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Another example could be that an unmarried boy and unmarried girl having sex is not in itself wrong because having sex is natural. But if the girl has not completed her rites de passage (her initiation), she is not entitled to have sex. If she does have sex, both the boy and the girl have broken a norm and will be persecuted for a public offence. Killing somebody is a serious offence, but not in a war between one village and another (as used to happen in pre-colonial times). Polygyny is sinful in the eyes of the Catholic Church and many others, but not in Africa. It has been accepted practice almost everywhere in Africa, was a social and economic institution and created a pact between two families. It was not an indication of a man's sexual drive, as was assumed by European church leaders. For the traditional African society, no wrong was done if a man married two wives, looked after them, took good care of them, respected them and had children by them. Neither the man nor his wives would have violated a social norm in such a case.
Evans-Pritchard heard his Nuer informants in Sudan speak about their grudges against the colonial administrators. It highlighted for him the gap between the emic views of right and wrong on the one hand and the perceptions of Europeans on the other.
He wrote as follows:
The native becomes convinced finally that the European is quite incapable of seeing the difference between right and wrong, between the proper use of a cultural weapon fully sanctioned by public opinion, such as white magic, and a heinous and cold blooded murder, such as the crime of black magic or sorcery.33 A different perspective The previous paragraphs may have given the impression that all missionaries acted in the same way. This was not the case. I did not conduct research or organized interviews to find out how many missionaries had adopted a perspective other than that of the official church when they were confronted with a pastoral situation that, in their view and in their conscience, justified a different approach. When I discussed with colleagues certain pastoral dilemmas that I encountered myself, I was told that it was not exceptional that a missionary might take a different viewpoint and decide not to reproduce the church's discourse but to transform it. Let me give three examples of my own experiences as a missionary in the Sefwi area of Ghana in the 1960s to illustrate this.
1. One day I was sent for by an old man. I knew him as an amiable and honest man who was always present in church services but was not baptized as he had two wives.
Now he wanted to see me because ‘I am old. I will soon die. I want to put my life on order, so that I may have a church burial when the time comes. I want to be baptized.' All I could answer was: ‘But you have two wives. Only if you dismiss one wife can I baptize you and bless your marriage, and can you have a church burial.' The man looked away, through the open door into the courtyard where he saw both his wives busy preparing dinner. He said: ‘What can I do? Both have cooked meals for me for so many, many years. How can I dismiss either of them? Whoever I send away will ask me why I am punishing her in this manner for the good care she has given me for so long?' I found myself in a dilemma: who on earth had decided that only monogamy had been allowed by God as a requirement for Holy Matrimony against the age-old practices of the whole of Africa? I looked at the old man, I saw the women in the courtyard, and I whispered: ‘Come to church tomorrow morning, I will baptize you and bless the marriage with your first wife.' I did not refer again to any dismissal of his other wife. In this situation I deliberately diverged from the Church's discourse. I decided to acknowledge the interests of the old man who wanted to be baptized but refused to dismiss his second wife, his loyal partner for so many years, as would have been required by the Church as a condition for baptism.
2. In the village of Attronsu lived an old man, Papa Kwamena Afena, who was much respected for his wisdom but perhaps even more so for the fact that, together with seven other age mates, he had carried a missionary from Tarkwa to the Sefwi area along bush paths in 1918, a distance of about 200 km. (The colonial government had not yet reached this area so there were no roads.) He was the area's first convert to the Catholic Church and became the founder of the Church, which is now a diocese with its own bishop and 25 Sefwi priests. He was also the first man in the area to enter Holy Matrimony. But then the problems started as his wife did not get pregnant. After almost two Evans-Pritchard (1931: 22).
years, the families of the couple met and decided that this had not been a marriage according to customary law: the woman was allowed to go back to her family and the man was free to marry again. This is what he did. But as the Catholic Church did not accept divorce, the second marriage could not be blessed in church. As a consequence, the couple lived in sin, could not receive Holy Communion and if either of them died, s/he could not be buried in sacred soil. I accepted the Church's viewpoint that the man was living in sin, even if, for the Sefwi community, the first marriage was not considered a marriage as it had not produced offspring. I identified with the Church's discourse and reproduced a social reality, which did not coincide with the observable reality. The man too was aware of his situation but never approached me to do anything about it. He accepted the Church' s verdict. I was aware that the death of the founder of the church (in the not too distant future) would be a moment of great sorrow and also of celebration for the Catholic community.34 If he died, while I was the priest-in-charge, I would find myself in a dilemma and this kept bothering me. My conscience would not allow me to make an exception for this man, regardless of his accomplishments in life. All I did was to hope that he would not pass away while I was still there. I was then transferred to another position and Papa Kwamena Afena died two years later. My successor gave him a magnificent Church burial. I decided to support the Church's perspective. However much I sympathized with the plight of the old man, I felt I could not have acted otherwise.
