Christianity and Democracy in Global Context

John Witte

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429720079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In the past, Christianity has had both positive and negative influences on democracy. Christian churches have served as benevolent agents of welfare and catalysts of political reform. But they have also served as belligerent allies of repression and censors of human rights. Christian theology has helped to cultivate democratic ideas of equality, li

Unmasking the Powers: Christianity, Authority, and Desacralization in Modern African Politics

KWAME BEDIAKO

Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana

Introduction: Christianity as an African Reality

The impact of Christianity is a major element in the Modern political, socioeconomic, and cultural histories of African societies, particularly of sub-Sahara Africa. Whether one takes the view that Christianity “historically… can rightly be described as an indigenous, traditional and African religion,”¹ or rather that the history of the Christian faith in Africa is part of a process of gradual assimilation of African cultures “to the aggressive, conquering force of Western civilization,”² it is impossible to set aside the conclusion drawn by Christian Baeta of Ghana 26 years ago that “the Christian presence has been and remains in the African scene, a massive and unavoidable fact and factor.”³ Indeed, it is worth recalling the full assessment of Christianity’s role in African society that Baeta made at the 7th International African Seminar held in Legon, Ghana, in April 1965:

In numberless institutions of many different kinds, as well as in the equally numerous and diverse voluntary organizations and free associations of men, women and children; in the pervasive influence and challenge of its message to men and its demand upon their individual lives, and their relationships with one another; in countless personal and group decisions made and lives actually lived differently from what they would otherwise have been; in the new high hopes and aspirations for individual and social destiny which it has awakened; in the sheer excellence of human performance; in devotion and courageous self-sacrificing service to others, and yet in other ways, Christianity plays a role and exerts a force in tropical Africa which is none the less significant because it eludes full and conclusive analysis.⁴

A quarter of a century on, when the evidence is beyond doubt that there has occurred a shift in the center of gravity of world Christianity, from the West to the non-Westem world, the analyses of church statistics in Africa indicate that it is Africa which has effectively tipped the balance and transformed Christianity permanently into “a primarily non-Westem religion,” as David Barrett predicted just over twenty years ago.⁵

If indeed Africa may be said to have such a determining influence on the new shape of the Church, of Christianity itself, as we approach the twenty-first century, it is to be expected that African societies themselves have in the process undergone some significant changes under the impact of the Christian faith, as Baeta argued in 1965. John Mbiti of Kenya, in a publication of 1969, expressing the view that “the religious traditions of Africa contain the only lasting potentialities for a basis, a foundation and a direction of life for African societies,” stated that it was through what the Christian faith had to offer that the African quest for “the freedom… of mature manhood and selfhood are attainable.”⁶ In 1986, Mbiti felt able to assert that “the Christian way of life is in Africa to stay, certainly within the foreseeable future.”⁷ What, then, might be the role of Christianity in Africa in the contemporary political ferment in African nations?

The Modern Problem: From African Independence to African Democracy

A recent statement by Kenyan political scientist, Ali Mazrui, well summarizes the modern African political predicament to which Christianity in Africa may be required to address itself:

[I]n the final two decades of the 20th century Africa has been undergoing what does indeed deserve to be called “the Second Liberation Struggle.” If the first liberation struggle was against alien rule, this new crusade is for African democracy. If the first liberation effort was for political independence, this second struggle is for wider human rights. If the first endeavor was for collective self-determination, this second liberation is individual fulfillment. Africa fought hard for decolonization in the first crusade; it remains to be seen if Africa will fight equally hard for democratization in this second challenge.⁸

Mazrui made this statement in his own country of Kenya. Furthermore, applying his observations to factors and forces in Kenya which he saw as impediments to democratization, he described his country as one which, in time past, was “Africa’s flagship against white minority governments,” but which now is “in danger of becoming the dragship which pulls the democratic fleet behind.”⁹ The fact that Mazrui’s comment drew sharp criticism from the government of Kenya, which called him a “misguided foreigner… who does not know anything to do with his country,”¹⁰ is perhaps an indication that “the struggle for African democracy” is also the struggle for the legitimacy of dissent.

The post-independence political history so far of many African countries can be described as the process of elimination of political dissent, at least of organized and recognized dissent. The majority of these countries began their post-colonial political life in the 1950s and early 1960s as some kind of democracy, with a well-defined and recognized opposition both within and outside the legislative structures established to control national political life. By the early 1970s, these arrangements had been replaced by one-party and, in many cases, military governments. It was only at the end of the 1980s that the one-party concept began to be seriously called into question.

