Common Concerns in African and Chinese Theology and Missiology
From a Christian Chinese perspective, certain features of African life and theology stand out. In their approach to life, there are three common issues:1
(1) family (and names),
(2) ancestors and the spirit world,2 and
(3) blessings and prosperity.
Family (and Names)
Even before spiritual issues can be broached, the language barrier for Africans, who mostly speak Swahili versus the Chinese (who do not), is a big hurdle. Moving beyond the language is getting to know the people.3 According to an African theologian,
… one of the most distinctive features of African culture is that the family and the community are totally blended. The African family is defined in very broad terms and embraces far more than the nuclear family of parents and children. Anyone with whom one shares blood ties, whether close or distant, is regarded as part of one’s family. Thus, a family includes brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins and nephews, as far back as anyone can remember.4
One should note that the concept of “family” for Africans and even the Chinese includes the extended kin and thus forms a common overlap of meaning. For the traditional Chinese, the family is not equated to the nuclear kind (two parents with two children) but is extended, incorporating grandparents, older and younger relatives and even ancestors.5 When the Chinese are far away from home, especially in Africa to work, a church that functions as a family is a powerful witness. In Christianity, God’s family means those who are
… born of the Spirit is of more value than what is born of the flesh (Matthew 10:35-37; 12:46-50; John 3:1-21) …. [Therefore,] welcome in the church should also not be reserved for blood relatives, even in the larger sense of all those from our ethnic group. Christians of all nations are equally brothers and sisters in the Christian family (Acts 6:1-7; Galatians 3:28). If we can learn to combine our good family and community spirit with the biblical ideal, the … church will be an example for the world, a model of how to live.6
Related to the family is the importance of names—to recognize and respect who a person is called. In Asia, names are so significant to the Chinese that parents choose their children’s names carefully, thinking of particular meanings that come with them. Interestingly, Africans also share this concern for the meaning of names.7
In the Bible, the long genealogies show how ancient Israel honored their ancestors’ names and the meanings given to people that would reflect their character and personhood. Name changes would signify a change in one’s personhood or station in life, e.g., Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel. Paul also cared to mention people’s names when greeting brothers and sisters in the faith and workers in his letters. When he included different types, classes, and names of people in his salutations, he didn’t just honor them. By mentioning them, he introduced a new way of thinking and relating how including non-kinfolk as part of God’s community meant embracing them as a part of a new family or humanity in Christ.
By being aware of the importance of names and name-calling, Africans and Chinese who are highly appreciative if each person cares to remember and enunciate one’s name well—especially when enunciating difficult sounding African or Chinese names. Additionally, asking the meaning of their names opens deeper avenues for conversation and connection. In fact, Africans or Chinese who are Christ-followers will likely have biblical or Christian names—a giveaway to their faith, which heightens spiritual relationships.
Ancestors and the Spirit World
In Chinese and African culture, “family” also extends to the spirits, where ties to specific gods and ancestors are included. A theologian observes:
Africans and Asians do not simply walk away from their buried or cremated dead and forget about them. The holistic emphasis includes the notion of the deceased as part of the present-day family or clan. In Africa this means that western notions of material and technological “progress” are often avoided or resisted, for fear of offending the ancestors. At the same time, achieving personal power confers status not only on oneself but also on one’s ancestors … Asian respect for ancestors may take different forms, and have different social and political effects, to those discerned in Africa.8
Because the subject of family and ancestors is significant for the Chinese and Africans, “churches and theologians need to develop a clear theology of ancestors which affirms the importance of family but heeds the biblical injunctions against worshipping or consulting the dead.”9
One way that Africans and Chinese can healthily relate to one another is to share the stories of our ancestors’ upbringing and influence on each other’s lives to understand their impact on our lives. Doing this creates a shared mutual and richer understanding of each other’s lives on a common theme. Even deeper is to show one another that Christ is our true ancestor10 who guides and protects us and meets the needs and hopes of our future. Christ came before us, died, and now goes before us to make the way (Hebrews 12:2). Because of this, he is the best ancestor that we can have—but a living one who is also God.
