Crossroads of Western Quakerism in Africa -- 2

Before the coming of the white missionaries into the East African region, African people had already been solidly grounded in the knowledge of God, and the concept of Trinity was evidently present in their day to day worship. For example, the Bukusu, an ethnic group in western Kenya, among whom Jefferson and Helen Ford, M. Estock, and Fred and Alta Hoyt worked as missionaries, the Supreme Being was addressed in three dimensions: Wele Baba, Wele Mukhobe, and Wele Murumwa (God the Father, God the Herald, and God the Messenger respectively). God the Father, Wele Baba, was also adorned with a variety of attributes such as, Muumba, meaning The Creator. The name God the Herald, Wele Mukhobe, carries with it the concept of spokesmanship. Wele Murumwa has the attributes of the Holy Ghost, who was sent as a messenger to reveal the mysteries’ secrets to the people.

The number three was a symbol in high esteem in the African religious heritage. Each of the three personalities mentioned above functions with equal power. Just as each of the three traditional firestones served important but equal roles in supporting and providing balance to the cooking pot, none of the three persons of the Trinity was subservient to the other.

Every time an African old man or woman went out on safari at dawn, he or she would enter the shrine, with three stones at the center, to ask God to remove the evil god, Wele Kubi, from the way. Or in the absence of a shrine one would stand in front of the door of his or her hut, face the rising sun and spit three times towards the direction of the rising sun.

This is deep theology the early missionaries failed to comprehend or misinterpreted. To them this was a mythology associated with fetish or ancestral worship.

Of course, one could argue that several factors stood against the missionaries’ advancement into an understanding of various as-pects of the African spiritual life that would include a demythologi-zation of the African concepts. To me, that is simply a lame excuse. The Bukusu concepts can be easily demythologized as follows.

In the first place, the shrine was simply a dedicated place of worship, equivalent to the present day Church, Temple, or Mosque with symbolic facilities in the altar. The standing position facing the rising sun simply represented total adoration and thanks giving to the Creator for daybreak. This act was exemplified in the spitting of saliva three times, each time offered as an honor to one of the three persons of the Trinity for their corporate benevolence to humanity. Of course this was, and still is, the practice of consecration with holy water, found especially within the contemporary Catholic and higher Anglican faiths. Wele Kubi was a malevolent god who was usually associated with all sorts of calamities in a society. It was an evil god always in combat with the powers of the Triune God.

Witnessing this overwhelming and incomprehensible African theology, Willis Hotchkiss concluded that "no doubt the African has a knowledge of God, a supreme being, but that being is remote, unconcerned about mundane affairs" (Hotchkiss,144). Hotchkiss therefore advised his fellow missionaries to make the African worship of the "unknown God" as the starting point from which the African would be pointed to the Lamb of God. Hotchkiss still misses the point here.

In reality, one would say that the missionaries who went to East Africa to plant the seed found already prepared fertile soil for the superlative spiritual message. The African was already educated in the supernatural concepts. Unlike the average congregation in the Western world, the African congregation had already been thoroughly "sold" on the proposition of the concept of miracles.

The African God and the God of the Early Missionaries

May I now invite the reader to do a bit of theological reflection here to discuss the question of the African God and the God of the early missionaries? What I have offered above is only a tip of the iceberg. African theology is a comprehensive one. If by the time of the missionary enterprise in the East African region, the African had already been immersed in the knowledge of God, the Supreme Being, then how remote was the African God? Was this God remote by nature or was God made remote at the introduction of the missionary God in the concepts of Western theology? The missionary God was and is remote in many aspects, such as in language and style of worship. The use of inclusive language in personal pronouns attributed to God is a creation and the problem of Western theology. Most African languages have no personal pronouns equivalent to those in the English language.

When the missionary God was introduced as the only God to be worshiped through Jesus Christ, the entire African way of life changed. The Africans were made to discard their African names for Western names. The African worshiper was made to move from his sanctuary, the African shrine, to a church decorated in Western styles. He was taught to face the altar instead of the rising sun while praying. And the concept of the use of spiritual water displaced his use of saliva in moments of consecration.

In the Post Missionary Era

In the post missionary era, God has become remote and very much limited to the confines of Western theology. God is to be preached, addressed, and worshiped in the manner in which God was introduced. The various activities of Christian missionary societies had a profound impact on African societies. In the first place, the standard of living of the converts changed forever. The African people began wearing European style clothes. They gained access to modern medicine and their research in the advancement of African traditional medicine was discouraged. They lived in houses built in modern European style. Practice of monogamous marriages took hold and the institutions of polygamous marriages were destroyed. In short, the African converts were made to feel contemptuous of their own traditional institutions that for many centuries had held communities together (Boahen,16).

Western missionaries failed to identify themselves with ethnic ambitions and idiosyncracies. They still do to this day. The continuing American presence in the running of projects in East Africa prevents full development of the African Christians. Their presence destroys the superior physical qualities of African Christianity. Independence, courage, bravery and daring self-reliance, and readiness to face difficulties are obviously discouraged. The continuing American presence only increases the attitude of dependency. Most aid that goes to Africa is accompanied with a notion that Africans are primitive and static in development.

Many missionaries went to Africa with a notion that Africa could only be civilized by introducing Christianity, formal education, capitalism, industrialization, and the American Protestant work ethic. Adu Boahen sees colonial conquest as just another way of accomplishing this mission. He argues that the missionaries collaborated with colonists to produce the African in their European image. Colonial rulers as well as missionaries condemned everything African (Boahen, 36). African names, music, dance, art, marriage, systems of inheritance – all were excluded from school and college curricular and Church programs.

The kind of Christianity that was introduced by the missionaries in the East African region can be likened to ice cream in a cone cup. We licked the ice cream and ate the cup too.

Works Cited

Boahen, Adu A. African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1997.

Chilson, Edna. Ambassador of the King. Wichita : E. H. Chilson, 1943.

American Friends Board of Foreign Missions. Foreign Mission Work of American Friends: A Brief History of Their Work from Beginning to the Year Nineteen Hundred and Twelve; Each Sketch Prepared by the Board in Control. Richmond, IN.: American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, 1912.

Hotchkiss, Willis R. Then and Now in Kenya Colony: Forty Years in East Africa. London & Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Co.,1937.

Related Resources:

American Friends Board of Missions, Twenty-five Years in East Africa: A Description of the Field and Work of Friends Africa Mission. Richmond, IN: American Friends Board of Missions, 1928?.

Painter, Levinus King, in collaboration with Archie Bond, Fred Reeve, and others. Foreword by Thomas Lung’aho. The Hill of Vision; The Story of the Quaker Movement in East Africa, 1902-1965. [n.p.]: East Africa Yearly Meeting of Friends, [1966].