eBook West African Christianity : The Religious Impact ePub

Robert Recker suggests two main purposes to Sanneh’s argument: (1) to correct the often-told perspective of the spread of Christianity in Africa as a matter of passive reception on the part of native and active work on the part of missionaries (whether good or bad); he contends instead that Africans were active participants in the process, taking the message received from missionaries [or bringing it themselves in the case of freed slaves colonizing Sierra Leone and Liberia] and spreading it among their countrymen – the resulting Christianity, with all its flaws, is not the creation of the missionaries upon the helpless African pawns, but the creation of a process which the Africans were centrally part of—and the flaws of that process show that they are as fallible as any people. (2), Recker says Sanneh wishes to revive the importance of the returning freed-ex-slave colonists in the re-introduction of Christianity into West Africa. (3) Sanneh rejects the claim that the educational enterprise of the missionaries was destructive and irrelevant to Africans, and the claim that Africans need more practical education—but also contends that the growth of the missionaries’ educational enterprise was due to African participation and desire: education is vital to Africa’s future and the Africans, not the missionaries, made their own choices. (4) Sanneh traces the rise of AICs as a positive development of African adaptation of Christianity (and Islam) to their context.
It seems after reading the introduction that the great contribution of this work is the perspective: looking at modern African Christianity not as a product of Western missions, with all the positive or negative baggage a given interpreter may attach to that, but as the product of a primarily African process. The import of the ancient world—both in its impact on what became Western Christianity and it’s continued presence in Africa in its Coptic and Ethiopian forms—is more to Sanneh than most writers, even those who acknowledge it would claim. Further, the “modern” period in Africa is much older than is usually acknowledged—Sanneh begins in the 15th century, for a reason. Further, the African participation in the “Christianization of Africa” is central: African Christianity is not the gain of Western missions, or the sad, manipulated victim of Western missions: it is an African creation, which included Western missionaries among its sources and influencers—but it cannot be viewed as the pawn of outside forces; the “African factor” is the part left out in most discussions, and the essential part of the movement! [We should also note, however, that this perspective is not the only contribution: Sanneh’s work is used as a standard scholarly text in virtually everything I’ve read on Western African Christian history since it’s publication.]
Part of Sanneh’s argument, and reason for starting with the Portuguese in the 15th cen. is it underscores the essentially African task of Christianization in Africa: the early missions up to 1792 failed. Ch. 2-3 on these missions are a list of bright hopes turned to failures. The reason Sanneh suggests and defends is that these were European missions into African contexts, and they failed. In ch. 4 the stories of Sierra Leone and Liberia are told, and the story changes. Sierra Leone, a settlement of returning Africans with British affiliations (either North American or European) is a success story because it is Africans reaching into Africa in a non-exclusive way (Sanneh is insistent that African religions are non-exclusive and Christianity would benefit from this—not sure if he means that Christianity give up its exclusivist claims, or [what seems more the point] that the missionaries’ approach of total intolerance of African religions and rejection of all their input, rather than seeing the worldviews they produce as a basis for Christianity, was unhelpful). Liberia (the 1820s and later American project of slave resettlement), in contrast, while keeping government and church closely united in a very African fashion, did not integrate into the African context or reach much beyond its own enclave because its black colonists had been prepared by the American organizers to redirect the colony’s efforts and religious produce back into the colony. It was not until Prophet William Harris brought a more African face to Liberia’s proselytization that success began to be experienced.
Sanneh bases his telling of the story of African mission work among Africans on newspapers published in the colonies at the time, the observations in travel accounts of Europeans, and accounts of both European observers and black colonists themselves.
In ch. 5 Sanneh praises the educational efforts of the missionaries, even if it was done by fallible men with limited perspectives. He also notes that the birth and growth of ‘Ethiopian’ churches disprove the claim that Christianity prevented Africans from adopting political activism: rather it fomented such activism in the Church itself.
“In many parts of the West the Church has been neutralized, it’s prophetic sting drawn by the effective encirclement of institutional political privilege, with a fate no better than the Church enjoys under Communist domination in the East. This fate has not for the most part overtaken the Churches in Africa, with the notable exception of South Africa. As long as support for the national cause is not exclusively identified with the cause of God, then the Church is proportionately free to be the people of God. The alternative would be to make the national anthem the hymn of orthodox faith. Given this prophetic role of the Church, it is indisputable that for much of Africa Christianity is embarked on the inexorable march of the people of God” (250-1).

Good

The book focus on the encounter of West Africa with the diverse religious traditions that has shaped the sub-regional history. It traced the advent of Christianity into West Africa, beginning with the Portuguese and their desire to find the Kingdom of John Prester. This attempt led to the interactive history between the people of the area and various Western forms of Christianity, and eventually of colonialism. The author also expressed that prior to Christianity acculturation of elements of the traditional th African religious experience had occurred precipitated by contact with Islam. This book provides a wonderful insight into the early period of Christianity in West Africa, and articulates its pre-Christian heritage significantly. I enjoy the book and recommend it to those who want to have any meaningful resources to the happenings in Africa since the 15th Century. This book provides another view of the tripple heritage position as is forcefully articulated by Ali Mazrui and others.