 (1985), 106n6. 13 Third Council of Carthage 397, cn. 23—Acta Conciliorum et Epistolae Decretales ac Constitutiones Summorum Pontifcum, Parisiis: 1715, vol. I, p. 963. The translation is from Allan Bouley, From freedom to formula: the evolution of the eucharistic prayer from oral improvisation to written texts, Studies in Christian antiquity no 21 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), p. 162.

496

Liturgical theology—African perspective 14 See Sheshna Amram ben, David Hedegård, and Tryggve Kronholm,“Seder R.Amram Gaon” (Theses, Lund., 1951). 15 Louis Bouyer, Eucharist: theology and spirituality of the eucharistic prayer (Notre Dame Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), p. 137. 16 http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0419-0419,_Synodum_Cartaginense,_Canones_%5 BSchaff%5D,_EN.pdf Philip Schaff, NPNF (V2-14) 714-5 [accessed May 15, 2018]. 17 Hänggi and Pahl include footnotes to the text of the Roman Canon with references of African usages that are similar to the Roman. Anton Hänggi and Irmgard Pahl, Prex eucharistica; textus e variis liturgiis antiquioribus selecti, Spicilegium Friburgense (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 1968), 426–538. 18 http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211064.htm [accessed May 15 2018]. 19 Bouyer, Eucharist: theology and spirituality of the eucharistic prayer, 140. 20 This is the conclusion of Vos: Vos, “A la recherche des normes pour les textes liturgiques de la messe,” 34ff. 21 Casimir A. Kucharek and Catholic Church, The Byzantine-Slav liturgy of St. John Chrysostom; its origin and evolution (Allendale, N.J.:Alleluia Press, 1971), p. 557. Bouyer, Eucharist: theology and spirituality of the eucharistic prayer, 139–140. 22 Hänggi and Pahl, Prex eucharistica; textus e variis liturgiis antiquioribus selecti, p. 179. 23 See text in ibid., 160–166. 24 More specifc and detailed study in Ernst Hammerschmidt, Studies in the Ethiopic anaphoras, 2nd. rev. ed., Athiopistische Forschungen (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1987). Hammerschmidt gives parrell schema of 18 anaphoras, underlining the freedom in composition that is the feature of the nonEgyptian and non-Syrian reworkings, 54–58, 75–101. 25 Conférence Épiscopale du Zaïre, Missel Romain pour les dioceses du Zaire (Kinshasa: Éditions du Secrétariat Général, 1989). Decree approving the liturgy is contained in Congregation for Divine Worship: Decree “Zairensium Dioecesium,” Notitiae 264 (1988), 457. 26 Josef A. Jungmann, The place of Christ in liturgical prayer, 2nd rev. ed. (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House, 1965). 27 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Origen: Spirit and Fire—A Thematic Anthology of His Writings (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984; reprint, 2001), 9. 28 Jungmann, The place of Christ in liturgical prayer, 157. 29 Bryan D. Spinks, ed. The place of Christ in liturgical prayer: Trinity, christology, and liturgical theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), p. 19. 30 This is the dominant theme in the collective work Robert J. Schreiter, ed., Faces of Jesus in Africa, Faith and cultures series (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991). See also John S. Pobee, Toward an African theology (Nashville:Abingdon, 1979). Charles Nyamiti, Christ as our ancestor: christology from an African perspective, Mambo occasional papers. Missio-pastoral series; 11 (Gweru [Zimbabwe]: Mambo Press, 1984). 31 Marcel Metzger and Clement, Les constitutions apostoliques. Tome 3 Livres VII et VIII., 3 vols., Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), 187–191 (anamnesis of the covenant). 32 One of the great contributors to the discussion is Louis Ligier, “Autour du Sacrifce eucharistique: Anophore orientale et Anamnèse juive de Kippur,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique LXXXII (1960). I studied the matter in detail in my ThD dissertation, Blessing and Thanksgiving among the Igbo (Towards a Eucharistia Africana),Toronto: St Michael’s College, 1978. 33 See the classic C. E. Hammond and F. E. Brightman, Liturgies, eastern and western; being the texts, original or translated, of the principal liturgies of the church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). 34 Congregation for Divine Worship: Decree “Zairensium Dioecesium,” Notitiae 264 (1988) 457. 35 “Galaxy of prophets and founders” is the choice term of Mana’s study: Kä Mana, La nouvelle évangélisation en Afrique, Chrétiens en liberté (Paris,Yaoundé: Karthala; Clé, 2000), p. 122ff. 36 Frans Jozef Servaas Wijsen, There is only One God—A socio-scientifc and theological study of popular religion and evangelization in Sukumaland, Northwest Tanzania (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Kok-Kampen, 1993), 201, 217. 37 See in addition to Rosny Wijsen Les Yeux de ma Chevre: Sur les pas des maîtres de la nuit en pays Douala. Note that the English translation “Healers in the Night” fails to capture the visionary template that the “eyes of my goat” in the French original evokes, though it is accurate to state that the action is dominantly nightly. Eric de Rosny, Healers in the night, trans. Robert R. Barr (New York: Orbis, 1985). I summarized their important ministry in Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, God, spirit, and human wholeness:

497

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp.

38

39

40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60

appropriating faith and culture in West African style (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012). Chapter 7: “God’s Power Manifest in the Holy Spirit for Human Wholeness.” Kongo describe this as kindoki (gift of religious power) that could be used positively or negatively; the witch (ndoki) uses the gift negatively.T.K.M. Buakasa, L’Impensé du discours.“Kindoki” et “nkisi” en pays kongo du Zaire, 2nd ed. (Kinshasa: Facultés Catholiques de Kinshasa, 1980). See also the interesting study of Elias Bongmba outlining the positive and especially the negative dimensions of tfu among the Wimbum of Cameroon. Elias Kifon Bongmba, African witchcraft and otherness: a philosophical and theological critique of intersubjective relations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). This is in contrast with the dominant spirituality of “ascent” perfected in the theology of Origen of Alexandria. For a brief description of vodhun, see Nadia Lovell, Cord of Blood—Possession and the Making of Voodoo (London & Sterling,Virginia: Pluto Press, 2002). But note that the specialized study of B. Adoukonou, Jalons pour une théologie africaine: essai d’une herméneutique chrétienne du vodun dahoméen, 2 vols, Le Sycomore. Série “Horizon” (Paris; Namur: Lethielleux; Culture et vérité, 1980). Albert de Surgy, L’Église du Christianisme Céleste—un exemple d’Église prophétique au Bénin (Paris: Karthala, 2001), p. 205 (my translation). Ibid. Ibid., 205–206. Augustine and Maria Boulding, The confessions, 1st ed., Vintage spiritual classics (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), Book VI: 2.2. (p. 97). Ibid., p. 98. See Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing death: the creation of a ritual process in early medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 26–27. Robin N. Jensen,“Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity,” in Commemorating the dead:Texts and artifacts in context: Studies of Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials, ed. Laurie Brink and Deborah A. Green (Berlin; New York:Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 133–134, 140–143. See also Elochukwu Uzukwu,“Endless worlds, creative memories: indigenous (West) African eschatologies exploding the future of Christianities,” in Game Over?: Reconsidering Eschatology.Theologische Bibliothek tö Pelmann, ed. Christophe Chalamet,Andreas Dettwiler, Mariel Mazzocco, and Ghislain Waterlot (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2017). Bujo prefers the term “proto-ancestor.” Bénezet Bujo, African theology in its social context, Faith and cultures series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992). François Kabasele Lumbala, “L’inculturation sacramentelle au Zaïre,” Lumen Vitae XLII, no. 1 (1987), 81n14. See Bujo, African theology in its social context. 79ff. Texts quoted are from Zaïre, Missel Romain pour les dioceses du Zaire, 84–86. (My translation) From François Kabasele Lumbala, “Nouveau Rites, Foi Naissante,” Lumiere et Vie 159 (1983), 65. See also E. Elochukwu Uzukwu, Worship as body language: introduction to Christian worship: an African orientation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 304. See Karl Rahner, “Observations on the problem of the ‘Anonymous Christian,’” in Theological Investigations, tr. David Bourke (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 14, p. 283. Thoughts inspired by Adolphe Gesché,“Le Christianisme comme athéisme suspensif—Réfexions sur le ‘Etsi Deus non daretur’,” Revue Théologique de Louvain 33 (2002). http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360211064.htm [accessed May 15, 2018]. Letter 199: 12, 47. See Augustine, The works of Saint Augustine: a translation for the 21st century. Part 2—letters, trans. Roland Teske, vol. 3: Letters 156–210 (1990), 350. John S. Mbiti, The prayers of African religion (London: SPCK, 1975), 151. See Brian Hearne and Nsolo Mijere, eds., Celebration, vol. II, Spearhead 42 (Eldoret, Kenya: Gaba Publications, 1976). John Paul II’s address to Kenyan and Zairean bishops during his visit to Africa (May 2 to 12, 1980), Documentation Catholique 1787: 1980; African Ecclesial Review XXII/4: 1980. English edition in use with the permission of metropolitan archbishop of Addis Ababa is available, The Ethiopian Rite Missal—For Weekday Celebrations of the Eucharist with Seven Anaphoras: Ad Experimentum, trans. Abba Emmanuel Fritsch CSSp and Abba Brendan Cogavin CSSp, English Language ed. (Addis Ababa2002). Here I follow the work of Tillard on the local church. See Jean-Marie-Roger Tillard, L’Église locale— Ecclésiologie de Communion et Catholicité (Paris: Cerf, 1995), 284–285. Tertullian, Apology, vii; in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed.A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, vol.III (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1989 reprint).

498

Liturgical theology—African perspective 61 Epp. X: 96, 5—written c. 112 A.D. Text taken from Documents of the Christian Church. Selected and edited by H. Battenson. London: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1963, p. 4. 62 See W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and persecution in the early church; a study of a confict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Garden City, N.Y.:Anchor Books, 1967). 63 Tertullian, Apologeticum ch. 50, 13. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm 64 W. Rordorf, “La ‘Diaconie’ des Martyrs selon Origène,” in Epektasis: Mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou, ed. J Fontaine and Ch. Kannengiesser (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 400. See Uzukwu, Worship as body language: introduction to Christian worship: an African orientation. 176. 65 Comments based on John Mary Waliggo,“The Religio-Political Context of the Uganda Martyrs and Its Signifcance,” African Christian Studies 2, no. 1 (1986). See p. 10, 29. I also use the insight of Michael Twaddle, “The Emergence of Politico-Religious Groupings in Late Nineteenth-Century Buganda,” Journal of African History 29 (1988). 66 Waliggo,“The Religio-Political Context of the Uganda Martyrs and Its Signifcance.” 26. 67 Twaddle, “The Emergence of Politico-Religious Groupings in Late Nineteenth-Century Buganda.” 85.Waliggo,“The Religio-Political Context of the Uganda Martyrs and Its Signifcance.” 12–13. 68 Waliggo,“The Religio-Political Context of the Uganda Martyrs and Its Signifcance.” 69 Ibid. 28. 70 Twaddle,“The Emergence of Politico-Religious Groupings in Late Nineteenth-Century Buganda.” 71 Waliggo,“The Religio-Political Context of the Uganda Martyrs and Its Signifcance.” 72 See the chronicling of the demise of the kingdom and church by Kabolo Iko Kabwita, Le royaume Kongo et la mission catholique (1750–1838). Du déclin à l’extinction, ed. Paul Coulon, Mémoire d’Églises (Paris: Karthala, 2004). 73 See the careful study of Kimpa Vita by John K. Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684–1706 (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For Kongo religion see also Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and society in central Africa: the BaKongo of lower Zaire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 74 Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684– 1706. 186. 75 John K.Thornton,“Religious and Ceremonial Life in the Kongo and Mbundu Areas, 1500–1700,” in Linda M. Heywood, ed. Central Africans and cultural transformations in the American diaspora (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 82. 76 See Chapter 5,Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684–1706. 77 The general idea of Kongo religion and the dispute between Capuchins and Kongo gifted with spiritual powers or occult powers, as some like to say, is discussed by MacGaffey: MacGaffey, Religion and society in central Africa, 184–187; and Chapter 8: Religious Movements, 1485–1970. Capuchin attacks on Kongo theology and religious imagination led to deadly misunderstandings, especially with Antonians who interpreted their misuse of spiritual power as ndoki:Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684–1706. Chapter 4: Faith and Force. 78 In her inquisitorial trial, Father da Gallo queried: “In the Mbidizi valley … did she not burn crosses along with objects of witchcraft? Did she not try to get rid of the cross in the royal square, if the king had allowed it?” She responded,“It is true. But the crosses of the valley also had superstitions attached to them.” Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684–1706, 123. 79 Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa 1450–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 92.The other catechism in Kikongo was by Diego Gomez, but Cardoso’s was the most popular. See Kabwita, Le royaume Kongo et la mission catholique (1750–1838). Du déclin à l’extinction, 39–40n23. 80 English translation of the Italian text by Thornton,Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684–1706, 216. 81 See Kabwita, Le royaume Kongo et la mission catholique (1750–1838). Du déclin à l’extinction, 62. Also Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684– 1706, 194. 82 Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian movement, 1684– 1706, Chapter 9, 199–214. 83 See Cardinal Malula and Léon de Saint Moulin, Œuvres Completes du Cardinal Malula Rassemblées et présentées par Léon de Saint Moulin s.j., vol. 3:Textes concernant l’Inculturation et les Abées (1997), 125, article 169.

499

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp. 84 See Emmanuel Katongole, The sacrifce of Africa: a political theology for Africa, The Eerdmans Ekklesia series (Grand Rapids, MI:W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011). 85 On “useless suffering,” see Emmanuel Lévinas, Entre nous: on thinking-of-the-other, European perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 91–94. 86 Captured from South African theology by Takatso A. Mofokeng, The crucifed among the cross-bearers: Towards a black Christology (Netherlands: KOK-Kampen, 1983).

