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FULL ISSUE (48 Pp., 2.4 MB PDF) Vol. 15, No.1 nternatlona• January 1991 etln• Taking Stock: Mission in the Last Decade of the Mi1lenniutn he woodcutter is forever sharpening his ax; the church sessment of the achievement, present direction, and prospects of T is always reforming; and mission engages in unrelenting the Christian world mission. reassessment. The last decade of the millennium, which began Other stimulating features await your reading. May they all January 1, 1991, invites a retrospective evaluation of the Christian help us to sharpen the skills of mission no less than the woodsman world mission. sharpens his ax (Ecclesiastes 10:10). In this issue Lamin Sanneh offers a provocatively different reappraisal of the impact of Christian mission in Africa. Sanneh finds not only that the secular critics of mission in Africa over­ reached in their criticism but that the Christian world as well On Page failed to appreciate the indigenous dynamics that Christian mis­ sion mobilized and unleashed. Even the more astute monitors 2 The Yogi and the Commissar: Christian within the mission community, concerned about Western mis­ Missions and the African Response sionary paternalism, underestimated the power of the message Lamin Sanneh and its indigenously inscribed Word to propel African societies 12 The Christian Gospel and World Religions: along paths of their own choosing. "The most fruitful ques­ How Much Have American Evangelicals tion," Sanneh insists, "is what happened to missions on the Changed? ground in Africa, and how to distinguish that from the slogans, Ralph R. Covell rhetoric, and popular propaganda in the field and back home." 17 A Boon or a "Drag"? How North American On another front, Ralph Covell assesses developments among Evangelical Missionaries Experience Home North American evangelicals in regard to their stance on the Furloughs uniqueness of Christ. Without yielding on the New Testament Robert T. Coote manifesto--"Salvation is found in no one else" (Acts 4:12, NIV)-­ 23 Reader's Response Lausanne-oriented evangelicals, says Covell, in the last two dec­ 24 Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: ades "have turned the corner" in regard to certain key atti­ 1991 tudes and styles of Gospel witness to people of other faiths. David B. Barrett David B. Barrett, in his annual statistical assessment of Chris­ 26 The Legacy of Robert P. Wilder tian mission, focuses on "World A," the 23 percent of the James A. Patterson globe that "is ignorant of Christianity, Christ, and. the Gospel." 28 Noteworthy Barrett asserts that "World A" is the touchstone of missional 33 Personality Disorders and the Selection Process relevance. Unless the Christian community "massively rede­ for Overseas Missionaries ploy[s] its resources into direct contact with World A," says Bar­ Esther Schubert, M.D. rett, "it will remain virtually irrelevant in the unfolding global 36 Book Reviews drama." Given that more than 90 percent of all Christian mission 39 Fifteen Outstanding Books of 1990 for Mission effort is directed at populations within the already Christianized Studies world or "evangelized" world (by Barrett's admittedly prob­ 46 Dissertation Notices lematical definition), what we have here is indeed a radical reas­ 48 Book Notes of Isslonory• • search The Yogi and the Commissar: Christian Missions and the African Response Lamin Sanneh n many people's minds Christian missions were respon­ of aggressive Western exploitation, thereby accelerating Africa's I sible for disrupting and destabilizing society in Africa. disinheritance. Through educated converts, J the argument goes, With malice and forethought, critics allege, missions obstructed the West came within striking range of societies stripped of indigenous authority and induced surrender to European colonial their ability to resist. Consequently, the missionary and the coloni­ control. alist were the yogi and the commissar who complemented each We have, consequently, inherited a large body of scholarly other: the one supplied pacified natives for the other's aggressive and popular works occupied with proving that mission and co­ strategy. lonialism were bedfellows, and that, although much might be Even apart from acknowledging the influence of writers who said in mitigation, missions were essentially the religious version advance such a view of missions, we have to admit missionaries of Western political and economic imperialism, offering Africans committed many sins of omission and commission, and that their a pious formula of otherworldly distraction while foreign con­ presence initiated wide-ranging changes in the societies affected. quest proceeded unchallenged. However, saying that leaves us still considerably short of the full This view of mission dies hard, in part because it is reinforced range of the impact of missions. by a complex chemistry of galvanized guilt and residual pater­ This article is concerned with the attempt to lay down some nalism, and in part because massive expansion in former mis­ general principles for a fresh interpretation of the materials. It sionary fields has boosted the fortunes of a begrudged religion. argues that to view missionaries as perennial historical villains is On one page, writers press the view of the damaging conse­ too one sided to be useful for any dynamic understanding of quences of Western interference in African societies, with mis­ change, and that to view Africans as a victimized projection of sionaries being among the most insidious influences. O~ another, Western ill will is to leave them with too little initiative to be writers harp on the idea of African converts as classic victims who arbiters of their destiny and meaningful players on the historical henceforth lost, their original capability. In any event, the spate stage. I attempt a three-part alternative exposition that builds on the nature and practice of missions as well as on the nature and The missionary was seen quality of the African impulse and response. Whatever the long­ term effects of Western contact, the missionary impact in Africa as the yogi who supplied was not entirely or permanently at the price of a reawakened pacified natives for the indigenous impulse. In the first part I raise briefly how the West's ambivalence toward missions has affected its image at home and colonialist commissar's abroad. In the second, I rehearse some of the negative criticisms aggressive strategy. against missions, and point out gaps in the material. In the third and final constructive part, I offer an alternative evaluation of the evidence. The paper is concerned chiefly with South Africa, with of atoning ink spilled in rehearsing the wrongs and injuries done comparative observations drawn from other parts of Africa. to Africans swamped any possible independent African response, allowing the West to continue as the authoritative outlet of what Mission and the Western Image was, or was not, good for Africa. Similarly, any suggestion that missionary contact, however intended, might have had a positive In much that is otherwise respectable scholarly literature, the impact is discounted outright because contact as such is judged subject of missions is given rather short shrift, often without the bad. relevant evidence. In any case, the subject ruffles the secular West This leaves us with a grim, cyclical picture of history in which by the upbeat confidence of missions that religion is worthy of missionary dominance of the field persists with the spread of its world allegiance. It is not that the secular West does not believe influence through continuing conversions. Such impressive evi­ that its own materialist worldview has a future beyond its borders dence of conversion could in fact be used to concede intrinsic but that it sees that worldview as the exclusive successor to the worth to the subject; on the contrary, writers have wrung from religious order, though somewhat removed from criticism for not it proof of external manipulation. it is a procedure that reduces having an explicit text. So in the name of secular commitment religion to a political project, saying, for instance, that the Su­ the West combats the church at home and missions abroad, in preme Being of missionary preaching is synonymous with the spite of the fact that in the latter case it intrudes on societies that worldview of imperialism, and that African converts were yoke­ it wishes to protect from outside interference. This might explain bearers for colonial subjugation. not just the inconsistency of rejecting missionary interference but It is thus alleged that the two representative institutions in­ also the frustration of Third World scholars who accept at face strumental in the colonial takeover of Africa were the school and value Western liberal defence of their societies, only to be stumped the church, twin engines that thrust the continent into the path by pre-established Western judgments on the matter. Hence the irony of the most liberal religious and academic institutions being also the slowest to include Third World persons in positions of Lamin Sanneh, a Contributing Editor, is Professor of Missions and World Chris­ responsibility, a situation that should make us pause about the tianity at Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut. world prospects of liberal secularism. 2 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARYREsEARCH Instead of dismissing missions, secular liberal scholars might International Bulletin have something to learn from Third World responses, especially of Missionary Research where those responses include
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