“Liturgy and Ecumenism,Contexts and Challenges”: A Glance from the African Context

Abstract

Ecumenical activities in East and West Africa, though modest, represent significant strides for Christianity in the continent of Africa. The narrative in this article, deliberately tilted toward African agency, is an attempt to capture aspects of the story. It begins with the ecumenical liturgical performance of Catholic Kongo-Angola slaves soliciting Holy Communion from Anglican divines, in South Carolina, early in the eighteenth century. Its impact in the overall understanding of ecumenism from the African context is underlined. Next, the article shifts to eastern and western Africa, where a divisive colonial Christian agenda was propagated, and, at the same time, contained, thanks to the initiative of African leadership, guided by the Holy Spirit. Further samples of the Holy Spirit guiding the community to Christian unity are drawn from the witness of the Ugandan martyrs. The article also refers to the liturgical melding of Christian denominations in the Charismatic and Pentecostal patterns of worship as an important statement on liturgical ecumenism.

1. Introduction: General Overview of a Complex African Narrative

If the story of the emergent world Christianity must be told from the perspective of a “second [African] glance,” our narrative is “decidedly polycentric.” ¹ The advantage of taking a second look at everything we are told, to embrace the challenging path of a balance of stories, is that one is liberated from hearing only one side of the story. Following Chinua Achebe's postcolonial hermeneutic of suspicion, one declares, “If you hear only one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.” ² To appreciate the complex ecumenical tones of the Church of God spread throughout the oikumene, the African liturgical theologian and/or missiologist brings into the conversation the evangelizing ministry of the cohort of free and liberated Blacks, denizens of the “Black Atlantic” world. ³ This enables one to engage in conversations on liturgical ecumenism, from the African perspective, not as threat but as promise.

In the first place, one notes that the “abolitionists abroad,” who were perhaps inspirational to the nineteenth-century modern missionary movement, preceded European missionary congregations in the evangelization of West Africa. These diaspora African Christians profoundly transformed by the liberating force of the Christian Faith—the faith that was driving them back to Mother Africa—played an irreplaceable role in the making of modern West Africa. ⁴ Their colony, Freetown (Sierra Leone), founded in 1792, was described in 1853 by African American pastor-evangelist, Alexander Crummell, as “the cradle of missions, the mother of churches, the parent of colonies.” ⁵ This view of mission underlines that indigenous African agency appropriated the transforming and liberating Faith for Africans.

It was from the cradle of missions and mother of churches that Samuel Adjai Crowther set out in 1857. Crowther, later ordained the first black Anglican Bishop on the Niger, led from Freetown “the first important move of the Church Missionary Society [CMS] in planting a Mission from a native ministry.” This CMS mission, he reports with pride, is “an entire native offshoot from the colony of Sierra Leone.” In view of the dour race relations and denominational rivalry that dogged the nineteenth-century missionary movement, Crowther was insistent that the mission he led was “a step in advance of the Yoruba Mission, commenced and worked under the direction of European missionaries.” ⁶

This article, which explores the challenges of liturgy and ecumenism from the limited results of multiple African experiments, will try to be sensitive to the polycentricism of the African performance in the Black Atlantic world. Consequently, to open the conversation, I begin before the late eighteenth-century opening of Sierra Leone, to acknowledge the early eighteenth-century ministry of enslaved Catholic Africans, evangelizing in the Americas long before the modern missionary movement. They arrived in the Americas from the African side of the Black Atlantic world. Their non-denominational performance is inspirational for my critique of and comments on the modern missionary movement, driven by the denominational churches. Today, guided by the Spirit of Pentecost, denominational churches are searching for unity.

This article, therefore, introduces first the ecumenical liturgical initiatives by enslaved Catholic Africans who, early in the eighteenth century, made the challenging statement on the unity of all Christians, and the oneness of the church. From the underside of history, the “wretched of the earth,” ⁷ four Kongo-Angola Catholics interrogated church unity in South Carolina—unity that is inseparable from and essential to the nature of the church. The questions that would preoccupy Yves Congar in the twentieth century were raised, in a non-thematized way, by their liturgical performance: is the church the same, in its essential nature, ⁸ in Kongo-Angola and in Rome, in South Carolina, and in Canterbury?

Second, inspired by the ecumenical optimism of the Catholic slaves of South Carolina, who had no doubt about the sameness of the church everywhere and for all people, I join Protestants in eastern Nigeria (early in the twentieth century) to lament the torn flesh of Christ, the torn flesh of the church plagued by denominationalism. The twin movements of colonialism and Christian mission, dogged by competition and rivalry, spawned the divided people of God. The lament of Protestants was punctuated by denunciations of the rivalry on the ground. Guided by the Holy Spirit, they took steps toward unity, deciding to eliminate or reduce denominational rivalry, except with Roman Catholics. This reaction against division obtained not only in eastern Nigeria (West Africa) but also in East Africa.