References Adoukonou, B. Jalons Pour Une Théologie Africaine: Essai D’une Herméneutique Chrétienne Du Vodun Dahoméen (Le Sycomore). Série “Horizon.” 2 vols. Paris: Lethielleux/Namur: Culture et vérité, 1980. Amram ben, Sheshna, David Hedegård, and Tryggve Kronholm. “Seder R. Amram Gaon.” Theses, Lund, Sweden, 1951. Augustine. Letters 156–210 (Epistulae). Letter 199: 12,47. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by Boniface Ramsey. Translated by Roland Teske. Part 2, Vol. 3. II, Hyde Park, New York: New York City Press, 1990. Augustine and Maria Boulding. The Confessions.Vintage Spiritual Classics. 1st ed. New York:Vintage Books, 1998. Balthasar, Hans Urs von, ed. Origen: Spirit and Fire—A Thematic Anthology of His Writings. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984. Reprint, 2001. Bongmba, Elias Kifon. African Witchcraft and Otherness:A Philosophical and Theological Critique of Intersubjective Relations.Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Bouley, Allan. From Freedom to Formula:The Evolution of the Eucharistic Prayer from Oral Improvisation to Written Texts. Studies in Christian Antiquity No 21. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981. Bouyer, Louis. Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. Bradshaw, Paul F., Maxwell E. Johnson, L. Edward Phillips, and Harold W. Attridge. The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary. Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002. Buakasa, T. K. M. L’impensé Du Discours. “Kindoki” Et “Nkisi” En Pays Kongo Du Zaire. 2nd ed. Kinshasa: Facultés Catholiques de Kinshasa, 1980. Bujo, Bénezet. African Theology in Its Social Context. Faith and Cultures Series. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992. Conférence Épiscopale du Zaïre. Missel Romain Pour Les Dioceses Du Zaire. Kinshasa: Éditions du Secrétariat Général, 1989. Fagerberg, David W. Theologia Prima:What Is Liturgical Theology? Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publication, 2012. Frend, W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Confict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Garden City, NY:Anchor Books, 1967. Fritsch, Abba Emmanuel, CSSp and Abba Brendan Cogavin CSSp, translators. The Ethiopian Rite Missal. English Language Edition. For Weekday Celebrations of the Eucharist with Seven Anaphoras.Ad Experimentum. Addis Ababa, 2002. Geldhof, Joris. “Liturgy as Theological Norm Getting Acquainted with ‘Liturgical Theology.” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 52, no. 2 (2010): 155–176. Gesché, Adolphe. “Le Christianisme Comme Athéisme Suspensif—Réfexions Sur Le ‘Etsi Deus Non Daretur’.” Revue Théologique de Louvain 33 (2002): 187–210. Hammerschmidt, Ernst. Studies in the Ethiopic Anaphoras. AThiopistische Forschungen. 2nd rev. ed. Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1987. Hammond, C. E., and F. E. Brightman. Liturgies, Eastern and Western; Being the Texts, Original or Translated, of the Principal Liturgies of the Church. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Hänggi, Anton, and Irmgard Pahl. Prex Eucharistica;Textus E Variis Liturgiis Antiquioribus Selecti. Spicilegium Friburgense. Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 1968. Hastings, Adrian. The Church in Africa 1450–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

500

Liturgical theology—African perspective Hearne, Brian, and Nsolo Mijere, eds. Celebration.Vol. II, Spearhead 42. Eldoret, Kenya: Gaba Publications, 1976. Heywood, Linda M., ed. Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Hippolytus, Gregory Dix, and Henry Chadwick. The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, Bishop and Martyr = [Apostolikē Paradosis]. London: Alban Press/Ridgefeld, CT: Morehouse Publishing, 1992. Jensen, Robin N. “Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity.” In Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context: Studies of Roman, Jewish, and Christian Burials, edited by Laurie Brink and Deborah A. Green, 107–143. Berlin/New York:Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Jousse, Marcel. L’anthropologie Du Geste. Paris: Resma, 1969. Jungmann, Josef A. The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer. 2d rev. ed. Staten Island, NY:Alba House, 1965. Kabasele Lumbala, François. “L’inculturation Sacramentelle Au Zaïre.” Lumen Vitae XLII, no. 1 (1987): 75–84. Kabasele Lumbala, François.“Nouveau Rites, Foi Naissante.” Lumiere et Vie 159 (1983): 61–73. Kabwita, Kabolo Iko. Le Royaume Kongo Et La Mission Catholique (1750–1838). Du Déclin À L’extinction. Mémoire D’églises. Edited by Paul Coulon. Paris: Karthala, 2004. Katongole, Emmanuel. The Sacrifce of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa. The Eerdmans Ekklesia Series. Grand Rapids, MI:W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2011. Kavanagh, Aidan, and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. On Liturgical Theology: The Hale Memorial Lectures of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, 1981. New York: Pueblo Pub. Co., 1984. Kilmartin, Edward J. “The Liturgical Prayer in Early African Legislation.” Ephemerides Liturgical 99 (1985): 105–127. Kucharek, Casimir A., and Catholic Church. The Byzantine-Slav Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: Its Origin and Evolution.Allendale, NJ:Alleluia Press, 1971. Lévinas, Emmanuel. Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other. European Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Ligier, Louis. “Autour Du Sacrifce Eucharistique: Anophore Orientale Et Anamnèse Juive De Kippur.” Nouvelle Revue Théologique LXXXII (1960): 40–55. Lovell, Nadia. A Cord of Blood—Possession and the Making of Voodoo. London/Sterling,VA: Pluto Press, 2002. MacGaffey, Wyatt. Religion and Society in Central Africa:The Bakongo of Lower Zaire. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Malula, Cardinal, and Léon de Saint Moulin. Œuvres Completes Du Cardinal Malula Rassemblées Et Présentées Par Léon De Saint Moulin S.J. Vol. 3: Textes concernant l’Inculturation et les Abées, Kinshasa: Facultes Catholiques de Kinshasa, 1997. Mana, Kä. La Nouvelle Évangélisation En Afrique. Chrétiens En Liberté. Paris: Karthala/Yaoundé: Clé, 2000. Mbiti, John S. The Prayers of African Religion. London: SPCK, 1975. Metzger, Marcel, and Clement Pope. Les Constitutions Apostoliques. Tome 3 Livres Vii Et Viii. Sources Chrétiennes. 3 vols. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985. Mofokeng, Takatso A. The Crucifed Among the Cross-Bearers.Towards a Black Christology. Netherlands: KOKKampen, 1983. Nyamiti, Charles. Christ as Our Ancestor: Christology from an African Perspective. Mambo Occasional Papers. Missio-Pastoral Series; 11. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1984. Paxton, Frederick S. Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pobee, John S. Toward an African Theology. Nashville:Abingdon, 1979. Rordorf, W. “La ‘Diaconie’ Des Martyrs Selon Origène.” In Epektasis: MéLanges Patristiques Offers Au Cardinal Jean DaniéLou, edited by J. Fontaine and Ch. Kannengiesser, 395–402. Paris: Beauchesne, 1972. Rosny, Eric de. Healers in the Night.Translated by Robert R. Barr. New York: Orbis, 1985. Rosny, Eric de. Les Yeux De Ma Chevre: Sur Les Pas Des Maîtres De La Nuit En Pays Douala. Paris: Plon, 1981. Schreiter, Robert J., ed. Faces of Jesus in Africa, Faith, and Cultures Series. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991. Shmeman, Aleksandr. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. 3rd ed. Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986. Sienaert, Edgard, Richard.“Marcel Jousse:The Oral Style and the Anthropology of Gesture.” Oral Tradition 5, no. 1 (1990): 91–106. Spinks, Bryan D., ed. The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008.

501

Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu C.S.Sp. Surgy, Albert de. L’église Du Christianisme Céleste—Un Exemple D’église Prophétique Au Bénin. Paris: Karthala, 2001. Thornton, John K. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684– 1706. Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Tillard, Jean-Marie-Roger. L’église Locale—Ecclésiologie De Communion Et Catholicité. Paris: Cerf, 1995. Twaddle, Michael. “The Emergence of Politico-Religious Groupings in Late Nineteenth-Century Buganda.” Journal of African History 29 (1988): 81–92. Uzukwu, E. Elochukwu. God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness: Appropriating Faith and Culture in West African Style. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012. Uzukwu, E. Elochukwu. Worship as Body Language: Introduction to Christian Worship: An African Orientation. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997. Uzukwu, Elochukwu. “Endless Worlds, Creative Memories: Indigenous (West) African Eschatologies Exploding the Future of Christianities.” In Game Over?: Reconsidering Eschatology.Theologische Bibliothek töPelmann, edited by Christophe Chalamet,Andreas Dettwiler, Mariel Mazzocco, and Ghislain Waterlot, 383–402. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Vos, Margriet. “A La Recherche Des Normes Pour Les Textes Liturgiques De La Messe.” Revue d’histoire ecclesiastique 69, no. 1 (1974): 5–37. Waliggo, John Mary. “The Religio-Political Context of the Uganda Martyrs and Its Signifcance.” African Christian Studies 2, no. 1 (1986): 3–40. Wijsen, Frans Jozef Servaas. There Is Only One God—A Socio-Scientifc and Theological Study of Popular Religion and Evangelization in Sukumaland, Northwest Tanzania. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Kok-Kampen, 1993. Wilson, Monica.“Nyakyusa Ritual and Symbolism.” American Anthropologist 56, no. 2 (1954): 228–241.

502

32 ESCHATOLOGY IN AFRICA Anticipation and critical engagement1 Elias Kifon Bongmba

The strong Akamba (and African) interest in a futurist Eschatology may partially be an unconscious attempt to fnd a spiritual homeland beginning here and now in this life, but not knowing how to fnd it they revert to a largely mythical future which may be no more than a shallow veneer of escapism. John Mbiti2 His speech is also a judgment. It pronounces, expresses a set of transformations, a complexus of effects to be produced in the area of behavior and attitudes, and institutions. The judgment is the irruption into thought, word, and deed, of the end of history—of the perishability of the world as human beings have made it. Human beings have erected their world on the basis of the opposition and struggle between man and woman, master and slave, rich and poor, instructed and ignorant, saint, and sinner.The proclamation and practice of the end unveil the provisional character of the hierarchies, institutions, and values, which sin—the overestimation or fear of oneself and of what is—transforms into ultimate, fnal realities. Fabien Eboussi Boulaga3

Introduction In this chapter, I refect on eschatology, offering a different theological reading of the eschatological event that departs from much of the discussion of eschatology that has stressed the nearness of the end times, its apocalyptic dimensions, and the different distinctions of millennialism or speculation on the nature of the end times or the nature of life after death or the eschatological event. I argue that it is important for the ecclesial community to move beyond the speculative approach to eschatology because those approaches tend to miss the eschatological orientation, which in my view calls for a broad and transformative social praxis and ecological responsibility. From that perspective, regardless of the apocalyptic images of the biblical texts, eschatology describes the orientation of the cosmos toward a telos, which we cannot map out with specifcity. More importantly, I will argue that the doctrine of the last things ought to serve as an invitation for the ecclesial community to renew its discourse and practice to beft persons who anticipate renewal and regeneration of the created order. In the frst part of the chapter, I will offer a brief discussion of eschatology as a theological category. In the second part of the 503

Elias Kifon Bongmba

chapter, I will briefly describe eschatology. I will situate the study in the African context, and start by highlighting the contribution of John S. Mbiti in his New Testament Eschatology in an African Background, and reflect briefly on that account. In the third and last section of the chapter, I will argue that eschatology as theological should be read in light of the transformative ecclesial practices in liberation, social justice, and ecological liberation. I grew up in the Cameroon Baptist Convention in Cameroon, where black Jamaican missionaries started missionary work under the supervision of the Baptist Missionary Society of London. Since Cameroon was German territory, World War I disrupted mission and North American Baptist Conference missionaries took over the mission work when the Germans could no longer work in Cameroon. The new missionaries were American evangelicals, and some of the missionaries received training at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I remember the dispensational theology that we were taught and the focus on themes like premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. I remember all the rhetoric about the apocalyptic that was premised on the view that the world was coming to an end, justified with claims that the events taking place in Israel were clues that biblical prophecy was being fulfilled in our day and Jesus would return soon. The establishment of the European Economic Community and the formation of the World Council of Churches were taken to be further signs that we lived during the end times. During our training at the then Baptist Bible Training Center (BBTC), now the Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary, we were trained to take eschatology seriously because we were living in the end times. Our preaching and public speaking professor, Dr. Louis Johnson, used to tell us that as a preacher one ought to preach on eschatology at least once every six months to awaken the church from slumber.The main hymn book we used in our churches was Ira D. Sankey’s collection Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos. Local composers like Mr. Isaac Musing, the resident composer for David Choir during my tenure as Pastor of Ntumbaw Baptist Church, composed some songs on the theme of eschatology. Among the many songs he composed for the Choir, two of my favorites focused on eschatology. The congregation was always inspired and moved to reflect every time the choir performed any of these two songs. For a long time these two pieces remained the favorite of David Choir of the church. Buu ha ka’ càa wℇℇ wèr à yɛ bcindapyʉ.̀ Suu lɛ embe bùu a tʉr lɛ ŋger magòr Ŋgòŋ ha zhi ruu nè bvi bkù’si. A ka’ ba njo’ ku’ buu enjep ŋgòŋ ha Lar ryòŋ rli bʉ àcici. O yàa ta koo mɛ.̀ M̀ be làa mɛkɛ kùntombi nè Nyʉ̀ Nf è’ nsà à ghɛɛ nè mɛ.̀ M̀ be dù làa mɛkɛ kùntombi nè Nyʉ̀ Nf è’ nsa’ à ghɛɛ.

When all things passed we saw Angles descending from heaven with much power The world was full for of their glory Left to the things of the world, My life would be lost for nothing Oh my God take me What will I go and say before God Judgement time is here for me What will I go and say before God Judgement time is here

Many members of the church thought his classic composition was Rsòŋ rli làa Yu’ àmbò rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ rli ce làa. Nfèʼ à càa sèʼni mbe tunshe. Bcindap Nyʉ̀ o dù lɛ ŋgòŋ. Dù lòr bèe ce o byemi nè ye. Mɛmɛ be kèe dù suŋ mɛkɛ?

Hear as the trumpet of God is sounding Time on earth is now over Angels are going into to the world They go to those believed in God What will I go and say 504

Eschatology in Africa

Kù ntombì nè yàa Nyʉ̀ ce embe bùu Suŋ nè mɛ̀ yuu ce m̀ be kèe dù làa. Tɛ m̀ bo fʉʉ efa rkwe. Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ laa, laa, laa rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa

Before my God in Heaven Tell me what I will go and say So that I will escape death God’s trumpet is sounding, sounding, God’s trumpet is sounding Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa God’s trumpet sounds (Tenor and Baritone) Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ la ce kɛʼ bèe o byemi nè ye. God’s trumpet is sounding calling those who believe in God Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa God’s trumpet sounds (Tenor and Baritone) Mɛmɛ̀ m̀ be kèe dù suŋ mɛkɛ. What will I go and say? Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa God’s trumpet sounds (Tenor and Baritone) Before my God in heaven Kùntombì nè yàa Nyʉ̀ embe bùu Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa Gods trumpet sounds (Tenor and Baritone) Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa, Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa, Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa God’s trumpet sounds (3 times) Rsòŋ Nyʉ̀ làa God’s trumpet sounds (Tenor and Baritone)4 I loved the hymns on eschatology. Take for instance the hymn by H.L. Turner’s It may be at morn, when the day is awaking, when sunlight through darkness and shadow is breaking; That Jesus will come in the fullness of glory, to redeem from the world His own. O Lord Jesus, how long, how long Ere we shout the glad song, Christ returneth! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Amen, Hallelujah Amen. Then there is the amazing spiritual by André Crouch, “Soon and very soon, we are going to see the king (times) Hallelujah, hallelujah we are going to see the king.” Bill Gaither’s “The king is coming” captured the core of premillennialism with its vivid imagery of a world brought to a standstill as Jesus returns to take away the church. Eschatology remains a major theme of Christian doctrine and preoccupation for some who may not even care about its doctrinal subtleties. Scholars have well documented its relationship to apocalyptic literature, and it has generated millennialism that has been as escapist as it has been harmful and deadly. Today terms like “millennium,” “apocalypse,” and “Armageddon,” all relate to some aspect of an eschatological imagination. Eschatological and millennial expectations have resonance in different religious traditions. The scholarship on indigenous religions gives hints that the Xhosa cattle-killing precipitated by the prophecy of Nongqawuse could be interpreted as an eschatological event because it was a preparation for the renewal and revitalization of the Xhosa nation. J.B. Peires argued that the myth of the cattle-killing connected to Christian perspectives on the end times because Nongqawuse might have been influenced by her uncle, Mhlasaka, who served the Archdeacon Merriman in his missionary work in the region. Discouraged, he turned to end time thought and focused on the destruction of the present to create room for the ancestors who would return and restore everything meaningful about the Xhosa nation.5 Jewish apocalyptic literature influenced early Christian views on end times. Thousands of people died because of this destruction of their livelihood.6 The tragic destruction of cattle among the Xhosa is matched by, if not exceeded by, violent millennial expectations. Millennial anticipation led to the death of 540 persons on March 17, 2000, in the Ugandan town of Kanungu. There were members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments. The members of the church reportedly prepared for this event and tried to recruit their relatives to travel with them to Kanungu because the Virgin Mary was going to 505

Elias Kifon Bongmba

come and give a message to them.They prepared for their departure in a big way, feasting on coca cola, paid their debts, and boarded the house where they would gather for these last events. It is reported that Joseph Kibwetere took the land certifcate of the church to the police, where he thought it would be safe, but he knew they were not coming back because the great ark was ready to take them to meet their God.7

