Morality Truly Christian, Truly African

Foundational, Methodological, and Theological Considerations

Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor C.S.Sp.

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780268037383, 9780268206604
• eBook ISBN: 9780268088675
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Given the largely Eurocentric nature of moral theology in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, what will it take to invest the theological community in the history and moral challenges of the Church in other parts of the world, especially Africa? What is to be gained for the whole Church when this happens in a deep and lasting way? In this timely and important study, Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor brings greater theological clarity to the issue of the relationship between Christianity and African tradition in the area of ethical foundations. He also provides a constructive example of what fundamental moral theology done from an African and Christian (especially Catholic) moral theological point of view could look like.

Following a brief history of the development of African Christian theology, Odozor examines responses of African theologians to African tradition and Christian responses to the reality of non-Christian religions. In a context where the African religious experience and heritage are powerful sources of meaning and identity, Christian evangelization raises questions both about the African primal religions and about Christianity itself and its claims. Odozor takes up the subject of moral reasoning in an African Christian theological ethics and concludes with case studies that show how the African Church has tried to inculturate moral discourse on a religiously pluralistic continent and relate the healing gospel message to African situations. Students and scholars of moral theology and ethics and church leaders will profit from the issues raised in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African.

Part One

The Nature of African Theology

Chapter One

African Christian Theology

Understanding African Theology

Theology and Culture

If theologians are in agreement about anything, it is that theology can and does benefit from its location within cultures. Considered as the reflection “on the experience of a particular Christian community in relation to what God has done, is doing and will do,”1 with Jesus as its reference point, Christian theology, for instance, is further subjected to the interpretive nuances emanating from its contemporary component cultures, including Africa. An African Christian theology therefore arises out of the need for African Christians to make sense of or to grow in understanding of the Christian faith that they have inherited as Africans, a faith that they share with many other people around the world. The emphasis here on African theology is deliberate, for even though African theology is theology in every other sense, it is a type of theology whose task is additionally “to translate the one faith of Jesus Christ to suit the tongue, style, genius, and character of African peoples.”2 In Desmond Tutu’s view, theology must necessarily be bound by the limitations of those who are theologizing—ethnic, temporal, and cultural, and personality limitations.3 Every theology therefore bears the restricting mark of the cultural context in which it is produced, since it is contextual and “the product not only of the religion it investigates and expounds but also of the cultural ideals and norms that set its problems and direct its solutions.”4 One would thus agree with Edward Schillebeeckx that since every theology is conditioned by its time and situation, it is therefore, despite its deepest intentions, “in fact ‘regionalized,’ even if it was not aware of that before.” Where such a theology is “imported” from somewhere else, it is “a colonialist undertaking, even if it could not have been experienced as such to begin with.”5 African theology is contextual theology. So is Thomistic theology; so is American theology; and so is European theology; and so forth. To fail to see that “all theologies have contexts, interests, relationships of power, special concerns,” or to pretend otherwise, “is to be blind indeed.”6

African Theology as Contextual Theology

The acknowledgment of the contextual nature of theology is important also because it marks an important shift in theological thinking. This shift has three important characteristics: (1) new questions for which there are no ready traditional answers; (2) old answers being charged upon cultures and regions with new questions; and (3) the emergence of a new kind of Christian identity apart from much of the traditional theological reflection of historical Christianity. The theology emerging out of this new identity has particular sensitivity to three areas: context, procedure, and history.7 In Robert Schreiter’s terms, African theology is local theology in that it arises from the dynamic interaction of gospel, church, and culture: the gospel raising questions about the community context, its quality, praxis, worship, and other forms of action; the church raising questions about the relationship of the local church to the other churches; gospel and church finding themselves in interaction within culture.8 What makes African theology unique therefore is the content and the context of its preoccupation, although, we should note, it is not bound solely by its content or context, because as a Christian theological enterprise it shares concerns and sources with other types of theologies as well.

Some African scholars have sometimes tended to regard African theology as just a response to the need to present a “purer” form of the Christian faith to Africans. Thus, one often hears remarks like the following from Onuorah Nzekwu, a Nigerian writer, which sound a warning about the syncretism that characterizes belief in Africa today: “Even though Christianity claims many millions of converts . . . it can only boast of millions of hybrids, who are neither Christians nor traditional worshipers, . . . who belong to no particular faith, only claiming to be one or the other when it suits their purpose.”9 What Nzekwu says here has been echoed by several other observers of the African religious scene—which suggests therefore the need for a deepening of the faith on the continent. Peter K. Sarpong, former Catholic archbishop of Kumasi Ghana, once pointed out that “many so-called Christians have no hesitation in going to the juju man or the fetish priest when it is considered expedient. Newfound churches are thriving on the memberships of the mainline churches. Some members of the latter abandon their mother churches; others retain their membership while they adopt a new church, and see no contradiction in that action.”10 Sarpong’s and Nzekwu’s views indicate that in the minds of many African Christians there is a war for turf going on in the African religious landscape. In this view theology becomes a means to ensure Christian victory in this battle. In the minds of some the way to win this war is to snuff out “the enemy”: African Traditional Religion. Some African writers claim that the missionary effort at implanting the faith in Africa was precisely engaged in this approach, based on a number of assumptions. First there was the presumption that Africans were savages, from whom nothing good could be expected. Although the Christian missionary effort in Africa did not originate the idea of Africans as savages—in fact, the idea originated with atheistic and agnostic anthropologists and other social scientists in the West—it has been argued that acceptance by missionaries of the general European presumption of African “savagery” and “primitivism” had more far-reaching significance than was perceived. Secondly, therefore, “importation of Christianity as understood in European terms was seen as the mighty lever without which other means were of no avail to effect the elevation of the native mind and the civilization of Africa.” Africans could become “civilized” only if they became like their European mentors in culture. And the only way to make this happen was “to produce as near replicas as possible of European models of Christian life and conduct—in effect black Europeans.”11

