Missionary-scholar Jim Harries argues that the wide differences between the West and the Rest are being ignored by anti-racist strategies. These misunderstandings are perpetuating dependencies in the majority world and stunting sustainable development. However, there is a way forward, a path of humility that rejects colonialism and embraces real equality.

Abstract

Strategies designed by Western nations to counter racism can conceal difference between non-Western and Western peoples. Such concealment results in a misleading obscuring of social reality outside of the West. Because the globalised world is dominated by European languages and scholarship, non-Western academics can be forced to plan their strategies for socio-economic development in the light of contexts and peoples other than their own. By preventing development in the majority world this provides a back door to the ongoing stoking of racist thinking in the West. “Anti-racist” strategies in the West and the tidal spread of globalisation seem at the moment to be relentless. This article suggests that Christian champions practicing vulnerable mission make a contribution taking us towards a society more accepting of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity that can understand rather than condemn difference. Once understood, difference can be compensated for and appreciated rather than ignored.

Introduction

Image: Sergey Pesterev

This article links two issues which are frequently addressed separately—development for the poor in the majority world (with a focus on Africa) and anti-racist strategies in the West. The author, who is British born and raised but has lived in Africa since 1988, points to an antagonism between the above two: policies designed to counter racism are oriented to ignoring consequential cultural differences that fall along racial lines. Such ignoring frustrates efforts at majority world development.

The first section looks at the roots of racial thinking and its ongoing impact in global perspective. It finds that a self-deception on the part of the West, perhaps arising from its “shame”[1] over a history of racist thinking and policy, is undermining the efficacy of scholarship about “the other.” This in turn is skewing strategies pertaining to international and intercultural relationships, including development intervention in the majority world. There has been a “rise of claims to global knowledge in the contemporary world,” according to James.[2] I interpret James as telling us that the contemporary Western world these days considers itself to be well informed about human societies beyond its shores. It does so in part since the Western world conducts much well-funded anthropological and other research. Unfortunately, such research may follow over-simplified models of translation from indigenous languages of the majority world. These models often arose from work in Bible translation,[3] but have in extension of their use resulted in insensitivity to indigenous cultures.[4]

The West, through interpreting non-Western ways of life according to its own categories has perceived non-existent similarities. Visitors to the majority world, missionaries included, can be determined at all costs to find the “sameness” that they are told back home should exist. This renders them impervious to signals that point to massive and deep cultural differences. Because the way in which majority world cultures are different from Western ones is consequential to their economic and social development, development strategies that ignore these differences are constantly frustrated. Through contributing to the perpetuation of poverty in Africa, the undermining of development aggravates racist thinking in Africa, which impacts back in the West.

The second section seeks for solutions to the above scenario. The option of doing nothing could be disastrous. This author advocates for champions operating based on vulnerable mission. Champions are people who dedicate themselves to intercultural service on behalf of others. The term vulnerable mission refers to ministry using indigenous languages and resources.  Champions practicing vulnerable mission buck the system by expressing a deep love for and commitment to people in the majority world as they are, rather than as they ought to be according to the West.

The author’s personal experience in Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa should be borne in mind as a backdrop to this discussion.

Black people referred to herein are predominantly those of sub-Saharan origin, including some now living in Europe or the United States. Whites described are those originating from Europe or the United States, some of whom are living in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cultural Linguistics

 I will in this article draw on very recent work on ‘cultural linguistics’. Sharifian, a self-proclaimed leader in this field,[5] draws heavily on research into Aboriginal people in Australia. Genetic evidence points to Aboriginal origins in Africa, their having left Africa separately and prior to European and Asian peoples.[6] Cultural similarities remain between them and African people, as observed by some visitors,[7] and as is clear from scholarly descriptions.[8]

“Cultural linguistics,” according to Sharifian “explores the relationship between language, culture, and conceptualisation.”[9] Such “exploration brings to the surface ‘differences’ and arising issues that were not previously visible.”[10] Whereas it has traditionally been thought that learning a language required knowing words and their meanings, Sharifian points out that “cultural conceptualisations … underlie the use of human language.”[11] These conceptualisations that arise from a people’s culture, mean that two people coming from different cultural communities can use the same language very differently. This applies even if they say the same words. Sharifian found Australians who, “because they sounded like speakers of Australian English, were not identified by their teachers as Aboriginal English speakers,” yet, “English words such as family, home, and shame evoked cultural conceptualisations in these students that were quite different from those of Australian English speakers.”[12] For Aboriginal people, for example, contrary to the understanding of Western people, land is a living being.[13] This is strikingly similar to the understanding of land held by Luo people in western Kenya, for whom land can speak (piny owacho), can die (piny otho), and can be us (wan e piny).

Hidden but ‘real’ differences between Africans and Westerners

African people can sometimes be surprised by portrayals they receive through the media of fellow blacks who have emigrated to and live in the West. That is, the way they are depicted may be contrary to expectations at home in Africa. To some extent this may be because blacks who have migrated to the West have adapted and become “Westernised.” Additionally, I suggest, it arises from determined efforts by Westerners not to represent people of African origin as “inferior.” Since Westerners implicitly understand “inferior” behaviour to be any that is “not-western,” these efforts are in effect to depict them as behaving essentially no differently than white Westerners.

Handling issues of racial identity is a big concern in Western nations. Robert Young explains that not so long ago different (especially black) races were looked upon by the West almost as if they were different inferior species (“types”).[14] According to Neville Alexander, race replaced religion as the main social status differentiator in British society in about 1806.[15] The West is still trying to recover from the reverberations arising from its legacy of scientific racism. In reaction to this past the West has developed an extreme sensitivity to any portrayal of Africans that one could interpret as implying their inferiority.

African people tend to be monistic in their thinking.[16] That is: Africans typically make a much less clear distinction between the spiritual and the material than do Westerners.[17] Such has certain out workings. It results in a holistic approach to problem solving: if problems (i.e. misfortune) are caused by “spiritual agents” then they need to be resolved by prayer, the shedding of animal blood, the following of customary law codes, etc.[18] When Africans who live in the West are depicted as using Western reasoning to solve problems, those who remain in Africa ask themselves whether that depiction is accurate.

Any attempt at providing evidential support for hidden difference will need to draw on contextual contributors largely invisible to Westerners, but very evident to many Africans. This is what Sharifian refers to as conceptualisations that are associated with a language, which are peculiar to a culture. The Luo people of Western Kenya have a term jochiende that refers to a cause of negative feelings in living people that are linked to less than positive experiences of people who are at the time already deceased. For example, a girl who dies childless could bring misfortune to a living woman. The term jochiende is commonly translated into English as ‘spirits’. English speaking people who come across the term ‘spirits’ and consider themselves already to have an understanding of what they are will be missing specifically African conceptualisations. Luo people, who may also take spirits as the English translation of jochiende, can remain largely unaware of Westerners’ assumptions that arise from their understanding that jochiende = spirits.[19]

The message given at a Pentecostal church I attended in Kenya regarding dealing with your past seemed to be strongly akin to ways in which counsellors in the West endeavour to help people to come to terms with prior experiences. Paying careful attention to what was going on in this church however revealed that the actual targets of the preacher’s message were the ancestral spirits that were troubling the congregation. The service turned out to be a massive exercise in exorcism involving 90% of the congregation. People’s relationships with their ancestors are complex and rooted in numerous traditions. Dealing with ancestors implicitly brought all that profound complexity onto the scene. To have depicted those African people to be dealing with their past, in the way that this English phrase seems to suggest when used in western circles in England, would have been failing to grasp local conceptualisations.[20]

Questioning African people’s capabilities as scientists could be considered a very racist position. Yet “In contrast to the classic European, the Negro African does not draw a line between himself and the object … Thus the Negro African … abandons his personality to become identified with the Other … he lives in symbiosis [with it]”.[21] A foundation for science, is that it is practiced by people who in some way endeavour to separate themselves out from the objects that they are studying. How can an African person do this if he “does not draw a line between himself and the object” (as cited above)? In so far as Senghor is right, an African person’s capabilities in science must be limited or at least different from that of a typical westerner. To claim that this is not the case is misleading untruth.

