The People Who Do All Things Together: Living Base Ecclesial Communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Introduction

Growing up amidst the social turbulence of twenty-first-century Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tharcisse Onema found solace in his village’s rich Catholic communal life. In particular, he spent many evenings reflecting on Scripture with family members and neighbors in his communauté ecclesiale vivante de base (CEVB), or living base ecclesial community. Teachers by training, his parents took other CEVB children into their homes, and it was through studying Scripture in his CEVB that Onema first developed a desire to attend minor seminary. Nor was his CEVB—located in Dionga village within Tshumbe Sainte Marie Parish—limited to religious study. Members were actively involved in a wide array of charitable and community ministries including visiting the sick, providing food for the hungry, repairing roads, and cleaning water sources such as creeks and streams. When Onema was later ordained a priest, a group of Dionga mothers gave him a Bible, a chasuble, several goats, and a special letter with six points of advice for his priestly ministry. When his parents died while he was away at major seminary, the “CEVB did everything,” including purchasing a tomb for his father, providing burial cloths, bringing gifts to the family, providing goats for the funeral celebration, and even paying his seminary fees for three years. For Onema, his vocation as a priest grew out of his experience in the local base community: “If I am a priest today, I am the fruit of this community. They gave me the training to know the name of God.” ¹

Onema’s experience speaks to the crucial importance of base ecclesial communities in the DRC and the broader Catholic Global South. First widely studied in the Latin American context, base communities received extensive scholarly attention among both liberation theologians and social scientists during the late twentieth century. ² However, these communities have been important well beyond Latin America: the eastern African region counted over 180,000 Small Christian Communities (SCCs) in the 2010s. ³ In the DRC, base communities compose the foundation of the church in both urban and rural areas, integrating faith formation with community and family life. In Lingala, the language most widely spoken in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, a CEVB is known simply as a lisanga: the “people who do all things together.” ⁴

Although Congolese base communities have flourished for over fifty years, they are not well known in Western theological scholarship due to linguistic differences and logistical research barriers. ⁵ This article addresses the lacuna by shedding light on the history, ecclesiology, and continued religious and social salience of base communities in the DRC. The argument proceeds in four movements. First, I contextualize the Congolese story within the broader history of the base community movement in the Global South, paying particular attention to Brazil, the Philippines, and eastern Africa where such communities originated and thrived. Second, I trace the historical development and foundational theological and pastoral vision of CEVBs in the DRC, also one of the original homes to base communities. Third, drawing on field interviews with forty-seven base community leaders, I offer a more in-depth case study of the theological vision, structural organization, and pastoral work of CEVBs in the Diocese of Tshumbe in the Sankuru region of central DRC. Exemplifying the African ecclesiology of the “church as family of God,” these communities are the living foundation of the Catholic Church in this rural diocese in terms of faith formation, charitable works, and community building. At the same time, I will also show that a sociopolitical quietism characterizes Tshumbe CEVBs and underscores a missed opportunity to fully integrate faith formation, catechesis, and Catholic social teaching. Finally, on a constructive note, I conclude by considering the ecclesiological fruits and lessons these communities demonstrate for the broader global church especially in the North American context. In essence, CEVBs offer an impressive model for lay faith formation, exemplify Vatican II’s vision of the people of God, and embody a synodal church at the African grassroots.

The Postconciliar Rise of Base Communities in the Catholic Global South

In Latin America, Brazil is widely seen as the nucleus of the base community movement in the post-World War II Catholic world. Here the comunidade ecclesiais de base (CEB) started in the 1950s as an outgrowth of the Catholic Action movement and as a response to the rapid twentieth-century growth in Protestant churches and the acute shortage of rural Catholic clergy. ⁶ Dom Agnelo Rossi and other forerunners trained lay catechists to sustain the faith community through weekday gatherings of Bible study, prayer, and music as well as the Sunday missa sem padre (Mass without a priest). ⁷ In the aftermath of Brazil’s 1964 military coup and under the influence of Paulo Freire’s “Base Education Movement,” Brazilian base communities developed a stronger social and political edge. ⁸ Theologian-practitioners such as Leonardo Boff went so far as to describe the movement as a kind of “ecclesiogenesis,” namely a “rebirth” of the church in local, lay-led communities that would reflect the “reciprocity” and “belonging” that characterized the original Christian communities of the New Testament. ⁹ These communities expanded rapidly in the 1970s with upwards of 80,000 Brazilian CEBs by the end of the decade. ¹⁰

