Ethics That Matters: African, Caribbean, and African American Sources

Chapter 2: Homecoming in the Hinterlands

23 Chapter 2 Homecoming in the Hinterlands Ethical Ministries of Mission in Nigeria .Katie Geneva Cannon. in february 1982, i had the good fortune of representing the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America at the service of ordination and installation of the Reverend Mgbeke George Okore, the first woman ordained to the gospel ministry by a mainline denomination in Nigeria.Born in Mkpakpi,a village within the province ofArochukwu/ Ohafia, she was a profoundly accomplished and educated woman.1 On February 20, 1982, when the Presbytery of Aba ordained Okore as Minister of Word and Sacrament, her parishioners at St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church exceeded a membership count of four thousand. Ministries of mission contributed immensely in molding the life of the Reverend Mgbeke Okore. As part of my preparation for this historic occasion, the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria invited me to embark on a three-week mission tour—a journey through gorgeous rainforests, along magnificent sandy beaches, over creeks and mangrove swamps to Christian communities scattered throughout southeastern Nigeria. Not being a specialist in international This essay represents an expanded and heavily revised version of an earlier attempt at reporting the ethics of Presbyterian missions.See my“Homecoming in the Hinterlands” in the United Presbyterian Women’s Concern magazine (October 1982): 12–15. 24 Katie Geneva Cannon missions, intuition led me to the life and work of Lavinia Johnson, who may have been one of the first African American women missionaries to arrive in West Africa (Liberia) in 1845.2 Even though I had worked as an Operations Crossroad Africa volunteer in Pleebo, Liberia, during the summer of 1971, with travel junkets to Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, I lacked a mental grasp of Nigeria. A year later, while matriculating as a seminarian, Dr. Josephus R. Coan, who taught academic missiology at the Interdenominational Theological Center, professed a deep awareness of our inescapable Christian duty “to respond in obedience to the mandates of our Lord Jesus Christ as found in the four Gospels (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47; John 20:21) and in the book of Acts (1:8).” This commissioning theme that Christians should go into the world and make disciples of all nations has been improvised into thousands of variations. As a result, expanding my conscientization of imperial power and its painful underside embedded within the Christian missionary agenda in one of the largest, most populous, and—with the increasing revenue from oil—wealthiest countries in Africa became my fundamental quest. During the month of January, I culled the most reliable data about Nigeria from a wide variety of sources. At the forefront of my investigation I orchestrated hospitable briefings in corridors, on elevators, and on the streets of New York City with everyone that I knew who had ever traveled, worked, or lived in Nigeria. These international travelers were kind enough to provide me with a broad perspective of the cultural disposition and day-to-day life of Nigerian people. However, the only hint of commonality that proved highly significant was that I should expect the unexpected, allow plenty of time for delays, and drink only boiled water. Next, I read scholarly journals, United Nations documents, and history books on Nigeria to provide the broader picture of overseas missions that began in 1842, when King Eyamba V of Duke Town, King Eyo Honesty II of Creek Town, and the chiefs of the Efik-Ibibio people (who produced the highly artistic specialized craft of Igbo-Ukwu bronzes and terracotta), invited the Church of Scotland to send educators to Nigeria.3 In other words, this reflective essay framed around personal observations only partially refers to effective strategies in “the planting of Christianity”4 in Igboland. Homecoming in the Hinterlands 25 By mid-nineteenth century, there had been more than two centuries ofAfrican trade with Europeans.When the Europeans left home on trade expeditions to Africa, a round-trip usually lasted a year or more. Therefore , with the booming trade of palm oil and Eurocentric-exacerbated desire for a constant flow of enslaved African people, ivory, timber (mostly obeche), copra, beeswax, and piassava fiber, it seemed economically wise to build convenient anchorage depots around the coastal villages , near the mouths of the Cross and Calabar Rivers. These depots were located where the Europeans could keep their goods in safe harbors and maintain supplies necessary to refit sailing vessels when their...