Shamala tells us that ceremony is “the bedrock to African Obuntu [i.e. communalism].”[22] “Ceremony denotes … the presence of the departed,” Shamala adds, linking to our point from the church service above.^[23] The love for ceremony does not suddenly end when Africans leave their homeland to live in the West. It will continue in the West. Western people who do not perform such regular ceremonies tend to ignore such goings on amongst Africans living in their midst. Could ignoring such be doing many Africans a great injustice?

A lady who had for many years lived in South Africa approached me a few years ago. She explained that the standard of English of many South Africans is far too poor for them to submit their writing as it is to their professors. They are obliged to use people like her (a native English speaker) to radically re-work what they have done before submission. The level of editing she was doing for South African students was high. That reminded me of comments I have often heard from British friends of African students studying in the UK telling me things like: “I told my friend what to write,” or even, “I wrote something for my friend, because it was obvious that he would not get his degree without my help.”

My final piece of evidential support for difference comes from a fascinating if frustrating experience that I had on accompanying a North American colleague visiting a Kenyan in the USA, who had already lived for a number of years in the USA. The difference between my engagement with that Kenyan, and that of my North American colleague, was to me very striking. My American colleague treated the Kenyan (I have lived in Kenya, engaging very closely with indigenous people, since 1993) as if he was American. He ignored endless ‘Kenyanisms’ that I was constantly perceiving. For example, my American friend told the Kenyan that I wash in the traditional way. The Kenyan articulated with his hands, a movement like that of throwing water over oneself with one’s hands. My American friend did not recognise this movement, or the implications that someone who washes in that way is somehow ‘primitive’ or of the lower classes. This Kenyan was not very impressed by the way in which I lived with his fellow countrymen in Kenya – something to which my American colleague remained oblivious. I was very aware that the tribe that I live with tends to be despised by this American Kenyan’s tribe. My American friend was oblivious as to how this inter-tribal relationship profoundly detracted from the development of good rapport between myself and this American Kenyan. My American friend was oblivious to endless conceptualisations attached to my Kenyan colleague’s English.[24]

I hope the above provide sufficient evidential support for ways in which the West is determined to ignore ways in which African people differ from them. It is drawn from personal experience, and in each case depicts insights hidden from regular Westerners. It is because the above bases for difference are hidden that they are easily ignored by the West.

Anti-racist policies in the West contribute to the ignorance of Westerners

Samuel Tshehla once observed that globalisation can be the global spread of provincialism.[25] While the West may believe that globalisation enables a flow of information to and from all corners of the globe, the reality is that information flow is rather heavily from the West to the rest.[26] The evidence for this in fact is rather overwhelming. The influence of the Western film industry is enormous globally. So is the influence of Western academia.[27] Western news media are translated into numerous languages and listened to almost everywhere around the world. Can poorer countries have a voice in the global world? Gayatra Spivak’s study of majority world women concludes that they, along with subalterns (the global poor and “underprivileged”) in general, “cannot speak.”[28]

A general concealing of cultural differences contributes significantly to this unidirectional flow of information.[29] Westerners are deceiving themselves into the belief that concealed differences between cultures, such as those between dualistic (Western) and monistic (African) ways of understanding, do not exist. To use Sharifian’s language, they “conceptualise the source domain in terms of the target domain,” that is, they assume monistic conceptualisations simply to be equal to Western ones. To restate that: Major efforts being made in the West by all kinds of organisations and institutions to conceal cultural difference by means such as positive discrimination and other strategies, can end up misleading the population of the West itself. Westerners can believe that conceptualisations that are concealed from view have disappeared.

If the general populous in the West is misinformed by the above mechanisms, then it is likely that policy makers and academics are making decisions on a misinformed basis. We must ask; can Western scholars writing about Africa, including those advocating for particular means towards social-economic development, be trusted?[35] Were the impact of their scholarly study to be clearly visible and receiving feedback from genuine intercultural experience, then the reality of the context could be preventing them from going too far astray. The outcome of research on Africa arising from Western scholarship could be more reliable if the Western scholars doing the research were on an ongoing basis deeply immersed in African contexts and languages. This cannot be happening if a Western scholar writes about the other (say indigenous African people) on the basis of a misguided assumption that what he or she appears to find in the West will also be found in Africa, while fearing that to suggest otherwise could bring an accusation of racism. In reality, many scholars draw for their research on the writings of other scholars and short-term relatively shallow interaction in Africa confined almost universally to engagement in European languages.[36] While they may draw on what the others (in our case Africans) have written about themselves, this writing typically being in English is limited for reasons outlined above.

As well as Western people being determined not to find differences in the course of their exploration of Africa, Africans may well attempt to conceal that about themselves which is different from Westerners. This could be for many reasons, and I can only touch briefly on a few here. 1. They are unlikely to want their visitors to receive confirmation of the once-held notion that Africa is a dark continent with all that this implies.[37] 2. African people prefer as far as possible to themselves control the interventionist strategies proposed by their visitors. If “the problem of Africa” is in the behaviour of the African people themselves, this implies that Westerners should be in charge of the many foreign-funded projects that are designed to “put Africa right.” It is understandable that African people get tired of having their affairs run by outsiders.[38] This makes it often in African people’s interests (at least in the short term) to deny extant difference in order to be given charge of whatever project is at hand, even if this means that the project concerned may not function as was intended and may instead “fail.”[39] The high rate of “failure” of projects in Africa is a known concern.[40]

Because Western countries do not sit high and dry from the rest of the world, issues that affect the majority world, including Africa, come back to them through new immigration, the media, travellers, migrants, the globalised communication system and other means.

Strategies for dealing with “anti-racism” in the West, in global perspective

We have seen above how “anti-racist” policies in the West are causing considerable confusion in Africa (and quite likely the majority world as a whole). I now want to look at possible resolutions to the stark picture painted above.

The barriers (many mentioned above) to the circumvention of our problem are so enormous as to appear at the moment to be insurmountable. There is a place for those who attempt to challenge the status quo both in the academic and in the political arena. The people who will do so will, as things appear at the moment, have an uphill struggle.

A lot of research has in recent decades been done into what is the appropriate choice of language for education.[48] Contrary to apparently widely assumed wisdom, it is believed by researchers to be in the interests of majority world people’s intellectual development for them to use their own language (typically their mother tongue) for as long as possible in the educational process.[49] Westerners working with a people using the people’s own language can help them appreciate and value it. They can help in the growth and expansion of that language. They can thus add directly and indirectly but powerfully to the prospects of a people’s intellectual development. Working with a non-Western people using a Western language undermines the non-western people’s competency in their own tongue. I refer those who consider Africa’s problems to be that it has too many languages to the writings of Prah.[50] One cause of the ongoing failure of African languages to thrive is the smothering effect of subsidised Western languages like a blanket for formal purposes over African communities.

An outsider’s refusal to subsidise his key activity with foreign resources will enhance local productivity and reduce the production of dependence. If outsiders can do something using local resources, then so should local people be able to imitate them without becoming dependent in an unhealthy way on outside donations.

Disquiet expressed in this article can be considered to be part of a wider category of post-colonial concerns. The post-colonial legacy in parts of Africa, when examined closely, can be extremely discouraging. This article is an attempt at encouraging Christians (and others) in the West to develop an awareness of such concerns. Considered from within the West, racially based bias is clearly the bad guy. From a global perspective, if as appears to be the case non-Western races are often foundationally culturally different from Westerners, trying to avoid racially based bias can result in the spreading of types of knowledge that do not have a fit to local understanding.

