Le COE est une communauté d'Eglises qui compte 349 membres de presque toutes les traditions chrétiennes dans plus de 110 pays sur tous les continents
The tension between African Traditional Religion (ATR) and Christianity has been described as the “African Christian problem”.[i] In many parts of Africa, African Christians[ii] cling tenaciously to their traditional religious beliefs and customs and are reluctant to give them up in favour of Christianity. This results in conflicts between ATR and Christianity because the Church dismisses traditional practices as heathenism, and often has refuses to encourage any form of dialogue with African traditionalists.
This work reflects the progress made towards a resolution by means of organized dialogue between Limba Christians/Traditionalists and Christian Limbas[iii] in the National Pentecostal Limba Church (NPLC)[iv] in Sierra Leone, West Africa. I will begin with an overview of various theological and ecclesiological attempts to address the African Christian problem. This will be followed by a summary of the reasons for the persistence of ATR in Christianity and the reactions of the church to traditional religiosity. I will then explain the strategy I have employed in organizing dialogue and summarize my findings and recommendations, which have fostered mutual respect, understanding, and continued dialogue between the two groups. The paper concludes with a discussion concerning the future of the African Christian problem in general, and suggestions on how it might eventually be resolved.
For many decades, scholars[v], the church and ecumenical organizations have been attempting to find answers to the African Christian problem. John S. Mbiti argued that Africa has enough tools and expertise to evolve a viable form of Christianity for African Christians.[vi] However, this task is complicated by the lack of a clear consensus among African theologians/religionists/missiologists and the church as to appropriate methods/approaches of dealing with the African Christian problem. Unfortunately, Mbiti’s theological constructs for African theology were “context dominant” and tend towards “syncretistic amalgamation” such that the end result is “neither African nor Christian.”[vii] On the other side of the methodological spectrum, Kato “approached culture with the absolute standard of priori truth” maintaining a theocentric emphasis so that “Scripture critiques culture and never the reverse.”[viii]
Robert G. Rogers categorized African Christian theologians into two main groups based on the differences in their hermeneutical perspectives.[ix] The first group, which Rogers calls the “Old Guard,” is “somewhat at variance on the degree to which dialogue between Christianity and traditional religion is useful.” The second group, which he calls the “New Guard,” does “not have such dialogue as a major theme on their theological agenda.”[x]
Some scholars have been working to provide contextual Christologies that are relevant to ATR worldviews.[xi] The work of Jesus has been compared and contrasted with African traditional healers.[xii] Jesus has been referred to as: “Ancestor/Proto-Ancestor”[xiii], “our ‘brother-ancestor’ in fullness”[xiv], “the great ancestor, our ancestor par excellence” and “an intermediary spirit between God and people”[xv], “Priest”[xvi], and “Chief”[xvii]. Part One of the edited work of Robert J. Schreiter, surveys African Christologies, and Part Two discusses the different perceptions of Jesus in Africa.[xviii] Other scholars have published valuable guidelines for dialogue between ATR and Christianity.[xix]
In ecumenical spheres, the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) officially recognized the African Christian problem and sponsored the first conference of African theologians in Ibadan, January 1966 on the theme, “Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs.” Since this event almost every African theologian has had something to say on the encounter between the two religions. The AACC continues to promote dialogue between Christians and members of other faith communities. This dialogue is however promoted to a greater degree with Islam than with ATR.
After Vatican II and the apostolic message Africae terrarum, a series of consultations and publications on ATR were carried out by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID). The Roman Catholic Church’s “theological evaluation of other religions has gone all the way from the disregard and rejection which characterized much of Christian tradition, through a guarded acceptance and openness, to a positive assessment and recognition of salutary values.”[xx]
Since the development of “Guidelines on Dialogue with people of Living Faiths and Ideologies” in 1979, the World Council of Churches (WCC) has taken “significant steps towards facilitating inter-religious relations and dialogue.”[xxi] The Critical Moment conference in June, 2005 brought together 130 participants of different faiths including indigenous religions, and “the WCC manifested its commitment to be involved in the present and future of Interreligious relations and dialogue ….”[xxii]
The joint project for Africa – the Inter-Religious Relations and Dialogue (IRRD) of the WCC and the PCID of the Vatican – provides opportunities for the discussion of various aspects of African religiosity and culture. The project held a Francophone meeting in Dakar, Senegal 2002 and another for Anglophones in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2004.
Many African Independent Churches (AIC) represent a creative indigenization of the gospel in African soil. The impressive following they have attracted suggests that they are meeting the needs of many Africans and many of their church buildings are being expanded to accommodate more worshipers.
