SSM 11: Natasha Erlank, "Missionary views on sexuality in Xhosaland in the nineteenth Century" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bulletin of the GHI, 2015
In this paper I would like to consider how African American missionaries in Africa altered notions of sex and family relations in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century. 1 My goal will be to suggest where a reassessment of the African American mission and its meaning in the context of the history of black Atlantic emancipation and pan-Africanism could begin. Present studies think through the mission and its impact from the perspective of the relations between black communities and their white oppressors in the Atlantic world. In this view, African American missionaries made a "signifi cant contribution to a growing awareness of pan-Africanism among ordinary black people in the United States well before the rise of Garveyism and the Harlem Renaissance" -the two most important Africa-centered movements of the interwar years. 2 Not much attention is given to the African American mission from the point of view of the colonial encounter of which it was part in Africa, despite the fact that it was precisely the European colonization of Africa in the late nineteenth century that sparked new waves of pan-African protest and identity. Scholars consider the impact of black American missionaries in Africa "somewhat illusive" and by extension mostly negligible where it was not directly related to the rise of black international movements and the resistance to global white supremacy, which characterized the twentieth century as the century of the color line. 3 Adrian Hastings, the eminent scholar of African Christianity, for instance, describes black American missionaries in Africa as "never very numerous" and "mostly too immersed in the Westernizing orientation of the main American missions to off er any distinctive message." 4 Why African American missionaries were drawn to go to colonial Africa and how they defi ned relations of race and power in the spheres of sex and family relations -the core arenas of both colonial power and black Atlantic solidarity -deserves much more investigation. This paper will only suggest a direction to take in answering these and related questions. As I hope to show, the travel writing of African American missionaries in Africa altered both the colonial and the pan-African discourse about the relationship between
Unmasking the Colonial Silence : Sexuality in Africa in the Post״ Colonial Context
2017
This article explores the silence associated with sexuality in Africa. Aside from examining the false premise that homosexuality is un-African and un-Christian, this article argues that sexuality in Africa was not only socially controlled, but also carried socio-ethical and sacred overtones. Against the belief that sexuality in Africa exists in silence, the essay contends that in the traditional culture, sexuality was highly celebrated until missionaries attached shame to it—thus introducing the silence which is now defended as the default African position on human sexuality. The article concludes with some ethical considerations on sexuality in Africa.
Framed within queer theory and using Zambian Christian men of same-sex orientation as a case study, this paper explores possibilities for convergences of sexualities in Southern African Protestantism. It highlights two paradoxical expressions of contemporary Southern African Protestantism toward same-sex relations -which embraces sexual diversities, although many African Protestants remain largely opposed to sexual inclusivity. We explore how the prevailing religious discourse about sexuality in Africa can be viewed as the result of late colonial missionary endeavors to codify sexual norms. This process alienated indigenous sexual norms for inclusivity, which has led many advocates and critics to assert that LGBTI is inherently 'un-African. ' We specifically seek also to illustrate how the Bible and biblical interpretations remain borders in the convergences of sexualities in the context of Southern African Protestantism, which mainly focuses on policing, reinforcing or rupturing sexual borders. Finally we propose that the doctrine of 'justification by faith alone' offers ways to facilitate convergences of sexualities within Southern African Protestantism, allowing for authentically inclusive ways of theologizing and being an ecclesial community.
The Making of ‘African Sexuality’: Early Sources, Current Debates
History Compass, 2010
The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa's emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of 'African sexuality' as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring, harmful impacts in the present? 'African sexuality'-the idea that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world-has had numerous incarnations over the centuries. These include as 'Black Peril' (McCulloch 2000), 'African as Suckling' (Ritchie 1944), 'Voodoo Eros' (Bryk 1964 [1925]) and MCP (Multiple Concurrent Partners-Kenyon and Zondo 2009). Despite differences in emphasis and veneer of science, the overarching theme has been that African sexuality is a problem. In colonial times, Africans' supposed stunted or brutish sexuality was thought to oppress and degrade women, engender laziness and stultify intellectual growth in men, threaten public health and safety, and impoverish culture and the arts (no love or higher emotions, just lust and steely transactions). In modern times, African sexuality has been invoked to explain the high rates of HIV ⁄ AIDS in much of the continent (and by implication in the Diaspora). An influential article by Australian demographers Caldwell, Caldwell and Quiggan (1989) surveyed the ethnography to conclude that Africans were less prone to feel guilt, less concerned with female virginity or fidelity, and hence more relaxed toward having multiple sex partners than Asians or Europeans. More controversially, Phillipe Rushton (1997) argued that there was a direct co-relation between penis size, intelligence, respect for the law, and sexual behavior. 'Negroids', in this analysis, were genetically predisposed to be sexually precocious, permissive, and criminal. 1 African sexuality, in short, needed to be fixed by propaganda, legislation, and perhaps a global rescue mission. It is tempting to decry this stereotyping and the policies that have stemmed from it as straightforward racism-'five hundred years… of white racist imperialism' and 'white words' as Greg Thomas puts it (2007, 21). Certainly, those who uncritically draw upon on nineteenth-century European travelers for their empirical facts about African sexuality are at the very least extremely naive. But racism cannot explain why so many African
Interrogating Issues of Sexuality in Africa: An African Christian Response
East African Journal of Traditions, Culture and Religion
The issues of sexuality have been very contentious in Africa more so after the legalization of same-sex marriages by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2015 under the President Obama reign. Africans have resented the way sexuality is understood and practiced in the west and has termed it un-African. Some scholars and indeed African leaders have argued that the attitude towards sexuality is a modern practice which is being introduced and even forced to Africa by modernity and influenced greatly by the western worldview. In a modern setting, different sexual orientation has been accepted as a lifestyle and has been institutionalized. Although African does not refute the fact that there were and indeed still are people with different sexual orientation, they do not find it right to institutionalize it since according to African culture, this is an abnormality that needs to be corrected, sympathized with and tolerated. To that end, African peoples assisted those with a different sexual ori...
6. The making of ‘African sexuality’: early sources, current debates
The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa’s emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of ‘African sexuality’ as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring,harmful impacts in the present?