(1) The Anthropological Approach
How can we explain the sudden appearance of such
post-Christian ethnic religious movements? The first people
who found themselves confronted by them were the missionaries and colonial
administrators. While
missionaries regarded them as a
falling away from the new religion, the government officers suspected concealed
rebellion and, in some cases, interfered in a violent way. Quite early reports
in missionary
periodicals stirred up the interest of sociology
and anthropology. The sociologists here discovered a chance to study
the emergence of completely new social organizations in the realm of the
apparently rather static
primitive cultures. The parallelism
of the cases caused scholars to assume that behind those seemingly spontaneous
and incidental movements, quite definite sociological laws were hidden.
Soon they recognized that the reason for the origin of
these movements was the so-called "reaction to conquest" (see M. Hunter 1964), i.e. the clash between the colonial
expansion and the primitive ethnic
society for which the political and economic
annexation of their country meant rape and exploitation. Against this
total threat the indigenous society defends itself by recalling its traditions
and by the desire to expel the
white man and his culture. In view of what Dr.
Tippett calls "the capacity of cohesive cultural complexes for survival,"
such reaction must necessarily always be religious and social at the same time.
This characterizes
these movements as nativistic, a term
which was defined by the American anthropologist R. Linton (1943:230)
as "any conscious and organized attempt by the members of a society to
revive or perpetuate
selected aspects of their
culture." The hope which is expressed by these attempts is, according to
some
ethnologists, predominantly of a socio-economic
nature. Primitive messianism, according to Barber (1941), is the
reaction of a people being deprived of their possessions and rights.
A profound socio-psychological approach is
offered by the important essay of Anthony Wallace on "Revitalization Movements" (1956). According to Wallace, such
revitalization movements are "any intentional organized and conscious attempts by the members of a society
to construct a more satisfactory
culture." Wallace describes the psychological
stages which follow each other when the communal consciousness of a primitive society sees itself threatened by inevitable
disintegration in consequence of the cultural clash. Under this stress the primal community reacts with an
urgent desire either to reconstruct their old culture or to substitute for it a new superior culture. Such
revitalization movements can bear rather different characters depending on the respective culture and situation.
They can appear as revival movements which try to give a new validity to values of the old culture which seem
to have been lost: a typical case is the Mau Mau Movement in Kenya. Revitalization movements can also appear as
cargo cults or chiliastic
movements. Another important type, finally, is the
messianic movement. Here the decisive feature is the part played by an apotheosized savior who is expected to bring about the
cultural revolution. In these movements the person of the founder, who impresses his adherents by his prophetic
appearance, gains central
significance. According to his sensitive nature, the
conflict of his community is condensed in him. He receives in dreams, visions and auditions a vocation experience which transforms
his personality and designates him to be the savior of his people.
The anthropological approach has contributed
substantially to explaining the character of the messianic movements
in their nativistic aspect as "reaction to conquest." The economic,
social and psychological
factors which are pointed out here
must be taken very seriously. This approach explains convincingly why
messianic and other nativistic movements appear in
such a multitude, especially in South Africa. For here the cultural
clash has been especially extensive and intensive. A nativistic reaction is, as
B. Malinowski (1949:47)
has pointed out, very frequently the
result of an "integral rejection" of members of an inferior culture
by the
members of a technically and economically
superior civilization. The enticement to join the European society in the enjoyment of a more "saturated" standard of living is
not fulfilled as soon as expected, or is not fulfilled at all. Thus the disappointed members of the deprived society react
either in a militant or an escapist way.
Amongst the nativistic movements, however, a major attraction is
developed only by those movements which not only arouse utopian hopes but also offer social protection to their
adherents and effective help in
mastering the new problems in the midst of rapid social
change. This can he confirmed especially in the messianic communities of Lekganyane in North Transvaal and Limba (see
Mqotsi and Mkele 1946) in Port
Elizabeth. Both have established small settlements where
some of their adherents can make a living. The question, however, is whether such sub-cultures which put themselves
beside modern civilization can be of
long duration.
(2) The Approach of Comparative Religion
The approach of the anthropologist has to be
complemented by that of the scientist of religion. Here special interest
is taken in all those features which show common ground between the nativistic
movements and the
animistic mother religions: the roles of the cultic
key persons like divine chiefs, shamans and healers, the tabu, the
concepts of witchcraft, the magical means, rituals. They all relate to Dr.