The different schools of thought and approach in dealing with the African Christian problem are reflective of the three basic typologies of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Without a doubt, the ongoing discussions about the relationship between African Christianity and the gospel suggest “that there is still work to do in the area of relating the Christian message to African cultures.”[xxiii]
In 2002, I undertook fieldwork to investigate the causes of the conflict between African Traditional Religion and Christianity among the Limba People of Sierra Leone. I sought to gain a better understanding of Limba religion, its persistence and the resulting conflicts with Christianity. The following are the major causes given by Limba traditionalists for their dual religiosity and tenacity:
For the Limba, like many Africans, religion is a way of life. There is no sharp dividing line between religion and culture. They believe that their religion and culture originated from God, and cannot be parted with or replaced. ATR is the heritage into which the traditionalists were born. It is maintained by God and influenced by the ancestors. It “emerged from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present generation” and is “being practised today in various forms and intensities”[xxiv] in African homelands and settlements. For these reasons, the complete renunciation of their God-given heritage in favour of a foreign culture, as the church requires, seems a very difficult task, and is tantamount to losing their entire heritage, identity, and place, both spiritually and physically within their religio-cultural community. This is why African Christians “do not always adhere to religious and ritual demands that are formulated and expressed by the leaders of their churches.”[xxv] Even long after their conversion to Christianity; the African traditional worldview persists in the lives of Christian converts.
A majority of Limba Christians, still view Christianity as the “white man’s religion” that brought “new teachings and a new way of life” and attempted to “deliberately destroy” Limba culture.[xxvi] This concept is common throughout much of Africa and continues even now “that the age of foreign missions in Africa”[xxvii] is over.
Byang H. Kato has argued that “although missionaries from Europe and North America brought the gospel to Black Africa in modern times, they are not the first messengers of the gospel to our continent.”[xxviii] As such, he argued, “to claim that Christianity is a white man’s religion only because white missionaries brought the gospel two hundred years ago is not historically accurate.”[xxix]
While Kato’s argument is valid, it does not address the main reason for the persistence of this perception. Christian missionaries to Africa are still blamed for their cultural insensitivity to African values, which resulted in the transplantation of an ethnocentric form of Christianity. Successive missionaries attacked African culture, and required a complete abandonment of African culture and practices.[xxx] Christ was “presented as the answer to the questions a white man would ask, the solution to the needs that a Western man would feel, the Saviour of the world of the European world-view, the object of the adoration and prayer of historic Christendom.”[xxxi] Attempts were not made to answer the needs of Africans yet the missionaries enforced on Christian converts, a complete break from the African beliefs and culture that met those needs. For example, Assemblies of God (AOG) missionaries to West Africa enforced the burning of medicine and charms and prohibited members from using charms or making sacrifices. Cultural insensitivity is also displayed in the production of religious pictures, and films that are found almost everywhere in Africa portraying Jesus as a white man, from a white mother, and as the leader of white disciples.[xxxii] Insensitivity to African culture and worldview was not unique to Euro-American missionaries. Samuel Ajai Crowther an African clergyman whose parents were traditionalists and who had personally assisted the Ifa priest in his village in seeking guidance from the oracles was prominent in the attempt to eradicate traditional religion from the inhabitants of Sierra Leone and Nigeria.[xxxiii]
Although most missionaries handed leadership to indigenes and left Africa several decades ago, some churches still painstakingly follow the practices and teachings of the missionaries. The NPLC continues the tradition of destroying charms and its indigenous leaders still espouse the same views and philosophies of their forebears and are reluctant to study ATR in an effort to understand it or create opportunities for positive dialogue.
The NPLC, like most other mainline African churches, uses western-style vestments to portray the image of a western church and has adopted western songs, music and musical instruments. The Bible is read in English, leaving the majority of non-literate, non-English-speaking Limba Christians to feel marginalized, left out and unwelcome in the church. They criticize the church which under an indigenous leadership maintains missionary Christianity as “the same car just [with] a different driver.”
The indigenous church has thus far been unable to develop a theology, which bears the distinctive stamp of African thought and meditation. These churches read and accept Euro-American theologies without critique. Christian Africans “have not yet begun to do their own thinking and to grapple spiritually and intellectually with questions relating to the Christian faith.”[xxxiv] Most churches are still enslaved to Euro-American cosmology and the struggle has become “not so much against European domination as against that of Europeanised Africans.”[xxxv]
While there are many areas in which African theology shares affinity with Christian/Biblical theology, the divergences, touch on the major teachings of the two systems. For Limba Christians, the Christian teaching about the death of Christ as a sacrifice for the propitiation of sin is “strange and contradictory.”[xxxvi] Christian missionaries condemned human sacrifice as sinful and inhumane and then preached reconciliation to God through such a sacrifice. This problem is not, however, confined to African Christians. Even in the west, some Christians have challenged the rationale about the sacrificial death of Christ. Some western Christians, including members of the clergy, no longer believe that a loving God could have offered his son as sacrifice for the sin of humankind.