3. One day I was driving through a village with a flourishing Catholic community when I heard women wailing, which is a sign of a burial. I stopped and walked towards the house where I heard the noise. When I entered the compound, I saw the women in one room, surrounding a coffin in which a girl of about 18 was lying. She was a beautiful girl. She did not show any signs of an accident or of protracted disease. When I entered the room, the wailing stopped. I asked them what the cause of death had been.
They kept quiet, all of them. I realized immediately that they did not wish to answer my question. I realized too that they were hiding something from me and that this could mean only one thing: the girl had died as a result of an (illegal) abortion. I realized the dilemma I was in. If I asked any further questions and they answered me truthfully, I would not be allowed by Canon Law to give the deceased girl a Church burial. On the other hand, if I did not know what the cause of her death was, I would not be compromised if I buried her. I decided there and then what to do: I told the women (her mother, her aunts and other women of her abusua or maternal family) that I would provide the burial they wanted for their daughter and bury her in sacred soil. And that is what I did.
Again, I deliberately diverged from the official discourse of the Church. I decided that applying the Church's perspective and refusing to give her a burial in sacred soil was not the right option. After all, whatever the mother and the relatives thought of abortion, they were now mourning the loss of a daughter who had died unintentionally and, in their eyes, unnecessarily. From my perspective, the mother and the relatives had All over Africa, the day of one's death is considered the most important day in their life. The funeral and burial are therefore important occasions in the life of a community. See: de Witte (2001).
already been ‘punished' by her death. Applying the Church's law would only increase their sorrows.
Successful or not?
The process of the planting of the church belongs to the past. Has the planting been successful or not? According to some theologians, the concept of Plantatio Ecclesiae was successful in the sense that it established the Catholic Church firmly in regions where a different church construction, from their perspective, would have been impossible. It was also inherent in the theory of Plantatio Ecclesiae that after local churches had been established, their running would be left to local clergy and bishops.35 This ideal did not, however, materialize until the second half of the 20th century. Within the concept, a great deal of emphasis was placed on organizational and statistical aspects. In other words, its success could be measured by the number of baptisms, catechumens, churches and catechists, Catholic marriages and burials and native priests and bishops it recorded. ‘Missionary work may be called successful, because the torch of the gospel, previously introduced by missionaries from abroad, has now been taken over by local Christians in the movement of the Third Church.'36
The theologian Hans Kng disagreed with this optimistic and predominantly organizational view:
Following the example of Paul, the church became Greek with the Greek world and barbarian with the European barbarian world. However, it has not become Arabic with the Arabs, black with the blacks, Indian with the Indians, or Chinese with the Chinese. Viewed as a whole, the Church of Jesus Christ has remained a European-American affair.37 We are touching here on the fundamental issue of what constitutes the essence of a Church. Was it a matter of the Church being introduced and planted ‘from the outside' and the way it created a medium through which Africans were invited to convert from ‘paganism' to the true Church? Or was the issue the way European church officials perceived conversion from paganism to Christianity, thus accepting the way in which Africans perceived their conversion. After all, for them it was not only a religious conversion but also the road to a new way of life or a new civilization. ‘For the Peki converts [in S.E.Ghana] 'civilisation' basically meant the consumption of Western goods and the 'Europesation' of their lifestyle, for the missionaries it implied the modification of outward behaviour.'38 For missionaries, even gods and spirits (trowo) were not a fictitious product of superstition but genuine accomplices of the Devil and they preached this view on evil in their sermons. Missionaries thus continuously diabolized the abonsam (spirits) that, in the belief of the Ewe, were both beneficial and malicious.39 In 1961, the Catholic Church in Ghana numbered 6 dioceses and the same number of bishops, of whom one – the Archbishop – was a Ghanaian. Missionaries considered it their task to now make themselves redundant. Only a few dozen priests were Ghanaians, the others were expatriates. In 1910 Ghana had 19 dioceses, of which 4 were archdioceses and all were headed by Ghanaians. Ghana had two cardinals.
Verstraelen (1980: 520).
Kng (1961: 14).
Meyer (1995: 92).
Meyer (1994: 266).
Here again is an example of the way missionaries in all Churches misunderstood or misinterpreted the internal values of an indigenous African religion. One might also argue that missionaries were eager to claim that the Ewe religion was of the Devil's making so that they could explain it as a justification for their own missionary work.40 We can therefore conclude that the success of the Plantatio Ecclesiae was not unambiguous. Between 1900 and 1950, missionaries introduced Eurocentric Church concepts and a Eurocentric Canon Law and established an organization that was a replica of European Church organization.
There was little regard for indigenous religious or social practices that were a priori considered incompatible with Church doctrine.41 Missionaries were confronted with dilemmas due to conflicts between Church laws and customary laws. If they obeyed Church laws, as they had sworn to do before they were ordained priests, they would disavow customary laws, some of which appeared in fact to be good and were respected and obeyed by millions of Africans, men and women. If missionaries honoured customary laws, they would go against the explicit orders of the Catholic Church and commit a sin. On more than one occasion, I found myself in such a dilemma and did not always obey Church law.
