Christian faith and African tradition

At a conference held recently on spiritual direction, I asked the question: To what extent can we accommodate traditional African beliefs that are not consistent with the Gospel message of Christ?Many who commented acknowledged this was an important question, but no one gave a clear answer. In this column I hope to start a serious debate on the question by taking us back to the teachings of the apostles.

A Catholic woman sings during Mass at a church in Garissa, Kenya. (Photo: Goran Toma sevic, Reuters/CNS)

It is necessary to begin by articulating three important principles: First, inculturation-presenting the faith through the culture of the people-is a positive approach to evangelisation.
Second, there is no culture which is superior to another, meaning that teaching the Christian faith to African people through the medium of Western culture, as many missionaries did on the grounds that traditional African culture was primitive, was a wrong approach, even if the intentions were good.

Third, Jesus said he came not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them (Mt 5:17). This statement is relevant to the way the Church should deal with traditional African beliefs.

The issue of the relationship between the Christian faith and traditional beliefs and practices has been an important consideration since the very early days of the Church. In fact, what may be called the first Council of the Church was held to deal with this very issue.

In Acts 15 we are told about how some Jewish Christians from Judaea went to Antioch and taught that Gentile Christians had to be circumcised. After praying about it and debating it, the apostles sent Judas and Silas with Paul and Barnabas to deliver this message to the believers in Antioch: It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality (Acts 15:28-29).

By this the apostles meant that Gentile Christians did not have to adopt Jewish traditions. They were also telling Gentile Christians to abstain from certain Gentile practices that were not consistent with the Gospel.

In his later writings Paul emphasised that even for Jewish Christians like himself, certain religious practices that were allowed under the Law of Moses were no longer necessary as these had been superseded by the supreme sacrifice made by Christ on the Cross. Consequently, circumcision and the offering of the blood of animals were no longer necessary.

In the same vein, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews explains that Christ made his sacrifice through a tabernacle that was superior to the tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption (Acts 9:12).

What are the implications of this discussion for African Christians? There is no space here to comment on the issue in anything like sufficient detail. Suffice it to note the following: If the sacrifices that God allowed our Father in faith, Abraham, to perform, and the circumcision which God ordered Abraham to undergo in terms of the Old Covenant, have been superseded by the supreme sacrifice of Christ, it consequently follows that all traditional African practices such as circumcision, divination and the sacrificing of animals and birds have also been superseded by Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, and should accordingly be discontinued.

Dependence on traditional beliefs and practices such as those just mentioned is an indication of faith that is still immature, still in its infancy. If we want to assist some of the African believers in townships and rural communities to have a more mature faith, we must help them to develop a Christianity that empowers them to encounter God through faith in Christ.

Paul urges all of us to develop a mature faith, to no longer live as the Gentiles do: Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ (See Ephesians 4:14-17).