PLURIFORMITY AND CONTEXTUALITY IN AFRICAN INITIATED CHURCHES

by Revd Dr Allan Anderson Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, B29 6HQ, UK

1 INTRODUCTION As the two technical words in the title to this paper do not appear in standard English dictionaries, an attempt should be made at simple definitions. Pluriformity refers to the fact of variety whilst contextuality refers to the ability to relate to a given situation or context. It is this combination of variety and relevance which distinguishes the African religious traditions I shall refer to primarily in this paper, those movements originating in Africa rather than in the African diaspora. A sensitive study of these African traditions will enrich the whole church. What I shall refer to as African initiated churches (AICs) have become a major force in Christianity, a manifestation of the shifting of the centre of gravity of Christianity during the twentieth century from the North to the South. This growth has often been at the expense of European mission churches. Christianity, which commenced in the Third World, is returning to its roots. There are ways of expressing theology other than those familiar to westerners, and AICs focus their theology in oral narrative and experience. The contribution of AICs to a meaningful African theology must be examined, including important lessons about the relationship between the gospel and culture, the contextualisation of Christianity and mission strategy. We are provided with living, radical experiments of an indigenised Christianity that has consciously rejected western models of mission and forms of being Christian. The AICs also provide valuable insights into such important issues as the intercultural communication of the Christian gospel and the encounter between Christianity and another living religion. The

importance of this African form of spirituality to the mission of the universal church is only now beginning to be acknowledged.

2 PLURIFORMITY In discussing the pluriformity of AICs, hasty generalisations or the overlooking of obvious differences must be avoided and distinctive liturgies, healing practices and different approaches to African religion must be recognised. In these ways the unique contribution to Christianity in a broader African context of AICs can be fully appreciated. Categories in any case should not be defined beyond those acknowledged by the churches themselves, and there are signs that the categories that were first suggested by missionaries almost fifty years ago are no longer applicable. The thousands of AICs in their rich diversity are now becoming the dominant and fastest growing expression of Christianity on the continent. With the European colonisation of Africa in the nineteenth century, a process of religious acculturation took place as older religious and social traditions were threatened and partially replaced by new ones. The term African independent churches was the first neutral term used for these movements after more biased terms as sects and nativistic, messianic, separatist and syncretist movements. Harold Turner (1979:92) defined African independent church as a church which has been founded in Africa, by Africans, and primarily for Africans. Later, many African churches founded by European missionaries saw themselves as independent, and the term African indigenous churches was proposed. This term also became inadequate with the movement on the part of many mission-founded churches towards inculturation and to be seen as indigenous. African initiated churches and African instituted churches are terms which avoid these difficulties by simply indicating that these many different kinds of churches were initiated by Africans, and not by Europeans. AICs have flourished in the areas where Protestant missions have been longest, in particular Southern Africa, West Africa, the Congo Basin and Central Kenya. They are of a great variety, and placing them into categories may not accurately reflect the true nature of each particular church in each category, it does not always help increase our understanding and

sometimes actually may be misleading (West 1975:17). Accordingly the following, tentative outline of some of the common characteristics of what only loosely may be described as different types of African religious movements adapts a typology developed by Turner (1979:79). Some African religious movements are specifically not Christian, such as those that Turner defined as revitalisation or neo-primal movements which have deliberately sought to revitalise traditional African religious practices. Examples of these movements would be the Church of the Ancestors in Malawi, the Herero Church in Namibia and the Afrikania movement in Ghana. There are also African movements that have arisen in an Islamic context, such as the Mahdist movements in West Africa. Then there are those that can be termed Hebraist, because they consider themselves to be the Old Testament people of God but are not predominantly Christian (:83-86). The difficulty with the latter type is that some of these movements do consider themselves Christian, and so one wonders by what criteria they are categorised. This is another example of the dangers of categorising. The first scholar to attempt to impose some uniformity upon the pluriformity of AICs was Bengt Sundkler in his pioneering work Bantu Prophets in South Africa, a work which was first published in 1948 and was the first of its kind. His own research on which the book was based was conducted in rural KwaZulu during the mid-1940s. He identifies two main types of AICs: Ethiopian and Zionist (1961:53). In Zimbabwe, Marthinus Daneel made the same distinction between what he called Spirit-type and Ethiopian-type churches. Zionist or Spirit-type corresponds to the term prophet-healing used by Turner in a wider continental context (:97), and distinguishes prophetic movements which emphasise the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit, from the non-prophetic church groups (Daneel 1971:285). The differences between these two types were religious and organisational rather than socio -political(:350). Sundklers basic dual typology for AICs was followed by most subsequent scholars of the movement (Anderson 1992:56-58), and now seems inadequate. I suggested in an earlier publication that Daneels term Spirit-type might also be termed Pentecostal -type (Anderson 1992:59). To these two types there can now be added at least one other: new pentecostal churches, quite differ ent from the other two and of very recent origin. These three types of AIC which briefly will be discussed in turn may be broadly regarded as only

