From Self-Reliant Churches to Self-Governing Communities:
From self-reliant churches to self-governing communities: comparing the indigenization of Christianity and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa
Michael D McGinnis[1]
Indiana University
[This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration in the CAMBRIDGE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS © 2007 Centre of International Studies; CAMBRIDGE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS is available online at: . The final version of this article is scheduled for publication in the Sept. 2007 issue.]
Abstract Christian missionaries, especially from Anglo-American Protestant denominations, have been remarkably successful in their effort to plant ‘self-propagating, self-supporting, self-governing’ churches throughout the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Today’s international non-governmental organizations and inter-governmental organizations engaged in development, humanitarian assistance, peace-building, and human rights resemble ‘secular missionaries’ spreading their gospel of democracy, good governance, peace, justice and sustainable development. This article investigates the extent to which today’s secular missionaries might learn from the indigenization of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. I conclude that an essential ingredient in the missionary strategy of evangelization is conspicuously absent in contemporary programs of development, democratization, or peace-building. In particular, the extensive efforts devoted by Protestant missionaries to the translation of their Biblical message into local languages and symbolic repertoires bear little resemblance to efforts to transplant Western ideals of universal human rights or the institutional templates of democratic governance first developed in the United States and Western Europe.
Introduction
Over the past several decades, a global network of government agencies, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been engaged in extensive campaigns to spread economic development, peace, democracy, and human rights throughout the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The primary focus of these efforts has shifted from an initial emphasis on large-scale infrastructure development to more recent concerns with promoting community self-governance via local ownership of sustainable development projects. Despite some notable successes, the results for the most part are disappointing (Lancaster 1999; Dichter 2003; Gibson et al 2005; Easterly 2006). Much of sub-Saharan Africa remains at war with itself, autocratic rule remains prevalent and a brutalizing poverty seems inescapable.
By the middle of the 19th century, a similar international campaign to spread Christianity to Africa (and other parts of the world) was in full swing. Denominational and cross-denominational missionary societies managed a far-flung network of organizations. Much of this effort, especially among missionaries from mainline Protestant churches, was inspired by a vision articulated most clearly by Rufus Anderson in his call for the establishment of ‘self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-governing’ churches (Williams 1990; Hanciles 2002; Harris 2004). To a remarkable extent, this goal was achieved before the end of the 20th century. Analysts writing about recent trends within global Christianity uniformly comment on the ever-growing importance of churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Robert 2000; Cox 2001; Jenkins 2003; Escobar 2003).
Christian missionaries ultimately succeeded in their efforts to implant vital and self-reliant churches. Members of the contemporary network of developmental, democratizing and peace-building organizations have yet to demonstrate a similar level of success. In this article I ask: Can today’s global network of ‘secular missionaries’ learn from the past successes of Christian missionaries?
I conclude that an essential ingredient in the missionary strategy of evangelization is conspicuously absent in contemporary programs of development, democratization or peace-building. Early missionaries, especially Protestants, devoted extensive effort to the translation of the Bible into local languages. This effort involved more than literal translation, since it was especially important to express the doctrines and rituals of the Christian faith in terms that would be readily understandable to potential converts (Nida 1952; Sanneh 1989). In this process of translation, Christian missionaries had to separate what they considered to be the universal message of the Gospel from the trappings of their own cultural traditions in order to help local converts realize their own understanding of the Christian faith. Although a clear separation between the message and its cultural manifestations was not always achieved, missionaries managed to deliver their core message of spiritual transformation.
In sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, new traditions of faith and practice have been added to Christiandom. Ironically, missionaries from mainline denominations succeeded in imparting or inspiring a fuller manifestation of the diversity of Christian experience than they may have originally intended. Missionary pioneers hoped new African churches would adopt the forms and practices familiar from Europe and the United States, but mission churches have had to compete with other religious movements, many of which emerged as a consequence of the shortcomings of Western forms of worship. Many among the diverse array of religious organizations known as AICs, for African Independent (or Initiated or Indigenous) Churches, as well as locally grounded neo-Pentecostal or charismatic churches, stress dynamic and enthusiastic forms of worship, including faith healing and other direct expressions of the Holy Spirit (Anderson 2001; Gifford 2004; Larbi 2002; Meyer 2004). It is now virtually impossible to generalize about Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa, except to say that many of these new churches continue to grow.
