REFLECTING ON TRIBAL VALUES[1]
By CHIDI DENIS ISIZOH
By CHIDI DENIS ISIZOH
INTRODUCTION
Anthropology and Comparative Studies of Religions have shown that traditional or tribal or indigenous peoples and religions from different parts of the world, beyond normal common human elements, are very close to each other. This close affinity is particularly striking in India, especially in the north-east where, despite differences in costume, language, religious observances, the people can still identify themselves as Adivasi or Tribals.
The word “tribe” itself and its derivatives assume a totally different meaning among them. Since the unfortunate division of the world into three: the so-called first, second and third worlds, “tribe” has come to be associated with underdevelopment and poverty; uneducated or closed-in society, and so on. People shy away from applying the term to themselves. In India, however, the term is saved from degenerating into negative and uncomplimentary use. There, it is used in its original sense for cultural identification, locating a person in the anonymous sea of humanity. There are in fact many people who are proud to be identified as Tribals.
In presenting tribal values, I would like to proceed as follows-
POSITIVE TRIBAL VALUES
It is definitely not possible to discuss all the positive tribal values that we know within the time frame for this presentation. This may not even be expected. How could one in a single paper summarize the values that can be found among a very large percentage of humanity? We can only make a few indications.
One of the most treasured values of the tribal people is the family. A person is defined in terms of the group to which he or she belongs. This sense of community is gained through the family, the lineage, the clan, and the tribe. Among many Tribals the family is not simply made up of father, mother and children. It comprises a whole group of persons: the head of the family with his wife or wives, his children, and grandchildren, and also his brothers and sisters with their wives and children, his nephews and nieces, in a word, all those persons who descend from a common ancestor. In some areas there are no separate words for cousins or nephews or nieces: every person is either a brother or a sister. It is not how large this family is that is important, but what role it plays in keeping together the members. In it, every person has a place. Elders are respected and young people are treated with love and kindness.
The spirit of oneness is not limited to the nuclear family. It extends beyond the group from the same ancestral tree to a clan or village or even town. The individual is not alone in the world. He or she is surrounded by members of his or her community. A person is complete only in so far as he is part of this community. A tribal, right from birth, learns to believe that “I am because I belong”.
This community consciousness makes one realise the necessity to contribute for the welfare of the group. It is not uncommon to find in some places communities making financial contributions to build houses for their members in need or to send some of their bright young people to study in order, later, to represent them in the government or, in case of doctors and lawyers, to handle their problems. There have been many cases, for example, in which seminarians and aspirants to religious life were sponsored by the community. Every member of the community rejoices on the day of graduation or ordination or religious profession. The success or failure of a member is not only for the individual concerned, the whole community is involved.
Another important value is the concern the Tribals show for their weak members: the sick and the aged. The sick are not left alone; the aged are not abandoned in “Old People’s homes” and the poor are not forgotten. They live with the members of their families. Euthanasia is not considered as an option to end the pains of these weak members of the society. They are loved and cared for until they die.
Marriage is taken seriously. It is not a union of two young people who met each other along the road or in a night club and decided to get married the following day. It is an alliance, a covenant, between families and persons. Cultural provisions are made to guarantee its stability.
Children are loved. Among most Tribals, marriage without a child is regarded as meaningless and unfulfilled. When children come, they are not just for the nuclear family, the whole community is involved.
For the Tribals, there is great respect for the sacredness of life. There is almost a feeling of a divine imperative that “Life must be given; life must be lived; life is to be enjoyed; life is to be whole; life is to be honourable; life is to be long and peaceful.”[1] For this reason, many tribal societies have taboos and rituals to protect the divine gift of life. Wilful murder is an abomination, sometimes requiring complicated rites of purification which may include going into exile for several years and paying for the upkeep of the family of the murdered person. Abortion is also regarded as an abomination.
Among the Tribals, there is no need to book an appointment in advance for a visit to or a meal with a neighbour. In most tribal societies, hospitality is considered a duty. Visitors are welcome, even when the motive for the visit is not clearly defined. This explains why it was easy for the first European missionaries to gain a foothold in the tribal territories and how they were able to get close to the ears of the people to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ.