4.1.4 Modes of appropriation
Appropriation is understood as the active reception or adoption of the cultural goods that are being presented, thereby attributing a new significance to them.42 In the encounter between (European) missionaries and (African) converts to Christianity, research has been done on the way in which Africans have appropriated Christian concepts, rituals, objects and other ‘goods'.43 Appropriation takes place by attributing a new meaning in the specific context of the user of the goods. It is the user who produces his/her own personal or collective meaning and attributes this meaning to a ‘good'. In the context of this book, I am looking at the position of missionaries in their encounters with indigenous African religious and social values. I have already indicated that missionaries ‘came to teach, not to learn'. They came to convey, perhaps even to impose, a message that they described as the ‘glad tidings of the Gospel'. However, Africans were not always passive recipients of this message. They had their own values, norms, rituals and customs that they cherished and were not willing to give up. These encounters, which at times became confrontations between two entirely different cultures and religions, made missionaries choose strategies that would enable them to effectively convert pagans.
Meyer (1994: 271).
By criticizing missionaries in Africa, I may give the impression that such statements applied to all the missionaries there. This is not the case. I know from experience that most of the missionaries were genuinely committed to their work and to their faith. I am not questioning their good intentions but I am being critical of certain aspects of their behaviour as that behaviour, even if not intentionally, had a negative effect on the people among whom they were working or was harmful for the good work of the Church.
Frijhoff (1997: 100); Frijhoff (2003: 13); Weimann (1983: 474); Roth (1988) and Cook (1933). See also Chapter 1.3.1.
Okorocha (1987: 263); Frijhoff (1997: 101); Fabian (1986) and Meyer (1994; 1995).
These strategies can be described in terms of appropriations. I speak of appropriations in the plural here. Missionaries in particular developed several such strategies during the 1900-1950 period in which they showed their attitudes towards indigenous African religions and particularly objects with power. There are no indications that the different strategies or attitudes can be associated with specific groups of missionaries or with a specific period in which one strategy was considered stronger than another. I tend to think that individual missionaries acted according to specific strategies.
I distinguish below three different strategies, each with its own peculiar mode of appropriation.
Objects with power are idols When Europeans first arrived in Africa, they were confronted with local customs and rituals. I have already quoted Olfert Dapper's apparently unbiased observations of minkisi.44 However, the majority of descriptions of African customs and rites by Europeans sound negative and narrate how missionaries destroyed objects with power (fetishes or idols). This confrontational and, at times, aggressive attitude can be observed over the centuries, not only on the part of missionaries and colonial authorities but also on the part of Africans themselves. One category of objects with power that has fallen victim to aggression are minkisi. (see Figure 56) There is a well-documented account of the battle between Affonso (1456-1542 or 1543), who was a staunch Catholic, and his brother who was a pagan. Affonso's army was guided by a ‘white female figure' and he defeated his brother, became king and ordered all his minkisi to be burned.45 The Kongo Kingdom was much reduced in size between 1850 and 1860. When King Nerico Lunga came to power, he blamed the Minkisi for the troubles and ordered that all of them be destroyed. The campaign was followed by a period of ‘peace of the royal throne'.46 But later, in 1890, a movement called Kioka (burning) collected all the minkisi and burned them in an attempt to restore morality.
The rise of Kimbanguism in the 1920s again resulted in the burning of Minkisi. Its founder was able to persuade the last of the banganga that a greater power than theirs was available in the person of Jesus Christ. Minkisi to him were ‘evidence of selfserving attempts to improve one's lot at the expense of others, morally similar to witchcraft itself and a threat to public order'.47 The remaining minkisi were burned, destroyed or purchased by Europeans.
The Prophet Simon Kibangu appeared on the scene in 1921, performed miracles in the name of Jesus and fiercely opposed witchcraft and fetishism. ‘See how all these villages hastened to abandon their fetishes; see all the roads littered with fetishes of all kinds. People confessed their sins. Drums were broken, dancing forsaken,'48
– – –Father Pierre Knops from the SMA was a missionary among the Senufo in northern Ivory Coast and was later active as a propagandist in the Netherlands, speaking in
churches and at mission exhibitions. One of his texts from 1937 reads as follows:
The all-encompassing Kanga- and Porro Cult [a so-called secret society of the Senufo] was to me the sad proof of a deeply pitiable paganism, by which a considerable part of this people still is weighed down. The brutal cruelties, the satanic faces, the disgusting, ingrained abuses, both bodily and spiritually, formed as many indictments, and provided a sharply realistic view on what ‘mission' in fact means.49 Knops (1937: 19). This author's translation. The original Dutch text reads: ‘Het gehele samenstel van Kagba- en Porrocultus was mij een treurig bewijs van het diep-medelijdenswaardig heidendom, waaronder het overgroote deel van dit volk nog gebukt gaat. De onmenselijke wreedheden, de satanische tronies, de afschuwelijke, ingeroeste wantoestanden naar geest en lichaam vormden even zoveele aanklachten en gaven een fel-realistische kijk op hetgeen 'missie' eigenlijk betekent.'