prominent examples of the wide variety of religious movements in Africa which consider themselves Christian churches. 1 Ethiopian and African Churches AICs which do not claim to be prophetic nor to have special manifestations of the Holy Spirit were called Ethiopian or Ethiopian-type churches in Southern Africa (Daneel 1987:38), and African churches in Nigeria (Turner 1979:95). These churches are generally earlier in origin than the other two types, and arose primarily as a political and administrative reaction to European mission-founded churches. For this reason Ethiopian or African churches are very similar to the churches from which they emerged. For example, they usually practice infant baptism, read set liturgies, wear European clerical vestments (often black) and are less enthusiastic or emotional in their services than prophet-healing churches are. They tend to be less prescriptive regarding food taboos, the use of medicine and the consumption of alcohol. Not necessarily named Ethiopian or African, they originated in secessions from European mission-founded churches and were formed as a reaction to the white mission's conquest of African peoples. Generally, as Sundkler (1961:54) observed, their church organization and Bible interpretation are largely copied from the patterns of the Protestant Mission Churches from which they have seceded. Sometimes they even include the churchs generic name in the church title, thus reflecting their origins: Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, Lutheran, and so on (Anderson 1992:126 -127). Ethiopia, as the only African nation that had successfully resisted European colonialism, is mentioned in the Bible as a nation that stretches out her hands to God (Psalm 68:31). This and the conversion of the Ethiopian court official formed the basis of the Ethiopian ideology that spread in Africa after about 1890, and was later to influence the Jamaican Marcus Garveys Back to Africa movement and the Rastafarian movement. Africans had received Christianity before Europeans had and therefore had a special place in Gods plan of salvation and at least as much right to being missionaries of the gospel as European people had. There were clear political overtones in the creation of Ethiopian-type churches, but they did not flourish as much as other AICs did, largely because they did not sufficiently adapt to the African context nor fully free themselves from the cultural baggage of western Christendom.

2 Prophet-Healing and Spiritual Churches Martin West (1975:16) summarised the difference between Sundkler's two AIC types by saying that Ethiopian churches were those which had seceded from mission churches for political reasons, and which remained patterned on their parent churches. Zionists were a pentecostal, apostolic movement, stressing the influence of the Holy Spirit and of divine healing, and combining both African and European cultural elements. The prophet -healing or spiritual churches are AICs with historical and theological roots in the pentecostal movement, although they have moved away from this movement in several respects over the years, and may not be regarded as pentecostal without further qualification. They are also churches that, usually in contrast to Ethiopian-type churches, emphasise the working of the power of the Spirit in the church. They have probably adapted themselves to and addressed the popular African worldview more substantially than other types of church, and this is their unique contribution to an understanding of Christianity in Africa. This is the largest grouping of AICs, which includes a wide variety of some of the biggest churches in Africa. Examples are the Kimbanguist movement and the African Apostolic Church in Central Africa, the Aladura and Harrist churches in West Africa and the Zion Christian Church and the Amanazaretha in Southern Africa. Theology in these churches is generally less precisely formulated than in European mission-founded churches, and often the differences in belief systems, liturgy and prophetic healing practices are considerable. Undergirding these churches are definite theological presuppositions found more in the practice of their Christianity than in formal dogma. Like pentecostals in the West, there is an emphasis on healing, although the methods of obtaining healing differ. Whereas western pentecostals generally will practice laying on hands or prayer for the sick, this will usually be accompanied in prophet-healing churches by the use of various symbolic objects such as blessed water, ropes, staffs, papers, ash and so on. This constitutes one of the more obvious differences between western pentecostals and prophet-healing churches. There are also strong taboos for members prohibiting alcohol, tobacco and (especially) pork. The attitude to traditional practices, particularly the ancestor cult and polygyny, is generally far more ambivalent than in

western churches. For the outsider, the biggest distinguishing feature of these churches in most of Africa is the almost universal use of uniforms for members, often white robes with bright sashes and sometimes military khaki. Although prophet-healing churches differ fundamentally from western forms of Pentecostalism, because of their emphasis on the centrality of the Holy Spirit in faith and (especially) in practice, they may also be termed African Pentecostal. The term pentecostal is taken from the Day of Pentecost experience of Acts 2 (Anderson 1992:2-6). Harvey Cox (1996:246) more recently referred to the use of this term by Walter Hollenweger (1972:149) to describe prophet-healing churches as the African expression of the worldwid e pentecostal movement. There are, of course, other kinds of African pentecostals.

