PLAGIARISM FREE "A" WORK IN 12 HOURS

CHAPTER 25

A Fresh Look at Evangelism in Africa

J. N. K. Mugambi

Introduction

My intention in this essay is to review the relationship between gospel and cultures in the process of evangelization in contemporary Africa, discerning the achievements and the shortcomings of the missionary enterprise in this process, and anticipating the future of the Christian faith in Africa within a challenging context characterized by rapid social change.1 The essay suggests that in general, the modern missionary enterprise, despite great achievements in translation of the Bible and liturgical literature into African languages, has been insensitive to the cultural integrity of African peoples, and that this attitude of insensitivity should change to one of appreciation and sensitivity if African Christians are to regain their dignity and integrity within the Church universal, and within the family of nations.2 The bibliographical index of the International Review of Mission can serve as one indicator of missionary attitudes toward the African cultural and religious heritage: there is no index for African religion, African culture, or African religious heritage. The predominant attitude has been that African peoples have no culture or religion worth indexing — except as primal worldviews which could as well apply to the peoples of other cultures.3

The invasion of Africa’s living rooms and villages by the mass media from the affluent nations of Europe and North America makes it difficult for the people of Africa, both young and old, to affirm their cultural integrity. Newspapers, radio, television, and Internet — these media are, generally speaking, driven by one theme alone: profit. In these media, culture is useful only if it promotes consumerism. Advertisements are the driving force of the media, no matter how committed the owners might be to educate, inform, and entertain their respective audiences. The days when culture was the manifestation of a people’s integrity are gone. Today, culture is what the transnational corporations say it is: buying and selling goods and services in the name of progress and civilization. Christian evangelism is caught up in this web of consumerism. Evangelists find it difficult to avoid the temptation to sell the gospel the way business enterprises do — through aggressive marketing. If the gospel is a commodity for sale — like cars, or color television, or the Internet — what is the role of the Holy Spirit?

Church membership is rapidly growing in those countries and regions (especially in Africa) which are becoming more and more pauperized, as affluence becomes chronic in Europe and North America. Through tourism, African culture has become a commodity for curio trade and exhibition, alongside wild flora and fauna. Evangelism in Africa has become a

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form of Christian tourism, in which itinerant preachers come for seasonal crusades, combining their preaching with tourism and sunbathing. Missionary Christianity has yet to present African culture as the way of life of a people created in the image of God. In Catholic circles, inculturation has became a dominant theme in African missiology, just as liberation has been the dominant theme in Latin America. African expressions of Christianity have yet to penetrate the core of Christian worship in Europe and North America. To be theologically consistent, inculturation has to be reciprocal within the global Christian community. If inculturation is another word for cultural liberation, then evangelization in Africa must be culturally liberating in order to be consistent with the gospel. The fact that “inculturation” became one of the themes of the 1994 African Synod at the Vatican indicates that cultural insensitivity in Christian missiology continues to be a thorny challenge.4 How can we, as Christians, evangelize the people of other cultures without denigrating their cultural and religious integrity? Jesus proclaims that he has come to fulfill, not to destroy. St. Paul follows this principle in his missionary work, and fulfills Greco-Roman culture by showing the relevance of the Christian faith for the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, and so on.5

Cultural Insensitivity and the Modern Missionary Enterprise

Cultural depreciation and insensitivity in the modern missionary enterprise has arisen from an erroneous theology of mission, which presupposes that the acceptance of Christianity necessarily demands total rejection of the African cultural and religious heritage and adoption of the culture of the missionary without question or criticism. The consequence of this missiological error has been a superficial acceptance of Christianity, which is displayed in formal, ecclesial settings, and suspended in the normal, daily life of the majority of African Christians. For this type of Christianity, J. V. Taylor used the phrase “classroom religion.” Reflecting on Christianity in Uganda in 1963, Taylor wrote:

For forty years and more the advance of the Christian Church in tropical Africa has depended more upon her virtual monopoly on Western education than upon any other factor. Today secular governments are taking that monopoly from her and it is a bitter irony that the factor which seemed to be Christianity’s greatest strength in Africa threatens to prove its heaviest liability. For to a great extent it has become a classroom religion.6

Taylor’s observation is as relevant today as it was half a century ago, Leopold Sedar Senghor in Senegal,7 and Okot p’Bitek8 in Uganda, poetically commented on the superficiality of African Christianity, highlighting the popular impression which the modern missionary enterprise created, that Christianity is a Euro-American religion which Africans can adopt only after they have become “civilized.” The complaint against the superimposition of Christianity over the African cultural and religious heritage has been partly the result of the close association of “evangelization” with “Europeanization,” to the point where both terms have become interchangeable. Taylor continues:

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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It is bad enough that religious pictures, films, and film-strips should have almost universally shown a white Christ, child of a white mother, master of white disciples; that he should be worshipped almost exclusively with European music set to translations of European hymns, sung by clergy and people wearing European dress in buildings of an archaic European style; that the form of worship should bear almost no relation to traditional African ritual nor the content of the prayers to contemporary African life; that the organizational structure of the Church and its method of reaching decisions should be modeled ever more closely on Western concepts rather than deviating from them. But in the last resort these are all merely outward forms that could quite easily give place to others. They are serious because they are symptoms. They persist because they are the school uniform of a classroom religion reflecting a worldview that is fundamentally European.9

