Freedom's Distant Shores: American Protestants and Post-Colonial Alliances with Africa

Notes

227 Introduction 1 Stephen Neil, A History of Christian Missions (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1964), 572. 2 Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 89–91. 3 One of the measures of Africa’s increasing ecclesiastical importance is the number of Africans heading strategic global ecclesiastical bodies, including Sam Kobia from Kenya, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches; Setri Nyomi from Ghana, the General Secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches; Ishmael Noko from Angola, the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation; Musimbi Kanyoro from Kenya, the General Secretary of the World YWCA; and Ndaba Mazabane from South Africa, Chairman of the International Council of the World Evangelical Alliance. 4 Titus Presler, Horizons of Mission (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 2001), 91, 105. 5 Gerald H. Anderson, “A Moratorium on Missionaries?” Christian Century, January 16, 1974, 43–45. 6 Dana Robert, “Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since 1945,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 24, no. 2 (2000): 50–58. 7 Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans , 1995), 325. Notes 228 Notes to pp. 2–3 8 Timothy Yates, Christian Mission in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 199; Anderson, “Moratorium,” 43–45. 9 Isichei, History of Christianity, 326–27; Anderson, “Moratorium,” 43–45. 10 All of the Pentecostal and Charismatic denominations listed under Barrett’s Protestant and Independent categories were added together to reach these totals. It is important to note that the totals will not include Pentecostal and Charismatic practitioners affiliated with mainline denominations, i.e. Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans, etc. with Pentecostal and charismatic orientations . See David B. Barrett, George Kurian, and Todd Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2001), 16–18. 11 With respect to the 1970s totals, more than 104,000,000 of the 147,000,000 were in Africa (70%). With respect to the 1995 totals, more than 379,000,000 of the 605,000,000 were in Africa (63%). 12 Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley , 1995); M. P. Fisher, Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999), 63–64. 13 Cox, Fire From Heaven, 63–64. 14 Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford, and Susan D. Rose, Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism (New York: Routledge, 1996), 7. 15 Barrett, Kurian, and Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia, 687, 689. 16 Professor Jesse Mugambi characterizes the phenomenon as an “invasion of Africa’s living rooms and villages by the mass media from the affluent nations of Europe and North America.” (Jesse N. K. Mugambi, “A Fresh Look at Evangelism in Africa,” International Review of Missions 87 [1998]: 342). The subtext of Mugambi’s comment and of most recent assessments of the impact of church mission outreach is that an increasingly unwelcome transmission of political (and cultural) values has accompanied European and American church involvements in Africa. Mugambi’s critique also invokes concerns voiced by others about the problematic nature, in general , of foreign missionary activities aimed at converting and proselytizing persons in what have historically been the “receiving” countries (see Yates; and Abdullahi An-Naim, “Competing Claims to Religious Freedom and Communal Self-Determination in Africa,” in Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa, ed. Abdullahi An-Naim [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999], 2–14). Not all scholars, however, are inclined to view mission relationships between the United States and Africa as having moved along this singular trajectory. For example, noted missiologist Lamin Sanneh points out that while western missionaries were complicit at many points with western efforts to undermine African self-determination, western missionaries also contributed in certain ways to the revitalization of African cultures through, among other ways, African cultural resistance to western cultural imposition as well as through missionary fortifications of African cultural forms as vehicles for transmitting the gospel (Lamin Sanneh, “The Yogi and the Commissar: Christian Missions and African Response,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research [January 1991]: 2–11). Moreover, scholars have noted the new reality that no matter how the question of the cultural impact of western missions in Africa is settled, mission relations between Africa and the United States can no longer be understood through the paradigm of the United States (or other western nations) as senders and Africa as receivers. A two-way influence on American and African ecclesiastical life has resulted from American...