Politics Goes to Church in Zaire

The pen of General Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire (formerly Congo), has proved mighty like a sword. He used it in a double stroke to render hors de combat more than 1,300 religious groups in his nation. The move radically altered the church scene in Zaire.

The first stroke of his pen signed into law on December 31, 1971, the requirement that all but three main churches reapply for permission to function. The three exempted were the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Christ in Zaire, which had united various Protestant denominations, and the Kimbanguist Church, an independent African movement (see March 17 issue, page 42).

The second stroke fell on March 27, 1972: the President signed three of the applications submitted by numerous churches and movements wanting to continue. The second group of three that joined the original trio were the Israeli Community of Kinshasa, the Islamic Community of Zaire, and the Greek Orthodox Church. All the other 1,300-plus groups except one had to disband and disappear (see May 12 issue, page 38).

Now the dust has settled enough to attempt an evaluation. The radical restraint on religious activities had both short- and long-term implications for Protestants in Zaire.

Cold-Blooded Politics

Some observers attribute President Mobutu Sese Seko’s crackdown on religion to his “Campaign for Authenticity.” Zaire’s African personality was in danger of suffocation by Western technology and culture, he charged late last year. The time had come to reassert authentic Bantu values in art, music, and every other aspect of national life. Some believed this meant the nation’s religious life as well.

Other Africa watchers, including the diplomatic corps in Zaire, suspect the sudden concern for Bantu personality may have been prompted as much by politics as by ideals. The authenticity campaign coincided with severe economic troubles caused mainly by an almost 50 per cent drop in the price of copper ore. This export garners four-fifths of Zaire’s hard currency. Waving the flag of authenticity helped divert public attention from increasing inflation.

Similarly, politics—not ideals—prompted the government’s action against religious groups on December 31, 1971.

Since independence in 1960, Zaire had become the breeding ground for a swarm of prophetic movements, secret cults, and splinter churches. A self-styled prophet or frustrated church leader or divided congregation seemed reason enough for a new group to organize and proselytize and hundreds did. The new organization often assumed an imposing name, in contrast to its small size, such as Church of Renaissance Love, Jehovah’s Church of Men of Goodwill, Israeli Army of Builders of the Kingdom of God, and Church of Faith by the Prophet Isaiah. One small city of about 80,000 in Central Zaire bred 150 different movements, the Lower Zaire Province more than 300. The Ministry of Justice knew of 1,300 groups nationwide, and hundreds more probably never bothered to declare themselves.

This epidemic stirred public criticism. A daily newspaper in the capital city of Kinshasa expressed the disgust of many citizens. Citing the practice by one group of sleeping in the cemetery at night, it condemned such irresponsible movements as a threat to public order—if not the security of the nation.

Other African states had as many or more such religious movements and did not consider them dangerous. Why should Zairians be so jittery? Because of their recent bitter experience. In just seven years of independence, Zaire suffered one full-scale rebellion, two coup d’états, three military mutinies, and two abortive secessions. Zairians attributed these troubles to irresponsible political factions. They were in no mood to tolerate erratic cults whose antics could cause more national grief.

No one appreciated this problem more than President Mobutu. Since seizing power in 1965 he had pushed the nation well uphill toward unity and stability. But progress was still precarious. If he stumbled, he knew he would be crushed as Zaire plunged downhill again to tragedy. The chaotic proliferation of cults could cause that stumble. If he didn’t move to control them, his enemies might.

The founder of one movement had already been accused of high treason. Emmanuel Bamba, leader of the Eglise congolaise, was arrested and hanged with other members of the “Easter Plot” against the President’s life in 1966. Since then, according to David B. Barrett, an authority on African religious movements, such groups in Zaire had become a political issue.

Bystanders Or Targets?

Legislators drawing up the bill for presidential approval assured troubled Protestant leaders that the measures were aimed only at the cults. Established churches and missions were not targets. But it may have been more than coincidence that just six months before, the Protestants of Zaire had suffered the severest split in their history (see April 14 issue, page 4). It was certainly no coincidence that the only Protestant group to survive the President’s slashing pen was the Church of Christ in Zaire (CCZ).