Tippett's three categories:
mythical thinking, therapeutic system
and the living dead."
It can easily he
discovered that in their decisive presuppositions the adherents of the
Afro-messianic movements have remained faithful to the old
animistic worldview. Among them as well as among the pagan Africans, the key concept for explaining the world is the
idea of the mystico-magic life force which fills
the universe and which gives to each part
its own quality and ability. African religion is the desire, in contact with the ancestors and mediated through the familiar or communal ritual,
to channel the life force both to the individual member of the clan and to the whole community iii order to
strengthen them against the threats of enemies. Originally all African rituals had their ideological frame of
reference in ancient mythology. Today
those mythological notions have fallen into oblivion; the
ritual practices, however, persist.
Highly important is the demand for a
therapeutic system. According to Bantu conviction any misfortune, any illness, any death is the result of the diminishing of one's vital force
caused by the interference of the superior force of somebody else. There are, besides ritual pollution, three major
reasons for illness:
(a)
Minor diseases like catching a cold or measles can
be ascribed to natural causes. All other illnesses and misfortunes,
however, are believed to be caused by witchcraft or interference by the
ancestral spirits.
(b)
The sorcerer or the witch is an evil person who by
technical or biochemical manipulations and spiritist contacts
gains power over his fellow man and thus prevents his psychological or bodily
organs from functioning normally.
(c)
But also the ancestors can interfere disastrously
in the life of their posterity if they feel neglected. To avoid
such misfortune the wrath of the ancestors has to be appeased by ritual
sacrifices. The Bantu spend
much time and attention to reveal the
causes of disasters. This constitutes the power and authority of the witch
doctor. He is first of all a witch finder and secondly a destroyer of
witchcraft. For the Zulus, these two
functions are separated into two
professions, isangoma and inyanga.
Any study of the messianic movements in Africa will
show how central to them are the concepts of magical forces,
magical harm and magical restitution of life. This explains, first of all, the
position of the head of the
community. For he unites in himself the powers of
divination and of healing in the highest potency. In a lower degree
also the minor prophets, installed by him, participate in this ability. They
are to be understood more in
analogy to the traditional diviners
and healers than to the biblical prophets. Such judgment would, of course, be
sharply resented by the official representatives of the movements. They try to
find a biblical cover for
every phenomenon of their cult, however
striking the actual parallels in traditional tribal religion might be. In some cases a process of transculturation has led to modern substitutes
for the ancient means, and this usually goes together with the ostentatious renunciation of the "heathen
practices" of the tribal environment.
It is interesting to note that several founders of
messianic movements acted in their earlier life as diviners or mediums,
or came from families of witch doctors. Usually they recruit their
"prophets" from the range of
pagan diviners and magical practitioners. This
former contact with ancestral spirits (Zulu: idlozi) from which they
received their clairvoyance forms an obvious counterpart to their present claim
as nativistic prophets to
have contact with "angels"
or to be filled with the "Holy Spirit," which gives them the power of
divination. This transcendental relationship constitutes the
religious or magical authority of the Bantu messiahs. It leads their adherents
to blind submission and makes them immune to missionary influences.
Lastly I want to refer to the parallelism between
the institution of divine chieftainship and the office of the head of
the messianic movement (Oosthuizen 1966:94-96; 1968:91). Traditional African
Religion was a
religion of the tribe and, therefore, had
to carry out its main function in the frame of the community of blood and soil. The objects of religious invocation in prayer and sacrificial
ritual were the ancestors of the clan, and especially of the family of the chief. The chiefs were the high priests
who mediated between the tribal
community and their own forefathers, who were the real national gods. In
view of the dispersion of the tribal fellowship and the emergence of new social entities in urban areas, the
only religion which proves its
efficiency and reality is that which can transcend the former African
particularism in its worship and its sense of fellowship. The Afro-messianic movements do this by substituting new
religious authorities and forms for the traditional ones and by making large concessions to the traditional
worldview. The cultic relationship between John Galilei Shembe, the present leader, and his deified father
Isaiah Shembe, the founder of the
Shembe community, forms a striking parallel to the royal
ancestral ritual of Zulu chiefs. To this extent
Afro-messianism is the most comprehensive attempt
of a traditional African religion threatened by dissolution to save
itself and to enter into the modern age by means of certain terminological and
ritualistic transformations.