In the religious sphere, the Tribals have a very high sense of the sacred. There is reverence for sacred places, persons and objects. Religion enfolds the whole of life and there is no dichotomy between the secular and the religious, the sacred and the profane, the visible and the invisible. These distinctions are to them artificial. A completely secular world does not exist for them. There is no borderline between this life and afterlife. Life itself is cyclic, going from birth to death and to rebirth. The emphasis on a person’s enduring happiness is not concentrated on the afterlife but rather on the totality of his or her well-being in this life and in the afterlife.
The Tribals are conscious of the invisible presence of Supreme Being/God, the spirits and the ancestors. They must therefore always live in a manner pleasing to these supernatural forces. They must tell the truth, be honest in business and just in dealing with others. Care is taken to ascertain the will of the spirit to whom sacrifices may be due or from whom protection may be sought.
The Tribals attach great importance to the power of the word. The words of blessing pronounced by a father on his child are believed to be very efficacious. The verbal last testament of a dying person is considered sacred, no one dares add or subtract. To break the oath of secrecy taken during some initiation ceremonies is considered a very grievous offence in a community.
NEGATIVE TRIBAL VALUES
It would be a mere romanticization of the tribal values if we fail to acknowledge the fact that there are also shadows. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, in a letter dated 21 November 1993 to the Presidents of the Episcopal Conferences in Asia, the Americas and Oceania, mentions, inter alia, “objectionable moral practices, the rejection of twins (in some places), even occasional human sacrifice.”[2]
There is a sense in which an over-exaggeration of the community spirit can lead to ethnicism, creating a closed-in society in which foreigners and minorities are discriminated against. In its extreme form, it can lead to “ethnic cleansing,” oppression and suppression of “outsiders”.
CHALLENGES TO TRIBAL VALUES
In the last one hundred years the world has witnessed tremendous changes in the social, economic, political, and even religious spheres of life. The changes have been brought about by the possibility of frequent contacts between peoples. It is a matter of hours for an event in India to be heard in Brazil, Spain and Zimbabwe, thanks to the mass media. People frequently travel by air, by road and by sea, from one end of the globe to the other. Religious missionaries are on the move. Mother Theresa of Calcutta is known world-wide and her sisters are easily identified in most countries of the world. All these movements mean that cultures meet one another, new ideas are acquired, prejudices are reduced, and friendship is fostered.
The tribal religions and values are not in isolation. In the course of history, they have met with world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Foreign cultures have impacted with local traditions. Urbanization, industrialization, modern science and technology and local and national politics are realities which tribal peoples have to reckon with. What has happened to the tribal values in the process? Let us refer to some areas of life.
The traditional family system has to battle with the impact of the economic problem posed to salaried workers in a big city who cannot afford to pay for a flat big enough for their growing families, let alone visiting relations.
The community spirit with the traditional sense of private property owners having the obligation to share with their poorer neighbours is put to a difficult test by the modern business culture which puts the emphasis on individual success, personal profit and further investment for yet greater gains.
Basic virtues like honesty in the village where there is no need to lock doors, truth in the marketplace where everybody knows everybody and the seller tells the buyer the real price of the article, being one another’s brother and sister by which a compact village community lives and celebrates together: these and similar values are severely tried in the megalopolis where the individual feels alone and unknown in a city of two or more million people.
The religious virtues, celebrations and customs which have been protected by closely knit communities begin to disintegrate under the anonymous impact of the big city where everyone is struggling to survive.
While democracy has its merits, it is undeniable that the threads that held many tribal societies together are weakened under the pressure being exerted by the onrush of modern politics and government, electioneering campaigns and changing attitudes towards the elders, traditional authorities and indeed customs as a whole.
In front of these, some of the Tribals have lost confidence in themselves and occasionally tried to hide their background in order not to be considered primitive. Some have embraced foreign values as if they are superior and better than those inherited from the tribal cultural background. At another end are the Tribals who are campaigning for a return to the “original state”, that is, the state of the tribal culture that is unaffected by the impact of other cultures.
PRESERVING TRIBAL VALUES
The answer to the challenges posed by the changes in the tribal society lies neither in regretting good modern developments nor in looking backwards, but in studying what values in the tribal societies have a permanent validity, so that they could in some suitable form be saved and an acceptable synthesis with what is good in the new be worked out. This discernment has to be made in each cultural area of the world.
