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ONE FROM 'UBUNTU' TO KOINŌNIA: THE SPIRIT-FORMED COMMUNITY AND INDIGENOUS AFRICAN COMPASSION
Missio Africanus: Journal of African Missiology, 2019
This essay explores the way in which the New Testament concept of koinonia informs and offers a corrective to both Western individualism in missions and the African concept of 'ubuntu'. I argue for the need of indigenous expressions of compassion arising from a contextualized ecclesiology and missiology that flow from the Spirit's work within the church.
Vulnerable Mission in Depth: Listening to God and Man in Africa Collected Essays
Apostolic Academic Series, 2023
Chapter 1: Introduction. This chapter points to ways in which African people’s innate avenues of thinking are increasingly considered taboo—so ignored—and allowed to fester rather than to develop, grow, and blossom. Chapter 2: I was struck by the contents of a sermon in 2010 at a church in Kenya. It was presented in the Luo language and translated into Swahili. The categories being employed by the speaker were, in terms of Western language(s), especially English, incongruous. This is despite their apparently tallying with four very ordinary English words; money, hope, fear, and love. Correct comprehension of what was being said required me to draw on learning I had achieved impressionistically, i.e., insights I had picked up “subjectively” through sharing life with Luo people over an extended period. I could not easily quantify or even outline these insights, that certainly had no objective origins. Chapter 3. This short chapter imagines Africans as dairy farmers and Westerners as sheep farmers. Contrasting two different husbandry practices clarifies differences that may be less clear-cut between cultures. Thus the folly of the use of one language across cultural difference, i.e., use of Western languages in Africa, is exposed. Chapter 4. The notion that literacy might be of other than religious / esoteric value (being a product of Protestantism) raises questions regarding its contemporary spread, and the extent to which literacy may still be considered inherently religious / esoteric. This chapter proposes profound implications arising from consideration of this, arguably, contextual difference between Western and non-Western Englishes. Chapter 5. Many scholars producing academic writing on Africa quickly learn to beware the “sin of generalizing”—which is essentially to assume that diverse African peoples have things in common, that are not found in the West. Such prohibition of so-called “generalization” is used to maintain an apparent universal direct relevance of Western scholarship in Africa. Chapter 6. This chapter contains a fuller articulation of a greater number of arguments that seek to qualify today’s prohibition of generalization. It thus renders both African communality, cultural facets of people’s lives that are similar across Africa, and the work of the gospel, visible. Chapter 7. A general invisibility of translation has, in recent decades, popularized the incorrect assumption that profound bodies of interconnected knowledge that affect the whole of life, can simply be transferred wholesale from one language to another. Because information is always domesticated into its target language and culture, a process that requires a very profound knowledge of that target, translation from unknown to known, must always be prioritized over that from known to unknown. The impact of this vitally important principle being these days largely ignored is potentially catastrophic! Chapter 8. Human satisfaction is often supplemented by the suffering, failure, or even death of others. This is metonymically represented by the shedding of blood. The rejection by modern thinking of “traditional” logic—that sees shedding blood as healing—has transformed African solutions to coronavirus into fake news. This chapter explores implications of this kind of transformation. Chapter 9. Conventional Western and modern ways of considering and evaluating Africa are faulty. This chapter points to the nature of such faultiness, such as the expectation that use of English can be adequate and helpful for delineating indigenous African categories. The chapter draws on work of the late French scholar René Girard as the basis for a proposal regarding how to make sense of what is unconventional. Chapter 10. Drawing heavily on insights from René Girard, “aggression” in African worship (shouting, screaming, noise in general, aggressive dancing, and so on) is connected to a desire for cleansing by imitating the lynching of a witch. When correctly focused as a reenactment of Christ’s death on the cross, this kind of activity should be understood as being a means of bringing healing / cleansing. Chapter 11. This chapter explores theology as an alternative to rainmaking as foundation for leadership in Africa. Some peculiarities of African styles of worship appear to arise from rainmaking traditions, to which adherence to the Bible should be a marked improvement. Chapter 12. While Bible translations are these days prolifically being produced, production of associated study texts in indigenous languages has to date proven stubbornly difficult. This chapter articulates such difficulty—and how to overcome it—with reference to Study Bible production. Chapter 13. This chapter suggests that largely unrecognized sleight of hand has contributed to, if not formed, today’s logic in the West, that has many accepting the bogus straw-man category of “religion.” Once defined and accepted, “religion” can be considered no more than a primitive relic, and condemned! Associated historical naivety is denying people a knowledge of Christ! Chapter 14. An impassioned plea is made for the reader of this chapter to cease being hoodwinked and misled by contemporary secular society, when