Pentecostalism in Africa

 

Introduction to the Dilemma of Foreign Missions in Africa

The history of post-colonial African Christianity is the history of a people searching for their lost identity. “African’s have lost their own story and absorbed another people’s story. An enduring theme in African history is how to exorcise the humiliations from contacts with the Western world: the battered self-image, distorted identity, and challenges to the cultures and religions.”[1] The dominion of the Western colonial powers strongly affected African politics, education, culture, and religion. This is particularly true of Christian missionaries to Africa, who tended to view the ‘Dark Continent’ as nothing more than unwashed pagans, completely ignoring the history of Christianity persistent in Africa since the time of the Early Church. For example, “Early Pentecostal missionaries frequently referred in their newsletters to the ‘objects’ of mission as ‘the heathen’, and were slow to recognize indigenous leadership.”[2] Similar attitudes abounded among Christian missionaries, and this shaped mission endeavors in Africa for nearly a century. This essay will trace the effects of Western colonialist missiology on the development of African Christianity, with an emphasis on the Pentecostalisms prevalent in the African religious communities.

Early missionary ministries to Africa exemplified a colonial mindset. Foreign ministers would travel to Africa to bring God’s truth to the ignorant and wicked natives. This would result in the growth of missionary-controlled churches which would disciple new converts and direct their further evangelistic outreaches. The goal was the establishment of God’s Kingdom under the permanent control of the Western church. “In Africa…expatriate missionaries kept control of churches and their indigenous founders, and especially of the finances they raised in Western Europe and North America.”[3] “The reason for all this is that most of the missionaries believed in good faith that their form of Christianity was the best one, if not the only one, forgetting that some of our greatest theologians have been Africans (Augustine, Tertullian, Origen), and forgetting that oral biblical religion is much nearer to African social values than to out modern Western society and church.”[4] Perhaps Pentecostal missiologist Melvin Hodges puts it best when answering the question, “Why the weakness of many of the mission churches in the Third World? Because missionaries have treated people like irresponsible children…Missionaries are not intended to be a permanent factor. They must work themselves out of a job.”[5]

Based on these faulty opinions of Africans and God’s ability to work in and through them, organized compound-style missions was generally ineffective in Africa. Its effect was certainly miniscule compared to the indigenous Christian movements which burst within African culture in the twentieth century. Traditional missionaries had attempted to command the African Christian churches through a variety of means. Initially, foreign missionary power was rooted in their leadership structure and supported by their control over financial donations from oversees. Foreign missionaries dominated the positions of spiritual authority within their African ministries. Foreigners were the educated, called, and sent ministers from God to the African heathen masses. Any African indigenous leadership arising from within these missions organizations was undereducated, and therefore unsuited to the higher positions of spiritual authority. This anti-African bias, coupled with the fact that the foreign missionaries controlled the funds flowing into Africa from abroad, guaranteed that the African voice within foreign missions organizations would be muted.

Coupled with this foreign control of authority and finances in African missions was the foreign control of education. Western Christians in general, and many Western missions organizations in particular rely heavily upon higher education in the process of choosing and training spiritual leaders. Further, the wealth of the West is directly associated with education. These attitudes create a dichotomous problem in the context of African missions. First, from the perspective of the missions organizations, they are suspicious of any spiritual authority that is not derived from Western-style higher education. Yet rapid growth in African missions, particularly of the Pentecostal variety, practically necessitates the recognition and integration of African ministers. As Kalu describes the problem, “Ministerial formation is a key component of missions. The quality of Christianity in Africa would depend on how churches train their leadership…ministerial formation continues to be a problem for all the churches in Africa, because the rapid growth call to question the viability of inherited patterns and walled institutions.”[6] The other side of this problem of Western-style education is the perceived betrayal of relinquishing one’s African spiritual roots in favor of higher education. This was often perceived as subservience to the colonizing powers, and therefore reviled in African society. Western education, intended to equip one for ministry, could therefore undermine its own goal.

Based on these faulty opinions of Africans and God’s ability to work in and through them, organized compound-style missions were generally ineffective in Africa. Its effect was certainly miniscule compared to the indigenous Christian movements which burst within African culture in the twentieth century. Christian revival, particularly of a Pentecostal flavor, broke out in numerous parts of Africa through a variety of sources. “In Africa, Pentecostalism also has a unique historiography emanating from various indigenous movements which include African Prophetism, African Indigenous Churches (AIC’s), and African traditional religions.”[7] To fulfill its own evangelistic potential, African Christianity has to break away from its Western missionary benefactors and serve God in its own authority and according to its own culture. This leads to the formation of a several recognizable renewal movements in Africa.

