In this article: Sometimes, missionaries speak of “empowering” the people they work with, but there are serious questions about whether foreigners should perceive themselves as having some kind of power that they can bestow upon local people. Through his decades-long service in Africa, Jim Harries has come to understand how the issues involved in this thinking impact our practices in theological education. His solution? Become “vulnerable” by using only local languages to train people for ministry and living at the local level so that it is clear you have nothing to give but service. Vulnerable missionaries will need to stay longer to get a deeper grounding in language and culture. Doing so will ensure that theological educators provide deep roots for the new soil. Though set in the context of Africa, this article equally applies to missionaries from whatever background wherever they serve, particularly if they come from a more affluent or educated situation.
Jim Harries
Jim Harries (PhD, University of Birmingham, UK) has lived and ministered in East Africa since 1988. Challenged by his observation of cultural estrangement with Westerners, Jim has lived within an African family in indigenous conditions in a Kenyan village, travelling by bicycle. His major pursuit has been theological education—using the Luo and Swahili languages—with an orientation to indigenous churches. Jim has published widely in peer-reviewed and other journals promoting the practice of vulnerable mission. His published books include two novels.
Mission Round Table 19:2 (May-Aug 2024): 35-41
To read articles in this edition, visit this post on Mission Round Table 19:2.
Introduction
This article intentionally concerns the role of Western people in theological education in Africa. It is not intended to give advice to African people themselves. It is not necessarily suggesting that the whole of theological education needs to be transformed. Its objectives are more modest. This article addresses Westerners. It seeks to outline contributions that Westerners can helpfully make to a whole system that they do not (and ought not) themselves control. This is in the light of the fact that Christian theological education of many kinds is already happening. Westerners will not be able to control that or, in many ways, to understand it. If Westerners want to contribute to what is happening, the question I here ask is how they should do so. In other words, if the objective is for African people to better know Jesus, then what should Western people do to help facilitate that?
As this short article cannot totally answer the above question, I instead attempt to draw on personal experience to lay out a structure and broad proposal. I appreciate that in doing so I will leave many gaps and frayed edges in my arguments, but I cannot plug all the gaps or tidy all the edges in one article. I encourage my reader to explore related materials I have produced over the years, many of which are posted on my Academia.edu page.[1] See also the web materials of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission.[2]
One of my aims in this article is to demonstrate that helpful, sustainable interventions into African communities by Westerners require both use of local languages and reliance on locally available resources. In this way, interventions can build upon, rather than circumvent or dominate, what is already happening indigenously. I suggest that neither use of local languages with outside resources, nor use of outside languages (like English) with local resources, will enable theological education to be truly effective. I will first focus on language, then on resources, although there is (in my understanding) a lot of overlap between these two.
The principles advocated in this article—that some Western missionaries practice key ministry using indigenous languages and resources—is known as “vulnerable mission”.[3]
Theological education: Language focus
Jesus had disciples. He thus gave us models of what we should be, and how we ought to be it. The Apostle Paul, himself a disciple of Jesus, puts it like this: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Tim 2:2, NIV).
We today face a fundamental issue in cross-cultural theological education that Paul does not mention and that Jesus largely did not face since they both engaged Mediterranean people who, to a large extent, had a common history and had been trading, mixing, and even intermarrying for centuries. The issue I refer to is that languages carve up the world in which people live in different ways. Languages, and their communities, think using different categories. This makes translation difficult and, consistently, inaccurate. Hence my question: How should theological texts and wisdom that the West has be translated for Africa today?
Language categories, having different shapes,[4] can lead to flawed translation that easily troubles communication. In some ways, this renders translation impossible. I will concentrate on differences between modern (European) languages that Westerners use amongst themselves and non-modernised languages, such as those of Africa. Comaroff and Comaroff use the term, “Afromodernity” in their article “Afromodernity and the New World Order.”[5] They explain that African people who use English consider themselves to be participating in modernity. Yet their understanding of what modernity is can remain vastly different from that of Western people. “All other modernities are … mimics of a real thing whose full realisation elsewhere is, at best, infinitely deferred … at worst, flatly impossible.”[6] The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and, even more recently, colonialism and modernity, have transformed European tongues. We can broadly assume that European people no longer use their languages as they once used them, because meanings arise from the use of a language.[7] Languages being used differently results in what they mean being different than were they still to have been used as originally.
