MOTIVATION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TO DIALOGUE WITH AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION
Transcript of a Conversation with the Students of Religious History,,
Università di Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”
By CHIDI DENIS ISIZOH
Rome, 23 May, 2002.
Transcript of a Conversation with the Students of Religious History,,
Università di Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”
By CHIDI DENIS ISIZOH
Rome, 23 May, 2002.
1. General information
There are many things human beings have in common. When a person laughs, whether he is British or Spanish or Ugandan, it shows in some way that he or she is contented. When a baby cries, it does not matter if it is an Italian baby or German baby or Kenyan baby, it shows that the baby is uncomfortable. We are feel hunger. We feel pain. These are natural things which all human beings share in common. But there are many many things we do NOT have in common. Let talk to you about Africa. I am sure this is what you would like to hear from me. Or, at least, Prof.ssa Visca has requested me to talk to you about Africa. As students of history of religions, I shall discuss particularly issues relating to African Traditional Religion.
Africa is a large continent with a population of about 750 million persons. It has 54 countries. People talk about African language. But Africa has no one language. Each country has several languages. For example, my country, Nigeria, has 240 languages not dialects, spoken by about 120 million persons. I know only one of these 240 languages.
All Africans are not the same. You cannot judge the whole continent from the appearance or behaviour of one African. It is wrong to judge the whole of Europe by looking at somebody from Italy or Russia or Germany. There are differences. So, a Nigerian is different from Tanzanian; a Ghanaian is different from Ethiopian, and so on.
Culture is NOT one of the things human beings have in common. Africans do not have one culture. We have many cultures. The way Yorubas (from Togo) greet their elders is not the way Igbos (from Nigeria) greet. If a boy wants to marry a girl, it is not enough that they meet in a dancing hall and they tell themselves “I love you”. Each society in Africa has a set of guidelines for entering into marriage. It is not the same among all African peoples. A child growing up in any African society has a number of things to learn and to do. If he does not do them, even when he is 20 or more years old, he is still considered a child. When somebody dies, the way his or her funeral ceremonies are organised varies from community to community. What is done to enter into marriage, or to grow up in a society or to bury the dead, is determined by culture and beliefs.
2. Understanding African Traditional Religion and its basic tenets
We hear about African Traditional Religion. Yes, African peoples had a religion before Islam or Christianity or Buddhism came to Africa.
In African Traditional Religion there is at the apex the Supreme Being. Each language group has a name for this Being. John Mbiti has a long list of such names. You can visit my website to see the names. This Supreme Being is the creator of every thing. He knows everything. He is deep. We can never know him enough. You can find the attributes given to the Supreme Being from names of people, proverbs, wise sayings, etc
Under the Supreme Being are spirits – good and bad. Some foreigners are confused and they call the spirits gods. The good spirits help human beings, the bad ones try to harm people. You can imagine the role of the spirits as we conceive angels in Christianity. We have good angels and the bad ones.
There are also ancestors. Those who lived with us, gave good example, kept the laws of the land and are now dead. It is believed that they are still alive in the world of the spirits. They still interact with the living. With them we have still a bond. There is feeling of spiritual communion with thm. We can imagine them to be like saints in Christianity.
3. Some Misconceptions
The early foreigners (missionaries, explorers, historians, colonialists, etc) that came to many parts of Africa did not understand the religion or the culture of the people. They called it strange names: paganism, animism, ancestor worship, idolatry, polytheism. All these terms revealed the ignorance of many of the earliest Europeans that came to Africa. Because these foreigners did not understand the religion, some of them tried to stop it. They taught Africans that to worship God as done in African Traditional Religion was a sin. To be a good Christian, an African must turn his or her back to anything connected with African Traditional Religion. The first African Christians did just that.
But not every missionary was against the practice of African Traditional Religion. Some of them were careful, they approached it with respect. This is evident from the remarks made by one of such missionaries in 1902. He said:
“There are innumerable ramifications which I have been unable to follow, and a vast amount upon which were I directly questioned, I should say, 'I don't know'. The more one investigates, the more one realises the extreme profundity of native thought. It seems so superficial yet, actually, it is infinitely more involved than the white man's logic, and he finds it extremely difficult to interpret it satisfactorily.”
Today, we know better. We understand the theology of African peoples more. The Catholic Church promotes studies in African Traditional Religion. She encourages inculturation of the values found in African Traditional Religion and culture. It was a gradual change. But why this change? Various reasons could be given. Let us examine some of them.
4. Motivations for dialogue with African Traditional Religion
The approach of the Catholic Church, especially after Vatican II, to followers of ATR or converts from it has a special qualification. The Church is interested in the religion, from a pastoral point of view (PCID). This is a self-examination of the Church, to find what she has done or not done to reach the hearts of the followers of traditional religion and make a home for Christ in them.
The following could be considered as some of the things that motivate Christians to approach the followers of ATR:
4.1. Salvation and development of peoples
The first motivation (the "divine task" of the missionaries) for approach to the followers of ATR was, as expressed by Pope Benedict XV: "to light the torch for those sitting in the shadows of death, and open the gate of heaven to those who rush to their destruction." This is the driving force which sustained many missionaries that worked in different parts of Africa. Many of them lost their health and even their lives.