Building upon these foundations in Brazil, as well as in Chile, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua, and Mexico, CEBs grew rapidly across Latin America in the years following Vatican II and the epochal 1968 Medellín conference organized by CELAM (the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano, or Latin American Episcopal Council). Medellín defined a CEB as “a community, local or environmental, which corresponds to the reality of a homogenous group and whose size allows for personal fraternal contact among its members.” ¹¹ Latin American CEBs facilitated the firsthand study of scriptural texts. Building on the methodology of Catholic Action, however, they also encouraged participants to apply the text to the social contexts of members’ lives through a five-step methodology of see, judge, act, evaluate, and celebrate. ¹² CEBs also conscientized members to greater awareness of their oppression, used the Bible to counter negative and fatalistic concepts of the self, and committed the Catholic Church to the poor’s “struggle to be free.” ¹³ This has lent a socioeconomic, justice-oriented edge to Latin American CEBs, exemplified in the recent mission statement of a group of urban base communities in El Salvador: “These communities continue to dedicate themselves to the fight against poverty and injustice on the local, national, and international levels. We are committed to contributing to God’s Kingdom of peace and justice on earth.” ¹⁴ CEBs’ commitment to social activism also led to opposition from significant elements of the Latin American hierarchy, and formal ecclesial support for base communities declined significantly under the papacy of John Paul II (r. 1978–2005).

Although Latin American CEBs garnered more international scholarly attention, the Philippines also became a center for base communities in the 1980s and 1990s. ¹⁵ Started in Mindanao in the late 1960s, Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) were embraced as a national pastoral strategy by the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines in 1991. ¹⁶ Filipino BECs shared their Latin American counterparts’ commitment to integrating Bible study, liturgy, and social action and also included a stronger emphasis on ecological and environmental awareness. For example, in the late 1980s, Filipino BECs in San Fernando, Bukidnon, shut down the timber industry on their island, famously celebrating Mass in the middle of a highway to block the passage of logging trucks. ¹⁷ Whereas Latin American bishops often disagreed over whether to support CEBs, Filipino bishops have generally encouraged them. In 2013, 92 percent of Filipino dioceses reported that BECs were a pastoral priority, and 72 percent of parishes had established BEC networks. ¹⁸ Exemplifying Christian baptismal theology as expressed in Lumen Gentium’s people of God ecclesiology, the Filipino BEC is envisioned as a “priestly, prophetic and kingly/servant people and as the Church of the Poor,” which includes the regular integration of liturgy and social action. ¹⁹ The concept of “total human development,” which Christopher Moxham calls the “central tenet of the [BEC] movement” in the Philippines, ²⁰ has encouraged local income-generating projects, the expansion of private property ownership, and nonviolent activism. This more gradualist Filipino approach contrasts with the wholesale structural revolution anticipated in some streams of the Latin American CEB movement during its 1960s–1980s heyday. ²¹

In the eastern African context, small Christian communities originated as a new pastoral strategy in the fertile years following the Second Vatican Council. In the mid-1960s, Musoma Diocese in northern Tanzania initiated chamas, small groups of lay Catholics that gathered in their villages for prayer and scriptural discussion. In 1972, Bishop Patrick Kalilombe of Lilongwe, Malawi, introduced a diocesan pastoral plan that called for the establishment of SCCs in all local parishes, and he later joined one as an ordinary member. In 1973, the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA) adopted SCCs as a regional pastoral priority, positing that “Church life must be based on the communities in which everyday life and work take place: those basic and manageable social groups whose members can experience real inter-personal relationships and feel a sense of communal belonging, both in living and working.” ²² Similar shifts toward base communities were unfolding across Francophone Africa including the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Burundi, Rwanda, and Burkina Faso, and the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference also adopted lay-led, small Christian communities in 1975. ²³

SCCs were endorsed as a primary expression of the African ecclesiology of “Church as Family of God” at both the First African Synod in 1994 and the Second African Synod in 2009. In this sense, SCCs are based in extended families yet also called to relativize blood relations within the waters of baptism. ²⁴ SCCs—what Joseph Healey prefers to call the “original manner of being church” or, following José Marins, the “church on the move” ²⁵ —have continued to enjoy strong hierarchical backing over the past fifty years. As with both Latin American and Filipino CEBs, eastern African SCCs are intended to create tightly knit, lay-led communities of between ten and twenty families meeting weekly in homes or local village worship spaces. ²⁶ SCCs also reach out to uncatechized, extended family members and “help the neighboring families to live in a spirit of fraternity and sense of spiritual togetherness.” ²⁷ In summary, they help Catholics share their faith in their homes, rather than limiting Christian community life to the parish building. SCCs have also facilitated the Catholic Church’s shift toward a more “bottom-up” ecclesiology: in countries like Tanzania, parish leaders must be drawn from the ranks of the SCCs. ²⁸ Perhaps due in part to the close involvement of the hierarchy, eastern African SCCs have generally not had the same degree of justice activism as one sees in Latin America and the Philippines.

