8 research outputs found
Sacred children and colonial subsidies: The missionary performance of racial separation in Belgian Congo, 1946–1959
No full text While most Protestant missions in Belgian Congo gladly accepted the colonial state’s offer of educational subsidies in 1946, a strong emphasis on church–state separation led the American Mennonite Brethren Mission (AMBM) to initially reject these funds. In a surprising twist, however, the AMBM reversed its position in 1952. Through archival research, I demonstrate that a major factor that led the AMBM to accept subsidies was the creation and institutionalization of a racially separate ecclesial identity from that of Congolese Christians. Moreover, the development of this separate identity was closely intertwined with missionaries’ vision for a “white children’s school,” geographically separated from their work with Congolese. The enactment of white identity helped pave the way for the acceptance of subsidies, both by bringing the missionaries more strongly into the orbit of the colonial logic of domination, and by clarifying the heavy cost of failing to comply with the state’s expectations. Through this case study, I engage with the complexity of missionaries’ political role in a colonial African context by focusing on the everyday political choices by which missionaries set aside their children as sacred, by exploring how ideas about separateness were embedded into institutions, and by demonstrating how attention to the subtleties of identity performance can shed new light on major missionary decisions. </jats:p
Helping “our Canadian brothers”: Early Recollect Missiology as an Experiment in Christian Community, 1615–1629
No full textAbstract
Existing histories of the brief Franciscan Recollect mission to New France (1615–1629) tend either to overstate the assimilatory character of the Recollect missionary vision or to overlook their comprehensively political vision. Through a close re-reading of early Recollect sources, I excavate a missionary vision for cohabitation between indigenous people and French settlers that, while assimilationist in some ways, also reflected deeply a conviction of human equality, a nascent understanding of the church as a political alternative to empire, and a willingness to learn from and adapt to indigenous cultures. The Recollects’ vision was shaped at every stage by their specifically Franciscan practice of poverty. This poverty predisposed them to critique mercantile interests in the colony, shaped their appreciation of indigenous traveling companions, and made them more prone to recognize Christian equality across cultures.</jats:p
Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 7, no. 2/3 (April-July 2022) Double issue - Bilingual (English, French)
No full textIn 2019, a group of Anabaptist-Mennonite historians from around the world gathered for a symposium under the auspices of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism (ISGA) in Goshen, USA. Unanimously, they affirmed that “[a]s followers of Jesus Christ our history connects us, reminds us of the Spirit’s activity among us, and calls us forward into the future.” Today, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) member churches exist in 25 countries in Africa, and African Mennonites and Brethren in Christ in 2018 made up 36% of the 2.13 million baptized Anabaptist-Mennonites worldwide.1 This special issue of the Journal of African Christian Biography, intentionally released in both English and French just prior to the July 2022 MWC Assembly in Indonesia, offers stories of the Anabaptist/Mennonite church as it took vibrant shape in Africa and became a source of renewal beyond its borders, contributing richly to a global Anabaptist movement.
At the core of this issue are seven biographies and two church histories. The stories come from western, central, eastern, and southern regions of the continent, with stronger representation from Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso. The Christians in these stories experienced the power of the gospel as it entered into confrontation with other powers. They took courageous action to demonstrate the authenticity of their own conversion and boldly shared the good news with others both far and near
Introduction: African Mennonite stories of conversion, mission, and renewal
No full text[In 2019, a group of Anabaptist-Mennonite historians from around the world gathered for a symposium under the auspices of the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism (ISGA) in Goshen, USA. Unanimously, they affirmed that “[a]s followers of Jesus Christ our history connects us, reminds us of the Spirit’s activity among us, and calls us forward into the future.” Today, Mennonite World Conference (MWC) member churches exist in 25 countries in Africa, and African Mennonites and Brethren in Christ in 2018 made up 36% of the 2.13 million baptized Anabaptist-Mennonites worldwide. This special issue of the Journal of African Christian Biography, intentionally released in both English and French just prior to the July 2022 MWC Assembly in Indonesia, offers stories of the Anabaptist/Mennonite church as it took vibrant shape in Africa and became a source of renewal beyond its borders, contributing richly to a global Anabaptist movement.
Becoming global Mennonites: the politics of catholicity and memory in a missionary encounter in Belgian Congo, 1905-1939
No full textThis dissertation examines the first three decades of a missionary encounter that began under the auspices of the Congo Inland Mission (CIM – later renamed as Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission [AIMM]) in Belgian Congo. As Africans, North Americans, and Europeans entered into relationship with each other through mission, they developed an identity as global Mennonites. They began to embrace a catholic ecclesial imagination – that is, a commitment to shared membership within the church as a political body capable of transcending competing claims of race, ethnicity, gender, or nation-state. Using both an ecclesiological lens of analysis and a global history framework, this dissertation traces the ways in which ecclesial institutions, practices, discourses, and performances functioned to support or undermine a social imagination that embraced expatriate missionaries and local believers within a single church, in both its local/congregational and trans-local manifestations.
During the period covered by the dissertation, expatriate and Congolese Mennonites struggled to define what the church was, and to determine who could participate in it and how. Factors that helped to promote a shared ecclesial imagination among Congolese and expatriate believers included an inter-denominational vision, faith mission principles and practices, Pentecostal revivalism, a Mennonite congregational polity, shared experiences of work and worship, and friendships that crossed boundaries of race and gender. However, CIM missionaries’ assertions of ethnic Mennonite control over mission strategy and structure, and their complicity with colonial labor exploitation, promoted a two-tiered understanding of the church that entrenched racial segregation and squelched the aspirations of white missionary women and Congolese evangelists. An ecclesiological lens of analysis thus offers new insights into the relationship between missions and colonial regimes, into the role of mission in American Mennonite denominational formation, and into the interactions among gender, race, and ethnicity in mission.