Mbiti on biblical eschatology in Africa John S. Mbiti, in his groundbreaking New Testament Eschatology in an African Background, offered a critique of eschatological thinking in Africa that has been overshadowed with concerns about his interpretation of time among the Akamba people of Kenya. The book grew from his doctoral thesis at Cambridge University in 1963.8 NTEAB was broadened as a study of the encounter between Christian views on eschatology and the local beliefs to articulate theological dialogue between mission Christianity and African cultures.9 Mbiti argued that Christianity was “intensely eschatological,” echoing a common assertion from theologians like Karl Barth and other theologians. Equally,Akamba beliefs were eschatological because they conveyed ideas about life, death,“the departed, the spirits, and the hereinafter.”10 Akamba Christians think about the “Parousia, death and destiny … This means that inter alia Christianity is embraced and pictured primarily as an eschatological faith.”11 Mbiti’s study was largely a critical exploration of the teachings of the Inland Christian Mission, an evangelical, interdenominational agency. He drew materials for the study from church literature and the reception of Christianity by the Akamba people, a patrilineal descent and exogamous people organized into clans, then gates, houses, and family units.12 Mbiti argued: the family, like early Hebrew society, is not simply a horizontal extension of tribal solidarity, it is also a vertical link between departed members of the tribe and those who are still alive. Kinship ties extend like a giant network united with one another those who are alive, and joining them to the kinsmen who have departed.13 This was an insightful comment for two reasons: Mbiti compared the Akambani to the Hebrew people, suggesting that end of the world beliefs are shared widely, and he linked life on earth with life after death, as in Akamba society “individual life follows a regular cycle from birth, through initiation, marriage, procreation, to death and entry into the community of the departed.”14 The Akamba believe in Mulungu, the God who creates and preserves all things. Missionary J.L. Krapf arrived in Kenyan society as a missionary of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS). Krapf had made contacts with the Akamba in 1844 in Mombasa and learned their language, translated the New Testament Gospels, and also published Vocabulary of Six East African Languages. Krapf left the region when Kivoi of Kitui, an infuential leader in the region, was assassinated. He returned to Europe in 1853 due to ill health.A new scramble to evangelize the region began with the building of the railway from Mombasa to Kampala.15 The African Inland Mission working in the region reported progress in evangelism, education, and Bible translation in 1919, and social services and agriculture, in spite of the challenges caused by World War I.16 Church growth accelerated in the Akamba area from 1953, and local clergy were engaged to serve in churches.The Akamba New Testament was published in 1920, and we should note here that Mbiti himself has recently published his translation of the New Testament from the Greek in Kikamba.17 Mbiti’s New Testament Eschatology painted a portrait of a thriving ecclesial community, arguing that it necessitated an examination of the conceptual background of the people, analysis of church teachings, assessment of their understanding of the teachings, 506

Eschatology in Africa

the study of traditional concepts alongside the New Testament to illuminate both thought patterns, and the drawing of theological implications. Central to Mbiti’s argument is the view that the New Testament used a materialistic and sacramental language to convey its teachings on eschatology. Readers remain fascinated by Mbiti’s claim that for the Akamba and other people in East Africa, time was not a matter of signifcant concern because they were concerned only with events that have occurred, the events taking place now, and the ones that will happen soon.What has not happened and that which belongs to the long future “has not temporal meaning—it belongs to the reality of no time.”18 Therefore time is two-dimensional, consisting of a “long past and a dynamic present.”The Akamba did not think of the future as a long linear process. The future is virtually absent because events which lie in the future have not been realized and cannot, therefore constitute time which otherwise must be experienced. Time as a separate reality does not move; only events come and go, often in rhythmic succession. It is therefore, what has taken place or will shortly occur that matters much more than what is yet to be. What has taken place is an elongation of the present: it simply adds to the events that constitute time.19 Mbiti argued that for the Akamba and other Africans, time moves backward because people look back to the past for an orientation of their history.20 Time for the Akamba is two-dimensional, constituted by a distant past and an active present.21 This backward view of time gave the Akamba ideas about creation—origins of humanity, cultures, and the formation of societies— claims which require new critical study today because Mbiti claimed:“Human life follows also another rhythm which knows neither end nor radical alteration … birth, initiation, marriage, procreation, old age, death and entry into the company of the departed.”22 In addition, since people who die move into the past and are forgotten after fve generations, Africans pour libations to keep the memory of the dead with them for a long time. He argued that the Akamba lack a concept of the end of the world and eschatology from a New Testament background. Mbiti distinguished between end time views in Jewish apocalyptic literature and Christian eschatology, arguing that the incarnation of Christ opened a future dimension and made eschatology a Christological event.23 Apocalyptic literature described a former age as one flled with sorrows, but it also anticipated the reign of God and the Christological phenomenon ushers in a new age.24 Mbiti referenced scholars from C.H. Dodd to Oscar Cullmann who neglected to emphasize the end as the consummation of all things.25 Mbiti returned to time again, stating: “time is an intensely Christological phenomenon. Any departure from it is bound to do injustice to New Testament Eschatology.”26 The incarnation of Jesus connected two signifcant periods: the one before the coming of Christ, and the period after the resurrection that inaugurated the expectation of Christ’s return. Saint Paul preached a futuristic eschatology, which “takes on cosmic scope embracing the entire creation in the purpose of God’s redemption.”27 The duality of New Testament Eschatology points to Jesus as the beginner of a new age that will be consummated in the future. He was “the completion of the new creation; the omega” had given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of the eschatological promise.28

Eschatology in the teachings of the African Inland Mission The Africa Inland Mission (AIM) futuristic eschatology emphasized “the personal, visible and premillennial return of the Lord Jesus Christ; the literal resurrection of the body; the eternal blessedness of the saved, and the eternal punishment of the lost.”29 The teachings, practices, and the music 507

Elias Kifon Bongmba

of the AIM demonstrated a rigid eschatological orientation that Christians would know was at hand because of signs such as famines, wars, and rumors of wars, the preaching of the Gospel to all parts of the world, and the return of the Jews to Palestine. Mbiti argued that the AIM used local terms, which promoted a futuristic eschatology. First, Yesu Nukauka means Jesus will come (far or remote future tense). Second, Yesu nukuka, Jesus will come (using the immediate or near future tense). Third, Yesu akauka (akooka), Jesus will come (indefnite future or near future). Additionally, the prevailing views of eschatology emphasized its material dimensions through its emphasis on life to be lived in a concrete place like heaven or hell-fre—rewards, cities, country, eating and drinking, tears, and pain.The heavenly life made possible by Jesus was also discussed in the broad context of church life.30 Eschatological hope in the AIM was lived through baptism and the Eucharist, sacraments observed in Christian worship and life. But Akamba and other African sacrifces lacked symbols, like baptism, which is a sign that a person has accepted God’s judgment and received forgiveness of sins. Baptism signifes death to the old self and acceptance of new life through the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus linked the cross and eschatology when he introduced the Eucharist in an eschatological setting. The AIM promoted eschatology through its curriculum of the catechumen and AIM hymns translated from American and English hymns had 90 songs on eschatology out of the 211 hymns. Mbiti criticized the futurist approach because it was escapist.31 Therefore, missionary teachings to the Ukambani hindered a sacramental understanding of eschatology.32 Mbiti then argued that Akamba views of the spiritual world emphasized several modes of being—God the creator and sustainer of life, Aimu, and the living dead, humanity, animals and plants, and other objects that do not have life. Expression of cultural and moral values respects all these modes of being. Death in the Akamba community calls one to join his or her ancestors. Death is described as a river that carries things away. It is the ultimate homegoing. Death is a summons, an emptying out of the soul, eternal sleep, withering away, passing away, answering the call, and rejecting people (those still alive). Death is a loss to living relatives. People also describe death as a miscarriage, the end, coming to the end of one’s breath, to depart, leave, and forsake all things, to collapse in ruins, and to become God’s property.33 Death transposes these elements from the physical to the spiritual, and one joins the ancestors and continues to care for those who remain on earth. Despite these compelling images of death as a departure into the future, Mbiti emphasized that Akamba time lacked a teleology and its eschatology could best be described as a “deteriology” because at death God does not recreate what has started to deteriorate.34 Readers today might fnd that puzzling because death rituals in African communities emphasize that the dead person is on a journey to the land of the ancestors. Mbiti pointed out that Christ is the gateway to the spirit world which one enters through the waters of baptism and now anticipates a substantive life with God in the future.The Holy Spirit is a witness to this teleological orientation made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus.The AIM taught that faith in Jesus offered security for believers and Christians had no reason to consult witches and diviners. According to Mbiti, the AIM used biblical texts on these issues in an uncritical manner. For example, the idea of demons was not known among the Ukambani, and New Testament terms did not correspond to the Akamba term like Aimu, spirits. Missionaries should have emphasized faith in Jesus instead of condemning spirits and demons because the sacraments assure Christians they already have a taste of the life they will live in the next world.The gateway to that world is participation in the sacraments of the church.Akamba traditional beliefs lacked the Eucharist, and their gifts to the ancestors lacked the force of Eucharist, which unites Christians with all the saints.35 Readers today would question why the Akamba do not experience oneness with the ancestors since Mbiti argued that Akamba beliefs about the living dead could be appropriated for 508

Eschatology in Africa

good by the church.Why was it necessary to “transpose the tribal spirit world into a Christian one.”36 These are challenging questions but Mbiti, in my view, was correct to argue that if the Christian message did not penetrate [relate to] the spirit world of the Akamba, “it will for a long time remain on the surface, incapable of providing a radical and all-embracing meaning to the total Weltanschauung of the people.”37 Reading the text today, one appreciates the detailed analysis of Akambe beliefs and the comparisons but it is not clear why Mbiti thought the world of the spirit in Akamba thought was dangerous, something one fnds in most apocalyptic texts, even if one appreciates Mbiti’s Christocentric approach to eschatology.38

The resurrection as corporate eschatology Corporate eschatology is the view that Christ will unite all believers at the end times. Mbiti argued that in Akamba beliefs, in the next life the dead also live in the community only to insist that Africans lost their gift of immortality and had nothing to replace the idea of mortality. Myths point to the tene period and are not future looking.The AIM’s futuristic eschatology emphasized a literal resurrection of the body, the gathering of the saved and damnation for unbelievers.39 The AIM taught eschatology in its hymns that comforted people on the grounds that believers, who die before the Parousia, will have a reunion with all believers when Jesus returns to take the saints home. Corporate eschatology includes all creation. Irenaeus frst described the complete restoration of the created order when he argued:“creation will be restored to its frst condition and made subject to the righteous without hindrance.”40 St.Augustine, in De Civitate Dei XX–XXII, gave a defnitive theological perspective.The fnal goal of resurrection is a new existence in the presence of God when all things will be put under the control of God. It is then that believers relinquish individuality, get new names, and enjoy a face-to-face relationship with God.41 Those who reject Christ will be excluded and punished with eternal damnation.42 Mbiti concluded his argument by stressing that both the New Testament and the Akamba two-dimensional view of time is valid. What is realized now would be consummated in the future because a Christ overcomes temporal limitations.43 Mbiti noted similarities in African and Hebrew cultures, but he emphasized that the New Testament offers a distinct worldview with no parallels in African cultures although the Akamba did not see symbols as carriers of theological meaning. Mbiti argued that the sacraments are areas where Africans could make a theological breakthrough. Ceremonies and initiation rites that humanize children offer areas where New Testament Eschatology could be meaningful to Africans. African thought emphasizes the spirit world and these insights from the African worldview could be used to build a broad view of the “communion of saints” and establish a connection between the living and dead. However, Mbiti stressed a Christocentric view because the Resurrection that points to consummation of faith in Christ when God brings all things into the presence of God has no parallels in African thought. Mbiti expressed hope for a Theologia Africana that would be grounded in biblical theology and ecumenism, engage African religions and philosophy, and refect a theology of the living church in Africa. As a prolepsis to what would come (or is already there), Mbiti warned, “prayer and piety alone will not do the task which rightly belongs to the realm of theology.”44 What was important for such theology was its Christological import because theology stands or fails in light of its relationship to Christology.

Reception of Mbiti’s thesis The reception of Mbiti’s work ignored his rich eschatological reading of the practice of the AIM and criticized Mbiti’s discussion of time. In an earlier reading, I engaged in this criticism, but to 509

Elias Kifon Bongmba

return to the text, I recognize that theologically, this was an original programmatic text that laid out how the AIM missed opportunities to articulate an eschatological vision.45 V.Y. Mudimbe located Mbiti’s work in the category of African scholarship that challenged and rejected western anthropological approaches to African weltanschauungen. Dismas Masolo argued that Mbiti’s thesis “limited the omnicomprehensivity and omniextensitivity, which, to our understanding, go beyond any temporal limitation.”46 Kwame Gyekye, in a review of Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy, argued that the Akan people also conceive of God as an infnite being, and the very idea of infnity includes the perception of the future as actual time.47 Jesse N.K. Mugambi, arguing from a cosmological perspective, has pointed out that Africans understand the idea of an integrated visible and invisible universe and Christian eschatology from this viewpoint is irrelevant.48 Kwame Bediako argued that Mbiti’s work did not stress time as much as present a Christological orientation of time and eschatology which should not be subjected to temporal limitations.49 Robert Heaney has undertaken a substantive theological analysis of Mbiti and argues that Mbiti challenged missionary eschatology that emphasized an individualized view of the future and a premillennial return of Christ, and did not refect the Christology of the New Testament.50 Scott Moreau argued that Mbiti’s work was “western produced” and Mbiti’s western training distanced him from traditional thought, an idea many students of Mbiti would question since Moreau also claims that one of the strengths of the work was Mbiti’s ability to give readers a glimpse of African thought patterns. One cannot ignore the distinctions in western and African thought; however, that does not hinder scholarly work that recognizes and states similarities.

Eschatology in the critique and recapture of African Christianity Fabien Eboussi Boulaga has argued that the eschatological principle examines “the form and content of what Jesus proclaims.”51 Claiming that Jesus frequently spoke about the Parousia, indicating that it was near, would come soon, suddenly, unexpectedly, and urged listeners to watch for it, Boulaga reads Jesus’ words as a judgment, which introduced transformations that affects the behavior of individuals and institutions. The fnal judgment of Christ should then be seen as an eruption of Christ in history that announces the end of the world as humanity has made it.The emphasis on the world as humanity has made it is signifcant, and one cannot ignore that interpretive move here, even if one were to depend on apocalyptic literature. Our generation has the responsibility of deciding how we relate to the apocalyptic literature we have inherited.This is an eschatological imperative which ought to be factored into our thinking about the future in light of the negative oppositional relations Boulaga points out we have established. Human beings have erected their world by the opposition and struggle between man and woman, master and slave, rich and powerful, instructed and ignorant, saint, and sinner. The proclamation and practice of the end unveil the provisional character of the hierarchies, institutions, and values, which sin-the overestimation or fear of oneself and of what is—transforms into ultimate, fnal realities.52 The invitation here is for a postcolonial theological imagination that sees the eschatological orientation as one that is necessarily a “deconstruction and deconditioning” that relativizes prevailing ideologies and existing institutions and their implicit interests. Eschatology blurs the differences between life and death, brings the transcendent close to us, and removes divisions, turning things upside down so that “prostitutes go before the ‘just’ into the kingdom.”53 In 510