The consolidation of “world confessional families,” which incorporate the “younger churches” but control them from metropolises in Europe or North America, has not made the cultural emancipation of African Christianity possible. Whereas the European Reformation emancipated European Protestantism from the cultural domination of Rome, such a Reformation has yet to bear fruit in Africa — even though the signs of it are evident in the African Instituted Churches.10 Within the churches of the missionary enterprise, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, there is much talk about “inculturation,” but this talk is largely one-way.11 In practice, “inculturation” refers to the appropriation in African Christianity of established doctrinal and ecclesial teachings and practices, as transmitted through the modern North Atlantic missionary enterprise. It does not reciprocally include the appropriation of African theological insights into the core of doctrinal and ecclesial teachings and practices of Euro-American Christianity.12 The missiological error mentioned above could be summarized under the following presuppositions:

a) Unsuitability of African heritage for mediation of the gospel: The modern missionary enterprise has presupposed that the African cultural and religious heritage is an unsuitable vessel with which to receive the gospel (2 Cor. 4:7). To use another metaphor, the modern missionary enterprise has presupposed that the African cultural and religious heritage is an unsuitable rootstock on which to graft the gospel (Rom. 11:17-21). Thus the African has been considered a cultural blank on which anything could be written. Hence the competition among many missionary agencies for the African soul.

b) Cultural superiority of sending churches and agencies: It has been taken for granted that the missioner (bearer of the good news) is always culturally superior and fulfilled, while the African convert (recipient of the good news) is always culturally inferior and depraved. This attitude of cultural superiority is often echoed not only in evangelistic campaigns, but also in sermons throughout the continent. This pharisaical attitude alienates many Africans who would otherwise be willing to join the pilgrimage to discover more of the joys of Christian discipleship.

c) Novelty as good news: It is also taken for granted, especially in missionary circles, that the missioner (evangelizer) is always the welcome bearer of good news, and the role of the convert is to accept this good news with gratitude and without criticism. When prospective converts reject the offer of conversion, it is rare for the missioners to review their missionary methods and try a different approach. Good news is such that it cannot be concealed. When

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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missionaries are expelled, as has happened in some countries in Africa and Asia, the fault is always traced to the regimes in power rather than to the failure of missionaries to communicate effectively in the countries where they are guests. Unfortunately, some of the message that has reached Africa in the name of Christianity has been culturally so alienating as to become terribly bad news. When a young person is taught that everything his parents and ancestors have taught him is wrong, how is he expected to consolidate his personal identity? In his study of the British missionary enterprise in Kenya, A. J. Temu writes:

Almost all Protestant missionaries to Kenya viewed all native customs and traditions with abhorrence. They saw nothing good in African dances, music, or in such important African traditions as circumcision and initiation ceremonies. They lumped them together as heathen and immoral without trying to understand them, what they were for and what significance they had in the life of the people to whom they had come to teach Christianity. No African, according to the missionaries, could become Christian before giving up his old, treasured customs. Invariably they used moral reasons for political ends.13

There is hardly anything that is “Christian” about the Greek and Latin classics which have formed the foundation of European “Christian” education.14 Should African “Christian” education be founded on Greco-Roman classics or on African cultural and religious heritage? That this question should be raised indicates the degree of cultural alienation the missionary enterprise has achieved in its good work of schooling in Africa.15 It is clear that cultural alienation was the preferred strategy of the modern missionary enterprise in Africa. This strategy suited the colonial regimes, because it facilitated the convergence between the projects of “evangelization” and “civilization.”16

d) Hermeneutic authority of the missionary: The modern missionary enterprise has presupposed that the teaching of the missionary is always consistent with biblical teaching. In general, the modern missionary enterprise has presupposed a literal interpretation of the Bible.17 Africans have taken great interest in the Christian Scriptures. When they read the Bible for themselves, they find other texts which are of greater relevance. The clash of literal interpretations has led to the rise of thousands of independent churches — more than anywhere else in the world.

e) Paternalism and condescension: It has been taken for granted that the missioner (evangelizer) has responsibility over his converts, and that the converts (as recipients) of missionary generosity and philanthropy have hardly anything to offer in return. This presupposition has been exaggerated by the financial and material power of the sending agency, which puts the recipients in a relationship of dependence. Henry Venn, who was CMS general secretary in 1840-72, viewed the objective of mission as the establishment of self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing churches. As soon as such communities came into being, the missionary had a duty to proceed to a new place, leaving the local community to grow under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In 1912, Roland Allen published his famous book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours, in which he echoed the principles articulated by Venn.18 Unfortunately, these noble principles do not seem to have permeated the missionary community.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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These presuppositions are so prevalent that any cultural critique of the missionary enterprise is often viewed as ingratitude on the part of those to whom the gospel has been preached. However, as Cecil McGarry has observed, Jesus of Nazareth is the man of all cultures who immediately captures the attention of individuals and communities in every culture and every occupational situation.19 This immediate appeal often becomes blurred and confused by the missionary mediation of the gospel.20 The challenge, then, is to communicate the gospel in such a way that missionary interpretations do not hinder the convert’s response to it. Translating the Bible and making it available to the people is the best way to meet this challenge. However, the appropriation of the Bible in particular cultural contexts, without missionary mediation, often yields forms of Christianity with which missionary agencies are uncomfortable, because they do not fit the cultural mold of the missionary establishment. In Africa, David Barrett has shown that church independency is most likely in areas where the Bible is available in local languages.21

