Introduction
The worldwide Anglican Communion is officially led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and a major denomination or church in worldwide Christianity, a major world religion. Yet a growing influence from Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria threatens this worldwide communion in terms of its unity. It is understood that schismatic events erupt over time in most organizations and to analyze the reason for such events reveals explanations hidden underneath the emotional aspects of the actual confrontation.
In this case, the traditional Christianity Akinola embraces claims fidelity to founding articles and creeds in a most rational and unwavering sense but its social outworking is most comprehensive and uncompromising and based upon uniformity of belief in practice. A practice that could have a distinct African derivation that typifies a movement coined the "Global South" churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Such churches are confronting the 77-million member Anglicans and Episcopalians in flexing their power as their numbers represent a rapidly growing presence. With 17.5 million members, Nigeria is the second-largest Anglican province after the Church of England with 26 million -- but its number of regular churchgoers is far higher and growing.
The power of these churches - which now account for more than half of the Communion - are increasingly on display in separate gatherings. The major issue that has received the most press revolves around how the African traditionalist primates are undermining their United States counterpart, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, for supporting gay clergy. Depending on where Anglicans stand on homosexuality, Akinola is seen either as the symbol of the shift of Christianity's center of gravity to the Global South or the man out to divide the third-largest denomination in the faith. (Gerson: 2007) The following questions arise: Is Christianity really a Western religion and what constitutes its organizational locus? How has the Anglican Church of Nigeria among the Global South’s emergence assimilated traditional Christian belief systems and interpretations within the great context of Africa’s place in the expansion of the Global North during the age of colonialism? Thus, could this Global South movement be challenging western-based ecclesiastical authority structures and institutional cultures because of the long history of African oppression? Furthermore, as the historical lenses of church and state social action to provide context: Is this a reactionary movement escaping previous Western paternalism and hegemony? How are theories of cultural dimensions involved in this? How can one identify the convergence and divergence taking place with the various structures of society from both the state and its people? What benefits are emerging if any that contributes to the Global South’s relevance in the worldwide community? What do cross-cultural differences really dictate in terms of practice? Are the Nigerians trying to find a wealthy partner? The following explores these issues from a global regional perspective in reference to the North and South, Old and New and other categories that developed in recent history.
Historical Context
The Roman Empire left its mark on several continents, including Africa but after the Roman Empire fell, the church remained both official and a stabilizer of society for a long time and the forerunner of the Global North or more commonly known as Western Civilization. Only after European states began to emerge from the so-called Dark Ages there was discontent and protest able to rise within an organized religion. (Bosch 1991: 48) Eventually, some reformers like Martin Luther were basically content to localize the church, that is, to detach it from Roman hegemony, but his movement was also a strong conservative movement back to the approved doctrines of the early church as formulated by the towering figure of St. Augustine who actually was a North African of the Berber peoples. As these events of the Church’s Reformation were concurrent with the discovery of the so-called New World, many of them left the Old World for new horizons where the separation of powers became a founding principle. (Walls 1996: 69) As nation-states emerged in Europe, most maintained the alliance between church and state, although some of these Protestant churches represented the English state in the British Empire as the State Church, but were given a seat at the pluralistic table of its American colony in the form of the Episcopal Church.
