The
Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) had a
Golden Jubilee celebration in Uganda, commemorating 50 years of evangelizing in
fraternal communion. This took place from the 21st to 28th of July 2019. This
all was due to the sense of brotherhood that was built upon and efforts of
living together in this common home. The homestead builds on strong pillars of
unity, collaboration, support, and Harambe lasts forever.
50
years coincides with what Pope Paul VI proclaimed the following words: "you Africans, you
are now your missionaries. You can and ought to have an African
Christianity" … In 2019 the theme of the symposium was Church-Family
of God in Africa, Celebrate your Jubilee! Proclaim Jesus Christ your Saviour.
The question is not now whether we can handle our issues without missionary
support or financial support from Europe? This to me should not be our
preoccupation after 50 years, but what do we have to showcase after 50 years of
existence? This question should be answered honestly without mincing around
polemic emotional hot air to whether there African Christianity exists or not.
The answer is that here we are and are ready to voice ourselves through the
airwaves to reach every part of the world.
Like
someone recently was sharing with me at the bus Termini in Rome: "Don…
look how many Africans we have now in Rome… Europe has to be re-evangelized
either by art and dance or by passion which you Africans come with from Africa".
Since I love listening more than talking to such voices, I didn't respond
immediately, he looked at me and he felt sad because I didn't respond to his
sentiments, the bus arrived and jumped into the bus to take my seat to enter
into contemplating over that… I was enriched and leaned to let go of what my
brain had accumulated.
These
are sentiments and words that keep us African theologians and scholars at the
edge of the seat. We have grown to start speaking from our experience, the task
of incarnating, contextualizing or inculturation Christian faith with the heart
of the church's missionary vocation. To study and live the reality of
inculturation can be compared to undressing to redress, but on condition that
you will have to accept to be naked before redressing as removing all your
biases, stereotype, judgments out and redressing into another culture to learn
and relearn other cultures. This inculturation in many parts of the world is
proving to be a very exciting task, but it is also one that often causes pain
that is ultimately liberating and life-giving because we have to now take the
center stage of being the driver of the bus (Church), not passengers. This
sometimes will force us to confront the fact that our understanding of
Christianity will be conditioned by colonial sentiments, racial undertones, and
the western mentality of superiority. But as Bernard Lonergan put it "Know
always makes a slow, if not a bloody entrance" (Cf. B. Lonergan, Insight,
A Study in Human Understanding, 1957:187).
This,
therefore, means that those who work for inculturation need a spirituality, not
enough to know the values or key symbols of a particular culture or the nuances
of a situation. Nor is it enough to have mastered the content of the Christian
tradition. Working for inculturation is an art, it will demand skill and
knowledge and accuracy but it demands much more than that. The qualities of
insight, depth, creativity, imagination, wisdom, openness to grace, courage in
the face of risk and recognition of the unexpected. It is not about what we can
do, but who we can become is what is important.
It
is this more self-involving, ascetical, prayerful aspects of ministry that we
need to be engaged in, building a contextualized spirituality, that emerges
from the practice of real reading proper signs of the times which are prophetic
and messianic and that produce desired returns. This will call for a change of
symbols, doctrines, attitudes, and practices that persons or a community set
about trying to make their own to be able to cope with a particular situation,
to grow in the love of God and self-reawakening. Spirituality is a fountain/
reservoir from which a person or community can draw, to motivate action, to
keep on track and commitment, to avoid discouragement when times get rough.
When we talk about contextualized spirituality, it means the whole complex of
ideas and practices that can open people up to Spirit in such a way that there
emerge an understanding and expression of Christianity that takes its form in a
loving, creative, and sometimes critical dialogue with particular social or
cultural context. These we shall categorize them in two categories: The sent
(stranger, the guest, the missionary, the ambassador, the envoy). This is
around the spirituality of hands off a bit from total control of issues. Those
who are called to listen, observe, let it be, taking interior dialogue. What we
call self-examination for better re-awakening. Then followed by the host
spirituality (the locals, indigenous, those who speak out, those who
narrate and transmit the values and movements in and out of the community. This
will call for activating the let off voices which if not interpreted well could
sound properly rebellious against those sent.
The
spirituality of let-off (Spirituality of the Sent/ "Muzungu")
Today,
once we get involved in historical explorations and expositions, we become so
emotionally charged and negatively drained with past baggage that blocks our
objective criticism. There has been a well-deserved focus on the negative
aspects of missionary activity and missionaries. Those sent often have a
practice a particular form of spirituality that should revolve around the
asceticism of let-off. As the Ghanaian proverb states "the stranger
has eyes like saucers, but doesn't see anything", we can also say, even
despite having large ears! Seeing what is relay there and listening to what is
relay being said takes a tremendous amount of self-discipline and is a genuine
practice of kenosis. This has to be the real virtue of those sent
spirituality. Each one of us sees the world through a particular set of
lenses and hears others with a particular filter and divesting ourselves of
those lenses and filters is hard work, in many ways a life's work. Sometimes it
will necessity you to close your mouth for the first year to learn to see and
listen.
But
as Lonergan would tell us in his five imperatives: "be attentive, be
intelligent, be reasonable, and be responsible and if necessary change".
The attentiveness sometimes costs and hard to achieve. (Cf. D. Tracy,
"Traditions of Spirituality and Practice of Theology", Theology
Today: 1998, 235-41). This will call for great humility on the part of those
sent if they have to be successful in their missioning in the
contextualized reality. This involves taking a risk for the sake of the gospel,
where they have to shade off their thinking of the contents of the bible they
have come with to a specific people, community and learning how things are done
in the new common home, literally learning a new language, food, climate and breathing
new fresh air to refresh their minds and hearts and they have to feel this wind
blowing in their hearts.