Eschatology in Africa

addressing what Boulaga earlier called the crisis of Muntu in the postcolony, one must recognize that the reorientation of eschatology to transformative social and ecological relationships introduces a realism that is masked by capitulation to the fancy imagination of apocalyptic literature. This reading of eschatology is compelling because it offers a deeper understanding of the love of God as mediated in Christ, who broke all social roles to create the eschatological community.This vision calls on the ecclesial community to live their eschatological expectation in social relations with others.The coming age does not call for ambassadors of Christ (missionaries) to go to different parts of the world to convert others to join the great meeting with Jesus. “At the bottom, the eschatological principle signifes that there are no more intermediaries. God is present right here, referring men and women to the divine mystery by referring them to their proper reality.”54 Promoting the common humanity all people share is the best proclamation of the eschatological God.55 Children of God are called to the work of liberation in the name of the God who “dies now in the clash of civilizations, in the violence of history that has never declared the glory of God to everyone the way the heavens do, with their seasons and astral revolutions.”56 Boulaga includes all gods, arguing,“The divinities are among the elements that differentiate one group from another—where God, when all is said and done is the principle of exclusion and is transformed, in confict or competition, into a principle of intolerance and elimination.”57 Boulaga indicts a false religiosity that promotes God and an eschatology that ignores present human and ecological conditions. Why would one throw away the Gods in a discourse of the eschaton? Boulaga argues: “Human destiny has been fxed once and for all, and the gods are either accomplices or impotent witnesses of this fact, this fatality.”58 The portrait of human destiny by Boulaga emphasizes a divine role in it, and Jesus calls people to a community that knows differences but practices no divisions and discriminations. Faith involves accepting the “creative autonomy of the human being as a gift, as real sharing in the Spirit who works in … the world and renews its face, a real sharing in the force of illumination that creates the shoreless universe.”59 The parenthood of God must be known from the premise that “the eschatological God is mediated by the humanity of human beings in act and exercise.”60 Boulaga offers an invitation to the ecclesial community to imagine “an original way of being-in-the-world, of being in society, of creating community” of children of God.61 These are not exclusive communities waiting to be whisked away “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”62 While such a community is always local, it is not exclusive, but should manifest an openness “a self-implementing negation of its closing.”63 This task is possible because the conversion experience establishes the basis for that kind of society where the self is limited to the “true conditions of action in the world.” Therefore, one must treat his or her neighbor as the manifestation of the “God-who-is End in the affairs of every day.”64 The reign of God is a new creation, and humans should strive to deliver themselves from the fesh and the world to rediscover the original self.The eschatological community is one of the brothers, sisters, and friends. God’s gratuity eschews all discriminations because eschatological life is an inversion of relationships and power that is deployed for unconditional service and love.65 Self-limitation of the community is its radical openness.While Jesus did not abandon his Jewish roots and resources, he also demonstrated that a thriving community in the eschatological sense is one that is open to others.66 Conversion is conversion to service and calls for a reworking of the community from within to transform old relationships and turn them into the “emancipation of all destiny.”67 Boulaga’s model of eschatology rejects all forms of discrimination, remains open to others, and is grounded in transformative service that ushers in the eschatological spirit. It is a model that avoids speculation on themes we do not fully understand, but grounds eschatology on everyday life-in-the-community. 511

Elias Kifon Bongmba

Eschatology calls for a transformative praxis The right approach to eschatology in the African context today would take a balanced approach to reading biblical texts on the end times.While one cannot ignore the exhortation to “watch and pray,” it is noteworthy that most of the New Testament passages that discuss eschatology also spell out the lifestyle that is anticipatory of the event which only Christ will inaugurate. In many ways, the apocalyptic charm has pushed the church to cultivate a desire and eagerness to depart from the challenges that circumscribe life for people here “in between the times.”Another reading of the texts of the New Testament invites a critical constructive postcolonial theology that asks new questions about the kind of mission and ministry that anticipates Christ’s new creation. It is a mission and ministry that recognizes the self that is a journey toward the consummation of life of service with Christ. But the articulation of the mission and ministry calls for a radical recognition of otherness in our social relations and with our habitat. It is, therefore, necessary that the African ecclesial community reimagines eschatology that departs from a predictive, calendar-watching,“exit this world” mode of being in the world.This is not to deny some of the core teachings of the New Testament that Christ will return for the church. Rather the eschatological engagement anticipates Christ with a mode of being and doing that is an imitatio Christi for today. While we cannot develop this fully here, it is crucial that we place this eschatological vision in perspective because from a New Testament view, it predates the speculative eschatology that African churches have been taught for a long time, and invites the ecclesial community to a praxis that anticipates the new creation. Although Jesus pointed out that he did not know when the times would come, he offered some clues about the eschatological mission and ministry in Matthew 25:31–46, laying down a path from prediction to praxis.The discussion about what will take place when the Son of Man returns at the end time is preceded by two parables about the kingdom (reign) of God, which is the future. In the frst parable, ten virgins anticipating the return of the bridegroom are grouped into two; fve of them were prepared and had oil for their lamps and were ready to meet the bridegroom if he came at night. The other fve did not have oil, and when the bridegroom arrived, it was too late because they could not get oil in time to attend the wedding party. In the second parable, Jesus talked about a man who gave his servants some money to manage. The frst two traded with the money and gained a hundred full, but the third did not do anything, but more importantly kept the money and returned it to the master, saying he knew the master was a tough person and he stored his money and the master could have it back as he gave it to him.The master rewarded the other two, but took the money away from the one who failed to trade and gave it to the one who had ten talents.The text adds that the lazy servant is thrown out into the darkness where he will weep and grind his teeth.The frst parable is about preparedness, and suggests that the followers of Jesus should be prepared for the return of Christ. The second takes the argument further. One should not only be prepared but should be faithful in everything over which he or she has responsibility. It is at the end of these two parables that Jesus discusses what will happen when he returns. Jesus announces that when he comes in glory accompanied by his angels, he will sit on the throne and all nations will gather before him, and he will judge the nations. I will not get into the technical details of the text or the apocalyptic interpretations of the text, and I am certainly not interested in reading a type of schedule of events. I want to highlight a praxis-oriented view of eschatology briefy.68 Matthew 25:31–46 has unresolvable questions as to whom Jesus is addressing. Jesus pointed out that he would come, all nations of the world would gather, and there would be a judgment after which some would enter into the reign of God and others would be excluded.There is no indication that they would be punished and rewarded based on 512

Eschatology in Africa

whether they have believed in Jesus.They will be judged based on what they did, not to Jesus, but to other people.Those who enter the reign of God with Christ do so because they gave food to the hungry, gave water to the thirsty, welcomed strangers, provided clothing to those in need, looked after the sick, and visited those who were in prison, but some did not do these things. These kinds of services were the key to the idea of the theology of the social Gospel.69 Ulrich Luz is correct in asserting that this text indicates that “the outcome of the judgment dependent on the love of those who suffer rather than on commitment to Jesus.”70 The implication to me for an eschatology for Africa today is for the ecclesial community to adopt an eschatological orientation grounded on a praxis that makes the world a better place.This implies a praxis that goes beyond soup kitchens and works to alleviate the conditions that make soup kitchens a necessity. Eschatology is an invitation to maintain an active intersubjective engagement with the other and exude the presence of God in daily life and activity.71 I next discuss two transformative practices of eschatological thinking. First, eschatological Hope and the Challenge of Feeding the Hungry. Jesus directly linked admission into the reign of God with providing food for those who are hungry.The challenge of feeding the hungry today is real, even when we live in one the most prosperous times humankind has known. In response to a world in need, African churches need to work toward an eschatological vision that takes seriously the severe food crisis the continent faces. Cameroonian theologian Jean-Marc Ela said many years ago,“the granary is empty.”72 Ela charged,“our churches today expose us to the dangers of atheism each time we celebrate the Eucharist in areas where no one is working to create conditions that would allow hungry people to feed themselves.”73 Ela mapped both the colonial and postcolonial conditions that had promoted hunger even in a context when Africa was redefning evangelism and church growth and the poor were accepting the Word of God and working to alter the structures that confict with the plan of God. It is in this context that Ela called for a “ministry of the granary” because “today the question of food must again become the center of daily life-starting from an African culture that is based on granaries, and dynamics of the revelation as it is read in Genesis through Mathew.”74 Ela’s question “how can we speak of the Lord of life, knowing full well that famine is the messenger of death?” remains valid today.75 When Ela tried to speak the Word of God, an elderly man interrupted him and said,“once upon a time God talked to people, but now he has fallen silent, and he has left us prey to hunger, sickness, and death.”76 In a refection on eschatology today, one ought to ask the question: what does a transformative praxis look like in light of the context where food remains such a challenge today in different parts of Africa? Since Ela published his book, the challenges have grown, and something must be done to feed the hungry across the continent who continue to go hungry because of violence, greed, the crisis of environmental degradation, and political and economic neglect by the political elites. African scholars of religion and theologians have addressed environmental issues and Christian earth keeping ministries for a long time.77 In its State of Food Security report in 2018, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated that the number of people who lacked proper nourishment in 2017 stood at 821 million, more than half of the people in Africa today.The FAO noted a decline of about 151 million children under fve had stunted growth and another 50 million were threatened by wasting.78 All this is happening in a world where obesity is also a challenge, and thus points to the need to manage the world’s resources in a way that will beneft all people. It is not merely a matter of thinking that all who go hungry must grow more food. Carrying out the mandate of Jesus to feed the hungry calls for actions on different fronts that will not only promote agricultural production, but promote political justice at all levels, creating farming, trading, and distribution models that look beyond the economic bottom line, to what it means to grow, market, and consume equitably. 513

Elias Kifon Bongmba

Eschatological thinking that complies with the vision of Jesus ought to think about ways of managing an ecosystem that remains productive for the good of everyone. Ernst Conradie has argued that in the Southern African region, scholars have addressed environmental concerns in four ways: frst, some scholars have called for Christians to practice stewardship and conserve natural resources. To do this, scholars have called for a disciplined and balanced approach to development in all areas, and they encourage an approach to development that seriously considers wildlife and all-natural species and promotes biodiversity to curb environmental destruction. Conradie points to a history of environmental degradation during apartheid and uncontrolled urban development.79 This approach has reminded human beings of the important role they can play as stewards of creation because biblical teaching supports responsible use and management of the created order.80 Feeding the hungry calls for a concerted effort to restore the environment and, in the African context, a determined effort to restore ancestral land that has been handed down to this generation as a sacred trust. The idea of restoration speaks to problems caused by deforestation, desertifcation, and the erosion of soil and water resources through human activities that have not included a sustainable focus to maintain the fragile ecosystem.The challenge given to the Christian community here is to work hard to restore and manage the ecosystem that our generation has received as a gift from ancestors to use and keep for future generations.This perspective emphasizes the sacredness of the environment, a perspective that is supported by African traditional religious beliefs and symbolic worldview.81 The goal for many who take this approach is to restore balance to the ecosystem, which must be used conservatively and concerning all life forms because all life is sacred and the ecosystem itself is flled with the presence of God.82 Second, eschatological theology that anticipates the reign of Christ calls for the practice of environmental justice, not only as an antidote to the destructive images of apocalyptic literature but also as an anticipation of the new creation. Pope Francis in his frst Encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home, invites everyone, regardless of creed, class, or culture, with these words:“Let us pray that everyone can receive its message and grow in responsibility toward the common home that God has entrusted to us.”83 Laudato Si unequivocally focuses on the environment, building on and developing Pope Francis’ concern about climate change and environmental degradation. Before the Laudato Si, Pope Francis called for an ecological conversion to make ourselves those who will protect the created order of God. On May 21, 2014, Pope Francis said: creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so we can care for it, and we use it for the beneft of all, always with great respect and gratitude.84 Christians are called to the vocation of protection: protecting our lives, each other, and this earth, which is home to all. Pope Francis pleads: Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be “protectors” of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and the environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world! But to be protectors, we also have to keep watch over ourselves! Let us not forget that hatred and envy and pride defle our lives!85 Laudato Si is a bold statement which defnes where we are with what Pope Francis calls our common home.86 514

Eschatology in Africa

Pope Francis articulates the Gospel of creation, grounds the current ecological crisis in human causes, deepens our global perspective of the ecological crisis with the term “integral ecology” to present an encompassing view of ecology that includes all inhabitants of the common home we share, suggests actions that can be taken, and offers perspectives on ecological education and spirituality.The recent Paris Summit on the environment made clear what the stakes are, especially for those who live in the so-called Global South who, while calling on global justice on the question of environmental destruction, must not wait, but assume our responsibility. Restoration of the created order must address the needs of the many in Africa who, according to the Gospel Matthew, must be fed.The ecclesial community needs to pay close attention to developments in science and see science not as the opposite side of faith, but as a partner in developing the resources we need to sustain our habitat, livelihood, and work in restoring creation. Moltmann has argued that the cosmic dimension of eschatology brings us to one of the co-themes of eschatology because we are reminded of our responsibility in re-establishing order.A Christological and cosmic approach to eschatology calls for an openness to otherness in several dimensions. First, I think it requires a multidisciplinary approach to an understanding of our future orientation. In Science and Wisdom, Moltmann invites scholars to recognize the interrelationship that exists between the disciplines and stop the hard distinctions that we have created between the humanities and the sciences. A holistic theology ought to inquire about “the future of the whole—its salvation or its doom.”87 As human beings, we are not against nature as an object which we must seek to understand, although we indeed must use all resources to understand, appreciate, and protect nature.88 Therefore we are invited to continue searching for knowledge from all disciplines to improve not only our understanding of nature but increase our wisdom about how to respect nature and preserve it. The destruction of nature and the environment is a critical eschatological concern because, in the end, we must ask if we are partners in this project.According to Moltmann,“Redemption is nothing but the restitution of the original, godly creation … If we see redemption this way … we have a protological understanding of eschatology.”89 Therefore an eschatological posture invites responsibility of the created order.We live at a time when the question of what is happening to our planet is the subject of much debate, and for the frst time, we have a leader of the United States who does not believe in climate change and the environmental challenges we face. Religious communities cannot afford the luxury of doubting that we have done damage to the ecosystem and cannot simply continue the destruction and expect some dramatic rescue. That is not the message of the eschatological discourse in Matthew. Regarding food production, I have argued that African faith communities must continue to lend their voices of support to scientifc developments that not only improve our lives with medicines but a new type of crops that can do well under challenging climatic conditions. Faith communities must increasingly pay attention to new developments in biotechnology that could open the doors to new techniques of production and high yielding seeds that could bolster food production to ensure food security in the African context.The debate has raged for a while now about technological developments that have given us genetically modifed organism (GMO) seeds. Like many Africans, I know that we have to come up with different ways in which we could multiply fve loaves of bread and two fshes, to feed the thousands in addition to fasting and to pray. If we are going to meet our eschatological quarter in feeding the hungry, we need a serious intervention that will use all the tools science has today to make sure that with limited land and space, we can still meet our food needs. It is not a lack of faith to say that we cannot merely pray our way through this.We must be open to new technologies that can help us contain environmental degradation, but also help us develop safe crops that we must grow to feed the inhabitants of our common home. 515

Elias Kifon Bongmba

This is an old argument, but I bring it here in light of the eschatological imperative to establish intersubjective and sharing relationships with our neighbors. It would be wrong to imply that churches are not doing something about hunger in our world today. One of the marks of the Christian tradition in the 20th century has been the services different branches of the Christian tradition have carried out in relief work around the world. Some of the major organizations that have been instrumental in addressing poverty include Christian services like Bread for the World, World Vision, and Heifer International. These organizations have assisted people in low-income countries and worked side by side with people in different communities around the world to combat the scourge of hunger by making sure that no child goes hungry. Studies by Richard Maposa indicate that the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe promoted agriculture as an essential part of its outreach in Zimbabwe.90 Since Africans embraced the green revolution of the 1960 and 1970s, the world has seen a population explosion and an environmental crisis that today calls for more creative ways of fulflling the scriptural mandate to feed the hungry.The international community has debated GMF for over three decades.The United Nations Development Program back in 2001 lent its support to GMF because it would enable the nations of the world to reduce malnutrition that affects millions of children and people.91 This report did not shy away from the controversies and concerns about the toxicity of these products and the harm they can cause the environment. Recently Monsanto was hit with a hefty fne because a worker who used their product developed cancer. One cannot dismiss these concerns.They should and must be taken seriously. Like the medicines we depend on, we must continue to support critical research that would improve these products that hold so much promise in alleviating the food shortage we face. The infuential publication Pambazuka, in different issues 321, in 2007, has raised severe concerns about the advocacy of GMF, arguing that it is too early for international organizations to be championing new dawn and proposing a new quick fx for African nations. I must say that the caution and the alarm bells must be taken seriously. Pambazuka’s warning is clear and should also be placed on the table. Rather than proposing techno-fxes to problems of agricultural development in Africa, donors could better assist in the development of rural infrastructures such as roads and water supplies, and education to empower the younger generation in the study of useful science. African farmers, along with peasants around the world, are seeking respect for their right to decide on what to plant and how to plait it, as well as what to eat and how.92 This suggestion should be taken seriously but I think this should not stop an investigation into a different variety of seeds that could give high yielding food products or survive under challenging climates. Opposition to Monsanto continues in Africa and should be an invitation to critical research that involves African universities.93 Other voices in the debate have pointed out that GMOs are safe, especially the Water Effcient Maize that has received funding from agencies and foundations with a long track record in Africa such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffet Foundation, and the United States Agency for International Development.94 An eschatological vision that contributes to food sustainability can lend support to new ways of growing food, and all must work with the technology to make sure that what is developed does not destroy the ecosystem and kill us. Current estimates put the population of the world in 2025 at over 8.5 billion with more than 80 percent of the people living in the Global South. In anticipation of the eschaton, Christians today, like the early church, cannot quarrel about who 516

Eschatology in Africa

is getting service but must be the deacons who will use technology to restore the environment, and increase productivity to promote an intersubjective engagement that prioritizes justice and security for all.We can reduce conficts in our age and stop seeing them as signs of the end.The real sign to expect is the cultivation of an eschatological realism that recognizes the neighbor who needs food and shelter and takes care of him. That is how we do our part in making all things new.

