For missionary Christianity especially in the Lutheran Church, a potential convert is brought to Christ during Baptism. So conversion and Baptism are almost inseparable. It is
63 As was pointed out in the previous chapters, Peace observes that within mainline Protestantism churches such as Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed among others, one simply becomes a Christian through Baptism.
Children are incorporated into the church when they are brought by their parents for Baptism (2004:8).
These churches maintain that children can be initiated into the family of God on the basis of their parents‟
promise to raise them in Christian values and life. In this case conversion can be generally regarded as using the pattern suggested by Peace (2004:8), as conversion through socialization (see chapter 2:8:3).
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believed that during Baptism a child or an adult is incorporated into the body of Christ.
This implies, according to Oswald Bayer (2008:265), a renowned German Lutheran scholar and professor of systematic theology, that conversion takes place during Baptism as an act of God‟s grace to humankind. Lutheran catechetical teaching emphasizes that Baptism “… works for forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the word and promises of God declare.”
During Baptism the focus is not just on water, but its power to clean and give life. The element (water) is saturated through and comprehended in the biblical words of Jesus who commissioned His disciples to baptize, “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who doesn‟t believe will be condemned” (Matt. 28 and Mk. 16:16).
Basically this implies that faith is very important. However, “faith doesn‟t make the sacrament, but the Holy Spirit creates faith by use of the Sacrament” (Bayer 2008:265).
For Luther, sacrament‟s efficacy doesn‟t depend upon the human individual who exercises an office; instead the work of God and the work of the human being who serves the divine word in the sacrament are one and the same. So the function of Baptism lies in the faith.
Bayer (2008:266) emphasizes that, “Baptism is a transference of life in God, the Lord;
whoever, believes this word has eternal life, without Baptism no faith, without faith no Baptism”. ”. To Luther, according to Bernhard Lohse (2011:130), is very important for one to receive what the sacrament offers as promised by God through the elements of sacrament.
Faith means that one firmly believes all this: that the sacrament not only signifies death and the resurrection at the Last Day, by which a person is made to live without sin eternally, but also that is assuredly begins and achieves this; that it establishes a covenant between‟ us and God to the effect that we will fight against sin and slay it, even to our dying breath.
The question that always arises is how can an infant have faith as an essential ingredient for Baptism? According to Lutheran teachings, through the parents and Godparents, the children receive grace of salvation through Baptism by the words of sponsors – in this case Godparents, on the assumption that the child will grow in faith until he or she will
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stands for his or her faith during Confirmation (Bayer 2008:266-267). Following this, Godparents were expected to pledge that the child would be raised and instructed in the faith by parents themselves or Godparents and this was a precondition for child baptism ( The justification of such a theological discourse is the biblical story of the healing of the lame man who was healed by Jesus through the faith of those who brought him to Jesus (Mk. 2:5). Jesus healed the lame man by the faith of those who stood on his behalf (Bayer 2008:267). Luther believed that when children receive the baptism at the younger age, when the glow and faith comes then their baptism will be complete. Mark Tranvik (2003:35) quotes Luther in this point: “Even if…children are without faith when they are baptized, it would make no difference to me…for faith doesn‟t exist for the sake of baptism, but baptism for the sake of faith. When faith comes, baptism is complete”.
Another aspect of Baptism, according to Luther, is that it is not “an isolated act, but that it decidedly includes the Christian life that proceeds from it as well”. That is why to him, Baptism means that “the Old Adam in us should be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, along with all sins and evil desires and that daily a new self should come forth to live before God in righteousness and purity forever” (Bayer 2008:267). For that, conversion through Baptism has to be seen as more than a single act but rather, perhaps, a continuous process. The continuous repentance and confession brings the believer back to his or her Baptism. To Luther Baptism is daily garment which a believer has to wear all the time. So Baptism is a daily act. To Luther, “daily Baptism is nothing other than to be in faith, in suppressing the old creature and growing up in the new” (Wengert 2009:120).
Consequently Baptism, according to Lutheran catechetical teaching, goes hand in hand with the renunciation of the devil and all his works and nature (abrenuntiatio diaboli) (Bayer 2008:269). Missionary Christianity and post missionary Christianity in the Lutheran Church, Northwest Tanzania emphasize the renunciation of the “Devil and his works” that was elaborated in the Haya liturgical and hymnal book which is taught to baptismal candidates (Empoya 2004:283-284).