This is not to say that African politics has lacked alternative viewpoints on national questions. Rather, the consensual quality of African traditional politics was evoked to justify and buttress the shift to the one-party concept. Under Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana blazed the trail of Modern African political independence in March 1957, and in just under seven years, in February 1964, had eliminated organized opposition and declared itself a one-party state, with the flag of the ruling Convention Peoples Party (CPP) replacing the original national flag. The rationelle for the shift was that the one-party concept was “in consonance with Ghanaian traditional political institutions which had no tradition of organized opposition, and worked through a system of consultation and consensus.”¹¹

However, the rapidity with which the popular demand for multiparty politics has surfaced in many of the same African countries, and the widespread nature of this demand, raises the question whether the usual justification of the one-party state is an adequate explanation for its presence in Modern African politics. It is well-known that in some countries where one-party politics has been in operation for a considerable period of time, governments find it difficult to accept the principle of democratic pluralism which is now widely desired. A case in point is my own home country Ghana, which in thirty-four years of political independence has known only eleven years of real multiparty civilian government. In the course of recent government-sponsored regional fora organized to collate views on the future political system for the country, the reporting in the government-controlled media appeared to suggest that the majority of the participants favored a complete departure from party politics altogether, and instead preferred a nonparty political arrangement. Only when the official report of the National Commission for Democracy, which moderated the discussions, was published, did it come to light that “the generality of Ghanaians” in point of fact preferred party politics. The fact that the Head of State himself came out with his own personal reservations about the people’s preference added credence to the notion that the government was compeŪed to acknowledge a reality which it would have preferred to be different.

The point is that the consistency of the picture of African postcolonial politics which emerges, with its difficulty by and large in admitting an organized opposition as part of reality, is a sign of a fundamental problem concerning authority in African societies, a problem which will need to be addressed if the “struggle for democratization” is to lay deep enough foundations for the future. For African countries, caught as they are between their legacy of the one-party concept and the perceived need for change in the direction of real democratic pluralism, cannot simply “run a democracy” by the mere adoption of the external trappings and institutions of democratic reform. A much more fundamental effort is required. To that extent, I share the view of those who argue, like the present Head of State of Ghana, that democracy must grow from the history of a people, and not be imposed from outside. But this also means that it becomes essential to examine a people’s history and tradition, in order to discern the particular factors which make the development of a democratic outlook and the sustained practice of democratic principles difficult in that society. The struggle for African democracy must address, therefore, African concepts of authority and power. I am persuaded that it is here that Christianity in Africa has some distinctive contributions to offer.

Sacralization: The Problem of Authority and Power in Indigenous African Tradition and Post-Colonial African Politics

In an article published a number of years ago, I sought to show that the issue of political instability in the post-colonial histories of many African countries needed to be understood as reflecting a religious problem in African societies.¹² Specifically, the problem has to do with certain important aspects of the African indigenous pre-Christian religious world-view as they related to authority, power, and political governance. In other words, I am not convinced by that body of theory which seeks to justify one-party politics on the grounds that democratic pluralism is a luxury which African countries needing to develop their economies quickly could hardly afford. The appeal of one-party politics has deeper roots than expediency.

It may well be the case that the independence democratic constitutions of the early post-colonial period reflected too closely the political institutions of the particular colonial metropolis. And yet the reality of the process which led to the one-party state, in many if not all cases, involved a bitter power struggle between contending interest-groups, in which the winner took all and secured his gains by instituting measures to eliminate and outlaw the loser. The argument that the one-party concept was in consonance with the consensual quality of true indigenous African tradition often came in as a rationalization and a justification of a decision taken on quite other grounds. It was not an understanding arrived at through sustained dialogue conducted on the basis of a shared perspective. If African consensus politics could not be maintained without political detentions and the removal of the right of opposition parties, qua opposition, to participate meaningfully in national life, the problem surely is “not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Yet much the same argument for a resort to the “African consensual politics” continues to be advanced. It is as if the opponents of true democratic pluralism, no longer able to deny the validity of the popular demand for the democratization of political life, now take refuge in a conception of democracy unique to Africa. The most recent sustained effort in this direction that I have become aware of is the book Ghana—A Political History from pre-European to Modern Times. The author, Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor, happens to be also Ghana’s Ambassador to Brazil. The central piece of Awoonor’s thesis is stated in relation to the African (extended) family which he takes to be the basic political unit:

Decisions of the family council are a...