Another NPLC teaching, which does not sit well with traditionalist, is that of the mediatory role of Jesus. Traditionalists view Jesus as a stranger who knows neither them nor their culture and is therefore a far less suitable mediator than the ancestors who know them very well.
Further, the absence of protective charms and important African rituals like sacrifice makes the church less attractive and fulfilling than ATR. When African traditionalists “cannot honour their ancestors through pouring of libation, when they cannot worship God through sacred dances, when they are not able to invoke God’s power of healing during worship, they must surely feel spiritually emasculated.”[xxxvii] Let us now look at some of the reasons why the church continues to reject ATR.
The NPLC, like many denominations, believes that humanity’s only hope of redemption is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Luke 24:47; John 3:3; Acts 4:12; Rom. 10:13-15; Ephesians 2:8; Titus 2:11; 3:5-7). God’s unique revelation in “Christ is clear – only One Way of salvation for all men, and that is through Jesus Christ.”[xxxviii] Therefore there is no salvation outside the church and no one can be saved without an “explicit confession of faith in Jesus Christ.”[xxxix]
African Religion is often described as ‘Primitive/Tribal Religion’ because it usually has no written history or scripture.[xl] Unlike Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Judaism, African religion has no sacred writings or documented theology for guidance in one’s spirituality. Laurenti Magesa in support of the universal recognition of ATR argued that “orality alone cannot disqualify a religious system from qualitative greatness” because Judaism, Christianity and Islam were all orally-based for long periods of time before their teachings were “codified in writing.”[xli] It was not on account of their sacred writings that these religions attained recognition, so it is illogical to make this a requirement for the recognition of ATR. ATR theology is written on the hearts, minds, words, actions and symbols of the African people. A factor responsible for the survival of African Religion.
To guard against syncretism and nominalism among its membership, the NPLC takes “a rigid line on the question of any cultural accommodation whatsoever.”[xlii] The church thinks it is not right to bring or mix elements of traditional beliefs into Christianity on the grounds that African religion is crude, uncouth and devilish, and any such incorporation would alter the church’s spirituality. Therefore, “anything that would dilute or substantially alter the basic structures of Christianity”[xliii] is strongly combated and the church enforces “a complete break with the past”[xliv] as a preventive measure against syncretism and nominalism. Let us now look at the strategy I employed that brought together Limba traditionalists with Christian Limbas to start dialoguing and searching for a solution.
Before traveling to Africa, I selected a pool of interviewees representing the five major Limba dialects and a cross-section of the Limba people. I also selected consultants including scholars, members of ecumenical organisations and Sierra Leone government employees. With the help of these consultants, I formulated a questionnaire about ATR, Christianity, and the interaction between the two religions. The goal was to understand the theology and practice of each religion from the viewpoint of the African Christians. Some of the questions included:
· How can you define Religion from a Limba Traditionalist view?
· Can you describe in detail your Religious beliefs, practices and teachings?
· How are your beliefs reflected in everyday life?
· What are the reasons that some Limba Christians still practise traditional religion?
· How are these practices affecting the church?
· What impact has Christianity on traditional religion?
In central Freetown and in five provincial towns, I organized dialectical discussions in a conference-like setting. The same questions were posed to each team and each team took turns in responding. Respondents were allowed to address each question based on knowledge, experience and personal opinion.
Following the interviews and discussions, I listened to the tapes and studied the notes then shared with all the participants the following findings and recommendations:
§ One of the reasons for the tension between Limba traditionalists and Christian Limbas was the ignorance about the other party’s worldview due to a lack of education and preconceived notions.
§ Although Limba Religion and Christianity have different frameworks, it is reasonable to say they share affinities in terms of description and components.
§ There are Limba religio-cultural elements and values which find parallels in the Bible[xlv] and which have been adopted by the Limba Church, for example the names and attributes of God. Also, the religious devotion, and numerical success of the NPLC can be attributed to the traditional heritage of the Limba in which religion is “a way of life” and a vital part of culture. Credit was given to the missionaries for their stance against the Limba traditionalists’ inhumane practice of child sacrifice.