This article, especially through drawing on linguistic insights, proposes that committed individuals are key to finding solutions to some of the world’s problems. Sufficiently committed individuals in focus here are those inspired by their faith in Christ. It is very difficult for those not so inspired to achieve the standards here advocated.

This article does not claim to present the silver bullet required to resolve global issues. Interrelationships in today’s world are such that a change in one area has implications everywhere else. Yet, a renewed look at the race-question in global perspective is an important piece to be considered in the process of unravelling deep contemporary injustices in the interests of building a better society for tomorrow.

What “champions” are able to do, once they have acquired sufficient understanding, includes sharing beneficial information from the wider world with people who are disenfranchised. They may be able, through a careful process of translation in the light of the local context and language, to share benefits of Western academia, literacy, history,  the experiences of other cultures, religious traditions, and so forth—things that otherwise remain trapped in foreign languages and traditions.[52] By doing this, a “champion” will empower a community to resist the attack of globalisation by building their own capacity and literacy.

Should foreign (non-Western) communities be able to develop their own innate competencies, then clearly this will reduce the competence gap between them and the West. This in turn will undermine racism, reduce numbers of migrants, and perhaps do so much more effectively than current “anti-racist” regulations.

Producing champions

Given that dominant models of intervention into the Majority World have been found wanting (Africa certainly being a case in point), we have suggested a need for “champions.” This raises the question of how one is to find these “champions” who can follow the alternative “vulnerable” means of intervention here advocated?

I have above narrowed the defining characteristic of a champion as being the practice of vulnerable mission, which is itself defined as the use of local languages and local resources in ministry to the people being reached. This has in the past usually happened by default rather than through purposeful intention. However, recent colonial and neo-colonial conditions increasingly give potential Western champions a choice. Such a champion (i.e. missionary) should remember the Spirit-given example set in Acts 2:11, in which every person in Jerusalem at the time heard the Gospel in his or her own language. Acts 22:2 gives a clear example of how Paul’s knowledge of the mother-tongue of a very aggressive mob that wanted to lynch him enabled him to share the gospel with them. Acts 14:8–20 is a little more complex: Paul and Barnabas’ preaching to the Lystran people without first having learned their language resulted in a very serious misunderstanding, as a result of which instead of being able to communicate about God, they were taken as being gods. Could this passage represent a way of warning would-be missionaries not to engage in serious ministry until they have a grasp of indigenous tongues?

The overt motivation for a lot of the use of outside resources by Western missionaries in Africa in recent decades has been compassion. Western missionaries who have perceived problems of poverty, ill-health, hunger, morbidity, infant mortality, and so on chose to invest western resources into communities that they have been reaching. This has led to many problems, not least unhealthy dependency and a very widespread prosperity gospel in much of the continent of Africa and beyond. Careful consideration of Christ’s own approach to mission and ministry (reflected in the Christian Scriptures) reveals that Jesus did not hand out material resources as a means to boost his ministry. He rejected that option in a very overt way through his refusing the temptation by the devil to turn stones into bread (Lk 4:3–4). Later, after Jesus had fed thousands, he had to walk-away from both them and his disciples to avoid being given political office by force (Jn 6:15). While Jesus taught people to be compassionate (and he had compassion for those who suffered) we do not find him raising funds abroad so as to initiate projects in the way that has become common practice in mission in recent decades. I believe that his failing to initiate such “projects” was intentional. It allowed him to identify with communities as a champion. Such practice on the part of Christ himself is often known in Christian doctrine as his incarnation.

Impacts of champions can be widespread even if not always visible. I want to give just a few simple examples from personal experience, having lived and worked amongst Africans since 1988. In one instance, a local church had invited me to share in some door-to-door ministry in a part of Tanzania. When it was time to leave, a motorised rickshaw was sent to pick us up. I got in and said nothing. My hosts paid for my trip back. I was told that a few years earlier they would have expected a white person like myself to pay for my own trip. My failure to offer to pay transformed me from an agent from the outside into a servant under local leadership, who could potentially be entrusted with sensitive local information. Another example involves the fact that outside speakers coming into western Kenya are usually ignorant of a very pernicious problem troubling local people. The problem is known locally as chira. This Luo-language term represents the outcome of people’s failure to follow ancestral decree. Outsiders’ unfamiliarity with the details of what causes chira can prevent outsiders from intelligently articulating and dealing with it. My own position of having learned the Luo language and culture in-depth, and my ability to communicate using the same language enabled me to apply healing balm in the form of Christian teaching to this gaping wound.[55]

I can illustrate how one may as a result of being better informed apply ‘healing balm’ by way of an example: Chira, suffering caused by sin, for the Luo people in many ways resembles AIDS. Telling people that AIDS is not caused by sin is either to radically re-define sin, or to be 180 degrees in contradiction with an incredibly deeply held belief and fear. Correct Christian teaching has, to my understanding, to find a more profound and helpful ways of understanding and dealing with sin than simply to deny that it causes misfortune such as chira / AIDS.

I believe that it is Christian teaching, the full depth of which has only been touched upon in the above few paragraphs, that by the power of God’s Spirit produces true champions. The deep influence of Christian teaching in the West over many centuries continues to influence our era. As a result, even many Western people who no longer confess Christ have been so profoundly affected by this kind of ethic as to be able also to appreciate the role of champions. The closer people are to their Christian roots, the more likely they will be able to appreciate the role of champions. The church can, through the production of champions, begin to counter the problems identified in this article that are brought on by “anti-racist” strategies that run on the basis of ignorance of the impact of conceptualisations on language use, in the West today.

Conclusion

Scholarship in the West that looks at inter-cultural relationships, especially those involving Africa, is found in this article to have been seriously undermined by strategies that are intended to counter racist thinking. This undermining has resulted in a skewing away from contextual truth in the planning of projects and programmes of all sorts oriented to the facilitating of development and healthy international relationships. Because this hampers or even prevents socio-economic development from occurring amongst many people outside of the West, it in turn accentuates unhealthy racist thinking in the West through the perpetuation of endless scenarios of apparently racially-based inferiority. The skewing of scholarship caused by “anti-racist” strategies is also found to conceal the importance of specifically Christian mission activities, such as the need for Christian discipleship.

Either the rate of globalisation should be slowed, legislation countering racism in the West withdrawn, or some means found to help to facilitate strategies that counter poverty that are drawn up in the light of non-Western conceptualisations. Because the likelihood that globalisation will be slowed or “anti-racist strategies” will be annulled in the West looks small, I have suggested another means by which enlightened Westerners can cut through the current screen of deception regarding race in their relationships with Majority World people. They may become champions who work on the basis of the practice of vulnerable mission. Such champions will become a cutting edge for new strategies that do take serious account of extant conditions in the promotion of socio-economic development in the majority world. Once such new strategies gain traction, they will reduce the apparent level of incompetence of majority world nations. Raising the capacity of Majority World people so that they can function effectively in their own contexts will remove the back door of feedback from outside of the West (including new immigration) which currently continues to fuel racist thinking inside the West. The Christian church in the West is well equipped to play a role in raising champions that can empower people in the majority world.

PR

Notes

[1] Nancy Lynne Westfield, “Teaching for Globalised Consciousness: Black Professor, White Student and Shame,” Black Theology: An International Journal 2, no. 1 (January 2004): 73.

[2] Wendy, James, ‘Introduction. Whatever Happened to the Enlightenment?’ in The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations. Wendy James, (ed.) London: Routledge, 1995, 1-14, 2.)

[3] https://marielebert.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/translation/

[4] Bible translation operates on the basis of an assumption of ongoing divine inspiration which means that the divine can use translations of his ‘living words’ to speak truthfully to a wide variety of linguistic communities. So called ‘secular’ translation has I suggest falsely presupposed that divine action to be universal to almost all translated texts.

