Africa’s Christian Future (Part II)

What’s ahead for the African church? Here is the concluding portion of the Editors’ interview with the general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (see September 26 issue for Part I):

Question. Dr. Kato, a number of evangelical missionaries have complained about the use of American scholarship money to “buy the minds” of foreign Christian nationals. Is it true that in Africa young evangelical men and women are taken out of Bible schools and financed through schools with a theologically liberal bent, and that some lose their faith?

Answer. That is very much a problem. It is going to be so increasingly, until evangelicals wake up and see what’s to be done and get involved in doing it. I highly commend the administrators of the Theological Education Fund for their initiative and for emphasizing national training. They have helped many Africans get trained for positions of leadership. It is unfortunate that the training has been made mostly in liberal schools in Norh America and in Europe.

For some reason we evangelicals sometimes seem to see ignorance and naïveté as virtues. If a person is not very bright and does not ask questions, we say he is very spiritual. Maybe that’s why you find independent missions operating largely in the rural areas.

Q. What do you mean? What’s the connection?

A. Most of the work of independent missions over the years has been in rural areas. They have neglected the city centers and the intellectuals. Up to now it has only been the conciliar groups that have chosen these strategic areas, and therefore you find leaders of government and leaders of thought in the academic world coming from the liberal camp.

Thank God the picture is changing. We are moving to the intellectual circles now. We hope that evangelicals will wake up to the need for leadership training. While we still appreciate the coming of missionaries, let us not take that as an excuse to keep on exporting young people from America instead of training Africans.

Q. What is your organization doing to encourage the new trend?

A. Because we consider the coming of missionaries second to the need for developing leadership in Africa itself, we want to establish a graduate school of theology at Bangui in the Central African Republic (Bange) so that young people in Africa can be trained at this level.

Q. What is the evangelical strategy for witness at the Second World Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture [to be held in November in Lagos, Nigeria]?

A. The Nigerian Evangelical Fellowship has put in a request to have a booth there, and I have written a booklet for the occasion. The NEF will have displays and will show Christianity’s history on our continent. It will show that far from being a Western religion, Christianity has more connections with Africa than with Europe, let alone the young continent of America.

Q. You have said that Gatu is pushing the idea of a moratorium on missionaries. Do you feel that this view is broadly accepted among the African laity?

A. It is far from being the major thinking of the lay people in Africa. In my travels recently I came across a church group whose missionary was just transferred from one town to another, and the group was very angry with the mission. “Why do you take away our missionary?” they asked. This is typical of the thinking in Africa.

One Presbyterian couple from North America saw the need for working among the Masaai people in Kenya, and so they went there and built a hut and worked with them. The Masaai people have come to love them very much. They are developing better living conditions, building dams for better agriculture, and so on. A church leader in Africa then went to this particular couple and said their presence in Kenya is a hindrance. The couple said they would go home if that were the thinking of the people they were trying to work with. A government official was called in to talk to the Masaai people. They became quite indignant and warned that if the couple were forced out there would be strong reaction. The government gave the couple a ten-year permit instead of the usual two-year permit.

Q. So you are convinced that Africa still needs foreign missionaries.

A. Yes, I am. And even the advocates of moratorium are not consistent. After the conference in Lusaka, where there was such a cry raised for a moratorium on missionaries, many of the vocal ones headed for North America and Europe. Maybe they do not want the foreign people, but they surely want the money. About 97 per cent of the resources of the All African Conference of Churches comes from abroad. It would probably fold up without foreign support. Admittedly this is also the case with the Association of Evangelicals in Africa and Madagascar. But we recognize the need for support from overseas while we are working to raise some in Africa also. It is not a question of either/or but of both/and.

Q. How were you converted?

A. It was through the ministry of a missionary of the Sudan Interior Mission and a Nigerian school teacher. The missionary worked in my town and got me interested in Sunday school. Later, when I was twelve, I started going to school, and it was in the classroom through the ministry of a Nigerian school teacher that I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour. My pagan parents later gave their hearts to Christ as well.

Q. Dr. Kato, you have suggested that Christians in Africa may be in for some hard times. In a number of countries there has been increasing political pressure of various sorts upon the churches. What is going on?