Third, the most popular and the fastest growing brand of Christianity in contemporary Africa are the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements that the historic missionary churches can no longer ignore. Despite conflicts between the missionary churches and modern African Pentecostalism, Charismatic and Pentecostal movements learn to perform together, devise liturgies that penetrate the metallic armor of division to secure space for church unity.

Finally, despite the anti-cultural propaganda of colonial denominational Christianity, despite the denunciation of African culture by modern African Pentecostalism, one can conclude legitimately that the preference for comity, in the efforts towards unity among Christians in Africa, displays the genius of African cultures. The realism of co-humanity, belonging to a bundle of life, one's humanity being inextricably bound to others, relativizes to a certain extent colonially transmitted denominationalism. Feminist African theologians, led by Amba Oduyoye, insist that the humanistic values of African cultures must be recovered by African women and theologians for the liberation of women, men, and all people. By challenging the colonizing Western patriarchal denominational Christianity, adopted by male African Christians, inclusivist African values help to set the stage for the reinvention of Christianity. ⁹

2. From the Ordinary to the Sublime: Catholic Slaves Challenge Eucharistic “Famine”

I begin with the story of an initial experimentation in liturgical ecumenism, early in the eighteenth century, North America. Four enslaved Kongo-Angola Catholics, who brought Catholicism with them from the African side of the Black Atlantic, initiated a vital conversation between Catholics and Anglicans in South Carolina on eucharistic communion. Really and symbolically, their story enables one to expand and critique the discussion on the African experience of and challenge to the divided people of God. Their performance instructs the attentive observer always to keep their eye on the action of the inspiring Holy Spirit directing the experiencing believers toward unity, beyond denominationalism. The story of the four enslaved Kongo-Angola Catholics sets aside, beyond ambiguity, the assumption that Africans are consumers of Euro-American Christian civilization—an assumption propagated not only by missionaries, colonizers, and travelogues, but also by “diaspora Africans” (black Christians from the American side of the Black Atlantic). By deliberately exalting the encounter between Kongo-Angola Catholics and colonial Euro-American Anglicans, I declare my postcolonial approach to evangelism, which contributes to explorations in the complex steps toward church unity.

In his study, “Kongolese Christianity in the Americas of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” David Daniels III creatively reflects on the mass conversion of Africans in the Americas, mediated by Kongo-Angola Catholics. This involved African conversion to Catholicism in the Portuguese and Spanish possessions (Brazil, Cuba, Florida, and so forth) and to Protestantism in the English colony (e.g., South Carolina). On all sides of the denominational divide, the effect of the enslaved African Catholics was felt. Daniels reports the claim of historian Alfloyd Butler that “the first mass Protestant conversion of Africans in North America occurred in the low country of South Carolina during the early eighteenth century.” ¹⁰ This conversion to Protestantism was in part the performance of enslaved African Catholics who challenged the scandal of a divided people of God.

The enslaved African Catholics’ performance was dramatic. Anglican missionary, Francis Le Jau, lived the drama in his pastoral location at St. James parish, Goose Creek, South Carolina. “Three or four enslaved Angolans” came to Le Jau and “requested Holy Communion.” Le Jau had no doubts about the genuineness of their Christian faith nor of their devotion: “[They] were born and baptized among the Portuguese … Thus, they were genuinely initiated into the Christian [Catholic] Faith. Furthermore, they come to church and are well instructed so as to express a great desire to receive H[oly] Communion amongst us.” By requesting holy communion they recognize, in my view, the theological truth (in a non-thematic way) of the one Church of God, made so only through celebrating the sacraments (i.e., eucharist). ¹¹

One applauds Le Jau's acknowledgment of the oneness of the faith, in which the slaves were “well instructed,” his recognition of the “one Baptism” in the Spirit, and even the slaves’ effectiveness as catechists who could instruct others. These qualities should come as no surprise. From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth–twentieth centuries, Kongo-Angola Catholicism was lay-driven: it was supervised by the celebrated literate maiestri (interpreters/catechists) rather than by the Catholic clergy. While I do not say that the enslaved Catholics were maiestri (a group drawn from the nobility) I note that they were familiar with lay-led instructors. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Le Jau testifies: “I take all the care I can that they instruct one another when they have time; there are a few men in several plantations to whom I have recommended to do that good service to the others, those men are religious, zealous, honest, they can read well.” By 1716, there was a sizeable community of African Christians in Le Jau's parish—including Christians that “prayed and read some part of their Bibles in the field and in their quarters, in the hearing of those who could not read.” ¹²

