The African missionary Churches’ theology and ecclesiology require deconstruction and transformation to allow new insight and thought. The call for deconstruction and reforming the theology of the former missionary Churches comes at the backdrop of people leaving these Churches to either join new movements or to stay at home, leaving the once mighty Churches’ white elephants. Reformation is an acknowledgement that times change and institutions, including the Church, must move with the times if they are to remain relevant. The nature, structure, and polity of most former missionary Churches make it difficult for the incorporation of new insight and thought, to the extent that the Churches have made recommendations for Change in several areas but due to the bureaucratic structure, the resolutions have remained on paper and were never implemented.
Deconstruction is an interpretive style, a detailed examination of text to show that there is no fixed meaning, but that it can be understood in different ways by each reader.It is a critique of long robed totalizers of capitalised truth (Caputo 2007: 30). In deconstruction, the people’s beliefs and practices are not destroyed but forced to reform and configure (Caputo 2007:27). The goal of deconstruction is not to attack the Church but to offer a critique of the systems, rules, laws and polity, and this helps to ascertain the hidden intentions of the author. The former missionary Churches should engage this interpretive style to their literature, constitutions, rules, and laws, so that it challenges what has been accepted as orthodox belief over the years. Deconstruction brings out the truth, which according to Caputo (2007), once it is out, the beliefs, practices, the texts, or the institutions begin to tremble (2007:30). Deconstruction will help the former missionary Churches to approach their policies, rules and laws, in a way that will listen to the truth as told by the ‘other’, forcing these Churches to realise that in their ecclesiology, this ‘other’ is not represented and that reformation is required.
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When deconstruction as an interpretive hermeneutic is applied very well by the African Church, the Church will realise the need for reformation of its ecclesiology, polity, and theology. In this way, reform in the Church is not done for its own sake, but is guided by the outcome of deconstruction, which brings out the truth that will direct the Church on what needs to be changed or upgraded. I argue that reformation should follow after a proper deconstruction because, as Ghosal (2011) argues, poorly conceived reform can be worse than leaving substandard regulations in place (2011:x). Reform, when properly done, opens new possibilities for effective governance (Jordana and Levi-Faur 2004:2). The reformation required by the former missionary Church in Zimbabwe today can be viewed the same way as the sixteenth century reformation of Luther and his contemporaries, which followed upon a crescendo of rising protest against the spiritual and dogmatic claims of the Catholic Church (Cameron 2004:3). The former missionary Churches in Zimbabwe today are faced with spiritual and dogmatic ecclesiology and theology defined by their denominational colonial missionaries. The sixteenth century reformation removed obstacles which the papal Church had imposed between Christ and the believer and opened doors to direct union with him (Schaff 2002:11). Like the sixteenth century reformation, the former missionary Churches, by reforming their theology and ecclesiology, would be carrying out an act of emancipation from spiritual tyranny, and vindicating sacred rights of conscience in matters of religion and belief (2002:31). Having done a deconstruction, the Church must then use its findings to be able to weigh and agree on how to relate with African traditional religion and culture. Below I discuss four ways of engaging African traditional religion and culture, which could be adopted by the Church.
6.4. 3 Incorporation and inculturation of the indigenous
The call for genuine dialogue between the Christian faith and African traditional religion and culture runs across from the missionary era to the contemporary era in the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe. It is not only the Methodist Church that has discovered the need for dialogue but other denominations too, including the Catholic Church. The failure by some denominations to pay attention to this call is due to the influence of the missionary attitude inherited by these Churches, which viewed African traditional religion and culture as evil, and Christianity as the only religious tradition that could offer salvation to humanity. If the African Church engages in deconstruction
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as suggested above, as a hermeneutic to read its discourse, the polices, rules and regulation, the truth will come which will shake the current beliefs about both African traditional religion and the Christian faith, especially that no religious tradition is all encompassing and superior. Such a discovery makes dialogue necessary and desirable for the future of the Church.