Terry Evens classifies European languages as dualistic; that is, they largely assume that there is a clear boundary between thinking subjects and the world that those subjects engage.[8] This mind-as-against-matter dualism is often credited to the French philosopher René Descartes.[9] I here ask, what happens if European language texts or discourses are transported to people whose languages (and their associated populations) do things in other than dualistic ways, what Evens calls non-dualistic?[10] The outcome, I suggest, often includes considerable confusion.
According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, James Frazer found primitive people’s belief in the efficacy of magical practices to be “a kind of foolishness.”[11] Wittgenstein responded that Frazer was the foolish one. Evens reports: “Wittgenstein argues that Frazer’s understanding of magic as a kind of foolishness is itself foolish, as it attributes to such practices a rational and instrumental objective that they do not entertain and fails to grasp their essentially expressive nature.”[12] Wittgenstein asks, in effect, why was Frazer faulting people for failing to do something they had not set out to do in the first place? Hence Wittgenstein’s explanation: “In magical healing one indicates to an illness that it should leave the patient. After the description of any such magical cure we’d like to add: If the illness doesn’t understand that, then I don’t know how one ought to say it.”[13]
One wonders how well missionaries have done in the last century or so in Africa with respect to parallels to these observations about Africans being non-dualistic? Some have certainly followed Frazer’s example and have mocked local practices. Others, through largely ignoring local practices, have busily translated texts and processes that work on the basis of Western dualism—for non-dualistic people as if they are dualistic. As a result, recipients of translations end up with little clue about the dualistic practices underlying what they read or are told. In the absence of dualistic foundations—hearers not making a clear distinction between the world around them and their understanding of it—translation processes have not worked for non-dualistic people. As a result, Africans have become dependent on Westerners, not only in theology, but in economics, sociology, science, and many other fields of knowledge.
Our focus here is on the pivotal issue of theology. It is pivotal because neither dualism nor nondualism are topics one is taught in school. Rather, they are grounds to thinking that one presupposes as one learns things in school. They are the culturally conditioned foundation on which learning can occur. Because they constitute the ground on which learning occurs, what is learned will not itself shift the ground; it will only build on it. Shifting the ground—moving between dualism and nondualism—requires something more foundational—something even deeper than either dualism or nondualism. The ground on which these basic philosophies themselves sit, I suggest, is theology, or, at least, theological. This is demonstrated by Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras, who points out that Western people’s tendency to believe and think dualistically is an outcome of a theological choice—whether or not to believe that God has energies, that is, activities in the world.[14] The Orthodox Church believes we can learn about God from his energies as well as his essence. According to Yannaras, the Western Church instead wants to know him only in his essence. Only knowing God in his essence leaves what happens in the world open to rational interpretation. This causes a “banishment of God into the realm of the empirically inaccessible”[15] and so a domination by rationality.
Misunderstandings between dualistic and non-dualistic comprehension are constantly replayed in interactions between Westerners and Africans. In magical healing, for example, one indicates to an illness that it should leave the patient.[16] When English texts in use in Africa refer to healing, then, to a large extent, indigenous people expect those texts to provide guidance on how, “if the illness doesn’t understand that, … to say it” differently.[17] This applies whether or not the English is translated into indigenous languages. In reverse, when Africans explain healing as a way of telling an illness to leave the patient, then the implication from Frazer is that missionaries may well consider those Africans foolish because they just do not seem to grasp modern scientific medical practices.
Overcoming the above issue is no joke. It is difficult! We need to consider language and its relationship to the culture and way of life of a people. In order to appreciate, understand, and participate in a way of life, one clearly must know the language in which that way of life is expressed. In order to know the language as the native speakers know it, one must clearly participate in their way of life as a necessary part of the process of learning the language.
In my experience in Africa, Westerners’ learning of local people’s languages has become—and is becoming—more and more difficult. This difficulty has deep economic roots. Failures in communication between the West and Africa, such as those mentioned above (non-dualistic Africans using dualistic languages as if they are non-dualistic), have ensured that while the West thrives, independent thinking in Africa remains stuck in a mire of confusion. For Western languages to bring thriving, they must be used in Western ways, i.e., for our purposes here, dualistically.