3 New Pentecostal Churches Although prophet-healing churches have historical, theological and liturgical links with western Pentecostalism (Anderson 1992: 28-31), it is necessary to distinguish between prophet-healing and new pentecostal AICs. The latter term will be used for th ose churches of more recent origin (mostly after 1980) which also emphasise the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Like the prophet-healing churches, they vary from small independent house churches to rapidly growing and vast church organisations. Examples of these are the Deeper Life Church in Nigeria under William Kumuyi (Ojo 1992:135), the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God African of Ezekiel Guti and Grace Bible Church under Mosa Sono in South Africa (Anderson 1992:53-55). A significant number of their members come from both the European missionfounded churches and from the prophet-healing churches, and this is sometimes a source of tension. There is a strong western pentecostal influence in many of these churches both in liturgy and in leadership patterns, and North American neo-pentecostal evangelists are often promoted (Anderson 1987:72-83). The difference between these churches and churches of western pentecostal origin is mainly in church government, which is entirely black and is more of a local, autonomous nature with no organisational links with pentecostal denominations outside Africa. Founders are generally charismatic, younger men who are respected for their preaching and leadership abilities, and who are relatively well educated, though not necessarily in theology. The membership tends to consist of younger, more affluent and better-educated people. These churches tend to oppose some traditional African practices as well as those of older AICs. They ban alcohol and tobacco, polygyny, the ancestor cult, the use of symbolic objects in healing rituals and the wearing of church uniforms. They are today probably the fastest growing expression of Christianity in Africa and have exploded on the African religious scene in the past two decades to such an extent that they are challenging many previously cherished assumptions about the character of African Christianity.

3 CONTEXTUALITY One of the outstanding features of many AICs is their spontaneously indigenous character, a characteristic which was held as an ideal by missionaries and missiologists for over a century. The now familiar three self formula for indigenisation (self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating) was automatically and effortlessly achieved by AICs long before this goal was realised by European founded churches. In the words of Wilbert Shenk (1990:191), AICs were living laboratories of that which had to come about if the churches in the non -Western world were to take root and survive. The question of contextuality brings with it the complex and controversial issue of syncretism. There is a sense in which all religions of the world are syncretistic, in that they have all absorbed elements of other religions and folk beliefs and are conditioned by their particular cultural context. Christianity cannot escape this dilemma. Western observers of AICs often sit in ivory towers passing judgment on whether AICs are genuine churches of Jesus Christ or whether the Christian witness has been obscured. The answers to these questions often depend on the observer's presuppositions and prejudices. The question of "syncretism" is a vexing one for researchers of AICs, often with negative connotations resulting from hasty western generalisations. We must take the utmost care when evaluating movements in Africa according to western criteria. Robert Schreiter (1985:145) asks whether the AIC movement should be seen as "the ultimate outcome of contextualization rather than as some aberration". This he says is one of the "hard questions" to be faced. He asks very pertinent questions concerning the relationship between what westerners too easily write off as "syncretism", and contextualisation. Because contextualisation is concerned with getting to the very heart of the culture, then the Christianity that is truly contextualised will indeed look very much like a product of that culture, which does not imply syncretism in any negative sense like impure (:150). AICs have to a large extent achieved an instinctive and automatic contextuality from which the rest of Christianity can learn much. In any case, one cannot judge any religious phenomenon as if it is in its final, static form. Even that which appears strange to our particular sensitivities, coloured as they are by our