Dr. I. (Jean) Bokambanza Bokeleale, president of the CCZ, had linked church unity to politics since he took office in 1969. He preached that opposition to organic unity was tantamount to rebellion against the regime. This political overtone disturbed some churchmen, but Dr. Bokeleale realized early success toward a united church. He had given expression to a deep feeling among all kinds of leading Protestants for a more visible form of their oneness in Christ.

Trouble started in 1970 when the long-standing forty-five-member Congo Protestant Council formally became the CCZ. Unconstitutional aspects of the vote, plus theological objections, eventually forced many member denominations to withdraw. They and other groups reorganized along the lines of the former council.

Not being part of CCZ, the thirty-three members of this Council of Protestant Churches of Zaire (CPCZ) were hit by the President’s ultimatum of December 31. Although the council tried hard to meet the government’s stringent requirements, its efforts for legal status failed.

But the government dealt more kindly with the abortive council than with the spurious sects and cults. The latter were simply and severely told to disband; their followers could individually join one of the approved groups. The CPCZ was promised a listing of Protestant denominations permitted to function within the CCZ.

The list appeared seven suspense-filled weeks later. It shows what happens when politics goes to church. The united church jumped from its original forty-five members to seventy-two. Not only were all dissident denominations reintegrated; left-over groups unwanted by the other approved associations were also swept in (see July 7 issue, page 36). One of these groups, the Seventh-day Adventists, has the distinction now of being the only SDA group that is a part of a united church.

PLACED BY THE GIDEONS

The landlord offers us his space for let

And it is scarred, by other loners

And losers: the split and peep-holed windowshade

Winking with garish signs, the sprung window,

Webs in the drawers, the mattress unsprung

And burns upon the counterpane, up the plumbing

A red spider running on infinitely painstaken wires,

Like a moving star cluster; and the landlord

Offers us his solace, his book of loving,

Left behind after Gideon and the others slept,

Passage fallen open for a sign, a sign:

How many mansions there are prepared

In that other house, beyond the landlord’s room

He offers now, where every door closets the dark,

The spider threads an orrery, the plumbing perspires.

NANCY G. WESTERFIELD

Bokeleale protested strongly that the CCZ should have the right to choose its own members. He promised that the united church would soon produce its own approved list.

The government’s action toward the divided Protestants resembles a familiar “African solution”: no one wins all, no one loses all. The CCZ maintained its distinction as the only recognized Protestant church. All the dissident denominations were returned intact to the united church; not one was forced to disband or reorganize. Summing it all up, the weekly magazine Zaire (reputedly the President’s own) concluded: “All the Protestant communities have been put in the same sack and condemned to get along with each other.”

Assessing The Aftermath

The net result seems to be a return to the status quo. The only apparent change stipulated that all denominations (now called communities) and missions must work within the CCZ structure. The official list published by the government pointedly assured local autonomy of the united church members, a key issue raised by the CPCZ. A preamble to the actual list of authorized communities states, “These associations are grouped by executive order within the Church of Christ in Zaire while retaining their own legal status” (italics added).

One high-ranking government official told leaders of the disbanded CPCZ, “The internal affairs of the united church are your problems, not ours. If you don’t like the leadership or the constitution, you can always change them. But you must do so from within.” If this is indeed the government’s attitude, it has significant bearing on what the reunited CCZ members can do about the issues that still divide them.

Church workers in the provinces tend to treat the decisions and events in Kinshasa as just a bad dream. Hoping that little has changed, they plan to carry on as before. The average church member is uniformed and unconcerned. But in this writer’s opinion, significant trends have been activated that will increasingly shape Protestant life in Zaire. The government’s political decision set off a chain reaction of developments not all immediately apparent—and not all political.