Despite some initial reluctance, these new churches have been accepted as legitimate manifestations of the Christian faith. As a consequence, Christianity itself now encompasses an even more diverse and vibrant repertoire of belief and action. Not all Christians welcome these new developments, and yet few can deny their importance for the future of their shared community of faith.
In contrast, today’s secular international activists demonstrate considerably less willingness to countenance local variations on their cherished templates of democratic institutions or human rights guarantees. This article highlights both the implications and limitations of the analogy between the historical experience of Christian missionaries and contemporary dilemmas facing the global network of developmental, democratizing and peace-building organizations.
Secular activists may cringe at the very idea that they could learn anything positive from Christian missionaries, who share so many ties to the disgraced legacy of Western imperialism. Yet the very fact that they have lasted long enough for sceptical analysts to become aware of their existence, makes out an at least prima facie case that the religious traditions these missionaries spread must have been sustainable. Furthermore, Christianity as a whole manifests viable and robust mechanisms of governance, or else Christendom would have long since collapsed into total incoherence. At the very least, scholars and activists concerned with sustainable development and self-governance should entertain the possibility that they might learn something useful from the experience of religious individuals and the faith-based organizations they construct and maintain.
The remainder of this article explores potential explanations for the contrasting outcomes achieved by secular activists and Christian missionaries. After setting up the puzzle by identifying the many properties shared in common by these two groups, several potential explanations are critiqued as incomplete. Finally, more substantial differences in strategy and implementation are highlighted, and their lessons for contemporary policy examined.
Similarities between Christian and secular missionaries
The goals of 19th century Christian missionaries and volunteers in today’s NGOs may seem fundamentally at odds, but both groups share a common motivation, namely, to help disadvantaged peoples in distant cultures, even at considerable risk to their own lives and safety. Both groups have sought to share what they consider to be the foundation of their own good fortune. In the former case, it is the Gospel message of spiritual redemption; in the latter case, modern institutions of economic development and democratic governance. Both groups of visionaries and reformers have aimed to protect vulnerable people from the ravages of natural disaster, political repression and economic exploitation.
The humanitarian impulse has long found expression in both religious and secular forms. In the heyday of colonialism, missionaries engaged in the same sorts of humanitarian relief or health care that is now so widely provided by international NGOs. Education has always been a centrepiece of both missions and of development projects.
Although many missionaries saw the delivery of social services as practical application of their faith, their primary purpose was to spread the gospel to unbelievers. Proselytism has been a core component of the Christian faith since its origins, and this goal has inspired an ever-changing array of responses (Neill 1986; Sanneh 1989; Walls 1996). Amidst this diversity, one particular goal is remarkably similar to contemporary rhetoric about the need for aid recipients to take “ownership” of development projects or newly established institutions of democratic governance.
According to the American Rufus Anderson and the Englishman Henry Venn, the ultimate goal of the missionary enterprise is the planting of local churches that can become ‘self-propagating, self-supporting and self-governing’. This widely-influential ‘three-self’ vision inspired several generations of missionaries, especially those sent out by Anglo-American mainline Protestant denominations during the 19th and early 20th centuries (Anderson 1988; Porter 2002; Robert 2002). Foreign missionaries played the essential role of first introducing the gospel into a region and translating that message into the local languages. It was presumed that doing so would lead to a significant number of native converts to Christianity. Eventually these converts would grow in the faith and become capable of leading their own indigenous churches. As Adrian Hasting expounds:
The task of the foreign missionary is to go where there is as yet no local Church in order to establish one. Once a native Church is functioning, he can and should move on. A self-governing Church is to be followed by the ‘euthanasia’ of the mission .... Once a self-supporting, self-governing, self-extending Church exists within a society, ‘a native Church under Native Pastors and a Native Episcopate’ as Venn described it in 1858, it is the duty of the foreign missionary either to advance to ‘the regions beyond’ or to integrate as some sort of auxiliary worker within the native Church. Until the middle of the century, Protestant missionaries had hardly at all thought in such terms; from then on they frequently did so, even if in many a case they remained deeply reluctant to implement the concept in practice. (Hastings 1994, 293–294)
This concluding caveat merits emphasis. In many ways, individual missionaries reflected biases inherent in the imperialistic project. Church leaders routinely expressed paternalistic or even racist attitudes. Despite the rhetorical goal of fostering fully self-reliant churches, in reality, few native Africans were accepted into even low-level leadership positions. The unexpectedly rapid spread of political independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s caught most mission churches unprepared to make a similar transition in their own organizations. Eventually, however, all mission or mainline churches transferred authority to native bishops and other church leaders.
