The Africa of tomorrow is just beyond the horizon and the role of the Church more important than at any stage in the history of the once “dark” continent. In world history the pace of Africa has been the pace of the camel, the ox, or the canoe. The emergence of our continent and its indigenous peoples has been slow. A land of promise during the early years of Christianity, Africa was cut off from the cultural streams and especially the religious development of “Christian” Europe for so many centuries that the twentieth century dawned almost wholly pagan or Moslem. This pattern was broken only by the groups of Copts in Egypt and Ethiopia and small and far-flung Christian communities, the result of nineteenth century missions, in other parts of this vast continent.
Politically Africa was hardly a factor in world affairs. But all that is rapidly changing. Africa is on the move. The role of the Church must now be seen against the background of the Africa of today and the Africa of tomorrow. Else our vision will be out of perspective.
In any evaluation of the future role of the Church, its opportunities, its tasks, and possibilities—we must begin with a realistic look at Africa as it is and try to discover the basic movements of the human spirit on this continent. The Church never exists in a vacuum. It is and must be rooted in some actual human situation. And if we take a long look at Africa, what do we see?
THE SPLINTERING PATTERNS
We see age-long patterns of life breaking up all over Africa. A “new look” is emerging about everything. Yesterday is dead. Tomorrow is only beginning to take shape. We may be entering into one of the most chaotic eras in the history of this continent.
Vast changes may come more suddenly than many of us now deem possible. On the other hand, old institutions may prove to be extremely stubborn. Much will depend on outside factors and on how African nationalism develops.
If leaders in different parts of Africa succeed in molding the emerging national sentiments of the different African groups into one all-inclusive African nationalism, the political face of Africa may change very radically and at a quite unexpected tempo. Our knowledge of human groups, however, leads us to regard this as fairly unlikely. Rivalries and inter-group hostilities seem bound to occur among the self-conscious African leaders and groups. But even if African nationalism breaks up into a few fairly inclusive federal patterns or smaller group nationalisms, it might still be a factor of very great importance and compel radical changes in vast areas of our continent.
The following factors will probably shape the new Africa: 1. Western technology; 2. Islam; 3. Communism; 4. Nationalism; and 5. Christianity.
Of these, the first influence is in one sense the most obvious. Even a superficial observer of Africa must be struck by the ever-growing role of Western technology throughout this continent. Wherever one turns, mills, factories, or processing plants are being built, mines developed, roads laid out, and cities planned. Oil wells are sunk, vast conservation schemes started, and transportation developed. Western technology is opening up the African continent and is laying bare its resources. The bush is converted into fertile land, and schemes like Kariba, the Volta, Aswan and Inga Falls projects must affect the future of the continent.
In the wake of Western technology, old Africa and its way of life are doomed. They must and will change—with increasing momentum. The process, once begun, can never be arrested, but runs its course. An accepted principle among anthropologists is termed “the irreversibility of culture.” A human group can never recapture a cultural phase gone by. New ways of doing things come to stay; new ideas displace outmoded ways of thought. This fact must have a very sobering effect on people who talk overmuch about safeguarding or “re-establishing” African tribal life or institutions. The attempt could at best have only very limited success. The factors of change are too real and too all-embracing.
ONE IN THREE A MUSLIM
Then there is the force of Islam. We in the deep South of Africa are not always aware of the power of Islam, which has anything between 70 and 80 million adherents in Africa. One out of every three people in Africa is a Muslim. The whole Mediterranean seaboard of Africa is a solid Muslim stronghold. Only the Coptic kingdom of Emperor Haile Selassie is half Christian. Probably 90 per cent of the total population of Africa north of the equator is Muslim.
It is important to note that the front of Islam has persistently moved south during the last decades. It has crossed the equator at several points. Islam has launched a full-scale missionary crusade. The Koran is being translated into African languages, even into Afrikaans.
But, from the vantage point of the West, Islam may be viewed as a potential ally in forestalling communism in Africa. This factor is rarely appreciated. Of all known groups it is most difficult to influence Muslims or change their basic loyalties. They have been called by Christian missionaries le bloc inconvertible. When people glibly talk of the Muslim world “turning Communist,” they have little historical insight. If it should happen it would be against all historical precedent. I believe the next decades will prove that Russia may have no more success with Muslims than the Christian Church has had through all these centuries. The Islamitic states of North Africa may instead prove to be a very real bulwark against the Communist penetration of Africa.
