Will the African Synod Make a Difference?

Many who are watching the African Synod in Rome “The Church in Africa in Service to Reconciliation, Justice and Peace” are hoping it will be more than a talking shop and actually bear positive fruit. My sense is that if it rises to the challenge of being the Church of Africa, and not a branch of the Church in Africa, it will.

This means both real engagement with the issues the continent faces and engaging with them in a way that is African. It means not simply adopting themes and practices of the universal Church, but adapting them to African realities and cultures. And at times adaptation necessarily means changing things.

The challenges in Africa are many: poverty, corruption, xenophobia, wars, disease (including AIDS), as well as the struggle for good government, democracy, economic growth and overcoming patriarchy. It should be noted that African leaders and intellectuals (including church people and theologians) are saying this. Moeletsi Mbeki recently placed the blame for post-colonial impoverishment squarely on the new elites who, in cahoots with unscrupulous Western corporations and states, have systematically stripped the continent of its wealth to benefit themselves while letting majorities go without and state infrastructure decay (except in their elite enclaves, of course). African scholars have denounced patriarchy and aspects of culture that dehumanize and contribute to conflict and injustice.

The Church in Africa has played an important yet ambivalent role. In countries where elite corruption has created disasters, the Church has been one of the few institutions to function effectively. Health and education has survived in some places through institutions of priests, brothers and sisters. Ironically, church schools have educated many of the elite who have used their education for their own benefit, becoming their countries’ dictators and despoilers.

But an era is passing. The missionary is disappearing; the local church is taking over – which is good, so long as it does not become a mirror of the corrupt elites and hence part of Africa’s problem.

Nor should the local church slavishly imitate the mission church. Western Christianity was built upon a dialogue with European culture, art, philosophy and even pre-Christian European religious practices. African Christianity needs to embrace more fully the vision of Vatican II and the Church’s commitment to inculturation. African rites like the Congo Mass, the use of liturgical dance and drums are, though important, superficial. They should not be seen as concessions but emerging out of the faith of a people whom Benedict has called the ‘spiritual lungs’ of the Church. They were a start, not the limit of inculturation.

African ways of thinking and deliberating need to become part of the life of the African Church. We need to see the Church primarily as a communion of communions in a process of ongoing dialogue and deliberation (lekgotla), a vision echoing the collegial and communal vision of Vatican II. We need to see personhood and relatedness (Ubuntu) as the foundation for our moral deliberation and action on behalf of justice, all done in dialogue with the universal Church and universal human values – even to the point where we become fierce opponents of aspects of African culture that are oppressive.

Let us hope and pray that this Synod will help the ‘spiritual lungs’ to breathe freely.