A way to connect with Mennonites in Africa

Africa: A Global Mennonite History, Volume One Alemu Checole with Samuel Asefa, Bekithemba Dube, Doris Dube, Michael Kodzo Badasu, Erik Kumedisa, Barbara Nkala, I.U. Nsasak, Siaka Traore, Pakisa Tshimika. Pandora Press with Herald Press, 2003. 320 pages.

This first volume of the Global Mennonite History project tells the story of the Mennonites and Brethren in Christ of Africa – more than 450,000 people in 23 church bodies in 16 countries. With that much to cover and little more than 300 pages to do it, this is something of a whirlwind tour.

Different authors describe the church in four areas: central (Congo, Angola); southern (Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa); eastern (Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea); and western (Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso). They recount the setting, church beginnings, expansion, some key personalities, failures and successes. The reader encounters a host of places, people and acronyms (53 listed in the front).

But it’s an overview that yields powerful impressions, of a complex and energetic church whose presence challenges the wider Anabaptist fellowship to receive “the gifts of diverse and particular cultures and histories” into their reflections of what it means to be Mennonite/Anabaptist.

This is a history of the African church told by Africans. Although Mennonite missions on the continent go back to the 1890s, the writers of this volume take pains to draw a larger context and longer chronology. They remind that God was in Africa before the missionaries arrived. Africans knew about a Higher God, the creator, and had religion. Parts of traditional faith conflict with Christian faith, to be sure, but in other ways, they say, the Christian faith “fulfilled” their beliefs. For African societies whose spiritual relationships were with the ancestors, for example, in the words of Kwame Bediako, “Christ replaced our ancestors as the Supreme Ancestor.”

The missionary enterprise, deeply embedded in the colonial endeavour, is described graciously and not without gratitude. It is also criticized for its legacy of dependency as well as the subsequent struggle of the church to find an authentic African Christian identity. Returning to the use of traditional instruments and dancing, generally forbidden by missionaries, has been both symbolic of and fundamental to a matured identity for many.

As a Mennonite Brethren, I particularly enjoyed the section on Congo and Angola, where our denomination is represented. I was also struck by the role relief efforts played in the formation of the church in some countries; the Mennonite church’s importance in their national societies and Africa’s ecumenical movement; the amazing growth of the persecuted Meserete Kristos Church in Ethiopia under the Marxist revolution (from 5000 members in 1982 before the official closure of the church to 34,000 in 1991 when the church “resurfaced”); the way the African church has embraced a vision of evangelizing. A contemporary challenge is the growing strength of Islam.

“We want people in the North to connect with the spiritual depth of the churches in Africa,” writes Alemu Checole. “There is an awakening, an exciting sense of being alive. The Spirit of God is being unleashed among us.” Reading this interesting and inspiring book is an excellent way for us here to make that connection.

Dora Dueck is associate editor of the MB Herald.