Conclusion Eschatological thinking since Mbiti, New Testament Eschatology, has shifted and we agree with Mbiti that eschatology should not be speculation about escaping the world to a land fowing with milk and honey, but should be an engagement with the sacramental life of the church. Such an involvement in the African context should draw from local symbols. Eschatology then invites the ecclesial community to engage in a new mission and ministry.This involves restoring the priorities, which Jesus led out about how we relate to others, making sure that we meet their needs. If we are to meet their needs and feed the hungry, it is incumbent that the ecclesial community take responsibility and anticipate the coming reign of God by promoting ecological justice. While Mbiti’s 1971 thesis might have been exclusionary because of its investment in the Christian tradition, Mbiti also has one of the most articulate defenses of African indigenous religious traditions and cultures. I have then raised questions about aspects of contemporary eschatology, arguing that at the core of the anticipation of a new order, the ecclesial community in Africa needs to shift its emphasis from speculations about the nature of heaven and who is going there to living in a manner that already expects eschatological fulfllment.

Notes 1 This chapter is part of the Doctor of Theology h.c. lecture which I delivered at the Faculty of Theology at Lund University during the Promotion of May 2018. I thank the Faculty of Theology of Lund University for the honor they have bestowed on me. Special thanks go to Dean Samuel Byrskog and the faculty of theology for this recognition. I also thank Dean Byrskog and Angela Byrskok for welcoming Odelia and I to Lund for the beautiful promotion exercises. I want to thank my promoter Professor Fredrik Lindstöm for everything he did to prepare me for the promotion. I want to thank Professor Mika Vähäkangas for being our host in Lund and making sure we were taken care of. I also thank Professor Auli Vähäkangas for coming to the University of Helsinki to join us for the promotion and show us the beautiful City of Lund. I thank Martina Prosén and Mika Vähäkangas for many years of collaboration and for reading and commenting on this chapter. I thank Martin Nykvist,Assistant Editorin-chief of Swedish Theological Quarterly, for his editorial insights that have strengthened this chapter. 2 John S. Mbiti, New Testament Eschatology in an African Background: A Study of the Encounter between New Testament Theology and African Traditional Concepts (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 125. 3 Fabien Ebousi Boulaga, Christianity without Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity, Translated from the French by Robert Barr. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981), p. 105. 4 I am indebted to Francis Wepngong Ndi for setting the text of the two hymns composed by Mr. Isaac Musing Nfor of Ntumbaw into the Limbum orthography. 5 See J. B. Peires, The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing Movement of 1856–7 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 6 Adam Ashforth, “The Xhosa Cattle Killing and the Politics of Memory,” Sociological Forum 6, no. 3 (1991): 581–92, 581. 7 See John Walliss,“Making Sense of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God,” Nova Religio:The Journal of alternative and Emergent Religions 9, no. 1 (2005): 49–66, 50. 8 John S. Mbiti, “Christian Eschatology in Relation to Evangelization of Tribal Africa,” PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1963.

517

Elias Kifon Bongmba 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

John S. Mbiti, 1971, p. 2. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 2–3. For this chapter, I will not discuss the background to the Akamba people as so much has changed among the Akamba and Kenya in general since this study was published. John S. Mbiti, 1971, p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. R. Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa, (London: Longman, 1952), p. 6. John S. Mbiti, 1971, p. 14, See Hearing and Doing,August 1991, p. 3. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., pp. 23–24. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., pp. 23–24. Ibid., p. 32. See also G. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth, 1960, p. 92. (cited in Mbiti, p. 32). See E. von DobSchütz, The Eschatology of the Gospels, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910); C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, revised edition (London: Pearson, 1972); C.H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1936); C.H. Dodd, The Mind of Paul, (Manchester: John Rylands Library, 1936); John Mbiti, New Testament Eschatology, in an African Background (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 34–35; T.W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus in The Mission and Message of Jesus, with H.D.A. Major and C.J. Wright, (London: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1946); C.H. Dodd, The Coming of Christ, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951); N. Perrin, The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus, (London: SCM Press, 1963); Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1957); T.F. Glasson, The Second Advent, (London: Epworth Press, 1945), pp. 151–156; J.A.T. Robinson, Jesus and His Coming, second edition, (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1979). John S. Mbiti, 1971, p. 38. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., pp. 44–45. Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 88. Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., p. 126. Ibid., pp. 121–129. Ibid., p. 139. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 159. See Irenaeus, Adversus omnes Haereses,V.32.1, in trans. H. Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 134. John S. Mbiti, 1971, p. 176. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid, p. 190. See Elias Bongmba. “Eschatology: Levinasian Hints in a Preface,” in Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, Gary A. Phillips, and David Jobling, eds. Levinas and Biblical Studies, 75–90 (Atlanta: Society of biblical Literature, 2003). Dismas Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 111. Kwame Gyekye, “African Religions and Philosophy, by J.S. Mbiti,” book review, Second Order: An African Journal of Philosophy 4, no. 1 (January 1975), pp. 86–94. Jesse N.K. Mugambi, African Christian Theology:An Introduction (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1989), p. 143.

518

Eschatology in Africa 49 Kwame Bediako, Theology and Identity:The Impact of Culture upon Christian Thought in the Second Century and in Modern Africa (Oxford: Regnum International, 1992), pp. 306–307, 327–328. 50 Robert Heaney, From Historical to Critical Post-Colonial Theology: The Contribution of John S. Mbiti and Jesse N.K. Mugambi (Eugene Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2015), p. 63. 51 Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Christianity without Fetishes: An African Critique and Recapture of Christianity, Translated from the French by Robert Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981), p. 105. 52 Ebousi Boulaga, 1981, p. 105. 53 Ibid., p. 106 54 Ibid., p. 107 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., p. 109. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., p. 110. 60 Ibid., p. 108. 61 Ibid., p. 111. 62 This is a line from a well-known Christian hymn “It could happen in a Moment.” 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., p. 114. 66 Ibid., p. 116.According to Boulaga,“The new community must surmount, in its own interior, the divisions and discrimination that are tearing Israel apart. It must base itself on some principle other than convergence of might. It must realize a society of brothers and sisters and friends, where authority is service without compensation.” 67 Ebousi Boulaga, 1981, p. 117. 68 David C. Sim, Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 2. 69 Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology of the Social Gospel (New York:Abingdon Press, 1917). 70 Ulrich Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 129. 71 Ted Peters argues:“The future actualizes a potential that is already present, just as a cherry tree actualizes the potential that is already in the stone or see we plant in the ground” (308). God—the World’s Future:A Systematic Theology for a Postmodern Era (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). 72 Jean Marc Ela, My Faith as an African,Translated from the French by John Pairman Brown and Susan Perry, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), p. 87. 73 Ibid., pp. 87–88. 74 Ibid., p. 92. 75 Ibid., p. 93. 76 Ibid., p. 94. 77 Ernst M. Conradie,“Approaches to Religion and the Environment in Africa” in Elias Kifon Bongmba (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa (New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 438–454; see also Ernst M. Conradie, “Christianity and the Environment in (South) Africa: Four Dominant Approaches,” in Len Hansen, ed., Christian in Public: Aims, Methodologies and Issues in Public Theology (Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 2007), pp. 227–250. I am indebted to Conradie for most of the literature cited in this section. 78 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2018 The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World: Building Climate Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition (Rome, 2018), p. v. 79 Ernst Conradie, 2015, p. 439. See also Cock, J. and E. Koch (eds), Going green: People, Politics and the Environment in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991); M. Ramphele and C. McDowell (eds), Restoring the Land: Environment and Change in Post-apartheid South Africa (London: Panos, 1991). 80 D.N. Field,“The Ethics of Sustainable Development,” In Kretzschmar, L and Hulley, L (eds). Questions about Life and Morality. Christian Ethics in South Africa Today (Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1998); D.N. Field, “Snakes in an African Eden:Towards a Theological Ethic for Ecotourism and Conservation,” Scriptura 69 (1999), 163–180; D.N. Field,“Stewards of Shalom:Toward a Trinitarian Ecological Ethic,” Quarterly Review 22, no. 4 (2002): 383–396.

519

Elias Kifon Bongmba 81 Y. Adu-Gyamf, “Indigenous Beliefs and Practices in Ecosystem Conservation: Response of the Church,” Scriptura 107 (2011): 145–155; R. A. Agyarko, “Inculturation Theologies—Is the God Who Saved Us the Same as the One Who Created Us? In E. M. Conradie (ed.) Creation and Salvation,Volume 2: A Companion on Recent Theological Movements (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012), pp. 316–321; T. BerhaneSelassie, “Ecology and Ethiopian Orthodox Theology,” In D.G. Hallman (ed), Ecotheology. Voices from South and North (Geneva:World Council of Churches, 1994), pp. 155–173; L. Kalugila,“Old Testament Insights and the Kagera Region, Tanzania,” In JNK Mugambi and M. Vähäkangas (eds), Christian Theology and Environmental Responsibility (Nairobi: Acton, 2001), pp. 82–95; M.L. Daneel, African Earthkeepers.Volume 2. Environmental Mission and Liberation in Christian Perspective (Pretoria: Unisa, 1999); M.L. Daneel,“Earthkeeping Churches at the African Grass Roots,” In D.T. Hessel and R.R. Ruether (eds), Christianity and Ecology. Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 531–552; Steve De Gruchy, “Some Preliminary theological refections on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD),” Bulletin for Contextual Theology in Africa 8, nos. 2&3 (2002): 64–68. 82 E. Wangiri, “Urumwe Spirituality and the Environment,” In M.N. Getui and E.A. Obeng (eds), Theology of Reconstruction: Exploratory Essays (Nairobi:Acton Publishers, 1999), pp. 71–89. 83 This is really the second Encyclical issued during his papacy because the frst one Lumen Fidei was drafted by Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis, Angelus, June 14, 2015. See http://store.usccb.org/On -Care-for-Our-Common-Home-Laudato-Si-p/7-502.htm?utm_source=Google-adwords&utm_ medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Encyclical.Accessed March 20, 2016. 84 http://www.catholicclimatecovenant.org/pope_francis, accessed March 20, 2016. 85 Ibid. 86 I have drawn some of these comments from online discussions of the Encyclical. See for example Jimmy Akins analysis at http://www.catholic.com/blog/jimmy-akin/pope-francis%E2%80%99s-environ mental-encyclical-13-things-to-know-and-share.Accessed March 20, 2016. 87 Jürgen Moltmann, Science and Wisdom translated by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 6. 88 Ibid., p. 15. 89 Ibid., p. 34. 90 Richard Maposa,“The African Church and Development,” in Elias Kifon Bongmba, ed. The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 424–437. 91 UN Development Programme, Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 48. 92 Nnimmo Bassey,“Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa—a blunt philanthropic arrow,” Pambazuka, 09-27, no. 321 (2007). 93 Lorraine Chow,“5 Million Nigerians Oppose Monsanto’s Plans to Introduce GMO Cotton and Corn,” EcoWatch, March 29, 2016. See http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/29/monsantos-gmo-cotton-corn-nig eria/. Accessed April 1, 2016. I thank my colleague at Religious Studies Review, Maya Rein, for calling my attention to this account. 94 My remarks here are taken from a Keynote Lecture I delivered at the University of Zambia and Justo Mwale University in 2016.

520

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Page numbers in italic represent fgures, while page numbers in bold represent tables. Abraham 492 Accra Conference (1989) 91, 194 Acemoglu, Daron 235 Achebe, Chinua 40, 335 activism 93 Ad gentes divinitus 12, 27, 249, 258 Adalbert 381, 473 Adam, David 62 Adekalun, Adewale 76 Adeyemo, Tokunbo 434 Adogame, Afe 325 Adoukonou, Barthélemy 255 Aedesius 266 Afan, Mawuto Roger 255–256 affrmation 152 Affrmation of the World Evangelical Fellowship (1999) 46 Africa 162–163, 165, 179, 202, 226, 235, 239, 247, 383, 386–387, 435, 474–475; and aid 162–163, 235–236, 516; Christian momentum in 226; Christology in 417–420; Francophone 256; looting 385, 394; post-colonial 229–231; pre-colonial 152 Africae Munus 259 Africae Terrarum (Paul IV) 250, 393 African Apostolic Church (AAC) 348–349 African authors 335–336 African Biblical Hermeneutics forum 98 African biblical scholarship 62 African Charismatic Expressions of Christianity 153 African Christianity 65–66, 79–80, 153–155, 158–159, 195, 197, 202, 205, 216, 235, 238, 251, 282, 290, 343, 348, 351, 401, 421, 425–426, 433;

conceptualizations of 64; history of 195–196, 281, 339; importance of 151–153 African Council project 251–253 African Cry (Ela) 127 African Diaspora 66n6 African ecumenical ecclesiology 218 African epistemological systems 31 African feminism 85, 87–89, 95–97; and the Bible 95 African Independent Churches (AICs) 12, 17, 33, 55n19, 60, 153–154, 158, 215, 346, 401, 424, 431, 434, 485; Christology 423–425; history 347–349; theology of 349–355, 404–405 African Independent Pentecostal Church 140 African Inland Mission 506–510 African Instituted Church Theology 349 African liturgical music 33–34 African philosophy 26, 30–32, 35–39, 41, 60; compared to theology 29 African Popes 19, 445–446 African Protestantism 61, 98 The African Reformation (Anderson) 158 African religions 15, 62–66, 152, 336–337, 352–353, 434, 439n25; dialogues with 79; and sexuality 367; as source for Christianity 63; see also African Traditional Religion (ATR) African Religions and Philosophy (Mbiti) 510 African scholars 41, 160, 297 African spirituality 12 African studies 41 African Synod of Bishops 12 African theologians 57–58, 63, 66n1, 79–80, 98, 210, 232, 255–256, 287, 324, 330, 340, 391–392, 419; women as 89, 92, 256, 327; see also individual theologians

521

Index of names and subjects African theology 3, 30–32, 35, 39, 53, 57, 60–61, 63, 65–66, 67nn8–9, 77–78, 108, 126, 131, 187, 194, 205, 214, 247–248, 254, 257, 259, 324, 338, 341, 347, 351, 367–369, 375–377, 379, 404, 409n2, 430, 509; attitudes to traditional religions 75; compared to philosophy 29; defning 58–59; and postcolonialism 335, 338, 377; sources for 59–60; see also African Independent Churches (AICs) African Theology (Bujo) 75 African Theology (Martey) 257 African thought 27 African Traditional Religion (ATR) 297, 336, 420; defning 73–74; dialogues with 75–76, 81–82; missionary attitudes towards 74–75, 78, 152, 336–338, 351, 426; and salvation 77; see also African religions African Union 157, 165, 393; see also Organization of African Unity (OAU) Africans, status of 153–154 The Africans (Mazrui) 158 Africa’s Commitment 323 Agbiji, Obaji M. 236 Agenda 2063:The Africa We Want 8, 157–158, 165, 393 Agre, Bernard 53 Agrippinus 447 Aguilar, M. I. 113–114 Ahikire, Josephine 87 Ahlberg, B. M. 373 Aigbe, Sunday 305 Akamba 22, 503, 506–509 Alexander 413 All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) 11, 30, 58, 157, 160, 194, 197, 212–214, 265 All Together in Dignity (ATD) 16, 358, 361, 363, 365 altersovereignty 124 Amanze, James N. 77 Ambrose 487 American Academy of Religion 98 Amoris Laetitia 390 Anabaptists 388–389 anawim 240 ancestor cults 75, 350, 487 ancestral memorials 21, 487, 489–490 Anderson,Allan 158, 349–351, 405 Anderson, Walter Truet 402 Anglican Church 136–141, 145, 489, 506 Angola 348 animism 343n4 Annual Assembly of the Botswana Council of Churches (1997) 77 Anselm 131, 387 antagonistic theology 122, 126–130 Anthony of Egypt 433