Even before leaders in Latin America, the Philippines, and eastern Africa launched base communities, however, Congolese leaders were initiating a similar pastoral strategy. It is to the historical and ecclesiological roots of the Congolese CEVB movement that we now turn.

Historical and Pastoral Background to the CEVB Movement in the DRC

The origins of Congo’s base community movement can be traced to the groundbreaking 1961 pastoral directions of the Congolese Catholic bishops. ²⁹ After decades of Belgian colonial favoritism, the Catholic Church faced a much more contentious political environment in independent Congo. The January 1959 Leopoldville riots that sparked Belgium’s rapid decolonization targeted Catholic mission churches, and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in January 1961 led into a more acute phase of civil violence. In response to this crisis and reflecting recent ecclesiological developments like Placide Tempels’s Jamaa family movement, ³⁰ the bishops’ pastoral directions were notable for their call to empower the laity and inculturate the church. In language that anticipated the impending Second Vatican Council, the bishops wrote that laity were “not only made by the Church. They make the Church.” ³¹ Even more noteworthy, a hierarchy still predominantly composed of Belgian missionaries recognized that a “Church which has appeared for a long time as European in its cult, its teaching, its organization” needed to more deeply encounter the “fundamental values of African society.” ³² Challenging the bifurcations of the colonial period, the 1961 instructions aimed to form Catholic communities that could be both “authentically Christian” and “authentically Congolese” through integrating faith and daily life in an apostolate of “personal and living contact.” ³³ Toward this end, the bishops argued that the Catholic Church should cultivate the development of “human communities in which they share the same faith, the reciprocal exchange of fraternal love, and participation in the same sacraments.” ³⁴ Such communal formation would happen not through traditional institutional means but rather through adopting a “pastorale de proximité,” helping the church to become incarnate where regular people lived, worked, played, and suffered. ³⁵

If the 1961 instructions provided the theoretical foundation for the Congolese church’s shift to living base ecclesial communities, practical implementation did not commence for some years. The early 1960s were a period of tremendous turbulence in Congo. The diamond-rich Katanga province briefly seceded; Lumumbist and later Simba militias launched wholesale rebellions against the newly independent state and terrorized local populations; and the postcolonial state itself rotated through multiple unstable coalitions before General Joseph Mobutu launched a military coup d’état in November 1965 and ushered in decades of corrupt, authoritarian rule. ³⁶ In the midst of the relative political stability that followed Mobutu’s coup, Catholic bishops gathered in 1967 for their seventh plenary conference and first since 1961. Building on Vatican II’s people of God ecclesiology, the bishops called for the Catholic Church to become a “church of the poor” and move “near to the Congolese people,” forming lay-led communities that would reflect an engaged, adult Christian faith and not simply a “religiously instructed” population. ³⁷ What became known as les communautés ecclésiales vivantes de base, or “living ecclesial communities of the base,” were also arising more organically across Kinshasa and around the country. In fact, members of Kinshasa Saint Etienne Parish’s CEVB Bolingani (“loving each other”) trace their origins to 1966. ³⁸