– – –Another negative report was by Clark, who wrote: ‘Les idoles paennes taient particulirement dangereux, car selon l'opinion de l'Eglise primitive, elles n'taient pas seulement de sculpture profanes, mais aussi le sjour des demons'.
The dogmatic position that the Catholic Church took at the beginning of the 20th century and was laid down in Extra ecclesiam nulla salus did not leave much room for discussion on the values of indigenous African religions. It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that missionaries ridiculed indigenous cults as part of their general condescending attitude towards Africans that was common among Europeans in Africa.
Rev. G.T. Basden was a British missionary in the Church of England who worked among the Ibo for about 35 years in the first part of the 20th century. He wrote two
books about the Ibo. The following is from the preface to his first book:
The black man himself does not know his own mind. He does the most extraordinary things and cannot explain why he does them. He is not controlled by logic; he is the victim of circumstance, and his policy is largely one of drift.50 Rattray, who worked as a government anthropologist among the Ashanti in Ghana in the 1920s and 1930s, conducted extensive research on Ashanti culture and religion. Yet he did little to alter the negative views that many missionaries had towards indigenous religions and objects with power. He may in fact have provided missionaries and officials with the tools required to eradicate practices in which asuman played a role. As these objects were often used in witchcraft activities, witchcraft also had to be suppressed, according to European church leaders and colonial officers.
Public pressure in Congo against magic and witchcraft practices has been so strong and effective in recent decades that no one has dared to admit that they were a nganga a n'kisi, even if others called him/her by that term. Instead, the secret nganga explains that s/he administers ‘traditional herbal medicine', a dexterity he ‘learned from his grandmother'. He calls the medicines min'ti (herbs), makaya (leaves) or bilongo, but not minkisi.51 There may have to be a caveat here. I have quoted Father Knops and his text and several others he wrote present a negative image of Africans. I knew him personally and I am inclined to nuance these views. His ambivalent views on indigenous African religions may be considered symptomatic of those of many missionaries at the time. Father Knops worked among the Senufo in Ivory Coast, arriving there in 1922. He was stationed at Sinematiali, the ancient capital of the Senufo, and became acquainted with the traditional leaders and managed to gain their confidence. He not only learned the local language but also took a great interest in their traditions, among others the Porro society. (see Figure 57) He was allowed to attend certain secret rituals, such as initiation ceremonies, and through his knowledge of the Senufo culture was able to correct the prejudiced views of French government officials who were determined to eradicate certain of the Senufo's practices that they considered incompatible with French notions of civilization. The result of his actions was that, after he left for a vacation in the Netherlands in 1926, he received a message from the colonial administration that his presence in Ivory Coast was no longer required.
What were Father Knops's personal convictions regarding the Senufo people that he so admired and held in such high esteem, even though he criticized some of their character traits? It seems to me that, while working as a missionary, he showed respect for the Senufo. Knops gives evidence of having good insight into the religion and culture of the Nafarra. ‘Religion is so intertwined with their lives and society that its disappearance would mean the disintegration of the tribe'.52 He offers inside information about the secret society called Porro, its internal organization, its position in society, its initiation ceremonies and its secrets. This is all the more remarkable as the Porro society would not admit Europeans to its meetings and the colonial government did everything it could to abolish the society.
Basden (1921: 14).
Andersson (1968: 133).
Knops (1937:23) He took such an interest in their cultural and religious traditions that the French colonial government did not allow him to return to Ivory Coast after his home leave. But much later when working as a propagandist in the Netherlands, he had a different mandate. He had to persuade his readers and visitors to missionary exhibitions that they needed to support the SMA fathers in West Africa who were working under harsh circumstances surrounded by pagans and were being accosted by fetish priests. If this assessment is correct, we could say that Knops, while working as a propagandist in the Netherlands, appropriated the Senufo culture and religion in order to make them look like idol worshippers. He appropriated them and attributed a new meaning to them (i.e.
one of idolatry and superstition) in an attempt to persuade Dutch visitors to missionary exhibitions and the readers of his articles to support missionary activities in West Africa.
