The African
reformation
:the
questions
that frame
the quest
Colonialism: European (or Western) culture in
the tradition of the Greeks and Romans is
normal and normative and superior. Other
cultures are “other” or different or odd or
inferior.
In many (most?) churches, European (or
Western) culture is identified as Christian.
Post-colonialism: Questioning the above,
seeking to see the world in a different way.
Many of us are trying to see Christian faith in a
post-colonial way.
Great Reformation: 95 theses …
Statements that
… created a new state
… by creating debate
debate
Great Reformation: 95 theses …
Statements that
… created a new state
… by creating debate
… and sometimes hate
Debate/ Hate
Great Reformation: 95 theses …
Statements that
… created a new state
… by creating debate
… and sometimes hate
Great Emergence: Not theses or statements …
Great Reformation: 95 theses …
Statements that
… create a new state
… by creating debate
… and sometimes hate
Great Emergence: Not theses or statements, but
questions that
… launch us on a new quest
… by creating conversations
… always seeking love
The spirit of questions and conversations
David Bosch (From Transforming Mission):
Humility … means showing respect for our
forebears in the faith, for what they have
handed down to us, even if we have reason
to be acutely embarrassed by their racist,
sexist, and imperialist bias. The point is
that we have no guarantees that we will do
any better than they did. (TM 485)
Why a new quest?
Quest
love
debate
Hotel
Congo,
and …?
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
The failures of the Christian faith in
recent centuries do not suggest a minor
design flaw … but rather a need for
deep shift
and
radical
change.
The way of a man of peace and
reconciliation and liberation
who was tortured and killed by
powerful people
became a powerful religion
that defended oppression, torture and
violence
in the name of this very man.
From Emmanual Katangole: Mission
and Social Formation: Searching for
an alternative to King Leopold’s Ghost
“… there is indeed something like
King Leopold’s ghost hanging over a
great part of Africa … many in Africa
today are wondering whether
Christianity has any power to save
them from this nightmare.” (123-124)
… the story of African Renaissance
is one whose plot as well as final
resolution is designed, determined,
and declared from the tenth floor of
some air-conditioned offices in New
York, London or Capetown…. (209)
[We need] an alternative to the basic
story embodied within the nation-state in
Africa… [Even in South Africa], the
moral and political legitimacy of an
apartheid state was challenged, but not,
it seems to me, the nation-state project
qua nation-state. (131)
This inability to question the nation-state
is perhaps not surprising given the
dominant tradition which has shaped
Christian social ethics since the
Enlightenment … assuming that the
social and religious constitute two
distinct fields each with its own relative
autonomy…. Suppose it is the way in
which the nation-state defines, narrates,
and frames the social sphere which is
the problem. (131-2)
For, now reduced to the social space,
the church, just like all the other
tribalisms that make up this space, is
regarded by the dominant story at once
as a “temporary nuisance” to be
tolerated and as potential capital, to be
“somehow recruited” [into] its ever
expanding of clientele politics. (138)
… the most determinate task and
challenge of theology becomes one
of social imagination, I.e. one of
imagining new and better ways of
conceiving those everyday struggles
and aspirations which lie at the
basis of a people’s social existence.
(139)
The church’s own story involves - or
rather is - a politics … a call for
Christians to be socially formed in a
distinctive way … the church can
(ought to) embody a different
(better) narrative of social existence
than the one embodied by the
nation-state in Africa. (140)
… what actually is at stake is not
just the framing of new doctrines or
formulations, but the availability of
an alternative set of practices. (141)
… the ability to re-energize these
everyday struggles within the
hopeful telos [purpose] of the
Christian story. … the Kingdom of
God (manifests itself) wherever the
new universe is under construction not a new world in the sense of a
world-beyond, but in the sense of a
different world right here, a world
being gestated in the deeds of the
everyday. (141-2)
…the call to social imagination seeks to
realize communities in which the daily
tasks of plowing, harvesting, or
pasturing: in which the cultivation of
vegetables and the digging of wells; the
immunization against malaria and the
construction of pit latrines is as much as
a matter of Christian salvation as the
celebration of baptism, the Eucharist,
and the reading of the scriptures. (142)
I kept wondering what it would take for
Christians to resist some of the values
of the market. For I am sure that there
are Christian practices … which make
it impossible for Christians to be good
consumers in a liberal capitalistic
economy… [such as the OUR in “Our
Father,” or the solidarity of the
eucharist]…
If one takes these practices seriously, then
one begins to harbor valid doubts about,
and to seek alternatives to, the liberal
economic story that tries to convince us that
we exist as individuals, driven by selfinterests, who regard the other as a
competitor for the same limited resources.
