to Witch Accusations

Vol. 39, No. 1 January 2015 Witchcraft and Mission Studies “I was blamed for all these deaths in the village, wrapped up in fishing nets, and beaten up severely.” So recounted star Indian javelin thrower Debjani Bora, recent target of a witch hunt in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. The accusation and attack were spearheaded by a woman village elder later arrested for inciting the violence. According to BBC News India, police in Assam report that over the last five years nearly ninety people, mostly women, have been “beheaded, burnt alive or stabbed to death” as a result of witch accusations.1 Such incidents occur incessantly and in various locations, as articles here indicate. Indeed, challenges presented by witchcraft and witch accusations have long been urgent concerns of countless cal settings live unconcerned about winter clothing, the polar vortex, or ice hockey. As for specifically Christian examples, consider patristic theologians. More intensely than had been required of their Jewish and apostolic forefathers, Tertullian, Athanasius, Cyril Continued next page On Page 3 8 12 14 19 23 28 30 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martha_Corey-Longfellow.jpg Martha Corey and seven others were convicted of witchcraft and hanged, Salem, Massachusetts, September 22, 1692. Christian communities worldwide. Even so, the reality of witchcraft has escaped the notice of most missiologists and mission studies. This issue of the IBMR seeks to help rectify this discrepancy. We human beings notice what is important to us, but we routinely miss other realities that have little impact on our values or the daily cares of our lives. Thus, for example, over the last decade Internet connectivity has become a daily and conscious need for millions of us worldwide. In contrast, people in tropi- 34 38 39 40 42 54 56 Putting Witch Accusations on the Missiological Agenda: A Case from Northern Peru Robert J. Priest Beyond the Fence: Confronting Witchcraft Accusations in the Papua New Guinea Highlands Philip Gibbs Healing Communities: Contextualizing Responses to Witch Accusations Steven D. H. Rasmussen, with Hannah Rasmussen Noteworthy Toward a Christian Response to Witchcraft in Northern Ghana Jon P. Kirby Witchcraft Accusations and Christianity in Africa J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu Christianity 2015: Religious Diversity and Personal Contact Todd M. Johnson, Gina A. Zurlo, Albert W. Hickman, and Peter F. Crossing My Pilgrimage in Mission John P. Martin The Legacy of Frank Arthur Keller Kevin Xiyi Yao Assembly of the International Association for Mission Studies, 2016—Call for Papers Longing for Community: Church, Ummah, or Somewhere in Between? A Review Essay Michael Nazir-Ali The Roman Catholic Church Worldwide (Changes from 2007 to 2012) Book Reviews Dissertation Notices Book Notes of Alexandria, Nestorius, and others formulated answers to questions arising from their Greco-Roman contexts, that is, to their contemporaries’ pointed philosophical questions about God and Jesus the Lord. A few centuries later and further east, Patriarch Timothy of Baghdad defended Christian teaching to Islamic authorities, under whose rule he administered extensive ecclesiastical and missionary structures. For modern Western missionaries, Jesuits in China and Protestants in Africa alike have had to deal with beliefs and practices involving active and influential ancestors. The European heritage of Western missionaries has typically come to terms with ancestors either through sainthood or by “scientifically” explaining them away. The unexpected encounter with both benevolent and malevolent powers regularly consulted by powerful chiefs and priests has presented an ongoing and vexing reality to expatriate missionaries unprepared for such interactions. The same has been true with witchcraft. Contemporary Europeans and North Americans may blush at the early modern witch trials in Europe and in Europe’s North American colonies. Accordingly, modern Western theologians and missiologists have for generations conveniently turned a blind eye to such phenomena, which have been rumored to take place elsewhere. In actuality, however, witchcraft-related activities—including violent witch hunts directed toward women and children— stubbornly plague Christian communities all around the world. Missiologists must catch up with these acute, long-neglected spiritual and pastoral issues. Today, we as Christians and as human beings are more globally interconnected than ever before. This statement becomes more than platitude as we note recent worldwide reactions to the West African Ebola epidemic or to the religio-military conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Today’s requisite missiological response to the realities of witchcraft must be honest, active engagement—even if my colleagues and I might not think that witches are cursing our own families or congregations. Missiologists as well as theologians—contextually bound as both are—must finally become fully engaged with the issues of spiritual agents, sociological dynamics, and people’s assumed universes. Multidisciplinary analyses are needed, including EvansPritchardesque anthropological examinations of relational dynamics involved in perceived witchcraft activities. We also need Paul Hiebert–type critical realist approaches that are selfaware of Western “excluded middle” assumptions (that rule out spiritual realities within a middle tier between God and thisworldly, scientifically observable phenomena). Related biblical studies must wrestle with the medium, sometimes translated witch, of Endor (1 Sam. 28) and related topics. The articles about witchcraft in this IBMR issue, which consider biblical, theological, anthropological, sociological, historical, and pastoral aspects of the subject, beckon us to accept the challenge and stride ahead. Thankfully, we can rest assured that God graciously deals with us in our particular settings. That is, God does not dismiss but takes seriously Christians who experience witchcraft realities, even while some expatriate critics might haughtily act otherwise. God’s gracious particular dealings also take seriously Christians who honestly do not sense or believe in witchcraft matters—but are genuinely open to being instructed otherwise. May we all heed this urgent missiological call that for most of us has gone largely unnoticed far too long. —J. Nelson Jennings Note 1. Subir Bhaumik, “Indian Athlete Debjani Bora Beaten in ‘Witch Hunt,’” BBC News India, October 17, 2014, www.bbc.com/news /world-asia-india-29655662. InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1977. Renamed International Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1981. Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. (203) 624-6672 • Fax (203) 865-2857 • ibmr@omsc.org • www.internationalbulletin.org • Join IBMR on Facebook Editor J. Nelson Jennings Senior Associate Editor Dwight P. Baker Assistant Editors Craig A. Noll Rona Johnston Gordon Managing Editor Daniel J. Nicholas Senior Contributing Editors Gerald H. Anderson Jonathan J. Bonk Robert T. 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Airmail delivery $16 per year extra. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research, P.O. Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-3000. Periodicals postage paid at New Haven, CT. Copyright © 2015 OMSC. All rights reserved. (ISSN 0272-6122) Contributing Editors Catalino G. Arévalo, S.J. J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu Daniel H. Bays Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D. William R. Burrows Angelyn Dries, O.S.F. Samuel Escobar John F. Gorski, M.M. Darrell L. Guder Philip Jenkins Daniel Jeyaraj Graham Kings Anne-Marie Kool Steve Sang-Cheol Moon Mary Motte, F.M.M. C. René Padilla Dana L. Robert Lamin Sanneh Wilbert R. Shenk Brian Stanley Tite Tiénou Ruth A. Tucker Desmond Tutu Andrew F. Walls Anastasios Yannoulatos International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Putting Witch Accusations on the Missiological Agenda: A Case from Northern Peru Robert J. Priest A s I write this article, I am in Kinshasa at a conference on child witchcraft (August 21–23, 2014) with fifty Congolese pastors and three other speakers (Andy Alo, Opoku Onyinah, and Timothy Stabell) who are part of an emerging network of theologians and missiologists focused on witch accusations today.1 Thousands of Kinshasa’s orphans have been accused of causing the death of their own parents through witchcraft, the accusations frequently endorsed by pastors, and the accused children often abandoned to the streets. But the pastors at this conference, as part of the organization Equipe Pastorale auprès des Enfants en Détresse, led by Pastor Abel Ngolo, focus on the well-being of accused children as they struggle to make sense of theological and pastoral issues involved, and as they strategize and work to turn the tide on the mistreatment of accused children. From the street children in Kinshasa to the killing of male witches in Peru or of elderly female widows in Tanzania, to the witch villages of Ghana or the witch burnings of New Guinea, it would be difficult to come up with a missiological topic that is more timely, or a topic that missionaries, pastors, and theologians in general are less prepared to engage. Much is at stake in wise contextual engagement. In this article I introduce the topic, not in the abstract, but through ethnographic case material from northern Peru. As should become evident, however, similar patterns and issues are present around the world wherever witch ideologies and accusatory practices exist. A Brief Case Shajian (a pseudonym), a brilliant leader of bilingual education in Peru, was known among Aguaruna Christians for his opposition to the church. Yet as he told me his life story, Shajian momentarily grew wistful and nostalgic as he described early experiences as a young Christian with answered prayers and Gospel witness. I asked him what the turning point for him had been, and he told me the following story about prayer and witchcraft. My daughter, at four months, was sitting up and crawling. She would smile in recognition of me and hold out her arms to be picked up. She was healthy and intelligent. I was proud of her. One day an uncle of mine, suspected of being a tunchi [witch], came to my house for a visit. I glanced up from [reading] a paper and caught him looking at my daughter with a contorted face, with malevolence. It shocked me. Then he asked, “How come you have such an intelligent, good-looking, healthy daughter while my children are sickly and not intelligent?” That night my daughter came down with a fever. At the time I was studying in Lima and had only a fifteen-day break. I didn’t want to leave Robert J. Priest is G. W. Aldeen Professor of International Studies and professor of mission and anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. A past president of the American Society of Missiology, he currently serves as president of the Evangelical Missiological Society.—rpriest@tiu.edu January 2015 my sick daughter behind, so I took her and my wife with me. In Lima the gringos [with the Summer Institute of Linguistics] helped me much and put her in the children’s hospital. They diagnosed her as having meningitis. All the gringos prayed for my daughter—as did many pastors. I used to be very faithful with “religion.” My wife was not so faithful. She always had doubts. But I said, “If I have faith, she’ll get better.” So I believed God for healing. The meningitis did get better, but stomach problems developed that the doctor could not explain. My wife wished to take her back to the rain forest to be treated by an iwishin [shaman]. I refused. She predicted our daughter would die and I would be to blame. That night I dreamed my clothes were floating away down river.2 In the morning I told my wife about the dream, and she said, “Yes, it’s our daughter. She’s going to die.” We arrived at the hospital only to learn she had died in the night. When I returned to my community, my uncle did not come to greet me. I didn’t say anything to anyone about my suspicions. Later my uncle got drunk and fought with his own son. Then he took the poison barbasco and died alone. He was a womanizer and dedicated himself to the use of tsumaik and pusanga [love magic]. The old men said it was doubtless his use of such strong pusanga and constant thoughts of women that caused him to be so disoriented as to commit suicide. After this I said, “I prayed much to God, and he didn’t hear me.” So I distanced myself from God. Assessing the theological and pastoral issues posed by this account requires us to consider pre-Christian cultural patterns, new dynamics introduced by Christianity, and broader patterns present in both older and more recent Aguaruna witch narratives. Pre-Christian Cultural Patterns Anthropologists find that people within any given society tend to share with each other cultural assumptions about what causes prosperity or misfortune. Depending on what those assumptions are in a given society, there will also tend to be characteristic response patterns—something that is certainly true for the Aguaruna. Cultural assumptions. In every society bad things happen to people—material setbacks, infertility, illness, and death. For the Aguaruna bad things also include high rates of snakebite, drownings in dangerous rivers, and injuries while felling trees, as well as illnesses such as dysentery, influenza, hepatitis, infections, intestinal parasites, leishmaniasis, malaria, measles, meningitis, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. In most societies, practices exist that treat afflictions as material events calling for medicinal remedies. The Aguaruna are no exception; they possess complex understandings of and numerous biomedical remedies for all sorts of medical conditions.3 But when material interventions fail to achieve success, people in many societies often appeal to other causal ontologies to account for and address misfortune. In the culture of Job’s comforters, unresolved misfortunes were attributed to the sin of the sufferer. One reaps what one sows. A variety of cultures around the world operate with such karmic 3 moral causal ontologies. But if Job had been Aguaruna, wise local counselors would never have attributed his misfortunes to his own sin, but rather to the agency of a third party, an envious, malign neighbor or relative thought to have caused harm through occult powers. Worldwide, such a witch causal ontology is much more common than the moral causal ontology evident in the Book of Job.4 The actual explanation of how witch power operates or is acquired varies from culture to culture. In some cultures this power is understood as inborn, perhaps located in the liver, the eye, or another organ of the body. For other cultures The stakes are high and people contribute stories designed to deflect suspicion from themselves and fix it onto another. this power is socially acquired. The power may be thought of as psychic, magical (involving manipulation of substances or words), or tied to spirits of the dead. For example, the Aguaruna believe that witches (tunchi) have invisible magic darts (tsentsak) in their throat. Like the poison-tipped darts of Aguaruna blowguns, these darts can be shot into someone else in a way that is unfelt but eventually brings death. A tunchi, angry at his mother, might reply to her with sharp irritation—completely unaware that he has “shot” her with his tsentsak, thereby causing her death. That is, the power of the tunchi may or may not be consciously acquired and exercised. Cultures with witch ontologies differ in many beliefs, including which age or gender is likely to be a witch, where the power is located in the body, how the power is acquired, how conscious or unconscious one is in exercising the power, and the exact nature of the power being exercised. They are united, however, in the belief that, when misfortune strikes an individual, another person—a third party—has maliciously caused the misfortune through a mysterious power. Triggering event. While the Aguaruna do not associate every passing illness with witchcraft, if the affliction is particularly intractable or mysterious, and especially if it results in death, then it triggers sustained talk about who is the guilty witch. Deaths by suicide or homicide (with shotgun, spear, or poison) are not attributed to witchcraft. But almost every other death—from snakebite or drowning to malaria or hepatitis—is blamed on a third party said to be a witch. Eventually, virtually every nonviolent death will be framed with a compelling narrative about a supposed witch, just as with Shajian’s narrative. Retaliatory impulse. Among the most primordial of human impulses is the feeling that murderers should be punished. Often, as with the Aguaruna, this demand for justice is articulated in the language of debt (diwi). Among the Aguaruna every killing should be remembered and avenged, with masculine values of honor and family loyalty mobilized against those who kill relatives. And since all nonviolent deaths are understood as caused by witches—who in Aguaruna culture are male—each such death imposes the requirement of an additional death; someone else must die in retaliation. 4 Identifying the witch. Historically, when an Aguaruna is sick and approaching death, widespread whispered speculations about the identity of the witch emerge and intensify. In one respect the Aguaruna diverge from many cultures in that only men are accused. In other respects suspicions are similar to worldwide patterns where witch accusations are present. Anybody known to have exemplified envy or ill will toward the afflicted is a suspect. Any prior conflict with the afflicted is grounds for suspicion. Anyone who directly benefits from the death is suspect. But also suspected is anyone perceived in general as being envious, antisocial, angry, resentful, or unhappy. Quite naturally, the individuals most likely to exhibit envy, resentment, and unhappiness are often those who are themselves poor, blind, crippled, socially marginal, chronically ill, or mentally disturbed, and who are thus a continually resented imposition on others. It is worth keeping in mind that usually many individuals are potential candidates for suspicion. Aguaruna village life is full of remembered slights and insults, adulterous affairs, conflicts over marriageable women, failures of reciprocity, and envy at the unfair advantages of others. Most of this is publically known and much discussed. Thus with every death there are many people who might naturally be suspected of having desired the death. Since prior gossip triggered by prior deaths has already generated in each village a significant pool of “suspected” witches, their names quickly get recycled as suspects when the next death occurs. Consider Shajian’s situation. When powerful foreigners selected him as a young lad to receive an education and arranged for him to enter a government salaried position, he was catapulted by his early twenties into comparative wealth and prominent leadership far beyond that of his “fathers” and “uncles” and “brothers.” When he and his “brothers” sought wives from the same small pool of eligible young women, he married the desirable one that others had hoped to marry. In a context where deficiencies in childhood nutrition and debilitating parasites and diseases are common, his daughter was unusually healthy and intelligent. Like Joseph with his coat of many colors, Shajian was surrounded by numerous deeply envious individuals, not just the one later named as a witch. Traditionally, the stakes are high in terms of who is identified as the witch, since this person will likely be killed. Therefore when someone is sick and approaching death, anxiety builds, and gossip attempts to fix blame. The very people who naturally might be suspected because of their own prior grievances or sinful sentiments toward the afflicted will deny any witchlike sentiments in themselves and often dramaturgically proclaim their own righteous indignation, moral solidarity with the afflicted, and willingness to help avenge the death. They contribute stories designed to deflect suspicion from themselves and fix it onto another. People kill witches for the very traits exemplified in their own lives. In such a climate few are prepared to defend another from suspicion, lest suspicion be redirected onto them. But many are prepared to immediately endorse and provide testimony against another party upon whom suspicion is coalescing, and to announce themselves willing to join in killing the witch. Dying adults, as a last act at the point of death, will often whisper to a close male relative the name of someone they suspect of killing them and will ask for a promise that their death will be avenged. When an illness does not yield to medical remedies, a shaman may be called to diagnose the problem, to counteract it, and sometimes to identify the witch. Aguaruna shamans have a single International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 diagnosis: “Somebody did this to you.” They work to remove the tsentsak and cure the afflicted. Especially if there have been several deaths, a shaman is asked to name the witch. Usually he names a person that the community already suspects, thus professionally endorsing community suspicions. Killing the witch. Aguaruna males are socialized to participate in homicides.5 As long as the ambush of a witch is organized by a relative of the deceased victim who himself initiates the violence, the accompanying group can with moral solidarity righteously join in the killing, with each person shooting into, or spearing, the body. Historically, only by participating in such a homicide could an Aguaruna male achieve the full adult status necessary for marriage, and only through such homicides could one acquire the coveted status of kakajam, “powerful one.” Every death then triggered great pressure toward identifying and killing the witch, with the relative of the deceased responsible to mobilize a group (ipaamamu) that was usually disposed to respond with alacrity (asum) to the invitation to kill the accused. Since Aguaruna culture constructed fully respected masculine identity around participation in revenge homicides, making such participation essential to male status, homicide rates were high. According to Michael Brown’s study, undertaken after Christianity was already beginning to have an impact, 37 percent of Aguaruna adult male deaths were due to homicide, a figure he believes would have been higher in the past.6 Men like Shajian are less likely to kill a suspected witch these days, although they may still suspect that every death constitutes a murder. New Dynamics under Christianity Evangelism brought with it a message against retaliatory violence and with a promise of peace and goodwill. Widespread conversions to evangelical Christianity from the 1950s to the 1970s sometimes involved almost utopian expectations of peace and harmony, with a belief that sickness and death would be removed. The earlier ritual complex associated with spirit visions and retaliatory violence as the route to prestige and influence was displaced by bilingual education, with pastors and salaried schoolteachers the new influential leaders in the community. Shamans, with their single professional diagnosis (“somebody did this to you”), were less frequently consulted, and Western medicine became increasingly relied upon. But witch ideologies continued to present many pastoral challenges. Prohibition against violent retribution. Today even non-Christian Aguaruna identify evangelical Christianity as having created a profound shift in moral consensus, to the effect that it is wrong to kill other people in “revenge.” Older men sometimes complain that “pastors control our community”—meaning that the moral suasion of pastors works against their own desires to mobilize retaliatory violence. A new folk belief has emerged that, if one’s death is avenged, one will not go to heaven—a reflection of the assumption that revenge killings are ultimately at the express wish of dying persons. Just as some Christians have wondered whether suicides go to heaven, Aguaruna Christians wonder whether a person whose dying act is to ask for retaliation will go to heaven. Christians take care as they die to forbid anyone to avenge their deaths, although they still sometimes name the person they think responsible. Both Christians and non-Christians continue to attribute many deaths to the agency of human neighbors and relatives acting through witch powers. Christians then find themselves living next to January 2015 relatives or other neighbors who they continue to believe have committed murder by means of witchcraft, but against whom their only recourse is to trust God and endure. When repeated deaths occur, pressure often builds to avenge the deaths (and get rid of the person thought to be waging destruction in the community). Male relatives of the deceased who are reluctant to lead the witch killing are condemned for not having loved the deceased, for not being real men, and for not defending family honor. The result is that even church leaders sometimes cave in to social pressure and participate in a homicide. More frequently, the retaliatory violence is perpetrated by those not in good standing at church. Thus retaliatory violence against supposed tunchi continues, although at reduced rates. Prohibition on recourse to shamans. Aguaruna evangelical churches have insisted that Christians not consult iwishin when sick. Herbal remedies, Western medicine, and prayer are employed. Since the single diagnosis of Aguaruna shamans is the socially destructive message that some neighbor or family member is to blame for each illness or death,7 the ban on consulting shamans has worked against shamanic influence, which converted every death into the need for a revenge killing. That is, the churches’ ban has mitigated the frequency of confident assertions that witches are at work. Some Christians do, however, in moments of life-crisis, when prayer and medicine appear not to work, consult a shaman—and are disciplined by their church for doing so. When a village has several deaths sequentially, pressure builds to consult a shaman to determine the identity of the witch. If a majority in a village are Christians, a shaman will not be called. If a minority of villagers are Christians, a shaman may be called. Since every Widespread conversions to evangelical Christianity from the 1950s to the 1970s sometimes involved almost utopian expectations of peace and harmony. villager is expected to pay part of the cost, this step creates a crisis for Christians on whether to pay, with some thrown into village jails for not paying. When the shaman arrives, everyone is expected to line up and allow the shaman to determine if they are the witch. Christians typically refuse, retreating to their own church for prayer and singing, with the shaman (whose influence is being challenged) declaring, not surprisingly, that the witch is among the Christians. Non-Christians thus repeat the refrain that pastors and churches are protectors of witches, which they bitterly resent. Many shamans have converted to Christianity, but they are continually pressured to carry out shamanic healing. Since they are thought to have the same power as the witch, while no longer employing it to combat witchcraft, they are often the first to be suspected of killing through witchcraft. A high proportion of such converts are subsequently killed as witches, as happened with Sanchum, a locally famous former shaman, shortly after I collected his life story—despite his faithful church attendance and the fact that his son was a pastor. 5 Crises of faith and new metanarratives. While Aguaruna Christians sometimes robustly claim the power of God against their fear of witches and the illness and deaths they cause, Christians and non-Christians alike still get sick and die. On old assumptions, each such illness or death is credited to witches. While converts often tell striking stories of divine healing understood as God’s power over witchcraft, the same individuals later inevitably encounter illness and death that do not yield to medicine or prayer. These subsequent experiences regularly provoke profound crises of faith, as they did with Shajian. As long as one assumes that witches are the cause of all intractable affliction—with witches now being understood as doing the work of Satan, with the presence or removal of affliction being what is at stake in the battle between good and evil—then every illness and death that does not yield to prayers of faith creates a crisis. The witch has won. The biblical message itself, as expounded by Aguaruna pastors, involves new metanarratives of evil. In place of the notion of shamans and witches as having a kind of psychic or magical power, Christians vacillate between two poles, either stalwartly denying their supposed powers or admitting that their powers are real but reframing them as satanic. In contrast to the iwishin, whose narrative of sickness and death features the diagnosis that “somebody did this to you,” pastors stress a metanarrative of death and suffering as a result of general human sinfulness. They teach that, just as Jesus underwent suffering and death, so we too must undergo suffering, and that a complete reversal of illness and death will occur only in heaven. They preach that God, who is muun (big or great), “holds our lives in his hand” and that nothing can touch us apart from his control.8 While traditional Aguaruna culture directed moral judgment away from self and onto others as the presumed repository of evil, conversion to Christianity profoundly shifted moral discourse so as to require a recognition of self as sinner on the part of all converts.9 Instead of a community self-righteously projecting all evil onto a single person to be killed, the new Christian message requires an endorsement that each of us has sinful Notes 1. In this article “witch” refers to anyone, male or female, accused of maliciously having harmed another through evil occult power. 2. For an analysis of Aguaruna dream interpretation, see Robert J. Priest, “Defilement, Moral Purity, and Transgressive Power: The Symbolism of Filth in Aguaruna Jívaro Culture” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1993), 107–33. 3. Ibid., 54–101. 4. Richard A. Shweder, Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003), 74–133. 5. Priest, “Defilement, Moral Purity, and Transgressive Power,” 244–353. 6. Michael Brown, Una paz incierta: Historia y Cultura de las Comunidades Aguarunas Frente al Impacto de la Carretera Marginal (Lima, Peru: CAAAP, 1984), 197. Brown reports that in Jane Ross’s study of the less acculturated but closely related Achuar, fully 59 percent of male deaths were due to homicide. (and witchlike) sentiments that must be acknowledged and repented of. This new element, I would argue, also undercuts the scapegoating tendencies present in witch accusations. Summary The overall effect of Christianity among the Aguaruna has been a reduced reliance on the socially divisive professional diagnosis of Aguaruna shamans, a reduced tendency to attribute every death to witchcraft, an increased willingness to confess sinful sentiments in one’s self and not just in others, and a reduced tendency to take violent action toward individuals thought to have caused misfortune. But whenever deaths occur under conditions that paradigmatically suggest witchcraft (a sudden or mysterious death occurring after a social conflict or expression of envy or anger, for example), Aguaruna Christians often do suspect that witches are to blame. While few Christians support the killing of suspected witches, most do avoid them as dangerous. Since the accused are often the individuals with the greatest social needs, this social avoidance has adverse consequences for the accused. In a world where illnesses and deaths are both frequent and associated with neighbors thought to be acting through evil occult means, every affliction triggers deep anxieties about the dangers represented by secretly evil neighbors, relatives, or church members. Furthermore, each affliction understood as caused by a witch triggers a spiritual crisis that is structured in rather different terms than the crisis experienced when affliction is understood in a different frame of reference. People in Europe and North America no longer commonly attribute misfortunes to the agency of neighbors, relatives, or colleagues thought to be acting through evil witch power. It is not surprising, then, that theological education in the West fails to substantively consider the theological and pastoral issues involved with witch ideologies. But since such patterns are common across major swaths of the globe, it is high time for this topic to move to the center of theological and missiological attention.10 7. For an analysis of the negative social consequences of this diagnostic system, see Michael Brown’s “Dark Side of the Shaman,” Natural History 11 (November 1989): 8–10. 8. To date, Aguaruna pastors do not claim the power to name and deal with witches, as sometimes happens elsewhere and which raises another whole set of issues. See my article “The Value of Anthropology for Missiological Engagements with Context: The Case of Witch Accusations,” Missiology (forthcoming). 9. Robert J. Priest, “‘I Discovered My Sin!’: Aguaruna Evangelical Conversion Narratives,” in The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, ed. Andrew Buckser and Stephen Glazier (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 95–108. 10. Within selected immigrant communities such patterns are increasingly present in Europe and North America as well. Guidelines for Contributors Guidelines for contributors to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research can be found online at www.internationalbulletin.org/node/377. The IBMR pub- 6 lishes original articles and reviews of analysis and reflection upon the Christian world mission. Articles previously published in print or online will not be accepted. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 FACULTY APPOINTMENT Chair and Professor of the Graduate Department of Evangelism and Leadership & Director of The Billy Graham Center For Evangelism Wheaton College seeks a unique individual with academic and leadership gifts including strong teaching, a scholarly track record, field experience, and outstanding administrative gifts to lead the newly merging academic Department of Evangelism and Leadership and the Billy Graham Center For Evangelism. Responsibilities include teaching core courses in the MA program in Evangelism and Leadership and the program in Missional Church Movements, as well as administrative leadership of the team of professionals forming the reorganizing Billy Graham Center For Evangelism, which serves Wheaton College and the broader Church to advance the cause of biblical evangelism across multiple constituencies. Candidates are expected to hold a Ph.D. in Evangelism or a related field. For more information, visit bit.ly/wcevangelismchair. Read more about Wheaton College and its programs at wheaton.edu. Beyond the Fence: Confronting Witchcraft Accusations in the Papua New Guinea Highlands Philip Gibbs S orcery and witchcraft beliefs and practices are common in Papua New Guinea (PNG), yet differ considerably throughout the country.1 This article addresses witchcraftrelated accusations and violence in the PNG Highlands. I take up a case from the Enga Province, illustrating the complexities of issues raised by people in an Enga faith community. How can I as a missionary for over forty years in this region accompany the Christian community as they try to respond to an outbreak of witchcraft-related violence in their area? Highlands Sanguma Witchcraft in the PNG Highlands, called sanguma,2 involves a malevolent power that is said to take the form of a creature such as a rat, bat, frog, or flying fox, with the power to kill or harm By killing the witch-host, it is presumed that the spiritcreature will die, which is a fundamental belief that leads to the killing of people accused of sanguma. Those cruelly killing the accused often think they are doing their duty, in the sense that they feel they have to defend the clan from a malicious power that has killed and could kill again. Such beliefs are common in the Simbu and Jiwaka Provinces, but in recent times they seem to be spreading to other provinces and to settlements in major towns. There has been a recent diffusion of this belief and associated violence westward, including the Enga Province. Violence is not new in Enga, but previously there was no tradition there of torturing or killing people thought to be possessed by a spirit-creature. With intermarriage and recent frequent travel to and from the Simbu and Jiwaka Provinces, however, some people in Enga now refer to sanguma witchcraft that involves magically removing a person’s heart and eating the flesh of corpses.6 A Case in the Enga Province 3/16" = approximately 50 miles people.3 The spirit-creature lives within the body of its host, and even without the conscious approval of its host, the spirit-creature can take another form and roam around, eating human waste and searching for human flesh, particularly vital organs like the heart or liver.4 Witches are thought to hide vital organs removed from a victim for later consumption.5 So when a person (usually a woman) is accused of being a witch and of stealing a victim’s heart, her accusers may brutally interrogate and torture her, demanding that she disclose where she has hidden the victim’s heart and commanding her to return it so that the victim might be healed or restored to life. Philip Gibbs, SVD, is a Divine Word missionary, born in New Zealand and working in Papua New Guinea since 1973. At present he is secretary for the Commission for Social Concerns for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference for Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. —gibbs199@gmail.com 8 There have been several cases in the Enga Province in recent years in which women have been killed (usually burned) or brutally tortured after being accused of practicing witchcraft. In this article I will follow one case in an area where I was formerly parish priest. The Christian community admitted confusion over the issue, and I found myself presented with several choices. Should I treat witchcraft with skepticism, or should I take people’s beliefs seriously? How much should I as an outsider intervene with a scientific viewpoint and ideals based on modern principles of human rights? How should I deal with issues of moral causal ontology in which misfortune is due to one’s own wrongdoing, or of interpersonal causal ontology, in which malicious persons are understood to cause the misfortune? To what degree should I entertain the reality of demonic powers and theologies of spiritual warfare? As an anthropologist, theologian, and former parish priest, I felt I should intervene, but I was uncertain how to do so in a way that would benefit the Christian community and the accused. In 2013 a young man died from unspecified causes in Wabag hospital (in Enga Province). Some people said that during his funeral, while people were mourning and his body had not yet been buried, word went around that the dead man had called by mobile phone and named a woman, saying that she had taken his heart and that this had caused his death. Male relatives of the deceased seized two women and proceeded to torture them with heated iron rods and bush knives, demanding to know where they had put his heart and telling them to put it back. The women were brutally assaulted but could not comply with the men’s requests. One woman died from her injuries. The other, terribly burned, managed to escape, walking the next day to where she received assistance to get to a hospital in another province. She was seven months pregnant and her baby died, suffering burns while in the uterus. The survivor was Maria, whom I met in another province shortly after she had been discharged after five months in hospital. Despite the dangers of returning home, she was looking International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 forward to being reunited with her husband and children, and she wanted to have her innocence declared publically through a court hearing. I decided to go and meet with the church leaders in her home community. They were alarmed and raised several concerns. Concerns of the Community Concerns raised by the community included the following: • They feared further violence and being blamed for being a supporter of the accused. • They worried, too, that Maria had admitted (under torture) to being a witch, so why try to support such an evil person? • They were confused, saying that they were Christians, yet they admitted that they believed in witchcraft. Africa, asks why people admit to doing things that they could not have done, even in their wildest imagination. He argues that people interiorize the vision and values of their culture and are unable to break out into alternative frameworks. He sounds a warning that “any campaign against witches always results in strengthening people’s fear of witches and consequently their acceptance of the theory.”8 Even before a confession, there is a tendency in PNG to presume that the accused is guilty. If a diviner points to a person, that person is automatically presumed guilty. Such persons, I consider these three points in turn. Fear of further violence. What if Maria returned and something would go wrong—for example, if someone would get sick and die? In such an instance Maria might be accused again, and then those who had helped her return would also be blamed. Some said that we should get “permission” first from those who had Maria (on left) being welcomed on a return visit to Yampu in 2013 tortured her. Then there would be less likelihood of others being blamed. Not everyone had been against Maria. Some said that they once they have been accused, tortured, or expelled from the had tried to help her but were accosted by men armed with axes community, have little chance of successfully defending their and bush knives and that they abandoned attempts to help, lest innocence. When Catholic sisters came to intervene in the case they too be badly injured or even killed. Remembering such of a woman being tortured near Mendi in the Southern Highviolence and the horror of a woman with third-degree burns lands Province in 2012, some people called out, “Sanguma i over 40 percent of her body, people did not want to risk a repeat kam” (witches are coming). Fortunately, even though they were episode. Why return and risk further violence? Could she not frightened, the sisters were not deterred by such accusations. remain elsewhere and let remembrance of the whole incident For most people, however, it is a terrifying thought that, if they defend the accused, people might point to them—and then how gradually fade away? would they prove their innocence? Even if a formerly accused person were to return, claimWhy support a person who has admitted to being a witch? In many cases I hear people saying that the accused person admitted ing innocence and appearing quite “normal,” this would still to being a witch. For example, in the case of Kepari Leniata, a be insufficient for some. A health worker gave the example of young woman burned alive in February 2013 in Mount Hagen sleepwalking. He said that persons sleepwalking are not con(Western Highlands), most people I have spoken with tell me scious of what they are doing and might have no recall of what that they believe she truly was a witch because she had admitted they did while sleepwalking. Analogously, the sanguma spirit is it, and two women from Simbu had corroborated this evidence, believed to leave the body of its host when he or she is sleeping. saying that they had seen her cook and consume the heart she Later, when such persons awake, they will have no idea what malicious acts the sanguma spirit might have performed while had stolen from a young man. In response to such claims, I ask whether the confession outside of their body. was made while the accused was being tortured. In most cases it appears that confession was extracted under extreme tor- Confusion over belief in Christianity and in witchcraft. Many Christure. People say that they have to torture the truth out of the tians admitted that they were confused. The group directly accused. How reliable is confession under torture? As Nick involved in the torture are unchurched, but the surrounding Schwartz notes in his book Thinking Critically about Sorcery and community is predominantly Catholic. They renew their baptisWitchcraft, some people confess their guilt, hoping that their mal promises every year during the Easter ceremonies, agreeing assailants will simply kill them and thus relieve them of the to “reject Satan and all his works and empty promises.” In doing so, they reinforce their belief in good and evil and the way good hell of prolonged torture.7 David Bosch, writing on the experience of witchcraft in and evil can be personified—good personified in Jesus Christ, January 2015 9 and evil personified in Satan. Like most Papua New Guineans, they believe in the spiritual, supernatural, or nonempirical realm. Outsiders might call it a magical worldview. The church leaders requested a two-day workshop to clarify issues. In November 2013 I facilitated the workshop for about fifty people from the parish. Several topics were shared during the workshop: points from history on witchcraft in Europe, some linguistic clarifications, issues of cultural identity, and lessons from Scripture. Participants were alarmed to hear that, before the Enlightenment in Europe, thousands of accused witches had been killed there. This historical information was new to them. The reality of witchcraft was not questioned, but the extent of the horror in Europe between 1450 and 1770 brought the response, “We certainly don’t want that to happen here!” We clarified linguistic terms. Enga people have a traditional belief in yama, which amounts to the personification of the malicious effects of envy. For example, if someone carrying pork or another valued food item meets a person on the way home and is not willing to share, then the resultant ill-feeling (conscious or unconscious) can result in illness or another misfortune for the person or the family of the one carrying the food. People say that experienced elders or a ritual expert might see or hear signs of yama (such as a whistling noise), and as a consequence they might recite a spell telling the person with yama to come Participants were alarmed to hear that, before the Enlightenment in Europe, thousands of accused witches had been killed there. with a recognizable sign, such as clay rubbed around his or her eyes, so as to be given food or some other valuable that had been put aside as an enticement.9 Some people in Enga today are reinterpreting yama in terms of sanguma sorcery. This is dangerous, since yama beliefs have traditionally not been associated with the violent torture and killing related to sanguma. It was important to clarify this point so that people could be clearer in their terminology. The debate on language also led to discussion on cultural identity. Are there ways they can prevent customary beliefs of a neighboring culture group from diffusing into their own? We selected Bible passages, particularly from the Gospels, and noted how Jesus had dealt mercifully with persons possessed by evil spirits, such as in the healing of what appears to be a boy suffering from epilepsy (Matt. 17:14–21). Participants reported that such passages helped them realize how a Christian response should seek healing and not destructive violence. Also, from a Gospel perspective, could it be that evil lies with the accusers rather than the accused? Study of healing stories in the Christian Gospels led to the issue of belief and decision-making. Participants put it in terms of a fence. If a fence around a garden is strong and intact, then a pig cannot get inside to destroy the garden. Similarly, they could have a “thought fence” to regulate their minds, which could keep them from being troubled by the stories circulating. There 10 are two possibilities here. The fence could separate real from unreal, thus allowing a person to say that they do not believe in the power of sorcery. The other possibility is to have the fence separate real powers, keeping the power of witchcraft outside the protective fence. Several participants witnessed that they were no longer afraid of sorcery or witchcraft, and this change left them feeling confident and free—in other words, for them, ideas of sorcery were disempowered. Those Christians who continued to entertain such thoughts about witchcraft stories were allowing them inside the fence and so experienced confusion due to conflicting beliefs. Thus it was not so much a matter of believing or not believing in the reality of evil, but of having one’s faith commitment provide a sense of security in the face of evil power.10 A Return Visit After the workshop, one weekend in November 2013 Maria and her husband came with me to Enga. As she approached the area where she had been tortured, she said she was feeling comfortable, but her body language indicated otherwise, as she pulled the hood of her jacket down over her face. Then, as we drove up in the hills, upon seeing her house across the valley, she pointed and spoke just one word, “Home.” There was a moving nostalgia about the expression, for she knew it was still too dangerous to go there. She spent the night elsewhere with her married daughter. The next day she and her husband attended Sunday mass at the local parish church. At the end of mass a leader addressed the congregation of about 500 people, noting her presence. Afterward, the majority of adults came to her warmly with hugs and many tears. Admittedly these churchgoers had had little to do directly with her accusation and torture. Notably, several people present who had been implicated in the accusations and torture did not come to greet her, but kept their distance. Later that afternoon we traveled several hundred kilometers to another province, where she is currently living. Maria reflected as we drove, saying that her accusers must have been jealous of her because she had a good house and garden and enjoyed a happy marriage. Judging from other cases I have encountered, jealousy seems to be a common motive leading to accusations of a person being a witch. Some weeks later I spoke with several of those who had tortured Maria. They still were convinced that the charges against Maria were correct and that she was responsible for the deaths of three persons. First, she had killed the young man through sanguma witchcraft. Second, in her fear after being accused she had named another woman, thereby accusing her (the one who eventually died) of being a witch. She was therefore responsible for the death of this other woman. Third, since Maria would not put back the heart of the deceased, she had to be tortured in an effort to make her do so. In the process, her unborn baby was killed, so she was responsible for that death as well. Moreover, the men claimed that Maria could possibly be responsible for a fourth serious problem and that there would be trouble and even violence if she returned intending to stay. As far as they were concerned, the only prudent solution was for Maria to forgive and forget—and to stay away. The men explained their view of the torture. “The reason for torturing Maria was not to kill her. It was not done as a game or for fun. She was tortured when other people who were living in Mount Hagen or Simbu said that she must have placed the heart in a cool place under a waterfall and she would eat it after International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 the burial of the deceased.”11 They were hoping that, with the return of his heart, the deceased would be saved and return to life. Christian Community and Witchcraft Accusations This account of Maria’s return and the response of the men who had accused her illustrate a number of issues relevant to a missiological response to witchcraft. The men who tortured Maria are not just young men with a blood lust or high on marijuana. They are people caught up in conflicting beliefs about life and death. According to the logic of Melanesian cultural tradition, misfortune is caused by someone else who must be identified. Moreover, if the situation is one of life and death, then it is urgent that the person responsible be found out, in order to force her (or him) to reverse the effects of the alleged sorcery. It is so urgent, in fact, that people are prepared to torture “the truth” out of the accused. How is one to respond as a Christian in this scenario? Participants in the workshop suggested the image of the fence that keeps them safe in a world where unleashed pigs would cause destruction to the garden inside. The image appeals to those for whom personal faith commitment provides a sense of security. The image is helpful, but I find shortcomings with it because gaps in a personal “fence” (i.e., a personal weakness of faith) could easily promote a moral causal ontology in which misfortune is ascribed to one’s own wrongdoing. Prosperity theology promotes notions of the better off being blessed by God, and the poor and marginalized suffering because of their sinfulness. There is similarity in the logic of such notions with the practice of demonizing other human beings as evil. We must be wary of interpreting suffering, illness, and death as God’s curse, or in terms of the demonic. In the PNG context an interpersonal or communal understanding of the causes of evil is more appropriate. Disciplines such as anthropology explain outbreaks of witchcraft accusations in terms of frustration following social disintegration and modernization.12 Social science treats witchcraft in terms of social processes. Christians refer to sin. Theologians call it the problem of evil. One can view the fence from a communal perspective. But this can lead to abuse if the faithful view themselves as a community virtuously united against a single evil scapegoat.13 Conscious of always being a visitor in their presence, I think Notes 1. See Franco Zocca, ed., Sanguma in Paradise: Sorcery, Witchcraft, and Christianity in Papua New Guinea (Goroka, PNG: Melanesian Institute, 2009). Also see Philip Gibbs, “Engendered Violence and WitchKilling in Simbu,” in Engendering Violence in Papua New Guinea, ed. Margaret Jolly, Christine Stewart, and Caroline Brewer (Canberra: Australian National Univ. E-Press, 2012), 107–36. 2. The term is similar to the term “sangoma” used in Africa for diviners or traditional healers. See P. Maurice McCallum, “‘Sanguma’— Tracking Down a Word,” Catalyst 36, no. 2 (2006): 183–207. 3. In recent times people have come to view the spirit creature also in other forms, even as a helicopter or a computer virus (Bishop Anton Bal in an address to a clergy conference in Mount Hagen, July 24, 2013). 4. Casper Damien, “The Myth of Kumo: Knowing the Truth about Sanguma in Simbu Province,” Catalyst 35, no. 2 (2005): 128. Nowadays in Simbu, bodies are buried in graves lined with concrete to prevent sangumas from accessing and eating the corpse. 5. The term “victim” can be used in different senses. Most local people refer to the victim as the person made ill or killed by the sanguma. Most outsiders refer to the victim as the person accused of being a witch (sanguma). January 2015 it is important to listen to people. Still, I challenged them to think beyond the fence. Christians may shelter behind a fence of security, but does not the witness of the Gospels urge us to help people change their interpretive framework, to turn from returning evil for evil, and to take responsibility personally or communally for what is going wrong in society—outside the fence? Misfortune need not come from Satan; it can arise from our own injustice. The Gospel teaches us to help the weakest and most vulnerable members of society—the orphans and widows, who are often the very target for witchcraft accusations. Leaving ontological questions about reality aside, we cannot ignore that there is a commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Is not the Christian community urged to find alternatives to the violence We must be wary of interpreting suffering, illness, and death as God’s curse, or in terms of the demonic. associated with witchcraft accusations? People have terms in their own language for envy and jealousy. Can we not name envy for what it is? Would this mean deliverance from selfishness rather than spiritual warfare? Most people prefer the security of the fence, but some have responded in ways that go beyond faith as security. Following the workshop and Maria’s visit, some people in the parish have committed themselves to making sure that witchcraft accusations and torture will not recur in their area. Health workers are expending extra effort to offer a biomedical explanation for illness. The local Legion of Mary group has invited several women suspected of being witches into their Legion group, where they will be protected. Others promise to remind the community that violence has legal consequences and that they will support Maria if she takes her assailants to court. The context here is that of the community trying to find ways to protect potential victims, while interacting with the invisible forces associated with the fundamental issue of insecurity and the uncertainties of life. 6. Talk of this new type of sorcery puts the blame on women, saying that Enga women who had gone to Simbu to buy magic for restraining unfaithful husbands had mistakenly brought back sanguma as well. 7. Nick Schwartz, Thinking Critically about Sorcery and Witchcraft (Goroka, PNG: Melanesian Institute, 2011), 51. 8. David Bosch, “The Problem of Evil in Africa: A Survey of African Views on Witchcraft and of the Response of the Christian Church,” in Like a Roaring Lion, ed. Pieter de Villiers (Pretoria: Univ. of South Africa, C. B. Powell Bible Centre, 1987), 48–49. 9. There is an expression for this presentation in Enga: yama nenge yukingi (literally: pulling out the yama teeth). 10. The issue of security, including “spiritual security,” is an important point raised in Adam Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005). 11. Interview with male relative at Tieliposa, March 22, 2014. 12. Mary Douglas, “Sorcery Accusations Unleashed: The Lele Revisited,” Africa 69, no. 2 (1999): 187. 13. Robert Priest, “Witches and the Problem of Evil,” Books and Culture 15, no. 6 (2009): 32. 11 Healing Communities: Contextualizing Responses to Witch Accusations Steven D. H. Rasmussen, with Hannah Rasmussen Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse. . . . My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. —Hosea 4:4, 6 W hen I returned to the church I had attended for a decade in Tanzania, I preached on witchcraft. I knew that Deborah, the woman sitting next to me, had ministered as a pastor’s wife for forty-nine years. I did not know she was suspected of being a witch. Just two months earlier outside Deborah’s home, a crowd of young men with clubs, machetes, and stones surrounded her, shouting, “We have come to finish you and your witchcraft!” A young neighbor woman, Ellen, crawled in the dust toward her, begging, “Stop strangling me!” Deborah raised her hand to God and said, “If I am a witch, may I die.”1 A Fatal Epidemic Witchcraft accusations are a fatal epidemic in Tanzania, leading to an average of ten murders per week.2 Among the Sukuma people of northwest Tanzania, a witch (mchawi in Swahili) is someone people accuse of using witchcraft (uchawi) to harm others through secret, evil means. Sick neighbors and family members readily voice suspicion that someone has harmed or bewitched them. Accusations turn to threats to “treat” the problem. If a suspected witch is fortunate, he or she is beaten, is chased from the village, or pays a fine of money or a cow. But not every suspect is so lucky. More than once a day someone, usually, like Deborah, a woman, is murdered for her or his “crime.” It often happens before the evening meal, usually just outside the person’s home. Pastors should be bringing healing to their communities, but their lack of context-specific understanding can be disastrous. If someone is ill, misdiagnosis leads to the wrong treatment. A diagnosis that blames another person for someone’s illness can be deadly for the accused—the supposed witch. When I researched witchcraft accusations in northwestern Tanzania, I discovered that local pastors had had no training on how to address witchcraft accusations in their congregations. In the “Search IBMR” database (www.omsc.org/searchibmr/index .php), an important resource in missions and world Christianity, I located no articles on sorcery or witchcraft in sixty years. According to Andrew Walls, “Witchcraft is beyond the reach of Western theology. [Westerners said and say,] ‘It doesn’t exist. It is an imaginary crime.’ . . . I have seen no pastoral theology book that tells you what to do if someone comes to you and says, ‘I am Steven D. H. Rasmussen teaches intercultural studies at the master’s and doctoral levels at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, part of Africa International University. From 1995 to 2008 he lived in Mwanza, Tanzania, where he taught at and led Lake Victoria Christian College. Previously he served as a pastor in the United States. —steve.rasmussen@africainternational.edu 12 a witch. I kill people.’”3 Yet African theologian Laurenti Magesa writes, “Witchcraft and polygamy . . . are the most prevalent and intractable challenges to the Church today. Of the two, witchcraft is obviously the most widespread even in African Christian communities and at various levels of the Church’s structure.”4 Samuel Kunhiyop, general secretary of a Nigerian church of six million, agrees that “there is an urgent need for the culturally postulated reality of witchcraft to be addressed pastorally with seriousness, sensitivity, and respect.”5 Witchcraft accusations and uncertainty about a Christian response to them are not solely African issues. Persecution and killing of people suspected of being witches happens not only in Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria, but also in Amazonia, Papua New Guinea, and London. Discovering Relational Pathology During our first three years in Tanzania, my family was sick forty times—and then we stopped counting. Along with culture shock, I had hepatitis A, malaria, and panic attacks. We buried a stillborn daughter. I thought God had called me here to serve as principal of a Pentecostal Bible school—then why the pain? I taught on Job. I discovered that virtually all the ministers I taught had lost children. John Mwanzalima, a pastor and school administrator and my next-door neighbor, supported me through this time. At yet another funeral for a friend’s child, he said, “This is normal trouble. We have all experienced this.” Whereas Western people tend to underemphasize the relational facets of life, northwestern Tanzanians in general see relationships as the key to everything. They therefore seek relational explanations and cures also for their suffering. In May 1996, nine hundred people drowned when a ferry sank in Lake Victoria. Tanzanians accused the president of having sacrificed people for political power. I did not understand this mentality. In growing up, I thought of witches as just neighborhood kids in Halloween costumes. My Scandinavian American parents preached in Pentecostal churches, but they did not blame witches or cast out demons. As I learned a new culture and language, taught in Swahili, and developed friendships with Tanzanian church leaders such as John Mwanzalima, I increasingly wanted to know how these people explained sickness and death. When I was a student at Trinity International University in Illinois, Paul Hiebert, Tite Tiénou, and Robert Priest taught me to analyze worldviews. I read a study of 752 illness episodes in 68 cultures. In 15 percent of the cases, people believed that biomedical causes were involved. In another 15 percent they blamed the sick person for a moral failure. But 42 percent blamed someone else’s envy Hannah Rasmussen, daughter of Steven D. H. Rasmussen, lives in Nairobi, Kenya, where she works as an editorial assistant for the Africa Study Bible. She graduated from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, with English and sociology majors. She grew up in Tanzania and Kenya. —hrasmus1@gmail.com International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 or anger. I learned that “for most peoples of the world, there are no faultless deaths.”6 What did Tanzanians believe? In the classes I taught at Lake Victoria Christian College, I changed from a lecturer to a listener. For three years I interviewed people in Swahili about their experience of sickness and death. I participated in daily life, church services, exorcisms, and funerals, recording over 100,000 words of field notes. The stories from my research consistently showed that both life’s successes and its serious suffering depended on relationships. The people assumed that cases of malaria, for instance, happened for a reason; they would ask, “Who sent the mosquito?” While sometimes people blamed demons or ancestor spirits, usually they accused a relative or neighbor of bewitching them through invisible means. Mwanzalima told me that every time someone is seriously sick or dies, the relatives ask who caused it, speculating about the identity of the witch. Healers Who Harm While I was conducting my research, Mwanzalima’s own sisterin-law was hacked to death with a machete after her husband died. People believed that she was a witch and had caused his death, because she had argued with him before he died. In addition, people knew that she had had three previous husbands, each of whom had died. To avenge her latest husband’s death, his relatives hired machete assassins. Most likely, these relatives consulted a neotraditional healer (mganga wa kinyeji, literally local healer), who identified Mwanzalima’s sister-in-law as the witch (mchawi) who had caused this death. The distinction between and the relationship tying together these two roles are key for understanding witch accusations. A healer is a public figure who claims to be able to discover the causes of misfortunes through divination and to treat them. The divination often identifies some other person, a witch, as the cause. Healers’ treatments include herbs, charms, and rituals understood to have social, spiritual, and physical effects. Neotraditional healers are available and popular. In fact, a Tanzanian scholar estimates that Tanzania has between 50 and 125 times more traditional healers than biomedical doctors (for the continent as a whole, he writes that “about 80 percent of the population . . . relies on traditional medicine as their primary health care”).7 Koen Stroeken, a medical anthropologist, tries to explain the social and psychological process in neotraditional healing: Sick people among the Sukuma of northwest Tanzania assume serious illness has a relational root. Perhaps the ancestors or the community are inflicting disease upon them as punishment for an unknown offense. They worry that perhaps people think they are proud or have not shared—two of the worst possible offenses in Sukuma culture. For instance, if someone puts a tin roof on his house when everyone else in the village has only a thatch roof, he might fear that envious neighbors will bewitch him. Sick people feel shame for their misdeeds, but are not sure what they did wrong or how to fix the problem.8 In order to understand the divination process—in effect, their “medical examination”—Stroeken became a Sukuma healer. He says that during the patient-healer consultation it is the ancestors who speak through the mouth of the healer or communicate through the healer’s analysis of a sacrificed chicken. Healers identify with the patient’s anxiety that the whole community is condemning them. Next, the healer tries to identify incidents that connect this sense of shame to one offended ancestor or an individual, a witch.9 In half the cases, Stroeken found that “the January 2015 oracles identify a witch.”10 Usually the person named as a witch is a relative of the patient, but it could be a neighbor, a lover, or anyone else in a significant relationship with the patient. The healer minimizes the patient’s offense by emphasizing how evil it is for the witch to inflict illness on another person. By transferring the patient’s shame to someone else and trading uncertainty for a specific cause, healers are able to make the patient feel better. But in doing so they have seriously hurt someone else by labeling her or him as a witch. As the patient tells others of the diagnosis and treatment, the accusation against the newfound witch spreads throughout the community.11 Deborah’s Case Deborah’s relational problems began when her daughter-in-law, Neema, moved in with Deborah’s son, Marko, before they married. Deborah and her husband, a pastor, initially did not approve. It did not help that Neema was from a different country and tribe. The family eventually accepted Neema when she became pregnant and married Marko. The couple moved next door to Deborah and her husband, and Deborah and Neema became close. Later, however, Neema began consulting neotraditional healers, angering her religious in-laws, and their relationship disintegrated. Marko was unable to reconcile his wife and his parents. Neema reacted with anger at his interference, and the two stopped sleeping together. Eventually she moved back to her own family in her native country, and Marko, taking a second wife, moved away. After some time, Neema came back to live with her in-laws. Her eleven-year-old son was frequently sick. He sometimes lost consciousness, and local pastors thought he was demon possessed. Neema began to visit healers again, seeking a solution and an explanation for her suffering. Deborah told her not to bring these spiritual influences upon their household, recommending prayer or hospital treatment instead. The healer undoubtedly knew that the two women did not get along and probably suggested that Deborah was the cause of Neema’s suffering, because Neema soon began telling the A Tanzanian scholar has estimated that Tanzania has between 50 and 125 times more traditional healers than biomedical doctors. neighbors that Deborah was a witch. At a wedding they both attended, Neema warned the bride not to open Deborah’s gift, saying, “It has a python inside.” Neema told neighbors that Deborah kept a python in a cupboard but refused to let anyone see it or kill it. Then Ellen, one of Neema’s friends, became sick, and she began wailing, “Deborah, Deborah, why are you trying to kill me?” Ellen’s husband, frantic for a cure, called his relatives and hired young men to kill the witch—Deborah. As the young men with machetes surrounded Deborah, a village leader intervened, crying out, “Don’t touch that woman!” The police grabbed her and put her in jail to protect her from vigilante “justice.” Early the next morning her other son arrived to take her from the village to safety in the city. The village relaxed, having treated the problem, though with costly side effects. 13 Treatment Options As I sat next to Deborah, I knew nothing of her story. But I did know that many Tanzanians feared and blamed witches. When I began preaching about witchcraft, I wonder what Deborah expected me to say. For my part, I had several options available. I could have approached witchcraft as a Western anthropologist, using my research just to describe the situation or to write an ethnography. Then I could have gotten a position teaching at an American university rather than intervening locally. Or I could have argued for an American worldview, that sickness is not caused by the envy people see but by germs invisible to the naked eye. I could have compared this incident to witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, and throughout Europe. I could even have claimed that during the Enlightenment Westerners progressed beyond believing in “superstitions” and “magic.” But claiming superiority over Africans is not only self-serving, it also immediately breaks any relational credibility. For instance, after the 2007 election violence in Kenya, the International Criminal Court of the Hague called Uhuru Kenyatta to trial—and unwittingly helped him win the 2013 election. According to the New York Times, “Uhuru and Ruto were skillful at mobilizing their communities by capitalizing on Kenya’s painful colonial history and the universal human tendency to dislike being lectured.”12 Likewise, when an outsider labels East Africans as criminals who violate a witch’s human rights, their efforts may backfire or at least make locals hesitant to work with them. At a seminar I facilitated in Tanzania, one of my students, now a radio announcer, quoted God’s law from Exodus 22:18: “The UN has its constitution, and Tanzania has its constitution, which talk about human rights. But we have ours, which we must obey. It says, ‘you shall not permit a female sorcerer to live.’” I could have ignored the issue, as do many missionaryfounded churches in northwestern Tanzania. Catholic, mainline, and standard evangelical churches such as the Africa Inland Noteworthy Announcing “Theological and Philosophical Responses to Syncretism” will be the focus for the Lund Mission Studies Open Seminar 2015, to be held March 23–24 at Lund University, Lund, Sweden. The intent of the seminar is twofold: to elaborate the consequences of syncretism (1) for the Christian faith and (2) for philosophical and empirical research into Christianity. Information can be found at www.teol.lu.se/forskning /konferenser-och-symposier/tprs-2015. “Colonial Christian Missions and Their Legacies” is the theme of an international conference to be held April 27–29, 2015, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference will explore the memorialization, articulation, and representation of histories of Christian missions within postcolonial and not-yet-postcolonial contexts. For information, go to http://australianstudies.ku.dk/staff/claire_mclisky /postdoctoral_project. Assistance with travel costs is available for postgraduate students and early-career researchers. The Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, will host an international conference entitled “Ecclesiology and Ethics: The State of Ecumenical Theology in Africa,” June 3–5, 2015. The conference will examine both current debates surrounding ecumenical theology in Africa and practical divides—denominational, theological, and contextual. For information, e-mail Heather Griffiths, hgriffiths@uwc.ac.za. Registration will close on May 15, 2015. The 2015 consultation of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity, to be held June 25–27 at Yale Divinity School, will address the theme “Religion and Religions in the History of Missions and World Christianity.” This annual event is sponsored by the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, U.K., and by Yale Divinity School and the Overseas Ministries Study Center, both in New Haven, Connecticut. For further information, see http:// divinity-adhoc.library.yale.edu/Yale-Edinburgh. The 2015 annual meeting of the Association of Profes- 14 sors of Mission (APM) will be held June 18–19, at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. The meeting will consider the titles that educational institutions worldwide use for their mission studies programs as a window onto how educators understand their relationships to the missio Dei. Potential presenters are invited to submit a title for their paper along with a 150–200 word abstract and a 30-word biography to APM president Nelson Jennings at jennings@omsc.org by February 13, 2015. “Missio-logoi: The Many Languages of Mission” will be the theme for the 2015 American Society of Missiology (ASM) annual meeting, set for June 19–21 at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. The conference will include a symposium on publishing in the field of missiology. Confirmed keynote speakers include Kirsteen Kim (Leeds Trinity University, U.K.), Terry Muck (Louisville Institute), and Lamin Sanneh (Yale University). For the call for papers and more information on the conference, see the ASM website, asmweb.org. A conference entitled “African Christian Biography: Narratives, Beliefs, and Boundaries” will be held October 29–31, 2015, in Boston, Massachusetts. Hosted by Jonathan Bonk, M. L. Daneel, and Dana L. Robert (all Boston University), the gathering offers the opportunity to reflect on the progress made by the first twenty years of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.dacb.org) and to identify new directions in the use of biography and autobiography for the study of African Christianity. Potential presenters should submit a topic description and brief vita to Michèle Sigg, dacb@bu.edu, by February 27, 2015. The Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University School of Theology is offering subsidies to enable the participation of presenters. For further details, see www.dacb.org/what -is-new.html. Personalia Elected. David Platt, as