We have already discussed Father Bittremieux's contribution to our knowledge of the Yombe through his study of minkisi. He appears to have had a genuine interest in minkisi and their role in the community but is known to have actively encouraged their burning and destruction by converts. In accounts of these burnings, Bittremieux talks of the ‘struggle of the true religion against the powers of darkness'. He calls the success of these events ‘our victory', describing it as follows: ‘The evil doers are afraid, the good guys are becoming braver, and those who doubted appear to be taken in by the true faith'.53 It is not immediately clear why some missionaries showed such contradictory behaviour. Hein Vanhee, the head of collections at the Tervuren Museum, feels that missionaries were pragmatic in their attempts to reach their goals but, on the one hand, they showed an interest in local cultures because of their curious customs or perhaps out of some nostalgic feeling for the simple life in a rural community. Their information was able to help the colonial government with establishing its rule. Their curiosity may also have been prompted by the strategic reason of ‘getting to know your enemy'. At the same time, they remained convinced that evil practices, such as idolatry, had to be eradicated.54 Here we arrive at the issue of appropriation. To justify their presence in Africa and their activities among Africans, missionaries and the congregations to which they belonged presented a picture of Africa to Catholics in churches in Europe and visitors to missionary exhibitions, but these did not, in many instances, coincide with the facts.
Missionaries depicted Africa as being idolatrous, superstitious and primitive, and in need of civilization and conversion to Christianity. In other words, they appropriated African religions to serve their own agenda: collecting funds for further missionary activities and inviting young men to become missionaries.
Objects with power are helpful Another mode of appropriation appears to accept African indigenous religions as an existing situation that needed to be altered to create a Christian community. Missionaries with this point of view rejected the use of force. They did not destroy shrines and temples or fight ‘the others' but tried to bring about the wanted changes ‘from within'.
Bittremieux (1930: 44-54).
Vanhee, Personal communication, January 2014 For that purpose, they searched the indigenous religions for ‘entrances' through which their own Christian doctrines could be introduced and accepted by Africans. They learned the local language, tried to adjust to the daily life of villagers but, most of all, they appropriated existing religious concepts in order to carefully replace them with Christian concepts.
They looked for existing concepts within indigenous African religions that could be appropriated. They had learned about the multitude of ‘small gods' in African religious beliefs and knew that not all of them were of equal power. Missionaries tried to construct a pantheon, in which a hierarchy of ‘supernatural beings' became manifest. The most powerful of these beings was interpreted as the Creator God. I will argue that this is how the concept of a pantheon and of a Creator God came about.55 The existing literature shows that many indigenous religions in Africa acknowledge the existence of a Creator God that the Ashanti call Nyame, the Yoruba Oludumare, the Kapsiki Sala and the Ibo Chi. Without any in-depth analysis of the meanings of these concepts, the early missionaries assumed that indigenous concepts could be equated to the Christian notion of the Almighty God. The process of appropriation by missionaries had a lasting effect on African converts who, in turn, became convinced that the newly acquired Christian concepts of a Creator God had been their own (indigenous) view of God long before the arrival of the white man. In other words, we observe here a double appropriation. Once a pantheon had been established, correctly or otherwise, not only the position of a Creator God was assured but also those of ‘small gods' that could then be considered idols.
Early missionaries among the Ibo in Nigeria found it difficult to identify the most powerful god that they could introduce as the Creator God. In fact, the Ibo were a society in which all central authority was absent, not only in social matters but also in religious matters. The Anglican missionary Basden, with a background in Victorian England and a theological training, was unaware of the absence. ‘There is a distinct recognition of a Supreme Being – beneficient in character – who is above every other spirit, good or evil.'56According to him, the Ibo believed in a heaven and earth, in good and evil spirits, and thought that rewards and punishments were meted out by God according to merit. He did not substantiate on these claims but considered Ikenga as the most universal of the household gods.
In his second major work on the Ibo, which was published in 1938 under the (rather long) title Niger Ibos: A Description of the Primitive Life, Customs, and Animistic Beliefs, etcetera, of the Ibo People of Nigeria by One, Who for Thirty Five Years, Enjoyed the Privilege of Their Intimate Confidence and Friendship, Basden appears to be aware that his prolonged stay among the Ibo had changed a number of his ideas, as he admonishes students to ‘sublimate' their opinions and keep their ‘pre-knowledge' in reserve.
Yet, when he explains the religious concepts of the Ibo, he repeats his 1921 views that the Ibo had a Supreme Being and that they knew of an equivalent to the Devil: Ekwensu who was ‘the master spirit who exercises lordship over all agents of wickedness'. The This concept is discussed in Chapter 4.2.4.
Chapter 4.2.
4 discusses the notion of Chi among the Ibo.
Supreme God was called Chukwu, who was head of the pantheon with so-called ‘small gods'. Ikenga was considered a ‘small god'.
