The challenge of contextualization and syncretism
to pentecostal theology and missions in Africa
Mathew S. Clark
Definitions
African Initiated Churches (AIC): Groups which have sprung up in Africa, in enormous numbers, in which traditional European church forms and content have been “translated” into African terms. Some are extremely syncretistic, to the extent that they scarcely appear Christian at all, while others have major areas of commonality with traditional Christianity. Most are not particularly interested or involved in socio-political issues, but a large grouping among them, termed Ethiopian churches, have a clear political thrust. Many of these AICs have adopted colorful clothing and liturgies, and incorporate elements such as staffs, holy water, ritualized exorcism, and “prophetic” figures.
Afrikaner: Although the term means “African,” it is used to denote South Africans of Dutch and Huguenot descent. They speak Afrikaans, a dialect derived from Dutch, very similar to Flemish but with distinct English and African influences as well. It was Afrikaner nationalists who formulated, adopted and implemented the policy of apartheid.
Bantu: The term is used here anthropologically, indicating an African group which shares certain tribal, cultural and language commonalities. Sadly the term was also used as a racial and political denominator in the apartheid years in South Africa, and is therefore often considered derogatory. However, there is no alternative appellation in anthropology.
Bazalwane: The term African Pentecostals in South Africa use to refer to themselves.
Muti: Might be simply translated “medicine,” but only if understood in an animist context. Muti has potent spiritual power, although it consists of simple everyday ingredients. The curse or blessing of the shaman gives it its efficacy.
Ubuntu: There is no direct translation into English. The term incorporates elements of corporate personality, involvement of every individual in every matter affecting a community, etc. The community of ubuntu might be perceived to exist at various levels, e g family, clan, tribe or nation. It is usually used to denote an alternative approach to corporate existence than what its proponents usually term “western individualism.”
1. Introduction
Pentecostalism, in its origins and methods, has had a unique history in Africa. The aim of this paper is to discuss this fact in terms of the challenges of contextualization and syncretism in the interface between Pentecostalism and African spirituality. In the light of significant regional diversities in African religious thought and experience, the scope of this study is limited to the Southern African region (home of the so-called “Bantu” peoples), viz. Africa south of the equator. The notion of contextualization is also limited to its use in the missiological context (developed from the notion of “indigenizing” the church), rather than from a political-liberation theology perspective (interpreting or doing Christian theology in and from a socio-political context).
The uniqueness of the African spiritual context is illustrated by the rapid growth of the so-called AICs - African Initiated Churches. Similar groups are found in nations such as Brazil and Jamaica, often linked to people of African ethnic origin. The Southern African groups first received academic prominence in the works of Sundkler, and later were made objects of dialogue and study by Daneel and Oosthuizen.[1] Early studies tended to be patronizing toward these movements, but recently they have received a far more favorable consideration from academics. There is general agreement that these groups cater directly to what Africans most miss in western forms of Christianity, viz. a spirituality that does not alienate the spiritual and material realms from one another. They also lay a strong emphasis on the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in Christian religion, particularly the liturgy. However, only recently have they been studied from a Pentecostal perspective. Allan Anderson, himself a Pentecostal scholar, has produced a number of monographs and articles on Pentecostalism among South Africans of African stock, and will be referred to frequently in this study.[2] The bulk of this study will reflect such insights as Anderson’s, as well as personal experience from the field - acquired over a number of decades of ministry in Africa, which continent is where I was born and bred.
Pentecostalism in Southern Africa had its major antecedent in the Zion Church of John Alexander Dowie, although the ministry of Andrew Murray was crucial in forming its piety.[3] Zionism, because of its emphasis on healing, had made a major impact on Africans in South Africa. A Dutch Reformed minister, P. L. Le Roux, had become associated with the Zionist group at Wakkerstroom in the Transvaal. The first Pentecostal pioneer in South Africa was John G. Lake, an elder from Dowie’s Zion church in the U.S.A. After Lake’s final return to America, it was P. L. Le Roux who became the first South African president of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM of SA), the oldest and largest Pentecostal group in Southern Africa. This indicates a logical continuity between the piety of Murray, the healing emphasis of Dowie and Lake, and the formation of a genuinely indigenous South African Pentecostalism which, at its inception, almost automatically absorbed the larger part of the Zion Church structure in South Africa. Until 1919, this Pentecostal group accommodated blacks and whites, and English, Afrikaans and African-language speakers without much tension. However, in 1919 most of the black members moved out and formed the Zion Christian Church, the single largest AIC in South Africa. The subsequent history of the two groups tells its own tale of the challenges of contextualization and syncretism in African Pentecostalism.