[5] Farzad Sharifian, Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/PA: John Benjamins, 2017, 9.

[6] https://phys.org/news/2016-09-unprecedented-aboriginal-australians-africa-migration.html

[7] In conversations about traditions, it turned out that there were surprising similarities in the lives of the Aborigines and the Maasai – for instance in circumcision ceremonies. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/911809.stm

[8] Sharifian’s descriptons of Australian Aborigenes’ ways of life have striking parallels with that, from personal experience and much reading, of many African peoples. (Farzad Sharifian, ‘On Cultural Conceptualisations’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(3), 2003, 187-209, 194-198.)

[9] Sharifian, Farzad, (ed) 2015, ‘Cultural Linguistics’, 473-492 in: Sharifian, Farzad, (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 473.

[10] Sharifian, Farzad, 2017, Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/PA: John Benjamins, 36.

[11] Sharifian Cultural, 21.

[12] Sharifian Cultural, 194.

[13] Sharifian Cultural, 55.

[14] Robert C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge, 1995, 13, 15, 117.

[15]  Neville Alexander, “An Introduction to Perceptions and Conceptions of ‘Race’ in South Africa,” in Racism in the Global African Experience, ed. Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Cape Town: CASAS, 2006), 129–141, 130.

[16] Jim Harries, Secularism and Africa: in the light of the Intercultural Christ, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock 2015.

[17] In this, as many other cultural features, Australian Aboriginals appear to be very similar to African people, hence finding any difference between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘real’ to be invalid (Sharifian Cultural, 42).

[18] Note that “Aboriginal people [as Africans] sometimes use words such as spirit and spiritual when talking about ‘beings’ in their worldview, as a communicative strategy to facilitate somehow non-Aboriginal people’s understanding of experiences that draw on the Aboriginal worldview” (Sharifian, Cultural, 42.)

[19] See also Sharifian Cultural, 201.

[20] Sharifian Cultural, 168.

[21] Léopold Sédar Senghor, On African Socialism, London: Frederick A. Praeger. 1964, 72.

[22] Lucas Shamala, The Practice of Obuntu among the Abaluyia of Western Kenya: A Paradigm for Community Building. Saabruecken, Germany: VDM Verlag 2008, 135, 54.

[23] Shamala, 10.

[24] I encourage my reader to go to Sharifian Cultural in order to grasp what I mean by conceptualisations.

[25] Samuel M. Tshehla, “’Can Anything Good Come out of Africa?’  Reflections of a South African Mosotho Reader of the Bible,’” Journal of African Christian Thought 5, no. 1 (2002): 15–24, 23.

[26] I would argue that a lot of what might be supposed to be the flow of information from the non-West to the West is more accurately a reflection back of what the West wants/expects or is able to hear from the non-West; hence not a non-West to West flow but West to West.

[27] Hans de Wit, “Africa Must Lead Innovation in Higher Education Internationalisation,” University World News: The Global Window on Higher Education, no. 239 (September 16, 2012).  http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120912160836275&

[28] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ”Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 271–313, 308.

[29] Jim Harries, “Racism in Reverse: the impact of the West on racism in Africa.’ In: Jim Harries, Vulnerable Mission: Insights into Christian Mission to Africa from a Position of Vulnerability, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2011, 163–184, 175–176.

[30]  Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, “Between Subalternity and Indigeneity: Critical Categories for Post-colonial Studies,” Interventions  13/1 (2011): 1–12, 7.

[31]  Jim Harries, Communication in Mission and Development: Relating to the Church in Africa, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2013, 106–124.

[32] Andreas Musolff, ‘Metaphors: sources for intercultural misunderstanding?’ International Journal of Language and Culture, 11, (2014), 42-59, 48.

[33]  Aidan W. Southall, “History and the Discourse of Underdevelopment among the Alur of Uganda,” in The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations, ed. Wendy James, London: Routledge, 1995, 45–57, 51.

[34]  Benjamin Graves, précis of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”  http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/poldiscourse/spivak/spivak2.html

[35] “The fact that scholarship is tradition-bound, in such a way that the cultures and societies create their own scholarship, which speaks to the experience of their societies, remains lost on us till the present day” (Kwesi Kwaa Prah, The African Nation: the state of the nation, Cape Town: CASAS, 2006, 114.)

[36] Thiong’o comments on this in Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers Ltd., 1981, 6–8.

^[37] See the above account of the church service in which African people were told to exorcise those aspects of their past that might hold them back from being modern and prosperous. By faith, people who have gone through such an experience, believe their past and traditions to be ‘gone’.

[38] Aboriginal people in Australia have a different problem. Whereas many African people want it to be known that they no longer have a ‘a culture’ and so can run their own affairs, Aboriginal people point to their culture as the source of their authority in modern-day Australia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06UpQQQ7cBM

^[39] Although what constitutes a failed project for Westerners may not be so understood by Africans: David Maranz, African Friends and Money Matters: Observations from Africa, Dallas: SIL International, 2001, 151.

[40] Andrei Schleifer, “Paul Bauer and the Failure of Foreign Aid,” Cato Journal  29/3 (Fall 2009): 379–390.

[41] See David Maranz, African Friends and Money Matters: Observations from Africa., Dallas: SIL International, 2001, 9.

[42] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmann’s Publishing Company, 1983, 32.

[43] Wolterstorff 32.

[44] Neville Alexander, ‘English Unassailable but Unattainable: the dilemma of language policy in South African Education.’ Paper presented at the Biennial Conference of the International Federation for the Teaching of English, University of Warwick, England, UK, July 7-10, 1999, 6. http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=ED444151 (accessed 28.08.08).

[45] Jean Johnson of World Mission Associates (USA) is particularly concerned about this kind of unhealthy dependency: http://www.missionexus.org/counterproductive/

[46] Robert A. White, “Research on Communication for Development in Africa: Current Debates,” African Communication Research 2/2 (2009): 203–252, 218.

[47] For examples, see http://www.jim-mission.org.uk/articles/index.html

[48] Allan Pitman, Suzanne Majhanovich, and Birgit Brock-Utne, “English as a Language of Instruction in Africa: Policy, Power, and Practice,” in Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa—Highlights from a Project, ed. Birgit Brock-Utne and others, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2010, 1–10, 3.

[49] Kwesi Kwaa Prah, “The Burden of English in Africa: From Colonialism to Neo-colonialism,” (Keynote address presented to the department of English fifth international conference at the University of Botswana on the theme, Mapping Africa in the English-Speaking World, June 2–4, 2009, 9. See also Sharifian Cultural, 207-247.)

[50] Prah, “The Burden,” 5.

[51] Kwesi Kwaa  Prah, ”The Language of Development and the Development of Language in Contemporary Africa: The Challenge of African Development in the Context of Current Linguistic Realities and Dominant Knowledge in Applied Linguistics.” (Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Chicago, March 26–29, 2011), 11.

[52]  Martha A.S. Qorro, “Unlocking Language Forts: Language of Instruction in Post-primary Education in Africa—With Special Reference to Tanzania,” in Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA), ed. Brock-Utne and others, Dar-es-Salaam: E and D Limited, 2003, 187–196.

[53] Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, New York: Orbis Books, 1989, 174.

[54] A process that could take many years.

[55] A problem with both of my examples is that their full explanation would require a lot more contextual explanation than I can give in a limited space. This is of course exactly the difficulty that I am dealing with in this article. The examples illustrate what they cannot, given limitations of space, fully articulate.

[56] For more discussion on this see Jim Harries, From Theory to Practice in Vulnerable Mission: An Academic Appraisal, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2012, 94–111.

