African answers to African realities

With the modern, fast means of communication, what happens in China is immediately relayed, live and fresh, to some village in Africa. The news may arouse emotions in people, several thousand kilometres apart, as if they are physically witnessing the events. This is our situation today; one simply cannot remain untouched by what’s happening around the world.

While this is good especially in promoting the sense of human solidarity, at the same time, it can be a great distraction with serious consequences. So we should be watchful to avoid landing into a kind of globalisation that wipes out what is particular, urgent and relevant to a local situation.

This means that we must have a balanced global vision, but retain our wits to identify and focus effort on the pressing needs at home, else we might squander energy on problems that are really somewhere else.

This is true for the Church too as it aims to find the equilibrium as both universal and local Church. Unless we keep this in mind, our evangelising activities become depleted of immediacy, urgency and freshness thereby compromising what a Good News should really be.

The Synod for Africa in October 2009 stressed the need for Africans to take their destiny into their hands. The Church is an important agent in that assumption of self-responsibility. This resonates with Ecclesia in Africa, the post-synodal apostolic exhortation of John Paul II following the first Synod for Africa a decade and a half ago: “A serious concern for a true and balanced inculturation is necessary in order to avoid cultural confusion and alienation in our fast evolving society.” And quoting his own address during a visit to Malawi, he added: “Many people in Africa look beyond Africa for the so-called freedom of the modern way of life. Today I urge you to look inside yourselves. Look to the riches of your own traditions”.

These rich words should be understood and applied in the manner that does justice both to the meaning of the author, but also to their depth. Besides the warning against the negative influences to avoid, I think, this wisdom should also be received as an exhortation to curb a culture of unnecessary dependency that passes stealthily, and, in the context of the universal Church, whereby the responsibility of being also a local Church is diluted. What does this mean in practice?

In the midst of abundant information and events going on in the Church all over the world, the African Church should discern what the issues are. What are the real issues, of our people; and what is the message, what is the Good News to give them only after which some other things may come?

This may not be as easy to apply as it seems to be, bearing in mind the culture of dependency which Africa has apparently accepted as normal. We seem to have an engraved culture of receiving: economically, politically, culturally and philosophically and ecclesiastically. Africa feels compelled to copy the examples of other regions, thinking that what works there will work here.

This is not to say Africa has nothing to contribute, but rather to highlight how imbibing foreign stuff is impoverishing Africa when true exchange is absent.

Materialism and secularism are some of the pronounced challenges that the Western Church is facing. These pose real dangers. Their damaging effects, through media, are transmitted live to some village in Africa. It’s good to learn from what is happening in other places, and if necessary warn the people especially that the attitude towards material wealth surely goes beyond who has or who does not.

Attachment to material is not a privilege of the rich; a poor person too may have an attitude that borders on materialism. Hence, it’s a message for both the West and for Africa.

As an African Church, among other things, we have an urgent mission to encourage people to try different possibilities to improve their way of living; to help people see that the resources around them are gifts from God who will be delighted if they worked more creatively and used them responsibly to enhance human life.

Materialism is just one example to show how we may become obsessed with things that are not appropriate to African life. This may arise often because we want to be up-to-date, use the language that everyone else is using, address problems that we see everyone is tackling — and we stand a better chance of being funded if we follow suit. Sure, it’s enriching to see how others are living and learn from them, but it’s not an excuse for losing the compass of our position.

This is where I feel Africa, especially the African Church, should rise, pick up her pallet, and walk by striking her balance in confident consciousness, in practice, that she is a universal Church which is equally local.

The African Church needs to grow in being original in responding to her local concerns with immediacy and urgency, and not be a simple follower of style.