THE MOTIVES OF THE SYNCRETISTIC PROCESS
There are central aspects of the messianic
movements which cannot properly be explained in the categories of religious
phenomenology either. How could it happen that in the office of the
chief-prophet-healer the
traditional sacred king was
transformed into an eschatological figure? The early adherents of Kimbangu expected
that in connection with a marvelous event he would suddenly return from
captivity on a great ship
on the Congo river as a national
liberator, heading all the old kings of the Congo Empire and the resurrected ancestors
(Andersson 1958:2280. Shembe and John Masove are believed to stand at the Last
Day at the gate
of the coming Jerusalem granting
entrance only to their adherents. For these roles there is no place in the cyclical
worldview of the Bantu. East African languages, e.g., do not even have an
equivalent for the word
"future", as Dr. John Mbiti
has shown (1969b:15-28; 1971:24-31).
The Afro-messianic movements, therefore, cannot he fully
understood if we overlook the fact that these
communities, even in their nativistic
determination, remain oriented towards the Christian church, from which they
took their point of departure. Secretly they also remain oriented towards the
person of Jesus Christ,
although they do so in a relativistic
sense (see Damman 1965). The answer to the cultural clash remains a pseudo-Christian
religious one: church and Messiah. Never has a nativistic messianic movement
wholly become a nationalistic party. Rather the
Afro-messianic movements claim to be the real manifestation of the
Christian church among their people,
possibly even for the whole world.3 Thus we can say that the Christian church, both in its form and in its teaching, became not only the impulse
but also the stumbling block for the messianic movements in Africa.
This is exactly the moment when missiology
comes into its own and has to prove its character as a theological discipline. Missiology is concerned with the communication of the gospel
to non-Christian people. Therefore, it has to trace the causes of the tragic breaking apart of mission
church and Afro-messianic movement. In the first step we have to make ourselves advocates of the Afro-messianic
movements and to put some searching
questions to our western missions. In a second step we
will use spiritual discernment to unveil how far the
wrong answers of the Afro-messianic movements
originate not merely in an inevitable misunderstanding, but also in
an existential contradiction to the message proclaimed.
(1) Western Christianity Cross-Examined
There are many questions which, in view of the
emergence of messianic and other nativistic movements, must he
directed to western missions and "their" churches. Let us select five
central ones:
(a) The Congolese people who had been healed by
Simon Kimbangu returned to their home with the exclamation:
"We have found the God of the black people!" Sprinkler reports a
sermon of John Galilei
Shembe, in which he described the
significance of his father in the following words: "You, my people, were once
told of a God, who has neither arms nor legs, who cannot see, who has neither
love nor pity. But Isaiah
Shembe showed you a God who walks on feet and heals
with his hands and can be known by man, a God who loves
and who has compassion" (Sundkler 1961:278). These two examples make it
quite clear that the
preaching of the missionaries at one decisive point did not reach its
aim. It could not convince many Africans that in Jesus Christ the Immanuel, the "God with us," has
really appeared. John V. Taylor (1963:l2lff) has tried to elucidate this tragic failure of the missionary's message and
of the church established by him. He claims that the most important experience of the African listeners was
the encounter with the personality, nearness and holiness of the transcendent God. This nearness, however,
can only be tolerated if, at the same time, the merciful love of this God as revealed in Jesus Christ, the
second Adam, is not only preached, but also testified to by the life of the Christians for each other. Otherwise
God will return into the indefinite distance of the dens otiosus which characterizes the African belief in a
supreme God.
(b) 
The Afro-messianic movements present themselves as eschatological
communities of salvation. They
either urgently expect salvation to happen with the
immediate parousia of the Messiah, or they do already enjoy the shalom of a realized eschatology (Martin 1964:123; Oosthuizen
1968:83-84). Christian hope has
been perverted here. But the idea of an eschatological
expectation as such had been introduced by the preaching of the missionaries. The question directed to the missions,
therefore, is this: What has been the object of their own hope to which they testified to the people of
Africa? Into what relationship did the missionaries set the futuristic and the present aspects of the New
Testament hope? Was it the psychological state of inner peace and harmony which must have appeared rather strange
to animistic listeners? Or did
the missionaries not bother at all about the realization
of the final aim of Christian hope because they were only concerned with the planting of the indigenous church? Or did they
represent that apocalyptic type of mission in which everything is acclaimed as total but imminent future?