Tropical Africa seems to be the only place where the Christian missionary enterprise has destroyed the confidence of people in their own cultural and religious heritage. In general, missionary policy with regard to traditional African religion and culture has been that African converts should abandon their cultural and religious heritage in order to become accepted into the Christian faith. The consequences of this policy has been cultural schizophrenia. As John V. Taylor observed, Christianity has become a Sunday affair, in which Africans do one thing on Sunday in church, and for the rest of the week they continue with business as usual. Perhaps this is one way of explaining the fact that countries which boast a majority of membership in Christian denominations could suffer as much devastation as Rwanda did in 1994. Christianity proclaims peace on earth and goodwill among humankind. In a country that boasts to be 90 percent Christian, how could its Christian citizens became so embroiled in conflict? What went wrong in the process of evangelizing such countries? Questions such as these have no ready answers, but they indicate that at the cultural level the missionary enterprise has not penetrated the African psyche. Africans have appropriated the gospel, but very much as an appendix to their cultural and religious identity. This double- mindedness, which the missionary enterprise has encouraged, is the root of the crisis in contemporary African Christianity.22

Conceptual Clarifications

The Christian faith is a missionary faith. This statement suggests that it is part of the definition of Christianity, that it is outward bound to win converts to its fold. Jesus commands all his followers to go out into all the world and make disciples of all humankind. There is a wide variety of ways of implementing this command, each of which is appropriate in particular circumstances. No method of proclaiming the Word of God is appropriate for all situations. Knowledge of the core of the message, principles of effective communication, and the cultural context in which the message is communicated — all these are essential

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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requirements for effective evangelization. Much of evangelical work today involves persuading — sometimes bribing — Christians

to leave one denomination and join another. The missionary or evangelist in such cases believes that he or she has a fuller understanding of the gospel than those of other denominations. Before the tragic war in Rwanda in 1994 there were eight Christian denominations, of which three were the most significant. Ninety percent of Rwanda was Christian. Today there are more than fifty denominations. What does “evangelism” mean in such a country? One of the most scandalous evangelistic tensions in some countries, such as Ethiopia and Russia, arises because missionaries from the North Atlantic are trying to “convert” people who are already Christians into their own denominations. If the aim of “evangelism” is to convert the world to Christ, it makes sense to concentrate on converting non-Christians. The process of winning Christians from one denomination to another is called proselytism, and there is too much of it going on today in Africa under the banner of evangelism.

Cultural pharisaism is partly responsible for proselytism. When a person believes that his or her culture is superior to all others, and when this attitude is reinforced with the religious conviction that this “superior” culture is ordained by God, the logical outcome of such bigotry is cultural imperialism. Exposure to other cultures at an early age may help to relativize one’s cultural parochialism depending on the educational process which one undergoes to internalize that exposure. Young colonial subjects are exposed to the imperial culture, but the educational process they undergo compels them to view their own culture as inferior and that of their masters as the ideal to which to aspire. Only through a process of liberation do colonial subjects emerge from this subjugation. This point has been lucidly elaborated by Paulo Freire.23

Conversely, young imperial citizens are brought up to believe that their culture is the best, and that imperial prowess is confirmation of the dictum that might is right. It matters very much whether a person is brought up as a cultural subject or as a cultural citizen. This differentiation is evident in the socialization of St. Paul, in contrast with that of St. Peter and the other apostles. As a Roman citizen St. Paul could appeal to Caesar, while St. Peter and the others, as Roman subjects, could not. Evangelism is colored very much by these cultural distinctions. Can evangelism be culturally liberating? Biblical literalism is often associated with “evangelical” Christianity. There is a tendency to avoid the challenges of cultural diversity by hiding behind biblical literalism. Yet every Christian must relate the gospel to his or her own culture. Conversely, each convert must approach the gospel from the perspective of his or her own cultural and religious heritage. Biblical literalism cannot eradicate the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ is constituted by people of diverse cultures, diverse nations, diverse races, diverse histories. This diversity ought to be reflected in the life of the church. In practice, however, one culture tends to be superimposed upon others, and this superimposition is dehumanizing.

How can evangelism accommodate cultural diversity? This question is directly related to

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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cross-cultural relations. Christians are at the same time citizens. They share the attitudes and prejudices of their fellow citizens. The gospel should help Christians to rise above cultural prejudice, but more often than not we, as human beings, are conformed to the norms of this world rather than transformed by the gospel.

Challenges

This section outlines some reflections on what I consider to be urgent challenges for the church in tropical Africa on the eve of the twenty-first century.

a) Prosperity for a pauperized continent: From an “evangelical” perspective, there is much rejoicing that tropical Africa is increasingly becoming a “Christian” region. At the same time, from an economic perspective the region is becoming increasingly pauperized almost to its total exclusion from participation in world trade and industry. This region contributes less than 2 percent of world trade, and less than 1 percent of world industry. Yet the missionary enterprise is largely responsible for the “modernization” and “Europeanization” of tropical Africa. What is the connection between Africa’s pauperization and Africa’s evangelization?

b) Turning stones into bread: As a region, tropical Africa has ample fertile land, much rain, many freshwater lakes, some of the longest rivers. Yet the region is a net importer of basic food. Most of its agricultural activity is directed toward producing cash crops for the luxurious consumption of the affluent nations. In return, the people of tropical Africa are fed with relief food from the surpluses stored in the industrialized countries. Is this situation irreversible? What does evangelism have to say about this situation? The sight of military cargo planes dropping relief food to destitute Africans has become familiar on the world’s television screens. The impression created by these pictures is that of a continent that is abandoned to the mercy of the principalities and powers of this world. Feeding the hungry has become the work of non-governmental agencies and military contingents from the affluent nations. What is the meaning of Matthew 25:14-31 in this context?

c) A minority religion in the midst of cultural and religious pluralism: Numerically, Christianity is a minority religion in the world. It may be a significant minority, but it is a minority all the same. Although in “evangelical” circles it is often stated that Africa is increasingly becoming a “Christian” continent, the desire to turn Africa into a “Christian” continent ought to be balanced with the fact that Africa is culturally and religiously a pluralistic continent. Africans themselves take this fact for granted.