South Africa also has had an indigenized Muslim community for some time, starting with the arrival of Malay Muslims at the Cape in the eighteenth century, and continuing with the arrival in Natal of indentured laborers from India in the mid-nineteenth century. The larger part of these laborers, however, were Hindus, and today the million-strong Asian community in South Africa is over 90% Hindu. This religion provides a real challenge of contextualization to Pentecostal missions, particularly since the greatest Christian impact on Hinduism in South Africa has been by Pentecostal ministry.[4] At the same time, South African mission groups are concentrating increasingly on Islam as a mission target: conscious efforts are being made to educate Africans in the face of Muslim penetration from the north, and missionaries are being send to Muslim regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East. However, this study will concentrate on the relationship of (classical) Pentecostalism to specifically African spirituality.
2. Pentecostal Contextualization in Southern Africa
2.1 Facilitating Factors
With Africa the center of the most intensive Evangelical Christian growth in the world, and most of that growth being related to Pentecostal or Charismatic groups, it is clear that there are many success stories of contextualization of which Pentecostal scholarship can take note. These have been facilitated by the following factors:
2.1.1 Emphasis on Healing and Power
Since the early Pentecostal pioneers to Southern Africa stressed (on the basis of their links with Dowie’s Zionism) healing of the body, this found immediate resonance with African spirituality and concerns. Where earlier Christian missions had concentrated on salvation of the soul, and western medical science had emphasized (rather clinically) the restoration of the body, Pentecostal preaching addresses the matter at a level that African spirituality readily comprehended: deliverance and healing of the entire persona. This combination of interest in the spiritual as well as the physical constitution, with its strong commitment to a biblical worldview, challenged the power of spirits to hurt, and invoked the power of God to heal. Instead of merely teaching African converts to Christianity that their earlier superstitions were crippling and should be abandoned, Pentecostal ministry demonstrated the healing and delivering power of Jesus Christ. The notion of the Spirit-filled individual, who demonstrated works of power, also appealed to the African sense of powerful leaders. Pentecostalism can point to the comparatively recent powerful ministry of men such as Nicholas Bhengu (Assemblies of God) and Richard Ngidi (AFM of SA) as foundational in its penetration into Africa.[5]
2.1.2 Acknowledgement of the Immediate Speaking of God
Pentecostals in Africa practiced prophecy and shared divine revelations that they had received through the “voice of God,” or by means of dreams and visions. This found resonance with that aspect of African spirituality that sought to hear from the world of spirit. Next to healing rituals, rituals of divination are crucial to African religion, and the sangoma (shaman) is as revered for “seeing” abilities as for diagnosis and healing. The artificial tension between worlds of spirit and of matter that modernism bequeathed Christianity, is not maintained in Africa. Neither is any tension between faith and reason. The African worldview minimalizes differentiation between the spiritual and physical world, and direct interactions and interventions are understood to be occurring continually. In a world-view in which the spirits are understood to speak, the speaking of the Spirit, particularly in the context of a loving and unchanging God, has been massively welcomed.
2.1.3 Sense of Community
Early Pentecostalism in Southern Africa revealed a sense of community, of joint ministry and mutual caring, that appealed strongly to the African notion of ubuntu. This notion stresses the collective above the individual, and leads to a sense of community where isolation and loneliness is less likely to be found. The contrast between this notion and western individualism would not have been as strong a century ago as it is today. It can be identified in the changing South Africa, where many “new elite” Africans who migrated to the affluent westernized suburbs are now returning to the impoverished townships, purely because they found the township neighborhood, with its sense of community, less lonely.
2.1.4 Diversity and Flexibility in Church Structures
Pre-Pentecostal missions in Africa tended to arrive with very “western” forms of church government and administration. Much of this was never attractive to Africa, although the hierarchies of Episcopalian structures did appeal to many of the more ambitious converts. Although the Pentecostal movement in Africa rapidly organized itself into denominational structures, ministry to blacks was often managed on very much an ad hoc basis. Until recently, in the AFM of SA virtually anyone who wished could go and “preach to the blacks,” in any form or place, and organize the resultant ministry as they wished. Such groups normally eventually gravitated into structural relationships with a denomination. In a certain sense there has occurred something of a reaction to such haphazard methods of church planting and administration. In the AFM of SA one detects a strong desire among blacks for centralization of church structural activities, with a correspondingly strong desire among whites for decentralization. While issues of racial intolerance cannot always be left out of this equation, it is fair to note that the white church experienced structural rigidity extremely negatively because of foolish decisions taken by central bodies in the past. At the same time blacks have felt that they were isolated for too long from the church body-politic because of weak structural ties.
