Religion and Social Reconstruction in Africa

Elias Kifon Bongmba, Elias Kifon Bongmba

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351167383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politik & Staat

Religion has played a major role in both the division and unification of peoples and countries within Africa. Its capacity to cause, and to heal, societal rifts has been well documented. This book addresses this powerful societal force, and explores the implications of a theology of reconstruction, most notably articulated by Jesse Mugambi. This way of thinking seeks to build on liberation theology, aiming to encourage the rebuilding of African society on its own terms.

An international panel of contributors bring an interdisciplinary perspective to the issues around reconstructing the religious elements of African society. Looking at issues of reconciliation, postcolonialism and indigenous spirituality, among others, they show that Mugambi's cultural and theological insight has the potential to revolutionise the way people in Africa address this issue.

This is a fascinating exploration of the religious facets of African life. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, theology and African studies.

Part I

Biblical and ecclesial perspectives

1 Texts of affirmation rather than negation

Jesse N. K. Mugambi and African biblical studies

Knut Holter

According to the official academic profile of Professor Jesse N. K. Mugambi in the webpages of the University of Nairobi, Mugambi is not only Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, he is also a resource person in the Commission for University Education on philosophy, theology, religious studies, and applied ethics; and he has professional training that includes education, communication policy and planning, publishing, and ecology (https://profiles.uonbi.ac.ke/jesse_ndwiga/). The list is impressive; still, something is actually lacking in this quite massive official portrayal, namely, Mugambi’s interaction with the guilds and discourses of critical biblical studies in Africa and beyond. The following pages, therefore, will offer a few remarks on this particular segment of his scholarship.

Jesse Mugambi’s interaction with the guilds and discourses of critical biblical studies can be illustrated by the role he played at two international conferences that took place in 1999, at the turn of the century, when we all wanted to call a halt for a while and reflect on past and future. There are some parallels between these two conferences. First, both attracted biblical scholars from various parts of the world onto African soil; one – in October 1999 in Nairobi, Kenya – assembled Old Testament scholars, whereas the other – in August 1999 in Hammanskraal, South Africa – brought together New Testament scholars. Second, both conferences explicitly intended to expose African and western guilds of biblical studies to each other, on hermeneutical levels, of course, but also on institutional and personal levels, deliberately facilitating interaction between African and Western scholars and their respective universities and seminaries. And third, both conferences asked Professor Mugambi to deliver the respective keynote addresses. In both cases, the conferences received what they had requested. Mugambi met the two scholarly communities, he drew some major lines in relation to ancient texts and contemporary interpretive contexts, and he challenged his audiences to participate in the developing of African biblical studies that would be characterized by contextual sensitivity as well as societal relevance.

Mugambi’s participation in these two conferences was an expression of his outstanding position in African theology. One can hardly say that he is a biblical scholar, at least not in a traditional, exegetical sense of the term. Rather, he is a kind of unusual plant in the garden of academia: a philosopher and theologian, who, if I may put it a bit bluntly, actually reads the Bible and finds it worthwhile to interact with guild members and discourses of critical biblical studies. This was precisely why he was invited to address African and western biblical scholars already in 1999. This is also why I will interrogate these two keynote addresses to illustrate and reflect on some of Mugambi’s concerns vis-à-vis the biblical texts themselves and the academic discipline of critical biblical studies.

Mugambi visiting the guilds of Old and New Testament studies in 1999

Let me begin with the Old Testament conference in Nairobi, in October 1999. The conference was organized by Mary Getui (Kenyatta University, Nairobi), Victor Zinkuratire (Catholic University of East Africa, Nairobi), and myself (MHS School of Mission and Theology, Stavanger, Norway). The papers read at the conference were published in an anthology two years later.¹ When colleagues from various parts of Africa as well as from the Scandinavian countries were invited to come together in Nairobi, the purpose was to make a critical analysis of the methodological, hermeneutical, and institutional Africanization of the academic discipline of Old Testament studies that were seen to be emerging all around. The first generation of African Old Testament scholars – in 1999 around 100 African colleagues with doctorates in Old Testament studies had developed a comparative paradigm allowing Old Testament texts and African contexts to interact and mutually illuminate each other.² The conference, therefore, sought to reflect on the form and function of this comparative paradigm; Mugambi was invited to draw a kind of interpretive map of Africa and the Old Testament, that is, a map of the ancient texts and their contemporary African interpretations.