It was in the 1970s, however, that Congolese CEVBs really blossomed. As Mobutu took an anticlerical turn and cracked down on the Catholic Church’s youth movements, banned Christian names, and briefly exiled friend-turned-foe Cardinal Joseph Malula, ³⁹ Catholic leaders realized the crucial importance of developing diffuse, grassroots, lay-led communities that could withstand formal institutional persecution. Malula, the Archbishop of Kinshasa, spearheaded this ecclesiological shift. Recognizing that colonial missionaries had tried to “Christianize Africa” without “Africanizing Christianity,” ⁴⁰ Malula argued that base communities could achieve both evangelical goals by deepening laypeople’s faith practice, connecting the church to “the problems of the neighborhoods,” and more fully indigenizing the church with African values. ⁴¹ Continuing a trajectory in his thought going back to the 1950s, Malula also believed that CEVBs could preserve ecclesial independence by “distancing the Church from the State while strengthening its ties with the population.” ⁴² In a 1973 clergy conference, Malula famously exclaimed that he “wished to bombard the current parishes by making them burst into small communities of a human dimension.” ⁴³ Malula’s commitment to CEVBs was complemented by his broader embracing of lay parish leaders known as bakambi who prepared liturgies, conducted catechesis, and provided social relief for parishioners. ⁴⁴ Malula also became one of the continent’s leading advocates for liturgical inculturation, best exemplified in the “Zaire Rite” approved by the Vatican in 1988. ⁴⁵

Formally adopted as a national pastoral priority at the Congolese bishops’ twelfth plenary assembly in 1975, CEVBs drew inspiration from the Acts of the Apostles 2:42–47 model of prayer, fellowship, economic mutuality, and common table. Whereas parishes were organized around the celebration of the Mass, CEVBs brought the church into homes and local chapels in urban neighborhoods and rural villages alike. A typical meeting would include prayer, music, the liturgy of the Word, group reflection and application, and a financial collection. Each community of fifty-to-one hundred Christians was led by between seven and nine lay leaders; Malula mandated strict equity in male and female leadership in Kinshasa CEVBs, a requirement that remains today. ⁴⁶ These communities were expected to be in communion with the broader church, and yet priests were explicitly instructed not to direct CEVBs but rather to support and encourage their lay leaders. ⁴⁷

Likewise, Vatican II’s ecclesiology of communion was a central organizing principle for the CEVBs. After 1977, the Congolese Catholic parish was reconceived as a “communion of communities,” and the CEVBs were expected to demonstrate how Christ present in the sacraments could also be present in the proclaimed Word and in love of one’s neighbor. ⁴⁸ In this regard, their work extended far beyond weekly gatherings as the CEVB became the face of the Catholic Church in terms of family conflict resolution, the corporal works of mercy, and even financial credit initiatives that enabled members to start small businesses and pay school tuition for their children. ⁴⁹ The communities were also expected to offer a prophetic social voice amidst the severe sociopolitical challenges of postcolonial Congo. This social mission was most famously exemplified in the central role that Kinshasa CEVBs played in the February 1992 “March of Christians” protesting Mobutu’s continued authoritarianism and calling for the restoration of the Conférence nationale souveraine (CNS). ⁵⁰ Likewise, in the midst of eastern Congo’s ongoing conflicts, base communities have trained paralegals to teach human rights to the local population and organized peace and civic education workshops. ⁵¹

Championed by Cardinal Malula, Congolese base communities influenced both Christifideles Laici, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 encyclical on laity in the church, as well as the 1994 First African Synod’s primary ecclesial metaphor of the church as family of God. ⁵² But Congo’s brutal 1996–2002 war disrupted all of Catholic life, including CEVBs, and in more recent years lay devotional movements like the Kizito-Anuarite have become more popular among younger Congolese. ⁵³ Whatever the setbacks, Congolese CEVBs continue to constitute the foundation of the Congolese church in the 2020s, especially in rural areas such as the Diocese of Tshumbe.

A Contemporary Congolese Case Study: The Cundas of the Diocese of Tshumbe

The Diocese of Tshumbe is predominantly populated by the Batetela ethnic group. Remembered for their anticolonial uprisings against the Congo Free State, the Batetela are a loosely organized Bantu ethnic community composed of Otetela speakers spread across the Kasai region and Sankuru province in the central region of DRC. ⁵⁴ The Batetela’s most famous native son was Congo’s first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. A part of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Kananga and the territory of Lubefu, the Diocese of Tshumbe’s twenty-three parishes are spread across a huge geographic expanse equivalent to the land mass of Belgium. The domestic and international profile of Tshumbe’s Catholic Church grew under its former ordinary, Bishop Nicolas Djomo Lola, who spent eight years as president of the Congolese National Episcopal Conference (CENCO). ⁵⁵ In addition to securing international funding for a wide variety of development projects, Djomo started Université Notre Dame de Tshumbe (UNITSHU), a Catholic university that provides programs in agronomy, medicine, and business with the goal of enabling rural Congolese to pursue a practical higher education without moving to Kinshasa. ⁵⁶ But whatever these tangible gains, Tshumbe remains a very poor, remote diocese, in part because the absentee state has not invested in infrastructure, leaving development work largely in the hands of the Catholic Church. ⁵⁷ Despite or perhaps because of these challenges, CEVBs—known locally in Otetela as cundas, which can be translated as either “branches” or “gatherings”—flourish as the beating heart of the local church. In the words of one local priest, “Without the CEVBs, the Church here would fall apart.” ⁵⁸

