African Pentecostalism and World Christianity. Группа авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ It grew exponentially and unexpectedly in the African independent churches, away from the gaze of the colonial governments and the mission scholars. William Wade Harris’s story of travelling to and through Cote d’Ivoire, baptizing an estimated one hundred thousand converts in an eighteen-month period and impacting the lives of an estimated two hundred thousand people over the three years75 when European missionaries could convert only one thousand people would play itself many times over in other parts of Africa. In addition, mission churches generally thrived where they allowed marginal movements of revival to exist in their midst. The Anglican Church in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda would benefit greatly from the East African Revival that operated between the Church and charismatic independent groups in the region. Allan Anderson is right to suggest that the growth of African independent churches is akin to an African Reformation—the title of his book that explores their development in the twentieth century.76 Citing Bengt Sundkler, Anderson says that African independent churches grew from forty-two thousand members in 1900 to fifty-four million in 2000.77 Gina Zurlo and Todd Johnson project that they will be at one hundred eighty million in 2025.78 This suggests that almost 25 percent of African Christians are in independent and unaffiliated churches. While this phenomenal growth is to be celebrated, I wish to suggest that their greatest impact is that they prepared the way for the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Neo-Pentecostal churches that emerged in postcolonial Africa.

During the colonial era, Europeans were essentially in charge of both governance and religion over millions of Africans even though they did not understand the religious sensibilities of Africans. Consequently, they sought to do away with African traditional religion and they frowned upon African independent churches, often persecuting their members. The existence of such churches allowed Africans some space out of European reach to practice a form of Christianity that the Europeans did not understand. This was a great cause for concern for Europeans as they needed to monitor the Africans at all times for fear of anticolonial uprisings. In Malawi, an insurrection in 1915 led by John Chilembwe, a Malawian evangelist, caused the British colonial government to pass laws that made it impossible for Malawians to register Christian churches unless they were led by white Westerners.79 Those laws were abolished after Malawi gained her independence from Britain in 1964.80

      Second, African independent churches differed quite significantly from Europeans both in their theology and their ecclesiology. William Wade Harris’s calabash and cross, the Aladura’s white garments, Isaiah Shembe’s music and dancing, Simeon Kimbangu’s healing ministry, all these plus the prominent role of the charismatic leader (in the likeness of the oracle or the medium of traditional religion) made it difficult for Europeans to trust members of African independent churches as fellow Christians. Since most of their leaders were not advanced in the Western system of education, and that they were either illiterate or semi-literate in the eyes of the Europeans, there was always concern about syncretism—that Africans were mixing their Christianity with aspects of African religion. Of course, the operational belief was that all Christians would worship and behave just like European Christians. Many missionaries believed that there was only one way to be a Christian—the European way. Every Christian in the world would have to believe and behave like a European. Any deviation was suspect. Consequently, African independent churches were politically suspicious and religiously unwelcome. Therefore, by their very existence, African independent churches critiqued this belief and showed that Christianity without European culture is possible. Whatever the Europeans thought of as syncretism, the Africans believed to be contextualization. Thus, the Africans risked syncretism in order to be—a charge that we still hear today even though it is true that every expression of Christianity has some syncretism in it. Yet, by the time colonialism came to an end, they had grown at a significantly faster rate than missionary-led denominational churches.

      Pentecostal, Charismatic, Neo-Charismatic, and Beyond

At the center of the argument of this chapter is the proposition that African independent churches have made African Christianity as we know it today possible. What Harris and Kimbangu did earlier on in the twentieth century, at the height of the colonial era became the template for the multiplication that we see in African Christianity in postcolonial Africa. Their spirit-empowered prophetic and healing ministries that critiqued and protested against the missionaries and the colonists foreshadow the many charismatic ministries that have emerged in Africa since the end of colonialism. They were both extremely successful in their evangelizing efforts. They understood how to engage their audiences from within their own cultures—the missionaries could never do this. They not only spoke local languages, they also understood the spiritual needs of Africans. Through prophetic and healing gifts, they presented to Africans a God who was both touched by their needs and was close enough to help. The Jesus of Harris and Kimbangu was not only concerned with saving souls from hellfire. Yes, people had to be saved, but they also had to trust Jesus’ Spirit for protection and healing. They had to burn their fetishes and be healed of their diseases through prayer. It should be no surprise that beginning in the 1960s and 1970s when European colonization of Africa started to unravel, and the colonial representatives and agents returned to Europe, it is the Harris or Kimbangu type of Christianity that emerged across sub-Saharan Africa. The process of decolonizing Christianity took much longer (and is said to have been a lot harder) than that of the political states but when it happened, a spirit-oriented Christianity emerged. Many Western missionaries tried to stay on, arguing that the “younger churches” of Africa were not mature enough yet to stand on their own. A majority of them had to be pushed to move on.81 But once the leadership of African churches was handed over to Africans, many churches began to allow some aspects of African culture shape their theology and ecclesiology and just like in the African independent churches of old, the Spirit came rushing in. Overall, it became clear that a decolonized African Christianity had to liberate itself from European thought systems.

Since the 1970s, the Christianity of African independent churches has come to shape a great deal of African Christianity. Without the widespread misunderstandings and persecutions from the missionaries and colonial governments, African independent churches have themselves thrived and multiplied. They are home to millions upon millions of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, both the Harrist and Kimbanguist churches have continued to grow. In southern Africa, Apostolic and Zionist churches have also continued to spread across many countries. Altogether, these classical African independent churches have millions of members both in Africa and in the African diaspora.82 Many other African independent churches have modernized and rebranded as Pentecostal denominations. Several large West African Pentecostal denominations started out as Aladura groups of praying people. Both the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Apostolic Church of Nigeria—with more than ten million members between them—have their roots in the Aladura movements of the 1920s. In addition, of course, the Pentecostal movement made it possible for many who wanted a spirit-oriented Christianity to find a home outside the mission-established and -controlled churches. Classical Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God and Foursquare have also benefitted, but in the context of Africa, they are far outnumbered by other enthusiastic expressions of Christianity. Neo-Pentecostal churches are generally modernized African independent churches. They have emerged in Africa after colonialism.

      Consequently, they have a different set of concerns from those of the early AICs. In addition, most of them have Western connections and are largely informed by American popular Christianity. In addition, data coming out of America research organization puts African Pentecostal, Charismatic and Neo-Pentecostal Christians at 25 percent of the entire African Christian population. However, anecdotal reports coming from the continent are saying otherwise. Spirit-oriented Christianity influences almost all of African Christianity. Even those denominations that have come out of strict Reformed and cessationist movements have had to pentecostalize. Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, and all other mission-established churches have gone through a process of pentecostalizing. They have had no choice but to follow the crowd and transform themselves to allow African culture and worldview influence their theology and ecclesiology. We joke of Bapticostals and Prescostals as a way of I have heard from many friends, Lutherans from Nigeria, Anglicans from Kenya, and Presbyterians from Malawi saying, “If we cannot beat the Pentecostals, we better join them, otherwise we will lose all our members.” One would be hard pressed to СКАЧАТЬ