Beyond the motions and the emotions

WE stood at a function in Harare when His Excellency the President, Cde R G Mugabe led his fellow Sadc Heads of State and Government in paying respects to the late Brigadier General Hashim Mbita who served as the OAU Liberation Committee Executive Secretary for two decades.
He was at the forefront of the liberation of most southern African countries from colonial regimes. There was no freedom fighter in Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa who did not know the immense contribution made by Mbita. His mission was accomplished when the democratic elections were held in South Africa in 1994.

The last occupation Mbita did was to oversee the Hashim Mbita Project which was launched in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe in October 2014 during the 34th summit of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Heads of State and Government.

It was during this summit that Zimbabwe conferred Mbita with the Royal Order of Munhumutapa in recognition of his contribution towards the liberation struggle. Not forgetting that he once served as a Diplomat in Zimbabwe.

As the President emotionally went through a brief reminiscing on that period my mind went to our spiritual journey in Africa. It was beyond the motion and emotion of observing a one minute silence for Mbita. For me it was like a race through time on the Christianity journey in Africa. As we look to the future of the liberation of this continent economically and philosophically we also ask where our guidance in the spiritual will come from. Such parallelism of truth inspired me to pen this today.

The question some of you may have is why say so much about a secular leader on a spiritual column. The ready answer to that would be the importance of us understanding that Africa’s spiritual development is intricately linked to her political development.

Africa has always had a triple heritage, to use a Mazruian term, and today I will use the same approach to look at the three strands that are affecting Africa’s spirituality as we move forward. Now we have mainline orthodox or old churches, and we have new churches of the Charismatic and Pentecostal persuasion. The Baptists seems to be in the middle and times serve as a bridge. Within Islam, we also have the old sects but recently we have more fundamentalist Muslims.

The indigenous religious aspects of the traditional religion seem to have disappeared. Some say that this is because the practitioners of traditional African religion have opted for the Christian religion and Islam.

It is important to note though that, there are indigenous or traditional sensitivities present in current Pentecostalism that can be observed in the life of the African Initiated Churches and of late in the prophetic movement of the Pentecostalism in Africa. Further, one of the interesting things we are seeing is the appropriation of the same indigenous thoughts in the mainline religions.

For example, issues of witchcraft which would have been thrown out in the past by the Church, are now being addressed in both the mainline and charismatic churches. When the prophets pray and perform the miracles there is a clear understanding that witchcraft exists and can be dealt with through a Christian, particularly Pentecostal approach.

My question is beyond the motions and the emotions, what is the theological foundation we can look forward to take beyond today in Africa? African Traditional Religion was the base religion until we had the incursion of both Islam and Christianity.

It has been said that African traditional religion was the grazing ground for the world religions and as the ground thins out, we are going to see probably more confrontations between Islam and Christianity because the buffer between them is African traditional religion. It is my submission that beyond the current motions and emotions a fundamentalist Christianity is brewing which will confront a fundamentalist Islam.

Going back to African traditional religion, it is by its own character very explorative, experimental and adaptive and therefore able to turn into new forms whether with Islam or Christianity.

One can see this taking shape in the early days of the convergence of the congregational church and the Prophet Shembe of amaNazaretha in South Africa, the Bishop Lekganyana’s ZCC and other African Initiated Churches that came as a resistance to the colonial master’s forced world view on the African. This began in the 1920s when there was the entry of Pentecostal experience in our sub-continent.

There was a visible convergence of African traditional religion and Pentecostal forms. Pentecostal forms of expressions even in America came from black people. One can actually say that Pentecostalism is the part of Christianity that resonates better with the African than any other strand of Christianity.

It may not be wrong to say that Pentecostalism as was experienced in America came from and had a lot of African expressions in terms of its liturgy, clapping, dancing, verbalisations are all black African experiences. The belief in the supernatural, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit as real and current.

So the black people who led the Pentecostal movement such as William Seymour of the Azusa Street experience, being descendants of African slaves, were essentially expressing part of an African religiosity which for the Christian was experience of the Holy Spirit. So when Pentecostalism came to Africa, it was quite appealing to the African spirituality because it affirmed most of the concerns and beliefs they held especially about how to balance the forces of good and evil and where we position ourselves and the way to seek protection. The Pentecostal believes in the power of the blood or Jesus and in the name of Jesus through the Holy Spirit to ward off all these evil spirits.

So starting from back then in the 1920s many Africans were attracted to Christianity because of Pentecostalism. They also brought into Christianity African concepts, which is why we have Christian-African syncretism aspect in the Church as I have alluded to them above as amaZayoni and the vaPostori among us.

One then sees African beliefs adapting to Christianity, which started as a blend of the two, African and Christian resulting in what one would refer to as Inkonzo zikaMoya. It was an amalgamation of a lot of things. There was a lot of Catholicism in it in terms of the use of incense and holy water and oil. Further, one saw the use of the long white cassock like the Catholic priest with the red sash. There was also a lot of prayer for healing directly to effect healing because people believed that this can be achieved. This went on for a while until about the late 1960 or to the early 1970s and it peaked in the 1980s when the new charismatic movement also came with its expressions.

Today there is a repeat of the same desire for experiences African in what one can call the Prophetic movement. Beyond the motions and the emotions one has to ask the question of the theology of the future Pentecostalism in particular and Christianity in general. I am getting hot now let us pause till next week as we delve into Africa month and spirituality. Shalom!