president of the International Mission Board (IMB), on August 27, 2014, by board trustees. IMB, which works with the churches of the Southern Baptist International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Church have tended to tell people that belief in witchcraft is superstition: “Do not believe it, talk about it, or seek treatment from healers.” Implicit in some of these statements is an imported cessationist theology, a claim that we have progressed beyond miracles to rational examination of Scripture. People who attend these churches nevertheless talk about witchcraft every day; they just avoid the subject when in church. Many interpret the silence to mean that Christ cannot handle their sicknesses, spirits, or witches. Therefore, they continue to address them using nonChristian methods. In these churches, even pastors or their families usually call a neotraditional healer when they are deathly sick. On the opposite extreme, I could have preached within the local worldview, telling amazing stories about witches and spirits from the pulpit that would make people suspect their neighbors and fear their family. Some spiritual leaders do exacerbate the problem in this way. A retired pastor friend in his seventies was suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure, and amputation ulcers. A visiting prophet told the pastor that these health Convention, is the largest denominational missionary-sending body among American evangelicals. Platt, 36, who was serving as pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, Alabama, took up his new office on his appointment. He succeeded Tom Elliff, who had served as president of IMB since March 2011. Died. Sebastian Karotemprel, SDB, 83, Indian Catholic missiologist, scholar, institution builder, and ecumenical advocate, July 20, 2014, in Shillong, India. Former dean and president of Sacred Heart Theological College in Shillong, where he taught for more than thirty years, Karotemprel also taught missiology at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, 1992–2001. The author or editor of twenty-nine books, he served two terms on the Pontifical International Theological Commission, was the founding editor of the journal Mission Today (formerly Indian Missiological Review) in 1978, established a major theological library at the seminary, and was responsible for developing the seven-storied Don Bosco Centre for Indigenous Cultures in Shillong, an anthropological museum of northeastern peoples and cultures. Karotemprel served on the executive committee of the International Association for Mission Studies (1985–88), was president of the International Association of Catholic Missiologists (1999– 2000), was secretary of the Office of Evangelization for the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (1988–98), and was a member of the Joint Working Group between the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church. Died. Arne Benjamin Sovik, 96, Lutheran missionary, administrator, scholar, and author, September 16, 2014, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born to missionary parents in China, Sovik later returned to China as a missionary, leaving again in 1947. Sovik received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1952 and went to Taiwan for three years. In 1955 he began work at the world mission program of the Lutheran World Federation, Geneva, Switzerland; his twenty-five years in Geneva were interrupted by four years heading the world mission offices of the Lutheran Church in America in New York City. Following retirement in 1984, Sovik undertook work for the evangelization of Chinese January 2015 problems had been caused by the pastor who succeeded him as a means to get his position. The old pastor dismissed this. After all, he had discipled this younger pastor like a son since his salvation as a child. Later, however, the pastor died. When I went to comfort his widow, she secretly told me not to trust the new pastor because he had caused her husband’s death. Other church members use Christian language like a charm to ward off witchcraft. Instead of using a chicken’s blood for protection, they pray for the blood of Jesus to cover them.13 I could have preached, as many African Pentecostals do, that witchcraft exists, but that Jesus the healer is more powerful than witches, healers, and spirits. In every worship service Pentecostals in our Tanzanian church sing, “There is no God like you,” to affirm that God’s power conquers all powers of darkness, specifically including Satan, evil spirits, and witches. Pentecostal pastors attribute the power of neotraditional healers to demons, not ancestors. Compared with other denominations, Pentecostals are more likely to pray fervently for healing and in France, lectured for short terms at a seminary in Indonesia, and edited a newsletter about China. Died. Johannes (“Jannie”) G. J. Swart, 51, associate professor of world mission and evangelism at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary since 2013, on September 8, 2014, in Pittsburgh, from an apparent heart attack while playing Frisbee with students on the first day of classes. A Dutch Reformed pastor from South Africa, he came to Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he earned a Ph.D., then served as pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Died. Samuel Wilson, 82, missionary, scholar, and missions director, July 1, 2014, in Kissimmee, Florida. Wilson, who retired in 2000 as professor of missions and director of the Stanway Institute for World Mission and Evangelism, Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania, had previously been director of the Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center, a ministry of World Vision International, Monrovia, California. At the outset of his career he served as a missionary in Peru with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (1956–67). Following doctoral studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, Wilson became professor at Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary, Nyack, New York (1971–79). His publications included, as coauthor, The Hidden Half: Discovering the World of Unreached Peoples (1982). Died. Isaac Zokoué, 70, theologian, educator, pastor, and peacemaker, September 11, 2014, Bangui, Central African Republic. Zokoué received his doctorate in theology from the Faculty of Protestant Theology, University of Strasbourg, France. He made a vital contribution to the establishment and running of the Faculté de Théologie Évangélique de Bangui (FATEB), formerly known as the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology (BEST), in Bangui, Central African Republic, including fourteen years as president of the seminary, following which he oversaw the creation and direction of its doctoral program. Zokoué was prominent in leading national reconciliation conferences and dialogues in his home country. 15 to share testimonies of supernatural healing and victory over witchcraft as a result. For instance, a very sick young woman came to Mwanzalima’s house. She sometimes lost consciousness and a strange voice spoke out of her, claiming to be Makata, a genie-spirit (jinn in Swahili from Arabic djinn). Makata said that the lover of the woman’s boyfriend had purchased it during a visit to a neotraditional healer and had sent it to afflict her. To the leaders of the church, this was a spiritual problem with a spiritual solution: they prayed over her for months, inviting me to join in telling the demon to leave. I also reminded her of her identity in Christ. This combined treatment gave her confidence to refuse the demonic voice and freed her from her sickness. It did not harm the boyfriend’s lover, which probably disappointed the demon. The church healed the woman’s physical, psychological, and spiritual problem. But the social epidemic of envy and witchcraft accusations in the community remained unchecked. A Contextualized Diagnosis None of these treatment options deals with the side effect of vulnerable community members being persecuted. Paul Hiebert, Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tiénou say that simply saying either Yes or No to local realities results in a “split-level Christianity.” Rather, they urge that we should respond using “critical contextualization.” This group process begins with careful study of the local reality, then moves to biblical and empirical evaluation, and finally seeks to initiate a transformative response.14 I have found this We began by discussing the reality of persecution. We gave a voice to those accused of witchcraft by listening to them tell their stories. approach to be helpful in my research and in seminars. I have progressively narrowed the focus of my research (and critical contextualization discussions) from how people understand causes of sickness to witchcraft and now to how we should respond to witchcraft accusations and to persecution of those suspected to be witches. Christians can act to protect widows and orphans even as we continue to debate the effectiveness accorded to witchcraft by our different worldviews. I followed these steps from local reality to transformative response in my Swahili sermon that Sunday with Deborah present. We believe our problems are caused by witches. How do we know witches cause harm? We have heard thousands of stories. But is this biblical? In Scripture I see cases where spirits and demons cause suffering, but no example of an evil person causing harm through invisible means—which is what we mean by witch (mchawi). The word “witch” (mchawi) is used in some Bible translations, but the stories show them to be public figures like a neotraditional healer (mganga).15 This mistranslation even applies to the verse we sometimes use to justify killing suspected witches, Exodus 22:18, which says “you shall not permit a female sorcerer (mchawi) to live.” But let’s keep reading. Exodus 22:21–24 says, “You shall not 16 wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.” God will judge us and even kill us with the machete if we mistreat widows, orphans, or outsiders. These are the people most often persecuted as suspected witches—accused, banished, beaten, and killed. While Scripture does not teach that witches cause harm, it clearly teaches that we should defend the vulnerable. When we accuse such people we aren’t battling Satan. We’re serving the interests of the ultimate Accuser (the meaning of “Satan”). Is it possible that our problems are not caused by witches, but by God’s judgment for mistreating widows?16 The day after this sermon we began a four-day critical contextualization discussion on how to respond to those suspected of being witches. Deborah joined others giving their stories of accusation and persecution as suspected witches. Listening to such unheard stories is one way to shift people’s perspectives. Normally, no one believes a woman suspected of being a witch—unless she is giving a forced confession! If she denies being a witch, the village ignores her denial and chases her out of town or kills her without appeal. We then examined the Bible and Tanzanian law. The conference brought together pastors from the region who were from Catholic, Mennonite, Church of Christ, Africa Inland Church, and Pentecostal backgrounds. Every one of these pastors believed that witches cause harm, and originally many of them believed that killing witches was biblical. They left the conference with an understanding that God loves everyone and commands the church to love them, too. They discovered that God especially loves widows, the poor, orphans and outsiders—the people who are usually persecuted as witches. Participants in this seminar in turn taught four similar seminars in various regions of northwest Tanzania at the end of 2013. They plan to teach more in 2015. Grassroots conversations must be complemented by global discussions. Christians of various worldviews need to challenge and sharpen one another. My 2008 dissertation sparked an interest in the people evaluating it, Tite Tiénou and Robert Priest. A conference that we organized, held in March 2013, brought together fifty Christian scholars from Africa and North America who have written about witchcraft or want to learn more. To avoid getting bogged down in metaphysical discussions about the existence of witchcraft, we began by discussing the reality of persecution. We gave a voice to those accused of witchcraft by listening to them tell their stories in the documentary film The Witches of Gambaga.17 Drawing on the many disciplinary perspectives represented within the group, we examined real cases in small and large group discussions. The participants left with plans to conduct research and present the results during a second conference, to be held at Africa International University in 2016. Samuel Kunhiyop and I are also writing a book, “What about Witches?”, intended for African pastors. Hope for Healing Our experiences and the stories we tell ourselves shape how we interpret the world. Understandably, persons who have heard thousands of stories of witchcraft will likely suspect that a witch is the source of their problems.18 To them, disciplining or removing witches will seem the best treatment plan, despite its cruel side effects. To address the root cause, we must change the diagnosis. New experiences and stories can change people’s understanding International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 “If you are looking for a dynamic community of men and women who are serious about ministry preparation, biblical studies, theological reflection, and cultural engagement, a community that desires to make a difference over the course of a lifetime for the cause of Christ and his church in this country and around the globe, then we invite your prayerful consideration of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.” David S. Dockery, President Studying with us means benefiting from the global experience of our faculty and your fellow students. Our faculty’s unity around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the authority and inerrancy of Scripture allows for community-enriching diversity on everything else. Focused master’s programs, including the flexible MA/INTERCULTURAL STUDIES A top-tier MASTER OF DIVINITY offering preparation for theologically grounded leadership in many contexts (such as pastoral, academic, nonprofit, and international organizations) The PHD INTERCULTURAL STUDIES — cutting edge research under the guidance of internationally recognized leaders, with full funding available Watch free lectures at teds.edu/media Learn more about our programs at teds.edu/academics Send us an email at gradadmissions@tiu.edu or call (800) 345-8337 TEDS is in Deerfield, IL, with extension sites in Akron, Chicago, Columbus, Indianapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and south Florida of what causes specific illnesses or at least help them to respond differently to accusations and persecution of vulnerable people. A student of mine, Joshua Lusato, states, “When I used to talk with Dr. Rasmussen about witchcraft in Tanzania, I thought he was too skeptical. I was sure that at least 90 percent of those accused of being witches really had harmed someone through witchcraft.” I challenged him to return to Tanzania to research the social consequences of witchcraft beliefs. Lusato’s research provided new experiences and stories that changed his perspective. He found that during the years 2004–11, Mwanza Region police records show an average of sixty-four murders per year in which the motive on record is that the victim was suspected of witchcraft. Eighty percent of the victims were women and most were older people. A suspected killer of the witch was identified in only 10 percent of the cases. Lusato’s wife did a similar study, and found that only 1 percent of the cases had gone to trial. Beyond these statistics are the many more killings that are unreported or do not specifically state “suspected witch” as the motive. In one village he visited Lusato discovered that six older people had been killed as suspected witches in the past eighteen months. Only one of them was listed in the police records. At the conference in Kenya and the seminar in Tanzania, Lusato said, “After doing my own research, I believe that if there is such a thing as witchcraft, 99 percent of these people are falsely accused.” Within the churches, when the local spiritual-relational explanation for congregants’ suffering causes others to suffer, pastors need to act as the true healers, developing a new spiritual Notes 1. During June and July, 2013, I (Steven) conducted multiple interviews with “Deborah” (a pseudonym), with her son, and with pastors who have known the family for decades. The pastors also visited the village to investigate this incident and bring reconciliation. Other accounts referred to below (also pseudonymous) are drawn from my doctoral dissertation and the data collected for it. See Steven D. H. Rasmussen, “Illness and Death Experiences in Northwestern Tanzania: An Investigation of Discourses, Practices, Beliefs, and Social Outcomes, Especially Related to Witchcraft, Used in a Critical Contextualization and Education Process with Pentecostal Ministers” (Ph.D. diss., Trinity International University, 2008). 2. According to Tanzania Human Rights Report, 2009 (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Legal and Human Rights Centre, 2010), 21, during the five-year period 2005–2009, a total of 2,585 people were murdered because they were believed to be witches; www.humanrights.or.tz /downloads/tanzania-human-rights-report-2009.pdf. 3. Andrew F. Walls, “A Consultation on Faculty Development and Doctoral Training for Theological Institutions in Africa” (author’s notes, Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, Nairobi, Kenya, August 8, 2007). 4. Laurenti Magesa, “Witchcraft: A Pastoral Guide,” African Ecclesial Review 48, no. 3 (2006): 174. 5. Samuel Waje Kunhiyop, “Witchcraft,” in Africa Bible Commentary, ed. Tokunboh Adeyemo (Nairobi: WordAlive Publishers; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 374. 6. Richard A. Shweder, Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003), 84, 87. 7. Menan Hungwe Jangu, “Healing Environmental Harms: Social Change and Sukuma Traditional Medicine on Tanzania’s Extractive Frontier” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 2012), 33–35; http:// deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93827/1/mjangu_1 .pdf. 8. Koen Stroeken, Moral Power: The Magic of Witchcraft (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 166–74. 9. Ibid. 18 answer, but also treating the community’s relational tensions. John Jusu, a colleague at Africa International University, has taken this insight to heart. He had observed and participated in the ostracism, persecution, and even killing of accused widows and old women in his home village. After studying deeply what Scripture says about the poor and then talking to the suspected witches, he does not believe they really were witches. He now cares for and defends sixteen widows and over 100 orphans in that village. The level of suspicion of witchcraft against some of these has now diminished simply because they are cared for and accepted as part of a family. He also wisely confronts accusations of witchcraft. After my sermon, Deborah told me why she had appreciated it. I asked if I could hear her story over lunch. Since this was her first visit to this church since being forced from her village, it seemed God had sent her. She agreed to share her story the next day in our seminar. Pastors who were part of the seminar counseled Deborah, Neema, and neighbors of the family. But a year and a half later Deborah’s accusers have not been brought to justice. Deborah’s children helped her and her husband move to another village because they fear that someone in the village could attack her again at any time. Through research, in seminars, and even by reading this issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, more and more people are beginning to listen to the stories of the accused. I find hope in that fact. Perhaps we are God’s answer to Deborah’s cry. 10. Ibid., 194. 11. Ibid., 166–74. 12. Michela Wrong, “Indictee for President!,” Latitude, March 11, 2013; http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/being-prosecuted -by-the-i-c-c-helped-uhuru-kenyattas-chances-in-kenyas-election. 13. Kunhiyop, “Witchcraft,” 374. 14. Paul Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tiénou, Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 15–29. The critical contextualization process has similarities to “the pastoral circle.” The pastoral circle steps include (1) insertion to listen to local voices, (2) social analysis, (3) theological reflection, and (4) pastoral action. It becomes a circle because, as with critical contextualization, the process is meant to be repeated, working toward increasing truth and transformation. See, for example, Frans Jozef Servaas Wijsen, Peter J. Henriot, and Rodrigo Mejia, eds., The Pastoral Circle Revisited: A Critical Quest for Truth and Transformation (Nairobi: Paulines, 2005). 15. A similar argument is made in Robert J. Priest, “Witches and the Problem of Evil,” Books and Culture, November/December, 2009, pp. 30–32; www.booksandculture.com/articles/2009/novdec /witchesandtheproblemofevil.html. 16. My argument from Exodus 22:21–24 is adapted from a sermon preached in 1649 at the end of an earlier epidemic of witch hunting (quoted in Alan Macfarlane, “Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Essex,” in Witchcraft, Confessions and Accusations, ed. Mary Douglas [London: Tavistock, 1970], 92, 94; www.alanmacfarlane.com/FILES /witch_asa_1.htm). Did the shift in seventeenth-century preaching contribute to the shift in actions toward suspected witches, or did it result from the shift? My hope is that a change in pastors’ preaching, counseling, and praying today could improve the situations in their communities. 17. Yaba Badoe, The Witches of Gambaga, documentary film (Fadoa Films, 2010); see www.witchesofgambaga.com. 18. Samuel Waje Kunhiyop, African Christian Ethics (Nairobi: WordAlive /Hippo Books, 2008), 378–80. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Toward a Christian Response to Witchcraft in Northern Ghana Jon P. Kirby T he hot afternoon sun is beating down in Ngani, northern Ghana. It is Christmas Day and some fifty elderly women are gathered in the compound of the Catholic Church. They are clearly enjoying themselves, banging out traditional rhythms on various homemade instruments and dancing single file in a circle. Some chant a mournful refrain while the song leader improvises stanzas about their life. Calabashes of sorghum beer are passed around. It is their annual Christmas party. One would hardly suspect that these women have all been accused of witchcraft and will live out their days in the “witch camp” across the street from the church. Today they will have a full meal, and they will laugh, dance, and sing—a dramatic contrast to the hopeless grind of their lives every other day of the year. For one day a year they are human again.1 Although they are feared by the townsfolk, their confinement needs no walls or guards, for attempting to leave or doing any harm will break their oath to the earth spirit, which will bring instant death. Their mud huts and leaky roofs offer little protection from the torrential rains. The knee-high walls of their compounds deny them privacy and human dignity. Their life lacks the most basic needs: food, water, shelter, and clothing, but most of all, human recognition, companionship, and love. Because of the African formula for identity, “I am because we are,” social rejection means they are denied their very identity as human beings and children of God. “Why can’t you do something for these poor women?” a friend of mine accusingly asks Fr. Joseph, the pastor. He shrugs. “What more can I do? I can offer only the most basic help, like bringing them water from the river in my pickup, helping to plaster the walls when their huts are about to fall, and giving them some grass thatching before their roofs cave in. I give them medicine when they are sick and some food now and then, but anything else will be taken from them. In small ways, like this party, I try to show them God’s love. How can I give them freedom when their people have made them outcasts?” Witchcraft and the Media Violence emanating from witchcraft beliefs permeates Ghanaian life. Despite a Christian presence in northern Ghana for more than a century, witchcraft accusations persist there and, by all accounts, are increasing.2 Neither the publicity, however, which focuses on the exotic, nor the Christian responses, such as those of Fr. Joseph at Ngani and the Gambaga Outcasts Project of the Presbyterian Church, get to the core issues.3 When I asked Simon Atunga, head of the Gambaga Outcasts Project, if he believed in witchcraft, he responded, “Yes, here in Ghana, everyone believes in it. If someone tells you they don’t, they are lying.” Far from fading away, the phenomenon of witchcraft seems to survive Jon P. Kirby, SVD, a Catholic priest and missioner, worked in Ghana for thirty-six years. An anthropologist, he is the founder and former director of Tamale Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies (TICCS) in northern Ghana. Now in the United States, he conducts workshops promoting intercultural and interreligious dialogue using “action-methods” such as culture-drama. —zanyeya@gmail.com January 2015 by adapting to the enormous changes that have occurred across Africa.4 Furthermore, witchcraft beliefs seem to be the filter through which modern social institutions, including Christianity, are colored, interpreted, given new meanings, and dealt with.5 Social psychologists such as Glenn Adams and other contemporary scholars explain witchcraft in terms of group-centric versus individual-centric cultural groundings of relationships.6 Witchcraft beliefs occur where people experience themselves as inherently connected to others and to unseen worlds. The primary experience of oneself as connected to others and as the object of others’ attention leads to the presupposition of personal causality. If bad things happen, it is because of other people. This presupposition makes a Christian response doubly difficult. Unlike in the West, in Africa there is nothing more sobering than the threat of witchcraft. The media portray accused women as victims, but few Africans believe this—often not even the accused. As Fr. Joseph points out, in the African mind they are outcasts, and helping an accused witch is itself antisocial witchery. How, then, might one approach a Christian ministry when even the most basic care risks being so grossly misinterpreted? The clues to finding an appropriate Christian response lie beneath the surface in their traditional worldview and in their response to problems. In this article I probe some of the deeper ethnohistorical underpinnings of the witch camps in search of directions for a more contextualized Christian response. Although the specific features of the Ghanaian situation may differ from those found in other African contexts, this type of foundational analysis is needed in each setting. The Seen and the Unseen Worlds In the African world all things are interconnected in a great chain of life that participates in relationships extending in two dimensions: horizontally, among the living in the visible, material world, and vertically, between this world and the invisible world. Though distinct, these dimensions are viewed as part of the same overall reality. In northern Ghana, one routinely sees large kapok trees growing near compounds. These trees are “clothed” with a strip of traditionally woven white cotton cloth because a diviner has revealed them to be ancestors “come back” to protect particular houses. Asking, “Where are the ancestors?” usually elicits the response, “They are sitting right here among us.” All being is in flux, and the world is caught up in a dynamic process. The goal for each person is to achieve fullness of life by becoming an ancestor. One must accrue life in the seen world in order to achieve “abundant life” in the unseen.7 Ideally, as one becomes older and closer to the ancestors, the more life-filled one becomes. But the process is fraught with difficulties posed by antilife forces. An elderly Anufo informant explained it to me as a process of maintaining a good destiny. Before a new child is born, the spirit [ancestral or tutelary spirit] tells God all that will happen during its lifetime. God gives his approval, and the child is born with its special destiny. The person will have good fortune or bad in life. This shows if he has a good or a bad destiny. If he has a bad destiny, he can change it to a good one through spiritual help. Life continues until the person dies, and if he has a good destiny, he becomes an ancestor; if a bad destiny, he becomes a spirit of the wild. A spirit of the wild 19 is a spiteful thing, so the name must be forgotten by all, never spoken again so that it won’t come back. No child in the family will ever again be given that name. Life’s evils are thus understood in terms of personalized antilife forces from which one must seek protection.8 Behind every misfortune are broken relations and the hidden bad intentions of enemies. The frequently heard threat “You will see!” is an example of such an evil intention. A powerful curse or a declaration of spiritual warfare, this threat is taken very seriously. If a misfortune such as a lorry accident or a serious illness occurs subsequently, the person who uttered the curse is held responsible. Strategies for dealing with problems and keeping one’s destiny on track involve activities at both the horizontal (seen) and the vertical (unseen) levels. The vertical activities or rituals Witchcraft involves much more than individual “witches” and their victims. In its most pernicious form it involves whole communities. relate to various agents of life and follow a hierarchical order of greater to lesser life extending from God, the source of life at the broadest transterritorial level, through the created earth spirits and divinities with less life at the territorial level, then to ancestors at the familial level, and finally to tutelary spirits with the least life at the individual level.9 The life-negating forces of witchcraft are normally associated with problems at the more restricted individual or personal level, but they also affect the broader familial and territorial levels. Indeed, the individual expressions may be only symptoms of an extensive malaise, for in its broadest conceptualization, it is any antilife force.10 These antilife forces manifest themselves differently at each level, but the term “witchcraft” can be applied to any of them. Earth Shrines and Witchcraft Life-negating acts at the level of the family—such as a youth attacking or cursing an elder—are witchcraft because they disrupt the harmony and integrity of family life in both its horizontal and vertical dimensions, causing a “spoiled house” and resulting in a loss of vitality and the untimely deaths of its members. At the community or territorial level, acts that threaten the horizontal social and political life of people, such as illicit sex in the bush, homicide, or war, are witchcraft because they bring about a state of ritual pollution, or “spoiled earth,” in which lifenegating forces prevail. Even worse ritual contamination was thought to result from spilling a witch’s blood. Early sources speak of witches in the south being executed through strangulation and drowning to avoid this blood-contamination. In the north they were (and still are) beaten or stoned to death to avoid having their blood touch the ground.11 When the vitality and fertility of the earth are killed, only pain and suffering are harvested.12 Children and animals die, crops fail, and people fall victim to unlikely accidents and other misfortunes. War, in particular, causes this perilous state of pollution and creates an urgent need for special 20 rituals of restoration. As one informant told Robert Rattray, “The land is a bitter thing, it will cast out, finish your house [if you refuse to purify it].”13 To redress this situation and revive the earth, the elders, chiefs, and people must rely on the earth priest (ten’daana). Harmonious relations can be restored only by a ritual of purification called “burying the blood” or “smoothing of the land.” Relations in one dimension affect the other; when a break occurs in one dimension, both need mending. Both vertical and horizontal mediation is needed. Although witchcraft can refer to antilife forces at any of these levels, the greatest threat is always to the community. Earth shrines, which are the center of a community’s life-force, are the key junctures for the maintenance and renewal of relations between the seen and unseen worlds, and they are thus the primary locus for the control of witchcraft.14 All witch camps, such as those at Ngani and Gambaga, are located within the parameters of an earth shrine that is in the custody of an earth priest. A History of Antilife The rise in accusations in the north cannot be understood without considering the region’s historical accumulation of antilife forces, especially communal divisiveness, at the horizontal level. The kingdom of Dagbon—where the five witch camps in northern Ghana are located—is the most powerful centralized chiefly state in northern Ghana. Its people, the Dagomba, are ruled by a king, the Ya Na, and his subchiefs. They coexist with and exercise control over the Konkomba, a nonchiefly people, whom they previously enslaved. The Konkombas’ subservience to the Dagomba from precolonial times to the present continues to be a major source of tension and conflict.15 In the precolonial era, the expansion of Dagomba power occurred in two stages. The first took place in western Dagbon (1500–1700), where Dagomba warriors killed the autochthonous Konkomba earth priests, usurped their ritual roles, and assimilated the population.16 In the second stage (1700–1900), because of the Asante conquest of Dagbon (1742–72) and the increased demand for tribute in the form of slaves (1,000–2,000 per year), the old pattern of “benevolent raiding” gave way to a more predatory type of raiding that allowed for little assimilation of peoples or appropriation of roles. Those who were not enslaved were pushed into territories further east. In the colonial era the British practice of indirect rule placed Dagomba chiefs over the very groups that they had formerly enslaved, giving them a free hand to continue extorting labor, wives, foodstuffs, and animals. In eastern Dagbon, including Yendi, where the Ya Na resides, this system permanently locked in the Dagomba as owners and the Konkomba as slaves. The chiefs maintained political power over the Konkomba and made ritual roles subordinate to the political.17 The horizontal (seen) relations were thereby broken and the vertical (unseen) dimensions blocked. The Dagomba and Konkomba were permanently separated by their difference in status, and although ritually subjects of the same earth spirits, their access to the spirit world was subverted. An Antilife State After Ghana’s independence in the late 1950s, political patronage in successive governments widened the split. In 1979 a new constitution vested in the Dagomba and other traditional chiefs the control of the northern lands on behalf of all northern peoples. This action effectively alienated the Konkomba from their hereditary lands. They reacted in a series of local conflicts, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 but the government continued to uphold the authority of the chiefs. In 1992 a major referendum to allow nonchiefly groups such as the Konkomba to have their own chiefs was initiated without success. This led to the devastating 1994 civil war, which engulfed most of the north, from which, after twenty years, the north has yet to recover. War breeds witchery. Witchcraft involves much more than individual “witches” and their victims. In its most pernicious form it involves whole communities. A Christian response, in order to be effective at the level of individual accusations, must bring “life” to these communities. The church must be a source of “life” not only for individuals but also for the state of Dagbon, especially by healing the breech between the chiefly and nonchiefly groups. Vincent Boi-Nai, the Catholic bishop of Yendi diocese, has an intuitive grasp of these essentials. Over the last fifteen years he has fostered peace and reconciliation vertically and horizontally—vertically through regular ritual activities such as masses for peace and reconciliation and by ecumenical prayer services that bring together Christians, Muslims, and traditional believers of both the chiefly and nonchiefly tribes; horizontally through activities aimed at facilitating intercultural dialogue, friendship, and trust in all the communities of eastern Dagbon.18 Boi-Nai’s efforts and those of his priests have met with some success but have also been stymied by politically motivated religious divisions, to which we now turn. Religious Division During the colonial era the development of the north had been purposely retarded by the British, who saw the region as a convenient labor pool for the rich cocoa farms and gold mines of the south. Missionaries were excluded, and schooling was limited to children of chiefs. But already in the early 1900s the Missionaries of Africa, called the “White Fathers,” began to establish churches and schools in the areas bordering Burkina Faso. By the 1950s they were establishing schools and literacy programs all across the north, including in the towns and villages of the Konkomba. By the 1960s other Christian groups joined in, leading to literacy programs and Bible translations in the so-called minority languages. By the late 1970s the nonchiefly peoples, as they phrased it, “got their eyes opened”; a new awareness of their ethnic identity, lack of political representation, and denial of civil rights and dignity led to a series of ethnic conflicts.19 Chiefly politicians soon became wary of the conscientizing effect of Christian missions. By the end of the 1980s, when an economic crisis necessitated alliances with oil-rich Gulf states—which the government leveraged by inflating the number of northern Muslims—the new political rhetoric began to recast the old oppositions in religious terms. Although the number of Christians was about the same in each group, the nonchiefly groups became associated with Christianity, and the chiefly groups with Islam.20 The resultant “aid” included roadside mosques, scholarships to fundamentalist schools, and modern weapons that were used with devastating effect in the 1994 war.21 Worst of all, the war was portrayed as a religious conflict, thereby obscuring the real issues and leading to the present state of institutionalized religious division. Chiefs and Earth Priests Strained horizontal relations disrupt the vertical dimension, and vice versa. The political and religious hostility in eastern Dagbon between the chiefly and nonchiefly peoples also disturbed January 2015 relations in the spirit world, leaving both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions in a constant state of ritual pollution. The witch camps are not the problem; they are part of a dysfunctional repair system that aims at restoring a harmonious unity. The camps are of two types—those in eastern Dagbon, like Ngani, and the camp in western Dagbon, at Gambaga—and have very different functions. In western Dagbon, where there are no Konkombas, the chiefs are also the earth priests. They thereby combine the two roles needed for unified mediation. As earth priests, they administer a ritual “washing of the stomach” to nullify antilife forces and reestablish vertical relations with the unseen world. As chiefs, they provide the civil authority needed for building trust horizontally in order to send those accused as witches back to their communities. But their authority is not always heeded. Accusations are affected by the relative social influence of the accusers versus the accused. A strong accuser, for example, can insist on another trial by ordeal to which a weak accused must submit. In the end, one’s communal influence determines the outcome. Furthermore, accusations are made in the heat of the moment, and people need time to cool off before trust can be restored. When the community is adamant or the accuser has great influence, the accused are sent for a time to the special camp at Gambaga, where they await reintegration. Here the system is able to function moderately well by keeping accusations in check and offering some protection for the weak, who are always those most at risk. But even where the system works, it is in need of life-giving grace. In eastern Dagbon, where both groups reside, the situation is entirely different. In Ngani the accused can never return home, but at Gambaga many will eventually be reintegrated. The Gambaga Outcasts Project has successfully helped more than fifty to return; in contrast, if accused women at Ngani go home, they will be killed. At Ngani both the tribes and the roles have been separated. The Dagomba chief and his people are on one side of town; the Konkomba with their earth priest are on the other. The chief mediates among the Dagomba only in the seen world, and the Konkomba earth priest mediates for his people only in the unseen. These divisions are aggravated by many other changes that have occurred, affecting everything from the economy to gender relations.22 The Weight of History The history of slavery and oppression in northern Ghana has led to a series of interethnic conflicts, culminating in a civil war with religious overtones. The legacy of slavery continues to breed disunity throughout the north through the unequal statuses that were fixed during the colonial era and in the government’s persistent denial of the rights of nonchiefly peoples. Conditions have now worsened with increased intra-ethnic rivalry between the two major Dagomba clans in a dispute over their chieftaincy. These tensions and anomalies have led to an antilife eruption of individual accusations. Witch camps are increasing in size, and new camps are being formed. The camp at Naboli, which is only for Konkomba witches, was established in 2008. An undercurrent of witchery now threatens the security and quality of life for everyone in northern Ghana. The camps in Dagbon are faulty attempts to deal with the problem of evil. They are only symptoms of a deeper problem: the peoples’ world is broken, and they are no longer able to repair it. The traditional forms of mediation are obstructed by the continued separation of the two ethnic groups and their mediatory 21 roles. This division prevents the unitary mediation that, vis-à-vis their shared worldview, is needed to reestablish a harmonious, life-sustaining environment for all. Politically and religiously, they live in an imbalanced state that will not get better by itself. Tensions between people groups are not usually seen as playing a key role in witchcraft accusations, but in this case they are crucial. From both a traditional and a Christian perspective, their state of anomie is alienation from God, the source of life. Our primary response as Christians, then, must be to restore relations in both the seen (with the people) and unseen (with God) axes in life-giving ways. In the light of this analysis, Bishop Boi-Nai is bringing new life through his rituals and peacebuilding. Fr. Joseph, in small but significant ways—as the accused witches laugh, dance, and sing—brings life to those accused. And the Presbyterian Church is following the lead of the Spirit by bolstering the traditional roles of the Gambaga earth priest/chief to set the accused free. More needs to be done in each of these areas. Notes 1. The background to the concepts and issues raised in this article is explored at greater length in Jon P. Kirby, “Ghana’s Witches: Scratching Where It Itches,” in Mission and Culture: The Louis J. Luzbetak Lectures, ed. Stephen B. Bevans (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2012), 189–223. My analysis is based on field research I conducted in 2001–2 among the Dagomba, Konkomba, and Anufo of northern Ghana. 