Or did they secularize the Christian hope resolutely in the sense of a social gospel? I am afraid that the
history of modern missionary preaching cannot offer any additional reply to this question. But none of all
these eschatological concepts is really fully representative of the eschatological message of the New Testament. This
is all the more painful since in
Protestant missions the essential motive has always been
the eschatological one.
(c)
In all missiological writings about the messianic
movements we find agreement that their prophesying, speaking
in tongues and ecstatic dancing reveal a hunger for genuine religious life.
Sundkler and Martin call it
a "hunger for a revelation here
and now" (Sundkler 1961:30; Martin 1964:167ff). Christian Baeta speaks of the
"desire to probe the reality of spiritual things" (1962:5). African
religiosity puts the emphasis not so much on the
intellectual or ethical sides, but rather on the emotional aspect of the
relation with God. Members of
Afro-messianic movements often talk
about the coldness which has driven them away from the main-line churches.
Without overlooking the opposite danger of being raptured by an unhealthy
enthusiasm, we may
ask: does this not indicate that the
charismatic life of the early church has been impoverished and that we have
failed to develop a relevant pneumatology in general?
(d)
In the present debate about the shortcomings of
western missions in the light of the religious expectations
of the Africans, it is sometimes stated sweepingly that missions have been too
spiritualistic. In
their attempts to save the souls, it
is said, they have forgotten the human body. The pioneering enterprises of medical
missions give the lie to such accusations. But there is art element of truth
hidden in this self-accusation. It is that missions treated the
body and the soul of man in different departments, the soul in the
church and the body in the clinic. Such a tearing apart is impossible in view
of the concept of wholeness
which we find in primal thought,
especially as it is manifested in the magical diagnosis and therapy. The black messiah
as a healer and prophet stands in the tradition of the Bantu philosophy
(Tempels 1959:27-46) of
wholeness. But does he not also stand
nearer to the biblical view about the psychosomatic unity of man and of his
salvation, at least structurally?
(e)
As our ethno-sociological analysis has shown, -
Afro-messianism is the outcry of a community which has
broken down in the cultural clash. The place of the traditional unity of life
in the tribe will be taken
by the modern pluralistic society.
Even the church today has already accepted its place in the pluralistic society
as one segment which is competent for the cultic claim of man. The uprooted
African looks back to
his community, in which he had his
protecting home in all respects, social, economic and cultic. The Afro-messianic
movement is a last, though utopian, attempt to restore the lost unity under the
present sociological conditions. Is it thus not at the
same time an accusation against the western church which has not been
able as koinonia in the diaspora to penetrate the totality of our pluralistic
life and to claim it for the
basileia tou Christou?
Our five questions which we as missiologists have
directed to the western missionary movement have clarified two points:
(a) Not all differences between the messianic movements and the main-line
churches are a conscious
rejection of the Christian faith. Many phenomenological
and psychological peculiarities of the messianic movements can be explained simply by the African's inability to overcome
the difficulties of the cultural
clash.
(b) Neither can we plainly identify the historic manifestation of the church
(i.e. in our case the mission
church in Africa), with the ekklesia of the New Testament. Some features
of the messianic movements show
a greater phenomenological similarity with those e.g. of
the congregation in Corinth, than the mission
churches can present. Probably the messianic
movements from their primal background sensed intuitively that the God
of creation originally put together certain things which the God of redemption
wants to join anew.
But they did not realize that this junction has to
pass through the crisis of the Cross and that the units have to be
renewed by the power of the Creator Spiritus who is to be received by faith.
(2) Afro-Messianism Under the Crisis of the Cross
Having listened humbly to the questions of the
messianic communities, or to questions which anthropologists and
theologians might ask on their behalf, the missiologist is now entitled in
return to put some questions to
the Afro-messianic movements. We want
to formulate them rather cautiously:
(a)
Could it be that many responsible members in the
messianic movements did indeed hear the call of the Crucified
to believe in him, but stumbled over this call because they preferred a new
national hero?