The failure to build productive indigenous economies has resulted in a clear and radical preference for Western languages throughout the African continent. Because African people do not comprehend Western languages in the same way as native speakers, Africans’ use of those languages for their own purposes helps them less than would their own languages. They struggle to be clear on their own issues when they have to present and engage such issues using someone else’s tongue. As a result, use of a Western language helps Africans primarily when a Westerner remains in control and able to implement the policies or ideas expressed in the Western language.
Westerners tend to give large rewards to people who speak their Western language(s) fluently. That is, they reward people with jobs, gifts, friendship, contacts in the West, references, etc. if they can demonstrate knowledge of a European language, even should that knowledge not render them productive.[18] Thriving, as recognised today in Africa, is largely an outcome of using Western languages.[19]
African people’s desperate desire for and widespread use of Western languages make talking with Westerners using indigenous tongues into what seems like a waste of time. African people much prefer Westerners to concentrate on bringing resources or giving access to progress rather than learning African languages—which is seen as an increasingly “useless” way of communicating. Many may prefer to deny that their languages represent ways in which they think, as that would, in today’s parlance, imply that they are “primitive”.
For a Westerner to learn how Africans think and communicate by living with African people, especially over an extended period, is notoriously difficult. Much of this difficulty is related to the above-mentioned issues that contribute to African people’s desperation for status and economic reward, for which they are constantly jostling.[20] This desperation for reward translates into competition for the attention of Westerners who can end up being fought over by people who do not make their intentions very clear to those Westerners. Yet sharing life with a people is perhaps the only way to learn to use their languages correctly in terms of categories, worldview, philosophy, and so on. For one to make sense in Africa when talking about healing, for example, one must be able to use an African language with respect to indigenous comprehension of healing rather than using a foreign language that carries a different comprehension. This requirement for an indigenous comprehension that applies to healing also applies to every other term and phrase in an indigenous language. So, we could say in brief: for a Westerner to learn to use an African language correctly is to learn a radically different way of life. Only that “correct” way of learning will enable intimate and mutually understandable communication. For Western missionaries to seriously contribute to theological education in Africa in a way that does not primarily lead to unhealthy dependency on foreign assistance, they need to know a local language much as locals know it. Then they should use that language.
For reasons already mentioned, and others not mentioned here (such as the enormous power of envy in Africa that easily has people jostle for attention from any Western missionary who seems to have available resources[21]), this requires the missionary concerned to not be involved in distribution of resources of foreign origin.
Yet learning an African language these days has become incredibly difficult. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that Africa is known to be a place of many languages. This quickly raises the question: which language is most appropriate for theological education in Africa? The answer is in a sense simple: it is appropriate for a theological educator from the West to choose almost any African language. The foreign mission worker needs to select a language, learn it, then use it to teach. But then, what of speakers of other languages—members of other tribes? Surely it is better to enable people from different tribes to attend a theology class by using a regional (typically European) language, so that godly insights spread more widely and quickly? This reasoning is widely followed. The difficulty is that although it saves Westerners a lot of work,[22] this practice results in language and cultural category confusions.
Here we have, in fact, another reason for theological education not to be linked to foreign funds. If a theological education programme in language X is funded from overseas, then this will result in protests from other language groups (tribes) who miss out through not being members of tribe X. Continuing with theological education using any one African language without evoking envious opposition requires that foreign funds do not come in hand with the theological education concerned. If others see that the tribe of the language being used in theological education does not thrive economically due to outside aid, then potential opposition and envious attacks can gradually dwindle, allowing education to continue in peace.
Imparting theological education to a people without the sweeteners of some kind of foreign funds is, in my experience (and according to my reading), a very difficult challenge. The fact that it is such a difficult challenge illustrates its necessity. In other words, it illustrates the large degree to which Western-originated, designed, or managed avenues of theological education are inappropriate. They are preferred for economic, not for theological reasons.[23] Western people seeking to provide theological education need to recognise, then acknowledge, these difficulties and change how they do things. That is, if Westerners believe the gospel of Jesus to be universal (as many do), yet a people reject it if it does not come with economic sweeteners, then there must be a problem with how it is being presented.
