dickson_african theology.pdf

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African Theology: Origin, Methodology and Cont

Kw e s i D ic k s o n

The inception of the Church in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) ctained the seeds of the questionings that have become associated with term African theology. A study of documents relating to the work of

Methodist Church in the last century would seem to suggest that for mof the new converts to Christianity there was no clear undersanding of true nature of the Church . Brodie Cruickshank, a British resident in country in those days, expressed the opinion, based on his observations, many people were attracted to the Church by the bait of employment; thwho worked for the Church as preachers (known as Native Agents) wgiven the same level of remuneration as those who were in the employmof the merchants. In the circumstances, according to Cruickshank,

many as could find employment in the Church by professing faith joinedChurch.1

There is some evidence that Cruickshank overstates the actual sition, but that there is some substance in this observation as admitted, alindirectly, by no less a person than Thomas Birch Freeman, a Methomissionary of mixed blood, who, writing of Cape Coast (one of Ghaprincipal towns) in 1853, observed: Our people here consist of a sm

band of sawyers and their families . . . 2 Others had joined the Chubecause the lure of the Europeans world was too strong,3 and indeedmissionaries did all they could to make the African converts fit into tEuropean world; Freeman admitted as much when he wrote: In the maof the Introduction of European manners and customs we have gone far.4

In the circumstances of those days, then, when conversion invol

1 Brodie CruickshankEighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa , Vol. II, 1

p. 69.


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35A f r i c a n T h e o l o g y

entering, or at least attempting to enter, the cultural world of the missionary,

the possibility that many members of the Church did not quite understandwhat the Church of Christ stood for must be admitted. This was dramatic-ally illustrated in the 1860s when some of the members of the fledglingMethodist Church broke away to form what was referred to as the Metho-dist Society; they broke away becauseas they themselves explained theiractionthey were convinced that the missionaries were not enforcing withdue stringency the rules they had themselves promulgated regarding thesale and use of alcohol by members of tfhe Church; they wanted presumably

to show their zeal for the Lord by enforcing these rules (and others whichhad no Christian foundation, as it turned out) with rigour.5 Evidently, themembers of this breakaway Society had not understood what being in theChurch meant, and this lack of understanding could be traced, to a greatextent, to the picture of the Church as it was presented to the people ofthat time, a picture whose colour scheme was at best patchy: the face of

Christ could not be discerned with any clarity, while Europeanism stood outin bold colours, overshadowing Christ.

Since the last century the Church has become a very visible institutionin Africa as a whole, and Church membership has increased so significantlythat euphoric prognostications of future growth are being made. There arecertain aspects of this development to which attention has been drawn. First,there is the observable fact that Christians who profess this new faith oftenlimit Christ to prescribed areas of their life. When it comes to things thatreally matter to the African Christian, many an African member of the

Church would push Christ aside and resort to traditional practices. TheChristian who has been instructed in the Churchs teaching before fullmembership is found to have entered the Church without leaving his tradi-tional world view behind. One student of the Church as found among theAkan of Ghana has observed:

The convert enters the Church as a traditional Akan attractedto an institution whose demands and concepts are basically foreign

to him. However great the attraction, and however sincere hisattachment to the Church, he cannot deny himself, or the societywithin which he has been nurtured He carries within himself his


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T h e Jo u r n a l o f R e l i g i o u s T h o u g h t36

into his own social and religious moulds. It is not therefore sur-prising that wherever one turns in the Church the religious andsocial valuations of the Akan people manifest themselves.6

And, because of the picture given him of Christ, the African prefers not take Christ along with him in grave movementsof sickness and death, oplague and suffering in general; here recourse must be had to traditional anwell-tried methods of countering the effeots of evil and giving assurance a world of uncertainty and danger. It might be argued that Christians whacted in this way could not have become truly converted. This could ve

well be so, even though the possibility would exist that such a view woulbe an over-generalisation. In any case, it would be truer to say that thChrist, as he had been presented to such people, was not found to fit inttheir scheme of things.