As Vincent Donovan argues so eloquently, "the
role of those sent, the missionaries, is only to preach the gospel presided is
a "naked gospel", shorn of as many of the preacher's presuppositions
as possible. But once this gospel is accepted it no longer belongs to the
missionary; it belongs to the people". (Cf. V. Donovan, Christianity
Recovered: 1982). Those sent have to believe that the people now are, like
him or, under the guidance of God's Spirit that the Spirit will lead them
towards a faithful expression of their faith that nevertheless their own.
Unless
we learn to lose the gospel in the process of contextualization, they will
never see the gospel become an integral part of a culture. Truth often doesn't
prepare us to grasp in human terms and symbols right timings. This is the time
for those sent to take leave of the gospel so that the gospel can be spoken in
real language of the native with their expressions and experiences. The gospel
message must be wrapped in the tree bark clothe and not thinking that it's
being adulterated. This will call for deep pain of let-off in the way of
seeing, ways of hearing, and ways of understanding.
This
Steve reminds us of who missionaries came to embrace and baptized. The
missionary has to be willing to look at himself as "missionary ghost"
(Cf. S. Bevans, "Seeing Mission Through Images", Missiology,
International Review, 19/1, 1991: 45-57). Being able to look upon one's
achievements with a certain amount of ‘holy indifference', being able to leave
them behind, allowing others to build up a parish or school or organization,
and then simply withdraw and leave it to another. We know missionaries who feel
quite bitter about the fact that after so many years of service their work was
not fully appreciated by locals, looking over leadership, changed things
according to their vision.
Let-off is part of being sent, moving on (la
uscita) and leaving the locals to take over. If those sent are bitter and
try to hang on, or bitter because he or she cannot, something is wrong. They
have to let-off their work, die to it to speak, and remain present only as
friendly ghosts. Perhaps it is the most difficult sacrifice of all that is
required for real fruitfulness of their labor. The locals have to adapt this
Jesus in their way of understanding him, because this Jesus has to be welcomed
in this culture and tradition, undressed and vested in their wrappings not
remain in the wrappings which he came with, you can lay a bed and fail to sleep
in.
Speaking
out and voicing a critique of the context in which the sent live, calls for
that context to conform itself to the gospel. But this speaking out we can say
can only be in the context of the let-off, it can never be the result of
one's frustrations, it can never be done out of anger or feelings of
superiority. (Cf. Amos 7:12-15). This is tremendously hard work and will shape
and stretch those who engage in it in ways almost infinitely beyond imagining.
This is the task of African theologians and scholars now to prove their worth,
not photocopy European methods into African context, it won't work. If an
African son can't talk in his mother tongue there is a serious problem that
gospel will be dead on arrival. Contextualization has nothing to do with
decorating yourself with indigenous attire and think you are missioning, it's
what you do with them, and you either lose something in the process or remain
in your ignorance of where you are and enjoy the game safari.
The
Spirituality of the locals (Wanjinku's voice)
This
has nothing to do with theological experts but that woman who sells her
commodities on the roadside. It the African theologians and scholars have to do
theology, it should be found there out on the street with that woman called
Wanjiku or simply close the academia and seminary. The locals have to express
their voice and their voice has to be heard. As P. Schineller wisely says, The
process of inculturation is far too complex to be left only to professional
theologians, and such complexity can rarely if ever be grasped by outsiders.
(Cf. P. Schineller, "Inculturation and Modernity," Sedos Bulletins
2:1988, 47). The locals have to speak out and differentiate the wheat from the
chaff, truth from fake news, false prophets of doom versus agents of capitalism
who are only interested to make us fight while they steal our resources and
then get back to get their loans with unfriendly terms…friends to have to be
tested.
When
people in a context who are often ignored or discounted can tell their stories
as blacks, Hispanics or homeless, disabled or lay, people, as women, as Asian
Americans. Authentic contextualization can take place only when that bare feet
theology of that woman called "Wanjiku theologies" as well as the
"big theologies" are to be articulated. Often many African
theologians and scholars have been intimidated by church leaders who see them
as the only interpreters of the gospel. Any kind of popular expression of faith
is suspect and smacked of "syncretism." That is why the locals in
their particular social-cultural context need to practice a spirituality of
voicing out, shout out.
A spirituality born out of courage that gives them the
energy, insight, and creativity to articulate how God is present in their
lives, their work, and their struggles. They will have to develop the skills of
really seeing and listening to the culture. Develop a kind of scanning machine,
x-ray vision, where they can begin to see the ways that God is present and
active in their situation, and the values in the culture or context that might
even add to the entire church's understanding of a rich source of meaning for
her own Christian life in the Buddhist teaching of meekness, (Cf. D. Whiteman, Contextualization,
NY, 1999:44) all Christians might profit from the attention to the concerns
with healing and lively prayer that African initiated churches especially those
with Pentecostal bent, in the recent years.
The
locals need to focus on God's immanence, God's nearness, and God's presence in
normal realities. Looking for God in places neglected in a very warp and woof
of the context. The locals should believe that God can be found anywhere in
their context, in ordinary custom, myth or legend. (I Kings 19:9-13). God is in
the presence of the obvious and therefore most overlooked places, and yet
places where only the locals might think to look. This spirituality is about
the discipline of seeking and courage to proclaim what is found. In this
context, courage could mean taking risks.
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