I have been trying to read the barometer of events related to coronavirus as they have unfolded here in East Africa. Living in an African community while doing this has, at times, wanted to make my head to explode! The two logics being applied to the coronavirus outbreak, the technical scientific one I am receiving from much of the media and especially Europe and the USA, is worlds apart from indigenous people’s interpretations. The former, from the West[3] is highly scientized. In tackling COVID-19, science has called the shots. People have responded by compromising their freedom. In East Africa, people struggle to believe that a mere virus can cause such a massive problem. They desire to resolve the situation through prayer. They trust that the problem will soon go away. They hold various theories like that coronavirus infection is cured by drinking a lot of tea, or that release of the virus was a means to give China global domination over the USA.

On the street in Lagos, Nigeria, on the far side of Africa from Kenya.
Image: Joshua Oluwagbemiga

Whoever dictated how Kenya should respond to COVID-19 had little grasp of the constitution of our population. People were told to ‘stay at home’. This lock-down strategy we understand has worked in Europe and the USA. Getting home from work one afternoon, I was told we had no food for that evening’s meal. Paramilitary forces armed with batons had chased everyone from the market! Fortunately, the same afternoon, food could be acquired alongside our highways and bye-ways: Women who had been chased from the market were selling their produce on the sides of paths and roads. We did not go hungry after all!

Many people have to do a day’s work to make the money they need to buy the evening meal. Others, like in my case, have money, but still need to find people from whom to purchase food.^[4] Typically, that was from the open-air markets. Travelling (by bicycle) through the area (hither and thither between my work and home, about 7 miles), apart from markets themselves being closed, there seemed to be as many people out-and-about as ever.[5] I realised that even those people who did not have to go to work or buy the day’s provisions still preferred hanging around in town to sitting all day in what is typical for many of them, their one-roomed mud-floor houses.

Around this time, some Kenyans under extended-quarantine for COVID-19 made an escape bid. This was reported in the local as well as the global media.[6] Many were held because they had just travelled in from abroad. The depravity of the conditions under which they were held has been shared widely on social media.[7] Gradually I twigged as to what was happening. African people were not going to upset their routines in response to scientific claims, as Europeans had done. They would, though, respond to force and to the demonstration of the intense suffering that awaited them as a consequence to disobedience. Although strict lock-down is hardly possible, the population seems to have been gripped by a specific fear: “If I get sick with this terrible virus, the government will force me to stay for two weeks or more in some dank cramped quarters without any family!” That terrifying prospect is galvanising efforts to social-distance and perhaps stay at home in some cases, so as not to be found sick and have to go through tortuous quarantine![8]

A few days later, a friend sent me a link to a report about a parallel situation arising in Iraq.[9] This report explains that, similar to us in Kenya but a little different, people in Iraq live in fear of being found positive for coronavirus! As a result, medical teams’ doing tests so as to assist those in need, are being avoided. People are hiding from them. The reason given in this article, is the shame involved in getting sick, and even more in being confined to a quarantine situation and dying in isolation only for one’s body to be disposed of in a large communal grave.

There are definitely overlaps between the two above-described fearful responses to shame. The shame felt by Kenyans at not being able to properly bury their dead is illustrated by the account of James Oyugi, buried at night by government order,[10] resulting in his family demanding that he be exhumed and given a proper burial later.[11] Fear of isolation clearly underscores the shame felt by Iraqis – who don’t want it to be known even that they are sick![12]

Reflecting on the above took my mind to recent research exploring the relationship between guilt, shame, and fear in cultures.[13] Guilt cultures are said to be those in the West, shame cultures in the Middle East, and fear cultures in Africa. That is to say, according to this classification system, Westerners are motivated by guilt, people in the Middle East by shame, and Africans by fear.[14] Westerners avoid guilt by complying with the prevailing scientific logic, people in the Middle East conceal themselves so as not to be discovered, while Africans will only respond to threats of being beaten by the paramilitary, or of being interned for what they perceive as torture in quarantine facilities. In the latter two cases, quarantine, and not death from COVID-19, can be the worst consequence and is to be avoided at all costs![15]

The rest of the world is supposedly following the lead of the West when it comes to countering COVID-19. The existence of shame and fear cultures, outlined above, may be making this impossible. In Kenya, many sick people who suspect they have COVID-19 may well avoid hospitals. They fear public recognition of their ailments that could result in quarantine. People that have other ailments, such as malaria, will fear going to any medical facility where their temperature may be checked. This situation is apparently similar to what is taking place in Iraq. Reported cases of COVID-19 may statistically be small in these contexts and health services may well remain very quiet. The sick will be nursed at home, with perhaps zero benefit from modern medicine, while spreading the virus to all and sundry.

I would at this point like to look at the background and cause to the above situations. I will start with Africa, and look at what is happening from two perspectives. Firstly, Africa is known for its fear of witchcraft.[16] Simplifying a little, witchcraft beliefs are based on the understanding that misfortune is always caused by someone else’s misguided heart orientation, typically their envy. People fear the consequences of the envy of others. Because what is good arises by default, and others’ actions are responsible for one’s misfortune, the other is to be feared. This is at the root of the fear aspect of traditional African ways of life. Secondly, the Christian church in Africa is often considered by Westerners to practice the prosperity Gospel. In this interpretation of Christianity, God is expected to bring blessings of all kinds, including money, position, job, wife or husband, children, prestige, public acclaim, and so on. This interpretation of the Gospel largely ignores or even denies aspects of it perceived by both Western and Eastern Christians, of following the example of Christ by accepting suffering on behalf of others.

A street scene in Cairo, Egypt.
Image: Simon Matzinger

People of the Middle East are considered less oriented to fear of witchcraft than are Africans. Perhaps this is because of the practice of Abrahamic faiths over centuries. Many people in the Middle East idealise the example of Muhammed. Muhammed is unquestioningly considered wise, strong, intelligent, and successful. He married many wives, was frequently victorious in battle, and became a wealthy and popular leader.^[17] The example set for Muslims in the Middle East is that true believers should be wealthy, powerful and successful, clearly underlies the profound shame they experience if taken sick from their homes to die in isolation.

I want to contrast the above with the understanding of the ancient churches of the message of Jesus.^[18] The role model for Christians is the life of Jesus. Jesus ended up shamed, rejected by nearly all (including his closest disciples), crucified on a cross (a shameful death) between two criminals (a shameful context). Jesus’ followers often faced shameful situations of defeat and failure. Jesus’ apostles are portrayed as incompetent in the Gospels, especially Mark’s Gospel. Peter, one of the heroes of the New Testament, was periodically interned, almost killed for his faith, offered no resistance to his persecutors, and was eventually shamefully crucified upside down.[19] Paul, another hero of New Testament faith, spent years in different prisons, never led any military force, and ended up ignominiously executed in Rome. The island of Patmos, on which the writer of Revelations (the final book of the Bible) spent many years, “was a lonely, isolated place.”^[20]

My examples above illustrate how Christian believers are, in so far as they follow the example of Jesus, ready for defeat, shame, suffering, rejection and even isolation for the sake of their faith. We can go further. Christians consider such suffering salvific.^[21] As Jesus died for others, so his disciples knew that their suffering was to benefit others.

In Luanda, Angola
Image: Francisco Venâncio/Olhar Angolano

The strategies being employed in the West to counter COVID-19 today can succeed for one major reason: The cultures of Western countries have ancient connections to Christianity. The reasons, only some of which have been mentioned here, that the same strategies can be much less effective or even ineffective in the Middle East and Africa, are to do with the absence of the same tradition. This has many implications: 1. Within the West itself, at this time of immense suffering due to isolation, interruption of all regular routine, fear of death, often deep relational tensions, the example of Christ and other biblical characters should be over and over emphasised to help people realise that what they are going through has a purpose, even an eternal purpose, that is something that God himself acknowledges and understands. This includes that their suffering can be salvific for others. 2. As a result of their long history in the Gospel, many Western people implicitly carry a profound comprehension of this message. Amongst the populations we have looked at in this article, people of the Middle East and people in Africa, many either have not been exposed to the Gospel, or in the Middle East have had false propaganda on it rammed down their throats. In the case of Africa, many have been presented with the Gospel in terms of prosperity.