The denominational divisiveness of the time, however, rendered this Anglican pastor unfree to engage in full communion—to recognize the same Christ, in the same Spirit, acting in the sacraments that make the same church. “I proposed to them to declare openly their Abjuring the Errors of the Romish Church without which Declaration I cou’d [could] not receive them.” In addition, Le Jau demanded they set aside their Kongo Catholic piety. They must renounce “praying to the Saints” and vow to never “return to the Popish worship in case they shou’d [should] be sent to Medera again. I gave them that fform [form] of Submission in Writing and left it to their Consideration, they come constantly to church and are very sensible.” ¹³

One notes, from the above, first, that the eventful opportunity to denominationally convert Kongo-Angola Catholics to Protestantism—music to the ears of North American Protestants—was driven by African Catholics (transplanted as slaves from the Kongo-Angola shores of the Atlantic). Their hunger or passion for the one church, verified in the same eucharist, drove them to the Anglicans. As koinonia (communion) characterizes the very nature of “Ekklesiai tou Theou scattered throughout the whole world and down through the ages, each one having its own characteristics,” it is not surprising that the Kongo-Angola Catholics were expecting hospitality from the Anglicans! Happily ignorant of elite conversations around Anglican Orders, they left themselves to be directed by the Spirit toward eucharistic communion, in this particular (Anglican) local assembly, the Church of Churches, embodying the apostolic witness. ¹⁴ The acceptance of the accommodations and compromises demanded by the Anglican pastor, so as to satiate their hunger for Church-Sacrament, is indeed a sublime ecumenical liturgical experience of the one church.

These Catholic Christians, the leading example of ecumenism in this article, and their passion to embrace communion with fellow Christians, Anglicans, express faith in the unity of the church. They testify that wherever the church is found, all over the world, even in conditions of chattel slavery, “the essential nature” of this one church, the one flesh of Christ, “cannot be separated from what she contains for other people.” ¹⁵ Their participation in the Anglican eucharistic liturgy, experiencing in a limited way the unified church born in diversity, is to be celebrated. Though never perfect, each demonstration of unity must be celebrated. The Kongo-Angola Black Catholics desired the eucharist in order to escape eucharistic famine. They solicited the confession of the One Christ in the One Church, even at the risk of conceding to the demands of the slave-holding Anglicans. Or, perhaps, they were seamlessly open to ecumenism, driven by the Spirit working mysteriously within the flexible indigenous Kongo willingness to recognize every spiritual religious power (kindoki) exercised for the common good.

The deliberate step by lay Catholic slaves in propagating ecumenical worship in the second decade of the eighteenth century should not be underestimated in the search for indices of the contextual expression of liturgy and ecumenism. It should be noted that in their Catholic home country, Kongo and Angola, in the mid-seventeenth century, during the reign of Garcia II (Nkanga a Lukeni, reigned 1641–61), such ecumenical liturgical communion would be unthinkable. For example, despite the conflict and wars between Catholic Portugal and Catholic Kongo, Garcia II rejected the letter of credence of the Dutch (Protestant) ambassador. (This was after the Dutch drove out the Portuguese and occupied Luanda, Angola.) The Kongo king's reasons for rejecting the diplomatic communication were both ecclesiological and denominational: “I belong to the Catholic religion and I have put myself under obedience to the Holy Father, Vicar [stadhouder] of God. The wickedness of the Portuguese [Catholics], founded on ambition, is not sufficient to make me abandon the Catholic faith or to chase the priests from my country and from the kingdom of Angola.” ¹⁶ In South Carolina, the socially and politically powerless enslaved guided by the Spirit and famished for the eucharist, embraced Anglicanism, whose history and center of governance were located elsewhere (London). However, celebrating in the Anglican assembly embodied, for them, a legitimate catholic experience of the Ekklesia tou Theou energized by eucharistic communion. ¹⁷

Second, recruited as catechists or evangelists, literate instructors of other enslaved Africans, their evangelizing mission historically preceded Christian evangelism by “diaspora Africans” in West Africa. The diaspora Africans, former enslaved Blacks, denizens of the “Black Atlantic,” were precursors or inspirers of the modern missionary movement. However, the enslaved Kongo-Angola Catholic evangelists in South Carolina were part of the cohort of evangelizers of Africans in the Americas. Their early eighteenth century, evangelizing ministry in South Carolina preceded the late eighteenth-century “abolitionists” who “found strength and fulfilment in Christianity's story of redemption and equality,” and were returning from the American side of the Black Atlantic to West Africa. The abolitionists, deeply rooted in their faith, with passion and compassion, were seeking “a new home” in Africa. They were intent on planting their faith in the mother continent, to rid Africa of slavery and to rid the continent, as they believed, of its inferior religious (“pagan”) culture, its superstition and barbarism. They intended to replace these with the superior (Western) Christianity/civilization. ¹⁸

