USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Fw: Faith and Justice-October 22,2017: Why African Christianity Lacks Spiritual Purpose and Power

Professor John  H. Stanfield III has said it all in this article posted by Wofa Akwasi, himself a man of the cloth. As  well as posing many problems, the article raises more than a few questions. Leaving aside some of the theological basis of once upon a time there was something called Apartheid and some of the theological basis of their assumptions , also leaving aside these two  items ( item one and item two ) that popped up in my mailbox, I want to comment on this broadside, but am I in any way, qualified to do so?

About Judaism or Islam, even some choice aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism, bring it on, but Christianity? I wish that I too could make a linguistic analysis of the Greek Bible, but unfortunately, abysmal ignorance is where I'm coming from. Apart from a full immersion baptism in that river in Umuahia, and the sprinkling of some "holy water" on my head, what do I know about Christ-ianity, really?  After all, one man's holy water is another man's holy ogogoro.

When I got back to Sweden,in the first half of 1985 I attended some pentecostal churches such as Citykyrkan, Philadelphia, Maranata, and Livets Ord whose leader Ulf Ekman has since converted to Roman Catholicism. In the second half of 1985, I attended several orthodox churches but mostly the Russian (nice priest Father Mathias), the Greek, Ethiopian, Syrian, Estonian (great choir) and Finnish Orthodox churches in Stockholm and had some brief correspondence contact with an American monk in Valamo...all this, mainly inspired by Seraphim Rose's book Orthodoxy and the religion of the future . Which doesn't mean to say that I didn't have a first cousin, my first cousin who is the very first to be ordained a catholic priest long before I was born - in France in 1939 and that's also where he breathed his last breath in 1984 after unsuccessfully prevailing upon me to follow in his footsteps. I can say this about the church / churches in Sweden : They give a lot of money, medical and educational  aid  to the poor people in Africa, Ethiopia and the two Congos especially;  secondly there are now a great many Nigerian  missionaries and their assistants in Sweden, trying to convert the heathen over here , to Christianity...

Only at the behest of my daughters in London, one a lawyer, the younger one a theologian ( with a masters in theology) , speaking so highly of Chris Oyakhilome have I of late been reading the Gospels ( I like the Gospel according to John, maybe because immediately after visiting the ruins of a Greek temple of Artemis, I visited St. John's Basilica in Ephesus in Turkey, two years ago, after which many things happened.)  But what do I know?

Well, I do know this and mainly speaking as me I ask the kwestion : Rituals , yes, but where is spirituality to be found in any of the churches, anywhere ? If you know, please tell me and the other ignoramuses  because somewhere in one of the Bibles it is written,  " Seek and ye shall find!"

(By the way, everytime I hear Oyakhilome's name mentioned I think of that con-man Elmer Gantry ( As for Igbos being one of the lost tribes of Israel  - one of the tribes kidnapped by Nebuchadnezzar and taken to Babylon which is in Iraq, last night, as I was asking  Kassim , my friend from Sierra Leone, how did they travel all the way from Iraq to Umuahia and more importantly what is the name of their God?)

Also recently, albeit with great reservation and scepticism , I have been reading Brother Nathanael's Real Jew News

When it comes to the church in Africa , especially the church ( Assemblies of God)  that I was acquainted with in Rivers State and Imo State,  on the one hand there is Jesus saying (as I understand him)  "Blessed are the poor in spirit and the downtrodden, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven",  which Fela has adequately translated to mean " suffer suffer for world enjoy for heaven…"  - and on the other hand,

whilst  the poor and downtrodden are forever suffering, the pentecostal pastors and evangelists are busy preaching some kinds of " prosperity gospel" and forever becoming richer and richer, whilst the poor Brethren and laity are getting exponentially more and more mired in poverty. It would seem that they are not preaching the social gospel  or the " take up your cross and follow me , " in Africa.

Question : Where does the Church stand in Muhammadu Buhari's fight against corruption?  I should like to hear from  ethicists of high standing such as the trinity/ toika of  

Professor Nimi Wariboko,  

Dr. Obadiah Mailafia

Bishop Kukah

In my own holy opinion, what the suffering masses of African Christians need now whilst still down here on earth is some holy dose of Islam ( to wake them up) or some radical LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Maybe the missionaries should send a few people like Cornel West over to the motherland, to preach some good news and stimulate some of the young , innocent minds, to more of social action/ activism?

On Sunday, 22 October 2017 17:46:07 UTC+2, aassenso wrote:

SHARING THE PIECE BELOW BY INDIANA UNIVERSITY EMERITUS PROFESSOR JOHN H. STANFIELD III

Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations is a global Internet-based  multiethnic spiritual direction ministry without walls headquartered in Southern Africa and in the United States  for everyone though is, especially for devout Christians without a church home and church attending devout Christians interested in discussing and effectively addressing difficult and challenging  justice and ethical concerns in their  lives,families, and communities.