In line with the broader national church, the first cundas began in the Diocese of Tshumbe during the 1970s. When asked to describe the nature of a cunda (CEVB) respondents most often used language of an expanded sense of family and a localized sense of church community. Here is a sampling:

One can see several common threads in these responses, including how the CEVB enmeshes the church in local community life, the importance of translating the Gospel message into daily life, and the ways in which the CEVB expands family ties. As one priest summarized, the CEVBs teach people “how to live faith together with others, how to get involved in the community, not alone, but with other people.” ⁶⁹ Such responses shed light on why CEVBs exemplify the African church’s family of God metaphor.

CEVBs in Tshumbe have a highly developed leadership structure. The onombodi (best translated as “animator” or “administrator”) is the overall leader of the community whose job is to “make sure the community grows in a holistic way” through coordinating and overseeing the other seven group leaders. ⁷⁰ Yet as several CEVB members told me, the onombodi is also accountable to those he or she serves. In fact, members can call out a poor-performing CEVB administrator and even oust him or her in a public meeting. ⁷¹ The second key role is that of catechist. This leader is the religious teacher for the CEVB, leading prayers, preaching on the scriptural readings for the day, visiting the sick, and counseling those struggling in their faith. Tellingly, the Otetela word for catechist, osambisha, literally means “the one who preaches.” ⁷² Beyond these two primary leadership roles, the Tshumbe CEVB leadership team also includes an ofundji (the “writer” who serves as secretary); an ondaki (“counselor”) who facilitates conflict resolution and family/community reconciliation; an okokedi (“protector”) who is the first line of support for the sick; an omombi (“steward”) who manages finances and stores food and livestock for community celebrations, the parish, and emergency aid; and an onongodi (“welcomer”) who provides hospitality for visitors. ⁷³ Many Tshumbe CEVBs also have an osambi (“consoler”) who is tasked with providing bereavement services for the mourning. Importantly, leaders are not democratically elected but emerge out of collective group discernment centered on the various charisms involved in each leadership role. Although men dominate the positions of animator and catechist, women serve prominently in leadership roles related to financial stewardship, conflict resolution, hospitality, and consoling. In a culture where polygamy is still commonly practiced, CEVB leaders are also expected to practice monogamy and have valid, sacramental marriages. ⁷⁴

Tshumbe CEVBs meet anywhere from weekly to daily for one to two hours. A typical gathering begins with prayer, often a standard Catholic devotion such as the Our Father, Hail Mary, the Liturgy of the Hours, or the rosary. ⁷⁵ This is followed by music, often in a praise and worship style. After an invocation of the Holy Spirit, the catechist reads and preaches from either the daily lectionary or the upcoming Sunday readings and Gospel. ⁷⁶ After this Liturgy of the Word, members report on the news from the neighborhood, especially related to illness, recent deaths, and the concomitant need for both home visits and funeral provisions. ⁷⁷ At times meetings include further sacramental catechesis, especially in preparation for baptism, as many Batetela delay baptism until primary school due to the inaccessibility of priests. ⁷⁸ Meetings close with prayer and often a shared meal and further community discussion. ⁷⁹

In Tshumbe, CEVBs play a central role in facilitating faith formation, especially in terms of increasing biblical literacy, socially reinforcing the practice of the faith, and increasing personal knowledge of Catholic teachings. ⁸⁰ This can take the form of sacramental preparation for youth and the nurturing of religious vocations; the local church in fact requires a CEVB endorsement of a particular candidate before he or she is admitted to seminary or religious life. ⁸¹ On a personal level, one female leader spoke of how hosting CEVB gatherings in her home strengthened her family’s ongoing prayer life; another credited her CEVB participation for enabling her to become humbler and to listen before speaking. ⁸² Many spoke eloquently of the inspiration of certain biblical passages in their faith lives. For CEVB treasurer Christine Mbutshu, the book of Ruth’s Naomi provided a model of family care in the aftermath of the death of a loved one. Her colleagues Jean Akasa and Lambert Lotanga highlighted the Gospel of Matthew’s call for forgiveness and for Christians to be “salt of the earth and light of the world.” ⁸³ Importantly, multiple leaders mentioned how participation in a CEVB allowed them to see religious practice through a lens of active communal engagement, rather than a lens of passive obligation. As one leadership team noted, it is one thing to listen passively to a homily preaching communal virtues; it is quite another to learn these virtues in practice by sharing a community garden with your fellow CEVB members. ⁸⁴ In turn, the proximity of CEVBs was critical to community faith formation and engagement. CEVB leaders could immediately address a member’s spiritual need or crisis during the day or night, whereas a priest’s response might take days or longer due to travel distance. ⁸⁵

