To write about Africa is, in Elspeth Huxley’s view, like trying to sketch a galloping horse: it is out of sight before you have sharpened your pencil. Before the 1950s, for example, there were only two independent states in Black Africa (on which this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY particularly focuses). When the wind of change swept over the continent it dealt a mortal blow to colonialism, and sent two score new ambassadors from Africa to the United Nations. Within the next 20 years, a tourist industry publication wishfully thinks, the erstwhile dark continent will be “the vacation choice of North Americans,” or, “the world’s next great destination.”
Elsewhere in these pages, Mrs. Traub and Dr. Adeyemo write on different aspects of the situation in Black Africa—a collective designation that covers divergent nations, from Namibia to Somalia, from Mali to Mozambique. The peoples of Africa are not dittoes. In trying here to outline some of the more common problems they face, we have gone to African sources, and are grateful to all who, through publications and addresses, correspondence, and personal conversation, have helped us to see our subject from an African perspective.
1. Political background. Many African states, says Bishop Henry Okulu of Kenya, “are ruled by military dictatorships with every individual’s life expendable at any time the ruler may decide so.” Okulu prophesies that the Western world’s leftward swing will spread to most African countries within two decades because “Africans are by mental make-up socialists.”
Just as significantly, there is still a tendency to think in terms of “after the revolution”—a view encouraged by Communists adept at fishing in troubled waters. The said revolution usually concerns white racism, not the black variety. Black governments have reason to be grateful for this perennial diversion, which makes their citizens more tolerant of a different sort of oppression at home. The tragedy about so many Black African countries is that their independence takes the form of rejecting imperialism and Marxism before awaking to find themselves in thrall to indigenous dictatorships. At the same time, we remember that nothing recognizable as democracy existed in the colonial era.
Apparent also is a distrust of the Western press. A well-known Western journalist rather surprisingly claims that a black curtain is descending. He states that Ethiopia, Somalia, Zaire, Tanzania, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique, Uganda until recently, and even Zambia are among those who give a frigid or no welcome at all, and are lands journalists enter at their peril. The Central African Empire, whose president reportedly has at least instigated the killing of prisoners and school pupils, is said to demand from visiting press personnel a sizeable deposit repayable on publication of a favorable report. It is a wry fact that the international press corps finds itself most secure in South Africa and Zimbabwe Rhodesia, countries with highly developed propaganda machines.
A further issue on the political scene is the difficulty of Africans in reaching beyond tribal and national borders. Nevertheless, says a Kenyan churchman, Africa is “the most exciting place in the world to live in today.… We may be ignorant but we have no pretenses.” Now there is a sobering comment for Westerners to ponder!
2. Islam. Of rival suitors of Christianity for Africa’s heart today, the most important is not Communism but Islam. Global resurgence of the latter has given it a boost in Africa, where it exploits a general anti-Western sentiment, and fosters the view that Islam is African. The initial Muslim approach south of the Sahara was made by Africans themselves. They moved into pagan villages where they quickly established themselves in the community. There were no major racial or cultural barriers, as there would have been in the case of European or American missionaries—and Christianity could be dismissed as something Western and foreign.
Islam, estimated in 1976 to have about 60 million adherents in Black Africa, could also offer features that made it readily attractive to the average African. Conversion to Islam from paganism meant turning away from much superstition and fear and entering into a more sophisticated society. Islam did not demand the strict moral standards Christianity did. Ceremonial and social amenities were offered, whereas the Christian concentrated rather on purity and spiritual principles. Islam provides a God easily acceptable, and a sense of unity within the brotherhood. Since religion covers the whole of life, political participation is not the problem it is for many Christians. Islam allows the presence of tribal customs, and its economic influence is exploited through the power of petroleum wealth—“black gold.” Islam is tolerant of common tendencies in Black Africa such as polygamy, easy divorce, the use of charms, and fatalistic attitudes.
3. Socio-economic needs. Africa is straining to catch up with the rest of the developed world, but the obstacles are daunting. Some of these were thus outlined by a Tanzanian government official, Dr. Israel Katoke: “We need to free our people from the shackles of ignorance caused by superstitions, primitive technology, sanitation, poor diet, poor leadership, hence, poor planning.” Still, in many rural areas of Africa water has to be carried long distances, social services are inadequate, public transport nonexistent, newspapers unknown. Perhaps 70 percent of the population cannot read.
4. Christianity and culture. More than half the population of Black Africa professes at least nominal Christianity, according to a Lausanne Committee information sheet. By the end of 1976, Dr. John Mbiti estimated there were some 180 million Christians in Africa (including the Muslim North), where 70 years earlier there had been only nine million. Christians are growing in numbers, he claims, at the rate of 5 percent per annum, compared with a population growth of 2.6 percent.
Another prominent African, however, is wary of such statistics. The church in Africa is swelling numerically rather than growing, says the Reverend Gottfried Osei-Mensah. He suggests there might be a serious setback within the next decade “unless this generation of Christian leaders takes steps now to contextualize the gospel and its ethics in all areas of African life.”
What is needed, then, is a theology both true to the gospel, yet free from Western accretions. A white speaker at the 1976 Pan African Christian Leadership Assembly (PACLA) suggested that it was “hard to imagine a less biblical culture than the European culture, even after 2,000 years of Christianity.” The Western world bewilders the African by the great gulf it fixes between sacred and secular; for the African there is no such distinction. Westerners show lack of imagination, too, when they fail to realize that Africans have a strong oral tradition, as did people of Bible times, and that they stress practical experience in religion. We must not forget that there are well over 5,000 groups with a total membership of some 10 million that are called African Independent Churches because they are not missionary-related.
Any theology to cope with African cultures, said another PACLA speaker, must relate to local church situations, endorse what is good in local cultures, and deal with deviations found in each local area. Ultimately, however, Africa’s problems are problems common to a fallen world in desperate need of Christ. Thus African evangelicals are, in Gottfried Osei-Mensah’s words, “pressing home the righteous requirements of Christ’s kingly reign both in man’s personal affairs and in his relationships and social structures.… The integrity of the gospel of reconciliation is seriously at stake in Africa, all the more so when other professedly Christian bodies are advocating and supporting a gospel of violence—which ironically dehumanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed.”
Many of Africa’s rulers have in youth come under Christian influence through mission schools, though some have since found dubious nourishment from other sources. Ours is a burden of prayer, that the leaven of a gospel perhaps half forgotten may carry out its mysterious transforming work in their hearts. The Israel of Bible days came to appreciate times of political independence as a direct gift from God. May a similar recognition guide our African brethren so that what are established are not necessarily American or British methods of democracy, but nations remarkable for that fear of God that alone can make countries and peoples perfectly secure.