Throughout Africa, it is common to have in the same family a Muslim, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and others. Likewise, it is common for one person to be exposed to a wide range of religious backgrounds, an exposure which establishes a much wider frame of cultural and religious reference than that of the missionaries who have come to Africa. It is important to respect and appreciate the religious heritage of those Africans who are not Christians, and of those African Christians who do not belong to your denomination or mine. In such a context, what does evangelism mean? For me, it means

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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appreciating that God, in his infinite wisdom, has left himself with many witnesses, and it is our responsibility to discern that wisdom from others before we begin to pour our own ignorance upon them.

d) Swords into plowshares: The quest for peace in Africa is the yearning of all people throughout this continent. In our mission schools we were taught that Christianity brought peace in Africa. Yet there have been many bloody wars arising from interreligious and interdenominational conflict. Uganda, Sudan, and Rwanda are notable examples. How can evangelism promote harmonious cultural and religious coexistence, rather than war and strife?

e) From the cities back to the villages: The influx of Africa’s population is from rural areas toward the towns and cities. Yet these urban centers are incapable of providing the facilities and amenities for a decent livelihood for all those migrating from their rural homes. Urbanization in Europe and North America was sparked by industrialization. In Africa, urbanization is sparked by the deterioration of living conditions in the rural areas, but it is not matched by the industrialization of towns and cities. The majority of urban populations in Africa live in shanties and peri-urban settlements, without basic sanitation, lighting, and transport infrastructures. How can evangelism respond to this situation? The challenge is how to reverse the influx of population from urban to rural areas, and retain rural populations within the rural areas. The church is well placed to respond to this challenge, but to do so will require a reorientation of its ministry.

f) Moral anarchy and political democracy: After the end of the Cold War, Africa was bombarded with campaigns for democratization. Why were the North Atlantic countries interested in the democratization of Africa only after the Cold War? Did Africans not need democracy in the 1960s and 1970s? What political process was put in place during the Cold War? Despite the “democratic” constitutions which were endorsed in the European capitals during the process of “decolonization” Africa was subjected to “autocratization” during the 1960s and 1970s. The Cold War encouraged, and even staged, coups and counter-coups, as the superpowers and their allies wrestled for influence in Africa. The end of the Cold War has brought a new situation, during which the reigning ideology is asserting its hegemony over the whole continent.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, democracy was equated with multiparty politics and parliamentary elections. Compliance with these two principles did not synchronize African politics with liberal economics, and multiparty politics did not yield political stability. Autocratization seems to be condoned again, in which military rulers, after usurping political power, convert themselves into politicians and seek election as civilians. In Africa it appears that anarchy is confused with democracy. With military rulers on political thrones the meaning of democracy in Africa remains an open question.

What can evangelism mean in these circumstances? For a while churches have been involved in “democratization.” Yet the process of democratization is neither politically nor culturally neutral. Africa has yet to experience its own cultural renaissance, without turning

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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for advice to its former colonial masters. Will evangelism be part of the solution to Africa’s quest for cultural identity, or part of the problem?

g) Economic prosperity and spiritual bankruptcy: It is often suggested that Africa is “economically poor” and “spiritually rich,” whereas the North Atlantic countries are “spiritually poor” and “economically rich.” From an evangelical perspective, is this a situation to rejoice about? The history of Christian mission shows that surplus capital is needed to finance Christian mission. St. Paul was able to spread the gospel in the Mediterranean region because he had the financial means to do so. The modern missionary enterprise from Europe and North America to other parts of the world was possible because of the surplus capital which the age of empire accumulated. How can Africa, which now has a significant Christian population, participate in the re-evangelization of post-Christian Europe and North America? The answer does not lie in donations to host “reverse missionaries” from Africa. Rather, the answer is to be found in revitalizing the African economy, so that surplus capital may be accumulated for a new era of Christian missions from Africa to other parts of the world.

h) Industrialization without inventiveness: Two of the most industrialized African countries are those which suffered economic and military sanctions when they were under institutionalized racism: South Africa and Zimbabwe. The sanctions forced the people of these countries to rely on their own brains to solve their own technological problems. When the moratorium debate erupted in the ecumenical movement, there was vehement opposition to it. How can African churches promote inventiveness and creativity while instant formulae, quick-fix solutions, and fast foods are dumped on the continent without restriction? How can unrestricted and uncontrolled liberalization enhance creativity and inventiveness in Africa, when the restrictions against African products are increasing in Europe and North America? Protectionism is condemned in Africa, but condoned in the OECD countries. Without political clout and economic bargaining power, how can African countries resist becoming a dumping ground for garbage and toxic waste from the OECD countries?