I participated in a theological programme in western Kenya, with no economic sweeteners, from 1993 to 2011. Locals who sensed my frustration at failing to get a good number of committed students, encouraged me to include healing as part of the programme (in the African sense of saying things to a disease in the right way, not biomedical healing). For various reasons, I did not do so. I allowed the programme to collapse in 2011.[24] I have since continued to search for those modes of presentation of theological education that are truly appealing to indigenous people. These days I share God’s word by participating in events run and put on by local people, that use their languages, rather than setting up a programme myself. When I attend these events, I may or I may not be asked to share God’s Word.
Should there be a theological education programme in Africa using an indigenous language that succeeds—i.e., comes to be truly valued in its local form—then I suggest that spread of this programme into other language groups may not be difficult and could happen very quickly. Even the most antagonistic of inter-tribal relationships are not likely to result either in zero bilingual people, or zero knowledge by one tribe about what is happening amongst another tribe. To the contrary, once benefits of an indigenous language theological programme begin to show, members of neighbouring tribes may well will be inquisitive, interested, and will want to know about what is happening. They may then adapt and appropriate what they have found to their own contexts so as to share in anticipated benefits that arise from it. Members of the original tribe who are touched by the need to share God’s love, will also seek to reach other tribes. This is why Western mission efforts ought to concentrate on reaching one tribe and one language theologically. If this is done in a local language and without investing outside resources, then successful outcomes are likely to quickly and easily attract others from neighbouring tribes and language groups to adjust what is happening to their own contexts so as to share in the resultant benefits. This seems to happen all the time with Christian denominations that frequently cross tribal boundaries. It results in a sustainable means of continuing to share theological knowledge. Even the very possibility of this happening exposes serious issues with theological education programmes today that use Western languages and outside resources.
Theological education: Resources focus with indigenous language
This section presents a (shorter) re-iteration of the above language focus, this time beginning with resources. I begin by assuming that there is good reason for Christians to embrace poverty. I take, for example, the biblical story of the rich young man who was encouraged to sell all he had in order to follow Jesus (Mark 10:17–31). I could also go into a long discussion on just how Jesus’ orientation in favour of the poor should best be understood, as, for example, entered into by Kanagaraj.[25] For the purposes of this article, I will simply assume, as do many Catholics, that Jesus has a “preferential option for the poor.”[26]
If indeed Christians—and for our purposes more specifically missionaries—ought to be poor, then in today’s Africa, this will be a means of attracting less attention to themselves. Western missionaries are more likely to be ignored, or taken less seriously, if they do not include aid packages and practice “generosity” to the poor. Once finding themselves relatively ignored, a missionary can concentrate on attracting people to the Word of God in a way that does not draw on their foreignness, i.e., a way that local people can imitate. If local people imitate what this missionary is doing, then it can subsequently spread widely, effectively, and rapidly, by the power of God’s Spirit working in people’s hearts, without foreign subsidy.
This relative ignoring of Western missionaries is only likely if they use indigenous and not Western languages. This is because Western languages have a lot of inherent value. An African person’s familiarity with a Western or colonial language is often a good indication of their status in their community and even their earnings. Should they use a European language, a Westerner will draw the attention especially of people aspiring to be wealthy and influential, even if they have no handouts. This is particularly true if they are a native-speaker of a European language that is widely used in Africa, such as English. Those who have a native-type fluency of such a language can easily attract the most wealth and prestige.
I believe that a missionary’s role can at times best be fulfilled when being ignored by the powerful and those aspiring to be powerful. This can help to leave time and emotional energy to invest into less prosperous sectors of a community, and into spiritually-oriented activities, such as articulating the words of Jesus. Since those are the sectors that are most likely to use indigenous languages, associating with them will open many doors to language learning that would not have opened had the missionary been concentrating on working with the better off in the community.
