Africa’s Evangelicals Choose the Middle Way

The second Africa Evangelical Conference gave the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar a clear, moderate position between the rightist and leftist forces at work in the Christian Church in Africa today. The position, roughly comparable to that of “neo-evangelicals” in the United States, allows for creative scholarship and social responsibility without compromising the Gospel.

The 160 delegates, representing eight national evangelical fellowships and several missions and churches in nineteen African countries, met in the lush green hills of Limuru early last month to appraise the evangelical thrust on the continent and to discuss the opportunities and problems of communicating “The Unchanging Word to a Changing Continent.”

Africa’s first continent-wide conference of evangelicals, also held at Limuru, gave birth three years ago to the AEAM, because delegates felt the need for an active fellowship among those who hold the same Bible-based doctrines, as a means of united witness and action.

But this second conference (concurrent with the association’s General Assembly) has given the association its form and program, and may prove to have been its real founding. Confidence and hope, observed acting Secretary General Eric Maillefer, replaced the uncertainties and doubts of the first conference; and Africans came forward to make the evangelical cause in Africa their own.

Declaring their “solemn responsibility before God to ‘earnestly contend for the faith’ in Africa and Madagascar,” the conference issued strongly worded statements against the “current dangerous trends of the Ecumenical Movement as evidenced in the increased efforts of liberals and neo-universalists to capture Africa and Madagascar,” and against “the dangers inherent in the United Bible Societies’ present policy of collaboration with the Roman Catholic Church.”

While rejoicing in the use of Scriptures by Catholics on a wider scale than ever before, the conference warned that the societies’ present policy will endanger evangelical Africans’ support for the societies, and may interrupt the cordial relationships in translation and distribution.

The ecumencial movement, the conference said, has been mounting steady pressure to break down the distinction between orthodox evangelical theology and liberal theology and practice. It has also been enticing African Christian youth by offering them scholarships for training in institutions with theologically liberal tendencies.

The conference therefore urged the association to establish a scholarship fund for theological studies and asked all evangelical Bible colleges and institutions to make a concentrated effort to instruct their students concerning the dangers of ecumenism and liberalism. It also called upon Christian workers to increase their knowledge of biblical theology. It urged the Association of Bible Institutes and Colleges, an AEAM affiliate, to move rapidly toward establishment of an accreditation association.

Papers and discussions centered on how the young evangelical church in Africa can reshape itself to better serve and challenge this rapidly changing continent, and what workable guidelines it should give for young Africa’s anguished search for stability and fulfillment.

“Africa is going through her teething period,” observed the Rev. David I. Olatayo, outgoing president of AEAM. “You can scarcely predict who your head of state will be tomorrow,” he added lightheartedly.

Deep-voiced and confident, Olatayo occasionally broke into the broad, engaging smile that often belies this Nigerian’s deep spiritual agony for the current suffering in his country. He outlined the political, economic, social, and religious consequences of the rapid wind of change blowing across the continent, “showing Africa’s need for the unchanging Word of God.”

General Director Donald R. Jacobs of the Mennonite Board in Eastern Africa drew excited comments, especially from Africans, when he said the modern missionary movement in Africa has given the Gospel a Western tint. “Unless the life of Christ finds expression in local cultural terms,” he said, “the task of evangelism and nurture cannot go forward.”

In the discussion that ensued, it became plain that the traditional definition of the indigenous church—self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating—is deficient in Africa. Many churches in African hands are distrusted because they still remain essentially foreign in form and content. To indigenize the form and content of church life and teaching is a delicate task. It might lead to syncretism, in which Christ shares the throne with other gods, yet it remains the most urgent and challenging obligation for the AEAM.

“Forces Opposing the African Church” were listed by incoming AEAM President Samwel O. Odunaike. paganism, Islam, Communism, Roman Catholicism, materialism, nationalism, and schism.

Criticizing missionaries who have presented Christianity as an exclusive preserve of the white man who has come to share his inheritence with the unfortunate black man, Odunaike acidly added that his African brethren have not helped the situation very much. “At times,” he said, “we have relied overmuch on funds from our foreign missions and at the same time we get annoyed when he who pays the piper begins to dictate the tune. At other times, we have shrunk from accepting responsibility because of the price it involves.”

This combination, Odunaike said, spurs extreme nationalists to call for complete Africanization of religion. Islam and paganism have also cashed in on these circumstances, claiming that Christianity is a foreign religion. Odunaike called on Christians in Africa and foreign missionaries to accept this sobering truth: True Christianity is foreign to any country or race; therefore no church leadership can look toward color or country of origin. ‘Then we shall begin to talk about the church in Africa and not the African church.”

The conference urged an annual day of prayer for personal heart-searching, submission to the Holy Spirit, and total commitment to evangelism.

At business sessions the association established a literature board in Nairobi to improve training and distribution and work toward an international periodical; a seminary extension program; scholarships for theological studies; a relief fund for the distressed; a committee for evangelism; and an information service on suitable Christian-education materials available in English.

African evangelicals face a future of unlimited opportunities and monumental problems. Some mission fields are closing, but new ones are springing up among city-dwellers, university students, refugees, and others. The government radio head in the Congo-Kinshasa is reported to have told a missionary: “Our people have heard too much politics; they need to have something to calm their hearts, so we are giving you free radio time.”

“Our main purpose is not just to oppose dangerous trends,” said the incoming secretary of AEAM’s executive committee, Joash Okongo, “but to exploit the existing opportunities in order to advance the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.”

The rich diversity of African evangelicalism is at once its great strength and great weakness. Scattered all over this vast continent, the evangelical churches were founded by men from many different countries, many cultures, many mission boards, and many denominations.