2. The Internet offers dozens of recent articles, films, and blogs on the topic of witchcraft in Ghana. 3. By pursuing sensationalism, promoting highly individualistic Western values over communitarian values, and emphasizing independence over solidarity, the media have misdirected the public and diverted attention from deeper issues. For the Presbyterian Church’s responses to the witch camp at Gambaga, see African Christianity Rising, by James Ault, http://jamesault.com/documentaries/africa-project. 4. Susan Drucker-Brown, “Mamprusi Witchcraft: Subversion and Changing Gender Relations,” Africa 63, no. 4 (1993): 531–49. 5. Paul Gifford argues that charismatic Christianity in southern Ghana has taken on dimensions of traditional religion, including witchcraft, spiritual causality, and destiny; see his Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2004), 83–90. 6. Contemporary authors are beginning to account for the durability of “irrational beliefs” such as witchcraft by expanding the parameters of traditional Western disciplines to include Ghanaian perspectives and meanings. See references in Kirby, “Ghana’s Witches.” 7. Laurenti Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997). 8. See Margaret Joyce Field, Search for Security: An Ethno-psychiatric Study of Rural Ghana (New York: Norton, 1960), 87, for the importance of such protection. 9. Magesa, African Religion, 61. 10. On life and antilife in connection with witchcraft, see Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, for the International African Institute, 1999), 86. 11. See Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1853; repr., 1966), 177–79, and John Beecham, Ashantee and the Gold Coast (London: Mason, 1841), 214–15. 12. See David Tait, The Konkomba of Northern Ghana (London: Oxford Univ. Press, for the International African Institute, 1961); Robert S. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, 2 vols. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1932), 1:258; Jean-Claude Froelich, “La tribu Konkomba du Nord-Togo,” Africa 25, no. 4 (1955): 441–42; Froelich, “Les Konkomba, Les Moba, Les Dyé,” in Les Populations du Nord-Togo, by Jean-Claude Froelich, Pierre Alexandre, and Robert Cornevin (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1963), 151; Meyer, Translating the Devil, 87; Jon P. Kirby, God, Shrines, and Problem-Solving among the Anufo of Northern Ghana (St. Augustin, Ger.: Anthropos Institut, 1986). 22 Conclusion Christian responses to African problems need to make better sense to the people than the traditional ones and thereby be good news in their world.23 Rather than simply condemning the traditional world along with the way it understands its problems and goes about solving them, the church needs to get its hands dirty, enter in, and begin to heed the much-maligned beliefs and rituals of this world. It needs to understand these antilife structures in terms of the institutions of injustice, disunity, and violence in which the people have been immersed, along with the historical processes that have produced them. The ways in which Christians address the antilife atmosphere of witchcraft can become more real, more integral to their worlds, by following the clues offered in the traditional though often faulty responses of the people. 13. Rattray, Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, 1:258. 14. There are no shrines to God, but when the people need help for a transterritorial “God problem,” they go to the Malams (itinerant Muslim teachers, expert in the Quran and adept at making amulets and “spiritual medicine,” who usually apply quranic suras to African problems). 15. See Jon P. Kirby, “Peacebuilding in Northern Ghana: Cultural Themes and Ethnic Conflict,” in Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition, ed. F. Kroeger and B. Meier (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 168–79. 16. Allan Wolsey Cardinall, The Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (1920; repr., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 16. 17. “The shrine knows its master” is the phrase the Konkomba use to designate their custodianship of earth shrines. 18. In 2002 Shu Gong and I co-facilitated a weeklong workshop that used sociodrama and culture-drama techniques in which ten Dagomba and ten Konkomba leaders reenacted conflict situations but in reversed roles. The workshop led to greater understanding and respect for one another and was a significant step toward reconciliation. See Jon P. Kirby, Culture-Drama and Peacebuilding: A Cobra Is in Our Granary; A Culture-Drama Workbook (Tamale, Ghana: TICCS Publications, 2002); Kirby, “Peacebuilding in Northern Ghana”; Jon P. Kirby and Shu Gong, “Reconciling Culture-Based Conflicts with Culture-Drama,” in Healing Collective Trauma Using Sociodrama and Drama Therapy, ed. Eva Leveton (New York: Springer, 2010), 207–33. 19. Hippolyt Akow Saamwan Pul counts eight major conflicts between 1981 and 1994 involving the Konkomba and Dagomba; see his “Exclusion, Association, and Violence: Trends and Triggers of Ethnic Conflicts in Northern Ghana” (M.A. thesis, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University, 2003), 6. 20. Despite these associations, at the time there were actually more Christians among the chiefly groups than among the nonchiefly. 21. See Justice Katanga (pseudonym), “An Ethnographic History of the Northern Conflict” (unpublished manuscript, 1994). 22. Master-slave relations between the Dagomba and Konkomba help to explain both Dagomba women’s insecurity and the high incidence of accusations; see Jon P. Kirby, “Mending Structures for Mending Hearts in Dagbon,” in Jon P. Kirby, ed., The Witchcraft Mentality Seminars: Applications to Ministry and Development (Tamale, Ghana: TICCS Occasional Papers in Cross-Cultural Studies, 2004). Economic imbalance also leads to witchcraft accusations (see Kirby, “Ghana’s Witches”). 23. Traditional perspectives on recurring African problems involving the unseen world offer starting points for contextualized Christian ministries. See further suggestions in Jon P. Kirby, The Power and the Glory: Popular Christianity in Northern Ghana (Akropong, Ghana: Regnum Africa, for Akrofi-Christaller Institute, 2013). International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Witchcraft Accusations and Christianity in Africa J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu I n the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Deliver us from evil.” Such rescue from evil and its consequences is critical for anyone wishing to live by God’s promises in the Bible. For the churches in Africa, evil preeminently includes witchcraft. In Africa, successful Christian ministry (i.e., ministry with significant personal relevance and impact) is impossible unless one takes into account the supernatural evil implied by the word “witchcraft.” Grasping the power and influence of evil, including witchcraft, is critical, not only for realistic pastoral care, but also for understanding African responses to the Gospel throughout Christian mission history. For example, the spectacular growth of African Independent/Initiated Churches (AICs) in the early twentieth century is linked, in particular, to the inability of Western missions to come to terms with the reality of supernatural evil, especially witchcraft, and to articulate a Christian pastoral response to it. Historic Western mission Christianity has generally been perceived to be powerless when it comes to dealing with supernatural evil. Those who are spiritually afflicted and troubled have therefore turned to alternate resources outside the sphere of mission churches— traditional witchdoctors, medicine cults, charismatic prophets, or a combination of these—in search of diagnosis, explanations, and solutions to problems ranging from ill health to infertility to failing economic fortunes. A century after the emergence of AICs, witchcraft and belief in its destructive power remain resilient in African life and thought. Evil of supernatural provenance requires—and in AICs has called forth—powerful prayers of intervention. These churches deal with witchcraft in the context of activities of prophecy and spiritual warfare. Indeed, the single most important contribution made by indigenous churches toward the renewal of Christianity in Africa has been the integration of charismatic experiences, particularly prophecy, healing, and deliverance, into church life. The pneumatic churches, including here Africa’s independent Pentecostal and charismatic churches, as well as the classical AICs, for whom dealing with supernatural evil is a major pastoral focus, combine biblical notions with traditional ones in devising the hermeneutical interpretations, rituals, and sacred spaces to deal with supernatural evil’s perceived effects on people and society. Witchcraft in African Cosmological Thought Supernatural evil and witchcraft are prevalent in the worldview of Africans. As Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar write in Worlds of Power, belief in witchcraft is a commonplace, rather than an extraordinary or esoteric, feature of the spiritual beliefs that many Africans share.1 For the African imagination, sacred and secular realities are inseparable. It is therefore routine to attribute occurrences with negative effects on people’s lives and circumstances J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, a contributing editor, is the Baëta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal/Charismatic Studies, Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Accra, Ghana. He has served as visiting scholar at Harvard University (2004), Luther Seminary in St. Paul (2007), and the Overseas Ministries Study Center (2012). —kwabena.asamoahgyadu@gmail.com January 2015 to supernatural powers. For example, in much of Africa AIDS is understood to be caused by witchcraft.2 Witchcraft, in the words of Basel Mission church historian Hans Debrunner, is “the idea of some supernatural power of which [human beings] become possessed, and which is used exclusively for evil and antisocial purposes.”3 This understanding resonates with the biblical material on witchcraft activities (Exod. 22:18, Deut. 18:10, Ezek. 13:17–23, Mark 1:21–28, Luke 9:37–43). In Africa, belief in the presence and work of evil powers, especially witches, is pervasive; most African traditions conceive of the universe as alive with spirit powers, a place in which evil is hyperactive.4 Evil itself can be of natural or supernatural origin, and usually a causal distinction is made between physical disease and spiritual disease. A relationship exists between the two causalities, however, for misfortune that emanates from natural causes could be made worse by inimical spiritual powers such as witches. Since it belongs to the realm of the supernatural, witchcraft works in the same manner as sorcery or occult powers, which are themselves basically forces of destruction. Aylward Shorter, who served as a missionary in Africa, states succinctly why witchcraft accusations thrive on the continent. [They serve as] mechanisms of competition in closed communities [which have] clear boundaries but vague internal structures. . . . [In them] conformity is the yardstick of who is, or who is not, “with us.” The misfit, the innovator, the eccentric, the outsider, the rival quickly becomes [a] threat to the system. . . . New factors and new roles are appearing in traditional human life which fuel social tensions and competition. . . . That is why witchcraft explanations are applicable to urban situations where job competition and inter-ethnic rivalry [are] acute.5 The Twi peoples of Ghana understand bayie, which Westerners have translated as witchcraft, as the ability to cause harm to others by use of supernatural powers either alone or in league with other persons of similar orientation. Witches, it is believed, fly in the night and engage in mystical cannibalism. They besiege homes and spiritually suck the blood of victims, which results in the onset of diseases. Witches make people poor by spiritually “eating” their wealth, which means that certain types of poverty are believed to be inflicted supernaturally. Family ties and those on whom one intimately depends are depicted as potential sources of evil, generating apprehensiveness. Sickness and troubles are attributed to envy on the part of relatives and their spiritually powerful allies. In parts of West Africa, witchcraft is popularly referred to as “African electronics,” an indication of its ubiquity. The implications for Africans’ sense of community have been profound. Despite witchcraft’s association with the power of evil, terms and expressions associated with witchcraft can be used positively. Still, the phenomenon is not viewed neutrally; on the whole, its morally ambiguous status is weighted on the side of evil.6 For example, in the Wimbum area of northwest Cameroon, the word tfu is related to bru and bfui. These all, according to Elias Bongmba, refer to the ability to do extraordinary things, but tfu discourse and practice involve a search for the cause of misfortune.7 When used positively, the expressions anyen and bayie, or the English witchcraft, normally refer to “genius.” In its more serious usage, however, anyen or bayie refers to a person’s ability to use some 23 supernatural power to harm others spiritually. Victims may be afflicted with a disease or a negative habit that makes it difficult for them to function constructively; they may even be killed.8 Witchcraft, Early Prophetism, and AICs The AICs are noted for their creation of ritual contexts for dealing with supernatural evil, which, in the minds of indigenous recipients of the Gospel, manifests itself in failed pregnancies, poverty, moral deviance, lack of general progress in life, negative emotions, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and general ill-health. Specific ailments such as sickle cell disease, epilepsy, and recently Ebola and HIV/AIDS are also widely perceived as caused by witchcraft. Thus in African Christian history, the medical facilities established by missionaries were relegated to dealing with common minor diseases and ailments such as malaria, coughs, and headaches perceived to be of natural causality. For dealing with supposed supernatural sources of affliction, however, people would commonly bypass these medical facilities to consult with traditional medical practitioners, seeking herbal preparations and other “sacramental” substances infused with the needed spiritual energy. When medical treatment or diagnosis failed to lead to healing, victims and their families typically interpreted the condition as a spiritual disease and then sought the appropriate spiritual center for help. Harold Turner, who made the study of primal new religious movements a lifelong academic pursuit, lists belief in witchcraft as a key feature in the worldviews that gave rise to independent Christian, or, as he calls them, “prophet-healing” movements in non-Western societies.9 Turner points out that belief in a hierarchy of beings—a pantheon that includes the high God, malevolent Unseen powers are believed to be active also in the natural order. divinities made up of lesser gods, earth-born occult powers such as wizards and witches, and benevolent ancestors—is also an element of the primal imagination. By entering into relationship with the benevolent spirit-world, people could receive protection from evil forces such as the powers of witchcraft.10 In the traditional context such protection came through diviners. With the rise of the independent church movement, however, the prophets leading them became Christian alternatives to solutions previously available through traditional religious ritual activity. The soteriological emphases of the AICs included release from both sin and supernatural spiritual bondage. These emphases were combined with a dynamic pneumatology in which the Spirit of God was present to heal, deliver, protect, and empower his children.11 The arguments so far indicate an important fact: that in African philosophical thought, witchcraft is real. In support of his own graces of healing and exorcism, Emmanuel Milingo notes that, although in recent times the ministry of deliverance has been played down, the pastoral practice of the Catholic Church has always accepted the power of spirits as real forces in human affairs. These powers of evil, he writes, “are ultimately destructive and enslaving; it is important to recognize them rather than deny them, and to learn to apply the power of the Holy Spirit in healing, so that sick people will not be driven to seek help 24 from an alien and dangerous source.”12 In the Christian mindset, witches have survived as demons, which means witchcraft activity is synonymous with demonic activity, and therefore the source of witchcraft is seen as being people demonized by the devil, or Satan. In most cases the mission denominations, however, dismissed witchcraft as a psychological delusion and a figment of the unscientific indigenous worldview. But beyond translating the Scriptures into the vernacular, negotiating nearly impassible terrains to preach the Gospel, and dealing with the devastating effects of malaria lay the single most important challenge facing mission pastoral ministry, which was the indigenous people’s ardent belief in the power of witchcraft. Witchcraft, Mission, and Public Imagination Through recordings of exorcisms and the production of films that reinforce conceptions of evil present in current public discourse and imagination, African Initiated Christianity of the pneumatic type plays an important role in perpetuating witchcraft beliefs. The exorcisms and films fall within the realm of spiritual warfare in which Christians are taught to resist the devil. In street art Sasabonsam, the personification of evil in the religious culture of the Akan of Ghana, is usually painted as a huge, dark, hairy, ugly animal creature. His eyes are bloodshot, he has unusually long claws, and he lives on tall trees in very deep forests. His location in the deep forest suggests a surrealistic and frightful environment. African farmers and hunters return from the forest with stories of encounters with either Sasabonsam himself or some of his cohorts, dwarfs who terrorize people to destroy them. Sasabonsam can also enter the bodies of other animals, making the African forest a place filled with mysterious powers. Some discourses on evil hold that witches and wizards are human agents of Sasabonsam. In places where unseen powers are believed to be active also in the natural order, hunters and farmers who are attacked by wild beasts may well blame a spiritual agency at work in these creatures. In most traditional African societies extraordinary performance, achievement, or skill, especially in competitive situations, is deemed to require supernatural enablement. Very wealthy people therefore easily come under suspicion of having gained their wealth through blood rituals. When such people have deformities or when any of their close relatives are deformed or disabled in any way, the deformity may be explained in terms of their having visited a shrine, where they exchanged their own or someone else’s normal body for material wealth. In contrast, an exceptionally intelligent student, talented sports personality, or successful musician may be referred to positively as being a bayie or anyen, simply in appreciation of that person’s extraordinary gifts, talents, or abilities. This positive usage has not been part of the Christian response to witchcraft. Witchcraft has had implications for Christian mission because many people in Africa, both traditionalists and Christians, process misfortune through a logic that assumes its reality.13 E. A. Asamoa (Ghana) and Gerhardus Oosthuizen (South Africa), among other African scholars, have bemoaned Western missionaries’ denial of witchcraft beliefs as being irrational and backward. No amount of denial on the part of the church, Asamoa maintains, can eliminate belief in supernatural powers from the minds of African Christians. Denial often produces only a hypocritical state of internal conflict for the believers. In official church circles they may pretend that they do not believe in witchcraft, but privately they resort to practices that assume witchcraft.14 Though African Christians are beneficiaries of Western misInternational Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 sion Christianity and theological education, they have reservations about the type of Christianity they have received. At the level of practical life, they realize that mission Christianity has not engaged constructively with the primal worldview, especially when it comes to traditional notions of spiritual causality. In that light Oosthuizen observes that, because of their deeply Westernized and intellectualized dispositions, missionaries typically have ignored witchcraft, sorcery, and the reality of demons.15 More recently, religious anthropologist Birgit Meyer has come to the same conclusion, stating that Western Christian missionaries interpreted witchcraft as an activity of Satan but dismissed its negative influence as outmoded superstition.16 The situation was no better among certain of the African elite who trained to serve as clergy alongside Western counterparts in the historic mission denominations. The failure to engage constructively with the phenomenon of witchcraft meant that these leaders were unprepared to deal effectively with the anxieties, fears, and insecurities that African converts faced regarding witchcraft. Witchcraft is reinforced in people’s minds both by Christian preaching and by its coverage in the media, where stories abound of the lynching of suspected witches. Accusations of witchcraft, as ter Haar rightly notes, are made primarily against women and children. Many of the women are old and depressed, and the children are usually from extremely deprived backgrounds or are orphans without responsible guardians. If mothers die during childbirth, it is not uncommon for a surviving child to be accused of having caused the death through witchcraft.17 Witchcraft, Christian Media, and Conversion Accounts of conversion from witchcraft circulate widely through popular religious books such as Snatched from Satan’s Claws. In this book Evangelist Mukendi of the Democratic Republic of Congo is said to tell his personal story of preconversion visits to the supernatural domains of witchcraft. For converts like Mukendi, the vital decisions that affect ordinary lives occur in this supernatural realm.18 Nigerian Emmanuel Eni’s Delivered from the Powers of Darkness has the same story line. Eni’s testimony includes his participation in a spiritual underworld through which he ruined lives by making pacts with the devil. In modern African Christian discourses on evil and the power of Jesus in unmasking and dealing with these powers, distinctions between Satan and witches have been all but erased. Guided by these beliefs that resonate with traditional ideas of causality, new Pentecostal/ charismatic prosperity–preaching churches, like the AICs before them, create ritual contexts of healing and deliverance to deal with the fears and insecurities of the faithful in search of help.19 Witchcraft beliefs are reinforced by ongoing media stories, rumors, and perceptions. The 1992 Nigerian video film Living in Bondage, for example, is infused with a neo-Pentecostalist rhetoric of deliverance. In the video, a petty trader named Andy follows a colleague’s suggestion that he obtain some money making medicine. At the shrine, he is expected to exchange the life of his new bride for the instant wealth he seeks. He does so, but then Andy’s wealth begins to disappear when his mother-in-law, following traditional religious beliefs, weeps at her daughter’s graveside, asking her to take revenge on the one who killed her. The point is that Living in Bondage was produced by a Christian organization and that it accepts local belief (that ritual sacrifice of human beings can produce wealth) as true. At the same time, the story sustains the Pentecostal Christian position that such wealth is from the devil and can turn against its beneficiaries, just as Andy’s life ended in ruins.20 These story lines in African movies January 2015 are sustained in the public imagination by being recapitulated in preaching and in African testimonies of conversion, as well as being featured in media resources from churches. Witchcraft and the Prosperity Gospel The emergence of the prosperity gospel and the popularity it has achieved are a major challenge facing the church in Africa today. Prosperity gospel teaches that God has met all human needs of health and wealth through the suffering and death of Christ. Believers are therefore encouraged to claim these blessings— including insulation from disease, poverty, and sin—by making positive confessions and sowing seeds of tithes and offerings. In an African context in which etiology and diagnoses speak of supernatural agency as the cause of misfortunes, witchcraft is easily invoked to explain the shortfalls of the prosperity gospel. These shortfalls are evident in the fact that, for the majority of those who have imbibed this gospel, poverty and sickness are everyday realities. The emphasis on health, wealth, promotion, advance, privilege, and power in the gospel of prosperity necessarily implies that those who preach it have a weak theology of pain and suffering. Rather than address the systemic socioeconomic failures brought on African countries and their people by greedy and corrupt leaders, pastors and people alike accept witches and demons as convenient causes of negative life experiences. Explaining poverty in terms of witch activities has led to a situation in which Pentecostal/charismatic healing camps receive not only people accused of witchcraft but also perceived victims looking for divine intervention in their plight. The accusers and the accused turn to the same well in seeking help.21 Witchcraft and Spiritual Warfare In African church life today, especially in its more Pentecostal/ charismatic streams, the discourse on witchcraft and the fight against it take place within the context of what has come to be known in contemporary Christianity as spiritual warfare.22 The term “spiritual warfare” as used in conservative evangelicalism refers to resisting the activities of evil powers through authoritative prayer in order to free victims of those powers from supernatural Witchcraft is reinforced in people’s minds both by Christian preaching and by its coverage in the media. possession and oppression. Witchcraft has become synonymous with demonology, a Christian reinterpretation of a traditional religious idea.23 In Africa, whole ministries called “intercessors” are specifically dedicated to the perennial war against demons working against the continent and its member nations. Usually no distinctions are made between the sort of evils perpetrated by witches and those by demons as portrayed in the Bible. In the 1990s, Redeeming the Land: Interceding for the Nations, by Nigerian charismatic preacher Emeka Nwankpa, articulated the worldview that encapsulates intercessory work for nations against the powers of destruction assigned to them by the devil.24 The inspiration for a “warfare prayer” mentality comes from 25 Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:10–12). Interest in spiritual warfare is by no means unique to African Christianity. Partly inspired by European and North American conservative evangelical theologians and evangelists such as Derek Prince, Don Basham, Kurt Koch, Mark Bubeck, and John Wimber, it represents a global movement.25 Books by Peter Wagner, such as Engaging the Enemy and Warfare Prayer, and by Charles Kraft have been highly influential.26 Rebecca Brown’s He Set the Captives Free and Prepare for War became so popular in Africa that Nigerian publishers of popular Christian literature broke copyright laws and produced cut-rate editions for distribution throughout the continent.27 These publications reinforced belief in the workings of demons and evil spiritual powers, of which witchcraft was the most well known. When African Christians read books on the Christian life as spiritual conflict, it is a short step to go from biblical demons to local witches.28 According to Charles Kraft, Scripture clearly portrays human life as lived in a context of continual warfare between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. If John could write that “the whole world lies under the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), then, according to Kraft, we should accept the need for warfare on the part of God’s forces to defeat the enemy.29 In civil life, war is associated with the military. With a belief that Christians must engage in spiritual warfare as a backdrop, African pneumatic movements often use militarized language and images to portray their mission. One of the first AICs in West Africa is the Musama Disco Christo Church, a so-called heavenly name that means “The Army of the Cross of Christ Church.” In the early 1990s, Pastor Eastwood Anaba of the Fountain Gate Chapel International in Ghana and an important voice in contemporary African Pentecostalism wrote God’s End-Time Militia: Winning the War Within and Without. In an introduction to a revised edition, Anaba declares, “The voice of the Lord in these end-times is distinct and loud. It leaves us in no doubt concerning what we ought to do as a church. It is loud enough to wake up all those who are in deep slumber on the battlefield. There is a call to war. . . . We are realizing that Christianity is not a game but a titanic conflict against the forces of darkness.”30 The book’s cover is designed in military camouflage colors. Anaba’s book is one of many popular publications on spiritual warfare in contemporary African Christianity. Emeka Nwankpa, mentioned earlier, writes that Jesus Christ has delegated power to born-again Christians, not only over the influence of the devil in the lives of people, but also in spiritual warfare to redeem the land.31 The leaders of these churches routinely include forms of militarization as part of their public image. Spiritual warfare summits and conferences are heavily advertised in the public sphere, with images showing the lead speakers in actual military outfits. Advertisements for Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, the founder of a charismatic church in Ghana, frequently show him wielding a sword, suggesting his power over negative spiritual forces, and he is constantly referred to as an “apostle of strategic warfare prayer.” Warfare language fits well with the African understanding of witchcraft. At Pentecostal/charismatic prayer vigils and church services, witches are resisted in prayer as demons who afflict God’s people. This movement deals with enemies not by praying 26 for them but by invoking fire from God to burn them. Repeating denunciations (following the leader) of witches in one’s family is therefore an important part of contemporary Pentecostal services in Africa. African Christians are not necessarily oblivious to the fact that certain problems are caused by people in authority and decision makers. Natural explanations are apparent for many of the problems that people face. Nevertheless, even the most mundane problems, from food shortages to corruption, are seen as having their deepest explanations in the actions of powerful figures who manipulate spiritual realities. Fear of supernatural evil and desire for protection from witchcraft are the reason why many people constantly seek power that will effectively protect them.32 The search for solutions to spiritual problems has generated a plethora of healing camps and prayer services in both Pentecostal/ charismatic and historic mission churches. Prophets specializing in healing, deliverance, and exorcism operate to set people free from bondage; and particular difficulties, including the inability of human reproductive systems to function properly, may be identified as associated with witchcraft. Healing and deliverance centers are heavily patronized by women in search of the “fruit of the womb,” that is, the gift of children.33 Witchcraft accusations often emerge when things go wrong in life without any rational explanation. The conclusion reached is usually that the problem lies within existing relationships. Thus at prayer services the power of God is constantly invoked to deal with real, perceived, and imaginary enemies responsible for one’s problems in life. Psalm 35—“Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me”—is much loved for the imprecatory manner in which it calls on the God of Israel to fight one’s battles for him or her by bringing the enemy to ruin, shame, and disgrace. African Christians are definitely aware of the material reasons for the socioeconomic and personal quagmires in which the continent and its peoples find themselves. At church and prayer services across the continent, prayers are raised asking God to deliver the continent from its difficulties. In October 2014, the metropolitan archbishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Accra publicly endorsed a call—issued by Nicholas Duncan-Williams, the archbishop of Ghana’s Action Chapel International, a contemporary Pentecostal and prosperity preaching church—to prayer against the “Ebola Demon.” In the West African countries of Ghana and Nigeria, national thanksgiving services endorsed by their governments are held, and intercessions for political leaders and public officeholders are constant features of these religious gatherings. In the run-up to Ghana’s 2004 democratic elections, for example, the recurring theme of the various services was to ask for God’s intervention so as to avoid the chaos that had characterized the political systems and transitions of countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Spiritual warfare is an important underlying theological theme of these national prayer services. Conclusion Drawing on a selection from Jesus of the Deep Forest, the prayers of Afua Kuma, an ordinary Ghanaian Pentecostal woman, Kwame Bediako notes that in African Christianity Jesus Christ has been received as one with superior power, able to reduce Sasabonsam to a mere mouse.34 Jesus blockades the road of death with wisdom and power. He, the sharpest of all great swords, has made the forest safe for hunters. The mmoatia he has cut to pieces; International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 he has caught Sasabonsam and twisted off its head. Sasabonsam is huge, while the mmoatia, short creatures or dwarfs, exist in African folklore as mysterious figures with spiritual powers that come from Sasabonsam. They are believed to be tiny with their feet pointing backward, which is to say that they are weird and ugly, and they “wait for the unwary hunter in the pitch darkness of the night.”35 The word “Sasabonsam” came into Christian vocabulary as the name for Satan via the translators of the Akan Bible. In Jesus of the Deep Forest, Jesus is presented as conqueror of the world of evil because he has “twisted off the head” of Sasabonsam.36 We see here African Christians responding to the denial of witchcraft through local religious innovation. Notes 1. Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 27. 2. Ibid., 45. 3. Hans W. Debrunner, Witchcraft in Ghana: A Study on the Belief in Destructive Witches and Its Effect on the Akan Tribes (Accra: Presbyterian Book Depot, 1959), 1. 4. See, for instance, J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Conquering Satan, Demons, Principalities, and Powers: Ghanaian Traditional and Christian Perspectives on Religion, Evil, and Deliverance,” in Coping with Evil in Religion and Culture, ed. Nelly can Doorn-Harder and Lourens Minnema (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 85–103. Though wizards are also present in African societies, witchcraft generally involves only females. For convenience, I use the word “witch” to refer to both male and female versions of witchcraft. 5. Aylward Shorter, Jesus and the Witchdoctor: An Approach to Healing and Wholeness (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), 96. 6. See Peter Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia Press, 1997). 7. Elias Bongmba, “Witchcraft and the Christian Church: Ethical Implications,” in Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, ed. Gerrie ter Haar (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2007), 114. 8. For earlier work underscoring the importance of witchcraft for mission in Africa, see Robert S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923); Malcolm C. McLeod, “A Survey of the Literature on Witchcraft in Ghana (Excluding the Northern Region), with Particular Reference to the Akans” (B.Litt. diss., Exeter College, Oxford Univ., 1965). 9. Harold W. Turner, Religious Innovation in Africa: Collected Essays on New Religious Movements (Boston: Hall, 1994). 10. See Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a NonWestern Religion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1995), 94. 11. See ibid., 91–108; Emmanuel Milingo, The World In Between: Christian Healing and the Struggle for Spiritual Survival (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984), 50. 12. Milingo, World In Between, 31, quoting Francis Macnutt. 13. Bongmba, “Witchcraft and the Christian Church,” 112. See also an important essay by Timothy D. Stabell, “The Modernity of Witchcraft and the Gospel in Africa,” Missiology 38, no. 4 (2012): 460–74. 14. E. A. Asamoa, “The Christian Church and African Heritage,” International Review of Missions 44 (July 1955): 297. 15. Gerhardus Oosthuizen, The Healer-Prophet in Afro-Christian Churches (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 120. 16. Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1999), xvii, 41. 17. See Gerrie ter Haar, “Introduction: The Evil Called Witchcraft,” in Imagining Evil, ed. Haar, 1. 18. See Ellis and ter Haar, Worlds of Power, 51. 19. For example, see Douglas Akwasi Owusu, The Spectator (November 21, 2009), an account in an important Ghanaian weekend paper of a session at Ebenezer Healing Church to exorcise the spirit of witchcraft from an eleven-year-old girl. January 2015 In his early study Witchcraft in Ghana, Debrunner makes the telling observation that, by accepting the reality of witchcraft and claiming the power not only to protect against it but also to heal from it, the AICs came into being as theological critiques of the historic Western mission denominations.37 In twenty-first-century Africa, witchcraft and how to deal with its effects on human life and activity continue to be important issues, drawing people into indigenous Christian communities. This movement says much about the resilient nature of primal worldviews in African life and thought. African expressions of Christianity have always been informed not simply by biblical ideas of Satan, demons, and evil spirits, but also by traditional worldviews regarding the sources and causes of evil such as witchcraft. 20. Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah, “Advertising God: Nigerian Christian VideoFilms and the Power of Consumer Culture,” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 2 (2003): 203–31. 21. The Cape Town Commitment (Cape Town, S.A.: Lausanne, 2010), 64, forthrightly denounces the prosperity gospel as unable to offer lasting solutions or deliverance from poverty. 22. See Opoku Onyinah, Spiritual Warfare (Cleveland, Tenn.: Center for Pentecostal Theology, 2012) and Pentecostal Exorcism: Witchcraft and Demonology in Ghana (Dorset: Deo Publishing, 2012). 23. Onyinah, in Pentecostal Exorcism, has coined the term “witchdemonology” to refer to this religious amalgamation of phenomena related to evil. See also Stabell, “Modernity of Witchcraft,” 462. 24. Emeka Nwankpa, Redeeming the Land: Interceding for the Nations (Accra: Africa Christian Press, 1994; repr. 1998, 1999). 25. A representative publication list would include Derek Prince, Blessings or Curses (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Word Publishing, 1990) and They Shall Expel Demons (Harpenden, U.K.: Derek Prince Ministries, 1998); Don Basham, Can a Christian Have a Demon? (Monroeville, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1971); John Wimber, with Kevin Springer, Power Evangelism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992); Kurt E. Koch, Occult Bondage and Deliverance (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1970); Mark I. Bubeck, Overcoming the Adversary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984) and The Adversary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1975). 26. Peter C. Wagner, Warfare Prayer (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1991) and Engaging the Enemy: How to Fight and Defeat Territorial Spirits (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1993). 27. Rebecca Brown, Prepare for War (Springdale, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1987) and He Came to Set the Captives Free (Springdale, Pa.: Whitaker House, 1992). 28. Note, for example, Birgit Meyer, “If You Are a Devil, You Are a Witch, and If You Are a Witch, You Are a Devil: The Integration of Pagan Ideas into the Conceptual Universe of Ewe Christians in Southeastern Ghana,” Journal of Religion in Africa 22, no. 2 (1992): 98–132. 29. C. H. Kraft, “Spiritual Warfare: A Neocharismatic Perspective,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 1091, 1092. 30. Eastwood Anaba, God’s End-Time Militia: Winning the War Within and Without, rev. ed. (Accra: Design Solutions, 1993; repr., 1998), xi. 31. Nwankpa, Redeeming the Land, 10. 32. Ellis and ter Haar, Worlds of Power, 92, 95. 33. J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Broken Calabashes and Covenants of Fruitfulness: Cursing Barrenness in Contemporary African Christianity,” Journal of Religion in Africa 37, no. 4 (2007): 437–60. 34. Kwame Bediako, Jesus in Africa: The Christian Gospel in African History and Experience (Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana: Regnum Africa, 2000), 9–10, citing Afua Kuma, Jesus of the Deep Forest (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1981), 19. 35. Bediako, Jesus in Africa, 10. 36. Ibid. 37. Debrunner, Witchcraft in Ghana, 2. 27 Christianity 2015: Religious Diversity and Personal Contact T his two-page report is the thirty-first in an annual series in the IBMR that lays out in summary form an annual update of significant religious statistics. The series began three years after the publication of the first edition of David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE; Oxford Univ. Press, 1982). The WCE itself was expanded into a second edition in 2001 (Oxford Univ. Press) and accompanied by an analytic volume, World Christian Trends (WCT; William Carey Library, 2001). In 2003 the World Christian Database (WCD; later published by Brill) was launched, updating most of the statistics in the WCE and WCT. The Atlas of Global Christianity (Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2009) was based on these data and was featured throughout 2010. The World’s Religions in Figures, by Todd Johnson and Brian Grim (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), covers the methodology of counting religionists around the world. In mid-2014 Brian Grim, Todd Johnson, Vegard Skirbekk, and Gina Zurlo produced the first of a series of annuals titled Yearbook of International Religious Demography (Brill). Redesign This year we have redesigned the annual statistical table, deleting many previous categories and adding some new ones. Categories cut include rural dwellers, nonliterates, church attenders, councils of churches, and several evangelism variables. Notably, the “Great Commission Christians” concept has been retired. This category, introduced in the early 1990s, was used by many agencies to express ecumenism in mission. While tracking Christians within each tradition who are active in mission and evangelism is valid, we have not found a way to corroborate these particular estimates with surveys and poll data. We break down the Independent Christian category into six subcategories by region (lines 29–34). In every case, global figures are derived by adding together data on 234 countries. Religious Diversity A new category this year is Religious Diversity (line 8), a composite measure of how diverse the religious makeup of individual countries is. This measure is adapted from the field of economics (market share studies). The least possible diversity is represented by 0 and the most by 1. The world as a whole is considerably more diverse in 2015 than it was in 1900, but diversity is now on a slight decline. While many countries in the Western world are becoming more diverse through secularization and immigration, others are becoming less diverse. In 2015 the most diverse countries are South Korea at 0.82 and China at 0.81, while the world as a whole (all countries’ individual contributions) is at 0.45. The least diverse country is Afghanistan at 0.00 (99.8 percent Muslim). See The World’s Religions in Figures, chapter 3, for method and details. Post-Christendom Another new measure is the percentage of Christians who live in countries that are 80 percent or more Christian (line 25). In 1900 This report was prepared by Todd M. Johnson, Gina A. Zurlo, Albert W. Hickman, and Peter F. Crossing at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Footnotes for the “Status of Global Christianity, 2015” table can be found at www.globalchristianity.org. 28 it was 95.0 percent, by 1970 it had fallen to 76.0 percent, and by 2015 it had further declined to 52.4 percent. This phenomenon is related to religious diversity; most majority-Christian countries are becoming less Christian through secularization and immigration. Personal Contact Christians make up one-third of the world’s population (line 22). It therefore might be expected that a significant number of non-Christians would have some kind of personal contact (line 50) with a Christian. This is not the case, however, since Christians are not evenly distributed globally. Some countries have large Christian majorities, while in others Christians constitute small minorities. Within a country, or even a city, adherents of different religions can be isolated from each other in many ways, including geographically, ethnically, socially, and economically. In order to estimate the number of non-Christians who have personal contact with a Christian, a formula has been developed and applied to each ethnolinguistic people group (see “Methodological Notes” in the Atlas of Global Christianity; also posted in the footnotes online). Thus, for every non-Christian population in the world, there is an indication of Christian presence and contact. Summing weighted values for each country, region, and continent produces a global total. Although these numbers are estimates, they offer a preliminary assessment of a critical shortfall. Overall, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims have relatively little contact with Christians. In each case, more than 86 percent of these religionists globally do not personally know a Christian (or, as line 50 reports, only 14 percent of all non-Christians know a Christian). 2050 Since 2025 is now only ten years away, we have expanded the table to include estimates for 2050. The United Nations Population Division projects population figures for every country of the world from 1950 to 2100, allowing us to base our projections for religion on their population figures. While these projections should be treated with caution, they do point to some important trends. Of particular interest: by 2050, world population (line 1) will cross the 9 billion mark, and Christians (line 23) will number 3.3 billion, or 36 percent (line 22). Note that this percentage is now on the rise after falling for nearly a century. This can be explained partly by the fact that the growth of Christianity in the Global South is now outpacing losses in the Global North. Pentecostals (line 38) will likely exceed 1 billion. Finally, the unevangelized (line 67) will rise to 2.6 billion, or 27.3 percent (line 68) of the world’s population. Counting Pentecostals and Martyrs This past year we published the following articles related to counting Pentecostals (line 38) and martyrs (line 24): Johnson, Todd M. “Counting Pentecostals Worldwide.” Pneuma 36 (2014): 265–88. Johnson, Todd M., and Gina A. Zurlo. “Christian Martyrdom as a Pervasive Phenomenon.” Modern Society and Social Science 51, no. 6 (2014): 679–85. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Status of Global Christianity, 2015, in the Context of 1900–2050 1900 GLOBAL POPULATION 1. Total population 1,619,625,000 2. Adult population (over 15) 1,073,646,000 3. Adults, % literate 27.6 GLOBAL CITIES 4. Cities over 1 million (megacities) 20 5. Urban population (%) 14.4 6. Urban poor 100 million 7. Slum dwellers 20 million GLOBAL RELIGION 8. Religious diversity (0–1, 1=most diverse) 0.27 9. Religionists 1,616,370,000 10. Christians (total, all kinds) 558,131,000 11. Muslims 199,818,000 12. Hindus 202,973,000 13. Buddhists 126,956,000 14. Chinese folk-religionists 379,974,000 15. Ethnoreligionists 117,437,000 16. New Religionists 5,986,000 17. Sikhs 2,962,000 18. Jews 12,292,000 19. Nonreligionists 3,255,000 20. Agnostics 3,029,000 21. Atheists 226,000 GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY 22. Total Christians, % of world 34.5 23. Affiliated Christians (church members) 521,683,000 24. Christian martyrs per year (10-year average) 34,400 25. Christians, % living in countries ≥80% Christian 95.0 MAJOR CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS 26. Roman Catholics 266,566,000 27. Protestants (including Anglicans) 133,606,000 28. Independents 8,859,000 29. African Independents 40,000 30. Asian Independents 1,906,000 31. European Independents 185,000 32. Latin American Independents 33,000 33. Northern American Independents 6,672,000 34. Oceanian Independents 22,000 35. Orthodox 115,855,000 36. Unaffiliated Christians 36,448,000 MOVEMENTS WITHIN GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY 37. Evangelicals 80,912,000 38. Pentecostals/Charismatics 981,000 GLOBAL CHRISTIAN DISTRIBUTION 39. Africa (5 regions) 8,736,000 40. Asia (4 regions) 20,774,000 41. Europe (including Russia; 4 regions) 368,254,000 42. Latin America (3 regions) 60,027,000 43. Northern America (1 region) 59,570,000 44. Oceania (4 regions) 4,323,000 CHURCH ORGANIZATION 45. Denominations 1,600 46. Congregations 400,000 CHRISTIAN MISSION 47. National workers (citizens) 2,100,000 48. Foreign missionaries 62,000 49. Foreign-mission sending agencies 600 50. Non-Christians who know a Christian (%) 4.3 URBAN MISSION 51. Global urban population 232,695,000 52. Christian urban population 159,600,000 53. Megacities under 50% Christian 5 54. New non-Christian urban dwellers per day 5,200 CHRISTIAN FINANCE (in US$, per year) 55. Personal income of church members 270 billion 56. Giving to Christian causes 8 billion 57. Churches’ income 7 billion 58. Parachurch and institutional income 1 billion 59. Ecclesiastical crime 300,000 60. Income of global foreign missions 200 million CHRISTIAN MEDIA 61. Books (titles) about Christianity 300,000 62. Christian periodicals (titles) 3,500 63. Bibles printed per year 5,452,600 64. Scriptures (including selections) printed per year 20 million 65. Bible density (copies in place) 108 million 66. Users of radio/TV/Internet 0 WORLD EVANGELIZATION 67. Unevangelized population 880,122,000 68. Unevangelized as % of world population 54.3 69. World evangelization plans since 30 c.e. 250 January 2015 1970 2000 Annual trend (%) mid-2015 2025 3,691,173,000 2,304,100,000 63.8 6,127,700,000 4,280,900,000 76.7 1.12 1.59 0.37 7,324,782,000 5,420,681,000 81.1 8,083,413,000 6,101,720,000 84.3 9,550,945,000 7,516,484,000 88.0 144 36.7 650 million 260 million 361 46.7 1,400 million 700 million 2.21 1.05 3.09 3.36 501 54.6 2,210 million 1,150 million 616 58.2 3,000 million 1,600 million 880 67.3 6,400 million 3,700 million 0.43 2,983,012,000 1,230,548,000 571,205,000 464,184,000 234,909,000 227,577,000 168,630,000 39,382,000 10,678,000 13,500,000 708,161,000 543,004,000 165,156,000 0.45 5,330,961,000 1,988,399,000 1,288,489,000 815,787,000 452,185,000 431,396,000 217,832,000 62,017,000 20,418,000 13,745,000 796,739,000 659,900,000 136,839,000 -0.06 1.32 1.32 1.88 1.26 0.94 0.34 1.19 0.32 1.41 0.37 0.28 0.34 -0.02 0.45 6,493,515,000 2,419,221,000 1,703,146,000 984,532,000 520,002,000 453,868,000 260,240,000 65,057,000 25,208,000 14,532,000 831,267,000 694,823,000 136,444,000 0.45 7,249,030,000 2,727,172,000 2,010,408,000 1,066,463,000 564,760,000 453,325,000 265,317,000 64,168,000 29,217,000 15,000,000 834,382,000 704,143,000 130,239,000 0.44 8,738,368,000 3,437,236,000 2,678,227,000 1,183,629,000 575,769,000 410,498,000 274,972,000 60,368,000 34,375,000 15,500,000 812,576,000 686,853,000 125,723,000 33.3 1,119,481,000 377,000 76.0 32.4 1,889,261,000 160,000 60.3 0.19 1.35 -3.76 -0.91 33.4 2,309,108,000 90,000 52.6 33.7 2,610,161,000 100,000 52.4 36.0 3,310,498,000 100,000 48.0 664,938,000 255,017,000 96,381,000 17,569,000 16,494,000 8,299,000 9,452,000 44,022,000 544,000 144,067,000 111,066,000 1,047,224,000 426,808,000 301,490,000 76,319,000 94,270,000 17,680,000 32,744,000 79,524,000 956,000 256,628,000 99,139,000 1.13 1.62 2.21 2.38 2.99 1.90 1.97 1.18 1.72 0.66 0.70 1,239,267,000 543,397,000 418,564,000 108,636,000 146,586,000 23,444,000 43,843,000 94,821,000 1,234,000 283,185,000 110,113,000 1,343,831,000 626,591,000 510,691,000 135,341,000 188,757,000 27,647,000 52,428,000 105,074,000 1,443,000 288,898,000 117,012,000 1,632,823,000 883,616,000 694,472,000 191,259,000 289,728,000 34,062,000 66,876,000 110,803,000 1,744,000 293,987,000 126,738,000 105,958,000 62,674,000 239,565,000 460,529,000 2.13 2.26 328,582,000 643,661,000 400,076,000 795,734,000 581,134,000 1,091,314,000 114,785,000 91,585,000 467,266,000 262,919,000 168,472,000 14,463,000 359,245,000 271,420,000 546,448,000 481,355,000 209,585,000 21,178,000 2.78 2.19 0.16 1.20 0.67 1.08 541,816,000 375,905,000 559,900,000 575,464,000 231,499,000 24,892,000 704,003,000 464,797,000 546,065,000 628,336,000 239,501,000 27,459,000 1,207,833,000 598,589,000 501,488,000 702,896,000 266,038,000 33,654,000 18,800 1,416,000 34,200 3,400,000 1.85 1.59 45,000 4,309,000 55,000 7,500,000 70,000 9,000,000 4,600,000 240,000 2,200 10.5 10,900,000 420,000 4,000 13.6 0.64 -0.32 1.63 0.24 12,000,000 400,000 5,100 14.1 14,000,000 550,000 6,000 14.8 17,000,000 700,000 7,500 15.4 1,353,274,000 660,800,000 65 51,100 2,864,278,000 1,223,415,000 226 129,000 2.18 1.64 1.53 0.25 3,957,725,000 1,560,439,000 284 134,000 4,702,865,000 1,800,195,000 357 137,000 6,432,512,000 2,028,925,000 450 164,000 4,100 billion 70 billion 50 billion 20 billion 5,000,000 3 billion 17,000 billion 300 billion 120 billion 180 billion 18 billion 17 billion 3.69 3.75 3.73 3.76 4.01 3.79 42,000 billion 700 billion 280 billion 420 billion 50 billion 45 billion 60,000 billion 990 billion 400 billion 590 billion 100 billion 60 billion 150,000 billion 2,400 billion 990 billion 1,420 billion 690 billion 150 billion 1,800,000 23,000 25,000,000 281 million 443 million 750 million 4,800,000 35,000 53,700,000 4,600 million 1,400 million 1,830 million 3.63 4.32 2.91 1.07 1.98 1.08 8,200,000 66,000 82,600,000 5,060 million 1,880 million 2,150 million 11,800,000 100,000 110,000,000 6,000 million 2,280 million 2,430 million 14,500,000 120,000 135,000,000 9,200 million 3,700 million 2,870 million 1,650,559,000 44.7 510 1,833,442,000 29.9 1,500 0.99 -0.13 2.89 2,124,216,000 29.3 2,300 2,314,510,000 28.6 3,000 2,608,900,000 27.3 4,000 2050 29 My Pilgrimage in Mission John P. Martin I was born in New York City on December 28, 1939, as the son of an Irish Catholic immigrant family and became an altar boy server in the sixth grade at Ascension Parish School in Manhattan in 1950. In 1952, while in the eighth grade, I went through a three-step process that became my “vocation story” and led me to become a member of Maryknoll. First, with the total innocence of a twelve-year-old, I rejected the path of the Catholic diocesan priesthood because of a personal quirk I once noticed in the priest coordinator of the altar boys. (It represented no ill will or bad behavior on his part.) Second, soon afterward, presuming to already know all about doing Masses, funerals, weddings, and baptisms, I decided to await “another challenge.” (Years later I recovered the memory of these exact words.) And, third, an unlikely classmate introduced me to two priests doing vocation promotion for the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in New York City, and I discovered the challenge of my life. I got hooked on becoming a missionary and discovered that I had to enter the seminary, which I did in 1955 in order to become one. This did not seem at all out of place, as I had been contemplating the priesthood as normal within my tradition. Thus was set up a lifelong dichotomy and tension between my inner fundamental calling to be a missionary, that is, to establish the church overseas, which was my dream, and the ministerial role that I was expected to fulfill as a priest. Because of the overwhelming significance that the Roman Catholic Church gave to the priesthood for any male believer with a “vocation,” during my eleven years of formation there seemed to be little or no room for further development of my initial inspiration to become a missionary. In the summer of 1964 I studied linguistics with the Wycliffe Bible Translators, mostly Southern Baptists, at their Summer Institute of Linguistics. The linguistic skills that I learned were invaluable tools for my missionary adaptation, helping me first of all to learn quickly to speak Spanish well. Mexico I was assigned to Mexico in the spring of 1966, and soon a dream came to the surface: as a true missionary, I would be dropped into an area to live with a people who did not know anything about Jesus Christ, so I would begin by just giving testimony to my Christian faith and living with them to assimilate their culture, and then we would together work out some kind of reciprocal sharing. It seemed that this vision was another, but secret, gift from the Wycliffe Bible Translators, for that is what their missionaries did. I landed in Mexico City in July of 1966 and learned how naive I was to think that there were areas there untouched by the Catholic Church. (We had been hermetically sealed off in those John P. Martin, MM, a Maryknoll missionary priest (and brother to all), lives in retirement at Maryknoll, New York. He is writing his memoirs as well as other materials so as to share with others the fruit of his cross-cultural and interreligious experience. —johnthep@msn.com 30 seminary days from the secular world and even from our Maryknoll missionaries overseas.) Soon thereafter while in language school, I spent an occasional weekend “helping out,” barely, in the huge housing development of San Juan de Aragon, where a Maryknoll priest was serving. This was a hands-on introduction to the culture and language of my adopted country of mission. Time for another revelation: it seemed to me that the style of pastoral ministry in Mexico City differed only in language from pastoral ministry at home in the United States, as the work seemed the same. I asked myself, Why aren’t these Maryknoll priests doing things that are more explicitly missionary? My missionary dream was raising its head in my consciousness again. These tensions and naive impressions and subtle influences all were duly buried in my unconscious in the predominant culture of missionary priests committed to the pastoral ministry of baptized Catholics, as I found no support for any of my deep personal inspirations to be expressed or developed—even if I had been able to express them then, which I was not. But now I am. “There has to be more to being a Maryknoll missionary priest than doing this work, as valuable as it is,” seemed to be the deeper urging of my heart. It simmered within me silently as I dedicated myself for many years to the pastoral needs and opportunities of a rural community in the forests of eastern Yucatán and the teeming populations of Mexico City’s rural migrants. Openness to friendships with these fine peoples became a hallmark of my years of living among them, and these friendships continue to this day. The former experience among a rural population gave me a good taste for the core traditional values of the Mexican people that are enshrined in their campesinos. In the urban setting of rural migrants I felt at home because I was revisiting and identifying with the family roots of my parents, who were rural immigrants from Ireland. I became aware of a degree of creativity in responding to these peoples that surprised me and helped me to overcome my low self-esteem that had been furbished in my seminary years. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a decade of tectonic shifts in the Roman Catholic Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council. It seemed as if some of us “liberal” newcomers had floated off and become separated from the plate carrying the “conservative” old-timers, not just moving away from one another but rather screeching our ways apart, inch by stressful inch. In the view of the old-timers, I and others like me could not seem to do anything right. This tension became the harbinger of the breakdown of my dream that I would spend the rest of my life with the Mexican people. The prospect of separation from the extended family into which I had been adopted kept me from this unthinkable thought, until the separation became inevitable. Bangladesh It turned out that our central leadership foresaw the need to offer me and many others new challenges for doing mission in other situations and with newer styles of living. At the end of 1974 I grasped onto that offer to be part of an “ecclesial team” of priests, sisters, and lay missionaries among the Muslim people of Bangladesh, then considered the neediest country in the world. This would be a dream come true, since to that point I had not had any community or work experience except with Maryknoll priests International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 in Mexico. Here again my naïveté popped up, as I dreamed of being a missionary among our Muslim sisters and brothers with no involvement with a local church or hierarchy. I was implicitly trying to keep a distance from the priestly ministry as the main way in which to carry out one’s missionary calling. By December of 1975, a not very ecclesial team of five of us priests landed in Dacca, the capital. Another disappointment! We all had previous mission experience only in Christian countries (Bolivia, Philippines, and Mexico), yet we came together on a vision of ourselves living as brothers and friends among the Muslim population with a strong commitment to our communal lifestyle. Our vision and our community living were new and unique values in the Maryknoll world at the time. We had to deal with the expectations of the local Bengali bishops and priests that we each be assigned to a separate “mission” to do pastoral ministry for the Catholics. Because of the untimely but fortuitous death in 1977 of our archbishop, who had wanted to give us an opening for our mission vision, his temporary replacement was not willing to prevent the archbishop’s wish from being implemented. Thus we were able to start out on this venture of fools for Christ to do mission in a way that none of us had ever done before, with people of a religious tradition that we knew nothing about either. In mid-1977 we rented a small, hot, noisy, uncomfortable house in the town of Tangail in the north-central part of the country. We did have a vision of friendship and brotherhood, but we were too ignorant to have anything like a plan. So each of us tried our hand at relating to whomever we could, however that might develop. Within our first week there, I took a ride by bicycle rickshaw out of town to visit a nearby “Muslim university” founded by a renowned freedom fighter and religious leader, Moulana Bhashani. I put “university” in quotes, for it was short on whatever one might expect to find there, being only a cluster of small schools around a mosque and madrasa for teaching children to memorize the Quran. Despite the warnings of the Bengali priests and the veteran missionaries that you can never make friends with a Muslim, on my first visit, Masud Khan, the director, and I became friends with our first eyeing of one another. Our visits often saw him reading the Quran and explaining it to me in his enviable combination of intense fervor and a social conscience. After a year of occasional visits, he floated the idea of my going to live there with them as a Christian in residence. It seemed like a marvelous idea, but internal problems with the staff over other matters sabotaged it. When I found myself spending more time at home than my companions, I continued a trend from my Mexican period of openness to building family ties, this time with the family from whom we rented our house. Their boys were in and out of our house all the time. I started getting invited into their home in back of ours, where the mother and two older daughters lived their life secluded from the view of men outside the family. Eventually I was able to enter spontaneously as a member of the family, for I called myself to all “Jon bhai,” which translates as Brother John. When the neighborhood boys saw the canceled stamps on my letters and asked for them, at first I just gave them away. Then I decided to make them work for them by writing me a short essay in Bengali about a stamp’s image. They loved the idea; the word spread around; and soon about a dozen boys were in the “club,” each sporting his homemade album. It pleased me to see them searching for information about the foreign stamps for their essays. Thus I added another personal role to that of our twofold community vision, namely, “neighbor.” It fit me so well and has stuck with me to live and to preach as a way of giving Christian January 2015 testimony. I learned something new for myself from those Bengalis that I carried over in my later years of ministry back in my beloved Mexico. To live with a vision as brother, friend, and neighbor seemed to me quite sufficient and elementary as a motivation or rationale for being a missionary and witness for Christ. These concepts have helped to lessen my need to be “doing things for others” in order to sense personal satisfaction in my missionary presence among the people, first in Bangladesh and even later back in Mexico doing pastoral work. Doing things for others, which I did plentifully, became a more integral response on my part out of my basic missionary motivation. Upon our arrival in early December 1975, I had had the most traumatic experience of culture shock of my life, in part because of my vaunted vulnerability as my basic attitude toward people in a new cultural situation. For several years I suffered through bouts of physical sickness and psychic depression. Visits to India Four years later I found myself traveling to a most unusual place in India, given my focus on a presence among Muslims: the Christian-Hindu Ashram of Father Bede Griffiths outside of Trichy in the state of Tamil Nadu. I had assimilated something of the repugnance of the Muslims for traits of the Hindu tradition, such as making images of their deities. Father Bede had left his monastery in England for India as a Benedictine monk in 1955 to follow the dream of an indigenous type of Christian contemplative life. His ashram became a center of attraction for many pilgrims, young and not so young people, disenchanted Christians and Jews, in those decades of the 1960s and beyond, who were searching for spiritual values in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufi Islam. He also did a grand service to the Christian churches of India by challenging them to open up new approaches, besides total isolation, to the sincere believers all around them. In December 1979 Father Bede was the midwife for two wonderful revelations for me. First, he gave me a way to understand the deep psychic and spiritual dimensions of my culture-shock experience as a shift from living on the masculine side of my personality to the feminine, thus challenging me to greater balance and equilibrium in my life. (My heterosexual orientation was not affected.) And the expansive spiritual environment of the ashram sowed a new seed in my heart: to be a brother not just to Muslims, but to all peoples. In the succeeding years I made pilgrimages to several holy places in India belonging to the Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, and Sikh traditions, just to hang out and be still, to listen and to meditate, to read their Scriptures, and to join their rites. In December 1981, upon finishing my commitment of six years in Bangladesh, I made monthlong pilgrimages to half a dozen places for the same purposes. United States I did not know it until months later back in the United States when the aura had dissipated, but I began ever so slowly to emerge from that special time and space that the Spirit had created around me and in me during that long pilgrimage. Some people’s responses to my story were “Wow!” as they helped me to grasp its meaning. Then came the challenge of getting used to living in this country again, a place where I had never worked in my life, but now as an adult at age forty-four I engaged in reverse mission, sharing the fruits of my sixteen years in Mexico, Bangladesh, and India with folks in this country. It took me a year and a half of transi31 tion time and a series of retreats and other experiences before I was ready to accept an assignment to our house in Los Angeles. Knowing that my culture shock in Bangladesh was due in part to a shoddy transition out of Mexico, I learned once and for all to be aware of these transitional times. All told, I worked for seven years with much satisfaction, creativity, and personal growth at the task of being a “mission promoter” for Maryknoll in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Jacksonville, Florida, in a wide variety of situations, conferences, church collections, vocational promotion, and so forth, for I was highly motivated to share the fruits of my overseas living with people here at home. I had been uniquely enriched beyond measure by those years and those peoples of several cultures and religious traditions. The missionary dimension of my life, the challenge I accepted at twelve years of age, was alive and very well in my heart and spirit and could not be contained, as it was not mine to cling to, but rather to give away. There are some Pharaohs that are not Egyptian, and my run-in with one of my department heads left me in a black hole in our community organization. Looking for a way to get back to India, in 1989 I took some courses in world religions at Harvard Divinity School. This experience challenged me to get a master’s degree with a focus on Hinduism and Islam. It made me conscious of how little I really knew about either one. But it helped in the long run to get a multiple entry visa for India, where I was permitted by my Maryknoll leadership to remain from 1991 through 1994. India I chose to live in Calcutta, since I already knew Bengali. I hoped to find an ashram community in West Bengal to enhance my contemplative lifestyle, and I looked forward to doing social outreach with the folks in nearby villages. It really was a great proposal that my superiors accepted willingly. Nevertheless, I found it impossible to fulfill, except for speaking Bengali. I ended up living in Shantiniketan, 100 miles northwest of Calcutta, which is home of the world-famous Visva-Bharati University, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. I rented a flat from a Hindu Brahmin family, though I enhanced my contemplative lifestyle more as a hermit than in community. Once again I was invited to live as brother, friend, and neighbor to the people in town, with no proposed outreach on my part. My fluency in Bengali did help a lot to make it easy to get on with the people without much hesitation. Then a funny thing happened on the way out of my hermitage, when I started getting bubbly inspirations to get back to Mexico, to my adopted family, and to priestly ministry. Well into my third year there I was strongly convinced that this would be my future path, somewhat surprised that these three years seemed to be all that the Spirit was giving me a rope for. They had sufficed for many encounters with foreign pilgrims at ashrams and travelers on the road, with Indians in many parts of the country, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim; for innumerable hours of writing my reflections; for good, simple social times with my neighbors; and for much reading about the historical riches of South Asia. Mexico Again Faithful to my awareness of the need for a transition, I spent two years active in mission promotion in the United States before, in January 1997, returning to live and work in Merida, Yucatán, Mexico; it felt as if I was going home again. I was given the pastoral 32 care of a corner of a huge urban parish under our Maryknoll care. I was not prepared, though, for the dysfunctional dynamics of that highly marginated community. Much alcoholism, many broken families, low educational prospects, and high unemployment were signs that the “high” society’s concept of the neighborhood—that is, as a place where undesirable elements such as the cemetery, slaughter house, red light district, dirty garages, and bus station were concentrated—had been interiorized. I was able to frequent the home of my adopted family and visit many old friends, for I had maintained my communication with these folks over the intervening twenty-two years by letters and visits on vacation. The difference between then and now in my priestly ministry was enormous, for I had been subtly working on reconciling those two vocations to be missionary and priest. I had left behind the anxiety and inner tensions of yesteryear; the conflicts of those days with my companions were mostly gone. The inner spiritual resources from those years of purification and growth made themselves evident in the words and actions that I used in my pastoral care. I found it easier to spend my energy and my time in a more compassionate fashion with people. I was eminently available, and it did not bother me. My sermons were more biblical and applicable to their lives. The formation of the laypeople in community responsibility was my chief goal, and it worked. During the eight years of this pastoral ministry, I committed myself to accompanying hundreds of couples in the Marriage Encounter movement through retreats that I qualified to give nationally. Counting on the friendships I started back in 1966, I offered to teach these old friends the rudiments of contemplative prayer through Father Thomas Keating’s “Contemplative Outreach,” eventually giving many retreats each year, forming several weekly prayer groups, and training many people to take over after me. After leaving the pastoral ministry, I next worked on my longtime dream of leaving behind some specifically missionary work. Pastoral ministry left folks with many good memories of the priestly care of our missionaries but with scant focus on doing mission. The question often came to me of how much of the adulation was due just to our being American and how much to our being missionary. In 2006 I launched a community of Maryknoll Affiliates, a small local group of people interested in assimilating our missionary spirituality under four rubrics: community life, spirituality, global vision, and action in the community. At that time there were more than fifty active groups in the United States, but fewer than a dozen in other countries. It was impressive to see the enthusiasm of this group for being part of our worldwide missionary movement. I have to admit that I was (indirectly) responsible for the closing of all missionary activity by Maryknollers after their sixty-nine years in Mexico. Because I had opted to ask for a year’s sabbatical during 2012, our leaders in Latin America decided that the three remaining older, retired priests had to move to our retirement facility in the Unites States. On the one hand, we could leave with a clear conscience because of the dedicated labor of the scores of our priests, brothers, sisters, and lay missionaries who had worked in a majority of the states of the country since 1943 in a wide variety of ministries. We were able to support the creation of a Mexican national missionary society, the Guadalupe Missioners, in 1949. On the other hand, I could leave to follow my dream of continuing to share the fruits of my many rich experiences of a cross-cultural and interreligious nature through writing my memoirs. This writing continues to the present. Dreams really do come true, provided you do not expect to see them in Technicolor accompanied by Dolby sound tracks. They may look more like worn but cherished photos. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 “I am excited to be a part of a global-minded community that both equips and learns from current and future mission leaders.” Dr. Sue Russell Associate Professor of Mission and Contextual Studies The Legacy of Frank Arthur Keller Kevin Xiyi Yao I n the late nineteenth century, China’s Hunan Province was they welcomed CIM founder J. Hudson Taylor into their home, considered one of the country’s toughest mission fields. With during what was his first visit to Changsha, but the very next its deeply entrenched Confucianism and widespread xenophobia, day he suddenly died. Though Keller came to China as a medical missionary and Hunan was a source of notorious anti-Christian literature and a focused on this ministry in the early years of hotbed of antimissionary activity. Neverhis career, the center of his various ministries theless, Western missionaries were drawn from beginning to end was evangelism. magnetically by the province’s central locaHe served as an itinerant missionary, contion and huge unreached population. A few centrating on the urban centers of Hunan missionaries attempted to enter the province Province and sharing the Gospel through as early as the 1860s, and the China Inland street preaching and handing out tracts. Mission (CIM) was especially aggressive He depended heavily on local assistants; in trailblazing there. But Hunan Province at least two Chinese evangelists, named Li fiercely and successfully resisted the entry of and Yang, played important roles in Keller’s missionaries until the dawn of the twentieth early mission outreach. century, when Frank A. Keller, a CIM mediDuring these early years in Hunan, cal missionary, was among the missionary Keller developed a supporting network pioneers who opened the doors of Hunan. of powerful backers in North America. Keller was born on May 26, 1862, in They included Lyman Stewart (1840–1923), Fort Plain, New York. He received a B.A. cofounder of Union Oil. A major supporter from Yale University in 1892 and undertook of several key fundamentalist projects in medical studies at Albany Medical School, North America, Stewart provided most of in New York, graduating with an M.D. in the funds Keller needed for his mission proj1896. During his student years he became ects. Keller used the money to hire Chinese deeply involved in the Student Volunteer Source: Undated Biola brochure assistants and to purchase printed Gospel Movement, serving as its traveling secretary Frank Arthur Keller materials from various mission publishing for 1892–93.1 Upon completion of his studies, he joined CIM and arrived in China in 1897. After a short period houses and Bible societies.2 Lyman’s brother, Milton Stewart, of language training, he was assigned to Hunan Province, the also became a staunch supporter of Keller, mainly through his active and influential Milton Stewart Evangelistic Trust Fund. field to which he devoted his entire life. Early Ministry in Hunan Houseboat Ministry Keller’s ministry in Hunan had a bumpy start. After arriving in October 1898, he was twice driven out by local anti-Christian mobs. But he refused to give up, making his way to Changsha, the provincial capital, in June 1901. Other Western missionaries had made a number of attempts to enter that city, but all had failed. In 1898, for example, B. H. Alexander of the Christian and Missionary Alliance was able to evangelize in the city, but he had to live outside the city wall. Keller’s medical skills, however, gained him entrance. In June, 1901, two Chinese soldiers guarding the city were wounded in a drill, and Keller stepped forward to bind up their wounds. This action earned the trust of the local officials, who later allowed Keller to settle in the city permanently. By this means he was instrumental in gaining entry to the city for CIM and other mission agencies. Keller married Elizabeth Tilley in 1902, and the new couple launched a series of ministries from their home base in Changsha. In June 1905 a notable event occurred in their home. On June 2 In 1909 Keller’s ministry underwent a major change. In those days foreign tobacco companies sometimes sent out their sale clerks on steamboats to distribute cigarette samples to residents. Some came to Changsha. Keller was deeply troubled by their zeal and techniques. He later recalled: “As we saw their strenuous work and heard of their far-reaching plans, and thought of the thousands and thousands of towns and villages whose millions of people had never heard of Christ, or even seen a copy of God’s Word, who would soon be smoking cigarettes, our hearts were filled with burning shame and at the same time throbbed with a great ambition, to be equally comprehensive in plan, wise in method, and prompt in action for the King.”3 No evidence can be given that he completely abandoned his medical practice thereafter, but clearly his long-existing passion for evangelism found new expression. By this time he was well on his way to a shift of his focus from evangelism through medical practice to evangelism by more direct means such as Bible conferences and theological education. Taking advantage of the dense network of the rivers in Hunan Province, Keller mobilized local Chinese believers and organized them into itinerant evangelistic bands, sending them out on houseboats. On July 30, 1909, the first band of six evangelists, led by Yang, was launched. The man-powered boat they used was actually a floating mission station with bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, and a larger room for worship and study. The boat stopped by the villages and towns along Kevin Xiyi Yao, educated in China and the United States, is associate professor of world Christianity and Asian studies, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He previously taught at the China Graduate School of Theology, Hong Kong (2003–11). —xyao@gordonconwell.edu 34 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 rivers, and the evangelists went out two by two, visiting almost every household. Sometimes the boat stayed in a berth in one particular location for weeks while the team went ashore to evangelize among local communities. The evangelistic trip by the first band lasted thirty-six days, canvassing seven districts in the south of Hunan Province. The team distributed 190 copies of the Bible and 8,244 Gospel pamphlets.4 Under Keller’s leadership, the ministry grew rapidly. By 1912 the number of evangelists increased to twenty-four, who were divided into several teams to cover more and larger districts of the province. The following year the number grew to twenty-eight.5 From 1911 to 1916 the teams visited a total of 363,767 households and distributed 17,837 copies of the New Testament.6 From the beginning Keller was clear that “the immediate objective of the work is to assist the missions working in Hunan in speedy and thorough evangelization of the twenty-two millions of people living in this province.”7 He thus insisted that the evangelistic teams enter a district “only on the invitation of the missionary in charge.”8 Keller made persistent efforts to ensure that teams were indigenous. Even though they reported to Keller and the mission agencies, “the direct conduct of each party is entrusted absolutely to its trained Chinese leader.”9 For this reason he emphasized the training of Chinese believers, and gradually the houseboat ministry took on a growing dimension of theological training. The first trip had already included Bible studies for the team members in their daily schedule. Each day, before starting their evangelistic activities at 10:00 a.m., they prayed and studied the Scriptures. After returning from their work around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., they took time in the evening to study and to share their experiences of the day. Later, courses on the Bible, theology, church history, homiletics, and even sacred music were added. While serving as evangelists, students could finish the curriculum in two years. In addition to being mobile bases for evangelism, the houseboats thus functioned as floating Bible schools. For the houseboat ministry, however, Keller relied heavily on financial support from America.10 The Milton Stewart Evangelistic Trust Fund and Mary W. Stewart, widow of Milton Stewart, were the major financial backers of this ministry, continuing until 1934.11 In the years that followed, this dependency on American money remained, which explains the financial hardship Keller’s ministry experienced during the Great Depression.12 Nanyoh Bible Conference Even while launching the houseboat ministry, Keller turned his eyes to another area for evangelism: Nanyoh (now Nanyue). Located about 130 miles south of Changsha, Nanyoh is one of the five sacred mountains of China and a very significant site for Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Every fall thousands of pilgrims from all over the country would flock to the mountain and worship at numerous temples there. In the fall of 1909 G. G. Warren of the English Wesleyan Mission organized an evangelistic team to share the Gospel with the Nanyoh pilgrims. Touched by Warren’s vision, Keller decided to join the team and also obtained funding from North America to purchase copies of the Bible for this venture. A German CIM missionary lent them a property located in the small village of Nanyoh Kai. Resting at the foot of the mountain, the property turned out to be strategically located. Not only did the village have a large temple, but also several nearby paths led toward the mountain. When Warren departed a few years later, Keller took over the ministry and transformed it into an annual event combining Bible study and evangelism. The facilities at Nanyoh Kai were January 2015 considerably expanded and improved. Every September the members of the houseboat ministry and Chinese church leaders, as well as other believers from Hunan Province, gathered there for three weeks. They spent their mornings and evenings in Bible study, prayer, and fellowship, inviting many well-known Chinese and Western church leaders to lead these gatherings. By 1918 the event attracted an average of eighty people every year from ten to twelve denominations.13 Evangelism was an indispensable part of the Nanyoh Bible Conference. From 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. each day the participants were sent out to meet pilgrims on their way home. They treated them with tea and shared the Christian message with them. They also put up Christian posters along the paths to the temples. By the fall of 1916 the number of pilgrims contacted by the evangelists reached 40,000; altogether the pilgrims had received 39,600 copies of Scripture quotations and 20,000 Gospel pamphlets.14 It was no surprise that the evangelistic outreach among the pilgrims brought Keller and his ministry into conflict with the local religious leaders. Local Buddhist monks and Taoist priests told some pilgrims to burn the Gospel materials. Certain temples even made an attempt to buy out the property of the Bible conference and thus drive out Keller’s ministry. Keller did not yield to the pressure but continued his campaign against “heathenism” and kept working “to spread widely the knowledge of the Gospel of Christ our Saviour.”15 Hunan Bible Institute The establishment of Hunan Bible Institute (HBI) was undoubtedly the culmination of Keller’s missionary career. He was always keenly aware of the necessity for training national church leaders, and the training components of the houseboat ministry and the Nanyoh Bible Conference were testimony to his commitment to theological training. At one point he even planned to develop the Keller mobilized local Chinese believers and organized them into itinerant evangelistic bands, sending them out on houseboats. conference in Nanyoh into a permanent Bible training institution, but ultimately he chose Changsha as the location for a new theological school. The Hunan Bible School (HBS; later Hunan Bible Institute) was officially launched in 1916. In that year Lyman Stewart decided to take over full responsibility for the support of Keller’s work in Hunan Province. This decision led Keller in 1916 to place his existing ministries and the newly proposed Hunan Bible School together under the supervision of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola), which also was funded by Lyman Stewart. For these reasons HBS/HBI was often referred to as “the Evangelistic Department of Biola,” “Biola in China,” or “the China Branch of Biola.” The years from 1916 to the early 1930s were the golden years of HBI’s history. A donation of $355,000 from Milton Stewart enabled a twelve-acre, state-of-the-art campus to be completed 35 in 1927.16 The institute served churches from more than twenty denominations all over the country, but the new campus was so modern and so splendid that one has to wonder whether the Chinese church could ever have afforded to maintain it.17 Keller’s leadership stimulated a long period of stable growth of the student body; enrollment grew from 39 students in 1919 to 117 in 1922.18 In the years 1918–29, a total of 239 students graduated from HBI.19 Throughout these years Keller was indeed the soul of the HBI community. As the longtime superintendent, he was revered by HBI faculty and staff. His wife, Elizabeth, was also involved in ministering to female students. During these years Keller was committed to indigenization of the faculty. Under his supervision in the late 1920s and early 1930s, HBI successfully recruited an outstanding Chinese faculty and placed Chinese church leaders and theologians in charge of many departments of the school. By 1931, twelve out of the sixteen faculty and staff were Chinese.20 HBI’s chronic financial dependence upon the American churches skewed the balance of power. Until the mid-1930s Chinese remained the majority of the faculty. They were responsible not only for caring for most of the classroom teaching load but also for the operation of most of the departments, ranging from correspondence courses to logistics. In fact, in the 1930s HBI boasted one of the most prominent and influential Chinese faculties among all the evangelical theological schools in China. This faculty included Chen Chonggui (Marcus Chen, 1884–1964) and Cheng Jigui (T. C. Cheng, 1882–1940). The former was a popular speaker at revival meetings across the country and edited an influential nationwide journal entitled Budao Zazhi (Evangelism). The latter was instrumental in translating the Scofield Reference Bible into Chinese and introducing dispensationalism to the Chinese church via a hugely popular correspondence course. Through the efforts of these Chinese faculty members, HBI quickly earned the trust of the Chinese evangelical churches, and it became a stronghold of evangelical theological education in China in the 1930s and 1940s. Despite its achievements in raising up a prominent Chinese faculty, however, HBI made little headway toward becoming self-supporting, and it failed to implement self-government fully during Keller’s tenure. As the founder and superintendent, Keller enjoyed enormous prestige at HBI, holding the community together through his personal charisma. He did not seem to feel an urgent need to set up an effective administrative structure or local decision-making procedures. Instead, he and Charles Robert, a longtime HBI faculty member and the treasurer, constituted the real center of power at HBI. Oddly enough, the institute remained under the final authority of the Biola board in the United States and thus was never able to establish its own board in China. The Chinese faculty and staff of HBI might be brilliant and might direct their own departments and ministries, but their voice was insignificant in deciding the overall direction of the school or in arriving at decisions on crucial matters. Another unfortunate factor, namely, HBI’s chronic financial dependence upon the American churches, further skewed the balance of power. Keller’s donor network was the essential lifeline of the school. For its part, Biola was responsible for collecting the 36 donations and distributing them to HBI. In the early 1920s Biola passed on $30,000–$40,000 to HBI annually.21 Until the mid-1930s HBI students did not have to pay tuition.22 Keller’s apparent failure to intentionally and persistently encourage the Chinese church to contribute more was a signal weakness of the school. Originally Keller modeled HBI on a Bible school, but later he made consistent efforts to upgrade its academic standards. By the early 1930s HBI had a full curriculum in place, tailored for students from various educational backgrounds. High school graduates would be enrolled in a two-year program, junior high school graduates in a three-year program. Others would first enter a preparatory program. A bachelor’s degree was the terminal degree. In 1933 the name of the school was officially changed from Hunan Bible School to Hunan Bible Institute. But Keller had no intention of turning HBI into an academic ivory tower. For him, the school’s purpose was to serve the Chinese church, and therefore practical training was just as important as academic training. As a result, he worked to ensure that the houseboat ministry and the Bible Conference continued to be vital parts of HBI’s ministry.23 From 1931 to 1935 the number of houseboats sent out annually stood between six and eight.24 From attendance of 200 in 1922, the enrollment of the Nanyoh Bible Conference grew to 350 in 1924.25 After 1926 the annual Bible Conference moved to Changsha, where it continued for another decade or so though on a much smaller scale. In addition, with Keller’s encouragement, HBI faculty and students initiated a number of local evangelistic outreaches such as newspaper advertising evangelism and prison and hospital ministries. HBI was a complex of ministries, not just a theological school, and in the 1920s and 1930s it stood out as a powerhouse of nationwide evangelism in China. Between 1935 and 1937, however, HBI came close to shipwreck because of its twisted administrative structure. As Frank Keller prepared to retire, tension between the Chinese faculty and the Biola board over the succession plan began to intensify. When Charles Robert was identified as the person most likely to be appointed by the board—over a number of more prestigious and popular Chinese professors—most of the Chinese faculty and staff rose up in protest. In June of 1935 they joined hands with some Chinese church leaders in Changsha to form a new board and declared a takeover of HBI, which lasted for a year. Then the Biola board asked Keller to reorganize the Changsha board, effectively ending Chinese independence. Consequently, HBI lost most of its prominent Chinese faculty. Heartbroken, Keller called this controversy “a tragedy.”26 The eruption of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 made the school’s normal operation impossible, and it did not enroll new students until the fall of 1947. In 1937 Keller officially retired, and Robert was appointed the new superintendent the following year. But for three years Keller continued to live in Changsha, leaving for Los Angeles in 1940. He died on July 24, 1945, in Los Angeles. During the turbulent war years, HBI was under Charles Robert’s leadership. With its educational operation suspended, the campus was often turned into a refugee and medical center. HBI recovered quickly in the wake of the war, but under the Communist regime, it eventually had to shut its doors in the early 1950s. Conclusion In his own time Frank Keller was not one of the most famous Western missionaries in China, but the course of his ministry was definitely unique. He did not articulate his theological views systematically, but in the 1920s and 1930s his passion for evangelism International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 and his exclusivist attitude toward non-Christian religions put him in the conservative camp. He was a practitioner by nature and content with a low-key, non-self-promoting approach to ministry. This fact explains why he accomplished as much as any of the contemporary conservative mission leaders in China but did not gain much fame beyond the HBI and Biola communities. In his lifelong attempts to indigenize the ministries he initiated, Keller’s record is mixed. He largely succeeded in raising the level of Chinese participation and creativity, but he fell well short of helping HBI become self-supporting and self-governing. While liberal missionaries, with their ambitious and costly establishment of institutions, might more readily be guilty in Notes 1. Record of the United States Home Council of Overseas Missionary Fellowship (China Inland Mission)-Collection 215, Box 17, Folder 2, P455, Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College; Henry Owen, “Frank Arthur Keller, 1862–1945: A Tribute,” The King’s Business 36, no. 9 (September 1945): 335. 2. See Henry W. Frost to Lyman Stewart, December 21, 1905, January 1 and 4, 1906, in Charles Everleigh Clements, “The Bible Institute of Los Angeles in China: An American Missionary Experience as Viewed from the Stewart Papers” (unpublished manuscript, December 1975), 8–12; hereafter “BIOLA in China.” 3. Bible Institute of Los Angeles Afloat in Hunan, China ([Los Angeles]: Bible Institute of Los Angeles, 1917), 3; pamphlet, Biola University Library. 4. Frank Keller to Ralph Smith, November 10, 1909, “BIOLA in China,” 24–28. 5. Xiao Mu-guang, “Hunan Zhu Jia Budao Tuan” (Hunan Evangelistic Bands), in Zhonghua Jidujiaohui Nianjian, 1917 (China mission year book, 1917), vol. 4 (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1917), 115. 6. Ibid., 117. 7. Frank A. Keller, “The Hunan Colportage Work of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles,” in China Mission Year Book, 1917, vol. 8 (Shanghai: Christian Literature Society for China, 1917), 353. 8. Ibid., 354. 9. Ibid., 353. 10. Keller estimated the cost for one boat and its equipment to be $3,500. See Afloat in Hunan, China, 41. 11. Mary W. Stewart to the Board of Directors, Bible Institute of Los Angeles, April 7, 1934, “BIOLA in China,” 452–55. 12. W. Twitchell to Mr. Lucy (business manager of Biola), November 16, 1933, “BIOLA in China,” 447. 13. Afloat in Hunan, 11. 14. Ibid., 38. 15. Frank Keller to Ralph Smith, October 9, 1909, “BIOLA in China,” 70. this regard, evangelical missionaries were not immune from such missteps—as Keller’s failure and HBI’s “tragedy” testify. In any case, it is beyond doubt that Frank Keller exerted a shaping influence upon evangelical Christianity in China through HBI and related ministries. He also played a pivotal role in connecting Chinese evangelical churches with the international evangelical movement via such prominent conservative figures as the Stewart brothers and such influential institutions as Biola. His immense achievements did not earn him national or international recognition during his lifetime, but the imprint of his legacy can still be seen in the theology and ministry of the church in China today. 16. Robert T. Harrison, “Biola in China: The Hunan Bible Institute, Case Study of an American Christian Institution in China, 1916–1952” (typewritten manuscript, March 1985), Biola University Library, 11–12. According to “Facts about the Hunan Bible Institute for Board Consideration,” a report from 1950, HBI’s campus contained a 750-seat auditorium, twenty classrooms, numerous offices, four dormitories, a large dining hall, six residences, tennis courts, and basketball and football grounds. The entire property was worth $1 million (“BIOLA in China,” 241–42). 17. For example, the thirty-five graduates in 1935 came from thirteen provinces and ten denominations (Budao Zazhi [Evangelism] 8, no. 3 [May–June 1935]: 64). 18. “A Brief Statistical Survey of the Work Done by Bible Institute of Los Angeles through Its Evangelistic Departments and Student Body for the Year 1922,” The King’s Business 14, no. 3 (March 1923): 261. 19. Budao Zazhi 4, no. 1 (January–February 1931): 76. 20. Ibid., 1. 21. Harrison, “Biola in China,” 13. 22. See “The HBI Recruitment Announcement,” Budao Zazhi 8, no. 1 (January–February 1935), cover page. 23. See “BIOLA in China,” 62; Frank A. Keller, “Our Bible Institute in Hunan Province, China,” The King’s Business 14, no. 2 (February 1923): 153; John Murdoch MacInnis, “Nanyoh—China at Worship,” The King’s Business 16, no. 2 (February 1925): 59. 24. See Budao Zazhi 4, no. 1 (January–February 1931): 1; 5, no. 2 (March–April 1932): 1; 5, no. 3 (May–June 1932): 1; 5, no. 6 (November–December 1932): 1; 7, no. 1 (January–February 1934): 1; 7, no. 6 (November–December 1934): 1; 8, no. 1 (January–December 1935): 1; 8, no. 6 (November–December 1935): 1. 25. “BIOLA in China,” 62; Keller, “Our Bible Institute in Hunan Province, China,” 153; MacInnis, “Nanyoh—China at Worship,” 59. 26. Frank A. Keller to Edmonds and the Board, September 25, 1936, “BIOLA in China,” 314. Assembly of the International Association for Mission Studies, 2016—Call for Papers “Conversions and Transformations: Missiological Approaches to Religious Change” is the theme of the fourteenth assembly of the International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS), which will take place August 11–17, 2016, in Seoul, South Korea. The 2016 IAMS assembly will be an opportunity for critical and constructive dialogue on issues of transformation and conversion across scholarly disciplines, Christian traditions, and practical contexts. All papers will be presented within one of the IAMS Study Groups: • • • 38 BISAM: Biblical Studies and Mission DABOH: Documentation, Archives, Bibliography, and Oral History Healing/Pneumatology • • • • Gender in Mission Religious Freedom and Mission Theology of Mission Interreligious Issues Prospective presenters should submit their proposed topic and a 250-word abstract by August 25, 2015. Papers accepted by the organizers must be no more than 2,000 words long and are due by May 31, 2016. After the assembly, expanded versions of conference papers can be submitted to Mission Studies, the IAMS journal, for consideration for publication. Further details, including criteria for accepted papers and information on how to submit proposals, can be found on the IAMS website, http://missionstudies.org. Queries can also be sent to secretary@missionstudies.org. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Longing for Community: Church, Ummah, or Somewhere in Between? A Review Essay Michael Nazir-Ali T his book on the theme of Christian witness in Muslim Roman Catholic contributor, made huge sacrifices for Christ settings contains contributions from some twenty and evoked the admiration of numerous Muslims and Chrismissiologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and linguists. It tians. The difficult question, however, is to what extent they spans a huge range of mission involvement spread over several accepted the prohibitions of Islam on freedom of expression, continents, and there is much practical wisdom to be found belief, and the right to change one’s belief. The same question here. We need to remember that these can be asked of many missionary were addresses presented to a mixed Longing for Community: projects today: To what extent conference, and therefore we should Church, Ummah, or Somewhere are they simply accommodating not demand too much academic rigor in Between? themselves to a dhimmi framefrom them. work? And is campaigning for The chapters concentrate heavily Edited by David Greenlee. Pasadena, greater freedom simply a waste on the questions of effective evange- Calif.: William Carey Library, 2013. of energy? lism, conversion, and discipleship, Pp. xix, 273. Paperback $19.99. Given that the connection of but there is little here about the social, Islam to Muslim-majority cultures economic, and political dimensions is particularly strong, does there of Christian mission. Given the disciplines of many of the not need to be, nevertheless, a proper distinction between relicontributors, there is a somewhat uncritical use of the social gion and culture? Should not this be so, even if many cultural sciences and their jargon, without a sufficient amount of practices and values are derived from a particular religious theological rigor being brought both to the use of the social tradition? The problem with identifying culture entirely with sciences and to the description of various missionary situa- religion is that contextualization can begin to look very much tions in which the contributors find themselves. like capitulation. The issue becomes sharply focused in the A glaring omission is ecclesiology. Individual stories are debate about “insiders,” or followers of Jesus within Muslim well told and groups described, but often with little information communities who maintain their Muslim identity. To what extent regarding how the authors view the significance of the church for has there been conversion if people continue to participate in mission, in both its local manifestation and its universal nature. the salat (ritual prayer), make the shahada (the Muslim profesA few of the contributors are from a Muslim background, one of sion of faith), derive their knowledge of Jesus and devotion whom does mention the church as being significant for converts to him mainly from the Qur’an and the Hadith, and so on? as they transfer from one community to another. Other questions concern the relation of communities of such As so often today, the phenomenon of conversion is con- followers (if they are in communities) to other local churches sidered from anthropological and sociological perspectives, and the worldwide church. Also, how are persons and cultures but we need more on conversion’s spiritual and theological to be transformed by the Gospel if the status quo ante is largely aspects, as well as the priority of the missio Dei in this and maintained? There remain serious questions about whether such other areas of mission. The issue of continuity and disconti- communities or persons will be allowed to survive within the nuity is a complex one and needs to be examined in all of its Dar al-Islam (House of Islam). aspects, with both the positive (as praeparatio evangelica) and We must remember that evangelists and missionaries stand the negative (the lingering on of the undesirable) meriting within the apostolic tradition and are not semidetached from it due attention. It is indeed useful, as in one of the contribu- or outside it altogether. This means, for instance, not making up tions, to tabulate both what has attracted converts to the new elements of contextualization but using the rich and varied sources faith (a sense of God’s love, security, freedom, guidance, and of Christian tradition—for example, in patterns of worship, litso forth) and what has turned them away from their old way urgy, the public reading of the Scriptures, and forms of private of life (such as empty ritual, inflexible law and customs, and devotion. In Islamic contexts, we are particularly fortunate that distance from the divine). so much has been taken from Eastern Christian traditions and can In the entirely laudable project of seeking to communicate be reappropriated without violence to the integrity of the Gospel. the Gospel in an Islamic milieu, there is always the lurking The problem sometimes is that Western Christian missionaries, danger of lapsing into a dhimmi mentality which assumes the and even Westernized indigenous Christians, are unaware of validity and priority of an Islamic worldview and value system. this rich heritage waiting on their doorstep or are suspicious of Some of the great heroes of the faith, mentioned by the only it. In some places, Islam is an import into an existing Christian culture; elsewhere, both Christianity and Islam have come from Michael Nazir-Ali, a citizen of both Pakistan and the outside. Whatever the case, rich resources for inculturation are United Kingdom, is president of the Oxford Centre available because of the historic interaction between Muslims for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue and Christians. Let us use them! The book represents a brave attempt at assessing the many (OXTRAD) and formerly was bishop of Rochester (U.K.) and Raiwind (Pakistan) and general secretary opportunities and problems for Christian witness in Muslim conof the Church Mission Society. texts. I hope it is only the beginning and that some of the issues —oxtrad@gmail.com raised in this review essay will be tackled at the next conference and in any publications that result from it. January 2015 39 The Roman Catholic Church Worldwide (Changes from 2007 to 2012) Region 2007 2012 Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 164,925,000 34,658 4,759 11,602 198,587,000 40,133 4,948 12,003 +20.4 +15.8 North America (excluding Mexico) Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 82,140,000 52,648 1,560 3,128 86,452,000 49,072 1,762 3,420 +5.2 -6.8 Central America (including Mexico and Caribbean) Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 158,468,000 22,905 6,918 4,447 165,811,000 24,400 6,796 4,462 South America Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 327,962,000 45,942 7,139 10,258 346,556,000 49,452 7,008 9,155 Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 120,894,000 52,802 2,290 15,216 134,641,000 60,042 2,242 15,148 +11.4 +13.7 Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 283,240,000 194,393 1,457 13,773 286,868,000 186,489 1,538 12,148 +1.3 -4.1 Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 9,027,000 4,676 1,930 536 9,706,000 4,725 2,054 588 +7.5 +1.0 Catholic population Priests (diocesan and religious) Catholics per priest Graduate-level seminarians 1,146,656,000 408,024 2,810 58,960 1,228,621,000 414,313 2,965 56,924 +7.1 +1.5 Africa Asia Europe Oceania WORLDWIDE Change % +3.5 +9.3 +4.6 +6.5 +0.34 +5.7 +7.6 -10.8 -0.44 -11.8 +9.7 -3.5 From The CARA Report 20, no. 1 (Summer 2014): 8; used by permission. 