Use of, and the ability to hear and understand, an indigenous tongue, when combined with a disconnect from the obvious attractiveness of foreign-originated wealth, puts a missionary into a position in which they can discern what is going on around them. The longer the missionary stays around, the more discerning they can be. When they are not providing money alongside it, people are likely to be honest to tell them if what they are promoting is not desirable or helpful. They can vote with their feet and abandon projects set up by a resource-poor missionary without risking losing out economically. Hence, this poor missionary can become familiar with where people are actually itching and what scratching they are needing in a way that someone working in a resource-based ministry never can be. Gradually, perhaps subconsciously rather than overtly, one might say tacitly,[27] such a missionary will hone their words and teaching to local conditions, including the condition of people’s understanding, such as their adherence (or not) to nondualism. That is to say, a poor missionary’s communication of theological education will omit faux pas and become more contextually relevant. Eventually, people may even want to hear them speak simply because of the inherent value of what they communicate, rather than as a link to wealth or prestige.
Such a missionary has something of value to share, and as a result people who have an interest in acquiring it can in due course result in neighbouring tribes becoming interested as well. Their members will translate what they pick up into the language that facilitates its relevance for their own people. Again, in this case, this will happen without (or at least while minimising) promotion of the prosperity gospel (i.e., the association between the gospel and the high-resource Western ways of life). Thus, theological education and the gospel of Jesus will spread in contextually appropriate ways. The foreign missionary will themselves learn to be a Jesus follower in more and more depth, and in a way appropriate to the local context. Their own faith may, to some extent at least, take on an indigenous form.
How to become indigenous
I have articulated above many advantages that accrue when a missionary of Western origin manages to identify as an indigenous person. I suspect that many will be ready to acknowledge what is in a sense obvious: that cultural, geographical, linguistic, and other proximity to indigenous African people will, through enhancement of understanding, enable missionary work. Yet, many Western missionaries are defeated in their aspirations to achieve this status. I have already described the requirement of using local languages and local resources in some detail. I think these things are key. Now I want to explore what this looks like in more detail in actual situations.
I believe that one key to this process is how one manages the interface between one’s original and one’s anticipated new identities and contexts. In essence, what a missionary needs to do in this day and age is, as far as possible, to leave their Western self behind when they cross into indigenous territory. That is to say, they should keep the two distinct. They should avoid connecting the two more than is necessary. This will clearly run contrary to a great deal of contemporary logic which believes that the best thing one can do for Africa is always more and more exposure to the West—especially donor money and Western languages!
Note that engaging the above means of identifying with native people might well require refusing to do what they themselves advise you to do. As already mentioned, African people—quite reasonably in many respects—desire to benefit from Western wealth and prosperity. As a result, they may overtly encourage a Western missionary to provide money and to be satisfied to use a Western language. A missionary who takes this advice will be following the wrong advice. Hence, the emphasis often given to working under local people and listening to them so as to do what they recommend, can be misguided. A Western missionary must be ready to refuse advice that denies them vulnerability—i.e., when it involves use of a foreign language, provision of resources, or involvement in a system that is built on one or both of these two. A missionary must, of course, listen very carefully indeed. They should listen to people who are speaking their indigenous language and make every attempt to understand what is said as it is indigenously understood. Then the missionary must use their own spiritual sense, wisdom, and understanding when it comes to basics of how to relate to people.
A missionary who wants to identify with people “spiritually” needs to prioritise appropriately. Some activities, and some missionary orientations, can distract from the spiritual by drawing the missionary into demanding roles, such as administration and providing accountability for outside funds. A missionary who wants to engage with people spiritually must be ready to refuse certain activities. The alternative they need to refuse may be things that could save people’s lives or improve their material situation in the short term. Traditional African ways of life tend to result in poverty. Links between overall prosperity and what could be termed Western rationality can be great. This tends to result in non-dualistic (e.g., African) people finding themselves in situations that would, by Western standards, be considered beyond the pale. Yet, for a missionary to solve these kinds of problems will soon have them acquire an identity as a donor, so a provider of resources, with all the difficulties that this entails. Not to solve a crisis—for example, by providing for funds for simple medicine such as malaria treatment—might even be illegal in the country of the missionary’s origins.