Anthony (saint) 494 Anthropos 480 Antonio, Edward 128 Anwarite Clementine 495 apartheid 106–107, 109–112, 115, 116n4, 117n27, 118n59, 125, 127, 132n17 apocalyptic literature 505, 507, 510 Apostolic Constitutions 484–485, 488 Apostolic Council of Jerusalem 51–52, 56n27 The Apostolic Tradition 481 Appiah, Kwame 198, 337 Arian controversy 413 Aristotle 20, 463, 468 Arius 413–414 Ark of the Covenant 265–266 Arnfred, S. 372 Arrupe, Pedro 6, 50, 55n19 Asamoah-Gyadu, Kwabena 350, 353, 405 àse 130 Association of Evangelicals in Africa (AEA) 282–284 Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar 13 Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) 22, 393, 489 Athanasius 433, 453–454 Augustine of Canterbury 483, 489 Augustine (Saint) 18, 35, 122–123, 343–344n4, 370–371, 433, 452–453, 467, 482, 487, 489, 509 Aurelius 454–455 Avis, Paul 216 Awinongya 252 Awolalu, J. O. 73–74 Ayittey, George 227 baby-doom generation 155–156, 166n15 Bakiga-Banyankore 38–39 Balcomb, Anthony 123 Baluba 472 Banana, Canaan S. 349 Banda, Kamuzu 176 Bantu 38–39, 487–488 baptism 81, 271–272, 449, 452, 454–455, 466, 473; see also re-baptism Barclay, William 76 Barrett, David B. 158 Barth, Karl 431, 506 Bediako, Gillian 337 Bediako, Kwame 75, 337, 340, 420, 434, 510 Beetham, T.A. 195 Benedict, Ssettuuma 76 Benedict XVI (pope) 20, 259, 389–390, 467 Benin Republic 490 Berlin Conference 195, 204, 384 Beta Israel (felasha) 266 Beyond 139 Biafra 203

522

Index of names and subjects the Bible 12, 60–62, 155, 159–160, 284, 326, 354, 375, 408–409; and African theology 59–60, 349, 368, 403; decolonizing 94; and ecotheology 293–294; and evangelism 284–286; and feminism 95, 129; literalistic interpretations of 61–62, 405, 407; as priority 293; role of 4, 401–402, 407; as talisman 404; translations of 60, 153, 195–196, 349, 405–406, 506; see also specifc books biblical exegesis 161, 164 biblical philosophy 40 Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs 11, 214 Biko, Steve 105–109, 111, 127 Bimwenyi, Oscar 255 Biwott, Nicholas 140 Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity 127 black identity 107–108, 116, 119n83 black theology 105–106, 110–111, 114–116, 117n9, 117n21, 118n42, 119n83, 126–127, 194, 205, 339, 354, 369, 403, 409;American 106–108, 113, 117n9, 118n40, 119n83 Blyden, Edward Wilmont 3–4 Boesak,Allen 105–107, 109–110, 113, 115 Bond, Patrick 384 Bongmba, Elias 11, 126, 130, 218, 227, 436 Book of Enoch 265, 267 Book of Jubilees 265, 267 Boon, Michael 474 Born of Lament (Katongole) 239 Bosch, David J. 113 Botswana Christian Council (BCC) 82 Boulaga, Fabien Eboussi 4, 12, 22, 242, 251, 256, 503, 510–511 Bouyer, Louis 482–483 Brand, Gerrit 18, 429–430 Bright, Jake 231 Brinkmann, Martien 217 Budde, Michael 231–232 Building the Church as Family of God (Healey) 326–327 Bujo, Bénézet 75, 248, 255–256, 330 Bujo-Ilunga project 255–256 Burkina Faso 360 Burns, J. Patout 447 Burundi 112 Buthelezi, M. 108 Cameroon 504 Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary 504 capital 237 Caritas in Veritate 390 Cecilian 450–452, 455 Celestial Church of Christ 485–486 Centesimus Annus 390 Cesaire, Aimé 343n1 Chad 203 Charismatic Pentecostal churches 405, 431

Chidester, David 336 Chike, Chigor 406 Chiluba, Frederick 125, 132n18 Chima, Alex 37 China, and evangelization 45 Chipenda, Jose B. 197 Chirac, Jacques 385 Chiti, Leonard 183–184 Christ-event 49 Christian communities 121 Christian Health Associations 357 Christian Institute of Southern Africa 127, 131 Christian National Education 125 Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction (Mugambi) 158–159, 161 A Christian View of Politics in Kenya (NCCK) 8, 139 Christianity 78, 121, 129, 151, 159, 342, 408; Africanizing 78, 251, 347, 352, 368, 415, 435, 462; colonial 128; diversity of 64–65, 406; early 123, 125, 195, 206n2, 211, 266–267, 281, 283, 339, 370–371, 374, 412–413, 415, 443–455; ecological reform of 295; and social change 224; tabot 266–267, 271 Christology 17–18, 53, 81, 268, 313, 368, 412–414, 420–421, 509–510 The Church and the Modern Word 467 The Church We Want 259, 330–331 A Church without Walls 237 churches 158, 184–185, 213, 218, 236–237; Ethiopian 272–273 Cicero 463 Cimperman, Maria 240 Circle conferences 91 Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (Circle) 7, 14, 90–93, 95–97, 126, 129, 213, 297–298, 342, 368 The City of God (Augustine) 122–123 civil society 146n4 Clarkson, Shannon 97 Clement of Alexandria 370, 432, 443–445 Clinton, Hillary 85 Cochrane, James R. 168 Cold War 128, 151, 160, 197 Coleman, James 237 Colenso, John William 80 colonialism 17, 112, 198, 265, 297, 341–342, 376, 382, 384, 462, 470, 513; and the church 45; and ecumenism 210–211 colonization 112, 130, 256, 422, 474 common good 175 communal bonds 21 Concepts of God in Africa (Mbiti) 158 Cone, James 117n9, 201 Confrmation 272 conficts: in Africa 384–386; between Christianity and traditional religions 74–75; see also violence

523

Index of names and subjects Congo 381, 384, 392, 487–488, 493–495 Conradie, Ernst 215–216, 514 Constantine 125, 413–414, 446, 451–452 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy 249 contextual theologies 95 Cooper, Frederick 232–233 Copleston, Frederick S. J. 26 Coptic Church 273–274, 339, 431, 483, 490 Cornelius 44 corruption 162, 386, 475 cosmobiology 27 cosmos 28 Council of Arles 452 Council of Boru Meda 13 Council of Hippo Regius 482 Council of Nicaea 413–414 creation: in Genesis 373–374; purpose of 234 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 87 Crouch, André 505 Cullmann, Oscar 507 cultural diversity 47 cultural hermeneutics 95 cultural violence 382 culture 93, 198, 351–352; defning 97; and theology 290 Cyprian 447–449 Cyril 35 da Gallo, Bernado 493, 495 Damas, Léon-Gontran 343n1 Daniel story 142–143 Darwin, Charles 465 David Choir 504–505 Davidson, R. M. 373–374 De Civitate Dei (Augustine) 509 de Gruchy, John 235 DeGruchy, Steve 232 De Lapsis (Cyprian) 448 de Lucca, Lorenzo 493, 495 de Surgy,Albert 486 death 309, 317n19, 464, 474, 508 Debele, Prince 194 Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions 249 decolonization 4, 41, 392, 423; of the Bible 94 Decree on the Missionary Activity 249 Dedji,Valentin 200 Democratic Republic of Congo 357; see also Congo Deneulin, Séverine 225 Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent 12, 248, 256, 259 destiny 473–474 Deus Caritas Est 390 development 229–233, 235–236, 238, 242, 247 Dickson, Kwesi 76, 214, 256 dignity 116, 254–255, 473; recovery of 105–106 Diocletian 449–450

Diop, Alioune 256 Diop, Cheikh Anta 35, 393 discrimination, by the church 378 diseases 185, 352–353; see also specifc diseases divine self-revelation 50 Dodd, C. H. 507 Dogmatic Constitution on the Church 249–250 domestic violence 203 Donatist controversy 19, 123, 446, 450–453, 455 Dowling, Kevin 325 Draper, Jonathan 403 drums 33 Du Bois,Web 59 dualistic faiths 418 Dube, Musa 90, 94, 96, 130 Durkheim, Emile 183 East African Revival Movement 153, 155–156, 160, 424–425 Easter 446 Easterly, William 230 Eastern Orthodox Church 212, 267 Ebola virus 8, 171, 179, 181–182, 237 Ecclesia in Africa 252 ecological crisis 515 ecotheology 14, 292–299 Ecumenical Association of African Theologians (EAAT) 251–252, 256 Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) 12, 91 Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA) 97 ecumenical learning 217–218 ecumenical theology 210, 216–219 ecumenism (oikouménē) 9–10, 210–211, 213–216, 296 Edinburgh Conference (1910) 9, 75, 211–212 Edousa-Eyison, Joseph M.Y. 256 education 357, 359, 360; Ethiopian 275–276 Egbulem 254 Egyptian cosmogony 35 Ekeke, Emeka C. 75 Ekeocha, Obianuju 236 Ekeopara, Chieke A. 75 Ela, Jean-Marc 19, 126–127, 182, 233, 256, 258–259, 330, 436, 513 elders 471 Eliade, Mircea 34–35 Ellingsworth, Paul 214 environmental problems 297 environmentalism 201–202 epidemics 60, 176, 181; see also pandemics; specifc diseases epidemiology 173 eschatology 22, 286, 503–505, 508, 510, 513–514; corporate 509 Ethiopia 12–13, 27, 265–267, 269–274, 277, 281, 483

524

Index of names and subjects Ethiopian Orthodox Churches (EOCs) 12–13, 122, 131, 265, 267–271, 273–276, 339, 431, 483, 490 ethnophilosophy 36–37 Eucharist 21–22, 272, 491 Eucharistic banquet 487–488 Eucharistic Prayers 484–485, 490 Evangelical churches 144 evangelical theology 280–281, 283–285, 287–289 Evangelicals 13–14, 18, 281, 287–288, 415–417, 420, 434; and the Bible 284–286; and politics 289 Evangelii Gaudium 390 evangelization 46–48, 78, 283, 391, 424; and China 45 Evangelum Vitae 390 exclusionary language 179 Exodus, book of 48, 113, 116 Ezana 266–267 Ezra, book of 164 Ezra (prophet) 163 Fabella,Virginia 90 Fackre, Gabriel 287 Fahole-Luke, Edward 61 faith, role of 363 Faith and Order meetings 214 faith-based organizations 16, 294, 357, 359, 361, 365; aid projects 361–362, 363, 364; education 358, 359, 360; health 358, 359 faith healing 185–187; see also health families 362 Fanon, Frantz 59, 335 Farisani, Elelwani 194, 196, 203 Farley, Margaret 97 Farmer, Paul 174, 179–182 Fassin, Didier 171, 176, 181 fasting 312 Felicissimus 448 feminism 85, 88, 97; and the Bible 95; criticisms of 86–87; defned 85–88; and racism 90; and religion 88; see also womanism feminist African theology 90–92, 95–98, 129–130, 369 feminist theology 89–90, 403 Ferguson, Everett 443 Fides et Ratio 390 First-Wave feminism 85–86 Foakes-Jackson, F. J. 445 food 513–514, 516 Ford, David 431 forgiveness 15, 44, 116, 239, 257, 283–284, 291, 306, 309, 311, 322–323, 508 Forrester, D. B. 114 Foucault, Michel 4, 369 France 385 Francis (pope) 47–48, 239–240, 258–259, 327, 330, 364, 389–390, 514–515

Francophone Africa 256 From Cold War to Hot Peace (Parsons) 151 From Liberation to Reconstruction (Mugambi) 158, 160, 163 Frumentius 266 Fukuyama, Francis 339–341 F.W. Goetz, S. J 27 Gaba Pastoral Institute 489–490 Gaise, Roger 255 Gaither, Bill 505 Galtung, Johan 382–383 Ganda 491–492 Garuba, Harry 343n4 Gaudium et Spes 6, 8, 46, 53, 175, 389 Gehman, Richard 282 Gelasius (pope) 19, 445–446 Gemignani, R. 360 Geminius Victor 447–448 gender justice 86 General Committee of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) 9 General Council of Carthage 482, 496n12 Genesis, book of 35, 373–374 genocide 112 Getui, Mary N. 352 Ghana 157, 215, 336 Gifford, Paul 64–65, 159, 235, 405 Gill, C. 463 Gilman, M. R. 372 Gitari, David M. 8, 136–137, 139–143, 145 Gittins,Anthony J. 50–51 globalization 21, 230, 232, 290, 393, 462 gnosis 4 God 114, 151, 158, 180, 240, 271, 283, 299–300, 312–313, 374, 472;Trinitarian view of 47, 180, 283, 285, 414, 444, 453, 473, 483 the Gospel 283–284; adapting 45; proclamation of 49–50 “gospreneurs” 407 Goussikindey, Eugène 256 government authority 137 Gragn,Ahmad, and wars 268 Grand Corruption (Moody-Stuart) 162 Gregory of Nazianzus 392 Gregory the Great 483, 489 Grube, George 464 Guadalupe Davidson, Maria del 108–109 Guatemala 361 Guest Christology (Stinton) 418 Guji Oromo culture 27 Gunda, M. R. 375–376, 404–405 Gunderson, Gary R. 168, 183 Gutiérrez, Gustavo 109, 113–114, 181, 240, 293, 309–310 Gyekye, Kwame 469, 471, 474, 510

525

Index of names and subjects Haddad, Beverly 93 Hadebe, Nontando 331 Haile Selassie 269–270 Haiti 248 Hallman, Niklas 313–315 Halpern, David 369 Hambukushu people 80–81 harmful culturally based practices, activism against 93 Harnack 444 Hartwig, Kari 97 Hastings,Adrian 33, 39, 494 Hauerwas, Stanley 128 Haymanot, Tekle 267 Healey, Joseph 326–327 health 169, 172, 185, 187, 309, 352 health promotion 170 Heaney, Robert 510 Hebga, Meinrad Pierre 253, 255–256 Heggenhougen, Harald 173–174 Hellenistic period 476n4 hermeneutics 112–113, 115, 129, 162, 217, 293, 298, 341, 403; biblical 161, 164, 405; marginality 241 Herod 412 Heslam, Peter S. 238 High God 74 Hildebrandt, Jonathan 281, 283 Hill Collins, Patricia 87 Hindmarsh, Bruce 284, 286 Hinga, Teresia 50 History of the Church in Africa (Hildebrandt) 281 HIV/AIDS 96–98, 171, 176–179, 181, 202–203; fght against 7, 183–184, 288, 475; prevention 173; and public health 8, 10–11 holism 463 Hollenweger, Walter 215–216 Holy Communion/Eucharist 21–22, 272 Holy Spirit 349–351, 354, 425 homophobia 376 Honest Accounts 162–163 hope 240 Hosea son of Nun 48 Hruby, Aubrey 231 Hulet Lidet 13, 269 human beings 180, 225 human bodies 178 hunger/food 514–516 Hyden, Goran 151 hymns 273 Hypatia 35 identity 254–255; black 107–108, 116, 119n83; reaffrmation of 151; tribal 472–473 identity narratives 112–113 ideology of inferiority 127 idolatry 74