(b)
Could it be that some of these later Bantu
messiahs, in their original choice to use their genuine Christian charisma
in an obedient way, could not resist the temptation to yield to the sudden
desire of their adherents to
treat them as God?
(c)
Could it be that the people, who in the cultural
clash discovered the fantastic new possibilities of civilization
but at the same time also heard the message about the coming kingdom of peace,
did not tolerate
the eschatological tension between the
"already" and the "not yet" any more, and preferred to take
a secularist short-cut?
(d)
To summarize it briefly: Is not in the deepest
analysis Afro-messianism just another new expression of the old
offense which natural religious man finds with the theologia crucis? A Zulu
pastor once stated in a
lecture: "The syncretistic sects
in our country are the way of the African to by-pass the Cross." If he is
right.
Afro-messianism reveals itself as a new
post-Christian religion which, as Freytag4 has shown, necessarily must turn
anti-Christian.
RESPONDING TO THE AFRO- MESSIANIC CHALLENGE
How should the apostolic agents of the Christian
church in South Africa react to those searching questions put to us
by the emergence of Afro-messianic movements? They will have to reconsider all
expressions of church
life, kerygma, leiturgia and koinonia
in constant confrontation with the challenge of their Christopagan counterpart
and to work for a reformation.
(1) Preaching and Teaching in Africa
Mission means translation. The fact that the
doctrinal terminology of the church is syncretized by the Afro-messianic
movements constitutes a double challenge to our theology, an apologetic and a
kerygmatic one.
Our apologetic responsibility forces us to
discover what those familiar words, whose content is determined for us
by the history of Christian interpretation, mean if they are received without
this guidance into an
African frame of reference. "The
Gospel heard is different from the Gospel preaching," said Walter Freytag. This
could be illustrated by a careful analysis of the understanding of any
Christian key term by
"unenlightened" African
listeners. Let us take as an example the concept of the Holy Spirit.' He is the
real principle of life for all African sects and
nativistic movements. He is identified with the life force of the
African Traditional Religion, but sometimes also
with the spiritistic forces that take possession of diviners. He is the
principle of continuous revelation. He is the power of healing and of
biological and professional
strengthening. He is the protecting
force for all critical aspects of life. As such he can be tapped and be
magically mediated by portions. He is the
metaphysical power which is sensed as really present in the worship ritual
and which transports its participants into an euphoric mood. But we find little
of the Pauline and
Johannine description of the Holy Spirit as the
personal Lord, who through the living Word guides his Church and by
his indwelling transforms the Christian into the image of Christ.
This means that in our missionary
communication, even of such a central topic as the concept of the Holy Spirit, something has gone fatally wrong. The church in Africa is still
facing art elementary hermeneutical task. How should it be approached? I would suggest three steps:
The first step is to make a number of theological analyses of how the
Christian key terms like God, spirit, sin, grace and redemption are understood in nativistic communities. Equally
crucial is the significance attributed
to the institutions of the church, the sacraments or the ministry. This
could be done systematically by studying the hymns and by evaluating a great number of sermons, prayers and
spontaneous witnesses which are
recorded during the worship rituals.6
The second step would be to give all
Christian instruction, both on the catechetical and the theological level, in constant confrontation between the authentic biblical meaning and
their nativistic re-interpretation. This is very important, because the. members and workers of main-line churches in
Africa have also been influenced
by such Christopagan concepts (Beyerhaus 1964; Haselbarth
1972:95-107).
A third step, finally, might be the formulation of
a Confessio Africana. It would affirm the historic Christian faith in
an African terminology. And it would simultaneously denounce the current
Christopagan distortions
of this faith just as e.g. the Nicene
Creed affirmed the divine Sonship of Christ in refutation of the Arian heresy:
"Genitus, non factus est .." . .
Equally important with the authenticity of our
message is its pointedness. This is our kerygmatic responsibility.