Nevertheless, third, the emergent church of the converted Africans in South Carolina, North America, assimilated the local, legitimate, and culturally differentiated Kongo characteristics. For example, David Daniels, following Alfloyd Butler, argues that the “revivals of the 1740s” intersect with “the enslaved Angolan Christians, including semi-literate, Anglican communicants, and nascent evangelicalism.” These elements enabled “this first mass Protestant conversion of Africans in North America.” Kongo Catholicism and spirituality, Daniels insists, perdured in the awakening of African Christians of North America: “With the Angolans and Kongolese as catalysts, these revivals created space for Africans to forge their Christianity in the Americas with memories of Kongolese and Angolan [Catholic] Christianity as well as an emphasis on conversion, the apocalyptic, and religious enthusiasm.” Daniels celebrates the “ring shout” in African American Christianity, traceable to Kongo-Angola cultural performance integrated within Kongo Catholicism. That “circle dance,” retained in the Pinkster Festival (in Albany New York, mid-eighteenth to nineteenth century), ¹⁹ captures liturgical ecumenism. In this African ritual repertoire within Christian liturgies in the USA, the African body remembers: “The body remembers how to worship. The body remembers how to do ritual. The ring shout is an African practice that comes across the ocean and is practiced by free and enslaved African Americans.” ²⁰

3. Challenging the Scandal of a Divided People of God, Christianity beyond Colonial and Denominational Rivalry

The missionizing ideology of the abolitionists abroad, passionate to Christianize/civilize, was guided by the drive to replace indigenous African world-performance with the “superior” Western European and Christian vision-performance. Some within the West African Christian community rejected or distanced themselves from the exclusivist replacement ideology. While not denying their Christian denominations they rejected divisive denominationalism. As Christian evangelizers, “recaptives”—slaves recaptured from traffickers by the British navy in the Atlantic and entrusted to missionaries, or settled in Sierra Leone—were less inclined to exclusivist colonialist views. ²¹ Their style of ministry constitutes, in my view, the second major African contribution to ecumenism and worship.

One notes the celebrated first black Anglican Bishop on the Niger, Yoruba-born recaptive slave, Adjai Crowther. He rejected denominational exclusivism. While combatting superstition, Crowther “eschewed the wholesale denunciation of African culture common among Europeans and Black Christians from America.” He promoted the vernacular and, guided by field experience, affirmed that Christianity “does not undertake to destroy” culture but rather to correct “superstitious defects.” ²² This opens a window to appreciate what Eugene Hillman calls the “wider ecumenism” ²³ that is liberatory. The Christian church could engage in dialogue with other religions and cultures. The openness of the first African Anglican Bishop on the Niger helps us not only to take another look at the guiding ideology of the modern missionary movement but helps us to reconsider the dominant evaluation of the foreign missionaries and the indigenous ordained collaborators as captive to rivalry and division. Generally, historians of African Christianity believe that Christian denominations were in competition or rivalry with one another, before, during, and after the “conquest” of African lands and peoples (sealed at the 1884–1885 Berlin conference). Historians such as Frank Ekechi, E. A. Ayandele, Ogbu Kalu, Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka, and Jehu Hanciles see interdenominational rivalry as the stock in trade of the churches. The competition remained unabated after political independence. ²⁴

It is undeniable that division and rivalry characterized the historic missionary churches in their European and American locations and in their African mission fields. The fractious relations among Christians in continental Africa raise the question as to whether rivalry and divisiveness are unavoidable in the one church born out of differentiation. The divisions remind one of Paul's disappointment with the divisions in Corinth. A frustrated Paul notes, “Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine.” (1 Cor 11:19). Nevertheless, one must affirm with Raymond Brown that in the self-definition of the Churches the Apostles Left Behind, diversity of ecclesiologies is central. Unity is never mistaken for homogenization. The rule is a Church of Churches. Some churches were linked to Peter, Paul, or James; others were closely connected to a personal experience of the Lord, such as the community of the Beloved Disciple. While some were strongly inclined to Jewish ritual practices (James), others expressed greater freedom in the Spirit (Hellenists). These Churches always retained koinonia and did not indulge in the type of divisiveness that characterized the post-Apostolic period and the Western Reformation. ²⁵

Divisiveness notwithstanding, this article suggests that in West and East Africa the underlying operations of the Spirit of God were directing the Protestant communities toward unity from the earliest period of the modern missionary movement. They realized that “[a] divided Church will remain scandalous to the gospel.” They struggled to respect genuine ecclesial differentiations that bear witness to the same Gospel. Jesse Mugambi is on target: “A differentiated church will manifest the richness of human responses to the gospel, provided that the differences in ecclesiology are mutually recognized and respected.” ²⁶ For example, in southeastern Nigeria, mission exigencies commanded “cooperation and comity,” respecting differences in ecclesiology. The story of this ecumenical cooperation needs to be told and retold.