Who are qualified to make this discernment? Certainly it is not the external observers: foreigners, be they missionaries, adventurers or students of anthropology and ethnology coming from other parts of the world. About one hundred and forty years ago, when the first European missionaries and colonial masters came to my country, Nigeria, they met, according to the interpretation of some of them, “strange” cultures, people who worshipped “idols”, spoke “unusual” languages. They dismissed as inferior almost all they found that were not consonant with what they were used to. To be a Christian, at that time, meant cutting off as much as possible from the traditional customs. It is now taking the Church and African scholars almost 50 years to correct some of the misinterpretation of the cultural values of the people. I guess you have your own experience of the situation that has just been described.
The people to discern and preserve cultural, tribal, values are the Tribals themselves: especially priests, religious men and women and all the educated tribal people. The following steps could be considered.
The first step is to form associations and clubs of people who are interested in the promotion of tribal cultures. It could begin as a students’ union of a particular locality and then extend to state and national levels. The aim of this group is to conscientize the people, to make them love to be what God has made them to be, to appreciate their cultural heritage. It will be part of the responsibility of this body to work towards the insertion of the study of tribal religions, customs and tradition into the curriculum of studies in universities and other institutes for higher education.
The second step is to begin a collection of materials. Tribal values are identified. Questionnaires could be prepared and sent to some individuals in the village. Oral interviews are conducted. The aim is to learn about some of the customs that are fast being forgotten because those who know them are dying out. Tribals who are students in higher institutions of learning are best equipped for this field study which could form part of their research project for academic degrees.
The third step is publishing articles and books on Tribal religions and culture. No outsider will have exact knowledge about tribal religions and culture unless the Tribals themselves begin to publish. This is the forum to correct some of the misrepresentations made in the past by foreigners who claimed they knew the Tribals very well. As an example, in Africa today, there are many journals specifically on the study of African Traditional Religions and Culture. If there are journals on Asian Tribal Religions and Culture, they are yet to reach the wider world. This is not to say that there are no articles which are found from time to time on Tribal Religions. I read, for example, the interview given by the Jesuit tribal theologian Fr. Paulus Kullu in the Jivan of April 1996. I acknowledge also the contributions of the Indian Missiological Review. The June 1997 edition offered interesting articles on Tribal Spirituality. Another good journal which from time to time takes up themes on Tribals Religions is Indian Journal of Spirituality.
INCULTURATING TRIBAL VALUES
For Priests, Religious and indeed all Christians, the study of tribal values have added significance. The tribal values are not studied for merely academic reason but to help tribal Christians to become authentic in living their faith. While it is important to christianize the tribal values, it is equally necessary to “tribalize” some of the purely European thoughts and expressions embedded in the Christianity. This process of making Christianity take the face of living peoples of a particular part of the world is what theologians have called inculturation.
Inculturation is defined as incarnation.[3] In Redemptoris missio, Pope John Paul II explains:
The process of the Church’s insertion into peoples’ cultures is a lengthy one. It is not a matter of purely external adaptation, for inculturation means the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through the integration of Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various human cultures. The process is thus a profound and all-embracing one, which involves the Christian message and also the Church’s reflection and practice.[4]
Genuine inculturation is founded on Christ’s Incarnation, understood not only as a mystery and as an event in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but also as a process to be carried on in history till the end of time. Thus, the mystery of the Incarnation is the solid theological base on which the edifice of inculturation is erected.
CONCRETE QUESTIONS
Inculturation is not a theoretical activity. It addresses living situations of people. In the contexts of the Tribals, for example, some concrete questions could be proposed. How can the concept of the tribal family be understood in the context of the “household of God”? How is the sense of community to be transformed into the notion of “Ecclesia”? How will tribal solidarity be interpreted in the Christian context of agape and koinonia? How will the concept of wholeness of life function in the Graeco-Roman-Church’s distinctions between body and soul, secular and profane? What tribal meaning of life can be assumed by Christianity in the light of the Gospel and moral teachings of the Church? What aspects from tribal covenantal marriage could be accepted and ennobled in Christianity? What elements of worship from tribal religions could be adapted for Christian Liturgy? These are some of the questions that can engage tribal theologians and pastors of souls.
[1] Cf. Sarpong P., “Can Christianity Dialogue with African Traditional Religion?”Online.
[2]“Letter to Presidents of Episcopal Conferences on Pastoral Attention to Followers of Traditional Religions”, par. 5.
[3] Cf. Gaudium et spes, 53-62; Redemptoris hominis, 8-11.
[4]Redemptoris missio, 52.