Then, secondly, the training of ministers in the Church in Africa doenot seem to have been carefully conceived as to its aims. Until very recentlthose trained for the ministry in Ghana and indeed in other countries

Africa were brought up on what was impeccably in line with the Westertype of training, and indeed they were usually trained by Western thelogians who had themselves been taught in some of the best-known thelogical colleges in the West. In my work both as a minister in the MethodiChurch and as a University Professor I have had occasion to talk to mcolleagues in the ministry on various matters of interest to the Church Africa, and I have come to the conclusion that there are many full-timworkers in the Church in Ghana and other African countries who a

curiously incapable of applying the theology learnt in the seminary to thpracticalities of their work among their members. Of course, to a certaextent our clergy have inherited a theological position which was often iconceived and indeed impossible, arising as it did from the circumstancof the implantation of the Church by the early missionaries who tended work on the assumption that all conceivable theological situations haalready been anticipated and solved by their home Churches.

This was recently illustrated when one Church refused to hold funeral service in the Church for a deceased member on the grounds that hh d b l d t t th id f th i i i t


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earlier days, when he was enjoying good health, had him in his congrega-

tion in the Church, then the impossible theological position in which he puthimself by refusing to have the body of the deceased in the Church becomeseven more apparent. Christ loved the sinner while hating sin.7 The seniorminister in question was following Church policy, but he was not aware thatthis policy entailed a distortion of what Christ stood for. It is not withoutjustification that T.A. Beetham has observed:

The curriculum (of African theological colleges) is in most

cases too much tied to a traditional Western pattern. Students canstill come away from their lecture-room after studying the first twochapters of Marks Gospelw,ith its account of the touch of Jesusof Nazareth on different kinds of illness, including mental sick-

nesswithout having come to grips either with the failure of theirChurch, despite its hospitals and clinics, to exercise a full ministryof healing or with the success of some Independent Churches in

8.this respect

The conclusion is inevitable that the Western theological training,

whether carried out by Western missionaries or by Africans trained in West-em theological colleges, has produced ministers whose theology is not al-

ways relevant to their circumstances, and who often seem unwilling, orindeed incapable, of recognising the irrelevance of the received theology.

The Christ preached by the missionaries was a particularChrist withwhom many could not easily identify, and who did not speak in relevantenough terms to the many who had joined the Church. He was understoodin a particular way by the missionary, and this understanding was thoughtby him to apply universally. Hence the Churchs theology, such as it was,was unsuited to the circumstances of the people. To be sure, missionaryrecords relating to Ghana contain statements which suggest that there wasthe desire, felt by some missionaries, to bring Christ closer to the people inand through their life and thought, but such statements were the exceptionrather than the rule, and were not ,in any case translated into action in the

way they could have been. As an illustration, there was the expressedintention to raise a local ministry, but in practice this meant a ministrymodelled strictl along the lines of the E ropean pattern 9 In the process


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the natural from the supernatural, to a people whose world was undifferen

tiated.

The view has often been expressed that the disappearance of Africareligion .is only a matter of tme. The early missionaries had hoped to brinan end to what they saw as a form of religious belief and practice whicenslaved the peoples minds, but as we have already observed, many Afrcan Christians still hold on to the traditional religio-cultural presuppositionIt is sometimes seriously suggested in these days of advancing technolog

and industrialisation that African culture will have to give up what is seen aan unequal struggle; it is argued that more and more people would binclined to seek scientific solutions, rather than religious ones, to their problems . Farmers are going to learn to depend more on modem agriculturknow-how than on the goodwill of the goddess of the earth; with the mandevelopments in modem medicine and the springing up of medical schoothere would eventually be no recourse to the belief in the havoc caused binimical spiritual agencies, and hence there would no more be felt the nee

to seek spiritual remedies.

The evidence available would seem to suggest that this view of thinevitable disappearance of African religion is a gross overstatement, say the least. Africans are coming to terms with the new technological another developments without sacrificing their traditional presuppositionAfricans are using modem agricultural implements and avail themselvof the facilities offered by modem medicine; nevertheless, the tradition

religio-cultural world view persists, simply because that and the scientifapproach ask different questions and seek for different answers, and Afrcans see the two approaches as complementing each other.