In conclusion, I suggest that there is a desperate and urgent need as a precondition for counter-COVID-19 strategies, for a profound and widespread sharing of the message of the Gospel of Jesus, globally. Not doing so may well result in thousands, or even millions, of avoidable deaths.

I should emphasise, that I am not here referring to high-budget English language Gospel content being beamed into Africa or the Middle East. I am talking about Christian believers willing to share God’s love in eager vulnerability, using indigenous languages without relying on outside resources. Some may retort that it is too late, there is too little time to do this. I believe it is never too late to begin.

PR

More from Jim Harries on the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa:

https://www.growkudos.com/projects/coronavirus-covid-19-in-africa

https://jimharries.academia.edu/research#covid19

Notes

[1] This was 19^th April 2020.

[2] Not a pleasant prospect in Kenya: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52326316

[3] Some might argue that this is not ‘from the West’, but global, certainly including China. My sources of information are in the West.

[4] There are many reasons why people purchase a day’s food on the day in question. One foundational reason is, because hoarders of food are considered greedy. If neighbours know that food is stored, they may well come and ask to be given some of it. To not share what is available is considered unsociable. In addition – many local people make their daily bread by being a part of the daily food distribution system, particularly many women.

[5] My impression is that people are slower to get up in the morning, and quicker to go home at night, because of the curfew.

[6] https://www.nation.co.ke/counties/mandera/32-escape-quarantine-in-Mandera/1183298-5523690-lkoyiv/

[7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p089ly4z

[8] My suspicions are shared by the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52326316

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/world/middleeast/iraq-coronavirus-stigma-quarantine.html

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoGia6VGEsc

[11] https://www.pd.co.ke/news/national/relatives-ask-court-to-order-siaya-virus-victim-exhumed-33093/

[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/world/middleeast/iraq-coronavirus-stigma-quarantine.html

[13] This resulted in the production of a test, that can enable someone to determine, through answering some questions, whether a culture is predominantly guided by guilt, shame or fear: http://honorshame.com/theculturetest-website/

[14] Shame and fear ceasing to be the dominant underlying cause for misfortune enabled the initiation of scientific discoveries for which the West is renowned.

[15] See also: http://honorshame.com/coronavirus-in-shame-contexts/

[16] [Editor’s note: See Jim Harries, “In Witchbound Africa”]

[17] https://www.al-islam.org/life-muhammad-prophet-sayyid-saeed-akhtar-rizvi/battles

[18] I use the term ‘ancient churches’ to refer to churches in the old world and countries populated by Westerners, with pre-20^th Century foundations. This is in contrast to ‘newer’ churches in the majority world that tend to be oriented to prosperity. I often discover this difference first hand. I am a Western Christian. I do a lot of ministry with orthodox Egyptians, in Kenya. The contrast between us and Kenyan Christians on these concerns is often great.

[19] The account of Peter’s crucifixion is not in the bible but in Christian tradition.

[20] https://bibleview.org/en/bible/revelationpartone/johnonpatmos/

[21] 1 Peter 2:21-25.

Missionary-scholar Jim Harries looks at the inherent difficulty in packaging and teaching theology in language translated from another culture.

This short article suggests that there are three possible translation-options when theological education from the West is transferred to Africa. None of those options are very satisfactory. The article concludes that a people need to engage theological education using their own languages.

Conflicting Understandings: Africa and the West

I offer some examples below of ways in which foundational understandings differ in parts of Africa with many people in the West:

• Western theology tells us that God can forgive sin.[1] Sin can be considered “an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.”[2] Sin, therefore, is an offence against God. In much of Africa people are more in fear of offending fellow community members than they are of offending God. People fear the shame that arises from condemnation by their community. To be discovered as having done something that one’s community disapproves of, is considered much more of a serious offence than to have done something that God does not approve of. Because acts can be performed secretly, an important means of discerning whether someone has offended their community is to look at the level of their prosperity. If someone ceases to prosper, perhaps showing visible signs of illness or poverty, then the cause for that can easily be assumed to be some secret shameful offence. The way to overcome shame, then, is to prosper. When African people discover that God forgives sin, that sets up the expectation that he will undo shame. Then that they will be healed and will emerge from their state of misfortune. A forgiven person should prosper. Someone will demonstrate their forgiveness through prospering. This common-sense understanding, according to African people, is often interpreted by Western theologians as being the prosperity Gospel, which they consider to be a very misleading teaching.

• James 5:14-16 reads as follows: “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” This passage, as others, makes it clear that sickness can be caused by sin. Matthew 9:1-8 also illustrates this clearly. In the Bible, especially the New Testament, the treatment for sickness is often forgiveness. Disease being caused by sin, one would expect the forgiveness of sins to be linked to healing. The plain reading of many New Testament examples affirms this. Yet the emphasis for healing from the perspective of Western Christians focuses on the use of bio-medicines.
  
  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/transmission-trouble-clashes-in-english-language-theological-education-in-africa/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/vulnerable-mission/ https://pneumareview.com/vulnerable-mission/#comments Wed, 31 Jul 2019 21:02:06 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=15527

  How can modern Western sending organizations move away from the legacy of colonialism and avoid creating unhealthy dependencies? To start with, carry out ministry in non-Western contexts using the languages and resources of the host culture. This article from missionary-scholar Jim Harries introduces the radical idea of vulnerable mission. This was initially presented as a paper entitled, “Understandings of Pneuma in East Africa, that point to the Importance of ‘Vulnerable Mission’ Practices from the West.”

   

  Introduction

  The AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) advocates that some Western missionaries to the non-West engage in their ministries using the languages and resources of the people being reached. This style of mission has come to be known as VM; ‘vulnerable mission’. This article attempts to articulate the importance of VM to Western efforts at mission to Africa from a particular angle. First, it points to the importance of local contextual knowledge in order for a missionary to be effective in passing on Biblical (and other Christian) teaching. Second, it points out that in order for such knowledge to be acquired, missionaries need to confine themselves in ministry to local languages and resources.

  This article cannot claim to cover all the bases or answer all the questions that may arise regarding vulnerable mission. It sets forth one simple case. Readers are encouraged to look for other articles in order to fill gaps in understanding. A particularly good source of those articles is www.vulnerablemission.com

  This article is not written from an Ivory Tower in the West, or even a university in the South. It has been written rather – from within East Africa by an author who is seeking to implement that about which he writes. The article challenges certain presuppositions in linguistics and regarding causality in the realm of philosophy and economics. Those challenges are rooted in observation and practice. Many contemporary Western missions’ approaches are not working well. The author advocates an alternative approach as a key supplement to existing mission strategies.

  This looks especially at the need for effective discipleship of Christians in Africa. It considers the effects of indigenous languages on Christian people’s understanding of the Gospel. It points especially to understanding of pneuma hagion (the Holy Spirit) and the prosperity Gospel, considered to be a widespread and serious departure from Biblical truth in church in Africa today, which has been brought about in part as a result of certain Western mission strategies.

  This isn’t how mission is supposed to work. Yet, almost every Westerner working in Africa is heavily involved in handing out money and resources.