Ethiopianism

One of the earliest African indigenous divergences from Western missions was the Ethiopian movement. “The Ethiopian and nationalist churches parted ways with the missions for mainly political reasons.”[8] Ethiopianism was fueled partly by the returning African diaspora, who ached for a break from Western values and a return to historic African spirituality. “It challenged white representation of African values, cultures, and the practice of the Christian faith. It challenged white monopoly of the cultic and decision making powers within the church, and the monopoly of the interpretation of the canon and the cultural symbols of worship.”[9]

Ethiopianism was fueled by the anti-colonial sentiment on the continent, coupled with an earnest desire to Africanize the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Ethiopianists saw themselves as the inheritors of the biblical prophecies to restore and glorify Ethiopia in particular, and all of Africa by association.[10] This movement led to the establishment of African churches, both in Ethiopia and throughout Africa, that were independent of the Western church.

African Prophetism

One outgrowth of the Ethiopian desire for spiritual freedom from the Western church was the rise of the African Prophetic movement. An African prophet, “…was as charismatic figure, stringently opposed to indigenous gods and yet critical of missionary methods as a replacement of one culture for another without confronting primary allegiances and covenants.”[11] We see here the struggle to apply the Christian religion to the indigenous culture. The prophets sought to inculturate the gospel of Christ.               The African worldview is not inherently compatible to the worldview of Western Christianity. The West historically approaches Christianity as fundamentally cognitive and theologically theoretical, while the African worldview emphasizes a narrative and holistic approach to life. Spirituality is seen as interwoven with all of life, rather than compartmentalized from the natural world, as it is in the West. The African worldview could be argued to be more like the worldviews of Old and New Testaments than Western thought. Perhaps this serves to explain in part the African acceptance of Prophetism.

African prophets, such as William Wade Harris, dressed in robes, carried a Bible, cross, and bowl for baptism, and ministered through miracles and healings. Harris is an interesting example of the tension between Africa and the West. He was educated in a Methodist school and taught in an Episcopal mission before he, “…experienced a vision of the Archangel Gabriel who identified him as a prophet to prepare the way for Christ, and instructed him to abandon his European ways.”[12] Harris set out to preach in communities which had never been visited by Western missionaries. He succeeded in spreading the gospel throughout the Ivory and Gold Coasts. Harrist churches sprang up widely in his wake, as well as churches inspired by a variety of other African prophets.

African Indigenous Churches

The African Indigenous Churches (AIC’s) were the next challenge to Western Christian hegemony in Africa. While Ethiopianism and Prophetism challenged the authority structures of Western missionary societies, the AIC’s challenged the lack of spirituality in Western-style Protestantism and Catholicism. As noted earlier, the African notion of life as fully sacralized clashed with the Western dichotomy of natural and spiritual. Here, we may note the similarity between African indigenous spirituality and the spirituality of pentecostalism. Both see life as primarily spiritual, and therefore expect religious beliefs and practices to embrace and manifest the spiritual world.

The AIC movement was an explosive evangelistic effort among African Christians. They went to uncounted unevangelized African villages and preached the gospel. This led to the establishment of African churches in which the gospel was heavily inculturated. This led to considerable unrest among other African Christians, over the concern that the gospel would become a syncretist mixture of Christianity and tribal indigenous religions.

Both AIC’s and pentecostalism share another trait of revivalist movements. “As an emergent religious form, the Pentecostal movement tends to rub every other religious form the wrong way, as common parlance would put the matter.”[13] This is certainly true of the AIC’s as well. For example, the West African Celestial Church of Christ (CCC) has been accused of overlaying the gospel onto the traditional indigenous religion of the Yoruba people. Many of their spiritual practices, such as the use of water, colors, and other rituals, mirror Yoruba practices. “Even though CCC leadership has consistently, adamantly, and publicly rejected any affiliation with Yoruba traditions, these observations raise the difficult questions about religious syncretism versus religious contextualization, on the one side, and the relationship between Christianity and other faith traditions, on the other side.”[14] Through translating the writings of M.L. Martin, Walter Hollenweger offers us the following advice in forming our attitude toward the AIC’s:

“We have to leave as much as possible to the Africans and be patient even when their expression, their terms, their forms, their organizations and their structures appear to us to be imperfect or even totally wrong. We have to overcome our fear of a possible syncretism, which does not mean that we close our eyes to its dangers. But it means to trust the Holy Spirit, as Paul did, to lead the African brothers into all truth.”[15]

 

African Pentecostalism/Charismaticism

Concurrent with the outbreak of Ethiopianism, Prophetism, and the AIC movement was the growth of traditional Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Renewal. Evangelism and missions were central to the North American Pentecostal Revival of the early twentieth century. The early Pentecostals believed in the immanent return of Christ. The catalyst of their eschatological furor was the restoration of the Gift of Tongues, which they mistakenly interpreted as a universal xenolalic empowerment meant to foster a final harvest before the coming of Christ. Though the Gift of Tongues did not prove to be the power over language barriers as was anticipated, this did not hinder many Pentecostal missionaries in Africa from evangelistic and renewal ministries. Pentecostal missionaries both preached to the lost, and spread the Pentecostal emphasis on tongues, healing, and miracles within existing denominational missionary organizations in Africa.