theological and cultural presuppositions, may be a dynamic and fluid movement on the way to becoming a truly indigenous expression of the church of Jesus Christ. Turner (1979:166) says that we must first recognise that many AICs have made what he calls a radical departure from pagan worship", which amounts to a "radical breakthrough... to worship of the one true, living, loving, and all-powerful God of the Christian Scriptures". One of the central features of many AICs is the rejection of key elements in traditional religion and culture. As Daneel (1987:26) points out, the AICs teach us "how the gospel is adapted to or presented in confrontation with existing indigenous customs and values". He considers the approach of the AICs to traditional religion and culture to be one of the main contributions of these movements to African theology. Contextuality is not "a simplistic adaptation to traditional thought", but is rather "an adaptation that, while displaying parallels with traditional religion, essentially implies a continuing confrontation with and creative transformation of traditional religion and values" (1990:56). The AICs provide us with many examples of an innovative approach whereby traditional cultural and religious ceremonies have been adapted and transformed to have Christian meanings (Daneel 1974:309-347). An African style of worship and liturgy and a holistic Christianity that offers tangible help in this world as well as in the next are factors which combine to form a uniquely African contextualisation of Christianity, meeting needs more substantially than the often sterile Christianity imported from the West. AICs provide what Turner called "a salvaging or rescue function" in relation to the older churches, by "providing a recognizably Christian and easily available alternative spiritual home" (Turner 1979:19). At the same time the AICs are challenged to recognise that their cultural context in an increasingly technological and urbanised society is a rapidly changing one. In order for them to change with the society and thereby avoid becoming archaic and irrelevant, the contextualisation process must continue. This is a lesson that the whole church must learn. Although AIC mission initiatives were in some ways an indirect response to the inadequacies of those of Europeans, they were not discontinuous with those initiatives. African missionaries went out just as European missionaries had done to proclaim the message of the Bible, to appeal to the Christian scriptures as their authority for doing so, and to call people to repentance, conversion, and especially to baptism (Hastings 1994:531). But this proclamation

was fundamentally different in that it was more radical in its orientation to the African worldview than the proclamation of the western missionaries had been. Furthermore, although western missionaries believed in the content of the Bible, they did not usually see any

continuity or connection between the biblical context and the present African one, a feature
that African missionaries were quick to discover and proclaim (Hastings 1994:527; 1979:71). The tendency to regard the growth of AICs mainly as a reaction to western missions and colonialism has some validity in the case of the earliest movements. However, it detracts from the fact that long after these initial secessions from western mission founded churches, AICs went on growing and changing the face of African Christianity without any reference to western missions whatsoever. The growth of AICs must rather be seen as the result of a positive contextual proclamation rather than as a negative reaction to western missions (Hastings 1979:69). Because western forms of Christianity were often regarded as superficial and out of touch with many realities of African life, it was therefore necessary for a new, truly African mission initiative to arise with a powerful message to penetrate Africas soul. The strength and attraction of these churches, observes Daneel (1987:101), should be seen in their original, creative attempts to relate the good news of the gospel in a meaningful and symbolically intelligible way to the innermost needs of Africa. Healing and protection from evil are the most prominent features of this contextuality and are probably the most important part of AIC liturgy in evangelism and church recruitment. In Africa the problems of disease and evil affect the whole community and are not simply a private domain relegated to individual pastoral care. As Harvey Cox (1996:247) observes, the AICs provide a setting in which the African conviction that spir ituality and healing belong together is dramatically enacted. Traditional African communities were to a large extent health-orientated communities and in African traditional religions, rituals for healing and protection were the most prominent ones. Significantly, women participated freely in leading many of these rituals. AICs responded to what they experienced as a void left by a rationalistic and male-dominated form of Christianity which had unwittingly initiated what was tantamount to the destruction of African spiritual and cultural values. Africans were able to declare a message which reclaimed ancient biblical traditions of healing and protection from evil, to demonstrate the practical effects of these traditions, and by so doing to be the

heralds of a Christianity with an implicit theology that was really meaningful to Africans. African missionaries proclaimed that the same God who saves the soul also heals the body and delivers from evil forces, and provides answers to human needs.

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Daneel, ML 1971. Old and New in Southern Shona Independent Churches. Vol I. The Hague: Mouton 1974. Old and New in Southern Shona Independent Churches. Vol II. The Hague: Mouton 1987. Quest for Belonging. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press 1990. "Exorcism as a means of combatting wizardry", in Missionalia 18:1 Hastings, Adrian 1979. A History of African Christianity 1950-1975. 1994. The Church in Africa 1450-1950. Oxford: Clarendon Hollenweger, Walter J 1972. The Pentecostals. London: SCM Ojo, Matthews A 1992. Deeper Life Bible Church of Nigeria in Gifford, Paul (ed) New Dimensions in Cambridge University Press

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Schreiter, Robert J 1985. Constructing local theologies. New York: Orbis Shenk, Wilbert F 1990. The contribution of the study of new religious movements to missiology in Walls, AF & Shenk WF (eds). Exploring New Religious Movements. Elkhart: Mission Focus Sundkler, B G M 1961. Bantu Prophets in South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press Turner, Harold W 1979. Religious Innovation in Africa. Boston: G K Hall West, Martin 1975. Bishops and Prophets in a Black City. Cape Town: David Philip

1997 Dr Allan Anderson