In view of this socio-historical context, African theology is for many theologians both a rebellion and a quest. As a rebellion, it is a fight against the negative characterization of the African reality, people, and history by outsiders, religious and secular. This rebellion has resulted in a massive shift of emphasis among African theologians to the study and re-evaluation of Africa’s cultural, religious, and historical past and has subsequently led a group of African theologians to set about demonstrating “that the African religious experience and heritage were not illusory and that they should have formed the vehicle for conveying the Gospel verities to Africa and that many of Africa’s religious insights had real affinity with those of the Bible. In many respects, the African was much more on the wavelength of the Bible than the Occidental ever was.”12 This is the basis of the theology of inculturation that will occupy us quite a bit in this book. However, one must also immediately note that this preoccupation of African Christian theology, laudable as it is, has sometimes also tended to make it appear more like an apologia for African Traditional Religion—with serious consequences, such as the tendency to start theology mostly from African cultural presuppositions and not from biblical and Christian theological ones. We shall return to this issue later on.

For many African theologians African theology is also a quest—a quest for identity, as Kwame Bediako insists. Andrew Walls notes that the African theological quest for identity has become rather urgent now that the Western value-setting pre-eminence of Western Christianity has diminished or has been rejected by many Africans. The question is where this leaves the African Christian whose identity as a Christian had been closely tied to the Western sources of his or her Christian faith: Who is he? What is his past? Walls maintains that since a past is vital for all of us, “the prime theological quest for African Christian theology today is about his [the African Christian’s] past and about the relationship between Africa’s old religions and her new one.”13 For many African theologians, then, theology is personal, in that it is a search for a place in the Christian sun, so to speak. The same applies to African Christian churches themselves. For these churches, African theology is as well a search for self-identity and relevance as the world grows more and more into a single place, as the center of gravity of Christianity moves more and more south, and as many new challenges arise on the African continent, putting the traditional Christian answers to the test as old formulations are found not to provide adequate insights for grappling with many of these issues and situations. There is no greater evidence for this truth and for the anxiety of the churches about this situation than the various regional and international assemblies of the Christian churches over the years and the different structures erected by the churches to help them address these challenges on an ongoing basis. We will consider some recent efforts of the Roman Catholic Church on this matter in the last chapter of this book.

One suggestion for ensuring that Christianity survives and thrives on the African continent is to make sure that Christianity is “integrated with the indigenous culture and religion,” for “without such integration its [Christianity’s] future remains bleak.”14 In this view, the onus is on Christianity to prove itself worthy of its presence on African soil. However, while it is true that the faith in the African context needs to be deepened, one must be careful not to reduce African theology to just one of its aspects: catechetics. Theology is broader than that. As Saint Anselm puts it, theology, generally speaking, is an undertaking by “one who strives to lift his mind to the contemplation of God, and seeks to understand what he believes.” It is “a meditation on the grounds (i.e., the basis) of faith.” It is “faith seeking understanding.”15 The key word of theology is the word God—indeed, etymologically, theology is “God-talk” or discourse about God. This word (or some more or less equivalent word), as John Macquarie has noted, lies behind everything that the theologian says, and integrates all the separate areas of theology into which the theologian’s investigations may lead him. “Whether the theologian talks of revelation or grace or justification or the last things, these are all understood as acts of manifestations of God, so that if one could give an account of the logic of the word ‘God’ one would have gone far towards giving an account of the logic of theology as a whole.”16 Even though theology is a different kind of science, it also claims to be an intellectual discipline and it aims at truth. The business of theology is to explain and interpret, to make intelligible and credible, and these are characteristics that it has in common with other intellectual disciplines. “This implies that theology has its own standards of methodological integrity, different no doubt, yet no less strict, than the standards accepted by the historian or the chemist in their fields.”17

African theology is faith seeking understanding, in this case, within the African reality. Like all forms of theology, African theology is an exercise of reason informed by faith; it is a reasoned reflection “on the gospel, the Christian tradition, and the total African reality in an African manner and from the perspective of the African worldview,” ongoing changes in African culture included.18 Just as in every other part of the world, Christian faith in Africa is facing, has faced, and will face the problem of integration, deepening, and stimulation. The gospel has always been faced with challenges since its initial proclamation, therefore creating the need for deeper reflection on the faith and for better understanding of its content and meaning.