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However, the question that arises is: what are these works of the devil and its nature in the Hayan context? Who actually has to determine these works of the devil? Was it supposed to be the missionaries‟ task, or the Haya new believers‟ task? Or was it not supposed to be a joint task between missionaries and indigenous Haya new Christians in struggling to discern what were the works of devil and what were not, according to the Haya religio-cultural context? This renunciation of the devil and all his works and nature during missionary Christianity among the Haya was unfortunately interpreted by missionaries to amount to almost every Haya pre-Christian religio-cultural practice, without first having any deliberate engagement with the Haya new Christian converts. This resulted in the works of Haya traditional herbalists, traditional dances and most cultural involvements all being regarded as devilish (Empoya 2004: 283-284)64.
This understanding, as was noted in chapter four, was the reason why traditional dances, traditional musical instruments like drums, in some cases traditional dress, among others, were not allowed in the church and were considered devilish by most missionaries in the Haya early church. This interpretation was a clear reflection of the missionaries‟ lack of a deep knowledge of Haya Traditional Religion. Knowledge of Haya traditional culture and religion, I argue, could be a tool that could help them to make an objective discernment on what was really evil and worthy of rejection and what were important Haya traditional religious elements that could be helpful in shaping Christianity in the context of the Haya cultural setting.
Conversion through Baptism for that matter, as I have argued previously in this dissertation, was generally regarded as an essential factor for making a new believer break away from his or her religio-cultural roots. However, this did not permanently work, for this interpretation negated the reality of the Haya ontological conceptual worldview which doesn‟t necessarily divorce religion from culture and spirituality, hence Haya Christians substantially remained in the dual world of being adherents to both Christianity and Haya Traditional Religion. The challenge for missionary Christianity remains to be how one
64This point has been widely argued in the previous chapter (see 4: 5:1 – cultural conversion: civilization of Africans or western cultural imperialism?) so I will not go deeply into it in this section to avoid
unnecessary repetition.
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should integrate missionary Christianity‟s teachings with the Haya‟s Traditional religious and spiritual worldview without the distortion of basic Christian fundamental teachings.
Lutheran theology on Baptism and conversion as it stands and as it was presented among the Haya, looked at from an African perspective, seems to lack the spiritual and experiential encounter of God during the time of conversion. In Lutheran theology of Baptism, the efficacy of Baptism to a believer is based on the faith of either the believer in the case of an adult, or Godparents in the case of infants. One needs to accept by faith the promise of God through his word that through Baptism we are accepted as children of God in the community of Christian believers. This understanding does not fit well into the religious context of the Haya and Africans in general since, as has been pointed out, for them religion is more experiential than dogmatic. It is not philosophized or theologised, but rather it is experienced and lived out in day-to-day life. It embraces both the physical and spiritual world. Religion to Africans encompasses the living, the living dead and the unborn65. For the Haya therefore, religion is manifested within the framework of encountering physical and metaphysical existential life realities.
Haya Christians were simply incorporated into a Christian community through Baptism by renouncing their “old life”, but nothing was said about their new life in terms of dealing with their relationship with ancestors, their fear of curses, witchcraft, just to mention some. They were told that Christians ought not to believe in witchcraft or relate with their ancestors. This contradicted their life reality and worldview. Converts therefore remained alien in their community and yet did not fit well in the missionary Christianity expectations, hence most of them remained both Christians and Traditional Religion adherents (Samwini, 2011:43) since their existential cultural and religious issues were not adequately addressed in these catechetical teachings.
It can therefore arguably be stated that Lutheran baptismal conversion, unless it is formulated in such a way that it matches well the Haya religio-cultural understanding and
65See chapter three, 3:2.5: The Nature of Haya Traditional Religion.
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takes seriously the nature and spirituality of the Haya conceptual worldview, will continue to remain irrelevant to most Haya Christians and therefore continue to yield little impact on their spiritual life, hence the necessity for a conversion outside their church‟s orthodoxy that will seem to them to quench both their physical and spiritual thirst. This necessitates a deliberate effort of contextualizing Lutheran theology of conversion within the Haya religio-socio-cultural context.
Professor Emefie Ikenga-Metuah as quoted in Thomas (1995:183) in Classic text in mission and world Christianity argues that contextual theology is missiological. He asserts that:
Contextual theology is a theology which in clarifying faith is very sensitive to the situation of people to whom the faith is addressed. It is not content with an abstract and intellectually satisfying systematic presentation of faith. Rather its aims are primarily to bring the Gospel as truly Good News to the people in their concrete situation … it is faith presented to a particular people, living in a concrete situation, at a particular time. This perhaps makes contextual theology more missiological than conversional theology.
Ikenga-Metuah‟s contention above is a clear reflection of the need of presenting conversion in a religio-cultural sensitive manner if we need to effect conversion from other people‟s faith that is different from ours in a more meaningful way.