Worldview has been defined as “people‟s systematization of the conception of reality, and their response to it; and from which stems their moral virtues” (Gitonga 2008:190. It comprises both local and universal components. Local components comprise people‟s environment with its geographical features, and historical experience, while universal components have to do with people‟s conception of the universe that comprises invisible and visible things as well as living and nonliving things (Gitonga 2008:19). It is therefore of vital importance to understand the Haya religious worldview in as much as their relation to the Supreme Being is concerned.
African worldview has been considered to express life into two worlds – the visible world and the invisible (spiritual) world. Thus human beings, animals and plants among others live in the visible world whereas God, ancestors and gods inhabit the invisible world (Samwini 2011:41). To Africans the physical and spiritual world are connected. Actually Africans believe that the spiritual world controls the physical world. Samwini (2011: 41) maintains that:
All Africans believe in the providence of God which supplies to his people through ancestors and the gods who give rains in good time to mature the crop, which protects his people from dangerous animals when they go out to the bush and multiplies his people through safe childbearing and good health. God has made everything good available for the wellbeing of his people.
For this reason the solution to any life problems should be traced in the spiritual world where God, ancestors and other good or bad spirits operate from, as it is strongly believed that the spiritual world influences what takes place in the physical world.
On the other hand, African spirituality has been defined in connection to “the way Africans experienced their God and expressed their faith through songs, rituals, and symbols” (Lugazia 2010:34). The Haya people and Africans in general have always been
96
strictly spiritual. Their religious worldview and spirituality played a key role in their reception of Christianity. Lugazia‟s arguments are worth noting:
I … argue that African spirituality and worldviews should be seen as a fertile ground for the seed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By tending to ignore its contribution to African Christianity, mainline Christianity in Africa remains, for many Africans –including those who attend their churches – alien to their experience of God.
In line with these views Mbiti (1970:430-43) sees African culture, spirituality and worldview as fertile ground where Christianity should be nurtured and grown when he writes:
We can do nothing to the Gospel, for this is the eternal gift of God; but Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures encountered in its never-ending journeys and wonderings.
This metaphor of Mbiti‟s has been regarded as an essential concept in inculturation and contextualization of African Christianity. It affirms that the African religio-cultural social life prepared Africans to receive the Gospel. Therefore the Gospel needs to find a home in the African religio-cutural life if it is to be relevant to the indigenous people.
Many African scholars agree that the African religious worldview is based on strict and serious spirituality which is an important aspect of African culture. The African conceptualization of spirituality may be at variance with the Christian understanding of spirituality. As has been argued elsewhere in this research, the religion of Africans just like other religions has been realized within their cultural frame of reference.
Lugazia (2010) discussing African spirituality and its relevance today emphasizes that
“[t]he praxis of African spirituality was fully-fledged in the pre-modern world and will likely endure the post-modern world, even if it means re-emerging in a transformed or modified form”. This suggests that the future of Christianity in Africa, and in our case among the Haya, will not help but draw on spirituality and other religious resources from the African traditional religious social-cultural context. Adding to this on African
97
spirituality and worldview, Cornel du Toit (1998:43) maintains that in Africa, spirituality is realized in various ways. He writes, “we celebrate our spirituality in songs, rituals and symbols which show the energizing Spirit animating the community to move together in response to God.”
Other features of Haya African primal religion have been regarded as communalism, holism, reciprocity, generosity, mutuality and interdependence. Balcomb (2011.5) sees the missiological implications in these African primal religious spiritual features, and therefore suggests that the African church must take these characteristics seriously for the Gospel to be incarnated into African life because they constitute the soil into which the seed of the Gospel must be sown. Otherwise, he says, “the church grows in number and often several miles, but only a few inches deep.”
With regards to Haya spirituality and worldview Mutembei (1993:254), in his socio-historiographical work on Kristo au Wamara observes that spirituality among the Haya religion prior to Christianity was not insignificant. Mutembei sees that this spirituality in the Haya Traditional Religion, as shall be discussed below, prepared the Haya people to receive and make sense of Christianity on their conversion during early Christianization in the region.
People in the Traditional Religion lived a sanctified life and what was considered sin in their socio-community life was dealt with very seriously through what was known as omuteego (noun) or okuteega (verb), which meant an action of reporting evil things done by someone to God or gods. This shaped the behaviour and social life of the community.
Justice was highly maintained in Haya society because many people feared omuteego.
Even if sin is more than immoral deeds, as it cannot be theologically reduced to social justice it should be born in mind that, as we pointed out earlier, to the Haya spirituality and social life were not really separated.
