Christianity in Africa - Research Paper Example

Table of Contents I. Introduction……………………………………………………………. 2 II. The Historical and Moral Premise………………………………….. 3 III. The Culmination of African Christianity…………………………..... 6 IV. Conclusions………………………………………………………….. 10 I. Introduction A new kind of apologetics is turning out to be the latest thing in the continuing debate regarding the need for an acculturated Christianity in Africa. The term ‘fashionable’ is an indication for vigilance, as Oscar Cullmann (1988) once mentioned, when a thing becomes fashionable it will eventually be generalized. Its argument is that Christianity is not unfamiliar to the Africans. The apologists are divided into two distinct schools of thought and endeavor to validate their argument in two different ways, which can be referred to as historical and moral. The former claims from the once-thriving Christianity in the northern part of Africa, which brought into being eminent prelates as well as theologians whereas the latter specifies the almost meticulous adoption of customary hospitality in majority of African cultures and the existence, before the missionary evangelization, of a criterion of morality as great as that which is expressed in the Christian proclamation of truths, particularly as indicated in the Gospels, of the realm. Nonetheless, only some thinkers consider either of these arguments persuading (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). The argument of this essay that Christianity is not at all unfamiliar to the Africans draws on contentions dissimilar from these. This essay assumes an accord of understanding on the dissimilarity between Christianity as given and Christianity as a perceptible institutional system which has generated creedal proclamations, clerical commandments and liturgical set of rules. Christianity per se is a genuine human way of life which originates from Christ’s life in humans as the elemental gift to human life by God. Otherwise, it would be extremely complicated to express that Christianity as a structured religious institution is not unfamiliar to Africa in similarity to the Western world whose civilization became almost tantamount with Christianity. II. The Historical and Moral Premise An examination of history demonstrates that North African Christianity which created Augustine, Cyprian, Origen and others ‘between A.D. 180 and 430 was a hybrid colonialist’ (Sundkler & Steed 2000, 49) impregnated by Roman imperialism. Both expired almost at the same time. The explanations why this particular Christianity was brief in existence would be quite informative for current church heads in Africa: it was unsuccessful in infiltrating African core metaphor; and it used up its existence on internal conflicts, a number of which did not approach the special gospel virtues (Sundkler & Steed 2000). The case is dissimilar for the Coptic Church. Even though it can be traced back to the apostolic era and dates back its beginning to St. Mark, the earliest bishop of Alexandria, it was originally a Jewish Christianity situated in Egypt. Neither time nor energy was left unused in cleansing this church of its Jewish character and planting its birth in the Coptic soil. Its acculturation into the Coptic culture, and also the rendition of the Bible into the indigenous language of the Coptic population, followed quickly. Primarily for this rationale, it effectively shunned the destiny of the Christian churches in the colonies of Rome in North Africa (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). What the Coptic incident demonstrates obviously is that there are unknown components which not merely do not at all times fulfill the intention of Christianity but could in fact represent a problem to evangelization. The moral premise will be unsuccessful even more terribly for the reason that of the almost limitless diversity of Africa’s cultural relativism, hardly any if any forms of which match up to Western thoughts of what is Christian. In the initial contact of Westerners with Africa, the former, not least the disciples believed that Africa had no moral standards at all. While providing the disciples unprofessional recognition for their evangelical boldness and noble intentions, we have to consider that they were accustomed in their own time to make modest or no difference between what was distinctively Western and what was uniquely Christian. At present, we are seeing a steady transition from this status to the likelihood that African morality in the end may not be contrary to Christian virtues. This transition is manifested, for instance, in the article of Benezet Bujo entitled Can Morality be Christian in Africa? Regrettably, the article assumes a rather controversial issue insignificant, that there is a particularly Christian morality (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005, 82). There was a time it was logical to mention an African morality in the identical univocal sense as the way of life in Africa. At present this mindset can hardly be justified. The exceptional diversity of the African continent and its natives are recognized (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). To the point to which morality is an element of culture, there is unquestionably a diversity of moral standards in Africa just as there are more than a few African cultures. E.K. Mosothoane affirms unreservedly that in Africa infidelity and fornication are very much unimaginable that those caught are quickly sentenced to death. While granting that, external of what is culturally allowed, any violation in this connection is considered as a severe moral transgression to which punishment of highest cruelty is attached, and one nonetheless has to know what specific behaviors are included or prohibited in both constructs and where exactly in Africa they are relevant (Sundkler & Steed 2000). Among the people of East Africa, called the Kikuyus, the tradition has stayed alive until the present day whereby a man is open to visit in his contemporary’s matrimonial abode and tempt his wife to bed. The guest has only