Brian Stanley concludes that this widespread failure to live up to the ideals articulated by Anderson and Venn ‘should be sought not so much in the influence of late Victorian racism (though that was clearly a factor) as in the institutional dynamics of missionary societies that had become large, sophisticated and partly self-absorbed institutions’ (Stanley 2004, 72). This reluctance no doubt increased the comparative appeal of AICs, in which Africans could minister to their fellow African Christians in ways they deemed more culturally appropriate.
Contemporary scholars typically dismiss missionaries as agents of cultural imperialism, since governments of colonial powers played significant roles in directing and facilitating the missionary project. Yet, in many instances, fundamental tensions arose between the self-styled servants of God and officials of colonial and post-colonial governments (Hansen and Twaddle 2002). We need not rehash the complex history of missionary enmeshment in Western imperialism to appreciate the intimate connections among primarily political and religious organizations in this network.
Today’s humanitarian and development organizations are similarly enmeshed with government and inter-governmental programs, and the extent to which they have been effectively co-opted remains a matter of active controversy (Dunch 2002; Fowler 1999; Lindenberg and Bryant 2001). The potentially negative consequences of enmeshment with political power have not gone unnoticed, by either group. Both Christian missionaries and secular activists hold themselves to a high moral standard, and their deeply shared idealism reveals itself in recurrent bouts of self-criticism of their own tendencies towards paternalism or cultural imperialism (Manjii and O’Coill 2002).
Despite significant points of current tension between religious and secular advocates of human rights, especially with regard to the acceptability of aggressive proselytizing where religious conversion is illegal (Hackett 2003; Marthoz and Saunders 2005), missionaries and other religious leaders have made essential contributions throughout decades of global human rights campaigns (Lauren 2003, 64-69; Nurser 2003). For example, faith-based organizations and faith-inspired individual leaders dominated the anti-slavery movement, arguably the first major transnational advocacy coalition. Even today, several of the largest humanitarian aid organizations are faith-based, notably Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief and World Vision International (Nichols 1988; Kniss and Campbell 1997; Berger 2003; McCleary 2004).
For some of these international faith-based service organizations, any explicitly religious motivation has been subsumed under more practical considerations of the effective delivery of assistance. Conversely, religious faith still plays a central role in the extensive efforts of Mennonites, Quakers, Catholics and inter-faith alliances in peace-building and reconciliation at the local and international levels (Appleby 2000; Johnston and Sampson 1994; Johnston 2003; Smock 2002). Some peace activists see their political activities as a direct expression of their faith, which might make them seem to qualify as both secular and religious missionaries in the terms used here. However, that would overstate the extent of overlap between what are primarily religious or secular pursuits. To be clear, this paper compares the experiences of two groups of activists from distinct historical contexts, namely, first, the contemporary and predominately secular network of developmental, democratizing and peace-building organizations and, second, the historical record of Anglo-American Protestant missionaries inspired by the self-reliance goal articulated by Anderson and Venn.
Similarities in the goals pursued by these two groups are often surprising. For example, Hastings (1994, 293–294) highlights the pivotal importance of establishing local churches as viable Christian communities. Evangelists are often thought to seek only individual converts, yet missionaries have always realized the critical need for a supportive community to nurture and strengthen new believers. Similarly, contemporary human rights advocates now realize that individual human rights require supportive community contexts. Thus, both Christian and secular missionaries share a deep realization of the fundamental complementarity between individual conversion or human rights and community support and responsibilities.
Another point of similarity concerns the organizational structures through which their goals were implemented. Christian missionary societies managed a far-flung network of organizations, and today’s secular missionaries operate within even more extensive global policy networks. The establishment of the United Nations may be said to be the point at which global policy networks began to emerge in earnest (Degnbol-Martinussen and Engerg-Pedersen 2003; Tvedt 1998). Wartime charities such as Oxfam or CARE expanded their programs to a global scale, and agencies of Western countries began long-term programs of developmental assistance. Subsequent programs have directed attention to community empowerment, sustainable development and good governance.