Anthropology and Comparative Studies of Religions have shown that traditional or tribal or indigenous peoples and religions from different parts of the world, beyond normal common human elements, are very close to each other. This close affinity is particularly striking in India, especially in the north-east where, despite differences in costume, language, religious observances, the people can still identify themselves as Adivasi or Tribals.
The word “tribe” itself and its derivatives assume a totally different meaning among them. Since the unfortunate division of the world into three: the so-called first, second and third worlds, “tribe” has come to be associated with underdevelopment and poverty; uneducated or closed-in society, and so on. People shy away from applying the term to themselves. In India, however, the term is saved from degenerating into negative and uncomplimentary use. There, it is used in its original sense for cultural identification, locating a person in the anonymous sea of humanity. There are in fact many people who are proud to be identified as Tribals.
In presenting tribal values, I would like to proceed as follows-
- identify some of the positive values among the Tribals;
- mention some of the shadows;
- highlight some of the challenges;
- discuss how tribal values can be preserved, and
- propose the need for inculturation of these values.
POSITIVE TRIBAL VALUES
It is definitely not possible to discuss all the positive tribal values that we know within the time frame for this presentation. This may not even be expected. How could one in a single paper summarize the values that can be found among a very large percentage of humanity? We can only make a few indications.
One of the most treasured values of the tribal people is the family. A person is defined in terms of the group to which he or she belongs. This sense of community is gained through the family, the lineage, the clan, and the tribe. Among many Tribals the family is not simply made up of father, mother and children. It comprises a whole group of persons: the head of the family with his wife or wives, his children, and grandchildren, and also his brothers and sisters with their wives and children, his nephews and nieces, in a word, all those persons who descend from a common ancestor. In some areas there are no separate words for cousins or nephews or nieces: every person is either a brother or a sister. It is not how large this family is that is important, but what role it plays in keeping together the members. In it, every person has a place. Elders are respected and young people are treated with love and kindness.
The spirit of oneness is not limited to the nuclear family. It extends beyond the group from the same ancestral tree to a clan or village or even town. The individual is not alone in the world. He or she is surrounded by members of his or her community. A person is complete only in so far as he is part of this community. A tribal, right from birth, learns to believe that “I am because I belong”.
This community consciousness makes one realise the necessity to contribute for the welfare of the group. It is not uncommon to find in some places communities making financial contributions to build houses for their members in need or to send some of their bright young people to study in order, later, to represent them in the government or, in case of doctors and lawyers, to handle their problems. There have been many cases, for example, in which seminarians and aspirants to religious life were sponsored by the community. Every member of the community rejoices on the day of graduation or ordination or religious profession. The success or failure of a member is not only for the individual concerned, the whole community is involved.
Another important value is the concern the Tribals show for their weak members: the sick and the aged. The sick are not left alone; the aged are not abandoned in “Old People’s homes” and the poor are not forgotten. They live with the members of their families. Euthanasia is not considered as an option to end the pains of these weak members of the society. They are loved and cared for until they die.
Marriage is taken seriously. It is not a union of two young people who met each other along the road or in a night club and decided to get married the following day. It is an alliance, a covenant, between families and persons. Cultural provisions are made to guarantee its stability.
Children are loved. Among most Tribals, marriage without a child is regarded as meaningless and unfulfilled. When children come, they are not just for the nuclear family, the whole community is involved.
For the Tribals, there is great respect for the sacredness of life. There is almost a feeling of a divine imperative that “Life must be given; life must be lived; life is to be enjoyed; life is to be whole; life is to be honourable; life is to be long and peaceful.”[1] For this reason, many tribal societies have taboos and rituals to protect the divine gift of life. Wilful murder is an abomination, sometimes requiring complicated rites of purification which may include going into exile for several years and paying for the upkeep of the family of the murdered person. Abortion is also regarded as an abomination.
Among the Tribals, there is no need to book an appointment in advance for a visit to or a meal with a neighbour. In most tribal societies, hospitality is considered a duty. Visitors are welcome, even when the motive for the visit is not clearly defined. This explains why it was easy for the first European missionaries to gain a foothold in the tribal territories and how they were able to get close to the ears of the people to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ.