Among Protestants in southeastern Nigeria, Hope Waddell, of the United Presbyterian Mission, Old Calabar, declared in 1844: “It is not our wish to disturb any other body of Christians who may be engaged in similar labors.” ²⁷ Adjai Crowther, leading the first all-African Mission of the CMS on the Niger (through Onitsha, to the interior of Igbo country in 1857) is more dramatic. He was consumed by an ecclesiology and eschatology of unity. He insisted not only on the oneness of the Christian faith but on a unified church, entrusted with the mission to unite nations. Ecclesiology and eschatology folded within ecumenism: missionary societies should occupy different operational zones; the church must not be a divider of nations. Referencing the sermon of the Bishop of New Zealand before the University of Cambridge (n.d.), Crowther advised missionary societies in Africa to adopt the paradigm of Abraham and Lot. Thus, they avoid the scandal of division imported from Europe and planted in Sierra Leone and in the European-directed Yoruba Mission. “[T]he same town should not be occupied by Missionary Societies of different denominations.” Denominational amity, with eschatological implications, is the ideal: “wherever this law of religious unity is adopted, there the gospel has its full and unchecked and undivided power.” ²⁸ The CMS Bishop appears to be saying that in whatever historical location the church is present, the Holy Spirit, through the plenitude (katholou) of eschatological gifts, comes “to plant the reality of the new (kainè) humanity that is not of this world.” ²⁹ Unity of this one church displays the unity and destiny of peoples. Crowther's mid-nineteenth-century ecclesiology aligns with the self-definition of the church by Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, 1964): “the church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race…” (LG 1). Any dramatization of intra-group or inter-group conflict in this church, envisioned primarily as a “human group,” betrays its very nature and its mission. ³⁰

Unfortunately, the wisdom of Crowther, expressed in zoning, became the exception rather than the rule. The hostility and bitterness imported from home countries by the Anglicans (CMS) and Roman Catholics, deepened division among clans, ethnicities, and peoples, as in Uganda. ³¹ Furthermore, the conservatism of African church leaders, translated into unflinching fidelity to imported denominationalism, exacerbated division. In the words of D. W. Waruta:

It is no exaggeration to say that African Christian leaders as Catholics are more Italian or French than Italians and Frenchmen, as Presbyterians more Scottish than Scotsmen, as Lutherans more German than Germans, as Baptists and Pentecostals more American than Americans, and as Anglicans more English than Englishmen. ³²

The failure to adopt the ecumenical-eschatological wisdom of Crowther is best illustrated by the scandal of undisguised radical social, political, and religious confrontation in Uganda. The severity and brutality of the competition, aggravated by British colonial interests that favored Protestants, imported anti-Catholicism from England to Uganda. It converted the “Church of Uganda” into the “Church of England.” Numerous efforts at church unity, such as the Ecumenical Discussion Group of 1963, turned out to be elite theological conversations. In a PhD thesis, “Making Peace,” the Ugandan Michael Komakec underlines the negative effects of the colonial legacy on ecclesial unity: inciting division, exacerbating religio-political rivalry, and undermining Christian unity. Komakec does not employ euphemisms:

The Anglican Church of Uganda has never been able to overcome its close affinity with the political leadership of Uganda since the British colonial period. Church and State are almost synonymous because of the political and military support from the British against the Catholics during the religious wars in Uganda when missionaries were laying the foundation of the Anglican Church in the country. Since then, they have considered themselves as the true Church of Uganda, unlike the Catholics, hence their name “Church of Uganda.” They have identified themselves with all the political regimes in Uganda since independence.

Komakec sums up the looming danger for Uganda, should Catholics assume political power:

The Anglican affinity with the political leadership of Uganda is another indicator of future danger/conflict should one day a Catholic become the president of Uganda. The probability is very high that they will not tolerate the leadership of a Catholic president who will certainly not give them the kind of favors they are “addicted” to since British colonial rule in Uganda. ³³

Sounding almost like Crowther, Fr. John O’Donohue advised Christian missionaries of Ugandan extraction to assume the mantle of privileged agents reimagining and renewing the oneness of the Christian Church. They should remain in their country to ecumenically re-evangelize Uganda, rather than going to other parts of the world. Their ministry, if effective, would bear ecumenical fruit—to “shame the Christians of the rest of the world into unity.” ³⁴ The late Ugandan theologian, John Walliggo, claims that it is precisely the blood of the Ugandan martyrs that provides the seed for the triumph of ecumenism, for church unity in Africa and the world. This provides another important example, to be developed below, of the limited positive result of ecumenism in Africa.