i) Economics and evangelism: The total number of European and North American missionaries operating in Africa runs into hundreds of thousands. Thus the missionary enterprise is a significant job market for the North. If all these missionaries returned home immediately, there would be a significant increase in unemployment at home. It is important to appreciate this fact so that we do not moralize evangelism at the expense of Africa’s human integrity.

j) Missions to post-Christian Europe and North America: Post-Christian Europe and North America are as much a mission-field as pre-Christian Africa. The Church in Africa should take it as a burden to evangelize Europe and North America. However, Africa does not have the surplus capital needed for a reverse missionary enterprise. It is ridiculous for the post-Christian North to allocate its own surplus capital for its own re-evangelization. The challenge lies in enabling Africa to become economically prosperous, in the hope that its surplus capital might eventually become available for the reevangelization of Europe and North America. In recent years in Africa I have encountered Christian missionaries from

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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South Korea, Japan, and India. This is possible only because the per capita incomes of these countries have recently risen to levels where surplus capital is available for tourism, international investment and missionary expansion. African economies will have to grow considerably before African churches can send missionaries abroad at their own expense.

Role of the Electronic Media

John Bachman has raised the important question as to whether, from the perspective of Christian evangelism, the mass media should be viewed as “wasteland” or “wonderland.” In his book Media: Wasteland or Wonderland, he observes that both views have their advocates.24 His own view is that mass media need not be culturally and morally destructive. He challenges Christians to develop a constructive attitude toward the mass media, taking into consideration that the electronic age has penetrated all aspects of industrial society. In the African context, manipulation of the electronic media by owners and sponsors is so rampant that it is difficult for Africans to discern truth and value from radio, television, and film. In a setting where only a small elite has access to the electronic media, these channels of communication have become instruments of propaganda — for the peddling of particular ideologies. It is for this reason that the state in Africa has taken an interest in the religious press and religious broadcasting.

The electronic media are coming to Africa and are being seen as exciting channels of communication which amplify, modify, and even transform the traditional media — oral, ritual, and symbolic. The excitement evoked by these electronic media often leads to emotional responses with dramatic consequences, both religious and secular. It has become common for rural congregations to purchase and install public address systems even in small sanctuaries which would be much better off without electronic amplification. Such installations serve more than a communication function — they are status symbols, which indicate that the congregations are entering the electronic age, even though their utility is questionable. In urban centers, evangelistic rallies and campaigns have become commonplace, more as show business than as missionary endeavors.

Throughout tropical Africa, evangelistic rallies are being organized with ever-increasing frequency in sports fields, theaters, recreation parks, and on street corners. These rallies feature American and European missionary-tourists who visit Africa on holiday for a few days or weeks before returning to their affluent countries. They spend only a fraction of their visit in these evangelistic campaigns, while the rest of their time is spent watching wildlife, collecting African curios, and sunbathing on the tropical beaches. They preach a message promising prosperity in the midst of mass poverty, and often demand tithes from the already pauperized audience whom they hypnotize with theatrical tactics and musical enticement.

The old image of a foreign missionary resident at a rural mission station is rapidly being replaced by the image of the missionary-tourist who periodically comes to preach for a few afternoons while spending the rest of his holiday in the game parks and tourist resorts.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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Between these periodic visits, local entertainers are equipped with public address systems to preach at street corners, car parks, road reserves, and other open spaces, advertising themselves as proclaimers of the good news. Poverty continues to bite, but there is no interest in relating the pauperization of Africa with this kind of preaching which promises “pie in the sky when we die, by and by.” Secular nongovernmental organizations are replacing the old missionary societies and their serene mission stations.

In the past, the foreign missionary would set up camp in the midst of rural communities, and expect the rural neighbors to come to him for “conversion.” If they came, he would mold them in his own image. Today, the nongovernmental organizations perform this function, and missionary work has been edged from humanitarian service to spiritual evangelism. Whether mission is “religious” or “secular,” Africa as a region continues to recede to the abyss of destitution. The secular NGOs, which are funded to focus on the “alleviation of poverty” through entrepreneurial projects, leave the structures of world economy intact, with the consequence that the poor hardly emerge from their poverty and the poor countries become ever poorer, while the affluent countries become ever more affluent.

The association of evangelism with show-biz certainly shifts Christian mission from ecclesiology to the entertainment industry. Here is an illustration. At Jeevanjee Gardens in the center of Nairobi, loudspeakers begin blaring at full volume at about noon every working day. They play prerecorded audio cassettes as the evangelists await the lunch hour. When people leave their offices for the lunch break, teams of “evangelical” dancers mount the platforms, and the musicians take to their instruments. The park, which was designed for quiet meditation and rest, has become a daily musical extravaganza, where several so-called “Christian” bands play simultaneously at full volume, all preaching the gospel and competing for audience from the passersby, who seem helpless in the midst of the din.

Paul Gifford has documented this phenomenon with a wide range of research covering many African countries. In his book, The Religious Right in Southern Africa, he has illustrated the abuse of evangelism for ideological purposes, particularly in dampening the struggle against apartheid during the 1980s.25 In 1992 he edited an anthology of research papers extending this research to the rest of Africa, published under the title New Dimensions in African Christianity, under the auspices of the All Africa Conference of Churches.26 These works show that evangelism in contemporary Africa has tended to hinder Africa’s liberation rather than support it. If Jesus came so that we might have life in abundance, and if he came to proclaim liberation to those who are not free, how can one explain an approach to evangelism which negates these values? In every period of church history, the missionary enterprise has risked becoming engulfed in the reigning ideology. Evangelism today is not exempt from this risk.