Among the early researchers of Ikenga were two missionaries: Sidney Smith, a former Secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and G.T. Basden, a minister in the Church of England. Smith wrote his PhD on the Igbo people based on ethnographic material that he or others had collected and on existing publications. His account of Ikenga is short, but in contradistinction to existing opinion (that Ikenga is a juju or must be associated with magic or the ancestors), he offers a more positive view of Ikenga, calling it ‘God of strength and good luck'.57 During the annual festival in Ikenga's honour, licentiousness is rampant, according to Basden, who called the festival devil worship of a modified nature. When he speaks of Ikenga, he admits that he has no clear idea as to its emic meaning but calls ikenga ‘a god', ‘a fetish' and ‘a spirit'. Yet he believes, as he did in 1921, that ikenga belongs to the beneficiary powers of the Ibo.
Voice zombie mac os. Many, if not most, Ashanti and Fanti accept a hierarchically structured pantheon with Nyame or Nyankopon as the Supreme Being and the asuman at the lowest level.58 They probably arrived at this view with the help of early missionaries and other Europeans who placed the phenomenon of the asuman in the lowest rank in the cosmology because they found asuman incompatible with their own spiritual categories. Missionaries had a tendency to equate the samanfo (the ancestors) with the saints and the abosom (small gods) with the angels but had no comparable category for the asuman. Secondly, they found the asuman repulsive and thus saw them as proof of the primitive and backward state in which the natives lived.
Father Leo Brouwer, an SMA missionary among the Ewe of Ghana in the 1940s and 1950s, wrote that the Ewe acknowledged a supreme God who they call Mawu. Brouwer had detailed knowledge of local customs, family structures and the religious concepts of the Ewe. He also devoted room in his manuscript to objects with power (which he called fetishes) and the rituals they played a role in. In Ewe religion, there are heavenly gods and earthly gods, with the latter called trowo, which Brouwer translated as fetishes. The most important among them are Dente, Yewe, Afa, Tigaree, Kunde and Atingli.
For the Ewe, a magic object or dzoka (medicine) can be changed into an earthly god (tro), while the possessor of the object becomes a tronua (diviner). In any case, the object must prove that it possesses an unknown power that shows that it has been earmarked as a lodging by a supernatural power.59 This approach or strategy meant that missionaries observed the existence of numerous individual spirits without any interdependence and altered them into a hierarchical construct with a supreme god, saints (that can be compared to the ancestors) and angels (that are similar to the minor spirits). This process is called appropriation. By so doing, they created inroads for their own theological doctrines and objects with power became useful in explaining the Christian concepts of God and the Devil, the relationship between God and angels and saints, and the relationship between God and man.
Smith (1929).
This issue will be discussed in Chapter 4.2.4 Brouwer (1952: 59).
Objects with power are functional For the third mode of appropriation, the research by Father Bittremieux, a Belgian missionary in Congo in the early years of the 20th century, is relevant. He conducted fieldwork among the Mayombe, especially on Minkisi figures, and acquired a large collection of minkisi figures from the Mayombe and shipped them to the museum at the University of Louvain. The extraordinary aesthetic quality of this collection was enhanced by the fact that Bittremieux documented each object carefully. As he spoke Biyombe fluently, he was able to gather relevant information about the objects from the horse's mouth. At the same time, Father Bittremieux wrote that the natives took recourse to spirits but that ‘this recourse to spirits and their banganga, diviners or quacks, was not their religion, it was not the worship of supernatural beings, but the baseness and deep moral decadence'.60 Bittremiex identified dozens of minkisi figures, each with its specific name and function, i.e. the effect a particular nkisi would have if called upon by a nganga or a believer. It could cause sleeping sickness, cure children with a swollen stomach or punish thieves.61 Bittremieux's research was later instrumental in the study of minkisi by anthropologists. As far as I know, he is the first scholar to claim that minkisi were not in themselves religious objects, even if they functioned in a religious context. The argument presented in this book is that not only minkisi but all (or almost all) objects with power are not intrinsically religious. Unlike missionaries who used objects with power to compose hierarchical religious constructs of a Creator God, with spirits or minor gods as the lowest of them (jujus), Bittremieux rejected this approach because it ‘was not their religion'. Nevertheless, from his remarks that their ‘recourse to spirits' was ‘the baseness and moral decadence', he agreed with other missionaries that these people needed to be civilized and converted to Christianity. He did not say that objects with power were idols, as missionaries did who worked from the first appropriation, but he used their lack of civilization as a motive for converting them to Christianity: a third mode of appropriation.
A comparable position was taken by Father Leo Brouwer, working among the Ewe in Ghana in the 1940s and 1950s He had an interest in the habits and customs of the ‘uneducated' Ewe people and put his observations on paper in 1952.62 In the introduction, he describes his own position as follows:
Mikes garden simulator 2015 platinum edition mac os. First of all, we civilized people have the duty to accept a fundamental equality of the negro, the human equality, which must carry any further differences in culture and problems. The Ewe negro will call an amiable, helpful white man Enye ame (he is a human being), while he will call the ever commanding, white master menye ame o (he is not a human being).63 The Ewe had properties that are not sympathetic to Europeans, according to
Brouwer:
Pride, bragging, affectation and vanity are natural virtues to the Ewe (..) They form a counterweight against his psychotic fear for all sorts of threats and dangers.' (..) As a first class materialist and easy Bittremieux (1942: 51).