(217-218)
For Christian theology, as I take it, has as
one of its great challenges the reappreciation of the “small” - the local, the
particular - which is always being covered
up by grand narratives and totalizing
structures (213)
Can theology challenge whoever is telling
that story [of African Renaissance] - the
World Bank, the IMF, the African leaders - to
come down to the ground … into the messy,
uneven trivialities of everyday contradictions
of the African villages, the shanty towns, the
squatter camps, and the black streets (the
home of starving street children)… (213214)
…the call to social imagination seeks to
realize communities in which the daily
tasks of plowing, harvesting, or
pasturing: in which the cultivation of
vegetables and the digging of wells; the
immunization against malaria and the
construction of pit latrines is as much as
a matter of Christian salvation as the
celebration of baptism, the Eucharist,
and the reading of the scriptures. (142)
This is a quest we must begin
together.
Quest
love
debate
What questions launch our
new quest?
Quest
love
debate
1. Narrative Question:
2. Authority Question:
3. Violent God Question:
4. Jesus Question:
5. Gospel Question:
6. Church Question:
7. Sex Question:
8. Future Question:
9. Pluralism Question:
10. How Question:
1. Narrative Question: What is the shape - or
storyline - of the Biblical narrative?
2. Authority Question: What is the Bible for?
How is it supposed to be used?
3. Violent God Question: Is God violent and
hateful? How do we deal with violent
passages in the Bible?
4. Jesus Question: Which Jesus are we
following?
5. Gospel Question: What is the gospel?
Information on how to go to heaven after death,
or the announcement of God’s will being done
on earth as it is in heaven?
6. Church Question: Does the church have a
future? Does the future have a church? What
kind?
7. Sex Question: Why is sexuality such a big
issue among Christians today?
8. Future Question: What kind of future do we
expect? How should that vision of the future
affect our lives here and now?
9. Pluralism Question: How do followers of
Jesus relate to people of other religions?
10. How Question: In light of these questions,
how can we open up this conversation to others
in fruitful ways?
Heaven
Eden
Salvation
Fall
History/
The world
Hell
Platonic Ideal
Platonic Ideal
Fall
Into
Aristotelian
Real
Atonement,
purification
Aristotelian
Real
Hades
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation
Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and
Mercy
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
Genesis: Creation and Reconciliation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and
Mercy
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
CRISIS
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
CALLING
CRISIS
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
CONVERSATION
CALLING
CRISIS
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
CHRIST
CONVERSATION
CALLING
CRISIS
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
COMMUNITY
CHRIST
CONVERSATION
CALLING
CRISIS
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
CREATIVITY
COMMUNITY
CHRIST
CONVERSATION
CALLING
CRISIS
CREATION
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
G
e
n
e
s
i
s
Isaiah: Peaceable Kingdom - Justice and
Mercy
Exodus: Liberation & Formation
Questions for conversation:
1. What one idea from this talk struck
you in some special way - and why?
2. Why are conversations even more
powerful than theses (or statements
for debate)?
3. How do you feel at this point in the
conference? Try to be specific.
With Kindness
From “Songs For a Revolution of Hope, Vol. 1: everything must change.”
Words and music by Brian McLaren.
2007, Brian McLaren. Publishing, Revolution of Hope Music Group SESAC 2007.
All rights reserved. Registered with CCLI.
Christ has no body here but ours
No hands, no feet, here on earth but ours
Ours are the eyes though which he looks
On this world
With Kindness
Ours are the hands through which he works
Ours are the feet on which he moves
Ours are the voices through which he speaks
To this world
With Kindness
Through our touch, our smile, our listening ear
Embodied in us, Jesus is living here
Let us go now
Filled with the Spirit
Into this world
With Kindness