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AFRICAN BIBLE ON THE GROUND, OUR LADY OF MT. KENYA BENEDICTINE MONASTERY NANYUKI Can something good come from the African culture? Does Christ find an already laid foundation stone for him to establish his kingdom among the African people? It is shocking when if you asked someone: who is an African? What was the reply? A black person! It is really lamentable considering the harm that the colonial masters impacted on the African people. They described them as and so the Africans believed. In memory of these dehumanizing agony, to remind the generations to come about the trauma they underwent, they (Africans) named some sites with names that demonstrate their laments. For example, African Shrine of Black Pain in Senegal. They described Africans with negative phrases in all aspects of life, ranging from social, political, economic, religious and cultural spheres. Everything from African people was barbaric, primitive, uncivilized and unworthy having. In fact, Africans themselves, according to the colonial masters, were primitive and without a culture, and they felt it their responsibility to civilize them.

The process of evangelization coincided with colonization, and the two parties seemed to enrich each other since they had, though different objects, nevertheless, the target was one. Peter Scheler puts it, “when Christianity went from Europe to (…) Africa, it often travelled with colonizers. Armed with the myths of the superiority of the western European culture, they simply transplanted western Christianity to (…) African soil, showing little respect, and often disdain, for traditional African cultures.” Unfortunately, the process of Christianisation took the same attitudinal inclination towards Africans. Nothing from African sphere was worthy assimilating in the process of evangelization. As a result, “the missionary movements imposed western culture on the people who were being evangelized on the assumption that western culture was “Christianity”; while ‘African’ culture was dismissed as pagans and heathen. Traditional African religious insights was in any sense nonsensical, uncritical and therefore unreasoned and were in need of rigorous expunge from theological schools before anything would receive credibility as African religion. The missionaries largely depended on the collected and distorted images of Africa so that anything like Truth, objectivity – in short Africa itself was lost. Africa was “a numinous absence” that waited to be discovered, to speak, to be understood. The yardstick for conversion was “abandoning traditional African customs because “they are uncritical” and adopting western ones.” This obviously, resulted to a life of double standards among African converts. On one hand, F.B. Welbourne argues: “accepted the norms introduced by the missionaries who saw nothing valuable in African culture. On the other hand, the converts could not deny their own cultural identity. They could not substitute their denominational belonging for their cultural and religious heritage.” This was and is still a temptation to the modern Christian. Witchcraft and sorcery are great temptations, ancestral spirits are sought or consulted during times of crisis or emergency even for professing Christians. The traditional help derived from traditional herbs are strongly preferred in great need. African traditional religion is regarded as a final assistance by most Africans. This is a religious conflict or rather confusion between Traditional African religious powers as preferred over Christianity, which through agents has sought to “disapprove” African Traditional Religious wisdom. Is a crisis that is no need to be arising from the fact that Christ is not properly understood in the lives of many. The African converts who found themselves at the mercy of these missionary agents, were baptized and became Christians. But then they hungered for Christ who seemed too far removed from their concrete life experience.

Instead of inculturation, the missionaries applied acculturation method: the transplantation of the Church in Europe shaped by the European culture and planting it into the African Culture but without due respect for the African Traditional Religious and cultural values. This in implication leaves Christ a stranger on the African soil. Though many accepted Christ and were baptized, Christ did not sink deeply into their lives. They practice a superficial Christianity or faith in Christ. More detestable in character was that, some dropped their Christian names in favour of indigenous African names. For instance, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta dropped his name “Johnstone.” They saw Christianity as “most colonial powers, believing that it (Christianity in western attires) truth embodied in a superior culture, and that those it encountered inferior and without true values or a significant cultural heritage.” Acculturation method of evangelization, the central and propelling mentality is the principle of imposition. The process whereby “doctrines, religious customs, morals and ways of praying and acting are brought from outside, from a foreign or alien culture and traditions, and imposed or forced upon the new culture. It shows no respect or regard, for the values, customs, and religious traditions of the group that is the object of mission… the new religion or gospel is set over or imposed on the old culture and is never given the opportunity to take root.” In this regard, though people may accept (as they did) Christianity, the practice of this religion remains so superficial.

Peter Sarpong of Ghana expressed this superficiality of Christian practice in the following terms: “Alas, he (…) searches in vain for his heart’s desire in the Christian church. The Christian church in its wake abolished his cherished institutions through which he (An African) was himself. In fact, the drums and African dances were completely proscribed as unbecoming of a Christian. Puberty and initiation ceremonies, the mainstay of juvenile morality, communal festivity, and social solidarity were condemned by Christianity as repulsive, repugnant, abhorrent, ridiculous etc.” Acculturation did not only destroy people’s identity but also laid a siege on the foundation upon which Christ would and had been laying for inaugurating His kingdom among the African people, for many centuries. This is evident in the words of the above quoted bishop, and he says, “We are now able to lament that at its inception Christianity did not realize that African ground had long been carefully prepared by God for the reception of the Christian seed; and that that see had in the course of the centuries inevitably put on the cultural garments of civilization.” In these terms, one realizes that African people were living the gospel even before the dawn of the missionary activities on African soil, that then watered down this gospel. For us, it was a lived Christianity, that is, Bible on the Ground was at the heart of the African life. In other words, the Bible was embodied in the African cultural heritage.

It is on the basis of the above brief analysis that the message of Saint Pope John Paul II (the driving force of the concept of the African Bible on the Ground) falls into perspective, and I quote:

“In order that the Word of God may be known, loved, pondered and preserved in the hearts of the faithful (cf. Lk 2:19,51), greater efforts must be made to provide access to the Sacred Scriptures ..., efforts must be made to try to put the Sacred Scriptures into the hands of all the faithful right from their earliest years.” '''Br. Augustine Peter Simiyu, OSB.'''