Idowu, Bolaji 76, 79–80, 195, 213–214 Ignatius of Loyola (saint) 28, 52 Ilwa, Jildo 342–343 imagination 53 imago Dei 8, 16, 20, 174–175, 179–180, 198, 243, 342, 464–467 inclusivity 198–199 inculturation 5–6, 32–34, 50–52, 54, 55n19, 93–94, 96, 126, 249, 257, 327–328, 368, 387, 393, 489 Inculturation (Benedict) 76 indigenous religions 5; see also African religions; African Traditional Religion (ATR) individualism 172, 174 inequality 177, 179, 235; and health 171, 174 Infections and Inequalities (Farmer) 174 initiation ceremonies 80 insecure modernity theory 186 intellectual smuggling 63 International Feminist Doctoral of Ministry program 97 International Monetary Fund 182, 422 International Movement ATD Fourth World (ATD) 16, 358, 361, 363, 365 intersectional feminism 87 intersectionality 87 The Invention of Africa (Mudimbe) 4 Iozzio, Mary Jo 180 Isaac 492 Isaac, Ephraim 275 Islam 131, 151, 206n4, 297, 369 Israel 48, 112–114 Jacobsen, Douglas 306 jando 80 Jensen, Robin M. 447 Jeremiah (prophet) 114, 142, 161, 466 Jesuits 13, 28, 268; see also Society of Jesus Jesus Christ 13, 18, 48, 50, 114, 126, 159, 161, 241, 269, 285, 304, 306, 314–316, 326, 387–388, 412–413, 415–416, 421–422, 466, 473, 510, 512–514; and inculturation 33, 126 John, book of 258 John Paul II (pope) 21, 49–50, 52, 199, 252–253, 256–257, 342–343, 389–390, 467–468, 475, 490 John XXIII (pope) 389, 467 Jones, Le Roi 119n83 Jones, Serene 97 Josefsson, Ulrik 305–307 Joshua, book of 48 Judaism 265–267, 374, 413, 421, 482–483, 486 Jungmann, Josef 483–484 justice 114, 128, 389 Justicia in Mundo 390 Kabasele-Lumbala, François 256, 488–489 Kagabo, Liboire 256 Kagame,Alexis 4, 12, 37, 76, 248, 256, 469

526

Index of names and subjects Kairos Palestinian movement 111–112 Kairos theology 111, 126–127 Kalilombe, Patrick Augustine 256 Kalu, Ogbu 351 Kamau, John 140 Kanyandago, Peter 256 Kanyoro, Musimbi 86, 89, 91–93, 95, 98 Kaoma, Kapya 367, 376 Karenga, Ron 119n83 Karungi,T.A. B. 202 Kataliko, Archbishop 385 Kato, Byang H. 434 Katongole, Emmanuel 126–128, 218, 236, 239, 324, 330, 340, 342–343, 381, 430, 436, 473 Kaunda, Chammah J. 351 Kealotswe, Obed 351, 404 Kebre Negest (Glory of Kings) 266–267 Kee,A. 105–106, 110 Kelsey, David H. 402 Kenya 136–145, 156, 202, 288 Kenya African National Union (KANU) 138–140, 144–145 Kenya Planters Cooperative Union 142 The Kenya Times 144 Kenyan Anglican Youth Organization (KAYO) 140 Kenyatta, Jomo 138–139, 403 Kenyatta, Uhuru 145 Kibaki, Mwai 138, 145 Kibicho, Samuel 63 Kibwetere, Joseph 506 Kikuyu Conference (1913) 212 Kimpa Vita 348, 423, 435, 493–495 Kinney, John W. 80 Kinoti, Hannah Wangeci 196, 203, 424 Kinshasa 248 Klassen, Walter 388 Kobia, Samuel 198, 214 Kolawole, Mary Ebun Modupe 86 Kongo kingdom 348, 423, 435, 493–495; see also Congo Krapf, J. L. 506 Kroesbergen, Hermen 215 Kuma, Afua 434 Kurgat, Sussy Gumo 79 Kuria, Archbishop 138–140 Kuyper, Abraham 132n17 Ladd, G. E. 306 Lakoff, George 174 Latin 33, 446 Latin America 310 Laudato Sì 259, 390, 514 Laurent, Pierre-Joseph 186 Laurie, Nathan 383 Lausanne Covenant 46 Law Society of Kenya 140–141

leadership 475; church 247–248; importance of 471; postcolonial 130, 227; and religion 8, 151, 289, 436 legitimacy 393 LenkaBula, Puleng 405 Leo XIII (pope) 389 Leslie, Kristen 97 Let the Bishop Speak (Gitari) 141 liberal Christianity 416–417 liberation 109, 118n52, 156, 200, 310; Biblical accounts 48–49, 112–113 liberation Christology 422–423 liberation theology 10, 15, 40–41, 61, 82, 91, 105–106, 108–109, 111, 113–115, 126–127, 182, 196, 205, 207n24, 257, 309–310, 311, 312, 340, 368–369, 436, 492; maleness of 85, 96 life 307 listening 218 A Listening Church (Uzukwu) 330 literacy 289 liturgical inculturation 51 liturgical theology 21–22, 481, 491, 495–496 liturgy 37–38, 51, 480; arguments about 481; Celestial Church 486; Ethiopian 273, 484–485; West Syrian 485, 489; Zairian 12, 253–254, 483, 488–489 Logos 414 Lomas, Jonathan 172 Lonergan, Bernard 29 Lowry, James 61–62 Lubaale, Nicta 241 Lucas,Vincent 80 Ludovic, Lado 179 Lugira, Aloysius 37 Lukau, Alph 215 Luke, book of 258 Lumbala, François Kabasele 21 Lumen Fedei 390 Lumen Gentium 11, 212 Luther, Martin 153 Luz, Ulrich 513 Maathai, Wangari 202 McGregor, David 402–403 Machingura, Crispinah 33 McKenzie, John 465 Maduku, Ignace Ndongala 253 Magesa, Laurenti 37–38, 249, 256, 321, 324, 386, 422–423, 468 Mahebere Qidusan 277 Makhulu, K.W. 77 Malaria 8 Malawi 176–178 Malula, Cardinal 12, 252 Maluleke,Tinyiko Sam 57, 60–63, 116, 119n101, 129, 160, 204–205, 214, 340, 343, 404, 406, 409, 436

527

Index of names and subjects Mana, Kä 198, 218, 256 Mandela, Nelson 59, 106, 160 Mann, Jonathan 173 Manus, Chris 62 Maposa, Richard 516 marginality 11, 224, 240–241 marginalization 9, 21, 89, 98, 108, 116, 130, 171, 173, 178, 181, 197, 234, 416, 418, 437, 475 Mark, book of 258 Mark (saint) 195 Marmot, Sir Michael 170 marriage 370, 375, 377 Marshall, Ruth 124–125 Martey, Emmanuel 257 martyrs 433, 447, 450, 481, 491–493 Mary 13 Maseno, Loreen 93 Mashtwero 82 Masolo, Dismas 510 Masondo, Sibusiso 347–348 Masowe, Johane 407 Masses, prayer for rain 33 Mater et Magistra 389 Matrimony 272 Matsuda, Mari J. 87 Matthew 515; book of 49, 130, 258 Matthew (saint) 266 Matthew the Poor (Matta El-Maskeen) 434 Maya, Juvénal Ilunga 255–256 Mazrui,Ali 153–154, 158, 225, 384 Mbefo, L. N. 470 Mbeki, Thabo 176 Mbiti, John 22, 36–39, 58–61, 63, 67n9, 76, 80, 106–108, 157–158, 204, 213–214, 256, 278, 327, 329, 339, 354, 401, 404, 408–409, 430, 470, 472, 489–490, 503–504, 506–510, 517 memory 200–201 Menkiti, Ifeanyi 470–472 Mensurius 450 Methodist Quadrilateral 292–293 Michael Marmot’s Commission for the Social Determinants of Health 170, 175, 188n14 Michael, Matthew 406, 410n7 millennialism 505–506 Miller, Donald E. 405 Miltiades (Saint/pope) 445–446, 451 ministry, and women 258–259, 261n51 Missel romain pour les dioceses du Zaire 253–254 Missio Dei 305, 342 missionaries 78, 153, 156, 158, 195, 248, 251, 281, 337–338, 348, 414, 418, 426, 470;African 348;Anglican 137–138, 506; attitudes towards 155–156, 159; attitudes towards traditional religions 74–75, 78, 152, 336–338, 351, 426; conferences 212–213; post-missionary events 227–228; and sexuality 367, 372–373; status of 153–154; Swedish Pentecostal 303–305

Mitchell, Bob 238 Mitendo, Nkelenge Hilaire 256 Mizeka, François-Marie Lufuluabo 256 Moa, Iyasu 267 Modiega, David 77 Mofokeng, Takatso 403 Moghalu, Kingsley 232 Moi, Daniel 8, 137–139, 141–143, 145 Moltmann, Jürgen 515 monasteries/monastic fgures 267–269, 275 Moody-Stuart, George 162 Moore, B. 106 Moreau, Scott 510 Mosala, Itumeleng 61, 111, 119n99, 403 Moses 48, 197, 463 Motlhabi, Mokgethi B. G. 77–78, 105, 117n10, 127 Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments 505–506 Moyo, Dambisa 236 Mozorewa, Gwinyai 37 Mpongo, Laurent 256 Mudimbe,V.Y. 4, 510 Mugabe, Henry J. 76–77, 158–159 Mugambi, Jesse 61, 122, 126, 128–129, 131, 194–195, 197–198, 200, 203, 205, 214, 218, 339, 403, 510 Muge, Bishop 139–140 Mulago,Vincent 4, 12, 76, 248, 255 multinational corporations 385, 394 Mundua,Victor 256 muntu 472, 511 Mushete,Alphonse Ngindu 58, 255 Muslim invasions, 7th C. 77 Mutahi, P.T. 375 Mutisya 417 Muzorewa, G. 58 Muzorewa, G. H. 206n2 Mveng, Engelbert 19, 251, 255, 436 Mwambazambi, Kalemba 256 Mwaura, Philomena Njeri 93, 97 Mwazha, Paul 348 Myers, Bryant L. 237 myths 35, 74, 332–333n24 Nadar, Sarojini 86–87, 90, 92–93, 405 Narayan, authors, Deepa 233 narrative theology 15, 95, 320, 323 Nasimiyu,Anne 37, 327 Nasimiyu-Wasike,Anne 418, 421–422 National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) 8, 139–140, 144, 146n7 national sovereignty 156 Ndung’u, Nahashon 78–79 Ndyabahika, Odomaro 256 Negritude 41, 53, 248, 335–336, 342, 343n1, 392 Nehemiah 128, 161–162, 164

528

Index of names and subjects Nehemiah (prophet) 162–163, 196–197, 203–204, 208n58 neo-colonization 422, 470 neo-liberal capitalism 230, 234, 436 New Code of Canon Law 252–253 New Partnership for Africa’s Development 9 “New Religious Movements” (NRMs) see African Independent Churches (AICs) New Testament 62, 123, 163, 197, 307, 506, 512; inculturation in 51–52 New Testament Eschatology in an African Background (Mbiti) 22, 59, 506–507, 517 Newer Pentecostal Churches (NPCs) 425 The Next Africa (Bright and Hruby) 231 Ngong, David 218–219 Ngoyi,Albertine Tshibilondi 256 Nicene Creed 414 Niebuhr, Richard 200–201 Nigeria 203, 436 Nigerian Pentecostalism 124–125 Niles, D.T. 113 Njoroge, Nyambura 90–91, 129 Njoya, Timothy 139 Nkrumah, Kwame 157, 336–337 Nlend, Hebga 12 Nnimmo, Bassey 386 No Shortcuts to Progress (Hyden) 151 Noble, Ivana 211, 216–217 Nolan, Albert 240 North Africa 77, 125, 343–344n4, 415, 443, 481, 487 Nostra Aetate 6, 52 Novatus 448 Nsapo, Kalamba 256 Ntakarutimana, Emmanuel 255 Nthamburi, Zablon 195 Ntumba, M. Tshiamalenga 256 Nyamiti, Charles 37, 59, 76, 126, 256, 418, 420–421

Onyewuenyi, I. C. 35 Oppenheimer, Jennifer Ward 231 oppression 54, 62, 78, 85–90, 92, 94–96, 108–110, 112–116, 138, 161, 182–183, 200, 236, 287, 305, 310, 383, 417, 422, 426 oral theology 329, 401 Ordination 272 Organisation of African Instituted Churches (OAIC) 347, 424 Organization of African Unity (OAU) 155, 157, 160; see also African Union Origen 343–344n4, 401, 413, 432–433, 445, 484, 490 Orobator, Emmanuel 324–325, 329–330, 391, 425–426 Oromo metaphysics 28 Oromo ritual for cattle 28 Osborn, Eric 443 Oschoffa, Samuel 485 Ottawa Charter 170 Otten, Bernard J. F. 445 Owen,Walter Edwin 195 Ozankom, Claude 255

Octagesima Adveniens 389–390 Oduyoye, Mercy Amba 7, 59, 61, 91, 93–94, 96–98, 194, 213, 301n24, 404 Ogbonnaya, Joseph 233–234 Ogundipe-Leslie, M. 202 oikouménē 211; see also ecumenism (oikouménē) Okambawa, Wilfred Kolorunko 256 Okello, Daudi 342–343 Okoye, James 59 Okullu, Henry 8, 65, 139–140, 410n6 Okure,Teresa 129, 326, 330 Old Testament 55n19, 62, 113, 254, 289, 310, 368, 465–466 Olopade, Dayo 230 Oluka, Odera 36 Olukoshi, Adebayo 227 Omenyo, Cephas 215

Pacem in Terris 389 Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians (1977) 53, 77–78 Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians (1996) 92 Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians (2002) 92, 97 Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians (2007) 92 Pan African Conference of Third World Theologians (2013) 92 Pan-African Congress (1919) 155 Pan-African Congress (1945) 155 Pan-African Congress (1994) 155 pandemics 171, 181; see also epidemics; specifc diseases papal Bulls 256–257 Parable of the Two Brothers 320–322 Parsons, Sir Anthony 151 Paschal Mystery 481, 495 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World 249 patriarchy 9, 89, 94, 130, 202–203, 375 patristic theology 18 Paul (saint) 52, 123, 154, 165, 408, 420, 464, 495, 507 Paul VI (pope) 12, 34, 52–53, 250–251, 254, 364, 389, 393 P’Bitek, Okot 63, 164–165 peace 383, 388 peacebuilding story 322–324 peacekeepers 384–386 peacemaking 385–386

