The Bible and African Culture: Mapping Transactional Inroads

CHAPTER THREE - Mapping the Transaction Between the African Culture and the Bible

Mapping the Transaction Between the African Culture and the Bible CHAPTER THREE Mapping the Transaction Between the African Culture and the Bible Introduction T he transaction between the African culture and the Bible is a relatively recent development. It is a natural development of a church coming of age. Culturally it corresponds to the casting off of colonial rule and constraints, as nation after nation became independent. Perhaps most significantly it coincides with ‘the rebirth of African culture’ (Baur 2000:430). Therefore an important aspect of the Bible in Africa is the mapping of the transactions that constitute the history of the encounters between Africa and the Bible (West 2001:84). It is interesting to note that a number of scholars, like Elizabeth Isichei (1995) and Ype Schaaf (1994), have engaged in this transaction but with little interest in the kind of transaction that has been taking place between theAfrican culture and the Bible. However there are other scholars, like Vincent L. Wimbush (1993) and Nahashon Ndung’u (1997), who note that someAfrican Independent Churches such as the Akurinu and Zionist churches emerged with a deliberate rejection of the beliefs and practices of the mission churches and gave the Bible a new interpretive approach, which helped them to identify their own teachings and practices in their transactions. There were a number of initial impetuses to the development of the dialogue between theAfrican culture and the Bible. One was the formation ofAfrican Independent Churches (AIC).As early as 1821, A Transaction between the African Culture and the Bible in Sierra Leone, anAfrican Independent Church was formed because of discontent with white missionaries. In the 1890’s these churches began being formed in Nigeria and today they are a major sector in African Christianity. Many have been formed in order to be independent and to express Christianity in ways more appropriate to their experience, even though not all may have been formed for noble reasons. This makes it clear thatAfricans do not transact with the Bible ‘empty handed’, separate from their experiences of reality, both religio-culturally and socio-politically. In their particular hermeneutic strategies for transacting with the Bible they are adept at using the full array of scholarly interpretive resources on offer, in order to engage the Bible in dialogue (West 2001:86). La négritude, a movement initiated by Leopold Senghor, was the beginning of the transaction between theAfrican culture and the Bible. Associated with him are Aimé Césaire and Léon Coutran Damas. These were part of a group of African writers (perhaps an organised group calledAfricanWriters) who began to challenge both the colonial system and missionaries. The La negritude movement called attention to what it meant to beAfrican and began to establish the distinctive values of African-ness. This was an important reversal of the negative ways in which colonialism and missionaries viewed African culture and religion. From this movement came the study of African oral traditions. The publication of these studies resulted in a growing appreciation and awareness of the cultural wisdom and riches of Africa. This writing and cultural movement was helped by the Blackconsciousness movement of the United States of America (Black is Beautiful) and the magazine PresenceAfricaine.Anumber ofAfrican writers, including Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya) were well received inAfrica and the appreciation ofAfrican life and values was heightened. The development and articulation of a distinctively African philosophy may be attributed to African original thinkers such as Senghor who began to describeAfrican thought and worldview. The book Bantu Philosophy by Placide Tempels, a missionary priest in 50 Mapping the Transaction Between the African Culture and the Bible what was then Zaire, is regarded as a most significant development. This was first written in 1945 in French, with an English version published in 1969. Tempels analysed African culture and thought categories and has been called the ‘Father ofAfrican Theology’. He concluded that the most basic focus of the wholeAfrican worldview and religion is ‘life-force’ (la force vitale). African thinkers have developed his ideas further. However the first African to write a philosophical study wasAlexis Kagame, a Rwandan, who developed an African ontology based on the Bantu philosophy of Tempels: Muntu - God, spirits and men; Kintu - animals, plants and minerals; Hantu - time and space; kuntu - modality, such as beauty and laughter.1 Africans thinkers finally settled on three general areas of revolution against foreign domination: political, cultural...