Most African Christians may have misread the bible

The hardline position of, especially, the evangelical churches in Africa has led to murmurs about the rise of Christian Talibans. This socially conservative movement might be the one grabbing the headlines, but it is fairly new.

More importantly, though, it would be wrong to think there is no liberal tradition in the churches. There is, and a section of the church has a much more ambitious agenda that goes beyond the wedge issues of gays and abortion. One initiative that typifies this liberal trend is the Accra Confession. Looked up from today’s charged environment, it is remarkably liberal. In 2004, at the 24th General Council in Accra, Ghana, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) adopted a confession of faith based on the conviction that “the integrity of our faith is at stake if we remain silent or refuse to act in the face of the current system of neoliberal economic globalisation”.

The Confession believes that the integrity of the Christian faith is at stake because of one predominant reason— the global market economy.

Because of this, the Church has redefined itself, and its agenda. There were two meetings that saw this come to this realisation; the meeting between the Southern African constituency of Reformed Christians and WARC in 1995, which produced the Kitwe Declaration, and the 23rd General Council meeting in 1997.

Market Economy

The Kitwe Declaration stated that the global market economy “usurps the sovereignty of God,” raising questions as to idolatry, and claims that the global economy has a dehumanising nature, excluding Africans from the human family. The global market, the meetings held, becomes part of the Christian agenda because not only is it “a direct contradiction of the faith that we were created by God in God’s image” and should include all in the human family but also because this system of wealth accumulation at the expense of the poor, is seen as being unfaithful to God and his teachings.

The 23rd General Council meeting in Hungary (1997) was based on a process of ‘recognition, education and confession’. The Church was deliberately trying to form a better understanding of the world we live in so that it can make informed decisions. What WARC discovered was a dramatic “convergence between the suffering of the people and the damage done to the rest of creation” as a result of the current World Economic order. WARC views it as a profit-driven and consumerist system with a strong disregard of the environment, leading to a loss of species.

This liberal trend has transformed ethical and environmental issues into theological ones upon the realisation that economic systems have become a matter of life and death and that this in turn contradicts God’s call to life for all.

Expanded Agenda

The Accra Confession is not a one off indicator of the movement. WARC even appears to be the institution at the forefront of this campaign.

Its far-reaching congregation should give an idea of the scale of the trend: WARC is the largest and oldest of the four international groupings of Reformed Churches and has a fellowship of approximately 76 million Reformed Christians in 218 churches in 107 countries.

It is hugely influential in Africa but it appears that many member African Churches are still ‘going conservative’.

Africa is “stuck” on the wedge topics while the liberal trend has moved onto the economy and the environment. Also, when you look at the degree of progression the Reformed churches abroad are taking towards wedge issues, they have far transcended what African churches continue to grapple with.

Homosexuality is a topic often referred to in Africa with negative connotations, a ‘Western thing’ or import, denoting the extremities of existing social conservatism. On the other-hand, in 2000, the Executive Committee of WARC made a declaration stating that homosexual persons ought not to be deprived of their human rights. It was even recommended that member Churches should “work with civil authorities” to ensure that people of homosexual orientation received “full and just protection under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN”.

The Reformed Church in America states that “there are varied and complex causes of homosexual orientation and behaviour; hence, simplistic analyses and solutions should be questioned”. And in America, over the course of the last couple of weeks, the Episcopal Church formally ordained its second gay bishop, Reverend Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool. The depth of its determination for understanding has yet to be replicated in many of Africa’s, predominantly evangelical, institutes.

Humanitarian Grounds

Compare this to the situation in Uganda where religious activist Pastor Martin Ssempa organised a rally to unite “Ugandan people” in support of a draft bill which makes homosexual acts punishable by life in prison, and death in some circumstances. Reverend Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool could be behind bars rather than in front of congregations if she were born in Malawi. A fortnight ago, gay couple Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were jailed for 14 years only to be pardoned last week. President Bingu wa Mutharika said he would release the couple on “humanitarian grounds only.” He made the announcement during a news conference with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

You may ask, so what if the conservative church in Africa stood by and watched or condoned this ‘anti-ism’? The relevance is that not only is it going against what has been a long-time-coming liberal movement in the global churches but that it is also rallying the flock behind what liberal theology would term as the wrong kind of sin.

Liberation theologists are the great minds behind the progressive trend. They believe that the basic context within which the Church operates includes social and liberating dimensions. This lends to the argument that a sin is a social, historical fact which is not primarily from an individual perspective but is also dictated by the relationships amongst humans.

Sin

The Church should therefore embrace its political dimension and develop a society-transforming vision of reality, as opposed to a merely private vision of personal salvation. This would mean that, a sin is also regarded as having been committed when one goes along passively with the oppression rather than resisting and attempting to overthrow it.

This approach is as old as many of the African continent’s modern nations and has become increasingly adopted the world over.

Liberation theology was evident in Latin America during the earliest colonial days. Churchmen and missionaries (first identified with the Catholic Church) questioned the oppression of the Latinos and the trend became even more fervent throughout the 1960s as bishops and priests called for national modernisation in the face of the interdependent and unequal developmental processes of the Western. This spearheaded the coming together of Christian groups all over the world in a struggle for social and political liberation.

The Catholic Church has had waves of openness to the concepts of liberation theology and the more progressive trends. From 1962 to 1965, the Vatican Council II criticised the wide disparity between the world’s rich and poor nations, in 1968 the Medellin Conference of Latin American Bishops denounced inequality and the unjust use of power for exploitation and even Pope John Paul II spent years dedicating himself to the establishment of a balanced policy on political activism for the Roman Catholic Clergy.

More recently however, the theology has become something that exists predominantly in academic circles, rather than religious congregations. This has been attributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s opposition to the Church losing its focus as a religious mission and his negativity towards the Marxist form of Theology of Liberation as well as the general attitude that many of the issues it dealt with have now passed, such as, the independence movements.

The question which must therefore be asked is why liberation theology is being adopted in some circumstances and yet not others?

In Africa, there have been signs of progression with regards to the Reformed Church approach to the environment. This is predominantly because the Churches want to take responsibility for caring for the world which God brought into being. In South Africa there is the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, which forms part of the South African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI) and in Nigeria individual Churches such as the Decross Gospel Mission Headquarter Church, Agege, are taking the initiative to clean up their environment.

If the Churches in Africa are willing to protect the environment, which God brought into being, it is surely contradictory that they do not also protect the homosexuals that God brought into being or adopt more ambitious agendas, particularly if it means that they are committing a sin if they do not.

It could be debated that perhaps certain Churches choose not to adopt the liberal stance so as not to ‘rock the boat’ and risk losing funding or members. They are comfortable to stick to wedge issues which help them tend to the flock. Perhaps, the reason for continued conservatism is based on the Catholic Church’s position; the liberal movement, based on liberation theology, is more feasible in rhetoric rather than action.

Nevertheless, their stringent determination against open-mindedness and aversion to issues which appear to be at the core of the Christian faith, gives a whole new meaning to the power of nightmares. There must be more to it than just beliefs.

The writer is Research Editor with the Nation Media Group’s Africa and Digital Division.

Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network Project.