After the abolition of the Slave trade in the early 1800s, the modern Protestant missionary movement was also in its infant stages, yet it developed rapidly through the century and specifically following the explorations of David Livingston and the subsequent “Scramble for Africa” of the colonial period. Thus, as missionaries came to Africa from both sides. Europeans were mainly colonial. Americans were much the same and came from congregational and free organized denominations rather than state churches, unlike Europeans many came with an official endorsement of their respective government. However, there were obvious exceptions to this pattern, on both sides. The rise of nationalism led to conflict on an unprecedented scale among the tribes of Europe as it was imposed upon the tribes of Africa. Therefore, nationalism did not serve Africa very well. What it really did, as colonial empires collapsed in the wake of the world wars, was to allow African power players to take over from colonial despots. The arbitrary borders protected local autocrats after independence was won from colonial oppressors. In post-war jargon, "First World" came to mean the developed countries in the West, fighting a Cold War with the "Second World" or East Bloc. Both were in the Northern hemisphere or North. The so-called "Third World" contains the developing countries, most of which are in the Global South. Ironically, the Global South contains two-thirds of the world's population, so it should really be called the "two-thirds world" and it makes up the regions of the world where Christianity is rapidly growing. (Bosch 1991: 181- 238)
Missionaries used to be mainly Westerners, but the majority now come from the Third World. Missionaries may leave South America for Africa, Africa for Eastern Europe, or South Korea for the United Kingdom... "John Clark of the ecumenical body Partnership for World Mission in London argues that half of sub-Saharan Africa will be Christian by the end of the 21st century. When the organization sends missionaries to the West, they are often surprised at what they find. 'A lot of people who come from Africa are shocked at the empty churches they find here,' he says. "While there are more than 7,000 British missionaries around the world, there are more than 1,000 from other countries who have come to Britain..." (CMC: 1998)
For sub-Saharan Africa will be one of the main springboards for Christian world outreach in the 21st century, just as North Africa was in past centuries when Alexandria (in Egypt) and Hippo (in Libya) were prominent. Africa is already a major sender of missionaries. The number of missionaries sent from Africa doubled between 1991 and 1995 according to Luis Bush, executive director of the AD 2000 and Beyond movement. The number doubled again in 1996. "Africa is a missionary movement for the world to reckon with," Bush says. At the beginning of this century, only two percent of the world's Christians were in Africa. Now, according to Bush's estimates, some 338 million Africans profess to be confessional Christians, 17 percent of worldwide Christianity. (CMC: 1998) This is the African side of an explosion of missionary activity by Protestants in the two-thirds world. Hitherto, the first decade after the year 2000, the Global South has made its mark. If it seems far-fetched to think of missionaries from Africa reaching the West, but just stop to think about African influence in Western music. Slaves taken from Africa were never allowed to touch their owners' band instruments, but their vocals (Negro spirituals) enchanted America. After emancipation, when they got their hands on those trumpets and trombones for the first time, their send-ups of white musicians gave birth to jazz. From spirituals and jazz emerged rhythm and blues and later rock and roll. The revenge of African culture on the Slave Trade is expressed in that famous song title by Chuck Berry: Roll Over Beethoven. (Mazuri 1993:5 –7) The Christians from Africa do incorporate a liturgical diversity by contemporary music and African drums and voices, but they also reaffirm the more traditional music as found in “High-Church” Anglican service and the Roman Catholic mass that is founded on monastic chants and classical composers.
The Current Controversy
Serious missionary work began in Nigeria in 1842, conducted by a Church Mission Society of the mother Anglican Church dedicated to promoting "the knowledge of the Gospel among the heathen." In 2007, the Nigerian outreach to America officially began, on the fertile mission fields of Northern Virginia. And the natives here are restless.” (Gerson: 2007) Controversial to say the least, this official outreach uncovers deep cultural contours which are fascinating. In its raw form, the emerging movement, points toward repercussions into the years to come that is changing the face of Western Christianity or the Global North: Some American religious conservatives have embraced ties with this emerging Christianity,... But there are adjustments in becoming a junior partner. The ideological package of the Global South includes not only moral conservatism but also an emphasis on social justice, openness to state intervention in markets, and a suspicion of American economic and military power. The emerging Christian majority is not the Moral Majority. (Ibid.)
But with such a move, the divide on the terrain has implications for the broad Christian spectrum, take for example its impact on the religious left purveyors of the distinct “social gospel”. For decades it has preached multiculturalism and even acceptance of “liberation theologies” which have nationalistic and even Marxist roots, but now, as the conservative Nigerians are making their mark, it doesn't seem to approve other non-western cultural expressions all that much. This uncompromising attitude could be something carried over from the Nigerian’s own “culture war” at home which includes confrontations with Islam, African traditional religions and hyper-statism. (Jenkins 2002: 172-3) But the more socially “enlightened” and “doctrinally compromising” US church demonstrates a certain exclusivity. As an activist at one Episcopal meeting urged the African bishops to "go back to the jungle where you came from." (Gerson: 2007) This reaction from the liberal and socially focused US-based churches parallels its division with conservative evangelical Christianity and its concurrent political difference along similar lines. However, the Nigerian ecclesiastical influx may turn some of these divisions into a broader societal impact that disregards the preeminence of the state and recognizing its own position as an equal authority structure.
In studying the permanence of “heavenly” based institutions by humans that are diverse, how such an ecclesiastical (church) organization addresses societal concerns is a perennial question. This societal outreach is the major organizational purpose for a Christian church and its worldwide interaction. This implies an authoritative role that operated in spheres of influence viewing itself on equal terms with that of the modern state and application in the lives of human beings. This is enacted through an approach understood as, “Holism” which in a Biblical sense means that the Church’s mission is both proclaimed through the “Word” and “Deed.” (Bosch: 1991: 20-55) How this interfaces with the organization of the state and the private sector reveals certain points to answer our research questions as today the church no longer has a corner on the “charity market” or what could be termed “Deed” but can this be separated from the “Word”? The Churches in the Global North seem to say yes, the church in the Global South or Third World, says no! The following explores this secularization.
Social Secularization in the Global North
It was Europeans migrating to America who named the so-called New World from which ideologies of liberation and modern philanthropy emerged. Back in the Old World, through - which was simultaneously colonizing Africa - churches that severed their ties with Rome had not necessarily done so with the government. They remained official in their own right - Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed. And in countries which remained Catholic, the church remained as official as ever. “In Britain, all through the 19th century, charity was a community activity and seen as a responsibility of the well-to-do. After 1890, with the growing belief in government as the master of society, most of this disappeared. The Salvation Army - founded in London in 1878 - is one of the few survivors of what was a flourishing culture of community service in Victorian times. And in France any community action that is not organized and controlled by government has been suspect since Napoleon, and is... almost considered subversive.” (Drucker: 1993:159) So the Old and New world differences radically emerge. Seminal to this observation and formulation occurred in the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville stood amazed at the range of American voluntary associations. They were of “a thousand kinds,” he said, “religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restrictive, enormous or diminutive...” (Tocqueville: 1863: 129) Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, in the United States you will be sure to see an association made up of private grassroots associations that address the variety of needs within the society.
Moreover, in this Old World context, church linkages to state bureaucracies were the rule. To this day Christian outreach from these countries is often conducted with state funding. This includes education, health, human services, development and advocacy for justice. Many Christian donor agencies operating in Africa are intermediaries between European government resources (i.e. European taxpayers) and local groups or projects on the ground. As Europe has secularized and pluralized, public agendas have brought new constraints; not to proselytize, but to rationalize interventions and to make philanthropy more business-like. One way that these donor agencies can mitigate this, is to channel resources through groups and projects in Africa's civil society. This avoids replicating the European paradigm in Africa and helps to balance the powers. (Drucker 1993:165) Nigerians have certainly shown an impressive dexterity in being so bold in their ability to flow with American religious freedoms and European state aid, easily demonstrating a grasp for divergent viewpoints that readily trace a convergence back to traditions as found in creeds and confessions. Nevertheless, the Nigerian experience is not without Old World influences showing a non-negotiable in separating the “Word” for the “Deed” even within the political context where the separation of church and state is not an issue. Therefore, the Africans have a certain affinity for the “Law” or proper interpretation of the “Word”, this is certainly a major divergence from its high context cultural expressions where symbolism is pre-eminent over strict adherence to written laws and guidelines as readily demonstrated in the lower context Global North.
Furthermore, in terms of Old Word influences, half of Europe was eventually overtaken by socialist imperialism - as were some African countries, but not without some radical actions by the state where increasing state social services tended to marginalize church activity, particularly in the case of Marxism. Africa has seen it all and in a short time frame. Marxist oppressors confiscated church property, nationalized schools and hospitals, refused to allow Christian outreach in the social sphere, closed down churches and even persecuted leaders. What has been learned, surely, is that it is best to encourage diversity and to privatize social services. The diagnosis is that voluntary organizations have “found themselves treated increasingly as instruments of public policy rather than social institutions that can make distinct and different contributions”. The usual treatment? “In the absence of a distinctive theory for voluntary organization, the powerful business model - or more accurately muddled attempts to introduce elements of what are thought to be the key characteristics of that model - will dominate governmental and other thinking.” The result? “Organizations sliding into unplanned change - the real threat to organizational autonomy.” (Billis 1993: 1, 16, 21) Such impositions produced an Africa that has changed with the times and readily shows how African church intervention in the both the New and Old World may provide a model for how faith can thrive in the midst of pluralism of a secular sort rather than the overtly religious distinctive of the Global South. Specifically, much of this strong moralist societal intervention in Nigeria is due to its balancing power with Islam, where the two major world religions are approximately equal size of the total population. (CIA Factbook: 2008) As the Nigerian’s have successfully tangled with such a significant power force in their home turf, consequently they have little fear of secular states and surely not from what they perceive, an apostate member of their own communion such as the American Episcopal Church. Yet, here they may have met their match as secularism’s merger with American pragmatism has developed into a very different Christianity.
It was the New World’s political reconfiguration that allowed a vibrant social sector to emerge, to balance the private and public sectors and allowed the “Deed” the church provided become separate from its authority and influence of the “Word.” American industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie espoused scientific philanthropy, as they realized that the pace of economic growth was surpassing the existing capacity of 19th-century voluntary institutions. These had been privately formed to alleviate poverty and cope with misery. It was this influence - backed by formidable private wealth - that began to shift the thinking of interveners away from the symptoms of need, to its causes as well as to the issue of eligibility of beneficiaries. Given Christian doctrines about the sanctity of life, assessing the worthiness or unworthiness of recipients was quite a challenge to conventional thinking. Investment thinking invaded human services, as this was also bolstered by American pragmatism which focused on “what works” over what was “right” or “true.” This easily followed an ethic that did not need a universal moral code, surely a product of the Enlightenment a century earlier. Increasingly, belief systems based upon creeds and confessions were jettisoned, as a social conscience could exist on their own. Meanwhile, there was another track which was also well resourced, with roots in the Second Great Awakening out of Christian churches in the 1800s, which eventually morphed into a secular product. As the emphasis of Christian outreach had shifted during the 19th century from the tract, missionary and Sabbatarian focus to temperance, abolition, youth, disabled and public health, the common denominator was that moral flaws were associated with all of the related needs, and thus government intervention would be second best. Voluntary action was undertaken by Charity Organisation Societies, the forerunners of non-government organizations (NGOs) or private voluntary organizations (PVOs) or non-profits. These groups provided fertile ground for social Darwinism, which surreptitiously entered Christian groups like indigenous gods desecrating the temple of old as Christian core convictions of creeds and confessions being disregarded where social justice issues came to the forefront. (Olasky 1992: 89) This in its simplest form is what the Africans are confronting. An American church and organizational structure that is no different than a secular voluntary society and incongruent from foundational documents of creeds and confessions as based upon what the Africans affirm as specific Biblical revelation that holds to absolutist authority.
Finally, there was a third track - the academics in the fledgling social sciences. After linking up with scientific philanthropy late in the 19th century, they brought on board the charity organization societies into a three-way merger, at the beginning of the 20th century. These were political scientists and economists who were corporately restructuring American life as well as tinkering with basic values. “When social Darwinist ideology, industrial wealth, and academic expertise came together in the 1890s, modern American philanthropy was born.” However, giving through monetary means also evolved into allowing freedom and liberation for any segment of society and people group perceived as oppressed. Already in 1878, the New York Mission and Tract Society was revising its views: “Haphazard and indiscriminate giving is not benevolence... Let no closed-fisted brother hide behind our words, and find an excuse for not giving at all. What is censured is not giving too much, but giving in the wrong way.” (Hall 1990: 46) Therefore, compassion upon the marginalized and discriminated began to become a separate category and this further developed into the 20th century based only upon the ethic of rejection, and not the question if the rejection was warranted or based upon some moral code or understanding derived from a religious document. Thus, the reading of the Bible as condemning certain human actions such as homosexuality eventually was boldly confronted and rejected or even revised or the source was discredited. First, because the authority of religious documents was questioned, namely, because of their supernatural genre and second, because these documents were perceived as ancient and outmoded from a developing modern society. This revisionist approach in reading into the texts came much later in the form of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and thus has given birth to variations like “political correctness” and “multiculturalism” disregarding absolute truth for relativism as the era of “postmodernism” reigns as default in the Global North.
The African Crossroads of Convergence or Divergence
The African church under its missionary recipient stage has had a certain advantage. While being assaulted by various ideologies that could easily be juxtaposed in the following manner, namely, as an expression of macro cultural contours coupled with specific dimensions of culture. African churches are certainly not passive as such ideologies elicit responses. These ideologies are represented by the following: indigenous (cultural) vs. foreign (imposed); American (federalist) vs. European (nation-state); religious (Christian) vs. ideological (secular); unstructured (spontaneous) vs. institutional (contrived); socialist (communal) vs. capitalist (individual); community-based (local) vs. bureaucratic (remote). These ideological impositions have certainly forced a selective process based upon belief that is founded upon the ultimate juxtaposition - that between right and wrong as revealed truth of the Bible, the “Word” that dictates the “Deed.” Such a method is at the core of the current Nigerian ecclesiastical movement over the American diocese rather than a simple pursuit for power as the conservative American bishops are willingly coming under the fold of the Nigerians. (AP: 2008) What they seem to offer is rather unique. Conservative American bishops are reacting against the liberalism in their midst and gravitate toward the Nigerians who represent a “holistic” faith that sees the “Word” and “Deed” and inseparable. The Nigerians could be merely offering a communion; as such shifting of alliances and associations is by no means unique.
On the other hand, Africa is still very poor, and its growth was destabilized for centuries by the slave trade, and distorted by colonialism. So there could be a debt to pay, in a sense by the Global North. This brings up the question of the American financial resources the Nigerian could be attracted to. The Global North has poured tremendous amounts of aid into Africa. Certainly, it is in the whole world's best interest for Africa to grow into a healthy and prosperous trading partner in the global market, but economic power does not equal moral power, yet Africa represents the basket case of global poverty, an issue that is by no means insignificant and not only related to it oppression and exploitation. (Landes: 2000) A partnership with the Global North could easily be assumed out of this confrontation. So off-shore resources for the Africans are legitimate, as long as dependency on them is averted and foreign inputs are mixed with local resources. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the Nigerian church understands its autonomous standing.
Back in 1854, Henry Venn of the Anglican Church Mission Society was already questioning the institutional route that mother churches imposed upon their mission established offspring. This was called the three-self alternative. Venn argued that mission agencies should not establish themselves permanently, but create local churches that were self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating, autonomous entities that moved with the times and were not dependant on a mother church for very long. (Terry 2000: 483-85) This issue of dependency and has been a problem for countless mission established churches in the Global South over the last century. But it is interesting to note that once the Nigerian Church applied these principles approximately 30 years ago - even though the Anglicans had a presence there for over a century- a mighty movement of influence was born out of its self-sufficiency, as it exists today. Thus, to say that that the Nigerian Church is looking for a wealthy partner cannot be substantiated, because they are not dependant on foreign funding. This is further exemplified by the fact that the current policy of HIV/AIDS prevention through condom distribution stands rejected by many Africa churches. They could be the recipients of massive funding in this regard, but many reject the aid money of the Global North because of it. (ENI: 2005) Therefore, these examples demonstrate convergences relating to various dialectical juxtapositions, but a clear divergence resisting a secular synthesis.
Conclusion
From a human perspective, there are only two kinds of organizations - those who are dying, and those which are changing. Some try to resist change, and are thus guilty of sin by omission - they are "not doing what they ought to have done" as the prayer book says. Managing change for them means devolution from clergy to laity, and switching the top-down approach for a bottom-up approach to influence and affect society by first confronting the leadership to lead the flock in the proper direction as perceived by the masses, but churches are no democracy, yet they thrive much better in such an environment. However, an ecclesiastical body of a major world religion does not fit this category of organization. There is a transcendent dimension that cannot be empirically studied, as it depends on matters of faith and belief. One reason for which organizations are created concerns momentum and institutional memory which will continue beyond the life-span of particular individuals. They serve as a repository of know-how and allow for synergy to be gained as people work together corporately. A church is not this type of organization, but such organizations are made up of a church or churches. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical organizations are made up of the same individuals and can come under such a study for analysis and better understanding. Therefore, the leadership succession of a church relies absolutely on hierarchical constants that draw upon creeds, confessions derived from agreed-upon interpretations of practice and what is held as sacred documents or scripture. Such a reality is often not considered in a rapidly changing secular world.
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