Pentecostalism was in many ways a natural fit for the African culture. The pneumatological emphasis of Pentecostalism spoke to the spiritual holism of the African worldview. Africans expected a religion to heal the sick, offer protection from evil spirits, and provide help to the weak. Pentecostal Christianity offered to fulfill those expectations. Further, Pentecostalism downplayed the role of formal education in spiritual authority, stressing instead the power of personal religious experience, calling, and gifting. This was very appropriate to the African cultural context, which had little access to, and great suspicion of, formal Western-style education.

The Charismatic Renewal of the 1970’s also found fertile ground in African Christianity, particularly the prosperity message. While much of African pentecostalism had taken firm hold in the rural, poverty stricken areas of Africa, the Charismatic message blossomed in the cities. Charismatic televangelism promised health and wealth, which aligned with both traditional African spirituality and modern urban African values. Charismatic Christianity was popular with upwardly mobile young urban Africans. The televangelist became what Kalu calls ‘the Big Man of the Big God’. “By the 1980’s, the fascination with media technology and the hypnotic allure of prosperity gospel quietly reshaped the Pentecostal attitude toward status, elitism, and the big man syndrome.”[16] African indigenous religion assumed that spiritual power would result in social and financial power. The Western televangelists seemed to embody this principle. Thus the spread of a more charismaticized form of African Pentecostalism.

Conclusion

African Christianity is a very diverse set of spiritual movements and organizations. Pentecostalism in Africa has become a huge spiritual movement primarily because of its affinity to the existing historic African worldview. The success of pentecostalism in Africa is due to the willingness of African Christians to take it from the auspices and oversight of Western Christians and spread it themselves throughout their continent. This occurred with a keen eye toward contextualizing and inculturating the gospel to the African worldview. While there are concerns over the syncretizing of Christian beliefs with African tribal religions, Walter Hollenweger offers measured advice for viewing African Christianity. “…trust the Holy Spirit, as Paul did, to lead the African brothers into all truth.”[17]

 

Bibliography:

Allan Anderson ed., Studying Global Pentecostalism (Berkley: University of California Press, 2010).

Allen Anderson, “Christian Missionaries and ‘Heathen Natives’: The Cultural Ethics of Early Pentecostal Missionaries,” Tenth EPCRA Conference: p 1.

Dr. Dale Coulter, Drawn from a lecture given at Regent University on Oct. 10th, 2012.

Melvin Hodges, The Indigenous Church (Pasedena, CA, 1953).

Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997).

Walter J. Hollenweger, “Evangelism: A Non-Colonial Model,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology no.7, (1995).

Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005).

Amos Yong & Clifton Clarke ed., Global Renewal, Religious Pluralism, and the Great Commission (Lexington: Emeth Press).

[1] Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 4.

[2] Allen Anderson, “Christian Missionaries and ‘Heathen Natives’: The Cultural Ethics of Early Pentecostal Missionaries,” Tenth EPCRA Conference: p 1.

[3] Allen Anderson, “Christian Missionaries and ‘Heathen Natives’: The Cultural Ethics of Early Pentecostal Missionaries,” Tenth EPCRA Conference: p 20.

[4] Walter J. Hollenweger, “Evangelism: A Non-Colonial Model,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology no.7 (1995): p 4.

[5] Melvin Hodges, The Indigenous Church (Pasedena, CA, 1953), p 114.

[6] Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 126.

[7] Amos Yong & Clifton Clarke ed., Global Renewal, Religious Pluralism, and the Great Commission (Lexington: Emeth Press), p 29.

[8] Allan Anderson ed., Studying Global Pentecostalism (Berkley: University of California Press, 2010), p 67.

[9] Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 24.

[10] Dr. Dale Coulter, Drawn from a lecture given at Regent University on Oct. 10th, 2012.

[11] Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 36.

[12] Ibid, p 37.

[13] Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 65.

[14] Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), p 25.

[15] Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), p 72.

[16] Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 113.

[17] Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), p 72.