Chapter 2.2.
1 gives more examples of Bittremieux's research.
The manuscript was not published.
Brouwer (1952: 7).
going opportunist the black man does not strive after the ‘good', but rather after the extra stroke of unexpected luck. As the morality of the Ewe is that of self interest, he cares little for feelings of love, empathy, trust and gratitude. They are present, undoubtedly, but their growth is hampered by fears and so many other obscure factors.64 Brouwer does not in any way challenge the validity of missionary work, implying that he considered such work to be justified and useful.
The Methodist missionary, Rev. Dennett, worked among the Kongo and the Vili (he uses the old term Bavili) in Congo at the beginning of the 20th century at a time when the colonial administration was engaged in a campaign to eradicate cults associated with minkisi as it was convinced that they constituted sources of ‘native sedition'. Although Denett was aware of the social and religious importance of cult objects, he actively participated in a campaign to eradicate the cults and the objects. He wrote that the word Kici (‘the mysterious inherent quality in things that causes the Bavili to fear and respect') was translated by early missionaries as ‘holy', while he himself describes it as ‘evil', basing his views on what people in his environment told him: Kici was a fetish in his view and he described the cult of Kici as Ndongoism. Dennett lists at least 33 major types of nkicikici, ‘those personal amulets serving protective purposes alone'.65 Dennett described the functional qualities of these objects with power but appears to view them as inherently religious. He justifies the missionary work as the battle against these evil practices and sources of ‘native seduction'. He too appropriated the phenomenon of minkisi and attributed a new Christian meaning to it.
4.2 The anthropological perspective4.2.1 Anthropologists in a colonial context
The process of pacification, as colonial governments called it, was usually accompanied by the force of superior gunpowder and brutal oppression. The introduction of colonial rule did not go without a hitch. Many ethnic groups (which in those days were called ‘tribes') opposed the imposition of foreign laws and the loss of their freedom and identity. Administrators did not always understand them or had misconceptions about them.
In some cases, force was applied to subdue these ‘unruly tribes', but the result was that the natives put up even greater resistance. In such circumstances, colonial administrators called on anthropologists to study the situation and report back to the authorities so that appropriate action could be undertaken.
This request by the colonial administration was welcomed by the anthropological community. At the beginning of the 20th century, the conviction was growing that only professional anthropologists were able to conduct research in a responsible manner as they were aware of the theoretical problems in the subject they were investigating, knew the kind of information required to solve them and they alone were able to put themselves in a position where it could be acquired. This was a break with previous practice where anthropologists stayed in their ivory towers at universities and relied heavily on information provided by others returning from Africa. It was a break too with another Brouwer (1952: 34.
Dennett (1906: 85).
th phenomenon from the 19 century, namely the search for one's own pre-history and the emphasis on one's own origins, the result of which was that the ‘other' was not studied for his/her own history or own sake. Anthropologists had participated in these searches too. Now, at the beginning of a new century, a shift in paradigm was taking place: anthropologists were starting to take a genuine interest in the ‘other'. And following initiatives by Malinowski, who had done fieldwork among the Tobriand Islanders, they were eager to accept requests from the colonial authorities as the latter provided the funds to support fieldwork that, in turn, offered the researcher the prospects of a successful career in academia.
Fieldwork was a new adventure and one for which new conventions had to be developed. For Evans-Pritchard, the anthropologist in the field had to live among the natives and put him/herself on a level with them, as far as he can like one of themselves. Unlike the administrator and the missionary, who, living out of the native community in mission stations or government posts, had mostly to rely on what a few informants told them.66 But, while associating himself closely with the natives he was studying, the anthropologist had to keep an intellectual distance from the same people in order to remain independent in his judgements. This approach has become known as ‘participant observation'.
Evans-Pritchard spent a year among the Nuer in Sudan in the 1930s as a government anthropologist. He worked under difficult circumstances as the Nuer, who were feared for their belligerent nature (see Figure 58), distrusted him and opposed every form of interference by foreigners and foreign institutions. But Evans-Pritchard came to conclusions that would have been difficult to conceive in the previous century when it was commonly assumed that Africans were savages: ‘The Nuer are undoubtedly a primitive people by the usual standards of reckoning, but their religious thought is remarkably sensitive, refined, and intelligent. It is also highly complex.'67 Evans-Pritchard's research on the Nuer will be discussed later as it is considered the pioneering study of what would be called ‘symbolic or interpretative anthropology'.
Critics have rebuked anthropology for having been the ‘handmaid' of colonial rule.