 

  

 

FAITH AND JUSTICE NOTES AND REFLECTIONS

John H. Stanfield,II

Copyrighted 2017 Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations, Inc.

 

October 22

 

 

"The Missionary Legacy And Its Successors: Why African Christianity Lacks Real Spiritual Purpose and Power"

 

Blessings to all of you!

Christianity in African countries and in other regions in the world where European descent missionaries imposed their oppressive brand of Christianity   was and still  is about  capitalistic plunder and control rather than the liberation meaning of what it means to be a Christ-like person. If you don't believe me just go to virtually any African, Latin American, and Asian country and you will find that missionaries in too many cases decades ago managed to get the best land for their churches and also for their private residences. To this day, missionaries remain the biggest owners of land both rural and urban in such nations.

And what missionaries did historically in land grabbing  and living like kings and queens is what is still going on as the missionary manifestations of traditional denominations continues to give way to mega prosperity congregations being piped into African and other traditional colonized regions and nations by American and European religious movers and shakers. Such secular power brokers in the realm of global prosperity Christianity are, in so many cases, more  concerned with globalizing their profit making than winning souls to Christ in need to understand and practice the justice imperatives in their lives in Christ.

The prosperity messages of mega church preachers in Africa ,with their faith and get rich under tones and schemes , are nothing more than the continuation of the colonial legacy in the importation and imposition of a type of Christianity stressing manipulation , control and passivity  than the liberation purposes of the birth, ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The prosperity message means local church  attendance and participation are  supposed to be somewhere to get happy with shouting and dancing giving your all to the pastor with the hope of a better day here on earth. Church is not some where you learn how to speak to power as Jesus commands in the Holy Scriptures.  To stress that liberation message of Christ is to strike the match of questioning authority and to rebel against the evils of the oppression colonialism and neo-colonialism brings and legitimates and to in other ways, shake up status quos collusive with  efforts to keep people oppressed and otherwise dehumanized.

When we are liberated, set free by Christ it means, for instance, communion in church takes on a meaning those who read their Bibles well understand. Communion is, in such liberation awareness situations, where Christ like people come together to re-dedicate their lives to each other; meaning liberating each other and thus ourselves.  Communion then is not a dead ritual of conformity to religious orders which at times are more secular than the world. It is a practice which should remind the Christ-like to be concerned about speaking to power, to advocate for empowerment until it happens and continue to make sure empowerment is sustained.

But , the warped image of Christ as the janitor who keeps the church building clean and nothing else  is why  it is so easy to understand why you hear Christ-like people in colonized societies always talking about God and enjoying going to church so much while their lives are so filled with poverty and misery and with contradictions. It is because they have not been exposed to what it means to be liberation oriented Christ-like disciples since the missionaries and their descendants have never taught that and surely that is as well the case with contemporary prosperity preachers. A major contradiction is appearing to be so holy but being corrupt in personal dealings with others and/or  simply not understanding the clear difference being going to church and living for Christ and how if not careful and discerning the former can inhibit the latter. It becomes the reason why it becomes so easy for those who do violence, genocide, and war in such colonial spaces embedded in a brand of Christianity without spiritual power or conviction to do so  as the profess believing in  a distorted image of Christ. It reminds me of the Rwanda the most Christianized nation in Africa in 1994 when the 100 days genocide was sparked 3 days after Easter with not a few church going genociders claiming to do God's work as they slaughtered thousands.

This distorted view about Jesus and the subsequent absence of sustain spiritual growth, is of course a major crisis in global Christianity but it is worst where the colonial distorted traditions of Christianity. In such traditions of religious  control and manipulation, for generations if not centuries people have been encouraged to be and to  remain disempowered with no  sense of what it means to be  authentically spiritually empowered and thus liberated .Such  perverted religious traditions wrought by the legacy of historical  colonialism  and its contemporary institutional and ideological so called  theological manifestations  drain away spiritual  awareness, commitment, and dedication replacing it with holy looking appearances with being evil and doing wicked things to others and with a pious smile at that—or just being a sweet passive person who has no awareness or interest in justice for self and for others.

It is no wonder, from a practical theological perspective, that the colonized areas of the world I am speaking about continue to have such a myriad of societal problems since there is no or much real faith in believing in a God who can deliver if we are faithful.  God like them is passive, smiling all the time with no power to do anything but grin. For this reason, it is time for those Christ-like brothers and sisters in places where European colonialism has its grip on mind-sets so intensely to begin to come together to develop an understanding of the perverted kind of Christianity they have been taught over the generations, critique it, and develop more effective ways to usher in the liberating nature of Christ in their lives.   

Love, Justice, Peace

John

Senior Pastoral Facilitator

Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations

Notes and Reflections

October 22, 2017 copyright

 

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