In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain strict boundaries between organizations involved in development or humanitarian assistance, or in peace-building or the protection of human rights. Alan Fowler summarizes the ultimate goal as: ‘Socially just and sustainable societies with accountable inclusive governance’ (1999, 7). This may not make a catchy slogan, but it nicely encapsulates the mutually supportive interactions among organizations advocating global peace, democracy, sustainable development or social justice.
Co-ordination remains the Achilles heel of policy networks (Reinicke 1998). Contemporary critics of the international humanitarian aid regime routinely call for improved co-ordination of policy at a global level, especially among United Nations agencies (Minear 2002; Weiss 2001). Yet, similar problems of coordination bedevilled the Christian missionary enterprise. Competition for converts was rampant and tensions between missionaries from different faiths often led to confusion among potential converts. In short, there is no reason to presume that officers of missionary societies were any better at managing global networks than are today’s international bureaucrats.
Differences that may not matter
The preceding survey of the many similarities between Christian and secular missionaries in terms of goals, network organization, attitudes and typical activities serves to deepen the puzzle of their sharply diverging results. Although Christian missionaries may have articulated a clearer statement of their ultimate goal in facilitating the establishment of self-reliant churches, they can hardly be said to have implemented that goal in a particularly effective or efficient manner.
So what can explain their overall success in catalysing the spread of self-reliant churches, in contrast to the frustrations experienced by secular activists seeking to facilitate the establishment of sustainable, self-governing communities? This section examines three obvious differences that prove, ultimately, not to provide the key to this puzzle.
In the first place, religion is not politics. There are many critical differences between the processes involved in proselytizing a particular religious tradition and in establishing a viable system of governance. However, this distinction may be less consequential than it first appears.
The nature of governance is to craft practical compromises between intensely articulated alternatives and to manifest some balance among the many competing goals and desires expressed by individual members of a community. In contrast to the expansive nature of politics, religion may seem merely a narrow aspect of life, especially for observers outside that faith tradition. Yet, for believers, religion is uniquely important and all-encompassing. They take it all very seriously and build governance institutions to facilitate their common endeavours. Anyone familiar with any religious tradition can attest to the vitality of the disputing process within that tradition. Disputes over matters of faith, doctrine, ritual and morally acceptable behaviour are intensely fought over within all faith traditions. Differences of opinion on any one of these matters lie at the heart of schisms and innovations in religious forms. In sum, faith communities are polities with both centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. As vibrant, disputatious communities, their governance procedures may offer lessons for governance in the political realm.
A second way of expressing fundamental differences between religion and politics would be to highlight the significant differences in the magnitude of the collective action dilemmas entailed in each of these realms of human interaction. Coordination presents daunting challenges in any networked environment, but, as noted above, networks of Christian and secular missionaries faced similar problems of collective action, both in securing cooperation towards their common goal and in fostering sustainable communities of belief and action in their wake. However, Christian missionaries may have had a considerably simpler problem to solve. It is well known that smaller, more homogeneous groups typically find it easier to act collectively. Religious communities tend to be smaller than political jurisdictions, and they tend to be voluntary in a way that political communities are not. Free riders who do not contribute to the collective program can be excluded from participation in a religious community (Iannoccone 1994), but it is rarely easy to prevent non-contributing members of a polity from sharing in the enjoyment of public goods.
Although coordination of religious and political networks may entail different levels of complexity (given that religious communities tend to be smaller, more homogenous and voluntary in nature), the effects of this difference can be offset by other factors, especially when all relevant stakeholders realize the importance of resolving highly salient problems of collective action. Consider, for example, the implications of research on effective community-based governance of commonly held resources (Ostrom 1990). Sceptics may counter that just because a remote village of farmers has successfully managed to construct and maintain their own irrigation system is no guarantee that they can construct similarly effective political institutions on a larger scale. Yet, this critique unfairly undervalues the true magnitude of their accomplishment. The primary reason that so many community-based systems of resource management succeeded is that the people involved realized that they simply had to make it work or risk their livelihood. It was the salience of this issue to all parties, and their shared realization of their common fate, that proved pivotal in their formulation and implementation of rules to govern themselves. In the political realm, equally salient issues provide the foundation for more broadly based patterns of co-operation (McGinnis and Ostrom 2007). In a comparable fashion, both religious and political activists may be sufficiently motivated to overcome whatever problems of coordination they confront in pursuit of their collective endeavours.