When Marshall McLuhan declared that radio and television had reduced literacy to obsolescence, many of his critics thought he had exaggerated the negative impact of electronic media.27 McLuhan had emphasized that the medium (radio and television) is the message, in the sense that we understand the message that is being communicated only

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through the medium that communicates it. In the context of missiology, we could say, with McLuhan, that the gospel is understood only through the medium in which it is conveyed. The missionary enterprise has packaged the gospel in a wide variety of brands so that the recipients understand it only within the framework of those brands. It is very difficult for individuals to have the privilege of exposure, to stand outside the missionary packages and view the gospel from a wider panorama than the narrow missionary brands.

The ecumenical movement, in principle, was established to provide this wide frame of reference, but it is limited and contradicted by the self-centeredness of the “world confessional families,” or Christian World Communions as they are known today. Pierre Babin, reflecting on McLuhan’s Theory of Communication, observes:

1. The message of faith is not first and foremost information affecting my understanding. It is the effect produced in me by the whole complex known as the medium. In the communication of faith, the message is my conversion.

2. The message is not first and foremost the material vehicle of communication. The message is the whole complex of ministries and conditions that are required for an effect to be produced. In the communication of faith, it is the church, the places of communication, the face, the gestures, and even the clothes of the religious educator. The message is the interrelation of the print media, the electronic media, the use of live drama, and the preached word. It is also the forms of financing, both the marketing and the administration associated with faith. All this is part of the medium that is communicating. All these conditions lead to faith development and conversion.

3. The content of the faith message is not primarily the ideas or the teaching, but rather the listeners themselves insofar as they are affected by the medium. In the communication of faith, the content is not first and foremost the teaching of Christ. Rather, it is those who are being taught, insofar as they are reached by Christ and his church; again, insofar as they are affected by the medium.28

The use of mass electronic media for evangelization in tropical Africa has considerably changed the content of the evangelistic message. Radio programs can include only sketchy information, which leaves the listener to interpret the programs as he or she chooses. The live sermon which is delivered every Sunday by the parish priest or catechist in a local church is very different from the radio or television sermon. It is different from the theatrically managed sermon delivered at a cinema theater or in a soccer stadium. The televangelist is much more an actor than an orator. The live preacher in a local church is much more an orator than an actor.

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman aptly explains the crisis to which the world has been plunged by electronic media.29 He contrasts the works of two critics of North Atlantic culture, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Orwell wrote 1984 to warn against the curtailing of freedom by dictatorship, whereas Huxley wrote Brave New World to warn against voluntary enslavement under the power of technology.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.30

Electronic media have become so pervasive that ordinary people can hardly escape from the propaganda perpetrated through radio, television, newspapers, and the Internet. Ordinary people are no longer encouraged to think for themselves. The owners of the media determine what the public should know and what they should not. Journalists are employed to implement that policy and if they do not comply, they are sacked. There are so many radio and television channels that the ordinary members of the public can hardly distinguish truth from falsehood, facts from propaganda, theology from ideology. Formal education is shifting from the classroom and the textbook to the television and computer screen. The role of the teacher and the preacher is being reduced to irrelevance, especially among the rich elite. In a world where public opinion is shaped by the electronic media, how can Africans respond to international opinion which portrays nothing constructive or positive from their continent?

The fact that Africa is negatively portrayed in the North Atlantic media is evidence of the editorial policy of those media with regard to this continent. Positive reporting on Africa would go against the policy to depict Africa as a continent which does not function. Any success stories in Africa are either suppressed or edited to reflect this policy. North Atlantic religious media, in general, is no exception. The gospel proclaims a message of hope. Yet the media, both religious and secular, continues to portray Africa as a region without a future and without hope. The media portrays Europe and North America as the places from where the salvation of Africa will come, despite the fact that strangulating bilateral and multilateral debts are largely responsible for Africa’s pauperization.

It appears that North Atlantic media rejoice in “amusing to death” their audiences who are obsessed by a craving for entertainment. Postman continues:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive of culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take account of man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.31

Many European and North American radio and television channels beam their programs to African audiences. Some of them have already established FM stations and contracted to beam their television news within local channels. There is no reciprocation of African news in Europe and North America. The flow of information should be two-way. If a European or North American country is allowed a channel in one African country, there should be a reciprocal arrangement whereby the African country also be allowed a channel in Europe and

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North America. If the channel is based in the capital city, then so should the other channel be based in the capital city also. This is the only way to ensure fair coverage and fair reporting. The church should participate in the negotiations that make this possible.

Implications

Pierre Babin in his book The New Era in Religious Communication writes:

… it is only possible to understand a person of another culture when one begins to understand oneself. One can begin to understand God by rousing the dormant aspects of one’s own personality and by eliminating the foreign aspects that keep one closed to other cultures and other peoples. Any deeper encounter with people of other cultures is a very special way of knowing God in the twentieth century, a century of travel and international exchange.32

I remember vividly an insight Professor Kosuke Koyama shared with me when he visited Nairobi in the mid-1980s. He expressed disappointment that, in spite of traveling thousands of miles from New York to Nairobi, culturally he had not moved at all. He had expected to experience some cultural movement, but in the plane he was served the same meals, hotels were culturally the same, and the language was English wherever he went. He raised the question: How can we talk of cultural diversity in a world where everyone is expected to become incorporated into the one North Atlantic culture? This is a difficult challenge for Christianity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Culture-sensitive evangelism is possible only if and when those involved in it are willing and ready to be changed by those whom they go to change. This willingness and readiness grows out of an attitude of acceptance, appreciation, and respect for the people of other cultures, to the extent of becoming empathetically immersed in those cultures. Empathy has been a rare virtue in the modern missionary enterprise. Sympathy and pity, though plentiful, have produced condescension and ridicule.