Uganda is not a unique signpost of the divided people of God in disarray. In southeastern Nigeria, the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Qua Iboes (United Evangelical Church) assembled in 1907 to fine-tune their mission strategy. They declared, in a combative tone, “Our problems are similar. Within professed Christianity we have the same enemy, namely the Roman Catholics.” Yet, the journey of self-shaming by Christians over disunity was at work in West and East Africa. The eastern Nigerian delegation to the nascent Christian Council of Nigeria in 1911 (Protestants) denounced the “existence of division among us as a source of weakness.” The delegation made a commitment to take steps toward “the consolidation of union among our Churches.” ³⁵ Nonetheless, Protestant unanimity should not be exaggerated. It is true that Protestant missionaries cooperated in colonial eastern Africa and parts of West Africa to advance their mission, yet the conversation on church unity, wherever discussed, was never embraced with unanimity. ³⁶

To close this section on an optimistic note, I fall back on the ecumenical performance of the inimitable Adjai Crowther to reemphasize how complex is the story of church unity in the African context during the colonial period. Crowther presents an unusual exception to the anti-Catholic rhetoric in southeastern Nigeria. He opens an alternative window for evaluating limited positive ecumenical performance.

Crowther, challenger to the shame of disunity, was the leader of the first all-African CMS Mission in the Lower Niger. When the Roman Catholics, the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans), led by Frenchman Father Joseph Lutz, arrived in the Lower Niger, Onitsha, in 1885, they were treated to the hospitality of the King, Obi Anazonwu, who promised them a piece of land of their choice. The land (measuring 900 square fathoms, or 20 hectares) was already taken by the CMS. When Father Lutz met with Bishop Crowther in 1886, the exceptional ex-slave, the first black Anglican Bishop on the Niger, was most obliging, “I acquired this piece of land for God's cause. Take it.” ³⁷ That piece of land became the center of the Catholic Prefecture of the Lower Niger, the location of the Catholic Holy Trinity Cathedral. Interdenominational competition and rivalry might have helped the geographical Propagation of the Faith. For Crowther, however, the eschatological mission of the church is more important than denominational expansion: the “full and unchecked and undivided power” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, fashioning the flesh of the Church, is present where the “law of religious unity is adopted.” ³⁸

The church of churches, as creation of the Spirit of Pentecost which sets aside the confusion of Babel, unites rather than divides people. As “the wind blows where it chooses” (John 3:8), students of ecumenism and liturgy must never ignore the driving wind of unity wherever it blows, in eastern Nigeria and even in Uganda. The Spirit of Pentecost is discerned to be active in the series of events that followed the banning of Evangelical Churches in Uganda by the Muslim President Idi Amin Dada (January 31, 1971), and in the murder of the Anglican (Church of Uganda) Archbishop Jannan Luwuum, by the same Amin. The opening of the doors of All Saints Cathedral of Kampala, Anglican communion, to Evangelical Christians, that generated the sharing not only of space but of liturgical resources, led to the Anglicanization of Pentecostalism and the Pentecostalization of Anglicanism. ³⁹

The Ugandan context introduces another twist to the conversation on the challenges of liturgy and ecumenism in the plural contexts of Africa. It introduces the conversation on the effect of Pentecostalism and Charismatic movements, as indices of the revitalization of church-life driven by the Spirit, impacting liturgical ecumenism in the Church of Churches, in the continent of Africa. ⁴⁰

4. The Impact of Pentecostal and Charismatic Pattern of Prayer on Christian Unity

The hidden hand of the Spirit, bringing together the Church of Uganda (Anglican Communion) and the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, makes much more sense if connected with the martyrial performance in Uganda, the 1886 holocaust at Namugongo. The witness of the Ugandan martyrs, canonized by the Catholic Church in 1969, bore the imprint of the typical African lay-led, Spirit-driven church, that tones down denominational rivalry. In making this affirmation, I do not ignore the ferocious rivalry between Muslims, Protestants, and Catholics. These rival religions were in competition at the court of the Kabaka, the Buganda king, securing the patronage of the king and initiating king and court pages.