They have also questioned the academic independence of the anthropologist in the field if his/her research was financed by the colonial administration. Turner was one who was critical of anthropologists: ‘Anthropologists, before independence, were 'apologists of colonialism' and subtle agents of colonial supremacy who studied African customs merely to provide the dominant white minority with information damaging the native interests but normally opaque to white investigation.'68 Evans-Pritchard who had been a government anthropologist when he did fieldwork
among the Nuer and the Azande, defended the role of the anthropologist in the field:
It is important to understand native opinion about black magic, not only for the anthropologist, but also for the colonial administrator and missionary, if they wish to show to the peoples whom they govern and teach that they understand their notions about right and wrong. The native does not so much distrust European justice and education as he despairs of the administrator and missionary ever underEvans-Pritchard (1951: 78).
Evans-Pritchard (1956: 311).
Turner (1971: 33).
standing, or attempting to understand, his point of view as expressed in laws and public opinion. This despair springs largely from the handling by Europeans of such matters as sorcery, with which both missionaries and administrators frequently have to deal.69
– – –From these observations, it becomes clear how much anthropologists in the field differed from missionaries working in the rural areas in Africa. As was shown earlier, certain missionaries, such as Father Bittremieux and others, did research on the indigenous religious cults of the people among whom they were working but their generally negative views of their religions and the people who practised them remained unchanged.
After saying that the natives took recourse to spirits, Father Bittrmieux wrote that:
‘this recourse to spirits and their banganga, diviners or quacks, was not their religion, it was not the worship of supernatural beings, but the baseness and deep moral decadence'.70 The missionary was able to describe recognizable properties of these Nkisi but Evans-Pritchard. (1931: 22).
Bittremieux (1942: 51).
failed to analyze them in the way Evans-Pritchard did. Evans-Pritchard lived among the Nuer for ‘only' one year but concluded that their religious thoughts were sensitive, refined and intelligent, which was a far cry from the missionaries' views of indigenous religious practices.
The differences between anthropology in the 19th century and the 20th century can be clearly seen below.
If many of the 19th century thinkers saw members of smaller-scale societies mired in superstition, ignorance, bliss, or folly, the personal connections forged in decent ethnographic fieldwork immediately deprived westerners of any illusions of intellectual or moral superiority (..) Thus the problem shifted from explaining the ostensibly irrational religious practices of others to understanding the nature of religious practices anywhere.71 Colonial governments developed policies based on how it was best to impose their rule on Africans. This was to be accomplished with as little opposition from the natives as possible. In this respect, the British introduced the system of Indirect Rule and, by adopting the policy, colonial governments presupposed that societies in Africa were coherent entities and that successful colonization could materialize if traditional societies were left untouched. They believed that their own administrative systems could simply be introduced and that it was their mandate to maintain society in its earlier functional state. The natives had to be persuaded to continue doing things as their forefathers had done them.72 The view that societies in Africa were coherent societies was the subject matter of a
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new theoretical discipline called functionalism that was spearheaded by Emile Durkheim. In explaining functionalism within the context of social anthropology, EvansPritchard wrote that:
[people] can make predictions, anticipate events, and lead their lives in harmony with their fellows because every society has a form or pattern which allows us to speak of it as a system, or structure, within which, and in accordance with which, its members live their lives. The use of the word structure in this sense implies that there is some kind of consistency between its parts (..) The people who live in any society may be unaware, or only dimly aware, that it has a structure. It is the task of the social anthropologist to reveal it.73 This description of his task touches on the fundamental quality of an anthropologist, namely to find out what the ‘other' thinks and believes, and what his basic concepts and ideals are, i.e. his emic account.
Apart from functionalism, other attempts were also made to explain indigenous African religions. One was a book that psychologist Carbeth Read published in 1920, in which he argued that magic was a product of emotional states, of desire, fear, hate and so forth, and he discussed magic and animism under the heading of ‘imagination beliefs'. Although the book did not receive much attention among anthropologists, his views continued to be popular, not least among missionaries. It had long been common practice among missionaries on leave, in sermons and talks about their missionary work The same applies to many missionaries who wrote about the customs of the Africans among whom they were working. Chapter 3 discussed some of these, such as Rev. Dennett (in Congo), Father Knops (Ivory Coast), G.T. Basden (Nigeria) and Father Brouwer (Ghana).
Janzen (1977: 76).
Evans-Pritchard (1951 [1971]: 19).
and at mission exhibitions, to describe Africans as ‘living in fear' and of living under the yoke of Satan.74 The message was, that only the glad tidings of the Gospel could redeem them.
These constructs were an attempt to understand primitive societies with the help of psychological concepts. Evans-Pritchard was aware of similar explanations of the Nuer
religion by European missionaries but disagreed with them:
For me this is an over-simplification and a misunderstanding. It is true that Nuer, like everyone else, fear death, bereavement, sickness, and other troubles, and that it is precisely in such situations that they so often pray and sacrifice.(..) But we cannot say that on that account their religion is simply one of fear, which is, moreover, a very complex state of mind, and one not easy to define or assess.
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