{"id":13850,"date":"2017-09-07T08:08:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T15:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=13850"},"modified":"2017-09-07T08:35:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T15:35:18","slug":"i-wanted-to-like-it-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-wanted-to-like-it-but\/","title":{"rendered":"I wanted to like it, but…"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that African influences and voices were paramount in shaping Christian thought and self-understanding. In How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, <\/em>Oden endeavours to \u201cSet forth the basic vision for a renewed initiative in the theological and historical reassessment of early African Christianity\u201d (Kindle loc 1222). In essence, the book reads like a treatise aimed to mobilize a force of historians who will do the hard work of piecing together and validating the important impact that Africans and African influences have had on the study of Christian theology and the development of Christian orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the book offers a much needed correction to western understanding of the history of Christianity. Or at least a correction that I needed. Oden writes, \u201cThe generalizations took hold that wherever there might have been any modest African influences, they are likely to be viewed as inferior and backward in relation to the unfolding positive developments of reason in history that flowed from Europe\u201d (Kindle loc 461). I don\u2019t know that I\u2019d go so far as to say that I viewed African influences as \u201cinferior\u201d or \u201cbackward\u201d so much as I would say that I didn\u2019t realize they existed at all. I suppose I would count myself among those who knew that great thinkers like Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine had some connections to North Africa, but I hadn\u2019t considered them to be African. I’m thankful for this correction to my thinking. He is absolutely right when he says, “It is incorrect to portray Africa to the world as if Africa has always been a bit lacking in intellectual toughness” (Kindle loc 751).<\/p>\n

Oden insists that being \u201cAfrican\u201d is not a question of skin colour, ethnicity, or language\u2014all criterion that have been used to disqualify certain thinkers from being considered African. \u201cFor Hellenism in Africa had become profoundly Africanized over the very long period of time of some twenty generations before Origen\u201d (Kindle loc 522). Athanasius, for which history is entirely mute of the subject of race, was raised and educated in Africa. Oden describes Origen as being \u201cindigenously African, whatever his specific ethnicity\u201d (Kindle loc 537).<\/p>\n

Oden\u2019s reasoning on the subject of who and what should be considered \u201cAfrican\u201d caught my attention. As an American missionary living in France, I understand the concept of cultural adaptation. In fact, this is something that I strive for. I work hard to speak French well, to respect cultural norms (don\u2019t be surprised if I greet you with a kiss on both cheeks when we meet in Cape Town, this is just how we say, \u201chello\u201d in France), and to create ministries that are relevant in my context. But I\u2019m not French. I\u2019ll never be French. My children moved to France when they were 13 and 14. They completed High School in France. They are slightly more French than I am. My friend Myriam was born in France to Algerian parents. She considers herself French, and is considered French by all who know her, though ethnically, she is African.<\/p>\n

In the same way, I can agree with Oden, that those who may not be ethnically African, but who spent their formative years in Africa, ought to be considered African, and their work should be counted among Africa\u2019s heritage. But Oden suggests, “for the purposes of this discussion, if a text was written in Africa it will be treated a African” (Kindle loc 548). I’d be much more comfortable with calling such texts \u201cAfrican influenced.\u201d Just as anything I write these days is necessarily \u201cFrench influenced\u201d but not outright French. So I wonder if Oden hasn\u2019t over-simplified the issue in stating, \u201cThere is a prejudice at work here: suspect anything of intellectual value that comes from the African continent as having some sort of secret European origin\u201d (Kindle loc 541).<\/p>\n

The conversation would have been even more interesting (and convincing) if Oden had done a more thorough job of pointing out how<\/em> the works of Origen, Athanasius, or Augustine were African in nature, style, or substance. What, especially, about these authors reveals their African heritage or influences? I find my notes on this book peppered with these sorts of questions.<\/p>\n

There is a tone of urgency coupled with mild indignation, as Oden repeatedly challenges the conventional thinking that Christian thought was predominantly developed and refined in Europe and later imported to Africa through missionary endeavours, insisting, \u201c\u2026in Christian history, contrary to this common assumption, the flow of intellectual leadership demonstrably moved largely from Africa to Europe\u2014south to north\u201d (Kindle loc 215). I don\u2019t disagree with this. But I wish he had made a more thorough case for his points rather than simply repeatedly calling for more scholarship to be done. He follows most of his best assertions with a statement like, \u201cFurther pursuit of these issues remains on the agenda for emerging African scholarship\u201d (Kindle loc 477).<\/p>\n

Which leads me to my final thoughts on the book. Because of the many calls Oden makes for African scholarship to further investigate his hypotheses (at least six according to a Kindle search), I became curious. I started to feel like he wanted other people, predominantly African scholars, to do the work of proving his points. I did a Google search and found his website called Center for Early African Christianity<\/a>, whose mission is to \u201ceducate African leadership in the depth of African intellectual literary achievements, especially those from the Christian tradition of the first millennium.\u201d I\u2019m not sure how I feel about a website staffed by white North Americans that believes it is their role to educate Africans about their own history. Their vision statement begins, \u201cOur purpose is not to presume to set a theological agenda for African Christians, but to resource African Christians as they rethink their own agenda using classic African sources\u201d and they talk about partnering with \u201cAfrica Christian leaders.\u201d I noticed that they have an advisory board that includes some Africans, which gave credence to that claim. I can be oversensitive to the idea of people being patronizing, so I fully acknowledge the possibility that my concerns are unfounded. What are your thoughts on the matter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that African influences and voices were paramount in shaping Christian thought and self-understanding. In How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, Oden endeavours to \u201cSet forth the basic vision for a renewed initiative in the theological and historical reassessment of early African Christianity\u201d (Kindle loc […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[953],"class_list":["post-13850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-oden","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13850"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13857,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13850\/revisions\/13857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}