A third factor to consider is a simple matter of time. Christian missionaries and Protestant Anglo-American missionaries to Africa have been active for two thousand years and a century and a half, respectively. In contrast, the global policy networks centred on the UN enjoyed a mere five decades to formulate and implement their goals. Perhaps we should wait a hundred years before passing judgment on development assistance.
However, the mere passage of time need not guarantee success. Success will elude today’s secular missionaries if, as I argue, they are pursuing an ultimately ineffective strategy.
An episode from recent missionary history helps identify flaws inherent in the overall strategy being implemented by contemporary developmental, democratizing, and peace-building organizations. In the 1970s, some influential leaders of sub-Saharan African churches called for a moratorium on the sending of Christian missionaries from Western countries. The basic rationale behind this was that it was time for African churches to stand or fall on their own (Kendall 1978, 86–107). Advocates of the moratorium noted that the relatively high salaries paid to foreign missionaries could be directed towards more concrete programs that might improve the living conditions of local church members. In the process, local churches would need to learn self-reliance.
No moratorium was ever declared. The call for a missionary moratorium received sympathetic consideration from mainline denominations because of its resonance with anti-imperial sentiment. Yet, this plea was ignored by members of rapidly growing evangelical and Pentecostal churches, many of whom believed that the Bible explicitly requires Christians to be unrelenting in their efforts to spread the Gospel to all corners of the world. Despite a significant decrease in missionaries from mainline denominations, the total number of Western missionaries may actually have increased (Stanley 2004).
Even this failure to declare a moratorium, however, had some surprisingly positive benefits (Sundkler and Steed 2000, 1027–1029). One important symbolic effect was to encourage African church leaders to take ownership of their own churches. Mission churches lost their predominant position in terms of a close connection to assured sources of resources from abroad and their local leaders were forced to cope as best they could in a more competitive religious marketplace. It is this sense of ownership that provides a critical link in the chain of analogical reasoning detailed here.
Recent emphases on the need to empower aid recipients to take ownership of development projects or peace-building efforts (Chesterman 2007) demonstrates that the global developmental, democratizing, peace-building IGO-NGO network faces a comparable crisis of confidence (Lindenberg and Bryant 2001). Development experts have come to regret previous emphases on large-scale infrastructure projects like dams that displace large numbers of people from their traditional livelihood. Corrupt leaders have siphoned off too much foreign aid to fill their bank accounts and humanitarian aid workers have come to appreciate the many ways in which emergency supplies can be diverted by combatants or otherwise manipulated to serve the interests of repressive regimes (Anderson 1999).
When results fail to meet expectations, it is time to re-examine one’s strategy as well as one’s preconceived notions. The episode of the never implemented yet curiously beneficial call for moratorium on the sending of missionaries from Western countries to sub-Saharan Africa directs attention to the critical importance of the underlying narrative of translation and transformation that suffuses the missionary enterprise. The remainder of this essay outlines a comparable secular narrative that has only barely emerged on the agenda of transnational activists seeking to catalyze political and economic transformations throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the Global South.
Translation and transformation
To accomplish their ultimate goal of establishing self-reliant indigenous churches, Christian missionaries had to satisfy four intermediate criteria. First, the intended beneficiaries must understand the message conveyed to them. Translation of the Christian scriptures into local languages has been accomplished in a remarkable range of cultural settings. However, it is not simply a question of translating from one language into another, but rather a question of matching core concepts in order to avoid profound failures of understanding (see examples in Russell 1966 and Ward 2001, 193). Second, new believers must be shown how their newly adopted faith works in practice and its practical benefits demonstrated. From the start, missionaries devoted considerable attention to health care, education, and other practical aspects of social welfare. Even after independence, when most post-colonial governments took control over schools and some health clinics, local churches continued to minister to the service needs of their own communities. Third, the responsibility for managing church-related activities and churches themselves must be transferred to local leaders. As noted earlier, it was on this point, so critical to the realization of the Anderson-Venn program of self-reliance, that implementation fell far short of the ideal until the time when African states achieved political independence.
