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Oral Theology and Christian Oral Tradition

Challenge to our Traditional Archival Concept

JOHN S. POBEE

It may seem out of place to speak of oral tradition and oral theologies at a conference or workshop at which archivists are in attendance. For the archivist collects and-stores public and/or cooperate records which impinge on the tradition of a people, a community, an institution. And of course, most times they have been collections of documents, including even letters written by the makers of the history. But, of course, it does not need much stretch of the imagination to see that much of such written traditions go back to oral traditions, passed on by word of mouth. That story is not radically different from the story of the biblical documents to which we hall return in a little while.

As if the attempt to go beyond and behind documentary traditions to possible earlier forms were not enough occupation, students of history have sometimes distinguished between oral history and oral traditions. The term "oral tradition" is reserved for materials handed down the ages and often now mimeographed or stil better, taped. On the other hand, the term "oral history" has been reserved for interviews with living important makers of history like the missionary, the businessman, the politician, interviews which probe how they got to where they got. For the purposes of this presentation it is perhaps not necessary to go into such distinctions except to underline that they both draw attention to the importance and value of the spoken word as distinct from written sources. ,

It has for some time now been reconized by scholars ( 1 ) that for all its imperfections, oral tradition is an important source of historical and other knowledge. As early as 1846 the educated gentry in England recognized that the - for them - alien cultures of the so-called "lower-orders" were expressed in collections of local tales, customs and beliefs. The story of the Grimm brothers in Germany is the story of Germany's serious interest in folklore. In the African context, the importance of folklore for understanding and reconstructing African history and culture has long been recognized. In 1962 the first Conference of African Writers in English, held at the University of Makerere, Kampala, Uganda devoted much time to the subject of folklore (2). There have been other congresses. The impulses for this interest range from intellectualistic to nationalistic interest. Whatever the influenced, they underscore the importance of oral traditon for drawing up a.picture of many a society.

But what is oral tradition? Oral tradition has been defined in various ways. Here we adopt one definition of Theodorson and Theodorson that it is "culture that is transmitted from one generation to the next by word of mouth rather than through written accounts. The term is usually used with reference to folk societies without a written language. Nevertheless it should be recognized that even in modern industrial society there are many informal traditions (games, for example), that persist among 88

adults as well as children and survive generation after generation without ever being written down. Folklorists can study modern as well as primitive society." (3) Thus oral tradition is neither just words nor just. stories. It is the vehicle for setting forth the culture of the people. In the definition of oral tradition quoted above another word is introduced - folklore. Needless to say the word is a compound of folk and .lore: Lore means traditions or special knowledge possessed by a particular people about a certain subject. The other part 'folk' sometimes causes anxiety because some like Hitler used the word in a painful, racist way. But abuse does not do away with true use. Folk means nation, race, people in general. Folklore then means "unwritten traditonal literature in the form of stories, legends, songs etc. The term is not usually applied to myths or other sacred lore of importance with the culture". (4) For the present, let me suggest that oral traditon and folklore are broadly synomymous, whatever qualifications we might want to make, if we were peaking in mor details. In the history of the world, folklore has been a unifying and nationalism-raising factor, especially when used by oppressed peoples struggling for their political and cultural identity against foreign rule. With such a role folklore becomes a most relevant background for what a church does for the selfhood of a people. As such folklore can be an asset in the study of political theology, for example.

Against the foregoing background, we are in a sense not being outrageous in beginning to address oral theology and Christian oral tradition; for this is * what secular sociology and secular history have pursued to their benefit and enrichment. It is my submission that it is a most appropriate pursuit in Africa.

In Africa where history, be it mission or otherwise, is being made, the society is predominantly non-literate and lives on oral tradition and history. Africans come to the church with all their skills of oral communication inherited down the ages. The majority of the Christians live in the rural areas, where the majority are unschooled and non-literate or at the best barely literate and not exactly at home in literacy. And yet the very existence of the church in such areas in the backwaters where the, so-called educated ones are unwilling to go, is evidence that their integrity, history, experiences and responses to the faith in these fellowships are being preserved and handed down orally. The very aliveness of these village churches, predominantly non- literate, is evidence of a people whose relations to the Christian gospel is being energized by oral traditon. There is a living oral tradition which gives direction to a people who do not read or write. Can those who thrive on collecting the traditons of a people afford to ignore such material, simply because it comes from the side of the local church?

One of the most exciting things about Africa today is the African Instituted Churches (A.I.C) or more commonly African Independent Churches or African Christian Independency. The membership is often recruited from the marginalized, the voiceless, the poor, the non-literate. They nevertheless, have a very lively faith and a strong sense of mission. Their story is often told in the form of a story, mostly unwritten. But it is often the story of manifestations of the power of God in healing, exorcism and glossolalia, precisely gifts which Christ bequathed to His church,