§ Although the greatest divergences between Limba religion and Christianity hinge on the core teachings of each system both systems are based on faith and mystery. Because of these religious qualities, there are beliefs and practices in each system that deny human logic and understanding.
On account of these findings, I recommended that:
§ The NPLC and traditionalists should seek more education about each other’s values in order to foster understanding and acceptance. The NPLC on account of this education should find methods of relating the Bible to African traditional values.
§ As both groups through my fieldwork are already aware of the concerns of the other, they should continue to assess their methods of approach.
§ The NPLC must continue to establish a dialogue with traditionalists. Both groups must be able to sit together and work out their differences. In order for this dialogue to be effective each side must continue to listen to the other’s ideas, and volunteer their own.
I continue to check the progress on a regular basis and have kept in touch with both groups, which are now meeting regularly to better understand each other. When I visited Sierra Leone in early 2005, I was delighted to see a vast improvement. Among the Limba of Sierra Leone, the resolution of the African Christian Problem now looks hopeful if things continue go the way they have been going these past three years. In a broader sense, let us now look at the future of the African Christian Problem as a whole.
The future of the African Christian Problem is a very touchy subject. Past and present resolution attempts have demonstrated that the issue is of major concern to scholars, missionaries, the church and the African people, but there is still more work to be done. The causes of dual religiosity throughout Africa are similar to, if not the same as, those cited by the Limba. If the problem is to be resolved, the African church must learn to take traditionalists and their concerns seriously and show appropriate respect. Unfortunately the staunchest upholders of Euro-American Christian traditions are usually African church leaders and scholars.
In Africa, Islam shares a strong affinity with ATR. In spite of this, the church has for a very long time now, preferred to maintain a strong culture of dialogue with the Muslims, even to the point of accepting that the two traditions worship the same God. However, they have failed to establish such a dialogue with a religion that emanates from Sub-Saharan Africa. The establishment of dialogue is essential to resolving the problem.
I believe all is not lost. There is hope. I am optimistic that if the Christians and scholars put away biases, and idealism, and instead come together realistically with traditionalists, it is possible to put an end to this age-old problem. It will take time but gradually the African Christian problem may become a thing of the past.
My approach and strategy has produced results among the Limba people in the NPLC. For that reason this study is worth considering. The methods I used to discuss the problem with the Limba may be applied to almost any ethnic group in Africa.[xlvi] If this is done, similar results may be achieved elsewhere.
It is helpful to read and be conversant with scholarly interpretation and understanding of the African Christian problem, but it is far more helpful and necessary to meet with traditionalists and Christians in Africa to see, experience and interpret this problem, and the major issues for dialogue. Although successful dialogue is not dependent on an ethnic connection, I believe that I received a high level of cooperation and respect from the groups I worked with because I too am a Limba and have, at times, personally been a part of each group. I believe it will be very helpful if other African scholars can make similar efforts with their respective ethnic groups and churches. More importantly, I encourage the African churches, missionaries, and those interested in the church in Africa, to treat African culture and religion seriously, and to find time to study the concerns of both the traditionalists and Christians to achieve dialogue and mutual understanding. It is through this understanding that we can hope the African Christian problem will be resolved.
[i] Joel B. Kailing, “A New Solution to the African Christian Problem.” Missiology: An International Review 22:4 (1994), pp. 489-506 (p. 489).
[ii] This term refers to those who practice both systems – Traditional Religion and Christianity.
[iii] This refers to those dedicated Christians who reject traditional religious practices outright.
[iv] The NPLC is the largest and only separatist/independent Limba Church to which the majority of Limba Christians and Christian Limbas belong.
[v] See John S. Mbiti, “Challenges facing religious education and research in Africa: the case of dialogue between Christianity and African Religion”, Religion and Theology 3:1 (1996), pp. 170-79 (pp. 174-75) for a list of some of the African and expatriate scholars who have addressed the encounter between ATR and Christianity.
[vi] John Mbiti, “Christianity and African Culture”, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 1 (September 1977), pp 26-40 (p. 30-31).
[vii] Keith E. Eitel, “Contextualization: Contrasting African Voices”, Criswell Theological Review 2:2 (1988), pp. 323-34 (p. 334).
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Robert G. Rogers, “Biblical Hermeneutics and Contemporary African Theology”, in Uncovering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson, edited by Lewis M. Hopfe (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1994), pp. 323-34 (p. 334).
[x] Ibid: p. 259.