Bishop Mvume Dandala of the Methodist Church in South Africa reminds us:

Spirituality, as I understand it, includes a satisfying explanation of who we are, where we come from, where we are going and how we can get there. In Africa today we have a very real crisis of spirituality, and genuine liberation will not come until Africa is able to define itself and find joy in itself without seeking the approval of big brother. One always hurts inside when non-Africans speak derogatively of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s failed ujamaa experiment; for they are laughing at Tanzania’s failure to control its destiny on the basis of its understanding of its origins and its destiny.

Until Africa finds a spirituality with which it is comfortable, within which it can search for meaning in life, from which it will seek to understand creation and its fellow human beings from beyond Africa, inculturation will not happen. If some such spiritual base is to be found, it is essential that African theologians, pastors and people have the freedom to explore and search unhindered.

Perhaps the task of those who are now being called to the leadership of the church should be to protect the right of Africans to do this rather than to preserve the established conventions of the church and the Christian faith. For without this freedom, inculturation of anything religious will be only another form of playing the same old game, on the basis of the same old rules, clothed in the niceties of accommodation.33

These are useful insights with which to conclude. Over twenty-five years ago David Barrett projected that by the year 2000, Africa would be the “most Christian continent” in the world.

Chilcote, P. W., & Warner, L. C. (Eds.). (2008). The study of evangelism : Exploring a missional practice of the church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Created from amridge on 2022-11-03 02:16:11.

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Since then, this observation has been echoed many times.34 It is echoed as a positive expectation. At the same time, it is widely accepted that the modern missionary enterprise in Africa has been the most significant agent of social change on this continent. Evangelization and civilization have been inseparable.

During the past thirty years, the economy of Africa has deteriorated at the same inverse proportion as church membership has grown. The more Christian the continent becomes, the more pauperized it is increasingly becoming. Is this a fact for Christians to rejoice about? If not, it is a challenge which we have to take seriously. Some of the converts being won to Christianity are drawn to the church by evangelists who preach material prosperity as the reward for becoming Christians. At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus had to face the temptation of turning stones into bread to feed the hungry. This temptation is more real in Africa today than ever before. “If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread, so that these hungry people may eat.” During the Cold War there was much talk in North America about using food as a political weapon. Will people “worship” those who feed them in times of destitution, or will God the Creator sustain them despite the pauperization they continue to suffer?

Most of Africa’s people living beyond ten degrees north of the Equator are Muslims. This represents a large population. Africa should be considered as one whole — a whole region. It is important to appreciate that many African Muslims are not Arabs, and that Islam is as much at home in Africa as in Arabia and Indonesia. As the twenty-first century draws near, the conflict in Sudan signals the next challenge that Africa must deal with, after colonialism, racism, and the Cold War: that is, the challenge of religious bigotry. If rational discussion of culture-sensitive evangelism within the ecumenical movement can help Africa to resolve this challenge peacefully, it should be encouraged and promoted in every church and nation. May God help us to remove the huge logs in our own eyes so that we might be able to see the tiny specks in the eyes of our neighbors. This principle can go a long way towards facilitating culture-sensitive evangelism.

Equipping for Culture-Sensitive Evangelism

In view of the foregoing elaboration we can ask: What should be done to enhance culture- sensitive evangelism? Among others, the following are suggestions which can be implemented at relatively little cost, if there is the will to do so:

a) Education for culture-sensitive evangelism: There is need for Christians to engage in cross-cultural interaction, especially to correct the prejudices perpetrated in the mass media. To be effective, such education should start in the seminaries, inculcating the appreciative attitudes among the younger generation of clergy in training.

b) Knowledge sharing for culture-sensitive evangelism: In his recent book Whose Reality Counts? Robert Chambers has observed that much of the knowledge that circulates in Europe and North America about other regions is obtained and packaged from the North Atlantic

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perspective.35 Consequently, there is hardly any cross-cultural exchange of knowledge. It would be worthwhile sharing African theological knowledge with the North Atlantic in a structured way, through facilitation of the flow of theological literature from Africa to Europe and North America. As the flow of knowledge is currently only one-way, a two-way flow should be developed. The ecumenical movement could be a useful instrument for this process.

c) Alternative video and audio media: There are many success stories in Africa which never reach the audiences of Europe and North America. The church could facilitate the production of documentary audio and video cassettes which express the experiences of Africa and Africans from the perspective of Africans themselves.

If these measures are carefully coordinated, they may contribute to a change of attitude in the North Atlantic toward an appreciation of Africans and their cultural heritage. As long as superiority and inferiority complexes clog relationships between Christians of various cultures, culture-sensitive evangelism will be impossible. In Christ all social distinctions, though, become irrelevant — not because they are glossed over but because they are taken seriously. The tragedy of Christian mission is that converts have been molded not in the image of Christ but in the image of the evangelizer. Both the missionary and the convert become pilgrims toward the kingdom of God and the distinction between them vanishes when the Holy Spirit binds their relationship.