The dissertation traces the contested memories of early CIM “pioneers,” such as Alma Doering, Aaron and Ernestina Janzen, and L.B. and Rose Haigh, and retrieves the missional agency of the many Congolese Mennonites who worked alongside them. In this way, it both uncovers the struggles for catholicity that shaped the missionary encounter at its inception, and calls attention to the ways in which such struggles continue to play out on the terrain of memory and knowledge production, coming to light through the competing efforts and uneven ability of Congolese and North American Mennonites to tell stories about their shared past. The historical narrative at the core of the dissertation thus serves as a case study for a broader exploration of theological and historiographical themes of memory and catholicity in relation to mission. The dissertation develops an ecclesiological framework for the study of the missionary encounter in which an explicit commitment to catholicity guides the task of writing world Christian history. It identifies ways in which such an ecclesiological mode of remembering can contribute to greater unity and catholicity within the global church
Atelier sur l’Ecriture de l’Histoire de l’Église à l’intention des mennonites congolais du 20 au 24 mars 2023 Centre Universitaire Missiologique, Kinshasa, RD Congo
No full text[Initié par Anicka Fast, docteure en théologie, l’Atelier sur l’Écriture de l’Histoire de l’Église à l’intention des mennonites congolais, tenu du 20 au 24 mars 2023 au Centre Universitaire Missiologique à Kinshasa, est la toute première initiative de ce genre en République Démocratique du Congo.
Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 8, no. 3 (July 2023) A quaterly publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.DACB.org)
No full text[Throughout African Christian history, catechists and evangelists have carried out the lions’ share of the work of mission. Catechists were generally served in Roman Catholic and Anglican churches as lay (non ordained) ministers and indigenous teachers. Their role was to instruct inquirers or new believers in the Christian faith. In Protestant churches, evangelists played an important role in outreach, often preaching in public places to draw people to the church. Their goal was to inspire their listeners to convert to Christianity.1 Many churches had male and female evangelists although the women were often not recognized and remunerated for their service, as the men were. Both catechists and evangelists traveled frequently, moving from village to village as the needs arose.
This issue showcases the biographies of three exceptional African missionaries. Fr. Cosmas Sarbah, PhD, writes the story of his grandfather, John E. Sarbah, a catechist in the Roman Catholic Church of Ghana, who performed almost all the work of a parish priest for countless parishes throughout his region filling in where there was a shortage of priests and of European missionaries. Kimeze Teketwe presents the exciting story of Sembera K. Mackay, the first Anglican convert and the first to request baptism in nineteenth century Uganda. Sembera had such an impact through his lifelong ministry as a catechist that the author theorizes that his name might have been chosen to express the Luganda concept of Christian eucharist (communion) – Oku-sembera. Professor Dickson Nkonge Kagema gives us the story of Jerusha Kanyua, an extraordinary woman who ministered as an evangelist, a teacher, a midwife, a prayer warrior, and a prophetess, leaving a lasting legacy in her home region in Kenya.
Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 9, no. 2/3 (Apr-July 2024) A quaterly publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.DACB.org)
No full text[This double issue of the Journal honors two giants of African Christianity who have died in the past year, Marthinus “Inus” Daneel (1937-June 29, 2024) and Allison Mary Howell (1951-2023). Zimbabwean by birth, Daneel was a pioneering eco-theologian and expert in the early study of African Independent Churches and movements, as well as an ecumenist and an activist on behalf of the Shona people. Howell was Australian and lived as a missionary before becoming a scholar, making her home among the Kasena, in northern Ghana, where she ultimately was buried. Daneel and Howell were both children of missionaries. One powerful aspect of their two separate legacies was their willingness to intimately embrace the people among whom they chose to live and whose religious lives they documented. As a result, the scholarship they left behind for the African and the global church is not the teaching of “armchair theologians,” but instead that of researchers who were first trusted friends and even adopted family members. Their enduring legacies emerge from the richness of intentional relationships n their immediate cultural contexts, in educational institutions with their students, and within the global church and scholarly community at large.
Other legacies in this issue are documented with biographies from Ghana, Zimbabwe, and the DR Congo. Michael Wandusim’s account of the life of Ludwig Adzaklo, a pioneering Bible translator, teacher, and catechist, born in late nineteenth century Ghana, challenges us to reflect on how to factor fallen humanity into the assessment of our enduring Christian legacy. Luke Donner’s biography of Bishop Stephen Ndlovu highlights his strong leadership and advocacy for women’s leadership at a time of great political struggle in Zimbabwe and internal conflicts in his own church (Brethren in Christ), all the while maintaining a spirit of collaboration and ecumenism. The story of Rebecca Sengu Mbongu comes to us from the DRC, from the pen of her adopted daughter and accomplished Bible Institute director, Berci Ba-Dia-Ngungu Mundedi. Mundedi has painted in fine detail the life of an outstanding and accomplished servant of God who ministered to others from the depths of her own affliction, putting
her Savior and others before her own needs, thus blazing a trail for other women to follow.