it is evident that all that humans do is “religious,” including the roots of secularism itself. Chapter 15. That African people might believe that God can protect them from the coronavirus might seem incredible in the West, but is very normal in parts of the continent. This coronavirus case study, written in 2020, considers numerous important ways in which policy makers must take African people’s belief in God seriously. Chapter 16. Was pre-colonial Africa peaceful, healthy, and prosperous? Today’s problems in Africa are often blamed on colonialism, modernity, and even Christianity. Pre-colonial Africa, though, was not free from fujo (a Swahili term meaning destructive mayhem). This chapter draws heavily on the work of the late Tanzanian novelist Euphrase Kezilahabi, interpreted through a lens of long-term close living and exposure to East African people. Chapter 17. Compulsory church attendance was once widespread in Europe. This historical requirement makes up part of the history of the contemporary West. Contemporary deploring and mockery of the notion that perhaps “religion” should be enforced at government level may or may not be appropriate in today’s West, but mocking the role of government in “religion” may not be helpful for some in the non-West. Such disparaging of government involvement can be considered “evil” if it results in a wanton depreciation of something that carries many important benefits to human society. Chapter 18. The West is adamant that racism is wrong. It rarely considers, however, the foundations on which its opposition to racism is built. One such foundation I here critique, is secularism. That is, the assumption of normality to which racism is considered antagonistic, is secular. The power of the West is such as to spread this assumption globally: African people must be treated as if they are secular, wherever they are! This conceals the religiosity of African people, in the interests of not being racist. Chapter 19. Digging a little into the nature of some indigenous African categories of thought related to the English concept of emotion, reveals ways of identifying what Africans mean by “poverty.” Comprehensions of African terms frequently used to translate English terms like that of poverty may seem, from a secular vantage point, to be out of this world! Amongst other things, exploration of implicit indigenous African categories of thought and understanding reveal English comprehensions of African ways of life, and the concomitant prescriptions for action, to be compromised by their own illogicality. Chapter 20. “Vulnerable” approaches to majority world people, as defined in this text, permit an otherwise largely unmatched deep level of cultural comprehension. This chapter considers the implications of such an approach’s revealing that world religions, considered by many to have some kind of objective existence, are reifications of the meeting of non-Western ways of life and Christianity. The implications of this nature of world religions are explored in this chapter. Chapter 21. How one uses language is key to on-the-ground ministry. Asking questions for which no answers are available or admissible reveals one’s ignorance. Language can reflect truth, or it can build truth. The availability of funding can create its own truths. Telling the truth about Africans can be interpreted as theft if the truth would result in a potential donor not supporting a project. Telling the truth to Africans about how people live in the West can generate envy. Some truths are plainly untranslatable. Chapter 22. Well-connected Western missionaries carrying out ministry drawing on access they have to outside resources, and their mastery of the globalized language of English, build on what is not locally available. All too often this, unhelpfully, forces them to minister through saying, “do what I say,” rather than “do what I do.” Chapter 23. While “guilt” may be an unpleasant feeling, this chapter points to ways in which it is much more desirable than are either fear or shame. The chapter explains, in relation to evident characteristics of many contemporary African communities, how Christianity is appreciated for moving people from fear of ancestral revenge, and from fear of shame, to guilt, for which they can be forgiven. Chapter 24. It may not be helpful for talking to jump ahead of action. Verbally declaring something to be the case, before it actually is the case, may deter those who are preoccupied into making it the case from their endeavor. So use of Western languages that presuppose open altruism can delay adoption of open altruism by African people. Chapter 25. This chapter is a study of the amazing love of God in intercultural context.
Compassionate Acts as Missional Theosis: A Call to the Evangelical Church of Southern Africa (ECSA
Pharos Journal of Theology, 2022
The Church is God's agency to bring about well-being in the world (Harold, 2018a). This bringing out of well-being to humanity call for an understanding of justice and compassion through a missional reading of the Bible and its intersection with "actions" of the Evangelical Church in post-apartheid South Africa. The aim of this article is twofold , the first, is to examine the praxis of the Evangelical Church and its relevance to the marginalised in South Africa critically, and the second, is to help the ECSA understand that a missional reading or a missional hermeneutic through theosis brings about a correct understanding (orthodoxy) of compassion, justice and the Missio Dei leading to the right action (orthopraxis). Using literature, this article will explore and recommend ways the ECSA can act prophetically by speaking to and on behalf of the voiceless in South Africa. The researcher then employs the notion of Theosis to show that by acting compassionately, the Church reflects the very nature of God.