1. This essay builds on the research published in five of my earlier books: The Biblical Basis for Evangelization (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1989); The African Heritage and Contemporary Christianity (Nairobi: Longman, 1989); African Christian Theology: An Introduction (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1989); Critiques of Christianity in African Literature (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1992); From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christianity after the Cold War (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995). It also draws on insights from the African Christianity Series as documented in note 22 below.

2. Lamin Sanneh has highlighted the great achievement of the modern missionary enterprise in making the Christian Scriptures available in African languages; see his Translating the Message (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1989) and Encountering the West (London: Marshall Pickering, 1993). Ironically, however, this achievement has not yielded appreciation and respect of the African cultural and religious heritage in Europe and North America. Instead, a great deal of prejudice is still perpetuated both in the media and in academic institutions. That African traditional religion is still described as “animism” in the media and evangelical literature, shows that attitudes toward African religion and culture have not changed much in the North Atlantic since the nineteenth century. The prejudice arises largely from the condescending attitude which missionaries have portrayed in their ethnographic monographs of the African peoples.

3. Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), pp. 91-108; J. V. Taylor, The Primal Vision (London: SCM, 1963); J. B. Taylor, ed., Primal World Views: Christian Involvement in Dialogue with Traditional Thought Forms (Ibadan: Daystar, 1976).

4. On inculturation, see Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (London: Chapman, 1988); J. M. Waliggo and others, Inculturation: Its Meaning and Urgency (Nairobi: St. Paul Publications Africa, 1986).

5. 1 Cor. 9:19-22. 6. Taylor, Primal Vision, p. 12. 7. Leopold Sedar Senghor, cited by Taylor, Primal Vision, p. 13. 8. Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lowino and Song of Ocol (Nairobi: East Africa Publishing House, 1981). 9. Taylor, Primal Vision, pp. 13-14. 10. David B. Barrett, Schism and Renewal in Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). In this book, Barrett viewed

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African Independent Churches as indications of an African Reformation. 11. Shorter, Theology of Inculturation. 12. Throughout the history of Christian Mission, very few missionaries could be credited with following the example of

Paul, to be all things to all people in order to win as many as possible for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:19-22). See Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours, 2nd ed. (London: Lutterworth, 1968). Also, Vincent Cronin, Wise Man from the West (London: Rupert Davies, 1955).

13. A. J. Temu, British Protestant Missions (London: Longman, 1972), p. 155. 14. Lesslie Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man (London: SCM, 1964), pp. 23-26. 15. I have been directly involved in debate and dialogue with missionary friends and colleagues on cultural education

policy and planning in East Africa. Invariably, cultural insensitivity has been so rampant among them that on many occasions we, their hosts, have been made to feel as strangers in our own cultural home. This policy dialogue culminated in revision of the Religious Education Curriculum in Kenya, whose remarkable innovation was the introduction of the African religious heritage as integral part of Christian teaching — in the same way that the Greco-Roman classics form the foundation of Christian theological training in Europe and North America. To provide a textbook for the new edition, I coauthored, with N. Kirima, The African Religious Heritage (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1976).

16. David Livingstone campaigned for the European support of Christian mission in Africa, arguing that such support would promote “Christianity” and “legitimate commerce.” Legitimacy was, of course, understood from the perspective of British mercantilism, not from the interests of Africans themselves. On this point, see Roland Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1970).

17. Norvald Yri, Quest for Authority (Nairobi: Evangel, 1978). 18. Allen, Missionary Methods. 19. Cecil McGarry, Preface to Inculturation, p. 8. See also Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction, pp. 90-106. 20. On the blurring of the gospel by missionary mediation, see Kosuke Koyama, Water-buffalo Theology (London: SCM,

1974). 21. Barrett, Schism and Renewal. 22. The crisis in contemporary African Christianity is documented in the series published by the Ecumenical Symposium

of Eastern African Theologians, edited by J. N. K. Mugambi and Carroll Houle: Jesus in African Christianity (Nairobi: Acton, 1989 and 1998); The Church in African Christianity (Nairobi: Acton, 1990 and 1998); Moral and Ethical Issues in African Christianity (Nairobi: Initiatives, 1992); Mission in African Christianity (Nairobi: Uzima, 1993); Pastoral Care in African Christianity (Nairobi: Acton, 1994); The Bible in African Christianity (Nairobi: Acton, 1998); Worship in African Christianity (Nairobi: Acton, 1998).

23. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin, 1996). 24. John W. Bachman, Media: Wasteland or Wonderland (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984). 25. Paul Gifford, The Religious Right in Southern Africa (Harare: Baobab, 1988). 26. Paul Gifford, ed., New Dimensions in African Christianity (Nairobi: AACC, 1992). 27. For a study of McLuhan, see Jonathan Miller, Marshall McLuhan (London: Collins, 1971); R. Rosenthal, ed.,

McLuhan Pro and Con (New York: Penguin, 1969). 28. Pierre Babin, The New Era in Religious Communication (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), pp. 6-7. 29. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin, 1985). 30. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. vii. 31. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, pp. vii-viii. 32. Babin, Religious Communication, p. 16. 33. Bishop Mvume Dandala, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church in South Africa, in ANITEPAM Newsletter (April

1998): 2. 34. David B. Barrett, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia (London: Oxford University Press, 1982). 35. Robert Chambers, Whose Reality Counts? (London: ITDG, 1997).

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