  Because this article is a comparison of translations, the key terms under consideration will be given in the New Testament language of Greek. Pneuma, which is commonly translated into English as spirit, hagion as holy, and theo as God. This article considers the impacts of words that arise from the ways in which they are used rather than from their more ‘static’ meanings, and so distinguishes between the ‘same’ words in different languages even if they are commonly considered be inter-translatable synonyms. The Greek (for example pneuma) is taken as the original and correct understanding of a term, whereas spirit is taken as the current British understanding of this term, and roho as the current East African understanding of the same.
  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/vulnerable-mission/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/prosperity-gospel-in-zambia-the-problems-of-engaging-african-theology-using-english/ https://pneumareview.com/prosperity-gospel-in-zambia-the-problems-of-engaging-african-theology-using-english/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2018 14:14:11 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=14767

  In this review essay, missionary-scholar Jim Harries challenges Western assumptions used to decry the prosperity gospel as it is taught and believed in Africa.

  Hermen Kroesbergen, ed., In Search of Health and Wealth: The Prosperity Gospel in African, Reformed Perspective (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2014).

  In reviewing a book about Africa written in English, one is tempted to ignore constant category errors being made. I have chosen in this review not to ignore them.

  The contributors to this book have embarked on an impossible, but nevertheless important task. Impossible, I suggest, because one cannot effectively evaluate African thinking using English. Important, because the issue they address is critical and topical. The book is an outcome of debates that occurred at Justo Mwale Theological University in Lusaka, Zambia, in 2012.

  My own background affects my interpretation. As a young man, I was much influenced by Calvinism. I continue to love Calvin’s teaching. Yet, I struggle to see how it can fit in Africa. I lived in Zambia from 1988 to 1991. Since 1993, I have lived in Western Kenya. Reformed churches in my home area in Kenya (I am familiar with one or two, there may be more I do not know about) have been swamped by Pentecostalism. It is hard to see how a reformed church can thrive, except through foreign donations, which would then implicate them in a kind of prosperity teaching that this text sees itself as critiquing.

  Chilenje gives us a run-down of the kinds of difficulties that the West has with prosperity teaching. In the following chapter, Zulu sees positive things in prosperity teaching, rejecting the idea that it is only a pathology. Ellington tells us that correct analysis of biblical texts would solve the problem of prosperity teaching. Banda, D. suggests that we shouldn’t attack prosperity unless or until we have a better alternative. Then Banda L. suggests that the best way to resolve the rift between reformed and Pentecostal churches, is through dialogue. Kroesbergen struggles not to condemn prosperity teaching as sheer folly, by looking at ways in which it enables African dignity. Soko sees prosperity teaching and Pentecostalism in general as a response to globalisation. Kroesbergen-Kamps realises that in Zambian minds, Christianity and modernism are integrally linked. Togarasei concludes the book, by suggesting that what prosperity-oriented Zambians are looking for is not flagrant wealth, but merely bread on the table.

  Many hours were needed to edit and proofread this book (xi). This indicates a starting difficulty – the expectation that citizens of African countries should produce work of a literary standard that pleases Western scholars. The book presents many respectable avenues of exploration of prosperity teaching in Zambia. I very much appreciate the efforts made by its authors.

  Be careful with the words you use: Supernatural is a Western category, from Western positivistic dualism.

  A foundational error made to different degrees by all authors in this compendium, is a basic confusion between Western and African worldviews. It is this very consequential if sometimes concealed situation, that I want to concentrate on in this review. The authors presuppose in their writing, in other words, that Zambian people have a ‘modern’ dualistic worldview. This presupposition being largely incorrect disqualifies a great deal of the book’s content. Most of my critique below is simply examples that point to this fundamental concern. In my view, this basic error is extremely widespread in English language literature about Africa. It might be considered unfair for me to point to errors in this book, that are being made throughout the literature. The fact that this book has stimulated me to do such, should perhaps be taken in its favour! Perhaps it represents the proverbial straw that breaks the back of the camel on this issue?
  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/prosperity-gospel-in-zambia-the-problems-of-engaging-african-theology-using-english/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/pentecostal-theology-in-africa/ https://pneumareview.com/pentecostal-theology-in-africa/#comments Sun, 09 Sep 2018 21:25:10 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=14702 Clifford R. Clarke, ed., Pentecostal Theology in Africa, African Christian Studies Series (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2014).

  This compendium of articles put together by Clifton Clarke excels in being a clear, carefully presented and carefully argued account, taking a variety of different theologically-rooted angles on AP (African Pentecostalism). As would be expected, the tone is optimistic and positive to the effect that AP has important significant contributions to make to the wider field of theology, both within Africa, and in the world at large. Being a compendium that includes a variety of work by different authors makes it hard to draw too many conclusions about the whole. I will endeavour to give an enticing flavour of the book below.

  The claim aptly made and articulated by Gallegos, that APs being rooted in ‘primal’ ways of thinking gives them advantages in Biblical interpretation over perhaps highly educated but ‘modern’ people, rings true. Pentecostalism in Africa is in some respects a ‘coming of age’. This is a very valuable comment: theological theorists’ search for indigeneity in African Christianity can find many of their answers in AP. AP churches are, in many instances, self-governing, and ready to be outspoken beyond what they have been told by their Western instructors must be right. AP is a part of a great revolution for Africa!

  African Pentecostalism is a part of a great revolution for Africa!

  Ngong points us to a key need for AP to leave space for the modern world. What good, after all, is a theology that cannot recognise or advocate for science and technology that profoundly dominate modern times? Landfair considers APs orientation to eschatology. Some scholars consider AP to be very this-worldly, despite its emphasis on God’s Spirit. Landfair unpacks apparent contradictions to such presuppositions. Gifford’s contribution is primarily cynical. That is a welcome compliment, giving us a non-believers’ perspective, challenging scholars on AP to consider how practices rooted in the countering of witchcraft can at the same time lead to socio-economic progress. A chapter by Ogungbile on the prosperity gospel points to ways in which what may seem ‘clearly wrong’ from the West, is not necessarily so for APs, for whom poverty after all is a kind of sickness, and who read frequent accounts of Jesus’ healing in the Gospels. This discussion highlights a set of evident contradictory relationships between AP and modernity.

  How do Africans see the ‘prosperity gospel’ differently than Westerners?

  Frahm-Arp gives us a refreshing and articulate account of AP view on gender. Her straightforward laying out of AP views related to gender could be of great help to people in the West wondering why the behaviour of women and men in AP contexts differs from Western norms. In the latter part of the book, Fleming and Ngong throw new insights onto social action and religious pluralism with respect to APs. A weakness in the approach of both of them, is that they seem to take a dominant Western view and to ‘Africanise’ it, rather than to explore AP practice on its own terms.
  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/pentecostal-theology-in-africa/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/marlene-yap-the-crucifixion-of-jesus-christ/ https://pneumareview.com/marlene-yap-the-crucifixion-of-jesus-christ/#comments Sun, 04 Mar 2018 13:33:44 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=14042

  Missionary-scholar Jim Harries reflects on what Asian scholars have to say about Jesus, his death on the cross, and the culture of honor and shame.

   

  Marlene Yap, “The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ: From Extreme Shame to Victorious Honor,” The Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 21:1 (February 2018), pages 33-47.

  This is a great article that makes a meaningful contribution to the ongoing emphasis on the importance of the recognition of the impact of shame in New Testament times and in contemporary times. This article is part of an entire issue with this emphasis, “Biblical Reflections on Shame and Honor in Asia.”

  Jesus continued on, despite the shame, and therefore overcame it, by accepting all that was done to him, knowing that he had a greater purpose.

  Marlene comes from a non-Western background, and I think readers would like to hear more about that background. That could be as simple as: what is the word used in the language of Marlene’s people that might translate ‘shame’? What are the further ramifications of the use of that word? How do people understand shame, and how does that fit into, compare, or contrast with, biblical understandings, and contemporary understandings?

  What cultures have difficulty talking about shame or putting it into words?