Another feature that characterized the spirituality in the Haya religion was the spirit of worship and sacrifices. The Haya spirit and commitment to worship, according to
98
Mutembei, (1993:254-255), was highly observed and maintained among them. People worshipped in various sacred places set apart for that purpose which included sacred big trees, ebigabiro, in the houses, and in shrines normally built outside the house known as omushonge (round shaped houses).
Mutembei further points out that this spirituality influenced early Christianity in Buhaya.
Prayers, offerings, worship and veneration of God were characterized by traditional religious practices prior to Christianity. This was the reason why early Christianity among the Haya was full of spirituality and charismatic features which previously dominated Haya Traditional Religion. This observation is exemplified by early Haya Christian converts like Pastor Jonathan Karoma, Sylivester Machumu and others. Sundkler (1980:75) reports on Pastor Jonathan Karoma as one of the famous charismatic pastors in the early church of Haya. His pastoral ministry was dominated by signs, wonders and miracles just as was the case of the apostles of the early church (Sundkler 1980:77-79, see also Mutembei 1993:255). Mutembei (1993:255-256) asserted that this kind of spirituality and charismatic personality were based on their primal region before their conversion to Christianity.
Sundkler emphasises that the spiritual quality of the Haya early Christians was highly influenced by their traditional religiosity and roles they played in their Traditional Religion. In this case he cites an example of Pastor Karoma, whose charismatic character originated from being a son of an embandwa (priest-diviner) and he had originally been an embandwa’s apprentice (1980:75).
From traditional spirituality and experience which actually embraced all kinds of human activities and life in general, Sundkler reports on one example of where Pastor Jonathan Karoma, who was among the early Christian converts and a pastor among the Haya, in his congregation used to pray for women bearing seeds in the fields before they were planted, a common ritual in the Haya Traditional Religion. Sundkler (1980:75) writes:
99
Thus a ritual for the blessing of the seed emerged naturally. The women brought the seed with them to the church in baskets, which were placed at the altar. The pastor read the Bible text and prayed that the work in the fields would be blest.
Then followed them into the fields where he also prayed before they began to work.
From the above Sundkler story one can infer the following key analysis.
One, the Haya Traditional Religion played a key role in reception and understanding of Christianity. Second, the Haya Traditional Religion shaped Christianity among the Haya‟s first generation Christians. Third, Christianity among the Hayas was challenged to embrace all kinds of life, including preparation of the ground and planting crops. The idea was if Christianity was to be relevant to the Haya new converts, it was challenged to address all the questions of life including planting of seeds and all other spheres of life, just as was the case in Haya primal religion. From the structuration point of view, we can argue that Christianity transformed the Haya. However, Haya Christians drew rules and resources from their traditional religious spirituality to make sense of their new faith in Christ. That was therefore, in the language of structuration theory, a transformation and reproduction.
This resonates with what the Lutheran World Federation discussed on worship in African contexts of holism. It was pointed out that, when one speaks of worship with regard to Lutheran churches in Africa, it is essential to consider the holistic shape of religion in many African societies – an important feature of African primal religion. For to Africans religion is commonly understood in its purer sense – way of life, for as Bishop Ambrose Moyo (1996:2) put it:
In the holistic worldview characteristic of all Africa, there can be no separation between the sacred and the profane, the spiritual and the material. Religion interweaves everything. Hence, asking an African, What is your religion? Is like asking, what is your way of life?
This understanding has a considerable implication in their comprehension of Christianity as a way of life. Within African context, religion as a way of life is far from
100
individualistic. It is rooted in and lived through human community and all of creation.
Religion in Africa isn‟t just metaphysical but physical. It has to address both spiritual and physical existential issues. The validity of a religion that remains silent in these issues is questioned.
So far it has beed in general discussed and pointed out that the Haya like other Africans were actively religious even before the advent of western Christian missionaries. For them, religion was part and parcel of their life and it was strongly embedded in their cultural life. We have seen how the Haya are strictly spiritual and how their spirituality was based on their rituals, songs, symbols and caring for nature. Their religion was communal and inclusive. Spirituality to the Haya, as we have seen, went beyond the living as it embodied the unborn and the living dead. The question we ask is: what does this mean in relation to their reception of Christianity. Could Haya Traditional Religion have created an arena for a viable and authentic Christianization of Haya or in other words can Haya Traditional Religion be regarded as praeparatio evangelica?
In the following sub-section it shall be indicated that the Haya religio-cultural practice and spirituality prior to Christianity was a praeparatio evangelica which could have served as fertile soil for Christianity to grow and flourish if missionary Christianity would have taken seriously the religious knowledge that the Haya had acquired since time immemorial. To this end, I shall engage scholars who see African Traditional religious discourse as preparation for the Gospel in Africa. Being aware that there are some other scholars who do not agree with this notion, I shall later engage their critical voices before I draw a conclusion.
101