Blessing and Prosperity
Family and ancestors are seen to bring blessings and prosperity in Chinese and African societies. Here, we can talk to one another about what blessings truly mean in Scripture where blessings come to those who are poor, who mourn, are meek, hunger and thirst for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted because of righteousness (Matthew 5:3-11). Lastly, when people insult us, great is our reward in heaven (Matthew 5:12)!
Matthew 5 teaches both Africans and the Chinese that God’s blessings are deeper than human notions of blessing that are materialistic or self-serving which are limited. God’s blessings go beyond and transform people on the outside and inside. These blessings stay true and remain even if circumstances affect one’s health or wealth because they are deeper than human contrivances or creations.
Blessing also comes when we give for it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), not with an ulterior motive to solicit a favor. Thus, when we “bless” people with an item or a gift, it is merely the first glimpse or witness of bringing God’s blessing to them. In this first act of giving, we begin to relate to people in the role as a “giver” of blessings.
The second and more profound blessing is the giving of our self to them. Doing this changes us to relate to people as a person instead of a transaction. The giving of ourselves involves our time and thoughts, and to be with them, to hear their lives and thoughts. Such giving is relational and more meaningful in any human connection.
The third and deepest level is to bless them by giving our experience of God to them. Doing this transforms both givers and receivers as fellow seekers of God. We are not merely friends to one another but seekers looking for God together in that relationship. To paraphrase the words of D.T. Niles, evangelism is like one beggar telling another where to find bread.
Conclusion
According to theologian Johannes Verkuyl,
African theology does all the things which theology in general does, but in African theology (as in Asian), all these other functions are embraced in the missionary or communicative function. It is not primarily an intra-ecclesiastical exercise, but a discipline whose practitioners keep one question central: How can we best do our theology so that the Gospel will touch Africans most deeply?11
Phrased in another way, good theology must lead to good missiology and ministerial engagements. In this discussion, I have suggested some theological and missiological commonalities that both sides can engage with one another. Good missiology and partnership with Africans that is more equal and mutually instructive to one another is a partnership that values the voices and contributions of both parties in theological understanding, finance and time, culture and our lives.
If Chinese and African Christians are to rise in maturity and come together as one, such healthy relationships can become a model of how two of the fastest growing populations of Christianity in the twenty-first century can come together to learn from and work with one another mutually for God’s kingdom witness.
- I omitted a fourth category due to space—dreams, magic, and witchcraft. For discussions on this, see M. C. Jedrej and Rosalind Shaw, eds., Dreaming, Religion, and Society in Africa (Leiden: Brill, 1992).
- Kwame Bediako, “Jesus in African Culture: A Ghanaian Perspective on Ancestors,” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 32, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 195–201; Charles Nyamiti, Jesus Christ, the Ancestor of Humankind: An Essay on African Christology (Nairobi: Catholic University of Eastern Africa, 1992).
- See Gong and Nehrbass, Reaching Out, for further discussion on bridges and barriers.
- Soro Soungalo, “Family,” in Africa Bible Commentary, ed. Tokunboh Adeyemo (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 1178.
- Alex Smith, “Family Networks: The Context for Communication,” in Family and Faith in Asia: The Missional Impact of Social Networks, ed. Paul de Neui (Pasadena, CA: William Carey, 2010), 49–50.
- Soungalo, “Family,” 1178.
- Romanus Aboh, Eyo Mensah, Idom Inyabri, and Lucy Ushuple, “Christianity and the Gendering of Personal Names among the Bette in Southeastern Nigeria,” Journal of Religion in Africa 53 (2023): 69.
- Clark, Asian, 184.
- Paul G. Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tiénou, Understanding Folk Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 131.
- Bediako, Jesus and Nyamiti, Jesus Christ. However, the idea of Jesus as our ancestor is disputed by some African Christians, e.g., Timothy Palmer, “Jesus Christ: Our Ancestor?” Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology 27, no.1 (2008): 65-76.
- Bediako, Jesus, 18.