The question then arises: Can Christ be made more real in anthrough African life and thought, through the tradition of spirit-consciouness which pervades Africa? To those like Troeltsch, one could not encouner Christ except as a member of the Western world,10 but not many wou

seriously champion such a view today, though the idea remains often aspresupposition unconsciously held and unconsciously influencing somi Ch i i i h b d h i i


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God reveals himself to all men. There is an inevitable universalism that

issues out of the particularity of Gods choice of Israel, but Africans mustapproach God in Christ and not through Westernism.11 African theologywhich deserves to be so called is that which does full justice to the Africanshumanity.12

For a long time the Church in Africa has been adjusting, unconsciouslyand without executive fiat, to the theological situation that has officiallycharacterised the Church. The world has become used to thinking oftheology in terms of carefully reasoned and systematically set out state-ments, the theological fraternity electing every few years a leading star bywhose decisions, often before the questions were asked, all matters theologi-cal were considered to have been definitively decided. Despite the Churchsreceived theology, African Christians have been doing theology of a differ-ent kind for some time. In Ghana, for example, the Methodist Church formany decades has had an unofficial place in her worship for what arereferred to as Lyrics: these are generally free-rhythm songs some of which

are reputed to have been war songs in the past.13 These are always sungwith the greatest enthusiasm; surprisingly, it is only in the last few yearsthat attempts have been made to collect these and reduce them to writingwith a view to making them even better known throughout the MethodistChurch in Ghana, and perhaps also in the envisaged United Church. Also,as against the often sterile prayers which the Churchs Orders of Serviceand prayer books feature, impromptu prayers made by worshippers inChurch, particularly during prayer meetings, are full of feeling and meaning,

and are more wholeheartedly assented to by the worshippers. These songsand prayers show a deep desire to have God involved closely with peopleslives and well-being. There is also the matter of the Churchs preaching,particularly as done by those who had not been trained in the Churchsseminaries. I have had occasion to listen to sermons given by lay preachers,sermons that did not strike me as useful in terms of what my seminarytraining had taught me to expect of preachers. And yet, the worshippers Ihad talked to had expressed complete satisfaction with the message given

them. It may very well be that the Church in Africa has to give serious


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consideration to discovering what preaching the word of God to her peop

should consist in.Granted that African Christians have been doing theology in th

singing, praying and preaching, how is this theologising to be sustainadjusted (if necessary) and organised?

A term that has been used most frequently to characterise the task the Church in Africa and elsewhere14 is indigenisation. This term is hto involve making a separation between the central revelation of God

Christ, which revelation ,is unchanging and about which there can be compromise, and the cultural incidentals of a Western nature which accopanied the Gospel to Africa; the latter must be either discarded or adapto suit the African traditional cultural ethos. This indigenisation conchas been found very useful and is not without merit. There are mChurches in Africa which have learnt to enrich their worship through singing of African songs and the use of indigenous percussion instrumenHere is an important development, and there is promise of more significdevelopments in this area in the years ahead. The concept, howeverviewed simply and solely in terms of the definition of it given above, willfound to pose some problems. The one that comes immediately to mindthis: Is there a core of Christian truth that is free from cultural colouriIt is not enough to sing African music; it is not enougjh merely to drape altar in a kente cloth, to make priests wear kente stoles and to have trational religio-cultural symbols displayed prominently in the Church.

our zeal to isolate the ,incidentals from the core of the faiththe revelatof God in Christand adapt the incidentals to suit the indigenous cultuethos, we may end up having a Church the Lord of which still wears a dtinctly Western aspect.

It ,is because indigenisation, as often understood and implemented, much of the Churchs foreign character unchanged that the conceptAfrican theology came to be advocated, though it must be added that so

would use this latest expression and indigenisation interchangeably. Tconcept of African theology is meant to express the need to do a md i h i ki f ll h h Ch h i d d f i h i


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who call upon the name of Christ. The term has been in use for about a

decade, but it is only now that the prerequisitjes for such a theology are inthe process of being defined. Three areas where .important developmentscould, and must, be brought about are clear: the Churchs Orders of Serv-ice, the study ofThe Bible, and the restatement of basic Christian doctrines.In connection with the last named, the question has been asked whethersuch restatement should necessarily be along the lines of the acceptedtheological categories. I shall now look at the three areas seriatim.