Finally—and this condition is just beginning to be realized—the message itself must be opened up to the creative influence of the new believers. In a recent extension of the classic Anderson-Venn goal, Warren Newberry (2005) adds a second triad of requirements for a viable indigenous church: self-theologizing, self-missionizing and self-caring (in the sense of providing public services). Transition to a self-missionising and self-theologising church takes the process well beyond the original insights of Anderson and Venn and yet this deepening of their vision seems to follow with an inescapable logic. After all, the Christian tradition has developed through being adopted by peoples in new cultural traditions—from its initial groundings in Judaism to later incorporation of insights and concepts from Hellenistic and other European cultures (Sanneh 1989; Walls 1996). The ongoing transition to a truly global Christendom should be expected to bring additional changes to Christian rituals and doctrines .
To better reflect the magnitude of such transformations, some analysts have abandoned the term indigenization in favour of either inculturation or contextualization (Moreau 2005). Whereas the term indigenization may convey a sense of translating a universal message into a locally understandable variant, inculturation designates a potentially open-ended process of mutual interaction through which global and local forms are merged into a new synthesis. Contextualization conveys an even more active sense of strategically framing the broader message to make it more appealing to potential converts and as such lies behind much of the current controversies concerning aggressive proselytism (Marthoz and Saunders 2005; Moreau 2005). For the purposes of this analysis, I retain the more intuitively understandable term indigenization, which has always had a special connection to the Anderson-Venn formula.
Douglas Hayward (1995) provides a lengthy inventory of criteria signifying transformation into what he considers a fully contextualized religion. Among these conditions are requirements for the use of local vernacular language and local musical forms in worship services, the full use of symbols, images and metaphors of local origin in any expression of faith, and the manifestation of local concepts of leadership and organization in actual practice.
I would like to suggest that a similarly expansive set of criteria could be used by secular missionaries to evaluate progress towards their goal of facilitating the establishment of peaceful, democratic and prosperous self-governing communities. For example, are policy debates and legal statutes expressed in vernacular languages understandable to all citizens? Do the rituals of election campaigns make substantial use of locally meaningful cultural categories? Are the leaders of political parties encouraged to craft innovative combinations of effective patronage and principled political discourse? Or are Western forms taken to be the standard template for acceptable practices?
On all four of the intermediate criteria identified above, it is clear that, in glaring contrast to Christian missionaries, secular activists have barely gotten started. Consider the issue of translation. It is now evident that the core message of the Christian Gospel can be meaningfully expressed in terms that resonate within diverse cultural contexts. Similarly, most cultural repertoires include practices that reflect the fundamental concepts of limits on authority, popular legitimacy, accountability, civic morality and other core aspects of liberal democracy. Unfortunately, far too little has been done to express these concepts in a way that resonates with the practical understanding of ordinary people. Instead, government agencies, IGOs, and NGOs engaged in the promotion of democracy have emphasized the establishment of standardized institutions or electoral processes, primarily at the national level. Very little effort has gone into translating the fundamental concepts of liberal democracy into local languages and symbolic forms fully understandable within local cultures. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, what little civic education that is available tends to be taught in English, French or another national language.
Nor have the practical benefits of liberal democracy been effectively demonstrated to the people. Instead of concentrating on enshrining European or American style institutions and programs at the national level, a wiser choice might have been to foster the establishment of accountable governments at the local and provincial levels, appropriately crafted to fit local conditions. Secular missionaries continue to provide assistance in the form of humanitarian or development aid, but precious little has been done to contribute towards the practical education of local peoples in self-governance. The recent shift in emphasis to local ownership of development projects and community participation in all stages of a project is promising, but this is a fairly recent development that should have been seen as critical from the very start. Local policy entrepreneurs could have been identified and their ability to creatively energize community action encouraged and enhanced (Daubon and Saunders 2002). National level leaders could have been held accountable for the way in which they nurtured or smothered the efforts of local public entrepreneurs, rather than assessing their performance on the basis of their allegiance in the global controversies of the day.