Shrinking freedom. The precedent has been set for government intervention in the nation’s religious life. Religious freedom has been compromised. The Minister of Justice, perhaps unintentionally, made this clear in commenting on the December 31 law: “We have freedom of religion in this country just as we have freedom of the press.” Anyone connected with the mass media knows just how much “freedom” the press enjoys in Zaire.

Not only has the precedent of government control been set, but the channel has been simplified. Instead of dealing with seventy-two different church offices, the regime can work through the CCZ secretariat, which oversees and coordinates activities of the member communities.

Disappearing neutrality. Bokeleale’s insistence on “one leader, one party, one church” closely identified Protestants with Zaire’s only political party, the Mouvement populaire de la revolution. The government’s accolade of approval on the CCZ formalized that relationship.

Some local churchmen suspect that ties between the united church leadership and the government are financial as well as ideological. Although the CCZ secretariat has received almost no funds from member groups, it has been able to organize and finance provincial-level offices throughout the nation. Pastors of the CCZ Provincial Synod of Lower Zaire officially requested a report of the secretariat’s independent financial sources. Bokeleale has refused such an accounting in the past.

FREE PARASITES

Scamper and run free, dead leaves,

Crackle and fire the lower world.

You were once fastened in lively slavery,

Responsive to the dew, the merry wind,

The clatter of birds, the bend and swoop

Of the green bough. Who can catch your

Elusive drive, now, or stoop

To find your crowded, dry bed

And bind you with unnatural grace

To the blood-rich vine where you can face

A greater beauty than your own;

Or dance in place, yet not alone,

With room for a rarer, wilder bloom?

So be an orchidic parasite,

Gaily prey on that anchor-tree

While life nods green and choice looms free!

ELLEN STRICKLAND

This close relation to the regime disturbs church workers accustomed to neutrality in political matters. One pastor confided an uneasiness shared by his colleagues: “The church is now little more than a shadow of the regime; if it falls, so will the church.” Disloyalty to the government is not the issue with these men; they readily acknowledge President Mobutu’s considerable achievements. Zaire’s short, turbulent history troubles them. The possibility of yet another upheaval and its consequences for the church is a horrible thought, but not unreasonable.

Too-close ties between the CCZ and the ruling party have another drawback: the church risks alienating people who sorely need its ministry. Like every one-party system, Zaire’s government has its excesses. Will the victims of these excesses turn for spiritual help to a church fulsome in its praise of the regime?

Continuing tensions. The united church’s organizational structure and leadership do not accurately represent the desires of its members. This is not only true of the dissident groups forced back into the CCZ, more convinced than ever that they are right. Communities that remained in the united church have cut off their financial support of the organization. Events since last December have largely polarized the church’s national leaders and provincial communities into two groups.

Bokeleale attempts to minimize the past months as a distasteful, minor incident, the quicker forgotten the better. But the issues will not be shrugged off. Tensions will remain and deprive the church of spiritual vitality until the local and national church leaders move to resolve their differences in Christian love and honesty.

Widening unity. The ecumenical dialogue is further advanced in Zaire than elsewhere in French-speaking Africa. Bokeleale and his staff have actively encouraged this trend, and would like to see more. Answering a question on unity by journalists, he countered, “You talk to me only about unification of Protestants. Why not about our uniting with the Catholics and Kimbanguists? The Church is one and indivisible.”

Currently the CCZ leader favors a council of the six religious groups. Yet a future church combining numerous confessions is not discounted. The secretariat’s director of information wrote several articles favoring a single national church. In one article he applauded a fellow journalist’s contention that all paths, even Islam’s, “converge toward the same goal which is God.” Later he wrote, “In the future, authentic Zairian ecumenicity should result in a single Christian Church neither Catholic nor Protestant nor Kimbanguist; a Zairian Church matured by the force of theological ideas and Bantu principles.”