The Methodist from England on visit to Ghana and other Africancountris where Wesleyan missionaries have worked, would find the formsof worship in the Methodist (British) Church familiar. He would hear andrepeat the same prayers, sing the same hymns, hear and see couples beingmarried and infants being baptised by the use of familiar liturgical formu-lations. It may be argued that such is the kind of situation that underlinesthe oneness of the Church of Christ, and that any situation contrary to thisdestroys this oneness. To this point of the oneness of the Church I shall

return. Meanwhile, it is an observable fact, and demonstrable, that not allthe Churchs Orders of Services axe meaningful from the point of view ofthe circumstances of the African. In my article Christian and AfricanTraditional Ceremonies 15 I have illustrated the inappropriateness of theMethodist Churchs Orders of Service for Infant Baptism and the Solemnisa-tion of Matrimony; I shall merely state here the main points made in thatarticle in relation to the latter Order of Service.

The Solemnisation of Matrimony Order of Service contains ideaswhich simply run counter to African life and thought to such a degree thatthe Order of Service represents an unreal world as far as the Africanmatrilineal situation is concerned. This Order of Service singles out twopeople, the couple coming to be married in the Church, informs them thatthe purpose of marriage is principally the nurture of children, and asks thatany one who knows any just cause why the two may not be married by theminister should declare it there and then. Now, in African society, whether

it be matrilineal or patrilineal, the bringing together of two people in mar-riage brings together two families, so that traditional marriage involves ai h d h j i i f h h d f i di id l i


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to lack authority in a situation of childlessness, particularly where the

expedient of raising children outside the marriage ,is resorted to, because itsoriginal stand on the question of children in marriage is basically differentMoreover, to invite someone or other to declare why the two may not lawfully be married by the minister is ,in a sense to engage in a meaninglessexercise since, having performed the customary rites in connection withmarriage, the couple would be considered already married by the contract

ing families.

There are many traditional ceremonies with such crucial significanc(e.g., initiation rites) from which much could be gained if one were tostudy them and use them to tell the story of Christ coming to man to makhim fully human. Our Orders of Service often fail to bring people to thheart of worshipcommunion with God, because they ignore those gathered in worship, taking little or no account of their being who they are. Thquest for an African theology must involve a close study of the receivedOrders of Service in the light of cognate traditional liturgical situations with

a view to arriving at formulations which will make Christ real to Africanin the particularity of their circumstances.

The second area, which has been woefully neglected by the Church inAfrica and which deserves urgent attention, is the study of The Bible. Ocourse, the many hermeneutical tools which scholars have defined over thyears are indispensable, and in the departments of religious studies all ovethe continent care is taken to ensure that students are brought up to appreciate the modem critical methods of biblical study. Earlier I referred tBeethams dissatisfaction with the study of the Bible done in the seminariein Africa,16 where there is little attempt made to relate the Bible to thstudents circumstances. A thorough study of the Bible should involve finding the word of God for the inquirer in the context, of his own circumstances. It is not surprising that the West African Association of Theological Institutions, at its 1974 annual meeting at Ibadan, Nigeria, called for Bible commentary that would, while employing modern critical methods o

study, at the same time help Africans to hear God speaking to them direcSuch a very contemporary work as the Acts of the Apostles, which foreh d th di i i t d Ch i ti it i Af i h t t


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While on the study of theBible, a special word must be said about the

Old Testament. Not only does the Old Testament enunciate more clearlythe principle of the particularity of theologising, but also, and with greaterclarity than the New Testament, it relates religion to every sphere of humanactivity. The Old Testamentcontains much that pre-dates the formation ofthe authentic Hebrew religion, though such material is made to tell the storyof Gods covenant relations with a people, and hence given a new setting.It would be surprising, indeed, if the constant contact with other peoples hadnot left its mark on Hebrew religion and literature. It is a well-known fact

that Israel reacted in two simultaneous ways to its milieu: ,it on the onehand freely appropriated some of the traditions of her neighbors (such asEgyptian wisdom), while on the other hand rejecting the context in whichthe things appropriated stood. The pre-Hebrew magical use of the sin offer-ing is solemnly recorded17 by the priestly writers in their compilation ofritual regulations and the role of sacrifice as a means of approaching God.The matter of the Old Testamentrelating religion to every sphere of mansactivity has long been recognized,18 and it is partly this which accounts forthe popularity of the Old Testamentin the African independent Churches.It is in recognition of this that several university departments of religiousstudies in Africa are experimenting with a course on the Old Testament (orThe Bible) and African life and thought.