One of the principal social and charitable contributions of the CEVB rests in what the Batetela and other Congolese call salongo, or community work. ⁸⁶ Such service includes leveling roads, fixing potholes, clearing footpaths, cutting grass to limit mosquitoes, cleaning creeks, constructing fisheries, and building community gardens. It also includes other prominent corporal works of mercy such as care for the mourning, visiting the sick and hospitalized, engaging in community health and vaccination campaigns, caring for widows and orphans, and burying the dead. ⁸⁷ Tshumbe CEVBs are also notable for their work in conflict resolution, especially regarding marital disputes, financial debts, land conflicts, and internal disagreements within the CEVB itself. ⁸⁸ Interviewees highlighted the work of CEVBs in mediating spousal disputes. This stems in part from a desire to discuss marital issues with fellow married couples, as well as laypeople’s reluctance to tell priests about the more intimate dimensions of spousal and family life. ⁸⁹ When facilitating disputes, CEVB leaders draw on traditional palaver methods where disputing parties can air their grievances, determine respective responsibility, and seek behavioral change, restitution, and forgiveness. ⁹⁰

As in other parts of the world, regular CEVB attendance in the Diocese of Tshumbe is dominated by women. As previously noted, women serve prominently in CEVB leadership, and in interviews, several female lay leaders claimed that personal character rather than gender was the key determinant of authority in the community. ⁹¹ Yet in part due to decades of gender-based educational discrimination, few women serve as animators and catechists in rural Tshumbe, especially in comparison to urban Kinshasa. ⁹² Regardless, the family metaphor is very important for many of these female leaders, with many adopting culturally reinforced maternal roles such as consoling, counseling, and providing hospitality. Almost universally, women were praised as more trustworthy with money than men. As one leader put it, “When you give a woman money, she knows how to keep it.” ⁹³ Women’s prominent participation in CEVBs also reflects the central social and familial roles of mothers in Batetela society. In the words of one female leader in Lodja, the mother is “the pillar of life,” yet the mother can also “put fire” through her words: “If the mother is bad, things will go badly in the family and the village. And if she is good, things will go well.” ⁹⁴

For all of the successes of CEVBs, manifold challenges remain. Given the primacy of scriptural reflection, the lack of an Otetela translation of the Old Testament is a huge lacuna. ⁹⁵ And although catechists receive continuing education three times per year at weeklong diocesan synods, priests, animators, and catechists alike felt that religious training could be expanded and deepened. ⁹⁶ Given Tshumbe’s entrenched poverty, it was not surprising to hear leadership teams name a lack of resources as a major pastoral problem. Not only are CEVBs expected to contribute money and foodstuffs to their local priests and parishes, but they are also the front line for providing social welfare, funeral services, and hospitality for members, visitors, the poor, and the destitute. Competition with charismatic Christian churches is also a growing challenge, leading many leaders to request electronic musical equipment such as keyboards and speakers that could compete with Pentecostals’ upbeat worship styles. ⁹⁷ In turn, interviewees noted a generational shift where CEVBs remain strong among older Congolese but are not engaging young adults at the same depth. This trend was noted especially in Kinshasa, where parish associations like Kizito-Anuarite or Bilenge ya Mwinda were much more popular with observant Catholics under the age of 35. ⁹⁸ In Tshumbe, youth participation was coveted, and young people were often credited with strengthening the ethos and especially the music of a CEVB. ⁹⁹

In turn, the sociopolitical and economic engagement of Tshumbe CEVBs seemed underdeveloped. There was little in the way of CEVB activism around the root causes of poverty or political predation, or the type of “see, judge, act” conscientization method so common in the Latin American BCC context of the late twentieth century, or more recently in the 2010s in Kenya. ¹⁰⁰ And although the Congolese bishops have been notable for their outspoken criticisms of state abuses and corruption, most of their French-language statements have not filtered down to the parish or CEVB-level, especially in rural regions of DRC. ¹⁰¹ Interestingly, one Batetela priest with CENCO’s national justice and peace commission claimed that sociopolitical engagement was much stronger in Tshumbe in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when he actively conducted local training sessions on faith, justice, and political action. ¹⁰² This underscores the important roles of priests, missionaries, and other educated elites in sparking social consciousness-raising among the poor, as evidenced in previous literature on Latin American BCCs.