Almost any analysis of development policy or the promotion of democracy could be used to illustrate the lack of an adequate analogue to the extensive missionary focus on translating the Gospel and its associated imagery into locally understandable languages and conceptual frameworks. Consider a recent critique of development assistance by Carol Lancaster (1999). After admitting that local officials might legitimately dismiss many externally-funded projects as peripheral to their real needs, Lancaster concludes that things have gotten better, in that
considerable efforts have been made over the past decade to inform African officials and publics of the importance of reforms, and there appears to be far more understanding and support … for the ideas that national resources need to be allocated efficiently, that governments should not try to replace the private sector but facilitate its investments, and that transparency and predictability in policies and the behavior of government officials is necessary to support investment and growth. (Lancaster 1999, 500, emphasis added)
Lancaster’s choice of the verb inform is telling. Far too little effort has been devoted to translating these abstract goals into the form of practices that might make sense within the local culture. In sharp contrast, missionaries made sure that local converts (recipients of spiritual development programs, so to speak) could understand, in terms familiar to them within their own culture, basic Christian doctrines and ritual practices. They didn’t just inform their charges about the Gospel; they showed them how to realize it in their own lives.
Only recently has the World Bank given serious consideration to routing financial assistance through local churches (Belshaw, Calderisi and Sugden 2001). Unfortunately, these efforts remain directed at the types of churches most familiar to Western audiences, namely the mainline mission-derived churches. The argument presented here would suggest, instead, that non-traditional forms of Christianity may prove the most effective allies in political and economic reform. The problem here, of course, is that many AICs and neo-Pentecostals remain isolated from political processes. Critics such as Paul Gifford (2004) denounce them as apolitical, or as a prop for corrupt regimes, whereas others, such as Ogbu Kalu (2006), see considerable promise in the potential contributions of AICs and neo-Pentecostals in the realm of public service.
The uncontrollable variety of religious experience found within the Christian tradition should inspire advocates of deep institutional pluralism to contemplate what might happen if indigenization of governance in Africa were to reach a point comparable to self-theologizing Christian churches in the Global South. Many of the most innovative variations on the Christian tradition that have emerged in Africa over the last century originated in locations or activities far removed from the centres of political power or economic prosperity. Remoteness enabled new beliefs and practices to become established before they came to the notice of religious or political leaders at the national level.
Realizing a similar degree of creative flexibility in the realm of politics in the shadow of the post-colonial African state is a daunting challenge. Although religious innovations may emerge without causing any direct discomfort to political authorities, national political leaders (as well as their local counterparts) are quick to suppress or co-opt any sign of independent political activism. In addition, their capacity to do so is strengthened by international recognition of their sovereign rights and by the patronage resources made available to them through foreign aid and the sale of their country’s natural resources. Effective reform would require both increasing the positive capacity of the state to deliver public services while simultaneously lowering its negative capacity to suppress any and all rivals to its own legitimacy.
The long-term success of Christian missionaries makes out a case for a significant shift in emphasis for secular missionaries seeking to spread sustainable development, democratization and good governance. The solution is not likely to be found in redoubled efforts to deliver more resources to local communities or to insure better co-ordination within global policy networks. Rather, it is likely to be found in encouraging political leaders at all levels to remain open to innovative institutional solutions to long-standing dilemmas of governance and to new variants more likely to thrive in diverse local contexts.
One of the most remarkable instances of innovative African governance concerns the self-proclaimed independent republic of Somaliland (Bradbury, Abokor and Yusuf 2003; Bryden 2004; International Crisis Group 2003). Despite a lack of international recognition, Somaliland’s government has achieved a remarkable degree of success in re-establishing law and order in the northwest region of a country that has lacked an effective national government since 1991. Although Somaliland has received significant levels of aid from Western NGOs, its success can hardly be attributed to external aid. The contrast to a long series of internationally sponsored peace conferences that failed to establish order in the rest of Somalia could hardly be more pronounced, or more profound.