It must be admitted that the recognition of the continuity between theOld Testament and African life and thought should be balanced by therecognition of the discontinuity between them, seeing that the Old Testamentmakes something new of the ideas and customs appropriated, and alsostands in a close relationship with theNew Testament, the later ftmphaskingthe need for recognising a radical dialectic of continuity and discontinuity:the Old Testamentprepares the way for theNew, but in the light of the latterthe Oldis judged.

I am convincd that the complex cross-currents of ideas in The Bibleought to be studied with all seriousness by Africans. God must be heard

to speak to Africans in clearer tones than the traditional theological studieshave made it possible for them to hear. In my own department such a tra-


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place, between the two. Indeed, the Department of Religious Studies, Un

versity of Ibadan, Nigeria, has for many years run a course entitled Interaction of Religions which seek to study some of the matters raised herwith respect to the meeting of Christianity and African life and thought.

The third area for careful consideration is Christian doctrines. Chritian doctrines need to be re-examined for two reasons. They are often thresult of biblical truth being interpreted in a Western way, which interpretation may obscure some aspect of the faith or indeed omit reference t

matters which are taken account of in the Scriptures but which are not paof the active, living experience of Western theologians. One may cite an illustration the meaning of death as seen in relation to the meaning oChrists work. In Africa death is seen as a force that revitalises societyinterrelationships, thus renewing societys vitality and strengthening thcommunity bonds. The powers of ev,il may have triumphed in bringinabout death, but the triumph is only temporary since the often elaboraand protracted customary rites in connection with the dead emphasise th

temporariness of the interruption. There is a paradoxical attitude to deatto be sure. Death is mourned and regretted, but the ceremonies aimed stabilising the community which have suffered loss are very striking: thancestors are called upon to re-inforce the community by giving the wommore children; there is also drumming and dancingthese and other activties underline the belief that death is not an unmitigated disaster. As againthis, traditional Christian theology has tended to see the death of Christ

a regrettable prelude to the resurrection, and hence the uncharacterissolemnity of Good Friday as celebrated in Christian Churches in Africa. there more meaning ,in the death per se of Christ than Christian teachihas recognised? In the African situation Christs death would mean, amoother things, the strengthening of the bonds binding Christians togethThere was great gain in his death; it was a 1triumph, the Church allows, bnot much more than lip service is paid to this because of the traditionChristian view that the death of Christ would have meant nothing witho

the resurrection. It is not surprising that since the patristic period tdeath of Christ has given rise to a diversity of theories of atonement. Lea


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inviolability of the traditional categories of theological thought? On theone hand, it could be a useful procedure to examine the Churchs theologyby looking at its various parts as traditionally defined, such as the doctrineof redemption, an aspect of which has already come under considerationhere when a look was taken at the meaning of Christs death. To proceedalong these lines could be very useful in .that it would mean relating freshthinking to specific areas of thought, thus enabling discussion to proceedwithin recognisable and manageable limits. However, the possibility that

this procedure may become a limiting factor cannot be discounted; for, therethinking would then be done in terms of areas of thought defined in theWestern context. This might very well stifle greater originality, and resultin confused thinking. Much thought will have to be given to methodologyto ensure that African theology develops as a real contribution to *!hrintianthought.

In these days of labels, African theology, as it is developing, might be

considered as a theology of selfhood, not only in recognition of the changedstatus of much of Africa, from the colonial to the post-colonial period, butalso as a symbol of the desire of the Church in Africa to be in a position topresent Christ as one who knows and understands the hopes and fears ofAfricans, and who promises salvation in the context of their circumstances.Of course, when one writes about Africa one always runs the risk of over-simplifying the picture of a continent which has a great variety of peoplesand traditions. Also, ,in some parts of the continent Africans live under

oppressive white rule, while in others Africans are under oppressive blackrule. Given this nature of the continent, with its varied religious, social,economic and political realities, one must face the possibility that rforktiantheology in Africa will be expressed in different ways to reflect the particu-larities of local circumstances. However, the focal point of African theologywould remain the same: an expression of the Christian faith which doesjustice to the Africans humanity and God-given ways of life and thought.

Finally, a brief word about the view sometimes expressed that thequest for an African theology is a quest for /the breaking up of die one


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