Missionaries need to think very carefully about just what they are prepared to give. I advocate giving one’s life. As an illustration, I give a personal example. Some years ago (in 1997), I saw an opportunity to take orphaned African children into my home. I knew that would require my home language to be an indigenous tongue. It precluded my getting married (unless I found a superwoman, and I have not so far). It required me to behave like an African. It required me to invest decades of my life in a fatherly role appropriate for African children. I continue this role to this day.
Many calculate that the more resources one has to use or give out, the more one will achieve. Having less, they may reason, means they will achieve less. But use of foreign languages and handing out resources (including working at a Western-resourced theological college) also have their problems. In many ways, for some Western missionaries at least, it is better not to use financial resources in their ministry.
I am not precluding the possibility of a missionary’s retaining a very Western home life. I am instead saying that such a home life should be kept distinct from a missionary’s key relationships in their service. So, a missionary may live in a brick house with electricity, have laptops, Wi-Fi, running water, own one or more vehicles, go on foreign holidays, use European languages, eat ice cream and meat in abundance, watch movies, put children in the best schools, and so on. A missionary’s family may exist entirely in this context. But a missionary, in front of local people, should be more ashamed of, than proud of, such an environment. “My wife would leave me if I didn’t do that,” kind of thing. If living such a profligate life in a sea of poverty is troubling to the missionary’s conscience, and to that of the family, then perhaps they ought to reduce their profligacy. Some are likely to leave the field to continue enjoying a lifestyle like that elsewhere—in the USA or the UK for example. That would actually be a continuation of profligacy amongst poverty, just at a greater distance. That “greater distance” is much less these days due to the widespread use of smart phones and the internet.
Should someone have forty hours per week available, then let them give those forty hours per week with the African people. If sixty hours, then those sixty. If ten, then those ten. Those hours need to be spent on “the other side of the line”. European languages are not to cross that line. Neither are profligate lifestyles nor foreign donations.
Here are a few additional suggestions:
- The circumstances of one’s Western home life should not be secret to those with whom one ministers. There will be a minimal number of African people who occasionally see how you live when you are not in the African community practicing missionary vulnerability. But those people should not benefit materially from their exposure to your domestic/foreign self.
- A missionary who follows the recommendations made in this article must be very careful regarding their relationships with other missionaries (and other fellow Westerners). Lack of care will result in such relationships compromising their “vulnerable” stand (i.e., it could result indirectly in providing Western languages and foreign resources). For example, should a vulnerable missionary advise a conventional missionary which person they should trust with some donor funds, they will indirectly be giving that person money, which will compromise their relationship with them and others. This may require a polite but distant relationship with non-vulnerable missionary colleagues.
- Marriage is a very relevant topic. Marrying an African can have advantages. It can certainly give one a local family and, as a result, singular access to indigenous contexts that can be learning contexts and contexts of ministry. On the other hand, marrying a national may well make it impossible in practice to prevent one’s spouse from going contrary to the recommendations I give above. (Nondualistic African thinking does not separate spiritual from material blessing. An African spouse will, it seems to me from my understanding, be put under a lot of pressure to be financially generous in a way contrary to what I am here suggesting.) If the spouse is Western, vulnerable mission can easily strain the marriage relationship. Will the spouse be prepared to allow the missionary to have time for vulnerable exposure? It may be difficult to relate profoundly to a spouse if one has transformed one’s own understanding (say of dualism) through many profound experiences that the spouse has not shared. There are very good reasons for some missionaries to serve while celibate.
Conclusion
The prerogative to disconnect with the West and identify with the indigenous is vital. Reasons to not do so may, in reality, be excuses. That is to say, some missionaries’ insistence that they be financially generous to the people they are reaching can become a means of manipulating relationships. Sharing resources makes the missionary feel wanted. People they have paid will encourage them. This style of ministry will facilitate the kind of texts, pictures, or videos that financial supporters in the West want to see. If the missionary’s objective is to achieve the kinds of things Westerners value happening in Africa and aim for status, then all this would be fine.
To conclude, I would not like to advocate that missionaries refuse to be generous to all. They may, on the contrary, be generous to some people. But those to whom the missionary is financially generous should not be the same people with whom they do key ministry. (In my own case, I have reared local orphans without giving them peculiar advantages—resource or linguistic—arising from my identity as a Westerner, using my own resources.) That way they will be known for generosity, while their relationships with people with whom they minister will not be built on foreign finance. In summary, some Western missionaries should engage in theological training and other ministry in Africa using indigenous languages and resources.