A. I think Bible-believing Christians in Africa should be prepared for some persecution perhaps before too long. Certainly there are things that would call the Bible-believing Christian to examine his position. We are deeply grateful that a number of high government officials in Africa are professing Christians. But as I have said before, the African is searching for an identity and asserting that identity. And in every country the authorities are rightfully anxious to bring about national unity. Some of our heads of state do not see any differences between liberals, evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and so on. They see only “Christianity,” and the emphasis is just to have unity. Any dissenting voice is suspected of being an enemy of unity.

Q. So this creates pressures.

A. It does. Another thing has to do with culture. There is a strong movement that Africans should be authentic and go back into the root of our existence and find our connections with our ancestors. This readily raises religious tensions. I am not condemning culture as such. I think I am thankful for being an African, and there are certain cultural elements that are compatible with a biblical outlook and can and should be retained. But some are not. Some of these so-called cultural things amount to denying the faith we hold so dear. Some leaders, for example, are calling for secret oaths similar to those of the Mau Mau, and other pagan practices. Thank God some influential Christians have taken a stand against such things as pouring libations to the ancestors.

Q. What is that all about?

A. Well, I heard an interesting story recently of a Christian leader in Zaire at a formal occasion where drinks were being poured on the ground out of respect for ancestors. But this Christian leader, instead of pouring his drink on the ground, lifted it up and thanked God in prayer. They told him he was not being an authentic Zairean. He told them he was a Zairean but not an ancestor worshiper. Rather, he said, he was a Christian whose practice was to give thanks. I thought that was beautiful. Unfortunately, many in Zaire are saying that they are Zairean first and Christian second. That’s why I said that Bible-believing Christians may be heading for persecution.

Q. How are the people in Zaire reacting to their political leadership, considering that they have long been under Christian missionary influence?

A. President Mobutu Sese Seko has done a lot for Zaire. Anarchy had been threatened, and he has brought order out of chaos. The people of Zaire are certainly happy with what he has done, and so they respect him. The Bible tells us to respect the powers that be. When it comes to the point where our religious convictions are involved, I think Christians should speak up to authority. This is not easy in Africa because the consequences can be far reaching. Some people who want to object may be afraid to do so.

Q. Zaire seems to be particularly interested in dealing with Christianity as a whole, a unified group as you mentioned earlier.

A. Yes, the Christians there have been forced into one big consortium of sorts. Of course, one has to understand the background situation in Zaire: the kind of dominance the Catholic Church had during the days under Belgium, and the multiplicity of splinter groups clamoring for recognition. The new arrangement could be a blessing in disguise. The Church of Christ in Zaire has an imposed unity and is headed by a clergyman who is a member of the WCC Central Committee. But the constitution of the CCZ allows a good deal of liberty for the individual denominations, now referred to as “communities.” It is up to Zairean Christians to make good use of the constitution.

Q. Are the Arabs having any success in spreading Islam in Africa? How strong are the Communists?

A. There is definitely a strong Islamic influence in Africa. But in countries other than Muslim states the Muslims are limited in policy-making positions. This issue of Communism is a touchy one. There is much emphasis today in Africa on African socialism. In all fairness we must appreciate the call for a kind of socialism because capitalism has become a real curse in Africa and the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen. In Africa today you will find many millionaires but also many people who go to bed hungry.

Many Africans are enthusiastic about Mao and admire some of the ideologies of Communist countries. Many young Africans go to Communist countries for an education. It is worth pointing out that when you study in a given situation it is difficult not to absorb the ideas, too. Some of the Communist ideas are not necessarily bad, but their atheism is what we totally reject as Christians. So Communist countries are having their influence in Africa just as Western countries had it for years.

Q. What do you think that Christians in Western capitalistic countries could be doing to help the material development of the people? Are things not getting done that Christian businessmen in the West could be doing?

A. Yes, I think that if Christian businessmen and other leaders in the Western world would take into serious consideration the voluntary agencies that are operating in Africa and would lend assistance in agriculture and preventive medicine, it would help a great deal. But sometimes the problem is not at that end. Sometimes the governments are not keen to see voluntary agencies operate. The governments want to give the impression that they are already doing what is needed. They feel that exposing their countries’ poverty abroad affects prestige.

Q. What do you think can be done in the southern part of Africa to give representation to non-Europeans?

A. We are now in the process of organizing a national evangelical fellowship for the whole Republic of South Africa that would be multi-racial and interdenominational. We may come up against a wall, but I have been working in correspondence with both blacks and whites. If Bible-believing Christians pray and keep talking, we probably will achieve more success than a radical approach would. We can have the radical approach to government and non-church organizations. We see the work of the Church as conciliatory.

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