with the Vatican than with Protestant evangelicals. We should be If we should miss or dismiss the promise and the presence grateful for the many contacts between the WCC and the Roman of the crucified and risen Lord in the continuation of missionary Catholic Church during and after Vatican Council II, but it is likely work, our task would be a lost cause, a meaningless enterprise. that the official trend in the Vatican in the 1990s will continue We would make concessions to the professional pessimists who more in the direction of counter-reformation than co-reformation. think it is their task to spread alarm and defeatism. But within We should certainly continue official contacts with the Vatican, the light of the Lord's promise and presence, the continuation of but on the national, regional, and continental levels we should the church's mission in the last decade of this century will not strengthen our relations with those groups within the Roman be a lost cause or a meaningless enterprise, since we know that Catholic Church that, in spite of heavy pressure from the Vatican, in the Lord our labor cannot be in vain. are still moving in the direction of a co-reformation. Mission in the 1990s needs Christians and churches that work in the spirit of the document "Mission and Evangelism: An Notes ----------------­ Ecumenical Affirmation." Our task now is to put flesh on the spirit of that document, in our words and deeds. 1. Harvey Cox, "Many Mansions or One Way? The Crisis in Interfaith Dialogue," Christian Century, August 17-24, 1988, pp. 731-35. 2. Ronald K. Orchard, ed., Witness in Six Continents: Records of theMeeting The Lord's Promise of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches Held in Mexico City, December 8th to 9th, 1963 (London: Jesus promised to be with us "all the days," to the end of time Edinburgh House Press, 1964), p. 147. (Matt. 28:20). This promise is related to the unfinished task of 3. Lamin Sanneh, "Christian Missions and the Western Guilt Com­ world mission. Therefore we must always ask: Which day is it plex," Christian Century, April 8, 1987, pp. 330-34. today? What is the importance of this decade for the Christian 4. Stephen Neill, Salvation Tomorrow (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1976), world mission? pp. 18f£. The Roots of African Theology Kwame Bediako Pre-Christian Africa: A Religious IITabula Westermann has not been alone in being troubled by what Rasa"? to do with the pre-Christian religious traditions of Africa, and the Western missionary estimation of Africa's traditional religions, in n his Duff Lectures of 1935, subsequently published as the main, took Westermann's line. The Edinburgh World Mis­ I Africa and Christianity, Dietrich Westermann took the sionary Conference of 1910 had concluded that the traditional view that in Africa the transposition of Christianity ought to entail religions of Africa, roundly described as "Animism," con­ the complete elimination of all that went to form the pre-Christian tained "no preparation for Christianity" (Report of Commis­ I~ religious tradition. "However anxious a missionary may be to sion TheMissionary Message in relation to non-Christian Religions, appreciate and retain indigenous social and moral values, in the 1910:24). case of religion he has to be ruthless.... he has to admit and Accordingly, when seventy years after the Edinburgh Con­ even to emphasize that the religion he teaches is opposed to the ference the expression "Christian Africa" becomes current in existing one and the one has to cede to the other" (Westermann, a major publication of a leading African theologian (see John 1937:94). In short, for Westermann, "giving the new means Mbiti, 1986), it may be worthwhile to investigate whether it is the taking away the old" (1937:2). view at Edinburgh, Westermann's judgment, or Cragg's intuition The response to Westermann would come thirty years later. that has prevailed. What, insofar as it can be discerned, underlies In a series of lectures given at Cambridge University and sub­ the African apprehension of Christianity at the specific level of sequently published as Christianity in World Perspective, Kenneth religious experience? What are the theological roots of Christianity Cragg countered Westermann's view and suggested: "On the in Africa as a historical reality in African life, as African Christians contrary: it means harnessing its possibilities [i.e. of the old] and themselves, and particularly African theological writers, perceive setting up within it the revolution that will both fulfil and trans­ them? form it. For if the old is taken away, to whom is the new given?" African Theology: The Pre-Christian Past as a (Cragg, 1968:57). Prime Concern These are not idle questions. For when one turns to the academic Kwame Bediako is Director of Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology in Akropong, Ghana, an academic and pastoral institution established by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana to foster renewal This essay is based on the Duff Lectures, a series of nine lectures given within the church through theological reflection and research and the training of under the title "The Roots of African Theology," presented in the Christian workers for mission in the Ghanaian context. He is also General Sec­ autumn term of 1987 at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the retary of the Africa Theological Fraternity. Non-Western World, New College, University of Edinburgh. 