In a long and involved process of inter-clan negotiations, local leaders established an innovative system of governance that draws upon long-standing traditions in Somali culture. They designed a unique two-chamber legislature in which representatives in both chambers represent clans rather than geographic regions or political parties. With this unique constitutional framework, a series of reasonably fair local and national level elections have been held (International Crisis Group 2003). This framework is not without its flaws. For example, international human rights organizations have expressed concerns about the lack of attention to women’s rights in Somaliland’s constitution (International Crisis Group 2003). Still, Somaliland stands as an example of a bottom-up approach to building constitutional order on locally compelling grounds, and its example might be more widely followed in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Sawyer 2005).
Ken Menkhaus (2003) portrays the history of independent Somalia as one of unremitting competition for the prize afforded by political power. Since no effective authority at the national level has been restored since 1991, conflict is now organized at a more localized level and traditional means of conflict resolution and community building can operate well away from the international spotlight. This process may eventually result in a rebuilt Somali state, but one in which clan compromises effectively limit the ability of any one faction to fully exploit the prize of national power. For now, a widely dispersed veto power undermines any internationally supported effort to establish a national government that would operate under the old rules of winner-take-all.
In terms of the analogy examined here, Somaliland can be said to constitute an innovative form of African-initiated governance, an AIG to complement the many AICs that developed over the years throughout Africa. Interestingly, the African Union has proven the most resistant to recognize the results of this locally grounded innovation, for fears that allowing northwest Somalia to go its own way might trigger a flood of similar succession efforts throughout the continent..
In a broadly similar fashion, mainline Christian organizations initially refused to recognize AICs as fully Christian, until they came to realize that these new forms of Christian expression were providing their members with a meaningful and satisfying religious experience. Perhaps Somaliland will eventually be deemed worthy of admission to the international community of mutually recognized governments. Before that can happen, however, external observers will need to become more comfortable with the confusingly hybrid nature of governing institutions in Somaliland.
Frankly, this discomfort reveals a deep lack of self-understanding on the part of international advisors seeking to implement ‘good governance.’ If they were to look honestly at their own home-grown systems of governance, they would see dramatic evidence of internal contradictions and rampant legal pluralism. Yet, international advisors seem to always insist on the imposition of clear lines of authority, based on the idealized contours of some particular constitutional arrangement that happened to work in some other set of circumstances. They seem to forget that few if any executive, legislative, judicial or bureaucratic political institutions at the national level can achieve their desired effects without the support of complementary informal mechanisms (Widner 2001).
In conclusion, the narrative of transformation to a global Christianity has a subtle lesson for contemporary advocates of peace, democracy and human rights: learn to experience the ‘joy of letting go’. Although Christian missionaries initially planted churches by means that undermined any meaningful prospect for self-reliance, they were eventually forced by the reality of political independence to distance themselves from their local charges. The key transition came when mainline churches stepped back from their partner organizations, thereby allowing new variants of Christianity more congenial to local traditions and expectations to grow and prosper on their own. Today, the religious ecology of African Christianity includes vibrant sectors of mission churches, AICs and emerging neo-Pentecostal variants. Christianity is alive and well all throughout sub-Saharan Africa, giving missionaries a sense of satisfaction thus far denied to their secular counterparts.
Looking ahead, an even more positive conclusion may be warranted. Some analysts argue that recent innovations in African Christianity may hold out the prospect for returning Christianity closer to its roots, since the faith healing and exuberant proselytizing spirit of AICs and neo-Pentecostals is eerily reminiscent of the early years of Christianity as reflected in the New Testament (Cox 2001; Jenkins 2006; Larbi 2002). By accepting and celebrating an intimate connection between the spiritual world and mundane earthly existence, African innovations in Christianity may help this global religion revitalize its own roots. Perhaps a similar revitalization lies in store for liberal democracy, from new forms of governance just beginning to peek out from the African horizon.
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[1] An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 47th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, San Diego, California, 22–25 March, 2006 and at a conference on ‘Designing Constitutional Arrangements for Democratic Governance in Africa: Challenges and Possibilities’, Indiana University, Bloomington, 30–31 March, 2006. I would like to thank the Joan B Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the University of Notre Dame for their generous financial and intellectual support for my recent sabbatical leave. For their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper I would especially like to thank Michael Barnett, Sheldon Gellar, Clark Gibson, Paul Kollman, Lauren Morris MacLean, Jackie Smith and three anonymous referees. Naturally, none of these individuals or organizations is responsible for the contents of this paper.
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