2.1.5 Diversity, Flexibility and Holism in Liturgical Expression
Anderson points out that the Pentecostal movement, in its origins, was strongly influenced by black religion.[6] Although it is too facile to simply identify the religious perceptions of black Americans at the turn of the century with (tribal) African sense of religion, it is also clear that both in the U.S.A. and in Africa there is a black approach to religious expression that is not always shared by white counterparts. In the Pentecostal movement this can be identified as the “shout,” rhythmic singing, dance, and body “motoring.” In short, African religion has always evaluated highly the involvement of the body in religious expression. Part of the huge success of Pentecostalism in Africa can be ascribed to the fact that, even in a united denomination such as the AFM of SA, there is a significant difference between the liturgy of African congregations and that of their western counterparts. A typical white suburban service will commence on time (well, almost!), rarely last longer than two hours, be fairly rigidly divided between worship and preaching, make large use of musical instruments, and sing songs that may have a number of verses, or at least recount a progression of thought. Worshippers might employ their hands in clapping or raising, might sway slightly to the rhythm, and (if influenced by some newer groups) might even dance - after the Hebrew pattern. However, a black Pentecostal service is another matter entirely: it rarely starts on time (one or two hours late, sometimes!),[7] it often lasts for hours; there are no rigid compartments for worship, prayer, preaching, etc; musical instruments are rarely used, songs tend to be repetitious “one-liners,” and the whole body is automatically intensively employed in worship. Indeed, African Pentecostal worship is one of the most holistic Christian experiences on display today, with African singing probably matching or surpassing anything that Pentecostal worship elsewhere has to offer.
However, at times westernized forms of worship have been imposed by some Pentecostal preachers. Another contemporary development is the spread of the Faith Movement’s liturgical forms into African Pentecostal congregations. These churches are often totally inflexible concerning what comprises worship in the “freedom of the Spirit,” and African groups who adopt this style soon become indistinguishable in liturgy from their western counterparts. This includes changing their style of body-movement from African to Hebrew, and the incorporation of western musical instruments in their worship -- also of “renewal” choruses. However, this development is limited primarily to the new urbanized African elite.
Anderson sums up the contextualization of Christianity that one perceives in African Pentecostalism as follows,
The common roots of the different types of African pentecostal churches, the African style of their worship and liturgy, the holistic Christianity that is evident in their offer of tangible help in this world as well as the next - all these factors combine to form a uniquely African contextualisation of Christianity that meets needs more substantially than does the often sterile Christianity imported from Europe and North America.[8]
2.2 Retarding Factors
2.2.1 Negative Experiences of Colonization
While Pentecostalism in Southern Africa has achieved an impact among African people, it still carries the stigma of promoting the “white man’s God.” Since most classical Pentecostal churches among Africans are related to white Pentecostalism (being originally mission or “daughter” churches), their members often feel the force of this contention. In “liberation” struggles such as that of Zimbabwe, many African Pentecostals and Evangelicals died for their faith, since they were identified with oppressive white colonialism. The worst occasion was the massacre of Elim Pentecostal Church missionaries and their helpers in the Vumba Mountains in 1979. The rise of Pentecostal or Pentecostal-type churches (AICs) which are not connected in any way to white Pentecostalism has helped obviate this perception in many ways, although just to what extent they can be classified as “Pentecostal” is not always clear.[9]
2.2.2 The Search for a Distinctive Pentecostal Theology - a North Atlantic Enterprise?
African Pentecostalism has not been very visible in the ongoing debate on the nature of Pentecostal distinctives, including the most recent locus of that debate, Pentecostal hermeneutics. This has been overwhelmingly dominated by North Atlantic voices, with even those (such as Sheppard) who warn of a bias toward white middle-class perceptions usually seeking redress in terms of the American black experience.[10] Pentecostal work in systematic theology and the biblical sciences has very little to say about specifically African challenges or experiences. Indeed, this virtual domination by the schools and methods of the North Atlantic has been reflected in the Pentecostal World Conferences. For instance, the sole African input at the PWC in Oslo in 1992 was by a German evangelist who is known for his work in Africa, and by an African-American who runs a middle-class church in Nairobi! While the appearance of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies and the realization of the theological symposium for Asian church leaders in Seoul in 1998 are both welcome correctives to the situation, this growing Asian visibility brings small comfort to African Pentecostalism. A recent conference of AFM church leaders and theologians from throughout Africa highlighted the disadvantage at which African Pentecostals find themselves when challenged by the processes and methods of western theology.[11] Anderson notes, after having surveyed the development of black theologies in Africa since 1966,