EXPOSURE TO COMMUNISM
The next great force in the development of the new Africa is communism.
I am convinced that there is great danger of infiltration by communism in Central and West Africa. On the whole, these peoples are not bound together by a fierce religious nationalism like that of the Islamic groups of North Africa. Whereas these groups are closely bound to the greater Moslem world, the Central and West African groups are not rooted in a great world religion. They are more “open” to foreign influences and also to communism. The great physical barrier of the Sahara is no longer as important as it was. Modern communications have broken through all the old barriers behind which any human group could live in isolation. Moscow is aware that all Africa can be reached by radio, and we can expect the Kremlin to intensify its onslaught upon Africa over the air.
At the present moment communism is not a great force in Africa. But we may be sure that Moscow will grasp every opportunity to exploit trouble-situations, to stir up Africa nationalism for its own ends and against the interests of Western powers in Africa.
CONFLICTING NATIONALISMS
The next great factor in the New Africa is nationalism in all its varied forms, from Afrikaans nationalism in the far South to different indigenous African or Islamic nationalisms in Central, West, or North Africa. The battle for Africa will in some sense be a battle of conflicting nationalisms.
There is a rising tide of nationalism from Algiers to Cape Town. But it occurs in different forms, springing from different historical backgrounds and even having different “spiritual” content. (Compare President Nasser’s Egyptian Islamic nationalism with Dr. Verwoerd’s Afrikaans Christian nationalism and Dr. Nkrumah’s West African form of nationalism.)
All these nationalisms, however, have one element in common: they all seek absolute goals. Nationalism never halts halfway. It goes the full mile. It may be pacified into accepting interim goals for a short time. But ultimately it is never satisfied without accomplishing final goals. Aggressive nationalism despises “wise” counsel, and compromise is branded as weakness.
Thus if African nationalism once becomes unified and on the move, Africa faces tremendous hazards. South Africa especially, with all the signs of a violent clash of nationalisms, may face upheaval. Genuine leaders will arise among African groups, but so will many dangerous political adventurers.
Much will depend on whether African nationalism will be “black,” that is, with as strong a color bias as our own “white” nationalism. If that should happen, relations between the different racial groups will progressively worsen. Against the background of our history, the Africans may be gravely tempted to follow this course. It may spell disaster for all concerned.
Much will depend on the role of the Church in this turbulent era in Africa’s history. It faces tremendous responsibilities. On the one hand, it will have to be realistic in taking account of actual historical situations. On the other hand, it will have to guard against becoming a tool of nationalism, either “white” or African.
Relatively few Africans, assuredly, belong to the Christian Church in this emerging new Africa. It would be a safe guess to place the number of Christians in Africa at around 33 million, about one-seventh of the African population. This includes Roman Catholics, Copts, and evangelicals. This means that Moslems outnumber Christians more than two to one. Moreover, Christians are more divided than the Moslems. Apart from South Africa and the Federation, there are, outside colonial possessions, no “Christian” states except Coptic Ethiopia.
On the other hand, members of the Christian Church are generally more literate than other groups and have relatively greater influence. The educational programs of the Christian churches and missions have done a great work. Furthermore, the Christian churches have progressed at an inspiring pace in the last three or four decades. Some churches have really become rooted in African communities. The Christian Church can count on many friends and champions for her cause among Africans.
THE RELIGIOUS TENSIONS
Yet we must not be overoptimistic. In an era of rising nationalism the Church may experience many shocks and disappointments. Many African Christians may be thrown off center by the tides of nationalism sweeping their countries. They may become nationalists first and Christians second. This must not surprise us. Christians in other countries or continents have succumbed to this temptation in periods of great nationalist upheaval. We need only remind ourselves of Germany during the heyday of national socialism! Even a man like Dr. Hastings Banda of Nyasaland, popularly linked with many sinister aspects of the Nyasaland revolt, is a Christian and used to be an elder of the Kirk of Scotland! How many of our own “white” Christians make decisions not primarily on Christian grounds but according to group interests? We must face the possibility, nay, the likelihood that many African Christians will do the same.