[xi] Carl Sundberg feels that these scholarly Christologies do not express the grassroots Traditionalists’ conception of Christ. See Conversion and Contextual Conceptions of Christ: A Missiological Study among Young Converts in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo (Lund, Sweden: Team Offset & Media, 2000), p. 14.
[xii] Aylward Shorter, Jesus and the Witchdoctor: An Approach to Healing and Wholeness (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1985).
[xiii] For example see, Kwame Bediako, “Jesus in African culture: A Ghanian Perspective,” in Emerging Voices in Global Christian Theology, edited by William A. Dryness, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1994), pp. 96-104; Sundberg, Conversion, p.17.
[xiv] Sundberg, Conversion, p.14.
[xv] Z. Nthamburi, African Church at the Crossroads: Strategy for Indigenisation (Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1991), pp.61-64.
[xvi] See Sundberg, Conversion, p. 22; Bediako, “Jesus in African culture”, pp. 115-116.
[xvii] Bediako, “Jesus in African culture”, pp. 106-110.
[xviii] Robert J. Schreiter, (editor), Faces of Jesus in Africa (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002).
[xix] See Mbiti, “Christianity and Traditional Religions in Africa”, International Review of Mission 59:1 (1970), pp. 430-40, The Crisis of Mission in Africa (Mukono: Uganda Church Press, 1971), “Christianity and African Culture”; Kailing, “A New Solution”; Tite Tienou, “The state of the gospel in Africa”, Evangelical Missions Quarterly 27 (2001), pp. 154-62.
[xx] Thomas Ryan, “Catholic Perspectives on Interreligious Relations”, WCC Current Dialogue 44 (2004), pp. 18-27, (p. 19).
[xxi] WCC, Current Dialogue, p. 4. The WCC booklet on “Ecumenical Considerations: For Dialogue and Relations with People of Other Religions” (2003) is very helpful in giving us a brief update on current inter-religious relations and dialogue, helpful guidelines on approaching religious plurality, some guiding principles and practical considerations in inter-religious dialogue.
[xxii] Hans Ucko, “Editorial”, WCC Current Dialogue 45 (2005), pp. 2-3 (p. 2).
[xxiii] Tienou, “State of the Gospel”, p. 161.
[xxiv] J. Omosade Awolalu, “The Encounter Between African Traditional Religion and Other Religions in Nigeria”, in African Traditional Religion in Contemporary Society, edited by Jacob K. Olupona (St. Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House, 1991), p. 111.
[xxv] Laurenti Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), p. 7.
[xxvi] Momodu Turay (Interviewed July 2002: Kamabai Town).
[xxvii] Mbiti, The Crisis of Mission, p. 1.
[xxviii] Byang H. Kato, “Christianity as an African Religion”, Evangelical Review of Theology 4:1 (1980), pp. 31-39. (1980, p. 33).
[xxix] Ibid: p. 35.
[xxx] Gilbert W. Olson, Church Growth in Sierra Leone (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1969), p. 192.
[xxxi] Taylor, The Primal Vision, p. 16.
[xxxii] Ibid: p. 13.
[xxxiii] McKenzie, Inter-religious Encounters in West Africa (Leicester: University of Leicester, 1976), p. 14.
[xxxiv] E. Bolaji Idowu, Towards an indigenous Church (London: OUP, 1965), p. 22.
[xxxv] Charles H. Kraft, “Christianity and Culture in Africa”, Facing the New Challenges 1:7 (1978), p. 285-91 (p. 288),
[xxxvi] Yelie Conteh (Interviewed June 2002: Freetown).
[xxxvii] Nthamburi, African Church, p. i.
[xxxviii] Byang H. Kato, Biblical Christianity in Africa (Achimota, Ghana: African Christian Press, 1987), p. 19.
[xxxix] Ryan, “Catholic Perspectives”, p. 21.
[xl] Edward G. Parrinder, African Traditional Religion (London: Sheldon, 1962), p. 18; Magesa, African Religion, p. 22.
[xli] Magesa, African Religion, p. 22.
[xlii] Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 145.
[xliii] Ibid: p. 144.
[xliv] Olson, Church Growth, p. 192.
[xlv] See Conteh, Fundamental concepts, for a comprehensive study on this issue.
[xlvi] As we know by now, although ATR is one in its essence, with a basic world-view, which is fundamentally the same throughout Africa, it is rather tribal, regional or national (John S. Mbiti, African Religion and Philosophy [London: Heinemann, 1989], p. 4).
Rev. Dr Prince S. Conteh is Minister of Carleton United Church, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Conteh is also Adjunct Professor in Religion and Interreligious Dialogue at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, NY USA, and Adjunct Professor in World Religions at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.