Evangelism in Africa should hit the existential questions, needs and anxieties
which have led to the Afro-messianic misinterpretation of the Christian
message. I do not mean that African Traditional Religion
and biblical revelation can be harmoniously correlated in terms of hope and
fulfillment. But I
maintain that only such Christians
can approach the members of other religious communities as preachers,
teachers, doctors or counselors who have tried to
identify themselves with the needs, fears and desires out of which the
Afro-messianic movements have been born. And if such questions are directed to
the biblical
revelation, it is quite feasible that they might
touch on aspects which have not fully come into the focus of our western
churches yet. The decisive question which is put to our missions by the concept
of a black messiah is
this: Have we really proclaimed Jesus
of Nazareth to the Africans in the same joyfully convincing tone as the angel
did to the shepherds, "For to you is born this day a Savior, who is
Christ, the Lord!"? If this is to be done,
four important aspects of New Testament Christology (Haselbarth 1972:210-230)
have to be emphasized:
Firstly, we should proclaim Christ the conqueror,
as he is depicted in the Gospels and in the Epistle to the Colossians:
the One who by the finger of God casts out evil spirits (Luke 11:20); He who
"disarmed the
principalities and powers, and made a
public example of them, triumphing over them" (Col. 2:15). He is the answer
to the African who is haunted by the fear of ghosts and witchcraft.
But secondly, in order to avoid making Christ the symbol
of hero worship, we have to preach him as the
crucified one. Not the magical threat of the human
enemy is our real danger, but the righteous wrath of God. Only at
the Cross could this wrath be overcome, and only in accepting our own cross we
will find peace in the
fellowship of Christ.
Here we find him, thirdly, as the present One. He
does not need to be represented by a Bantu messiah. For as the
Resurrected One (see Mbiti 1971:161-164) Christ is really in our midst. Such a
proclamation of Christ, the
invisibly present One, needs,
however, to be verified by the existential witness of an African congregation, which
itself has become free from the traditional fear of witchcraft and ancestral
indignation.
To be free from anxiety does not imply freedom from
suffering. As the African worldview does not know of a future
ontologically different from the present, Africans crave for complete salvation
here and now. I agree
with Dr. Tippett that Christianity
must "provide a vital eschatology." Such a vital eschatology can only
he
centered, fourthly, in Christ as the returning
One. The utopic fancies of Afro-messianism are both judged and convincingly
replaced by the proclamation of the coming Kingdom. Through the means of grace
it appears already now and transforms Christian lives. And
this Kingdom will become visible in its completion when Christ
returns with great power and glory (Mt. 24:30). If this vision is proclaimed in
its radiance, it will
generate in the congregation the power
of Christian endurance. The ability to "rejoice in our sufferings"
Rm. 5:3) has always been a most persuasive factor in
the spontaneous expansion of the church.
(2) Reshaping the Liturgy
If the African church experiences a fresh encounter
with the `Christ for you," she will also develop new liturgical
forms to give expression to this meeting. Here the church could, indeed, earn
much from the nativistic movements (Oosthuizen 1968:238-243;
Berglund 1966). According to my observation, there are four
elements which make the rituals of these groups so attractive to their
participants:
(a) The spontaneous involvement of all members, which satisfies the
African craving for rhythm and
movement.
(b) The impressive symbolism of the cult in its dramatic procedure and its
colorful vestments.
(c) The concrete relatedness to the individual needs. Any trouble and any
subsequent relief are told to the
group and shared by all members in compassion or joy.
(d) The originality of the religious songs. Their melodies, rhythmics and
harmonies derive mostly from
traditional Bantu music, but they are quite open for a
gradual acculturation with western styles and instruments.
On account of these factors there is no
meritorious boredom in these cultic meetings. Rather they are festivals of joy
where nobody counts the passing hours. When in the sixties our Lutheran Church
in Transvaal celebrated a number of Jubilees, these gained a
tremendous popularity among the Christians. My African students
told me that this was the direct reaction of Lutheran Christians to the
festival of the Zion Christian
Church. African Christians wanted visibly to
manifest their wider community and joyfully to break the routine of the
normal congregational life.
Most main-line churches are still too inhibited to
introduce a radical innovation or Africanization of their liturgies.