Add to this the fact that nationalism characteristically seeks inspiration in the cultural or religious past of the group. Religious heritage is extoled and a bias projected against all “foreign” influence. African nationalism may thus extol paganism at the expense of Christianity.
THE CHRISTIAN THRUST
But the Christian Church has a great role to play. She holds the key to better relations between the different racial groups. But to accomplish this, she must not herself be a “color or cast ridden” community.
Governments in different parts of Africa are struggling—up till now with few signs of success—to find a key to racial peace. I believe the Church of Jesus Christ remains the decisive factor. If the Church fails, the future of Africa is dark indeed.
The task of the Church in Africa seems to me to center around these basic points:
First, the Church will have to witness, to evangelize, and win the African masses for Christ.
Then the Church will have to stand for social justice. The Church will have to take a vital interest in the legitimate rights of the Africans. The Church cannot win the respect and loyalty of the Africans if she fails to take a vital interest also in their material needs. To stand aloof or to side automatically with the white groups would be fatal. The Africans would reject the Church as a white man’s or imperialistic institution. Of course, the Church will have to act with great responsibility and wisdom and will have to guard against the tendency in some quarters to champion any wild African aspiration merely because it is “African.”
The Church can also play a vital role in training African leaders. Although some countries have taken over the educational task of the Church, in most countries the doors are wide open for such leadership training.
Finally, the Church will have to create real community between the different racial groups within her own ranks. I do not mean that the Church must condemn all separate churches for different racial groups along cultural, linguistic, or other lines. But the Church must rid herself completely of any and all attempts at exclusion of any believer from any church or service on any of these grounds.
If the Christian Church in Africa merely tries to perpetuate the status quo in race relations or racial patterns, she will fail to meet the needs and realities of a new day in Africa in which nationalism and race consciousness and sensitiveness are very marked. This to my mind is the problem of the Church in the present world situation and in the emerging Africa.
Great new non-Christian or anti-Christian forces are on the march, and we see their shadows falling across all the horizons of our Western world. A divided Church faces this new world. As millions are freed from illiteracy and the power of old pagan gods and fears, what has the Christian Church to offer these temporarily uprooted millions?
One of their basic needs is a sense of communion. Can and will the Christian Church be a new home to them? The Christian Church will have to face tremendous competition in her quest for the hearts and minds of the millions of Africa. We must face the sober fact that 70 million Africans have already been drawn into the communion of the Moslem faith. What hope has a deeply divided and caste-or-color-ridden Christian Church in a life-and-death struggle against Islam for the soul of Africa? Humanly speaking, victory is a remote prospect unless the Christian Church creates a sense of real and deep community among all in her fold. I do not base my idea of Christian brotherhood on any vague philosophical or humanistic conception of the brotherhood of all men, but I base it on the clear and specific Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of all believers in Christ Jesus.
Apart from Islam, we have to face the challenge of communism, with its stress on community. Though we may condemn the community created by the Communist ideology as pseudo-community, the Christian Church will, in her struggle against communism, have to prove that her own genius for creating the deepest possible community among men is real and not pseudo or an idle boast. If the Christian Church in Africa fails to create real community she is doomed. If she fails to become a new “home” to the millions of uprooted pilgrims moving out of their old paganisms and outmoded securities, these pilgrims will fall prey to some other faith or ideology, and find another home far from the cross of Christ, like some extreme form of African nationalism, communism, or Islam.
Let me state clearly that the problem is not, in the first instance, the propriety of separate churches for different national or racial groups in different countries or even the same country, city, or town (whether German, English, Dutch, or African churches for countries or areas where people belong to these language or racial groups). That is normal and natural. I raise no objection so long as these churches do not bar their doors against fellow believers of another language, race, or ethnic group. This sort of thing becomes forced segregation within the Church, within the community of God’s people, and that is an evil thing and must be combatted by all Christians, even if it is camouflaged by high sounding concepts like “the need for autogenous development.”
This is the Africa we face. The Church can be the great pioneer, the bridge builder par excellence between widely different peoples. She can teach them to value their own heritage while initiating them into their great new home—the Church and the greater family circle of the people of God.
The Church, by being true to her own character as the communion of the saints, the people of God, will have to make Christian brotherhood and fellowship for all racial groups real. Otherwise Christianity will lose all hope of moral and spiritual leadership in the emerging Africa.
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