Limiting missionaries. After the government announced its final position on churches and prophetic movements, one writer in a Kinshasa daily paper, Elima, proposed some follow-up action. He repeated the familiar accusation that “fundamentalists and other foreign missionaries” plotted Protestant disunity. Then he suggested, “The best thing would be to have fewer missionaries in our associations, but have them more honest and sincere.…”

Bokeleale tried unsuccessfully last year to take control over which missionaries could work in Zaire. Quoting as his authority an annual synod decision found nowhere in the official minutes, he informed the government that all future visa requests by missionaries should first be cleared by his office. By denying visas to certain missionaries, he could weaken the resolve of communities opposed to his concept of organic unity. Although the Foreign Ministry rejected his claim, several overseas embassies did receive instructions to refer missionary visa requests to Bokeleale.

Such action widens the gap between the secretariat and the member communities. The CCZ president repeatedly assured wavering communities that their autonomy remained intact within the united church. But his attempts to control missionary visas contradicted this assurance. He was in effect trying to deprive local groups of the right to choose who could work with them.

After the December 31 decision, an American embassy official asked the CCZ president about the future of missionaries in Zaire. “Missionaries who cannot work with us,” Bokeleale replied, “will have to look elsewhere for work, just like any other person whose company goes bankrupt.”

The Zairian government revised its visa system in August. Missionaries now wanting to work in Zaire will get only a three-month entry permit from overseas embassies, they must obtain resident visas after arriving in the country. Will Bokeleale use this change to cut off the inflow of missionaries unsympathetic to his concept of organic unity? He probably will try.

Turned-On Church Leaders

Offsetting these sobering possibilities are some positive aspects that could direct the Protestants of Zaire toward brighter days. Both President Mobutu and Dr. Bokeleale started these trends and have thereby done great service to the church.

Protestants now realize the government is keenly church-conscious. Gone are the free-wheeling days of dissent and divide in total disregard to what others thought. Although proliferation among Protestants did not reach the epidemic proportions of the prophetic movements, churches and missions had their problems. Some conflicts persist unresolved after ten years.

Now Christians have a tangible reason as well as a scriptural injunction to settle matters among themselves: they are being watched by a security-sensitive state. The more closely they follow the biblical norm of living together in love, the less likely they will experience further government intervention.

In short, the Church of Christ in Zaire has been given a second chance to sort things out and get along as Christians should. The weekly magazine Zaire said as much: “Now that the government has demonstrated anew its confidence in the Protestant communities, it is up to them as well as the CCZ leaders to show themselves worthy of this mark of confidence.”

Bokeleale may well be remembered for shouting from the housetop what other Africans were muttering under their breath. In pushing organic church union, he expressed a common sentiment among Zairians of many church backgrounds. They did not appreciate the historical reasons dividing Zaire’s forty-five Western denominations and missions; they do not feel constrained to perpetuate them. Leading churchmen and laymen disagree with Bokeleale on how far and how fast they should move toward organic union. But they agree on the basic principle of a more tangible structure of their common faith in Christ.

Bokeleale brutally but effectively clarified missionary thinking on this point. Once convinced he was right, the majority of missionaries were willing to step back and see what African believers and the Holy Spirit could work out. The few who refused to take this attitude are frequently the same ones who persist in their excessive influence over the local church.

The most significant, positive result of events inside and outside the CCZ is the aroused concern of capable church leaders in the ranks. Thanks to President Mobutu Sese Seko, these pastors and laymen are held more accountable for the church’s conduct than ever. Thanks to Dr. Bokeleale, the church is theirs as never before.

One experienced European church worker attended the annual sessions of the Congo Protestant Council at Bukavu several years ago. Observing the same leaders again at Mbandaka in 1971 during the first annual synod of the CCZ, she was astounded by the contrast. The delegates at Mbandaka, alert and articulate, were beginning to have their own ideas on the role and nature of their church.

These turned-on church leaders may spring the next surprise in the fast-paced story of religion in Zaire. Having been shaken loose from the past by both the government and Bokeleale, they could emerge as co-authors with the Holy Spirit of a glorious new chapter in African church history.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

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