Although we often speak of African theology, it is also correct to talk of African Christian theologies. For if, as Bernard Lonergan says, the context determines or at least helps set the agenda of any theology, one must not forget that the African context is varied. Thinking historically, for example, it must be remembered that different African historical epochs have given rise to different issues—slavery, colonialism, apartheid, the various liberation struggles on the continent, and so forth. The theologies produced at this time and within the various regions of Africa reflect, have reflected, and are bound to reflect the historical circumstances and issues that give rise to them. Black theology in South Africa arose as a response to apartheid, and African liberation theologies have arisen, first in response to various liberation struggles on the continent, and today serve as reflections based on the struggles of minorities and marginalized people in Africa. Some other forms of African Christian theological reflections on the faith have arisen from concerns with socioeconomic and political issues.19 The issue of poverty too has attracted much attention from theologians, as have questions concerning ethnicity, ethnic rivalries, the place of women in church and society, and governance, among others. In fact, reflection on the so-called social questions is one of the most thriving aspects of African theology, especially among Catholics. Given the proliferation of literature on this issue, it might even be considered more prominent than the larger question of inculturation in African theology and that of women in the church and society in Africa. However, despite the various interests and sub-specializations of African theology, it is still true that “the chief non-biblical reality with which the African theologian must struggle is the non-Christian religious tradition of his own people.”20 This, as Kwame Bediako points out, makes African theology “something of a dialogue between African Christians and primal religions and spiritualties of Africa.”21 Clearly, discussion on inculturation and on the relationship of African Traditional Religion has continued to be a staple of African theology, and for good reason.

The Contemporary Subjects of African Theology

Although theology is God-talk, it is God talk for and by a people. God does not need theology. People do. What kind of people are the subjects of African theology? In a nutshell, the contemporary African subject of African theology is one whose psyche has been affected by so many historical circumstances such as colonization, missionary evangelization, and slavery.22 Ali Mazrui has referred to the colonial period in Africa as “the era of territorial imperative.”23 European contact with Africa, which began initially as a trading relationship, soon turned into a slaving relationship, which was later followed by full-fledged colonization.24 The colonial arrangement was ratified in 1885 at a conference in Berlin when the European powers partitioned Africa into spheres of influence. Lord Lugard, one of the principal architects of British rule in Africa, points out that “the partition of Africa was . . . due primarily to the economic necessity of increasing the supplies of raw materials and food to meet the needs of the industrialized nations of Europe.”25 Colonialism in Africa, among other things, allowed the European nations to meddle in African political, social, and economic affairs, mostly with disastrous effects for Africa. Consider the following three brief examples. The first has to do with the fact that Europeans arbitrarily redrew the map of Africa, in some cases bringing together peoples of different backgrounds and histories into one state, while in others dividing peoples with the same ancestry into different states. An attendant effect of this arbitrariness is there for all to see in the intractable wars and conflicts in many parts of Africa since independence. The second example has to do with the absorption of Africa into a world culture that is still primarily Eurocentric, an absorption that has in some ways been beneficial to Africa but in the main has had devastating effects in the area of values and norms in Africa. It is right therefore to say that globalization is nothing new to Africa. What has always made globalization in whatever form difficult for the continent is that Africa’s absorption into the global order has always (even presently) happened at a pace and on terms supplied by others. A third noteworthy effect of colonialism in Africa is that of the role of European languages in Africa. As Mazrui points out, “The significance of English, French, and Portuguese especially in Africa’s political life can hardly be overestimated. . . . Rulers are chosen on the basis of competence in the relevant imperial language. Nationwide political communication in the majority of African countries is almost impossible without the use of the relevant imperial medium.”26

African consciousness has also been shaped by the proselytizing activities of Islam and Christianity. The history of these two faiths in Africa is a long one. North Africa was home to Christianity from the very beginning of the Christian faith up until the emergence of Islam in that part of Africa in the eighth and ninth centuries. Although the spread of Christianity in this region was halted by the so-called barbarian invasions there and subsequently by the emergence of Islam, the spread of the Christian faith in much of sub-Saharan Africa in modern times has been phenomenal. This growth has occurred in two phases. The first phase ranged from the time of the European Middle Ages up until the 1960s, when many African countries got their independence. Christian evangelization was carried out by the so-called mainline churches, which were all European sponsored. The influence of these churches in the development of the African mind can be seen in three principal areas. The first is the obvious introduction of a new religion, which meant tampering with the foundational myths of most Africans who were converted from African Traditional Religions to Christianity. The second influence was that of the introduction of Western education with its means of communication and the opening up of worlds of insight hitherto unknown to the African. The third was the setting up of churches that were in communion with Christian churches in other parts of the world. The mainline Christian churches have sometimes been criticized for their attitude toward the various cultures of Africa, and accused of looking down on these cultures, sometimes waging all-out wars against those aspects that they considered devilish and uncivilized. The story is not that simple, as we shall see throughout this book. In any case, it is true that there has been a continuous “turf war” among t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One. The Nature of African Theology
• Part Two. African Tradition and Traditional Religion as Foundational Issues in African Christian Theology and Ethics
• Part Three. Foundations of an African Christian Theological Ethics
• Notes
• Bibliography