The desire to save the people from the "darkness of superstition" went beyond mere instruction of them "in the true faith of Christ" to an overall cultural advancement and civilization of the "uncivilized peoples". Hence the European system of education was introduced and promoted by missionaries. Yet Africans have their own system of educating young people, as I said earlier.
4.2. Desire to penetrate the depth of the spiritual treasury of ATR.
After more than hundred years of intensive missionary activities among the followers of ATR, some of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa have the following reports to make:
Burkina Faso: «La religion traditionnelle africaine survit toujours, même si elle va s'effritant. Malgré la modernisation et le mouvement de Christianisation et d'Islamisation, son influence reste profonde sur les consciences des individus.»
Cameroun: «La religione traditionnelle demeure vivace dans toutes les couches de la société camerounaise. Elle s'accommode aisément des exigences de la science, de la technologie et ne se trouve nullement freinée par les structures d'un Etat moderne.»
Ghana: «On the surface, African Traditional Religion seems to be dying out, but this is not so.»
Sudan: «ATR adherents number some 30% of the population of about 8 million people.»
Uganda: « ATR is solidly entrenched in the lives of millions of people and, therefore, cannot be ignored.»
Why is ATR still exerting much influence on the people despite many years of intensive missionary work? Why are there still in many places people who are unwilling to leave ATR? Why do those who are converted to Christianity return in certain moments of their lives to some aspects of the ATR practice? There is need to enter into the world of the "die-hards" in ATR to discover what spiritual richness, what fears, what elements, profound as they may be, attract, and sustain the followers of ATR or what draws back the half-converted Christians who return from time to time to the practice of the religion.
4.3. Desire to adopt some of the important values in ATR
If Christianity had come directly from the Middle East to Africa, it would probably have been more easily understood and appreciated by the pre-Christian followers of ATR. But having been filtered through European culture, it had acquired many abstract terms and some of the values which do not always touch the spiritual depth of the religious African person. This in itself has created a certain distance between ATR and Christianity.
Such values as family, community, appreciation of life as a gift from God, sense of the Sacred, are deeply appreciated and lived in ATR. The Church, especially in Africa, seeks to adapt some of these values and re-interpret them in Christian categories, and ennoble them
Pope John Paul II has particularly encouraged this initiative. To the bishops of Nigeria, 1982, he said:
An important aspect of your own evangelising role is the whole dimension of the inculturation of the Gospel into the lives of your people. Here, you and your priests co-workers offer to your people a perennial message of divine revelation - "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ep 3:8) - but at the same time, on the basis of this "eternal Gospel" (Rv 14:6), you help them "to bring forth from their own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebration and thought".
The Church truly respects the culture of each people. In offering the Gospel message, the Church does not intend to destroy or to abolish what is good and beautiful. In fact she recognises many cultural values and through the power of the Gospel purifies and takes into Christian worship certain elements of a people's customs. The Church comes to bring Christ; she does not come to bring the culture of another race. Evangelization aims at penetrating and elevating culture by the power of the Gospel.
To Bishops of Mali, 1990, the same Pope spoke:
In dialogue with those who remain attached to the traditional African religions, encourage a benevolent concern for the values they profess so as to recognise with discernment that which can remain as an integral part of the common good. Collaboration will often be possible and beneficial for the service of society. And, while maintaining an invaluable part of the traditional heritage, Christians will be able to give a clear witness to their own faith in Jesus Christ, in a naturally fraternal dialogue.
In preparation for the 1994 Special Synod of Bishops on Africa, the Bishops Conferences of Africa were asked to put together the values in African Traditional Religion and Culture which Christianity could promote. What Bishops put together was interesting. I would like to refer you to my website to read all out it. But I warn you, everything there is in English. I know that, as good students, you have some knowledge of English.
4.4. Desire to explore some of the concepts in ATR which have become important issues in contemporary international discussions
There are a number of such concepts that have assumed importance in international discussion. Let me give you just one of them: Ecology.
ATR takes Nature serious as God's work and, therefore, respects it. Pope John Paul made the followings remark to the Voodoo worshippers of Togo in 1985:
Nature, luxuriant and splendid in this place of forests and lakes, imbues minds and hearts with its mystery, and spontaneously directs them towards the Mystery of the one who is the Author of life. It is this religious sentiment that inspires you and that inspires, one might say, the whole of your compatriots. May this sense of the Sacred, which has always characterised the human heart created in the image of God, bring man to desire always to draw closer to this creator God in spirit and in truth, to recognise him, to adore him, to thank him, to seek his will.
Discussions about ozone layers, green peace movement, "earth matters", have become very important in the international circles. The care and attention which ATR gives to Nature as God's own work have helped to initiate and promote the evolving branch of studies known as ecological theology. Italians from time declare “pollution free-days” when no cars that use gasoline are allowed to move around in city centre. Protecting nature is important.
African Traditional Religion from time immemorial teaches that it is important to preserve the gift which God has given human beings in nature.