The reason is partly that they do not want to imitate the sects. But more
important is that in the
minds of first-generation Christians
traditional melodies and dancing cannot be dissociated from paganism. Therefore,
enforcing "cultural identity" on African churches is as detrimental
as keeping them captive in
imported western forms. It will have
to be left to the spontaneity of the living faith of African Christians themselves
to find those liturgical forms which give a genuine expression for their
encounter with the triune
God. Here the Christian youth with
their new songs are already paving the way for the church of the future. (3)
Mediating Social Integration
There is still a third field where main-line churches in
South Africa should heed the challenge of the Afro-messianic communities. It is their capability to establish
themselves as factors of social integration. Welbourn, in his study of East African independent churches (Welbourn and
Ogot 1966; Welbourn
1961:201-213), has called them "a place to
feel at home." This could be stated with equal appropriateness of the
messianic movements in South Africa. They do, indeed, serve as new tribes in a
time of socio-political
disintegration.
The misery of Southern Africa is that the principle
of ethnic separation has torn to pieces a population which through
history is destined to become a multi-ethnic and supra-racial society. The
Afro-messianic movements
have not stemmed the process of
ethnic separation. On the contrary, they have wholeheartedly subscribed to it.
They have become crystallizing centers of social integration in ethnic ghettos.
In a way the Group Area Act
and other Apartheid laws do not leave
much room for an alternative option to the main-line churches either. There
is, however, still plenty of room for them to begin to further fellowship in
daily life among their own
members. The African has an innate
feeling of human solidarity. It is much closer than our western individualism
to the synoptic concept of our responsibility to our neighbor or to Paul's
teaching about the
corporate personality of Christ's
body. Here the African churches will become more African inasmuch as they
become true churches in the New Testament sense. I have found tendencies within
urban church choirs
to bring their members into closer
community and to provide even social protection for them. The special pastoral
charisma of the African ministry will he to discover and to develop the
koinonia function of the
church (Beyerhaus 1964; Haselbarth
1972:95-102).
Still, a true church in South Africa can never
recede into an ethnic ghetto and acquiesce with the status quo. Christ,
as the Church confesses him, is no Bantu messiah, but the head of an universal
body. In him there is
neither Jew nor Greek, neither free
man nor slave (Gal. 3:28). Therefore, the churches in South Africa are called to
make manifest that Christians belong together because of a new bond of loyalty
(Beyerhaus 1972:89-102). Neither the color bar nor ethnic
divisions can suspend their mutual solidarity. Churches in South
Africa not only have the responsibility, but they should also have the
spiritual power to quench the
spirit of racism. That they have not
always acted accordingly is one of the main reasons why Africans asked
for a native God and a black messiah. True enough, the churches are the
largest social organizations in South Africa which in different degrees have constantly opposed the injustices
of the racist legislation. But
they have failed to manifest by their own koinonia that
fellowship, which could serve as a convincing model and sign of hope for a future integrated society.
We do not know whether the chance has already passed, where all national
groups involved could be convinced to agree on a political solution for South Africa's social
problems. Still, even where secular agents and secular hopes fail, the churches cannot stop
proclaiming the justice of God and serving as agents of reconciliation. For this is their raison d'etre. They will
be judged, not by their success, but according to their faithfulness. For it is their Judge who will make all
things new ( Rev. 21:4).
Notes
1. "`Accommodation' connotes something of a denial, of a mutilation. We
would, therefore, prefer to use the term possessio, to take into possession." (I.H. Bavinck 1964:178).
2.
About the Lekganyane movement, see Schlosser
(1958:lBlff) and Haselbarth (1966); about Shembe, see Sundkler (1961 passim~.
3.
The adherents ofLekganyane sing "The churches
of the world will finally be reigned from Morija" (Haselbarth 1966:71).
4.
(W. Freytag 1961:580 This interpretation is most
consistently unfolded in Oosthuizen's book Post -Christianity in Africa (1968).
5. See Oosthuizen (1968 Chapter 4): "Misunderstanding of the Biblical
Meaning of the Holy' Spirit in the Independent Movements."
6. A good example is given by CC. Oosthuizen (1967). Here he constructs the
theology of Shembe's Nazareth Baptist Church from its official hymnbook.
GM Editorial Note: Excerpt from pages 77-95 of the out of
print book, Christopaganism or Indigenous
Christianity, Tetsunao Yamamori — editor was reprinted
with permission. This book can be downloaded in its entirety in our Reviews & Previews section.
The Christian Encounter with Afro-Messianic Movements: