Innovating in an African Catechism to Overcome the Superficiality of Faith: The Central African Case Paradigm
by Banga Anatole, PhD Student, Institut Universitaire de Développement International (IUDI)
This article is in French. Use Google Translate if necessary to read one section at a time (3900 character limit per translation)
The author writes about an absence of transformation in the lives of those who declare themselves Christians. The ongoing crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) raised many questions among which the biblical teachings or catechism that pioneer missionaries taught years ago to introduce Christianity in the country. During the current armed conflict, when Muslim rebels persecuted harshly Christians to the extreme and destroyed churches, one can observe the so-called Christians militias reacted in very evil ways against Muslims in the country. The use of witchcraft to protect oneself against bullets from enemies, the killing of innocent people in the name of Christ, and so on, were some of the images international medias and breaking news at that time portrayed as the misconduct of believers in CAR. Yet, it is widely known Central African Republic has the record of 80% Christians, and according to Operation World 52% are evangelicals. Are such mentioned above testimonies the confirmation of the saying “in Africa churches are one mile length and one inch deep”?
When reflecting about that problem, we may find the root in the lack of anthropological knowledge at the time missionaries arrived and also their misinterpretation of the African peoples’ culture. The gospel was modeled according to a western point of view and didn’t deal according to the local context. Today, on the one hand, souls are saved every day, churches are planted every month, and statistics astonish us every year. But on other hand, there is no transformation of African societies. Poverty has prospered, wars are waging over the continent. We are suggesting an African catechism to overcome the problem. Such catechism will take in consideration the oral tradition of the people, the cultural context of the nation, the wide range of stories in use in the traditional societies for teaching, the community way of living of African people, as well as socioeconomic realities.
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