The Catholic Missionaries of Africa, founded by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie in 1868 and known as the White Fathers, arrived at Kabaka Muteesa's palace in February 1879. The king, highly interested in trade and political relations with foreigners, had good relations with the Arab Muslims (and even experimented with Islam). He also maintained a good relationship with the Protestant Church Missionary Society, which was in competition with the Muslims and making converts in the capital. The White Fathers, unwilling to accept King Muteesa's political interest in (French) Catholicism rather than in personal conversion, found ministry in the capital complicated. They abandoned the mission and withdrew toward the South, to the region of Victoria in 1882. Here the story becomes more complicated because of an ecumenical twist. (I draw from John Waliggo.) ⁴¹

Rather than diminish fervor among the catechumens, and the few baptized, or reduce interest in the foreign religion and ways, the withdrawal by the Catholic missionaries increased interest among the pages in King Muteesa's court and even in the provinces. The larger group of converts remained in Buganda and “continued to serve the king and their faith.” Three remarkable leaders—court pages who had been baptized in 1882—emerged:

* Yozefu Mukasa Balikuddembe led the Catholic community within the royal palace;

* Andrea Kaggwa presided over the community around the palace; and

* Matia Kalemba Mulumba organized the local church at Mityana, forty miles from the capital.

Yozefu Mukasa, the favorite page of Kabaka Muteesa, was totally committed to ministering to the Catholic pages and community. The Buganda traditionalists, committed to preserving Buganda tradition (and opposed to radical changes introduced by Islam or Christianity) nicknamed Mukasa “Balikuddembe” (the Christians are at peace). He not only led prayers and instructions in the Church but, after the death of Muteesa, was also instructing the young King Mwanga, a catechumen. ⁴² The group of lay-led Catholics preferred friendly terms with the Protestant mission rather than confrontation. However, they rebuffed all attempts and arguments to attract them to join the Protestant church. It was a pleasant surprise when, on his return to Buganda, in 1885, Father Siméon Lourdel found a flourishing Catholic community. Writing to Cardinal Lavigerie, Lourdel testified, “The work of God was marvelously carried on during our absence and this cannot be attributed to us.” ⁴³

Later, the inspirational leader, Mukasa, instructor of the young king, fell out with Mwanga. King Mwanga and the traditionalists felt betrayed by Mukasa, who was ordered to be executed. The first of the Christian martyrs! Matters precipitated. The political, religious, and social control of the kingdom, vis-à-vis the foreign Christian religions, was at stake. The storm of persecution was gathering. The missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, stood by, mere spectators, powerless in every way. It was the lay Catholic converts who provided the leaders among the martyrs.

The pressure on the Christians advanced ecumenical comity and evangelical (charismatic) fervor among the king's pages led by Charles Lwanga. The rivalry between the two missions (Catholic and Protestant) had given way to cooperation in facing common dangers. At the point of martyrdom, the holocaust of Namugongo, where each martyr was burnt slowly from the feet to the heart, the Christians, Roman Catholics, and Protestants were chanting to Jesus until they were totally burnt. ⁴⁴ It was surreal! Eschatology and ecumenism blended in the martyrial performance—a ritual proclamation of Jesus as the Christ through excruciating death. ⁴⁵ On the eve of Ascension, June 2, 1886, “[t]he Martyrs prayed, sang hymns, and comforted one another in the face of impending death. The 3rd [of] June happened to be the Ascension feast. Each Martyr prepared his own pyre with courage and confidence that soon he would be entering heaven together with Jesus.”

Waliggo believes that among the lessons of Namugongo, the witness to ecumenism stands out: “We get challenged by their unity of purpose and action, Roman Catholics and Protestants together, to renew sincere commitment to ecumenism in Africa and throughout the world.” ⁴⁶ However, what Waliggo considers generally ignored, but which must be deliberately memorialized, is the “regeneration of Africa and all black people in the world at the very critical moment when the imperial powers of Europe were cutting and dividing among themselves the huge cake of Africa for their colonial ambitions and economic advancement.” ⁴⁷ Waliggo waxes lyrical:

By the nobility of their culture, the virtue of their Christian living, the leadership of their Christian communities, the perseverance in their faith, the unity of their comradeship, the courage of their public confession of their belief in Christ, and above all by the heroism of their death, the Martyrs dealt a decisive blow to the myths, the pseudo-scientific theories, the racial superiority with which many foreigners regarded the Africans, their color, defective religion and “savage” manners. ⁴⁸

The survivors, the direct heirs to the martyrs’ witness, led the successful Christian revolution, creating the Christian regime that lasted into the 1920s. The British colonial occupation that favored Protestant chiefs, re-inscribed rivalry into Ugandan life. Stoking rivalry, however, contradicted the united Christian witness of the martyrs. Breaking the country into Protestant or Catholic political parties ⁴⁹ betrayed the eschatological mission of the church, the unity of peoples.