529

Index of names and subjects peacemaking theology 381, 387–388, 391–394 Peires, J. B. 505 Pelagius 454 Penance 272 Pénoukou, Efoé-Julien 256 Pentecostalism 11, 124, 154, 215–216, 228, 278, 306–308, 313, 317n2, 337, 349, 351, 404–405, 425; and the Bible 405, 407; Evangelical 286; Nigerian 124–125; Swedish 303–306 performance 480, 484, 492 Peri Archon (Origen) 445 persona 20, 463, 468 personhood 19–20, 172–173, 180–181, 462–466, 468–472, 475–476 Peter Lombard 387 Peter (saint) 44–45, 51–52, 412 philosophy 26, 37–38 Phiri, Isabel Apawo 86–90, 93, 97, 351 pilgrimages 34 Pius XI (pope) 389 Pius XII (pope) 54–55n4 Plaatje, Sol 335 Plato 464 Pliny the Younger 491 Plotinus 35 Pobee, John 37, 60, 63–64, 67n11, 213, 217, 219, 327 political theology 128, 493–494 pollution 202 polygamy 75, 351 Populorum Progressio 364, 389–390 post-missionary churches 227–228, 242 postcolonial Christianity 128, 282, 339, 341–342 Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of The Bible (Dube) 130 Postcolonial hermeneutics 95 postcolonial leadership, and crises 130 postcolonial states 226–228, 236, 242, 384; and development 229–231 postcolonial theology 15–16, 337, 341–342, 343n3 postcolonialism 4, 57, 112, 128, 130, 197, 343n3, 513; and African Christian theology 335 postmodernism 57, 86, 288 Poucouta, Paulin 256 poverty 14, 177, 182, 233, 288, 339, 357–359, 362; aid projects 361–362, 363, 364 power, privatization of 130 Practicing Reconciliation (Orobator) 324–325 prayer 309 Prayers of African Religion (Mbiti) 489 pre-colonial theology 337 pre-colonial thinking 337, 371–373, 375–377, 379 preschool project 361 prophecy 350, 423 proverbs 40, 329–330, 471 public health 8–9, 169–171, 174–176, 179, 183, 185, 359

public theology 7, 122, 125–126, 129 Punt, J. 405–408 Qibat unctionists 13, 269 Quadragesimo Anno 389 questions 301n24; on African Theology 257; on Christian faith 57; on democracy/freedom 154; Taylor’s 53 queuing system 139–140 Quijano, Aníbal 211 Rabalago, Lethebo 215 racism 110, 115, 127, 130, 230, 247; and feminism 90 Radford Ruether, Rosemary 89 Rahner, Karl 171–172, 489 rape 378 re-affrmation 153 re-baptism 446–447, 449–450, 452; see also baptism reality 35 reconstruction 161, 196, 199 Redegeld, H. 361–362, 364 Redemptoris Missio 52 refection 293 Reinikka, R. 360 relationships, importance of 320–322 religion 168, 339, 352–353, 426; and leadership 151, 289 repentance 109, 116 Rerum Novarum 389 revelations 407 revisionist theologies 91 Richard, Pablo 61 Richards, Paul 237 Ricoeur, Paul 35, 113–114 Ritchie, J. 377 rituals 30, 38, 158, 470, 473–474, 480; for cattle 28; and drums 33 Robeck, Cecil 215–216 Robinson, James A. 235 Rockhill, Beverly 172 Rordorf, Willy 491 Rossi, Maria Mercedes 183 Rurinjah, Simon 322 Russell, Letty 97 Rwanda 21, 33, 112, 203, 381, 384 Rwandan Genocide 21, 203, 384, 392, 473, 475 Rwiza, Richard 256 sacraments 271–272 sacredness, of time 39 The Sacrifce of Africa (Katongole) 127–128 Sacrosanctum Concilium 484 sage school of philosophy 36–37 St. Paul’s University 213 salvation 18–19, 76–77, 156, 200, 285, 306, 307, 308–311, 317n18, 352, 429–430, 432, 435, 437;

530

Index of names and subjects motifs 48–49; spiritual understanding 432–444; Western views of 431; women 436 Salve Antoniana 494 Samartha, S. J. 408 Sankey, Ira D. 504–505 Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos (Sankey) 504–505 Sanneh, Lamin 349 Sanon,Anselme Titianma 256 Sawyerr, Harry 58 Schaff, Phillip 443–445, 447 Schism and Renewal in Africa (Barrett) 158 Schleiermacher, Frederich 431 Schoepf, Brooke G. 179 Schreiter, Robert 325, 415 Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth 90, 94 Schwartz, R. M. 406 Scillitan Martyrs 433 Second African Synod 15 Second-Wave feminism 85–86 See-Judge-Act model 293, 320, 326 Segun, Gbadegesin 474 Selama,Aba 266, 273 self-affrmation 162, 165 Semporé, Sidbe 255 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 343n1, 392 sermons 136, 139, 143–144; expository 141–142 Setiloane, Gabriel 63, 338 sexuality 16–17, 288, 369–374, 376–379, 417, 436; missionary attitudes towards 367–368, 375 shalom 387 shame 78–79, 127 Shelby, T. 107–108 Shilling, Chris 178 Shona 76–77 Shorter, Aylward 51 Simpson, Sparrow 449–450 sin 77, 309, 314, 317n19 slave trade 256–257, 495 Smit, Dirk 217 Snook, Lee 354 social determinants of health 170 Social Reconstruction, and Theology (Mugambi) 204 Society of Biblical Literature 98 Society of Jesus 28; see also Jesuits socio-political engagement 305, 317n3 Socrates 463–464 sola Scriptura 284, 401–402, 404, 406–409 Solicitudo Rei Socialis 390 solidarity 182 Song of Lawino (p’Bitek) 164–165 songs 155–156, 315, 504–505 Sost Lidet 13, 269 soteriology 17, 53, 218–219;African 437;African Pentecostal 307, 308, 311; holistic 313–316 soul 465–466; and personhood 464 South Africa 8, 18, 40, 105–107, 110–112, 115, 125, 157, 160, 176–177, 204, 215, 297, 335,

436; and ecotheology 292–299; Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 201 South African Theology of Reconstruction 204 South Sudan 157 spiritual beings 74 Sportrio 199 Ssettuuma, Benedict 257 Stinton, Diane B. 418 storytelling 15, 30, 201, 323–324 structural violence theory 177, 383 Subsidiarity 393 superiority, perceptions of 45 supernatural powers 353 surveys 358 Susenyos (emperor) 268 Svensson, J. 360 Swart, Ignatius 236 Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) 304 Swedish Pentecostals 15 symbiotic theology 122, 123–126 symbolic healing 185–187 symbolic theology 401 symbolism 35, 36 symbols 35, 36 Symposium of Bishops 250–251 Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) 252, 393 Synod of Carthage 447–448 Synod of Rome 452 Tahdiso 277 Talking about God in Practice 305 Tamale, Sylvia 16–17, 369, 371, 378 Tanzania 471 Target (Okullu) 8, 139 Taylor, John V. 53 Tempels, Placide 37, 74–76, 248, 430, 469, 474 Tennent,Timothy 415, 419 Tertio Millennio Adveniente 257 Tertullian 35, 283, 343–344n4, 370, 401, 414, 444–445, 447, 481–482, 490–491 Tewahedo doctrine 13, 269, 271 Tewodros, Emperor 13, 269 Theodosius 125 Theological Colloquia on Church, Religion, and Society in Africa (TCCRSA) 330 theological education 289–290 Theological Education by Extension (TEE) movement 214, 290 theology 37, 61, 89–90, 121, 122, 131, 168, 187, 247, 280, 292–294, 300n1, 310, 338, 340, 343–344n4, 369, 401–402, 463, 466, 471; as a weapon 115, 125, 338; early history of 27 Theology in the Context of World Christianity (Tennent) 419 theology of abundant life 224, 241–242, 310–311

531

Index of names and subjects theology of culture 225–226 theology of development 11, 225–226, 228–229, 232–233, 235, 238–242 theology of history 225 theology of hope 224 theology of inculturation 34, 126, 129, 196, 489 theology of marginality 224, 240–241 theology of reconstruction 9, 128–129, 160, 162, 164, 194–197, 199–200, 202, 207nn23–44, 214 theology of sexuality 17 theology of sin/conversion 226 Theory of Social Involvement (Aigbe) 305 Things Fall Apart (Achebe) 40 Third-Wave feminism 86, 92 Third Way Theology (Balcomb) 123 Thomas Aquinas 20, 431, 467 Thornton, John K. 493 Tibebu 266 Tienu, Tite 61 time 507; concepts of 38; terms for 38–39 Togarasei, Lovemore 405 Towards an Indigenous Church (Bolaji) 214 traditions 408 transformation 94 triadic cosmos systems 28 trust, importance of 361 Tshibangu, Tharcisse 248, 255 Tsimpo, C. 360 tuberculosis 171 Turner, Bryan S. 178 Turner, Harold W. 350 Turner, H. L. 505 Tutu, Desmond 9, 18, 53, 59, 64, 197, 201, 403, 430, 436, 469–470, 472

Villa-Vicencio, Charles 194, 203–204, 436 Villumstad, S. 194, 196 violence 382–384, 387, 473; and Christianity 382, 475; increases in 386; structural 177, 383; see also conficts vitalogy 34 Volf, Miroslav 234–235 Vondey, Wolfgang 215 Vos, Margriet 482

Ubuntu philosophy 8–9, 20, 29, 30, 37, 40–41, 181, 242, 342, 386, 393, 430, 469–470 Udoh, Enyi Ben 418 Uganda 203, 360, 433, 474, 505–506 Ugandan Martyrs 12, 22, 34, 249, 433, 491–492 Ukpong, Justin 62, 346–347, 368 Unction of the Sick 272 Unitatis Redintegratio 11, 212 United Nations Decade for Women (1975-85) 88 universities 213 U. S.Africa Command (AFRICOM) 386 Uzukwu, Elochukwu Eugene 218, 255, 330, 432 Vähäkangas, Auli 98 Van de Loo, Father, S. J. 27–28 Vanneste, Alfred 248–249 Vatican II 11–12, 20, 27, 46, 52, 175, 183, 211–212, 247, 249, 253, 387, 467, 484 Vaughan 372 Ventura, Maria-Christina 202 victimizations, perceptions of 107–109, 119n101 Victor (pope) 19, 445–446

Wachege, Patrick N. 256 Wainwright, G. 402 Waliggo, John Mary 256, 257, 324, 326, 468, 491–492 Walker, Alice 86 Walls, A. 406 Walzer, Michael 169, 184 Wariboko, Nimi 124–125, 238 Warren, M.A. C. 54 Waruta, Douglas 412–413 Wasukuma Hutangaza Injili 321 Werner, Dietrich 213 West, Cornel 118n50 West, Gerald 67n12, 94, 403–404, 407 Westermann, Claus 387, 465 Westermann, Dietrich 75 Western arrogance 78 What Is Not Sacred? African Spirituality (Magesa) 37 Wiesner-Hanks, M. E. 371 The Will to Arise 92 Williams, Delores 90 Williams, Juliet 87 Wilson, Monica 21, 480 Wilson, William 443–444 witchcraft 12, 353, 404 witches/wizards 39 Wodon, Quentin 358, 360–361 wold qib 13, 269 Wolf, Hans 216 womanism 86; see also feminism womanist theology 90 women 17, 20, 66, 377–378, 421; and AICs 351; gospel accounts of 258, 416; lack of opportunities for 96–97; marginalization of 21, 87–88, 91, 95, 177, 381, 437, 475; and ministry 258–259, 261n51; and philosophy 468; salvation 436; and sexuality 370–372, 375–378;Third World 90 World Bank 182, 422 World Council of Churches (WCC) 9–10, 30, 46–47, 54, 91, 97, 210–212, 219n4, 265, 347; Theological Education Fund (TEF) 213 World Health Organization (WHO) 169, 199, 382, 485 World Missionary Conference (1910) 9, 75, 211–212 World War I 153 World War II 153–154

532

Index of names and subjects worship 34 Worship as Body Language (Uzukwu) 490 Wresinski, Joseph 16, 358, 361, 364–365 Wynne, Ronald 73, 80–82

Yestegalij 13, 269 Yoder, John Howard 388 Yong,Amos 124, 309, 313 Yoruba cosmology 130

xenophobia 436–437 Xhosa nation 505

Zaire 252 Zairian Rite 12, 253–254, 483, 488–489 Zambia 125, 215 Zemene Mesafnt 13 Zimbabwe 76–77, 348, 354, 516 Žižek, Slavoj 385

Yacob, Zara 267–268, 277 Yamamori, Tetsunao 405 Yared 273

533

INDEX OF BIBLICAL PASSAGES AND CITATIONS

Old Testament Genesis: 1 367–368; 1:1–2:1–25 43n51; 1:1–2.4a 373–375; 1:26–7 373–374, 464; 1:27 375, 469; 1:27–28 198; 1:28 466; 2:7 465–466; 2:23 468; 2:24 375; 2:27 468; 9:1–7 119n82; 9:6 119n82; 22:5–8 492 Exodus 112–114, 128, 161, 196; 3:6 112; 3:9 113; 3:15 484; 33:17–23 463 Leviticus: 12 374; 15 374; 18 374; 20 374 Deuteronomy, 14 406–407 Ezra: 4:1 199; 9:2 199

Nehemiah: 2:11–20 161; 2:18 197, 206; 2:20 208n58; 4:11 199; 6:15 161; 7:1–5 203; 7:6 199; 9:2 199; 9:24 199; 15 199; 30 199 Psalms: 8:4–8 465; 36:2 466; 42:1 466; 63:1 466; 86:9 489; 88:16 466; 139:14 465 Ecclesiastes, 12:7 466 Sirach, 44:1–15 484–485 Isaiah: 9:6 387; 53:5 387; 58:6 311; 58:6–11 312 Jeremiah: 4:14 466; 5:23 466; 17:9 466 Daniel, 3:25 424

New Testament Matthew: 1:21 283; 1:23 49; 5 464; 5–7 197; 5:9 387–388; 5:13–14 391; 5:13–16 152, 164, 382; 5:13–17 196; 6:24 471; 6:33 336; 6:34 299; 7:12 470; 7:21–29 159; 8:27 412; 9:35f 141; 10:28 466; 11:28–30 466; 11:30 466; 12:12 465; 12:30 471; 13:33 382; 16:13 412; 16:131–20 51; 18:1–4 152; 19:4 375; 21:31 473; 25:31–46 50, 464, 512–513; 25:40 317n4; 26:41 466; 27–28 261n51; 28:16–20 283; 28:19 45; 28:20 240 Mark: 1:15 240; 1:21–28 159; 5:41 93; 7:18 406–407; 11:30 465; 12:28–30 205; 14:38 466; 15–16 261n51; 16:15 45 Luke: 1:31–33 48; 1:53 240; 1:79 388; 2:3 211; 2:52 471; 4:16–20 199; 4:17–21 181; 4:18 115, 241, 287; 4:18–19 115, 422; 4:20–28 115; 4:22 115; 4:28 115; 6:20–21 240; 6:26 465; 7:49 412; 9:9 412; 10:30–37 474; 14:2–11 199; 15:11–32 321; 15:31 322; 15:32 322; 16:19–31 464; 18 240; 20–21 382; 23–24 261n51; 23:46 465–466 John: 1:1–5 313; 1:4 49; 1:12 284; 1:14 49; 1:18 463; 2:21 466; 3 196; 4:12 463; 6:10–3 422; 9

284; 10:10 240–241, 303, 316, 318n28, 430, 466; 10:13–15 242; 13:34–35 153; 14:6 313; 14:15–31 466; 14:27 388; 16:33 388; 17:21 211, 473; 19–20 261n51; 20:19 388; 20:21 388; 20:26 388 Acts: 1:8 45; 2:1–13 45; 4:12 285; 8 266; 8:26–38 281; 9 51; 10:34–35 44; 10:36–43 44; 15:1 45; 22:20 481; 25–28 154 Romans: 1:7 388; 1:16 284; 3:4 465; 5:12 317n19, 465; 6:1–4 466; 6:9 317n19; 7:5 462; 7:23 466; 8:29 466; 12:1–2 491–492, 495–496; 12:9–10 495; 13:1 407; 13:1–5 154; 15:5 495; 19 466; 21–23 462 1 Corinthians: 1:3 388; 3:17 466; 4:49 465; 6:19 466; 6:20 466; 7:9 374; 8:5–6 420; 9:19–23 152; 10:31 466; 12:27 466; 13:1–13 321; 13:13 151; 15:1–4 408; 15:49 466; 15:55 317n19 2 Corinthians: 1:2 388; 3:6 432; 3:18 466; 4:16 466; 5:17 284 Galatians: 1:1 465; 1:3 388; 1:12 465; 2:1–19 45; 2:20 416; 3:28 198; 11 465

534

Index of biblical passages and citations Ephesians: 1:2 388; 1:19–22 416; 2:14–17 388 Philippians: 1:3 388; 1:20 466; 2:1–3 153; 2:5–7 50; 3:20–21 416; 4:7 315; 4:8–9 152, 165 Colossians: 2:8 465; 3:1–3 416; 22 465 1 Thessalonians: 1:1 388; 5:23 464 2 Thessalonians, 1:2 388 1 Thessalonians, 5:23 464 2 Timothy: 2:2 289; 3:16 284; 2:2 289; 3:16 284

Titus, 1:4 388 Hebrews: 1:1–3 285; 4:15 49; 9:27 465; 10:23 240 James: 2:26 466; 5:17 465 1 Peter, 1:2 388 2 Peter, 1:2 388 1 John, 5:6–12 284 Jude, 1:3 287 Revelation, 1:5 481

535