58 International Bulletin of Missionary Research literature of African theology since its first flowering in the late African Theology: Identity as the 1950s, one of the more difficult problems is how to account for Hermeneutical Key the fact that "the chief non-biblical reality with which the African theologian must struggle is the non-Christian religious To the extent that this "anthropological" concern of African tradition of his own people" and that African theology early be­ theology "to rehabilitate Africa's rich cultural heritage and came "something of a dialogue between the African Christian religious consciousness" (Tutu, 1978:366)ha.sbeen mad~ as a self­ scholar and the perennial religions and spiritualities of Africa" consciously Christian and theological effort, It can be sald to have (Adrian Hastings, 1976:50f.). Hastings even ventured to suggest been an endeavor to demonstrate the true character of African that one effect of this concentration of interest was that "areas Christian identity. For looked at from the context of African the­ of traditional Christian doctrine which are not reflected in the Af­ ologians themselves (that is, as Chri~tian sc~~lars), the traditi~n~l rican past disappear or are marginalised" (ibid.). religions of Africa belong to the Afncan relIgIOUS past. Yet this IS These observations were confirmed in a survey article on not so much a chronological past as an "ontological" past, "Researchin the History of Religions in West Africa" by Kwesi which, together with the profession of the Christian faith, gives Dickson of Ghana. Dickson expressed regret that West Africa had account of one and the same entity-namely, the history of the not produced enough researchers in the area of "biblical i~eas religious consciousness of the African Christia~..In thi~ ~ense the and customs." The favored fields of study were, rather, Afncan African theologian's concern with the pre-Chnstian relIgIou.s her­ traditional religion and ethics, interaction of religions and the itage becomes an endeavor to clarify the nature and meanIng of Independent Churches (Dickson, 1975). African Christian identity. If, as E. Fashole-Luke (of Sierra Leone) There is probably no issue mo~e crucial .than the ne~d. to has argued, lithe quest for African Christian theol.ogies understand this heightened interest In the Afncan pre-Chnstian amounts to attempting to make clear the fact that conversion to religious tradition if Africa's theologians are. to be inte~reted Christianity must be coupled with cultural continuity," then it correctly and their achievement duly recognized, W~~t IS the becomes understandable that "what Africa~ theologians have explanation for the extraordinary fact that the very relIgIOUS ~a­ been endeavouring to do is to draw together the various and ditions that were previously deemed to be of scant theological disparate sources which make up the total religi~us experienc~ significance should now come to occupy "the very centre of of Christians in Africa into a coherent and meaningful pattern the academic stage"? (Hastings, 1976:50). (E. Fashole-Luke, 1975:268, italics ad~ed). It is the q~est for ~~at A glance at the bibliographies of the continent's leading the­ Kenneth Cragg, in another connection, has descnbed as In­ ological writers will confirm Andrew Walls's observation that tegrity in conversion, a unity of self in which one's past is gen­ "Each ... was trained in theology on a Western model, but each has moved into an area for which no Western syllabus pre­ pared him, for each has been forced to study a~d lectur~ .on African traditional religion-and each has found himself wnting "The very issue of on it" (Walls, 1981:49). identity becomes the However, it has not been generally recognized that the kind of study that the African theologian makes of African traditional single most helpful tool religion cannot be compared with "a c.linical. o~se:;ation of for interpreting the early the sort one might make about Babylonian religion, because literature of African "he is handling dynamite, his own past, his people's present" (Walls, 1981). In the process, African theologians ~a:e arriv~~ at theology." a generally more sympathetic view of the pre-C~nstia~ t~adltiO~ than the Western missionary interpretation of Africa, WIthItSbaSIC uinely integrated into present commitment.