Re-examining culture and language to enrich faith and scholarship
“Are you an African Christian or a Christian African?” This was a question posed to Catalysts by staff member Dr Augustin Ahoga during a recent LCI course in Francophone Africa. The course helps Catalysts explore their hybrid identity as African Christian intellectuals navigating between their African culture (their hereditary heritage) and the Western culture bequeathed to them through the historical events of slavery, colonization and Christianization. Now in its third year, the 5-week-long online course also compares and contrasts African, biblical, and scientific views of the world.
The course was particularly impactful for one Tier One Catalyst from Senegal.
“For a long time, the Christian African took precedence over the African Christian in me,” shares Dr Mane Hélène Faye. “For some years now I’ve been trying to nourish the African Christian in me. I’m learning to reflect, read and meditate on the Bible in my mother tongue. I’ve also found that hearing praise in my mother tongue stirs up strong emotions in me: each word has a particular, very specific meaning, with a depth that is incomparable to that which I perceive in French.”
The course is part of the LCI’s holistic training for Catalysts. Our goal has always been to develop Catalysts’ skills, character and knowledge so that they can be thought leaders in the science-theology dialogue in their context. But as the LCI has progressed, our staff have recognized the importance of culture in this dialogue. In recent years, our training in Francophone Africa has included helping Catalysts explore and re-examine their culture so that both their faith and their scholarship can be enriched with culture-infused perspectives.
“I love my culture and I’m not so much rejecting it outright as trying to understand how my faith can grow by embracing aspects of my culture that don’t conflict with it,” said Mane Hélène. “However, I find that there is a constant conflict between the Christian African and the African Christian in me according to the circumstances of life. The questions I ask myself and which I submit here are: what control do I have over the evolution of the identity conflict I’m experiencing? How can I nourish and help the African Christian in me to grow? What balance should I maintain?”
In a similar vein to Dr Ahoga’s course, Catalysts in Francophone Africa attended a seminar in September titled Indigenous Languages and Theological Culture.
Dr Vellah Temko Ngaina, a graduate from Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana, discussed the crucial role that indigenous languages play in theological expression and understanding. In many African contexts, indigenous languages have been pushed to the periphery in education, science and even theology.
Catalysts found the talk highly relevant. It provoked a lively discussion in which several shared their experiences of being discouraged from using their indigenous language or even punished for doing so.