In the religious sphere, the Tribals have a very high sense of the sacred. There is reverence for sacred places, persons and objects. Religion enfolds the whole of life and there is no dichotomy between the secular and the religious, the sacred and the profane, the visible and the invisible. These distinctions are to them artificial. A completely secular world does not exist for them. There is no borderline between this life and afterlife. Life itself is cyclic, going from birth to death and to rebirth. The emphasis on a person’s enduring happiness is not concentrated on the afterlife but rather on the totality of his or her well-being in this life and in the afterlife.
The Tribals are conscious of the invisible presence of Supreme Being/God, the spirits and the ancestors. They must therefore always live in a manner pleasing to these supernatural forces. They must tell the truth, be honest in business and just in dealing with others. Care is taken to ascertain the will of the spirit to whom sacrifices may be due or from whom protection may be sought.
The Tribals attach great importance to the power of the word. The words of blessing pronounced by a father on his child are believed to be very efficacious. The verbal last testament of a dying person is considered sacred, no one dares add or subtract. To break the oath of secrecy taken during some initiation ceremonies is considered a very grievous offence in a community.
NEGATIVE TRIBAL VALUES
It would be a mere romanticization of the tribal values if we fail to acknowledge the fact that there are also shadows. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, in a letter dated 21 November 1993 to the Presidents of the Episcopal Conferences in Asia, the Americas and Oceania, mentions, inter alia, “objectionable moral practices, the rejection of twins (in some places), even occasional human sacrifice.”[2]
There is a sense in which an over-exaggeration of the community spirit can lead to ethnicism, creating a closed-in society in which foreigners and minorities are discriminated against. In its extreme form, it can lead to “ethnic cleansing,” oppression and suppression of “outsiders”.
CHALLENGES TO TRIBAL VALUES
In the last one hundred years the world has witnessed tremendous changes in the social, economic, political, and even religious spheres of life. The changes have been brought about by the possibility of frequent contacts between peoples. It is a matter of hours for an event in India to be heard in Brazil, Spain and Zimbabwe, thanks to the mass media. People frequently travel by air, by road and by sea, from one end of the globe to the other. Religious missionaries are on the move. Mother Theresa of Calcutta is known world-wide and her sisters are easily identified in most countries of the world. All these movements mean that cultures meet one another, new ideas are acquired, prejudices are reduced, and friendship is fostered.
The tribal religions and values are not in isolation. In the course of history, they have met with world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Foreign cultures have impacted with local traditions. Urbanization, industrialization, modern science and technology and local and national politics are realities which tribal peoples have to reckon with. What has happened to the tribal values in the process? Let us refer to some areas of life.
The traditional family system has to battle with the impact of the economic problem posed to salaried workers in a big city who cannot afford to pay for a flat big enough for their growing families, let alone visiting relations.
The community spirit with the traditional sense of private property owners having the obligation to share with their poorer neighbours is put to a difficult test by the modern business culture which puts the emphasis on individual success, personal profit and further investment for yet greater gains.
Basic virtues like honesty in the village where there is no need to lock doors, truth in the marketplace where everybody knows everybody and the seller tells the buyer the real price of the article, being one another’s brother and sister by which a compact village community lives and celebrates together: these and similar values are severely tried in the megalopolis where the individual feels alone and unknown in a city of two or more million people.
The religious virtues, celebrations and customs which have been protected by closely knit communities begin to disintegrate under the anonymous impact of the big city where everyone is struggling to survive.
While democracy has its merits, it is undeniable that the threads that held many tribal societies together are weakened under the pressure being exerted by the onrush of modern politics and government, electioneering campaigns and changing attitudes towards the elders, traditional authorities and indeed customs as a whole.
In front of these, some of the Tribals have lost confidence in themselves and occasionally tried to hide their background in order not to be considered primitive. Some have embraced foreign values as if they are superior and better than those inherited from the tribal cultural background. At another end are the Tribals who are campaigning for a return to the “original state”, that is, the state of the tribal culture that is unaffected by the impact of other cultures.
PRESERVING TRIBAL VALUES
The answer to the challenges posed by the changes in the tribal society lies neither in regretting good modern developments nor in looking backwards, but in studying what values in the tribal societies have a permanent validity, so that they could in some suitable form be saved and an acceptable synthesis with what is good in the new be worked out. This discernment has to be made in each cultural area of the world.