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[1] A search for the term “English” in https://jimharries.academia.edu/research will reveal eighteen or so articles and reviews that critique the use of English in Africa (accessed 17 May 2024).
[2] Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, https://www.vulnerablemission.org/ (accessed 17 May 2024).
[3] See https://www.vulnerablemission.org/.
[4] Jim Harries, “A Linguistic Case for the Necessity of Enculturation in Theological and Economic Teaching Based on the ‘Shape of Words’: Including a Case Study Comparing Sub-Saharan Africa with the West,” Journal of Intercultural Communication 8, no. 3 (September 2008), https://immi.se/index.php/intercultural/article/view/Harries2008-3 (accessed 23 May 2024).
[5] Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, “Afromodernity and the New World Order,” in Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a Neoliberal Age, ed. Brad Weiss (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 329–48.
[6] Comaroff and Comaroff, “Afromodernity and the New World Order,” 331.
[7] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4th ed., ed. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 43.
[8] T. M. S. Evens, Anthropology as Ethics: Nondualism and the Conduct of Sacrifice (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008).
[9] “René Descartes,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/ (accessed 23 May 2024).
[10] Evens draws a clear distinction between nondualism and monism. Evens, Anthropology as Ethics, 25.
[11] Evens, Anthropology as Ethics, 69.
[12] Evens, Anthropology as Ethics, 69.
[13] Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” trans. A. C. Miles (Gringley-on-the-Hill, Nottinghamshire: Brynmill, 1979), 6–7e.
[14] Christos Yannaras, “The Disctinction Between Essence and Energies and Its Importance for Theology,” St. Vladimir Theological Quarterly 19 (1975): 232–45, https://web.archive.org/web/20081213005322/http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/yannaras.html (accessed 5 August 2024).
[15] Yannaras, “The Distinction Between Essence and Energies.”
[16] Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” 6–7e.
[17] Wittgenstein, “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough,” 6–7e.
[18] Jim Harries, “Formal Adoption of Wholistic Evaluation of English Is Urgently Needed to Avoid Generation of Racism in the West, and Under-Development in Africa,” in Reviving and Re-Writing Ethics in Social Research for Commoning the Community, ed. Jahid Siraz Chowdhury, et al. (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2024), 74–92.
[19] To consider that sub-Saharan Africa might have had an “economy” in pre-colonial times is in many ways itself a misnomer. Using Evens’s terminology, nondualism does not build economies as this term is understood in Western English.
[20] Jim Harries, “Practising Mission and Development in a Multi-lingual African Context of Jostling for Money and Power,” Evangelical Review of Theology 43, no. 2 (2019): 152–66.
[21] See Frank H. Melland, In Witch Bound Africa: An Account of the Primitive Kaonde Tribe and Their Beliefs (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1923) is the title to Melland’s book about the Kaonde tribe in Zambia. When one realises the degree to which witchcraft is an outcome of envy, one might consider this equivalent to “In Envy Bound Africa,” Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour, trans. Martin Secker (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1969), 13.
[22] This raises the question as to whether the real reason for widespread use of English is to make life easier for Western theological educators, i.e., to attract as many Africans as easily as possible.
[23] In nondualism, the economic and the theological are not distinct categories. The boundary between them is very fuzzy. Nevertheless, I suggest, people’s investing themselves into theological education for the purposes of economic gain remains problematic.
[24] Jim Harries, African Heartbeat: And a Vulnerable Fool (London: Apostolos, 2018). See, especially, Chapter 17.
[25] Jey J. Kanagaraj, “The Poor in the Gospels and the Good News Proclaimed to Them,” Themelios 23, no. 1 (October 1997): 40–58, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/the-poor-in-the-gospels-and-the-good-news-proclaimed-to-them/ (accessed 23 May 2024).
[26] Martin Schlag, “The Preferential Option for the Poor and Catholic Social Teaching,” in Catholic Social Teaching: A Volume of Scholarly Essays, ed. G. V. Bradley and E. C. Brugger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 468–82.
[27] For more on tacit knowing, see Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983).