  I myself live with and minister to the Luo people of Western Kenya. The Luo language does not seem to have a term that very accurately translates ‘shame’. Wichkuot, literally, ‘head-swell’, is the closest. But it would be inaccurate to say that Jesus suffered from wichkuot. Wichkuot is perhaps more like embarrassment than shame. I wonder how many languages have this kind of difficulty? That’s the kind of question that might have been helpful to have seen Marlene address.

  Are Westerners and Western missionaries as free from the fear of shame as is sometimes made out?

  Reading the article has had me reflect deeply on many related issues. It has me questioning – whether Western missionaries are as free from fear of shame as is sometimes made out? Marlene describes graphically and simply, how Jesus continued on despite shame and so overcame shame, by accepting all that was done to him, knowing that he had a greater purpose. Such should characterise more of Christian mission today!

  Reviewed by Jim Harries

   

  The latest edition of the journal of the Asian Pacific Theological Seminary, The Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, is available at www.apts.edu/ajps.

   

  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/marlene-yap-the-crucifixion-of-jesus-christ/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/vulnerable-missions-conference-2018/ https://pneumareview.com/vulnerable-missions-conference-2018/#comments Wed, 14 Feb 2018 15:00:10 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=13942

  Vulnerable Mission: What it is, and Why we need it

  When: May 31 – June 2, 2018

  Where: All Nations Christian College in Easneye House, Ware, Hertfordshire UK

  Sponsored by the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission.

  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/vulnerable-missions-conference-2018/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/shadow-boxing-the-missionary-encounter-with-christian-theology-in-world-religions/ https://pneumareview.com/shadow-boxing-the-missionary-encounter-with-christian-theology-in-world-religions/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2016 16:12:52 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=12252

  Missionary-scholar Jim Harries investigates whether the term “world religion” is a Western construct and points us toward a new way of sharing the story of Jesus that is free of this stricture.

   

  Abstract

  Globalised Western hegemony has resulted in the obscurest parts of the world having a contrived front to present to Western visitors and investigators. In European languages, many of these fronts are known as world religions. These European-reified inventions can significantly contribute to people’s self-identity vis-à-vis the West. This article suggests that Westerners engaging with communities in relation to their ‘religions’ easily end up engaging their own reflections, boxing their own shadows. The existence of such reflections of the West is what it is here suggested undermined the enthused 19^th century comparative theology project. Although created by those deeply influenced by Christianity, world religions are generally idolatrous. Formal dialogue with such Western inventions, apart from confusing the West, can further solidify what was originally reified, and cause efforts at Christian evangelism to falter and flounder. Engaging Christian mission in indigenous languages and without large amounts of outside resources results in responding to people’s actual ways of life rather than communicating ‘through Europe’ to reified world religions. Thus by avoiding contrived contexts, mission effectiveness can be streamlined.  

  Introduction

  The scholars who interpreted accounts and findings of 18^th and 19^th century explorers were deeply rooted in traditions of Western Christendom. They were accustomed to describing the Christian religion in terms of its dependence on a holy text, in terms of its doctrines that determined particular practices, in terms of beliefs, prayer, worship, and fulfilling of a complimentary role to a secular government. The scholars interpreted the practices they learned about people in other parts of the world in the way that was familiar to them. Hence, they made what have subsequently come to be known as other ‘world religions’ appear to be parallels to Western Christianity.

   

  What happened to ‘comparative theology’?

  19^th century Europe was characterised by much intense Christian belief.[1] One product of this that came under the heading of “comparative theology” was a “voluminous literature, which once filled the libraries of Europe and North America” (Masuzawa 2005:72). Mysteriously, nowadays Masuzawa tells us, this literature is “rarely read, and its very existence hardly recognised” (2005:72). What happened?

  Even those who claim to be entirely Bible believing Christians cannot get away from the context in which they are living.

  The major focus in Masuzawa’s text is on the invention of world religions. Her historical research unearthed an 18^th century belief that there were essentially four groups of religions in the world. Those were “Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, and the rest” (Masuzawa 2005:47). Within this view, Christians are clearly the ones who are OK. Jews and Mohammedans (i.e. Muslims) “in some way did possess religion, but obviously did not have it quite right” (2005:49). The ‘rest’ were idolaters, hence the early 19^th century adage “nations ignorant of God, contrive a wooden one” (Goodrich 1834:14).
  
  ]]> https://pneumareview.com/shadow-boxing-the-missionary-encounter-with-christian-theology-in-world-religions/feed/ 0 https://pneumareview.com/in-witchbound-africa/ https://pneumareview.com/in-witchbound-africa/#comments Sun, 12 Jun 2016 13:36:18 +0000 http://pneumareview.com/?p=11678

  Missionary-scholar Jim Harries discusses contemporary conditions and understandings of witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa.

  Introduction

  Questions about witchcraft[1] seem to float threateningly on the edge of most missiological discussions on Africa. Various authors of a recent edition of IBMR (International Bulletin for Missionary research (39(1)) have done us a service by bringing them to the fore. This is a very welcome step and I congratulate IBMR for their boldness in pointing us to this pernicious concern.

  

  Image: Mohammad Yearussaman

  From 1988 to 1991 I lived and worked amongst the Kaonde people of Zambia.[2] Whilst there I heard of a book by a British colonial officer Frank H. Melland, that he had written about the Kaonde and that was published in 1923. It is to my knowledge still the most comprehensive account of the customs and traditions of the Kaonde. The title of the book often sticks in my mind: In Witchbound Africa: an account … Melland having written in 1923, one would think things might have changed. More than three generations later this article asks; is Africa still ‘witchbound’?

  Is Africa still witchbound?

  Stimulated by the above IBMR authors, I would like to write this response to their scholarship. This response arises, subsequent to my above-described stay in Zambia, after having lived amongst the Luo (and to a lesser extent Luiya) people of Western Kenya since 1993. I find clear differences between these people and the Kaonde of Zambia. This especially because the Luo are ethnically and linguistically essentially unrelated to the Kaonde.[3] But there are also enormous similarities. The fact that apparently unrelated people can have such similar beliefs suggests to me that ‘witchcraft’, as it is known in some Western scholarship, is a default product of certain worldviews, especially monistic worldviews that seem to be the norm in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

  The question of the definition of witchcraft seems to be almost insoluble. Perhaps it is helpful to say that; witchcraft is a term used in Western scholarship that attempts to align certain practices carried out in the non-Western world with beliefs and traditions apparently once widespread in the West, which the West has in contemporary times come to understand as having been misguided. In terms of its content, witchcraft in Africa is a way of dealing with negatives in people’s character, such as envy (especially) and anger. This means used to deal with such has particular out-workings, including at times accusations regarding use of witchcraft that result in inter-human tensions, accusations, and sometimes physical violence.

   

  Extractive Scholarship

  The above introduction suggests that the West has paid some attention to witchcraft. The term itself, witchcraft, has dictated much of the nature of that attention. It has meant that from the start whatever constitutes ‘witchcraft’ is to be considered outdated and rooted in misunderstandings. Implicitly, as in the West, witchcraft accusations are no longer made but were once made, Western scholars are on their front foot, and Africans are on their back foot on considering this set of issues. Western scholars are waiting for Africans to be ‘enlightened’ as ‘we’ already are regarding the folly of belief in witchcraft.

  Anthropologists have probably been at the forefront of studies of witchcraft. I have personally greatly valued reading many anthropological texts on this subject. Anthropology has been one of the many scholarly disciplines to have gone through crisis since the advent of postmodernism on the back of the undermining of foundationalism.[4] Prior to about 1950, many Western scholars considered themselves to be writing on firm epistemological foundations. Since that time, at least amongst those ‘in the know’, the claim that science can be the foundation to all knowledge has lost its credibility (Plantinga 1983:4). Anthropologists have as a result been forced to re-examine some of their foundational assumptions, presumably including those on witchcraft.

  
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