to lodge his spear in front of the host’s home as a caution to the husband of the woman that the bedroom is in use and he should not interrupt. In some portions of West Africa, particularly Owerri, a married young woman is expected, nearly compelled by tradition to search for an extra-marital aficionado whom she would show to her husband (Oliver 1952). Moreover, in some areas of Nsukka region, adult women possess as much absolute control of their life as their male counterparts. This implies that as long as she is uncommitted she is open to have an affair with, as well as going to bed with, any man who she is attracted to, but she is certainly to put an end to any such affair upon getting married. The man involved may or may not be committed to other women (Oliver 1952). Without suggesting that acculturation is probable or even favorable in this region of sexual morality, it is immediately obvious on the grounds of these circumstances that plainly to suggest infidelity and fornication, abandoning both to be understood in Western standards, is at least a deceptive depiction of the practical relevance of high moral norm in Africa earlier than the missionary evangelization. Moral recommendations and prohibitions have at all times varied from one individual to another. In these variations every civilization has something to put forward as well as something to gain knowledge of. Polygyny is a traditional way of life for many Africans. In a sociological perspective, it has some constructive principles that have fulfilled and still fulfill a duty to the people of Africa. For the Westerners, this is nothing but legalized prostitution. The Christian church has appealed upon, even ordered, the African natives to believe that it is fatally immoral. This is more and more strange. This order, which stumbled upon passionate positive response from the main churches, has been contested by a few Protestant groups in Africa and particularly by the native congregations (Cullman 1988). As long as the decision as to the true nature of Christianity is depends on Western standards, sexual morality of Africans can only be seen as miserable and hopeless since, with extremely few and current exceptions, Westerners believe that the gods of Africans are nothing but sex deities. Geoffrey Parrinder has noticed that a traveler to South Africa, who stayed for a short period of time there, proclaimed that Africa’s gods are sex (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). If one desires to dispute on grounds of conventional African morality that Christianity is never unfamiliar to Africa, one would have to put to rights the aforementioned cases with Christian thoughts and teachings. One marvels how a person would hope to attain such like-mindedness. III. The Culmination It is part of the woeful heritage of colonialism that Christians in Africa, including most of their leaders, do not appear to believe that they have been assimilated after Paul VI arrived to Uganda to assign Africans to become disciples to themselves. In spite of this, leaders of African church still pursue approval from Europeans to leave African Christians to be themselves. For instance, Rome is still wanted to make a decision whether East African parishioners may attend a mass during the declaration of the gospel. In the way of life of a number of East African natives, to stand when a religious passage or message is being uttered is a great sign of disrespect, specifying that the message is insignificant after all. In the period of the great conventional leaders, such disrespect could earn cruel penalties for the whole community (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). Until consent to sit is gained from Europe, who is to hold responsible if the African people of this way of life consider the Christian message merely as a type of Western leisure that does not compel anyone further than one’s expediency? Nevertheless, the position of the congregation is sufficient proof that neither the instigator nor the declarer of the supposed good news is to be considered sincerely. Missionary evangelization becomes a prey of its own strategies; the selfishness of some missionaries and the collaboration of the indigenous structure. In short, liturgical representations lack significance and hence fail to relate with the interpretive representational system of the community. African warrant rulers were in the identical manner in fidelity to the colonial authorities. If that was oblique control in the worldly sense, its religious counterpart is no less distressing. The acceptance of this practice in regions of Africa where indirect control never triumphed confirms that religion can be an effectual system of control even when other alternatives were unsuccessful. One of the accusations pointed against African politicians is pre-bendalism, a concept which implies that the political rulers are puppets of patrons, usually Westerners, who in compensation oversee the security of politicians’ office and individual welfare. African autonomy still confronts the threat of ending up as a wretched nightmare provided a condition in which indigenous Africans converts tools of exploitations and oppressions acquired from Europeans against their citizens (Oliver 1952). The final detachment of combatants from Britain left Nigeria in 1964 immediately after the nation’s proclamation of independence. After two years, in 1966, combatants of the Nigerian army get on their first mission of annihilating Nigerians, pilfering the national treasury and keeping themselves in political power. Nigerians continue to live in fear of their own armed forces. In the traditionalized church, the indigenous clergy for its part fulfilled their task of taking advantage of the congregation for self-centered interests. These traces of the colonial era are unfortunately thriving in the Christian churches (Sundkler & Steed 2000). Alluding to the European structure of estate categorization, an African clergyman perceives himself as an esteemed affiliate of the first estate. In public occupations, one hears distinctions