40 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 the M AY 28-30, 2015 ON KNOWING HUMANITY C O N F E R E N C E Developing a Christian Anthropology What does it mean to study humanity from both scientific and theological perspectives? How might Christian theology inform the work of anthropological ethnography and theory? Might such integrative work yield results that are valuable for the purpose of solving human problems? This conference will bring together scholars from anthropology, theology, and Christian ministry to discuss common interests and potential collaboration on topics such as the significance of humanity’s divine image for human personhood and the construction of culture; the underlying reasons for humanity’s destructive behavior toward self, others, and the environment; and the role that purpose and hope play in human thought and practice. www.eastern.edu/OKHconference Contact Dr. Eloise Meneses at emeneses@eastern.edu 19 25 Book Reviews The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India. By Peter van der Veer. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 282. $75 / £52; paperback $24.95 / £16.95. This study in comparative sociology, driven by “anthropological theory” and fashionable tropes of “discourse analysis,” makes vast and sweeping historical claims about complexities of Indian and Chinese cultures. In so doing, it attempts to refute the notion that elements of modernity within these cultures are imitations derived from the West. Rather, it argues that ancient traditions of these societies have been transformed in distinctive and unique ways. Peter van der Veer, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, in Göttingen, and distinguished professor at Utrecht University, begins by exploring how, out of nineteenth-century imperial history, Western concepts of spirituality and secularity, as also of religion and magic, were utilized to epitomize traditions of China and India. He then attempts to show how modern notions of religion and magic were grafted into the respective nation-making projects of nationalist intellectuals within China and India in ways that were quite distinctive. Thus, while religion played a central role within nationalisms of India, religion was viewed as such an obstacle to progress in China that it had to be strictly controlled and marginalized. In pursuit of this argument, van der Veer addresses different understandings of art, compares yoga with qi gong, looks at concepts of secularism and of conversion within Christian histories, differentiates between constructions of religion in India and campaigns against superstition in China, and juxtaposes Muslim Kashmir and Muslim Xinjiang. As a prominent champion of comparative studies in religion and society, the author stresses the importance of deeper understandings of what is spiritual and what is secular within these two major civilizations. In pursuing this theme, where ideology can parade in the garb of theory, veracity is ever and always seen as conditional and contingent, if not contrived. Comparative analysis of culture ends in intellectual construction and invention. The “conditional idea” is made to represent “real presences” in a house of cards that is largely abstract. Thus, Can a Renewal Movement Be Renewed?: Questions for the Future of Ecumenism. By Michael Kinnamon. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Pp. vii, 163. Paperback $24. This masterly and impassioned analysis of the current state of the conciliar ecumenical movement is the product of many decades of leadership within the movement in North America and globally. Kinnamon writes out of personal experience while drawing on an amazingly rich tapestry of ecumenical relations, at points inviting ecumenical colleagues to contribute directly to the text of his book. He is far from optimistic for the ecumenical future but nevertheless maintains a clear vision of the centrality of ecumenism to biblical ecclesiology, combining this conviction with a lucid strategy for renewal. As Kinnamon confesses, the book is full of lists (4), which provide helpful summary analysis of each issue addressed, 42 as well as pointers to further research. Originally delivered as speeches, the chapters range widely from peace issues to Christian-Jewish relations and from justice to ecclesiology. After an introductory chapter the book falls into two main sections, the first reviewing the commitment of the ecumenical movement to such issues as peace, justice, and the environment, while the second deals with major challenges such as relationships with Catholic and Orthodox churches and the “add on” approach to ecumenism within some denominations. The concluding chapters present an agenda for ecumenical renewal. Themes that Kinnamon returns to often are the tension between “cheap unity” (59) and “passionate disagree- despite sometimes brilliant insights, forays grounded in actual historical events reveal little about those events that has not already been known for some time. What may be new within this study lies in the way already-known events can be remolded. Vocabulary for such analysis, borrowed from current fashions of literary criticism, sociology, and anthropology, invokes the lineage of Max Weber and genuflects before the rhetoric of Edward Said and his disciples. Interactions between four select concepts—religion and magic, secularity and spirituality—are connected, defined, and then redefined in respect to relations of power within imperial and national institutions. Yet, for scholars interested in the history of Christian missions, there is not much new to be learned from such rhetorical exercises, however dazzling they may seem. —Robert Eric Frykenberg Robert Eric Frykenberg is professor emeritus of history and South Asian studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison. ment—without breaking fellowship” (61), the value of diversity (84), the need to actualize within the churches the substantive agreements already reached (44), the role of the laity and local congregations (154), the failure of evangelicals and postdenominational churches to engage ecumenically (129), the need for ecumenical formation (134), and the severe financial constraints facing ecumenical structures (126). On the basis of Kinnamon’s analysis, one is tempted to respond to the book’s title, Can [this] Renewal Movement Be Renewed?, with a fairly definite No—but only because Kinnamon presents a narrow view of ecumenism, that of conciliar ecumenism focused on North America. In a book subtitled Questions for the Future of Ecumenism, it is surprising, for example, to find no reference at all to the Global Christian Forum, the amazingly ecumenical work of the Bible societies, and denominational mission agencies that increasingly work ecumenically. Although there is a very brief reference International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 to ecumenical communities (154), major ecumenical movements such as the Global Day of Prayer, the Alpha Course, and Micah Challenge are ignored, as is the more formal cooperation we see internationally, for example, between Presbyterians, Catholics, and Anglicans heroically working for peace in South Sudan or between evangelical and Orthodox leaders focused on mission through the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative. Kinnamon reminds us that “the ecumenical movement began as a lay [youth] enterprise—in the mission fields” (154). What, sadly, he fails to present is the hope, indeed the actuality, that renewed ecumenism will not be led by conciliar structures but by a network (127) of globally minded youth who draw creatively on the multifaceted Christian tradition and a rich pallet of global theologies. This renewal movement can be—is being—renewed. —Mark Oxbrow Mark Oxbrow, international director of Faith2Share, a global network of mission agencies of various ecclesial traditions, is also facilitator of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative for collaboration in mission, former assistant general secretary of the Church Mission Society (1988–2008), and an Anglican priest based in Oxford, U.K. Bible in Mission. Edited by Pauline Hoggarth, Fergus Macdonald, Bill Mitchell, and Knud Jørgensen. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013. Pp. x, 317. £30.99. There can be little question as to the centrality of the Bible to Christian faith in general and Christian mission in particular. Bible in Mission documents the wide range of ways that the Bible has been a foundation, motivation, and instrument of mission. Appearing as the eighteenth volume in the Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series, celebrating the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, Bible in Mission has a “transversal” focus, seeking to reflect the great confessional, geographic, historical, and hermeneutical diversity of the global church. This volume is not a textbook or systematic treatise, but rather a collection of essays displaying a broad array of perspectives on this important but often overlooked subject. The text begins with three introductory chapters, of which Tim Carriker’s “The Bible as Text for Mission” provides an especially helpful overview. The remaining twenty-six chapters are divided into two sections. Section 1, “The Bible in Mission in the World and in the Church,” presents various religious contexts and confessional approaches to the topic in broad fashion. Section 2 offers specific case studies divided into four geographic regions. It moves the discussion from theory to the experience of real people in real places, illustrating how the Bible has been read, translated, or communicated in different contexts, with different audiences and with different theological convictions. For example, chapters present environmentalist, feminist, liberationist, and evangelical approaches to the Bible and mission. Readers will discover ways in which the Bible relates to the HIV crisis, poverty, evangelism, children, and youth. Concerns range from personal spiritual growth to social transformation. Contributions also vary stylistically: some are more descriptive or historical in nature, and others advocate for a particular approach; some are research based, while Anthropomorphism Through Ancient Eyes Evangelically Rooted. Critically Engaged. A SI A N A M ER IC A N E X PER IENCE FOR T HEOLO G Y TODAY In this bold theological proposal, Amos Yong draws on the Asian American religious experience to develop a pentecostal global evangelical theology. “By providing a thorough examination of the burgeoning yet essential field of Asian American theology, Yong fills a significant gap in evangelical scholarship. This book will serve as the essential text not only for Asian American readers but for everyone concerned about the future of North American evangelicalism.” —Soong-Chan Rah, North Park Theological Seminary 255 pages, paperback, 978-0-8308-4060-1, $25.00 Visit ivpacademic.com to request an exam copy. Follow us on Twitter January 2015 Join us on Facebook 800.843.9487 ivpacademic.com 43 others are more anecdotal. This section provides both inspiration and information in a fascinating and sometimes surprising exploration of the subject. The variety of perspectives and themes is at once the strength and the weakness of this volume. The wide range of theological orientations, contexts, and styles exposes the reader to a colorful and horizon-expanding sampling of how the relationship of Bible and mission can be understood. But this diversity also makes for rather bumpy reading as the reader moves from chapter to chapter. The editors have clearly chosen diversity over thematic continuity. Overall, Bible in Mission offers a valuable collection of essays that will enlighten, and Trinity and Revelation. Vol. 2 of A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. By Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Pp. 486. Paperback $40. Author Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen here offers the second in his planned fivevolume series on constructive theology. Overall, he aims to offer practical reasons for eliminating conflicts between religions, provide a globally acceptable theory of the existence of one true God for all religions, and establish a theological framework for a coherent account of this truth (420–21). The book is cast as an “act of hospitality, giving and receiving gifts” (5). The author clarifies, explains, and reflects on the Christian doctrines of revelation and the Trinity, subjecting them to rigorous and thorough interfaith engagement. He argues that any theologian in search of God’s wisdom and love must be willing to “exchange gifts of inclusivity, belonging, mutual learning, and enrichment” (5). The nature of the Trinity, the articulation of truths that Christians believe, the quest for a fuller knowledge of the relation between God and world, and the methodology that structures the whole project pivot on the “spirit of hospitality” (364). Kärkkäinen carefully argues that the complex task of dialogue and religious conversation in our pluralistic world demands “respectful honoring of the otherness of other traditions and their representatives, as well as bold but humble arguing for one’s own deepest convictions, in the hope of being both enriched and enabled to share a convincing testimony” (365). The author’s view of the Trinity is based on a broad and rich understanding of revelation, which derives from the Bible, natural theology, and insights from other religions. At the same time, his notion of revelation is cast in a Trinitarian framework and conditioned by a spirit of hospitality. Kärkkäinen views understanding the Trinity as enmeshed with the task of “discernment of the unfolding of the economy of salvation,” that is, the creating, providing, saving, and conserving work of the triune God on the way to 44 the eschatological communion of all God’s people (180). Kärkkäinen’s construal of God is firmly rooted in the monotheistic Christian tradition, but in dialogue it displays the relationality and mutuality that characterize the triune God. For the author, the triune God is the God of all people and the whole of creation. This pluralistic and dialogical and yet confessional approach to understanding the divine is not a cheap tactic to nudge all other religions to relinquish their positions and embrace Christianity. His is a border-crossing invitation to dialogue, engagement, and peaceful coexistence. Kärkkäinen is seeking honest and mutual encounter with the ideas of the divine and practices in other religions. Kärkkäinen interacts with a vast number of interlocutors, always critiquing and reshaping their logic and arguments. The problem is that it is not always clear whether the prodigious efforts he expends in the dialogue are supporting an explicit thesis or clarifying his own distinct voice. In many places, the pluralistic clamor drowns out the small still voice of his constructive project. His style demands very close reading. Once his voice is heard, however, it pays off handsomely. —Nimi Wariboko Nimi Wariboko is Katherine B. Stuart Professor of Christian Ethics, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Reformed Means Missional: Following Jesus into the World. Edited by Samuel T. Logan Jr. Greensboro, N.C.: New Growth Press, 2013. Pp. 288. Paperback $19.99. The book Reformed Means Missional well defines and shows in practice the missional nature of the Reformed churches. potentially challenge, any reader who is passionate about God’s mission and the Word of God. —Craig Ott Craig Ott, professor of mission and intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, is director of its Ph.D. program in intercultural studies. The three chapters of section 1 cover the what, why, and how, giving a picture of what a missional church looks like, why the church should be missional, and how to be missional. Martin Allan ably identifies the marks of a missional church. Through studies of Jonathan Edwards’s work, Samuel Logan shows how the Reformed faith produces moral behavior: “What that person seeks first, Edwards calls that person’s affections” (29); “gracious affections arise from the mind being enlightened right and spiritually to apprehend divine things” (35). In the same chapter we find reasons why we should exercise our Reformed faith in Jesus: “The fundamental reason why I, and you, should exercise faith in Jesus Christ is because He deserves it” (36). Thomas Schirrmacher brings to our attention convincing arguments from Paul’s letter to the Romans for establishing a close relationship between local churches and world missions. Section 2 discusses various areas in which the church can be missional. By giving practical applications for missional vision, this section complements the first section well. P. J. Buys’s chapter on missional response to poverty and social injustice, based on his experience in South Africa, is insightful. As a pastor in a megalopolis, I found the chapter by Tim Keller, “What Is God’s Global Urban Mission?,” exceptionally helpful. Keller reflects on urban mission in the Bible, as well as on the growing importance of the urban mission of our days. Other chapters on missions in the context of healthcare, violence against women, child sexual abuse, migrant churches, secularity, Islam, hidden believers, and homosexual groups help us to see numerous practical ways to be involved in mission. This is a helpful book. It would be even more relevant across the world, however, if it included a chapter on how to do mission in the context of civil unrest and political instability. Many countries— particularly now Ukraine—face unrest and instability and would benefit from having Reformed missions in their midst. —Ivan Bespalov Ivan Bespalov is the pastor of Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church, Kiev, Ukraine. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. By Allan Heaton Anderson. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013. Pp. xviii, 311. £64 / $99; paperback £16.99 / $24.95. Pentecostalism has changed the face of world Christianity, most visibly in the non-Western world. The attention given in recent scholarship to Pentecostal Christianity and its various versions of charismatic renewal is testimony to the growth and influence of a movement that, until half a century ago, was on the margins of world Christianity. To the Ends of the Earth, part of the Oxford Series on World Christianity (edited by Lamin Sanneh), is a welcome addition to Allan Anderson’s already impressive collection of writings on Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism is distinguished from Roman Catholicism and historic Protestantism by its emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit as normative in church life and worship. “The experience of the Spirit and belief in world evangelization are hallmarks of Pentecostalism,” Anderson writes, along with the belief of Pentecostals that they are “called to be witnesses for Jesus Christ in the farthest reaches of the globe in obedience to Christ’s commission” (1). This thought informs the title of the book as Anderson presents stories from across the world showing how—even within Western contexts, where Christianity is on the decline—Pentecostal forms are keeping the hope of the faith alive. In nine chapters the book covers history, as well as missiological and theological issues that have turned Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity into a world religious force. Various chapters deal with missions and migration, women and family, the Bible and community, and preachers and entrepreneurs. The final chapter addresses contemporary prosperitypreaching Pentecostalism, using as a case study Korean pastor David Yonggi Cho, for many years head of the world’s largest congregation. This approach helps readers bridge the gap between this new form of Pentecostalism and its classic forebears. Pentecostalism is basically a revival movement that can exist both as separate churches and denominations and as a stream of renewal within historic mission denominations. The movement’s unencumbered ecclesiology allows it to become a grassroots phenomenon that appeals very much to non-Western believers in particular. It is helpful that Anderson, besides discussing African Pentecostalism, gives attention to Asian versions of the movement, with insightful information particularly on India. Chapter 7, on transformation and independence, is important for the bird’s-eye view it provides of the January 2015 most significant regions of Pentecostal activity—Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Anderson has dealt with his chosen themes quite fairly, although in chapter 5, on the use of the Bible, he could have gone a little beyond the older African Independent Churches. Prosperity preaching, which has become important in contemporary Pentecostalism, could also have been analyzed more extensively. Nevertheless, this is a useful volume that will serve seminaries and university departments looking for a broad study of the history, nature, and mission of Pentecostalism as a form of world Christianity. —J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, a contributing editor, is Baëta-Grau Professor of African Christianity and Pentecostal Theology, Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Ghana. E NEW BOOKS FROM EERDMANS FOR FREEDOM OR BONDAGE? A Critique of African Pastoral Practices Esther E. Acolatse “This is an important book. With the increasing significance of Africa within contemporary Christianity, new and urgent theological issues are arising for pastoral practice as African understandings of the spirit world interact with the biblical materials and traditional Christian practice. Acolatse is beginning a much-needed conversation between African and Western theologians, with huge pastoral implications.” — ANDREW F. WALLS ISBN 978-0-8028-6989-0 ● 233 pages ● paperback ● $35.00 CAN A RENEWAL MOVEMENT BE RENEWED? Questions for the Future of Ecumenism Michael Kinnamon “Michael Kinnamon’s well-resourced, clear, and thoughtful book reviews past achievements and proposes future directions for American conciliar ecumenism. His very practical, always informative, and sometimes disconcerting observations will challenge readers to deepen their own commitment to Christian unity.” — JOHN W. CROSSIN, OSFS ISBN 978-0-8028-7075-9 ● 175 pages ● paperback ● $24.00 MIGHTY ENGLAND DO GOOD Culture, Faith, Empire, and World in the Foreign Missions of the Church of England, 1850–1915 S TUDIES IN THE H ISTORY OF CHRISTIAN M ISSIONS Steven S. Maughan “Steven Maughan’s monumental study will be of particular significance in understanding the complexities of British overseas expansion, the changing nature of metropolitan religious society, and the ideology of evangelicalism everywhere. The range of Maughan’s research will make this an indispensable starting point for years to come.” — ANDREW PORTER ISBN 978-0-8028-6946-3 ● 527 pages ● paperback ● $45.00 At your bookstore, or call 800-253-7521 www.eerdmans.com 4022 45 Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership. By Andro Linklater. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pp. xi, 482. $30; paperback $16. Owning the Earth, while not a book about missions, reveals an underappreciated link between colonial history and mission history: the desire to own land. In twenty-three chapters divided into six sections, Andro Linklater surveys the growth of the idea of private property in England and America, compares this view with the alternatives being pursued elsewhere in Europe and China, and strives to account for how Western civilization took shape. It is a tale well told. Linklater begins in 1583 with the first British attempts to conceive of how land in the New World would be owned. First, the British had to ignore the fact that the land was already held by First Nations/Native American peoples. Second, the models they worked with reflected the struggle for land ownership in the British Isles between the kings, the nobles, and individuals on the land. Linklater claims that, in the recent English past, “the liberties enshrined in the common law and in statutes from Magna Carta onwards—freedom from taxation without representation, recourse to the supreme authority of the legal system, the necessity of trial by jury, the existence of habeas corpus—had all emerged from the landowners’ basic need for security of tenure” (43). Thus, rather than taking politics or economics as basic to society, Linklater argues that all rests on land tenure. The type of capitalism that developed in Britain was thus different from Continental (e.g., Dutch or French) capitalism, and certainly different from other forms of feudalism and serfdom (e.g., Polish or Russian). This difference was critical, Linklater argues, because “the history of the next two centuries would make it universally obvious that a private property society could harness resources that were not available to societies organized in other ways” (108). Linklater ranges widely in his consideration of the opportunities and the dangers arising from a clear concept of private property. When inventions or even ideas are protected by patents (i.e., turned into private property), then the relationship between private good and public good teeters off-balance. When private property slips over into monopoly, then society suffers because the means of progress are taken off the table for most people. Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up. By Simon Chan. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2014. Pp. 216. Paperback $22. Grassroots Asian Theology presents a vibrant picture of the people of God in the Global South, especially among the grassroots branches of Christianity. Simon Chan, professor of systematic theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, brings Asian grassroots Pentecostalism as an authentic “flavor” into global ecumenical Christianity, challenging the issue of “how theology ought to be done” in an Asian context (8). With theological articulation seriously and creatively derived from several historic Christian theological traditions, including Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, Chan lays out a number of very interesting theological premises. Carefully grounding his premises in Scripture, in tradition, and in ecclesial experience, he contrasts Eastern and Western ways of thinking, ending with the Asian 46 family perspective as an appropriate and distinctive approach for Asian theology (43–46). He also draws extensively from a broad and diverse Asian religious cultural context, including a “middle zone” (discussed by Paul Hiebert, Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tiénou) in Asian folk religions to provide rationale for the grassroots Pentecostal-charismatic movements in Asia (30–35). In the chapter “God in Asian Contexts,” he favors the triune family as an analogy for the relationship of the persons within the Trinity (47–68). In the next chapter, Chan discusses humans as relational beings, not individuals, with sins seen in light of shame (useful in Asia’s culture of honor and shame, in contrast with the Western culture of guilt), which fractures the harmony of the community (69–90). Christ is seen as both high priest and ancestor; he is our “greatest ancestor” Linklater takes the reader through the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, the mortgage collapse of 2008, and the Arab Spring, using his measure of whether a concept of private property is operative and how this factor is balanced with social justice (i.e., the needs of society) as a way of evaluating various movements and governments. Yet the central theme of the book is the future: “The task of feeding nine billion people in the middle of the twenty-first century will create such a mass of urgent and seemingly insoluble problems, it might seem perverse to suggest that the most important is how the land is owned. But that will be the key to solving all the others” (393). Where is the concern here for missionaries and mission agencies? First, the study reveals the complicity of missionaries in support of and participation in the land grabs of the past. Second, the study wrestles with the issue of how to balance individual needs with social justice, which is surely a missionary concern. Finally, mission agencies might examine their own conceptions of ownership and their practices in securing land, even for “sacred” purposes. —Michael A. Rynkiewich Michael A. Rynkiewich is retired as professor of anthropology from the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. in this household of faith. Salvation is therefore the restoration to a right position in the family of God, where people are called the “holy brothers” (91–127). The Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, and between the church and Christ (129–56). Finally, church life is a family life, or the communion of saints (both the living and the deceased), who are joined in communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (157–202). In places, readers may not agree with Chan or may need further discussion and exploration—for example, regarding the controversial practice of ancestral veneration (113–17, 188–97). Nevertheless, Grassroots Asian Theology draws our attention to Asian Christianity, where grassroots charismatic-Pentecostalism has significantly contributed to the efforts of the global church toward theological contextualization. —KimSon Nguyen KimSon Nguyen is a Ph.D. student in the School of Intercultural Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 influential in the lives of both women (xii). This work has great value for the student of African mission history, particularly those interested in women’s roles and status, gender issues, and sexuality. —Mary Cloutier Two Women: Anyentyuwe and Ekâkise. By Henry H. Bucher. Lulu Publishing, 2014. Pp. vii, 109. Paperback $18.96. Publication of Two Women: Anyentyuwe and Ekâkise brings out of obscurity this controversial and until now unpublished 1911 manuscript, written by missionary doctor Robert Hamill Nassau, who served in the late nineteenth century in what is now Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and coastal Cameroon. At the time it was written, the editor at the American Tract Society begged Nassau to suppress the account, fearing that it “would injure the cause of mission” (xix). A century later, editor Henry Bucher presents the work in its original form, while enriching it with a wealth of research notes, helpful maps, photos, three indexes, and suggestions for further reading in historical and contemporary scholarship. Two Women, a biographical work, details the lives of two young African women, Anyentyuwe and Ekâkise, who were educated by the mission and members of the local church community. Both eventually fell into moral error, resulting in church discipline and excommunication. Anyentyuwe, born into a wealthy family in what is now Libreville, Gabon, was educated and raised at the mission. Later orphaned, she became a default “servant” to the mission. In her twenties she was raped by another mission worker, resulting in pregnancy. A refined and educated young woman with an illegitimate child, Anyentyuwe was turned out of the mission and entered into a series of long-term liaisons with wealthy foreign men, which further damaged her reputation, though the liaisons provided some financial and domestic stability. The widowed Robert Nassau eventually hired Anyentyuwe as a governess to his young daughter, moving her to their remote interior mission station and touching off scandalous rumors regarding their relationship. Ekâkise was similarly educated at the Cameroon mission but was sold by her extended family to a man with multiple wives. A child-bride at ten and a mother at fifteen, Ekâkise protested the unhappy and abusive marriage but received no sympathy from church leaders. As with Anyentyuwe, her extramarital liaisons resulted in excommunication. Nassau’s intervention and financial assistance (paying her bride-price to free her from her marital contract) only exacerbated the tensions in the community. These two controversies, decades apart, injured Nassau’s reputation and resulted in his recall from the mission field. The manuscript is Nassau’s “apologia” (xxii), defending his own actions and those of the two women, while openly critiquing January 2015 the local culture, church leadership, and the foreign missionary community for their failure to support such women in crisis. Bucher offers the reader rich historical and cultural context without taking sides in the issue. He also gives due credit to Robert Nassau’s sister Isabella, who was Mary Cloutier served seven years in Gabon as a Christian and Missionary Alliance missionary, teaching at Bethel Bible Institute, Libreville. She recently completed a Ph.D. in intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. Summer Institute for ISLAMIC STUDIES JUNE 29 – JULY 10, 2015 Let AGTS and Global Initiative: Reaching Muslim Peoples teach you to relate and minister to Muslims. • Take courses in Islamic Studies for graduate or undergraduate credit • Audit courses in Islamic Studies for a 75% discount in price • Earn a certificate Professors Our resident faculty for Islamic Studies includes 5 doctorates and more than 200 years of field experience in Muslim countries. agts.edu/link/siis15ibmr 1-800-467-AGTS 47 Beyond Literate Western Models: Contextualizing Theological Education in Oral Contexts. Edited by Samuel E. Chiang and Grant Lovejoy. Hong Kong: International Orality Network, 2013. Pp. 229. Paperback $14.95; Kindle $9.95, available at Amazon.com. Beyond Literate Western Models is a fascinating attempt to contextualize theological education in oral contexts for effective world evangelization. Samuel Chiang and Grant Lovejoy have assembled fifteen papers, along with some of the more insightful responses from a 2012 consultation on orality held at the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton, Illinois. The four sections of the volume address pertinent issues, including local culture, methodology, and forms and methods of theological education among oral preference learners. The book begins by discussing the importance of preparing students from formal theological institutions to train local people to tell Bible stories effectively. It makes the crucial suggestion that an interdisciplinary approach be used in oral contexts. Also important is the role of context in informal settings of theological education. The book discusses the differences between Western approaches to adult learning and those of West Africa, where under the influence of local culture learning takes place communally. Some helpful grassroots experiences are used as examples. The book gives some creative suggestions for effective theological education among oral-preference learners, including the use of context-based questions, such as, “Why are the people not interested in reading?” and “How might one collaborate with oral leaders and coopt their in-put?” (153). In the World Interior of Capital: For a Philosophical Theory of Globalization. By Peter Sloterdijk. Translated by Wieland Hoban. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2013. Pp. x, 308. Paperback $28.95. Peter Sloterdijk, an important contemporary philosopher, published In the World Interior of Capital (original German ed., 2005) as a summary and reflection on his lengthy trilogy Sphären (Spheres). In this book, in forty-two short chapters, Sloterdijk offers his iconoclastic reflections on globalization. The image Sloterdijk uses to illustrate our globalized world is the Crystal Palace, the famous large-scale enclosure for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. Today we live in an elaborate “crystal palace,” which also functions as a hothouse, rather than under the open sky. The palace is the invisible construction of global capital itself, which works unseen to shape our world and our understanding of ourselves in it. This palace, which has floors to designate the unequal status of humans who live within it, stands as “a planetary palace of consumption” (12). Most of the book consists of Sloterdijk’s analysis of how this global crystal palace came about, based on the European expansion and conquest of the globe. He connects political and economic events to philosophical ideas and develops a general logic for understanding what is 48 going on; he avoids the celebration of multiculturalism, differences, and local narratives by postmodern scholars. Sloterdijk pays particular attention to the role of cartography, because it provides an image of the world as a sphere; this “roundness” of theory shaped Western consciousness from the Greeks until the end of modernity. He also focuses on the crucial role of Christian mission in the constitution of the modern world. Today, Sloterdijk claims, we are passing into a new way of thinking. Rather than being a round sphere, today’s crystal palace absorbs the outside world into its complex crystalline structure. It is an enclosure, but it is not a sphere. Sloterdijk uses a somewhat cynical tone to describe what is happening with thought and life today, but he does not simply celebrate or lament it. He gives us tools to understand the world, and at the end of the book he cautiously suggests that “being extended in one’s own place is a good habit of being” (263), in contrast with the modernist pretensions to universality. At the same time, this being in one’s own place should not become an excuse for ignoring what is happening elsewhere. This long-overdue pioneering work paves the way for more freedom and creativity in theological education among oral-preference learners. This is certainly important in the Global South, but not only there. The book could have given more attention to oral-preference learners among literates in the West. More important, the book fails to recognize the need to encourage the emergence of authentic local Christian theology. The task of contextualizing theological education (and mission) in oral contexts also needs to listen to voices of the local people in their struggle for justice, peace, and human dignity. In short, the holistic nature of the Gospel of Christ needs to be emphasized. For that reason, for a project such as this, more attention should be given to the local context in formulating theological or missiological questions, prioritizing issues, and finding answers to the questions. —Jangkholam Haokip Jangkholam Haokip is assistant professor of theology, Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, India. Reading Sloterdijk is a provocative experience, for he challenges commonsense presumptions and philosophical orthodoxies, offering striking analyses of how our world has come to appear to us as an enclosed crystal palace. This is an extremely vital and valuable book that is highly recommended for philosophically inclined readers. It combines astute theoretical assessment with important practical application to demonstrate how our world actually operates. —Clayton Crockett Clayton Crockett is professor and director of religious studies at the University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas. The Spiritual Expansion of Medieval Latin Christendom: The Asian Missions. Edited by James D. Ryan. Farnham, U.K: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. xlv, 367. £110 / $200. The Spiritual Expansion of Medieval Latin Christendom, the eleventh volume in the series “The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000–1500,” adds significantly to the history of missions in Asia. Divided into three parts, the volume comprises essays covering the “long and complex history of the Asian mission of the High International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 Middle Ages” (xvii). The essays focus on the development of the Latin-speaking missionary movement outside its immediate European context, providing a comprehensive discussion of the multifaceted context in which the Asian mission came into existence, developed, and withered. The contributors use a diverse body of primary sources, both written and material. The essays in part 1, “Crusades and the Mission,” discuss the evolution of missions in the context of the Crusade movement. Major themes are conversion and the Crusaders as agents of conver sion. Jean Flori discusses the motivations and the idealized perceptions of the Crusaders and questions whether conversion was their primary goal. Along similar lines, Elizabeth Siberry demonstrates that there were indeed two distinct camps: Crusaders (warriors) and missionaries (nonmilitary promoters of Christianity). Whereas part 1 discusses the interaction of Christians and Muslims in the Middle East, part 2, “Discovering Asia,” introduces the development of Latinspeaking missions further east through the themes of exploration, travel, and trade. Part 3, “The Missions with the Mongol Empire,” treats the missionary movement during the “established” period of the Mongol Empire. In particular, the appraisal of relationships between the Mongols and Christianity, including the role of diplomacy and trade in chapters 13–16, is most instructive. This volume will be a great resource for scholars interested in missionary movements, as it brings together the product of research that is otherwise found only in scattered monographs and periodicals. —Barakatullo Ashurov Barakatullo Ashurov is an independent researcher in Central Asia. He received his doctoral degree from SOAS, University of London; his research focuses on medieval Christianity in Central Asia and Iran. Nuestra Fe: A Latin American Church History Sourcebook. By Ondina E. González and Justo L. González. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 239. $54.99; paperback $44.99. In their introduction, the Gonzálezes note that, from the famous 1511 homily of Fray Antonio de Montesinos, in which he condemned the colonists of Hispaniola for their mistreatment of the Indians, a pattern was set in Latin America that has continued until our own time. One group of Christians would invoke their Christian faith to justify abuse and January 2015 exploitation, while another group would cite the same faith to insist, in the name of justice, on a radical transformation of society. The book’s nine chapters contain primary sources covering the five centuries of Latin American church history. The first four deal with the colonial period and illustrate how Christianity was used both to support and to condemn the exploitation of Native Americans and African slaves. A few of the documents also show how Indians viewed Christianity. Others treat the suppression of the Jesuits, while still others are concerned with the Inquisition’s persecution of Jews who had converted to Christianity but then supposedly reverted secretly to their old religion. Chapter 5 covers the new order of church-state relations that emerged following independence. Included here is the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the new liberal forces that came to dominate Latin America in the last half of the nineteenth century. Chapters 6 and 7 treat the animosity between Catholics Get ConneCted overseas Ministries study Center through the The Overseas Ministries Study Center has served church leaders and missionaries from around the world since 1922. Each year some fifty long-term residents from as many as twenty countries contribute to OMSC’s vibrant community life. Similarly broad is the ecclesiastical spectrum represented in the OMSC community—Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Anabaptist, Reformed, Lutheran, Independent—all of whom find at OMSC a welcoming and nurturing community. Weeklong seminars, public lectures, corporate worship, and informal exchanges afford Western mission personnel, pastors, educators, students, and others opportunity to gain insight into the perspectives and concerns of seasoned non-Western mission and church leaders. In addition, OMSC publishes the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, which is widely respected as a leading professional journal of mission research and reflection. Many of today’s foremost missiologists and mission thinkers appear both in the IBMR and as lecturers at OMSC. You are invited to join the OMSC community for a week—or a month— and to stay in one of our comfortable guest rooms. In summer months, our apartments are also available for rental. Our international mission community in New Haven, located between New York City and Boston, is one block from Yale Divinity School and its renowned Day Missions Library. Numerous research, cultural, and recreational opportunities are located in or within easy driving distance of New Haven. Get connected! For the latest information sign up for The Hearth newsletter and occasional e-mails—and join us on Facebook. While you’re at it, sign up for a subscription to our award-winning free IBMR e-journal. E-mail subscription: www.omsc.org/email_subscriptions.php Newsletter: www.omsc.org/newsletter Journal: www.internationalbulletin.org Facebook: www.omsc.org/fb www.omsc.org 49 and Protestants that developed in the postcolonial period and lasted until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. These chapters were for me the most interesting section of the book. Here the documents expose a Catholic hierarchy clinging to the conservative past and fearing the so-called modernism that Pope Pius IX condemned in 1864 in his Syllabus of Errors. They likewise reveal a Protestantism imported by Europeans and North Americans who saw Latin American culture as backward and who seemed oblivious to the oppressive policies of the liberal politicians who supported them. Chapter 8 focuses on the Catholic Church after Vatican II, with its internecine battles over liberation theology and the “preferential option for the poor” of the Medellín bishops’ conference. Chapter 9 treats the new challenges Pentecostalism and Africo-Caribbean religion pose for both Catholicism and liberal Protestantism. The Gonzálezes are to be commended for their excellent choice of document selection. Their book should prove especially valuable to undergraduate and graduate students of Latin American history. A bonus feature is the questions the authors include for readers of the texts to ponder. The only disappointing feature of the book is the absence of an index and a bibliography, which would have proven valuable for guiding readers who want to delve deeper into the study of Latin American religious history. —Edward T. Brett Edward T. Brett is professor emeritus of history, La Roche College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. True and Holy: Christian Scripture and Other Religions. By Leo D. Lefebure. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014. Pp. ix, 274. Paperback $30. In True and Holy, Leo Lefebure discusses interreligious dialogue, hermeneutics, and interfaith relations. Christianity’s interactions with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism are prefaced by analysis of the interplay of interreligious and intrareligious dialogue, as well as a review of hermeneutics from the early church fathers to the present. The reader is thus prepared to consider in the light of Scripture the wide variety of encounters, both positive and negative, that Christians have had with the four religious traditions under review. Judaism’s extensive scriptural overlap with Christianity and a commonality of themes and figures of both faiths with Islam have invited direct scriptural juxtapositions through the centuries. Christian commentators unabashedly used Jewish Scriptures to make sense of Islam, even as Jewish theologians challenged Christian thinkers on the validity of their understanding of the First Testament. The relationship of Christianity to Hinduism is more subtle, given the few early Christian records documenting how St. Thomas’s congregations viewed the majority culture scripturally. Gandhi’s use of Christian Scripture, however, to oppose British hegemony shows how the Christian Bible is not reserved for Christians alone to interpret. As a result, the church’s understanding of Jesus owes much to Hindu perspectives. Buddhism is the main focus of Lefebure’s personal scholarly interests. The relationship of Buddhism to Christianity as viewed through the lens of biblical International Bulletin of Missionary Research The reliable source for Christian mission history and analysis Take a coffee break online @ www.internationalbulletin.org ——Free online or in print worldwide by mail —— “While cleaning my home office, I came upon a bunch of IBMR issues. I’m now taking the luxury of reading one article each morning, which is like having coffee with a colleague across space and time. It energizes me for the day’s work.” —Dr. Miriam Adeney, anthropologist, missiologist, and author of Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity (2009) Whether in print or online, you will receive 4 issues per year (January, April, July, and October) of the IBMR, the Associated Church Press award-winning journal of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. The IBMR is an easily searchable gateway to in-depth feature articles, book reviews, news items, and conference notices. Go to www .internationalbulletin.org/register to sign up. It’s FREE online—or only $23 a year including postage worldwide. INVITE A FRIEND TO SUBSCRIBE AND JOIN US ON FACEBOOK. 50 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 interpretation is not readily obvious to more casual observers or practitioners of Buddhist-Christian interreligious dialogue. Yet Jesus, who spoke of camels passing through the eye of a needle, would not have been a stranger to modes of expression found in Zen. Lefebure cautions Christians not to reject how Scripture may speak to us through the eyes of the other. His examples are thought-provoking. —Steven Blackburn Steven Blackburn, an ordained CongregationalChristian pastor, serves as library director and faculty associate in Semitic Scriptures, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut. Introduction to Global Missions. By Zane Pratt, M. David Sills, and Jeff K. Walters. Nashville, Tenn.: B&H Publishing Group, 2014. Pp. viii, 280. Paperback $34.99. The three authors of this introduction to global missions and global mission studies are professionally engaged in the Southern Baptist Convention. They have produced an evangelical outline, founded on conservative theological principles. They are to be commended for presenting their study as an integrated text; consequently, it is difficult to trace who wrote which chapter (though sometimes the footnotes give an indication). After the preface, this well-written and well-ordered book offers thirteen chapters in four sections: biblical and theological foundations, historical foundations, culture (with chapters on applied anthropology and world religions), and practice (e.g., strategies for disciple making). Many chapters have a short conclusion, and each chapter ends with resources for further study. The book includes indexes of names, of subjects, and of Scripture. The biblical and theological survey focuses on mission in both the New Testament and the Old Testament (with special references to Isaiah and Psalms) and in the intertestamental period. The survey of mission history discusses developments from the early church to martyrs in the twentieth century. It does not mention Nicolaus von Zinzendorf as the founding father of Protestant missions on six continents, but instead presents William Carey as “the Father of the Modern Missions Movement” (116). The authors’ survey of culture focuses upon applied missiology, continuing work done by scholars such as Eugene Nida, Paul Hiebert, and David Hesselgrave. In this context it deals with issues such as contextualization and intercultural communication—topics that are discussed again in the fourth section of the book. This section explores making disciples, church planting, and the role of individuals and the local church in mission, with global missions as the comprehensive perspective. Here Donald McGavran and Ralph Winter are taken as guides. I wholeheartedly agree with the authors’ message on the book’s final page of text: “The global context of Christian mission is constantly changing, [but] the imperative nature of the missionary mandate does not change” (272). The chapter on religions (in the third section on culture) gives only little attention to Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and shamanism in Korea. Unfortunately, it uses the outmoded term “animism” to describe the many religions that are now commonly known as primal or traditional AMOS YONG AT FULLER: Building on Excellence We’ve always been innovators in mission. Now, with esteemed missiologist Amos Yong directing our doctoral program, Fuller’s Center for Missiological Research is an even more creative place of innovation—ever deepening insight into the seminal missiological issues facing our world. FULLER.EDU/CMR January 2015 51 religions. The authors’ view that the World Council of Churches as a whole embraces “theological liberalism” and “pluralism” (128) is patently incorrect. The authors here pass over missionary statesmen such as Hendrik Kraemer and Lesslie Newbigin, who were an integral part of the ecumenical movement and at the same time vehemently opposed relativism inside its ranks. The authors of the Introduction to Global Missions refer to John Stott but fail to mention that this evangelical leader and drafter of the Lausanne Covenant (1974) was a devoted member of the Anglican Church, one of the founding churches of the World Council of Churches. The book’s one-sidedness also comes to the fore in the bibliography. The authors pay no attention to publications of Majority World theologians. Moreover, from Gustav Warneck onward, they fail to include even a single source published in continental Europe. The largest missiological series in the world, Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity (Bern: Peter Lang), certainly deserves a place in such a volume. Also lacking are mention of contemporary mission handbooks and mission encyclopedias (e.g., by David B. Barrett, 1982, 2001; Jan A. B. Jongeneel, 1995–97; Gerald H. Anderson, 1998; Jonathan Bonk, 2007) and, in particular, David Bosch’s Transforming Mission (1991), the most translated and most widely used missiological textbook. As a mission scholar in a state university, I am disappointed; as a mission theologian, however, I sincerely recommend this book. After all, it will help its readers to engage in God’s global mission. —Jan A. B. Jongeneel Jan A. B. Jongeneel is honorary professor emeritus of missiology at Utrecht University and an honorary lifetime member of the International Association of Mission Studies (IAMS). His magnum opus is Jesus Christ in World History (Peter Lang, 2009). Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity. Edited by Wonsuk Ma, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2014. Pp. 397. £30.99 / $44.99. This “Pentecostal volume” in the Edinburgh Centenary Series fills a lacuna in mission studies. Whereas the Pentecostal movement as a whole receives full attention in discussions of the current global topography of Christianity, Pentecostal mission itself has been less studied. This comprehensive compilation of global Pentecostal mission portrays the dynamics of Pentecostal mission from diverse geographic and denominational backgrounds. The majority of the authors represent views from the Global South. Yet, with only two female theologians, the range of contributors lacks a gender balance. All of them share Pentecostal convictions, thus giving the volume an insider perspective on global Pentecostal mission. A historical overview of the century of Pentecostal expansion in diverse sociocultural contexts is followed by organizational surveys of Pentecostal mission practice. In systematic theological terms, the volume describes Pentecostal mission in the pneumatological categories of power, healing, and restoration. The thematic spectrum includes self-reflexive perceptions and outlines themes arising in Pentecostal mission, including ecology, Pentecostal social responsibility, and ecumenism. The volume does not deny tensions Interested in online learning? OMSC will offer six weeklong, graduate-level mission seminars online FREE at www.omsc.org/online. October 27–30, 2014 (Monday–Thursday) Building Bridges with Hindus in Diaspora. Dr. Atul Y. Aghamkar, OMSC senior mission scholar, South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, Bangalore, India, will discuss Hindu migrants’ beliefs, practices, and perceptions about Christianity, and suggest ways Christians might relate with Hindus. Cosponsored by Greenfield Hill Congregational Church, Fairfield, Connecticut. January 6–9, 2015 (Tuesday–Friday) Caribbean Encounters with Protestant Missions. Dr. Elmer Lavastida Alfonso, Second Baptist Church, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, considers how, since 1900, Cuba, Jamaica, and other nearby islands have encountered Protestant missions. January 13–16, 2015 (Tuesday–Friday) The Holy Spirit and Korea, North and South. Rev. Ben Torrey, The Fourth River Project and Jesus Abbey, Taebaek, Kangwon Do, South Korea, examines the impact of four generations of his family in Korea, beginning with evangelist R. A. Torrey’s sowing of seeds for revival. Cosponsored by United Church of Westville, New Haven, Connecticut. January 20–23, 2015 (Tuesday–Friday) Culture, Values, and Worldview: Anthropology for Mission Practice. Dr. Darrell Whiteman, The Mission Society, shows how one’s worldview and theology of culture affect cross-cultural mission. March 3–6, 2015 (Tuesday–Friday) Theological Formation for Integral Mission. Ms. Ruth Padilla DeBorst, OMSC senior mission scholar, International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation, San José, Costa Rica, examines the missional value of contextual theological practice that integrates faith with all of life. Cosponsored by Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. March 24–27, 2015 (Tuesday–Friday) Servant Mission in a Troubled World. Dr. Jonathan J. Bonk, OMSC executive director emeritus, examines theological, ethical, and missiological implications of political violence, human dislocation, economic inequity, and religious ideology as contexts for Christian life and witness. Cosponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church, New Haven, Connecticut. Overseas Ministries study Center (203) 624-6672 52 study@omsc.org Details: www.omsc.org/online International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 39, No. 1 that exist between Pentecostal mission and the broader Christian community. It considers emphases on church growth and church planting as a strong Pentecostal asset vis-à-vis the ecumenical focus on missio Dei. Several chapters, however, reveal an ecumenical consciousness within the Pentecostal movement. For example, the book devotes considerable attention to the theme of church and society, addressing questions of social justice and interreligious dialogue and considering the development of Pentecostal theologies of religion. By exploring such areas in global Pentecostal mission, the volume suggests a Pentecostal rapprochement toward the wider ecumenical movement. As the volume delineates hitherto marginalized areas of Pentecostal mission, it opens up fresh directions in Pentecostal studies; its insider perspective, which highlights variations in Pentecostal mission theology, will contribute to discussion of ecumenical praxis. Students as well as practitioners of mission will find much of value here. —Andreas Heuser Andreas Heuser is professor of non-European Christianity, with a focus on Africa, in the Faculty of Theology of the University of Basel, Switzerland. Mission Station Christianity: Norwegian Missionaries in Colonial Natal and Zululand, Southern Africa, 1850–1890. By Ingie Hovland. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xii, 263. €109 / $141. During the past thirty years, expanding scholarship on the history of Christianity in southern Africa has moved the focus of discussion away from AfricanEuropean confrontations, which preoccupied scholars during the anticolonial and antiapartheid struggles, toward more complex and nuanced views of the social changes that accompanied those conflicts. In doing so, scholars have often attempted a multidisciplinary approach, combining the historian’s concern for temporal specificity, individual agency, and political change with the anthropologist’s examination of broader cultural influences and different ways that people have conceptualized their experiences and surroundings. Though perhaps sometimes discordant in their multiple disciplinary emphases, the resulting studies have nevertheless greatly enriched our understanding of the important role that Christianity played in the evolution of African-European relations during the nineteenth century. Ingie Hovland’s Mission Station Christianity is a valuable contribution to that growing body of scholarship. Building on the work of anthropologists Jean and Please beware of bogus renewal notices. A genuine IBMR renewal notice will have a return address of Denville, NJ 07834 on the outer envelope, and the address on the reply envelope will go to PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-3000. Please e-mail ibmr@omsc.org or call (203) 624-6672, ext. 309, with any questions. Thank you. NEW MASTER OF ARTS IN THEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AT EASTERN UNIVERSITY THIS 11-MONTH PROGRAM PREPARES YOU TO TEACH, SERVE IN CROSS-CULTURAL CHRISTIAN MINISTRY, OR WORK IN AN INTERNATIONAL SETTING. • A faith-based approach to anthropology • Excellence in academics • Practical application Eastern University is a Christian university dedicated to faith, reason and justice. January 2015 • Preparation for doctoral programs • Complete the degree in one year Contact Dr. Eloise Meneses emeneses@eastern.edu 610.341.5953 Learn more at www.eastern.edu 1300 Eagle Road, St. Davids, PA 19087 53 Plan Your Summer Research Time at OMSC Efficiency to three-bedroom. For summer rates and reservations, e-mail a request with your choice of dates to Judy C. Stebbins, stebbins@OMSC.org overseas MInIstrIes study center www.omsc.org/summer CIRCULATION STATEMENT Statement required by the act of August 12, 1970, section 3685. Title 39, United States Code, showing ownership, management, and circulation of InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research. Published 4 times per year at 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Publisher: J. Nelson Jennings, Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Editor: J. Nelson Jennings, Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Senior Associate Editor, Dwight P. Baker; Managing Editor, Daniel J. Nicholas; Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511.The owner is Overseas Ministries Study Center, 490 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511. The known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding one percent or more of total amounts of bonds, mortgages or other securities are: None. Column A Average no. of copies each issue during preceding 12 months Total no. copies printed Paid circulation: sales through dealers, carriers, street vendors, and counter sales Mail subscriptions Total paid circulation Free distribution Total distribution Copies not distributed: office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing Returns from news agents Total Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation Column B Actual no. of copies of single issue published nearest to filing A 2,978 B 2,875 0 1,926 1,926 557 2,483 345 0 1,841 1,841 586 2,427 410 0 2,828 0 2,837 77.6% 75.9% I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete. (signed) J. Nelson Jennings, Editor John Comaroff and historians Norman Etherington, Paul Landau, and Elizabeth Elbourne, Hovland shifts from their study of “missionized” Africans to explore instead the “impact of the encounter on the missionaries themselves” (10). She focuses on small Christian communities founded and led by Lutheran missionaries of the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) during the mid-nineteenth century in the borderland between the British colony of Natal and the Zulu kingdom. Though her interest is apparently inspired in part by her own upbringing as a child of missionaries at one of those communities, Hovland’s study of the “social and material microcosm of the mission station” (20) is guided primarily by the fact that, rather than promoting the development of African-led congregations in African communities, as envisioned by many missionaries elsewhere in southern Africa, the NMS missionaries instead adopted a strategy of building Europeanrun outposts of “Christian civilization” in the midst of “heathen darkness.” In explaining how and why the NMS mission stations assumed that position, Hovland divides her book into chapters that consider in greater detail various aspects of the communities. After first describing the historical setting of the NMS missions, she examines the physical needs of the missionaries and the influence these needs had on the use of mission spaces. Next is a detailed analysis of “conversion” and the contradiction between Christian egalitarianism and colonial racism. Another chapter describes Zulu perceptions of the mission stations. The section ends with an overview of the main ways that Norwegian missionaries viewed their stations as European-run enterprises located between the British and the Zulu. The book continues with a chapter describing how the Anglo-Zulu wars brought the NMS into closer association with British colonial rule, and a final chapter summarizes how the mission stations shaped—and were shaped by—the missionaries’ “way of working out how to live Christianity in the world and to create an inhabitable Christian space” (233). While very well-written and wellreasoned, and adding Norwegians to a field of study generally dominated by British missionaries, Mission Station Christianity also treads a somewhat uneven path between anthropology and history. More comprehensive archival research including government records, newspapers, diaries, personal correspondence, and documents from other mission societies is arguably beyond the scope of an anthropological work, but the book’s recurring “Note on Method” interludes suggest that the author’s use of historical primary sources could have been incorporated more effectively. This historian found Hovland’s arguments to be most original and compelling when she moved beyond her dependence on published missionary reports to include other materials (e.g., 60–71, 87–91, 210–16, 220). Overall, however, Mission Station Christianity provides a valuable contribution to the study of mission history and the impact of European colonial conquest on Christianity in Africa. —Stephen Volz Stephen Volz is associate professor of history, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. Dissertation Notices Birdsall, S. Douglas. “Conflict and Collaboration: A Narrative History and Analysis of the Interface between the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and the World Evangelical Fellowship, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians, and the AD2000 Movement.” Ph.D. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Mission Studies/Middlesex University, 2013. Cochrane, Steve. “From Beit Abhe to Angamali: Connections, Functions and Roles of the Church of the East’s Monasteries in Ninth Century Christian-Muslim Relations.” Ph.D. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Mission Studies/Middlesex University, 2014. Mbusa Banga, Etienne. “A Critical Study of Leadership in the Anglican Church of the DRC: With Comparative Reference to Kimbanguist Models.” M.Phil. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Mission Studies/University of Wales, 2012. To search OMSC’s free online database of 6,300 dissertations in English, compiled in cooperation with Yale Divinity School Library, go to www.internationalbulletin.org/resources. Sage, Steven Brent. “Missio Dei and the Local Church: Case Studies in Pursuit of a Missional Ecclesiology for the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).” D.Miss. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller Theological Seminary, 2013. Serving God’s Servants Seminars for International Church Leaders, Missionaries, Mission Executives, Pastors, Educators, Students, and Lay Leaders January student seMInars on World MIssIon “Developing Your Christian Worldview” January 6–9, 2015 carIBBean encounters WIth Protestant MIssIons. Dr. Elmer Lavastida Alfonso, Second Baptist Church, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, considers how, since 1900, Cuba, Jamaica, and other nearby islands have encountered Protestant missions. $175. sPrIng 2015 February 24–27, 2015 for the cIty yet to coMe: an IntroductIon to MInIstry In an urBan World. Dr. Mark R. Gornik, representing the City Seminary of New York faculty team, asks, “What is taking place in the urban church? Are there particular patterns and practices? What direction does the Bible provide?” This course offers an introduction to theology, mission, and ecclesiology in a world of cities. $175. January 13–16, 2015 the holy sPIrIt and Korea, north and south. Rev. Ben Torrey, The Fourth River Project and Jesus Abbey, Taebaek, Kangwon Do, South Korea, examines the impact of four generations of his family in Korea, beginning with evangelist R. A. Torrey’s sowing of seeds for revival. Cosponsored by United Church of Westville, New Haven, Connecticut. $175. March 3–6, 2015 theologIcal forMatIon for Integral MIssIon. Ms. Ruth Padilla DeBorst, OMSC senior mission scholar, International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation, San José, Costa Rica, examines the missional value of contextual theological practice that integrates faith with all of life. Cosponsored by Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. $175. January 20–23, 2015 March 10–13, 2015 culture, values, and WorldvIeW: anthroPology for MIssIon PractIce. chrIstIanIty In aMerIca. Dr. Darrell Whiteman, The Mission Society, shows how one’s worldview and theology of culture affect cross-cultural mission. $175. Dr. Edith L. Blumhofer, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, introduces participants to the formative role Christianity has played throughout U.S. history. $175. March 17–18, 2015 MIssIonarIes In the MovIes. oMsc resIdent-led seMInar sessIons Dr. Dwight P. Baker, Overseas Ministries Study Center, utilizes both video clips and full-length feature films to examine the way missionaries have been represented in the movies over the past century. Cosponsored by The Evangelical Covenant Church, Chicago, Illinois. $175. OMSC residents, who are experienced missionaries, church leaders, and scholars from around the world, will lead morning and afternoon seminars on topics about which they have special concern, experience, and expertise. Check www.omsc.org/seminars for details. $95. January 26–30, 2015 Links to register for seminars and OMSC’s annual brochure are found online at www .omsc.org/seminars. For additional information, e-mail study@OMSC.org. For a FREE subscription to the InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research e-journal edition, go to www.internationalbulletin.org/register. Overseas Ministries study Center (203) 624-6672 New Haven, Connecticut www.omsc.org/seminars March 24–27, 2015 servant MIssIon In a trouBled World. Dr. Jonathan J. Bonk, OMSC executive director emeritus, examines theological, ethical, and missiological implications of political violence, human dislocation, economic inequity, and religious ideology as contexts for Christian life and witness. Cosponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church, New Haven, Connecticut. $175. April 7–10, 2015 ethnIcIty as gIft and BarrIer: huMan IdentIty and chrIstIan MIssIon. Dr. Tite Tiénou, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, works from first-hand experience in Africa to identify the “tribal” issues faced by the global church in mission. Cosponsored by Trinity Baptist Church, New Haven, Connecticut. $175. April 14–17, 2015 doIng oral hIstory: helPIng chrIstIans tell theIr oWn story. Ms. Michèle Sigg, Dictionary of African Christian Biography, shares skills and techniques for documenting mission and church history. Cosponsored by the U.S. Center for World Mission. $175. April 21–24, 2015 culture, InterPersonal and chrIstIan MIssIon. conflIct, Dr. Duane H. Elmer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, helps Christian workers strengthen interpersonal skills, resolve conflicts, and minimize cultural misunderstanding. Cosponsored by SIM USA. $175. May 5–8, 2015 sPIrItual reneWal In the MIssIonary coMMunIty. Rev. Stanley W. Green, Mennonite Mission Network, and Dr. Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates, blend classroom instruction and one-on-one sessions to offer counsel and spiritual direction for Christian workers. Cosponsored by Mennonite Mission Network. $175. Book Notes Ashley, J. Matthew, Kevin F. Burke, and Rodolfo Cardenal, eds. A Grammar of Justice: The Legacy of Ignacio Ellacuría. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014. Pp. xvi, 283. Paperback $25. Connor, Phillip. Immigrant Faith: Patterns of Immigrant Religion in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2014. Pp. x, 165. Paperback $22. In Coming Issues Progressive Pentecostalism, Development, and Christian Development NGOs: A Challenge and an Opportunity Bryant L. Myers Fensham, Charles. To the Nations of the Earth: A Missional Spirituality. Toronto: Clements Academic, 2013. Pp. viii, 173. Paperback $19.95. Embodying Memories: Early Bible Translations in Tranquebar and Serampore Daniel Jeyaraj Fountain, Daniel E. Health for All: The Vanga Story. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2014. Pp. xx, 214. Paperback $14.99. Transforming the Dualistic Worldview of Ethiopian Evangelical Christians Rich Hansen Gravelle, Gilles. The Age of Global Giving: A Practical Guide for Donors and Funding Recipients of Our Time. Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2014. Pp. xxi, 125. Paperback $12.49. Kureethadam, Joshtrom. Creation in Crisis: Science, Ethics, Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014. Pp. xi, 388. Paperback $50. The War in Syria and the Christians of the Middle East Mary Mikhael The Missional Heart of Member Care Kelly O’Donnell Mudge, Lewis S. We Can Make the World Economy a Sustainable Global Home. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Pp. xiii, 162. Paperback $18. Church-State Relationship: Three Case Studies from Contemporary China Peter Tze Ming Ng Nowell, David Z. Dirty Faith: Bringing the Love of Christ to the Least of These. Bloomington, Minn.: Bethany House, 2014. Pp. 188. Paperback $13.99. Cultural Past, Symbols, and Images in the Bemba Hymnal, United Church of Zambia Kuzipa Nalwamba Occhipinti, Laurie A. Making a Difference in a Globalized World: Short-Term Missions That Work. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Pp. 146. $40; paperback $20. Peppard, Christiana Z. Just Water: Theology, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2014. Pp. x, 230. Paperback $28. Reich, Simon, and Richard Ned Lebow. Good-Bye Hegemony! Power and Influence in the Global System. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2014. Pp. viii, 190. $95 / £65; paperback $24.95 / £16.95. Shenk, David W. Christian. Muslim. Friend: Twelve Paths to Real Relationship. Harrisonburg, Va.: Herald Press, 2014. Pp. 223. Paperback $14.99. Sinclair, John Henderson. Bandombele and Mama Bandombele of the Congo: The Story of My Missionary Uncle and Aunt. Bayport, Minn.: [Published by the author], 2014. Pp. xii, 407. Paperback $39.95. Wan, Enoch, and Elton S. L. Law. The 2011 Triple Disaster in Japan and the Diaspora: Lessons Learned and Ways Forward. Portland, Ore.: Institute of Diaspora Studies—USA, 2014. Pp. x, 117. Paperback $5.95. Wigg-Stevenson, Tyler. The World Is Not Ours to Save: Finding the Freedom to Do Good. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2013. Pp. 220. Paperback $16. “That Was the Beginning of Great Things at Miango”: Brakwa Tingwa and the Origins of Christianity in Miango, Nigeria, 1913–1936 Tim Geysbeek, Amos Koggie, and Zamfara Iveh In our Series on the Legacy of Outstanding Missionary Figures of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, articles about Thomas Barclay George Bowen Carl Fredrik Hallencreutz J. Philip Hogan Thomas Patrick Hughes Hannah Kilham Lesslie Newbigin Constance Padwick John Coleridge Patteson James Howell Pyke Pandita Ramabai George Augustus Selwyn Bakht Singh James M. Thoburn M. M. Thomas Harold W. Turner Johannes Verkuyl