Cross-cultural Communication, 2017
This article entails a critical investigation of the attitude of Africa and Africans to the poor and needy in the New Testament and the contemporary attitude of Africa and Africans (especially leaders) to the poor and needy. The paper glanced through the scripture for what it says of the poor and needy and the various terms used for the poor and needy. It also examines the terminologies used for Africa and Africans in the New Testament and critically discusses Africa and Africans care for the poor and needy in the New Testament. The article further looked into African core values as it relates to the current attitude of Africa and Africans to the poor and needy. It draws a conclusion that the contemporary attitude is nothing but bad news as against the legacy of Africa and Africans in the New Testament.
Intercultural Generosity in Christian Perspective: the ‘West’ and Africa
Transformation , 2015
Western dualism’s tendency to naturalism at times appears to do away with a need for God. African monism’s co-identification of material and spiritual profoundly affects presupposed aspects of Western reality, such as notions of holiness. Enormous misinformation arising from the global hegemony of Western languages conceals important complexities of African life from view to planners of mission and development. Particularly in focus is the centrality of feast and celebration in Africa’s economic and social life. Current efforts at exporting useful dualistic principles to Africa may be building on a misguided foundation. The current downward spiral of misinformation and the resulting confused practice can best be arrested by a reconsideration of biblical injunctions to generosity in the light of realities brought to light through sufficient vulnerability to non-Western contexts.
2017
This article entails a critical investigation of the attitude of Africa and Africans to the poor and needy in the New Testament and the contemporary attitude of Africa and Africans (especially leaders) to the poor and needy. The paper glanced through the scripture for what it says of the poor and needy and the various terms used for the poor and needy. It also examines the terminologies used for Africa and Africans in the New Testament and critically discusses Africa and Africans care for the poor and needy in the New Testament. The article further looked into African core values as it relates to the current attitude of Africa and Africans to the poor and needy. It draws a conclusion that the contemporary attitude is nothing but bad news as against the legacy of Africa and Africans in the New Testament.
Diaconia
Christian social practice (diaconia) is contextual; it is not uniform to people of all contexts. The contextual and neutral nature of Christian social practice means the question of methodology is important when considering it in a particular context. This article surveys the African context and the best way Christian social practice can be accomplished. Through reading Luke 10:38-42 in light of the African social practice of hospitality, the article argues that hospitality-and indeed any other Christian social practice-can hardly be realized in Africa apart from the African Ubuntu philosophy of life. It suggests that the see-reflect-act methodology of diaconia, taking the African philosophy of life seriously, is appropriate to the African context. According to this methodological approach, Jesus must be understood as an African stranger who should be welcomed with hospitality and fully incorporated into the African Ubuntu way of life. Hence, Ubuntu makes any methodological approach be African, differentiating it from methodologies applied in other contexts.
2021
The notion of ubuntu as a moral theory in the South African and African contexts presents attractive norms of an African worldview that can be articulated and applied to contemporary Christian ethics. The proponents of ubuntu perceive it as an African philosophy based on the maxim, "a person is a person through other persons", whereby the community prevails over individual considerations. It is not merely an empirical claim that our survival or well-being is causally dependent on others but is in essence capturing a normative account of what we ought to be as human beings. However, ubuntu has shortcomings that make it an impractical notion. Despite its shortcomings, ubuntu has natural ethic potential that enforces and engenders hospitality, neighbourliness, and care for all humanity. This article contributes to further conceptualisation and understanding of the notion of ubuntu and its relationship with hospitality in order to retrieve some principles that can be applied to effective and meaningful pastoral care. The principles drawn from ubuntu are juxtaposed with Christian principles and pastoral care to encourage embodiment of God by pastoral caregivers.
The Challenges of an African Theology of Hope and Solidarity
African Christian theology has addressed the problems of post-colonial societies by retrieving traditions of hope and solidarity, and inserting them afresh within the cultural context of the African Churches. By modelling Christian discourse on the traditional way of being together in post-colonial Africa, this theology has had an impact on the pastoral practice of ecclesial communities. The Church in Africa responds to the social sins of political oppression, economic exploitation and cultural alienation, giving new life to catholic traditions of natural law and advocacy in civil life. The Church, as prophetic witness proclaiming the kingdom of God in words and deeds, applies its Social Teaching to African situations, and transforms the dehumanizing crises of civil wars, displacement, poverty and legitimacy into dynamic forces of cultural change. The moral appeal to the leaders of civil society to act on behalf of justice is helping them to become the custodians of common good and stewards of God's creation. Speaking up for the downtrodden, the Church brings about social change through grassroots actions and civic movements.