such as ‘My Lords Spiritual and Temporal’ (Sundkler & Steed 2000, 61). Anyone who hear this cannot help questioning what is the relevance of all this with the good news of Christ. The capital-exhaustive focus of a number of African local churches with primarily peasant parishioners and persistent dependence on outside subsidy endanger the surfacing of an indigenous African Christianity that would be deeply receptive to the rather undesirable economic conditions of its majority. The former Catholic bishop of Malawi, Patrick A. Kalilombe, conveys an opinion that would be shared by several of his African associates. Bishop Kalilombe inquires, “Suppose all external aid was stopped. Could we make do with only K 16,388 where K 96,650 are actually needed?” He responded to his own inquiry in a way quite informative for the discussion at hand. “The diocese could carry on only on condition that there was a continuing help from abroad in both personnel and resources” (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005, 93). The convention in Lusaka in May 1974 attended by the All-Africa Conference of Churches involved authorized witnesses from the Catholic Church. This convention put forth a suspension on both money and staff so as to obtain the moral control to manage their own social and cultural condition. To facilitate the African Church in obtaining the authority of becoming a genuine tool of releasing and reuniting the African people, and also searching for the solutions to economic and social reliance, the alternative in accordance to the policy has to be a suspension on outside sponsorship in money and staff. This alternative is recommended as the single effective ways of becoming genuinely oneself while continuing to be a highly regarded and dependable constituent of the universal Church (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). This suspension has not restricted the foreign reliance of African churches to a practical sense that can be interpreted as joint concern between local churches. This deters the coming to existence of a genuine African Christianity, which would merely be probable at a price which church heads in Africa seem as yet reluctant to pay. The decision between being a fortunate slave and an unfortunate freeman who has nothing but the truthfulness of one’s individuality has at all times been a complicated one. Confronted with it, some individuals have preferred to die in pride. The African churches are still taking into account what decision they will make (Oliver 1952). IV. Conclusions Now we come to the fundamental issue, the issue on whose answer the potentialities of African theologies lies: can the Africans or other individual in this case, still follow the words of Christ today? As a matter of fact, this legitimate concern is an ancient one. Since the entry of God into the human narrative is the defining moment of God’s commune with humans, it would appear to indicate that the incarnation would turn out to the core of African theologies. This implies that Christ is existent and communicates to the Africans in their tangible African existential condition. Incarnation mysticism would then be capable to accomplish several things: first, to understand and pay attention to the incarnate God in all lands; second, to demonstrate how similar things are possible in several different ways such as one God, one belief, several theologies. Pope Paul’s accusation to African prelates absolutely appeals for a re-evangelization of those who think that anything that is Western is by the reality Christian in nature, whether such individuals are missionaries from Europe or Westernized African native clergy (Sanneh & Carpenter 2005). The African native clergy have to immediately become embodied among their people in order to be capable of acting in persona Christi. The African clergy have nobody to hold responsible for their inactiveness in this aspect of the current period of evangelization. Missionaries have traditionally been held culpable for the failures of the indigenous clergy. In principle, the heads of the main churches have thought of the necessity of investigations for an African theology. This theology, grounded on the essential goals of the African peoples, will make Christianity genuinely embodied in the life of the African peoples. In creating African theologies, sufficient attention should be given to the fundamentality of the Eucharist as a distinctively Christian atonement. It is the Eucharist particularly that, accurately speaking, establishes the Christian character of any church (Cullman 1988). This particularly Christian sacrament, justly acculturated, would make the personified God existent to the Africans as a substitute for the predecessors who are thought to be existent in every meal in the communities of the Black continent. African theologies would not have accomplished their task if they in the end provided Africa a colonial form of Christianity disguised in the most indigenous African outfit. Until African prelates confront the concern of commemorating this sacrament at home and hence relevant component, whatever else may have been acted upon in the issue of acculturation remains only a tokenism intended to sidetrack attention from the primary concern. In the meantime, African Christianity remains on very dicey position, the same dicey position on which the Christianity of the colonies of Rome was obliterated in the passing of time. Since it has occurred before, it can occur once again. But it could, to a certain extent, effortlessly be avoided through the human capability for learning from the past. References Cullman, Oscar. Unity Through Diversity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988. Oliver, Roland. The Missionary Factor in East Africa. London: Longmans Green, 1952. Sanneh, Lamin & Carpenter, Joel. The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West and the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sundkler, Bengt & Steed, Christopher. A History of Church in Africa. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Read More