The Ugandan Church was persecuted once again under the Idi Amin regime, 1971–1980, rediscovering its nature, its oneness, and its unity. Following the suppression of Evangelicals and Pentecostals in 1971, the All-Saints Cathedral Church (Anglican communion, dominantly High Church), expanded its services to “Christians from different traditions.” This generated dynamic church ministry. David Omona argues persuasively that this ecumenical walk, though “externally imposed, [brought together] Pentecostals and Anglicans in a traditional Anglican venue.” The resultant ecumenical liturgical performance “deepened and extended the energy for revitalization in [the] larger Kampala City.” ⁵⁰ In other words, the hospitality offered and received by different church traditions, sharing in the one Tradition, thanks to the one Spirit, is good for all the traditions. The one Tradition is “the Gospel itself, transmitted from generation to generation in and by the church, Christ himself present in the life of the church” (WCC). Vatican II clarifies the revelation that traditions testify to (Dei Verbum, 2): “By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man [sic] shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.” ⁵¹

Following the overthrow of Idi Amin (1980), and the departure of the Evangelicals to their own churches, things could no longer remain the same. There was genuine desire for and choice of a more charismatic type of worship. To stem the tide of youth exodus to Churches that provided the charismatic-Pentecostal style of worship, the High Church assured the persistence of revitalization ministries and liturgy within their Church. ⁵² In a recent personal communication (March 2023), Omona gives the cheery news:

The cooperation is still on, even beyond Anglican Church and Pentecostal churches. The Uganda Joint Christian Council brings together the Roman Catholic Church, [t]he Orthodox Church in Uganda, and [t]he Church of Uganda (Anglican Church) to work together. At public gatherings, they share in common prayer, and actions. Then the Inter-religious Council of Uganda also brings in other faiths like Islam, Bahai, and other Christian denominations outside the confines of the Uganda joint Christian Council. ⁵³

The Ugandan charismatic and Pentecostal-style performance is replicated across eastern and western Africa, and in South Africa (of which I am not well informed). Today, the rapid spread of Pentecostalism on the continent, the popularity of the charismatic movement with priests and ministers holding popular assemblies (crusades), and the stress on healing and exorcism, results in Christians of all denominations rubbing shoulders in the experience of Jesus/God, the rophe (healer-doctor). The charismatic liturgy, at times intoxicating, melds denominations, dissipates rivalry, and projects liturgical ecumenism. In a previous essay (“Sacramental Imagination”), I drew attention to the new shifts in Catholic worship, especially from the 1980s, with the Holy Spirit at the center of community celebration. “The style of worship [that Catholic charismatics] favor merge[s] experiences of the African initiated churches and Pentecostal movement.” These experiences display “the favorable presence and manifestation of the Holy Spirit in speaking in tongues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the gift of healing (Catholic priests engage in widespread healing masses), [and] the bonding together of participants through lively Gospel music.” ⁵⁴ The youth-focused lyrics and poetic renditions drawn from Gospel themes are not only singable but with the life-defining sound of the drum guiding, are also danceable. Evangelical “born again” Christians, notes Ezra Chitando, define the Gospel music as the “ministration of the Good News in songs.” It is the “communication of the gospel through beat with a message.” The message transforms, reinvents, and unites peoples and communities rather than dividing them. ⁵⁵

5. Conclusion

The popularity of the Charismatic- and Pentecostal-style liturgical performance, received by diverse denominations, creates a common ground to reinvent ecumenism and liturgy. It is an important contribution to the narrative of the African experiment in ecumenical liturgical collaboration. Perhaps it may enable Christian denominations to appreciate the existing “zones of communion,” and the need to approach, with modesty, the search for communion that comes only in degrees. ⁵⁶ Then, Christians learn to appreciate the one common baptism, as the index of the one church. The performance of the Kongo-Angola Catholics who requested communion from Anglicans in South Carolina becomes a leading narrative of Christian unity. The same common baptism, which energized Christian witness to the point of martyrdom (Martyrs of Uganda), displays the Spirit-led community transforming society and world.

The movement to actual or full union might have failed among the churches in Africa, but efforts such as the common translation of the Bible (including the deutero-canonical books to accommodate the Catholic interest), an institution such as the All Africa Conference of Churches, the establishment of the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (Zambia) to train eastern African ministers in an ecumenical context, move in the right direction. They are significant steps toward unity; the actual liturgical celebration of unity waits on the Holy Spirit.

Finally, the relational, receptive, African religious cultures inspire the revitalization of community and the relativization of denominational rivalry, as Yoruba ex-slave, the first black Bishop on the Niger, Adjai Crowther, demonstrated. Whether it is the Afro-inspired “ring shout” in African American Christianity, or the unassailable courage of carefully selected and trained court pages martyred in Uganda, or the Charismatic-Pentecostal style of singable and danceable drumming liturgy, culture is crucial. Culture is never external to the faith. One can conclude with Tillard that “inculturation [is central, and] belongs to the very birth of the Church of God. It is woven into catholicity.” ⁵⁷ Our conversation on the challenges of ecumenism and liturgy in context is also a conversation on the profoundly rich and diversified cultural reception of Christianity.