Mugambi began his Old Testament keynote address with reference to the assumed affinity between traditional African religion and culture and certain texts and motifs in the Old Testament: there is a puzzling but exciting affinity between the African religious heritage and the way of life which the Old Testament presupposes and takes for granted. This affinity is evident throughout the continent, from Cape Town to Cairo and from Somalia to Senegal, from Port Sudan to Luanda, and from Beira to Casablanca.³

The question is: how can this affinity be explained? On a textual level, Mugambi argues that Africa and Africans are present in the ancient texts of the Old Testament and play significant roles in the textual portrayal of the ancient Israelites. Cases here include the texts about the descendants of Abraham seeking refuge in Egypt, but also the texts regarding Cush, the African nation south of Egypt. Moreover, on a contextual level, Mugambi argues that African readers find their own experiences and concerns reflected in the lives and thoughts of the ancient Israelites. Here various parallels with regard to socio-political and socio-religious experiences could be cited. The obvious crucial question is: what consequences do these examples of an assumed affinity between Africa and the Old Testament have for African interpretive strategies vis-à-vis the Old Testament? Here Mugambi draws a sharp line between the implied biblical hermeneutics of the missionary heritage, and a more explicit biblical hermeneutics of contemporary African theology and biblical studies. The former, he argues, rejected key aspects of African cultural and religious experiences and concerns, and therefore also ignored their interpretive potential vis-à-vis the Bible, whereas the latter finds its interpretive potential vis-à-vis the Bible precisely within the interaction between the biblical texts, on the one hand, and African religio-cultural experiences and concerns, on the other.

Mugambi’s key illustration, not surprisingly, is the Old Testament motif of “reconstruction.” Throughout the 1990s, Mugambi argued increasingly that the liberation and black theologies of the 1960s through the 1980s – with their emphases on the Old Testament motifs of Moses and “exodus” – should now be replaced by a theology of reconstruction, with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah providing texts and interpretive models. The October 1999 context of Old Testament scholars coming together in Nairobi was obviously well suited for a presentation of this alternative hermeneutical paradigm; Mugambi contrasted the figure of Moses and the exodus motifs with texts related to the figure of Nehemiah and the idea of a post-exilic reconstruction of religion and society. Moses was then depicted in the image of the first generation of African leaders, as a political hero, who “led more by inspiration than through managerial training and skill. Whenever he was present, the people were orderly. In his absence there was anarchy.”⁴ Nehemiah was depicted in the image of the second generation of African leaders, as “a well-trained civil servant,” who heard the cries of his people and responded by conducting a feasibility survey (Mugambi 2001a:17–18). In conclusion, therefore, Mugambi argued that a shift of paradigm from liberation to reconstruction in biblical hermeneutics made it possible to use the Bible constructively in the context of an African renaissance.⁵

Turning to the New Testament conference (in Hammanskraal, South Africa, in August 1999), there was a post-conference following the first meeting of the Society of New Testament Studies (SNTS) on African soil, a post-conference with a particular focus on African biblical hermeneutics. The papers presented at the conference were published in an anthology two years later.⁶ Now, the SNTS is a rather elitist organization, dominated by traditional European academic structures (cf. its membership criteria) and concerns (cf. its de facto emphasizing of traditional critical approaches). In spite of this, however, SNTS representatives expressed quite inclusive attitudes vis-à-vis the younger guild of African New Testament scholars present at the Hammanskraal conference. One example took the form of a welcome by a past president of the SNTS in which he challenged his African colleagues to form an African society of biblical or New Testament studies:

When an African Society of Biblical or New Testament studies is organized, it should not, in my view, be seen as a subordinate satellite organization of the SNTS. The African scholars should meet the challenge and stand on their own feet, and its character should be defined by the African scholars themselves.⁷ In spite of these inclusive words, however, it proved difficult to completely hide the paternalism of the western center and an African periphery of biblical studies: “The two societies [i.e., the SNTS and the suggested African counterpart] should be closely associated with each other, and step by step an increasing number of African New Testament scholars will become members of the global SNTS.”⁸

In this context of global inclusiveness and western paternalism, Professor Mugambi was invited to present a keynote address. He immediately raised his flag, expressing concerns similar to those voiced at the Old Testament conference. He challenged western historical and political concepts of Africa, arguing that “only a reconstructive hermeneutic will help Africa to transcend this dark history and look to the future with hope,” and he claimed that it is a responsibility of theologians – who are part of society’s intellectual elite – to contribute towards achieving this.

Using the paradigm of reconstruction, it should be clear that the New Testament is a collection of reconstructive texts, with Jesus as the leader of a movement of social reconstruction. His 12 disciples are invited to form the vanguard of a reconstructive movement. The paradigm of reconstruction helps to provide a critique on Euro-American Church history, both within the North Atlantic region, and in the areas where the modern missionary enterprise has been operative.⁹ More than in his discussion of the idea of reconstruction in relation to the Old Testament, Mugambi here included the whole collection of New Testament texts and their core message, seeing Jesus as a “leader of a movement of social reconstruction.” Moreover, he also allowed this new hermeneutic of reconstruction to reveal the colonial paradigm of the North Atlantic interpretive tradition.

Some reflections on Mugambi’s approach to biblical texts and studies

Three aspects of Mugambi’s approach to biblical texts and critical biblical studies call for comment. First, it must be emphasized that biblical texts and motifs – as well as academia’s critical discourses on these texts and motifs – actually play significant roles in Mugambi’s thinking and publications, much more than is expected from other theologians and certainly other philosophers.

Re-reading Mugambi, I am struck repeatedly by the dialogue he is able to create between the ancient texts of the Bible, the discourses of critical biblical studies, and the contemporary interpretive experiences and concerns in Africa. On the textual side, Mugambi’s presentation of the biblical...