Who are qualified to make this discernment? Certainly it is not the external observers: foreigners, be they missionaries, adventurers or students of anthropology and ethnology coming from other parts of the world. About one hundred and forty years ago, when the first European missionaries and colonial masters came to my country, Nigeria, they met, according to the interpretation of some of them, “strange” cultures, people who worshipped “idols”, spoke “unusual” languages. They dismissed as inferior almost all they found that were not consonant with what they were used to. To be a Christian, at that time, meant cutting off as much as possible from the traditional customs. It is now taking the Church and African scholars almost 50 years to correct some of the misinterpretation of the cultural values of the people. I guess you have your own experience of the situation that has just been described.
The people to discern and preserve cultural, tribal, values are the Tribals themselves: especially priests, religious men and women and all the educated tribal people. The following steps could be considered.
The first step is to form associations and clubs of people who are interested in the promotion of tribal cultures. It could begin as a students’ union of a particular locality and then extend to state and national levels. The aim of this group is to conscientize the people, to make them love to be what God has made them to be, to appreciate their cultural heritage. It will be part of the responsibility of this body to work towards the insertion of the study of tribal religions, customs and tradition into the curriculum of studies in universities and other institutes for higher education.
The second step is to begin a collection of materials. Tribal values are identified. Questionnaires could be prepared and sent to some individuals in the village. Oral interviews are conducted. The aim is to learn about some of the customs that are fast being forgotten because those who know them are dying out. Tribals who are students in higher institutions of learning are best equipped for this field study which could form part of their research project for academic degrees.
The third step is publishing articles and books on Tribal religions and culture. No outsider will have exact knowledge about tribal religions and culture unless the Tribals themselves begin to publish. This is the forum to correct some of the misrepresentations made in the past by foreigners who claimed they knew the Tribals very well. As an example, in Africa today, there are many journals specifically on the study of African Traditional Religions and Culture. If there are journals on Asian Tribal Religions and Culture, they are yet to reach the wider world. This is not to say that there are no articles which are found from time to time on Tribal Religions. I read, for example, the interview given by the Jesuit tribal theologian Fr. Paulus Kullu in the Jivan of April 1996. I acknowledge also the contributions of the Indian Missiological Review. The June 1997 edition offered interesting articles on Tribal Spirituality. Another good journal which from time to time takes up themes on Tribals Religions is Indian Journal of Spirituality.
INCULTURATING TRIBAL VALUES
For Priests, Religious and indeed all Christians, the study of tribal values have added significance. The tribal values are not studied for merely academic reason but to help tribal Christians to become authentic in living their faith. While it is important to christianize the tribal values, it is equally necessary to “tribalize” some of the purely European thoughts and expressions embedded in the Christianity. This process of making Christianity take the face of living peoples of a particular part of the world is what theologians have called inculturation.
Inculturation is defined as incarnation.[3] In Redemptoris missio, Pope John Paul II explains:
The process of the Church’s insertion into peoples’ cultures is a lengthy one. It is not a matter of purely external adaptation, for inculturation means the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through the integration of Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various human cultures. The process is thus a profound and all-embracing one, which involves the Christian message and also the Church’s reflection and practice.[4]
Genuine inculturation is founded on Christ’s Incarnation, understood not only as a mystery and as an event in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but also as a process to be carried on in history till the end of time. Thus, the mystery of the Incarnation is the solid theological base on which the edifice of inculturation is erected.
CONCRETE QUESTIONS
Inculturation is not a theoretical activity. It addresses living situations of people. In the contexts of the Tribals, for example, some concrete questions could be proposed. How can the concept of the tribal family be understood in the context of the “household of God”? How is the sense of community to be transformed into the notion of “Ecclesia”? How will tribal solidarity be interpreted in the Christian context of agape and koinonia? How will the concept of wholeness of life function in the Graeco-Roman-Church’s distinctions between body and soul, secular and profane? What tribal meaning of life can be assumed by Christianity in the light of the Gospel and moral teachings of the Church? What aspects from tribal covenantal marriage could be accepted and ennobled in Christianity? What elements of worship from tribal religions could be adapted for Christian Liturgy? These are some of the questions that can engage tribal theologians and pastors of souls.
[1] Cf. Sarpong P., “Can Christianity Dialogue with African Traditional Religion?”Online.
[2]“Letter to Presidents of Episcopal Conferences on Pastoral Attention to Followers of Traditional Religions”, par. 5.
[3] Cf. Gaudium et spes, 53-62; Redemptoris hominis, 8-11.
[4]Redemptoris missio, 52.