Dialogue between Christianity and African traditional religion in the African Church is necessitated by the resurgence and power of African traditional religion and culture among African converts, and the effects of the Church’s efforts to quell this resurfacing and resurgence through the brutal purging of Christians who continue to adhere to traditional religion and culture. Dialogue between the two faith traditions is also a way toward reformation because if fights against the dismissive tendencies and superiority of any religious tradition. Critical dialogue between the two religious traditions will help identify the inoffensive tenets in African traditional religion that can be used to enhance the Church both numerically and spiritually (Haar, Moyo, Nondo 1992:53). Each religious tradition has its own goodness and at the same time its own negatives. Thus, critical dialogue will help identify both the good and the bad, and in the end, neither of the two is to give up its goodness (Keteyi 1998:36). Dialogue will help the African Church to identify the critical and peripheral elements in both religious traditions. The result of this critical dialogue would be that positive aspects of African traditional religion that have been devalued will be given space in the new dispensation (Osei-Bonsu 2005:21; Udeani 2007:115).
Besides helping the Church deal with the monologue, which has caused systematic violence to those who continued to participate in traditional religion and culture. Critical dialogue helps deal with domination and dictation by one religious tradition. The suppressed voice of African traditional religion and culture will have a chance to be heard during dialogue when its speaks of its golly and strength which was not known because it was never accorded an opportunity to be heard. The contemporary African Church should be guided by its own experiences, its own convictions and its own thinking in carrying out this dialogue, not by the missionary convictions and thinking. The contemporary Church is aware of the environment and spiritual worldview of African converts, such that during the dialogue they are guided by this knowledge of what is positive and negative in African traditional religion and culture. Critical dialogue, if properly conducted, helps the Church not to dismiss for the sake of dismissing, nor accept for the sake of
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accepting, but based on a consideration of life-giving aspects of both African traditional religion and Christianity.
Critical dialogue between the Christian faith and African traditional religion helps Africanize the Church. The African Church should engage the grassroots approach or grounded integration, by encouraging ordinary members to use their everyday spiritual and cultural experiences to forge an integration of their specific cultural contexts with the Christian faith. This, of course, should be opposed to the top-down approach used by the colonial missionary Church and has been challenged by recent scholarship due to its shortcomings. The top-down approach emphasizes the input of those on the hierarchical upper echelons of the Church at the expense of the general religious populace. The approach tends to ignore what happens at the grassroot level of the orthodox mission Churches by not taking seriously the experiences and thinking of the ordinary members of the Church (Vanden Berg 2005:47). It could be productive, however, to have theologians and religious studies scholars lead and guide the process through, but they must not dictate or impose their beliefs and feeling on the ordinary members. They must make sure the playing field is level so that ideas and belief systems are exchanged without one faith tradition leading the way.
The other way the MCZ could deal with African spirituality is that it reforms its ecclesiology and theology to the extent of giving full recognition and celebration of African ways of knowing, seeing and being. Traditional ceremonies and practices such as kurova guva ceremony, rainmaking ceremonies, ceremonies for remembering the dead and many others would be included on the Church calendar. Gathogo (2017) argues that “African Christianity in the 21st century is characterised by conscious or unconscious continuity of African indigenous rituals that were prevalent in African indigenous society”. I however, argue for conscious continuity as an option of relating with African spirituality where the Church deliberately allows members to participate in indigenous rituals and customs. Having adopted this mode of relating with the African worldview, the Church would no longer restrict members from attending traditional ceremonies and African traditional practitioners would no longer be viewed as threats to the Christian faith but as co-partners in the work of human salvation. The approach allows people to express themselves as African Christians and it enhances their spiritual life, and there would be no need for then to engage in traditional practices surreptitiously.
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The approach also saves the Church from the rigorous and meticulous acts of surveillance and having to discipline offenders who break the rules and regulations of the Church. The freedom helps members to perform traditional rites without looking out for Church spies and systems; and the issue of Christians who pretend not to engage in traditional rights, will be a thing of the past. The approach allows people to be themselves rather than pretending not to engage in indigenous practices, while participating during the night or when they think they are out of the Church’s surveillance system. Adopting the reformed ecclesiology, which Gathogo (2017:118) refers to as the concept of radical continuity, is a pointer and acknowledgement of the resilience of African spirituality. The weakness of the approach, however, is that the Church becomes too diluted and the important aspects of identity, uniqueness, and orderly worship are lost. Yet for many Christian denominations, these are very important. The Church, according to Allister (1989), is expected to be comprehensive yet cultic, which means that it has to be public and inclusive, but it should not forget that it has specific religious aims, practices, and priorities. Adopting the reformed indigenous ecclesiology as a way of dealing with the problem of the relationship between African indigenous spirituality has a weakness in that it only recognises the Church as comprehensive and ignores its cultic nature, with rules and regulations.