But, as the AEAM’s chief founder, the Rev. Kenneth L. Downing, observed at the end of the conference, “The concept of spiritual fellowship among evangelical believers is spreading throughout the continent; denominational boundaries are forgotten when they come together in this way for ‘Fellowship in the Gospel.’ ”

Miscellany

Notre Dame University President Theodore Hesburgh said any campus protesters who substitute “force for rational persuasion” will be subject to suspension, expulsion, or action by civil police.… The Roman Catholic club at the State Agricultural and Technical College, Farmingdale, Long Island, was suspended for reciting a voluntary Mass in a dormitory lounge.… Girls at Queens College (Southern Presbyterian) are boycotting required chapels.

The federal war on poverty granted the National Council of Churches’ Mississippi Delta Ministry $367,777 for education, housing, and day care.

A Minnesota district judge barred Hamline University (United Methodist) from joining a lawsuit over the finances of the late Scotch Tape millionaire Archibald Bush. The school claims Bush promised it $10 million.… South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled a United Methodist congregation can’t take its property when it secedes.… Six Protestant agencies filed U. S. Supreme Court briefs supporting the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” for broadcasters. Broadcast powers have filed on the other side, backing a fundamentalist station in Red Lion, Pennsylvania.

Indian members of the Native American Church want Idaho’s legislature to legalize their rites, which use peyote. And some Pueblo Indians seek exemption from “due process” legislation because their villages are theocracies.

A Catholic-opposed bill in Montana would permit voluntary sterilization of the mentally retarded.

The Luis Palau team recorded 814 professions of faith in two local church crusades in Mexico City.

Two dozen Catholic bishops, meeting in Rio, urged Brazil’s military to return the nation to democratic control.

A poll in Communist Yugoslavia showed 39 per cent of those over 18 believe in God.

British biologists took human eggs from ovaries removed for medical reasons and successfully fertilized one in a test tube. A Vatican spokesman called it “immoral and absolutely illicit.”

A poll among engaged Swedes showed 92 per cent of those in the state Lutheran church do not oppose premarital relations, and 80 per cent in the free churches.

Catholic sources claim Pope Paul refused an audience to South Viet Nam’s Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky.

Italian cults led by an ex-priest and a prophetess said the world would end February 20. It didn’t. Their new deadline is March 17.

Personalia

President Charles Boddie of American Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, will be the first Negro professor at a Southern Baptist seminary. He will teach ethics at the New Orleans school.… Theologian Clark Pinnock announced he would leave that campus for Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, weeks after a resigning teacher charged Pinnock with sparking a conservative turn at the New Orleans seminary.

Lawrence Cardinal Shehan asked Monsignor F. Joseph Manns, pastor of Baltimore’s second-biggest Catholic parish, to quit because he hasn’t carried out Vatican II-type renewal.

The Texas Council of Churches, joined last month by Roman Catholics, has fired migrant-worker organizer the Rev.

Edgar Krueger and is pulling out of the VISTA program that Krueger boosted. The council also backed off from a lawsuit against the Texas Rangers for brutality against Krueger in a May, 1967, incident.

The leaders of U. S. Inter-Varsity, Canadian Inter-Varsity, Campus Crusade, the Navigators, Youth for Christ, and Young Life met three days in Denver, then “declared their desire to love, aid, and strengthen one another and the movements they represent.”

Anglican Bishop C. Edward Crowther, who was expelled from South Africa for opposing apartheid, is replacing Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore as director of Operation Connection.

Retiring Director Stanley Stuber of the YMCA’s Association Press was replaced last month by veteran staffer Robert W. Hill.… Managing Editor Ron E. Henderson of motive (which just lost its editor) will become a religious book editor at Macmillan.

Jennifer Albright, 19, is belly-dancing at private parties to help put husband Stephen through Bangor Theological Seminary.

Baptist minister Joseph T. Wingate, 35, was found guilty of embezzling $1,429 from a war-on-poverty child center in Virginia which he directed.

Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Hatch of Westmont, New Jersey, read in the American Baptist Crusader about a 7-year-old who needs a liver transplant to live, and made plans to donate the organ of their young son, who has a malignant brain tumor.

Josiah H. Beeman V, long active in Northern California Democratic politics, was appointed international-affairs secretary of the United Presbyterian Church. Beeman, noted for leftist views, is slated to help the church “shape its ministries and public influence to help bring peace and healing to the nations.”

James A. Christison was promoted to executive secretary of the reorganized American Baptist Home Mission Societies. Christison, a lay accountant, succeeds retiring William H. Rhoades.

Dr. Harvey Henry Guthrie, Jr., was installed as dean of the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The 45-year-old Guthrie has taught Old Testament at the school since 1958.

Thirty-seven-year-old Johannes Gultom is the first Indonesian to be elected a Methodist bishop.

U.S.-trained United Church of Christ minister Ndabaningi Sithole was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of conspiracy to murder Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith. Sithole, a leader in a banned black party, denied the charges.… The UCC’s U. S. social-action agency recently backed the “legitimate claims” of black liberation units in Portuguese colonies.

Two American rabbis joined 2,000 Soviet Jews in a seventy-fifth birthday tribute to Moscow’s Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin, but eight Israeli rabbis declined invitations.

DEATHS

KARL JASPERS, 86, German-born creator of a major strand of existentialist thought which sought a course of “philosophical faith” between the irrationalism of Kierkegaard’s “leap” and Heidegger’s brand of existentialism whose logical outcome many saw in Heidegger’s espousal of Nazism. Jaspers’s anti-Nazism cost him a philosophy chair at Heidelberg, which he regained after the war, then left for a post in Base!, where he died last month.

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