The Sunday News
SO much has been said and proffered in the quest to understand what the African seeks when he seeks God in anything. Last week we took the example of one Bev Sibanda who is said to have been with one of the new Pentecostal churches in Harare and has since left.
Her interview published in one of the weekly papers was revealing of what one can aptly describe as the reason why many Africans go to church or even believe in anything. She describes or justifies her reason for going to church as her need for ‘‘. . . the father, family and material support for the life she has always needed!’’
Allow me to take our discussion to a different perspective of this new phenomenon of the Evangelical and Pentecostal brand of Christianity. I do not profess to be a theologian but I am one that believes that human beings are complex, intelligent creatures irrespective of their being Black, Caucasian or whatever colour or race!
Furthermore, I take it that it is neither fair nor objective to think that the perception or understanding of an issue by one group should be the basis of the truth about everything. Many a time we Africans have been misunderstood even by those educated among all because we want to believe that those that trained us to understand God are very right. We tend to believe them even if they have since moved on to make the God they taught us to understand a secular feature of some sort or simply have become more pagan than when they accosted our ancestors!
When the canonisation of a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church demands the miraculous proof no one raises a brow. It is clear that there should be unequivocal miracles seen as a direct result of the invocation of that person who is a candidate for sainthood.
There is no reference or doubt that the resultant miracle came from God but it is understood that God uses clean vessels to transmit His grace and therefore, proves the sainthood of a candidate! Is that not directly linking faith in God with the needs of the individual?
Is it not saying, in not so many words that, when I go to God it is not for God per se but it is for me? Is it not even proof that the Christian faith ought to meet my needs? Belief in God is not just for mere relationship but it should have a utilitarian role in my life. Why is this principle not accepted when it applies to the African way of interpreting scripture and the whole ritual and tradition of Christianity?
Although the trade of Bev Sibanda tends to make many think otherwise of her choices, I would like to posit that she has struck me as making an honest statement of her desires. She is not the only one! There are many ‘‘Bevs’’ in the thousands that throng these churches to hear us preach the saving gospel.
They all seek God to be with them and not just in them. To the African God is not just for a relationship but for life and livelihood. They take the Lord’s Prayer quite as it says, “. . . give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins as we forgive them that sin against us, deliver us from evil . . . for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory . . .” So God is meant to give us our daily bread not just on Sunday but daily.
Where is the challenge then? I would like to suggest that it is in the failure of the current religious analyst to remember that Christianity to the African was not the first way they met with God. Not at all! That is what the Eurocentric thought has taught us. So with all our Th.Ds. we fail to realise that there was a philosophy and worldview before hermeneutics and exegeses that came from the West! Hatshi bo! good people we are a people of the day before yesterday and we shall still be a people the day after tomorrow! These thought patterns remind me of the descriptions of the African by the early missionaries.
And similar to this was the dialogue that took place between one Edwin Smith, who had gone out as a missionary to Africa, and Emil Ludwig, an eminent biographer. When Ludwig got to know that Edwin Smith was in Africa as a missionary he was surprised; and in his surprise he asked, “How can the untutored Africans comprehend God? Deity is a philosophical concept which savages are incapable of framing.” Guess who the savage is among us today in the 21st century! Yet in all unfairness we still want to explain away the African’s deep spirituality using the epistemology of a foreigner who thinks less of the African!
There are others who have described the African better as one Father Schmidt who had served in the forests of the Congo among the pygmies where he says, ‘‘. . . the belief in, and worship of, one supreme deity is universal among all really primitive peoples — the high God is found among them all, not indeed everywhere in the same form or with the same vigour, but still everywhere prominently enough to make his dominant position indubitable. He is by no means a late development or traceable only to Christian missionary influences’’.
When the African throngs these new Pentecostal churches is he not just being an African seeking God the very manner in which he knows how to? What does it mean when he takes the prayer cloths, special oil, and anointed water; and makes those vigils, fastings and prayers for his life. This is surely the part where the Lord taught us to say, ‘‘. . . deliver us from evil!’’ Some then judgementally call it fetishism. The dictionary meaning of fetish is any ‘object, animate or inanimate, natural or artificial, regarded by some uncivilized races with a feeling of awe, as having mysterious power residing in it or as being the representative or habitation of a deity’; hence fetishism is the worship of, or emotional attachment to, inanimate objects.
But Rattray (1923) describing the West African corrected this wrong notion of the early investigators when he said: ‘‘Fetishes may form part of an emblem of god, but fetish and god are in themselves distinct . . . the main power, or the most important spirit in a god comes directly or indirectly from Nyame, the Supreme God, whereas the power or spirit in a fetish comes from plants or trees, and sometimes directly or indirectly from fairies, forest monsters, witches, or from some sort of unholy contact with death; a god is the god of the many, the family the clan, or the nation. A fetish is generally personal to its owner.’’
I am persuaded, then, that it would be quite wrong to describe these acts in the new Pentecostals as fetishism. There may be an element of this in the day-to-day life of the Africans, but it is incorrect to describe it all as fetishism. The African tends to understand God in the simple things around him or her. God is not far, reached by reference to him in a foreign language or ritual. No! God is too close actually with him.
If this is the African’s view then let us take a different look at these new Pentecostals. It is not just about the crowds but about the African worldview and behaviour. Is Christianity universal? Yes! Is Christianity also idiosyncratic to the geography and local ethnography of its locales? The answer is yes!
We are yet to see the end of this matter dear reader as we continue next week! For now, God bless you. Shalom!