One can also point to the complex challenge of gender equity. On one level, CEVBs reflect the patriarchal norms of both the Catholic Church and some streams of Congolese society, especially in rural areas where the top positions of animator and catechist remain largely the province of men. In turn, one wonders how a single woman fits into an ecclesial and local culture that largely defines the woman through motherhood. For example, the largest Catholic women’s organization in Tshumbe is the Mamans Catholiques, or “Catholic mothers.” As CEVB and Mamans Catholiques leader Catherine Dikaho noted, the purpose of this organization is to “teach women how to be good wives and mothers.” ¹⁰³ Another member described the “good wife” in traditional terms—obeying the husband, being polite, making sure husbands leave on time, taking care of the home and children’s hygiene, and ironing. ¹⁰⁴

On another level, though, CEVBs and the affiliated Mamans Catholiques reflect creative ways of empowering women within traditional church structures. Kinshasa communities require equal gender balance in CEVB leadership, and even in more rural Tshumbe, women take the leading roles in conflict mediation, counseling, hospitality, and financial management while also actively participating in diocesan synods. ¹⁰⁵ Particularly striking here were members’ descriptions of themselves as “mothers” of the church, with priests seen not so much as fathers, but rather as sons. In this vein, several female CEVB leaders in Kinshasa described their roles as “taking care of the church like their own family” and being “mothers of the house,” including counseling errant priests “like sons” and “bringing them back as their child.” ¹⁰⁶ Such language underlines an important nuancing of stereotypical clergy-lay or male-female power dynamics and highlights the communal power of the mother in Congolese society. And beyond simply supporting their husbands, the Mamans Catholiques help younger women to conduct responsible family planning and have played prominent roles in peacebuilding and social activism in both DRC and the neighboring Republic of Congo. ¹⁰⁷ Whether in the domestic or political sphere, then, the Mamans Catholiques strive to exemplify their Lingala motto: “Nzambe liboso, nzala muinda: God is in front of us, become light.” ¹⁰⁸

Ecclesiology in Dialogue: Learning from the Congolese CEVBs

What ecclesiological conclusions might one draw from the Congolese CEVBs, and what applications might apply in the North American context? First, as Congolese theologian John Mobiala has argued, these communities exemplify Vatican II’s ecclesiology of the people of God and the African ecclesiology of church as the family of God. ¹⁰⁹ In terms of the people of God ecclesiology, not only is the CEVB the primary place where laity hear and apply the Word of God, but the CEVB is also a privileged location for sacramental formation, eucharistic celebrations, and living out one’s own baptismal call to a royal priesthood. Here the CEVBs closely embody the vision of Lumen Gentium: “They [the faithful] exercise that priesthood by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, abnegation, and active charity.” ¹¹⁰ In turn, the CEVBs are also the primary way in which the Congolese church moves from the sacristy and into the streets, “bridging distance” and “getting involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives,” as Pope Francis calls for in Evangelii Gaudium. ¹¹¹ As one CEVB leader put it, “In order to spread the gospel, you can’t just rely on the priest preaching in the parish. You need other people who can go to where the priest is not present every day.” ¹¹² At the same time, the CEVBs grow out of extended family structures and are best understood as networks of village families. Reflecting the fundamental role of the extended family in African culture and tradition, this ecclesiological metaphor of church as family of God reinforces values of “care for others, solidarity, warmth in human relationships, acceptance, dialogue and trust.” ¹¹³ Reflecting the trinitarian love that animates the church, the image of family of God strengthens and deepens the relational understanding of church in comparison to people of God.

Reflecting the deeply communal nature of African culture, this emphasis on church as family can seem foreign to many Western ears. American culture is marked by deep currents of individualism, an understanding of freedom as autonomy, and a prioritization of career that combine to push younger generations away from their parents, grandparents, and geographic roots. In turn, Americans typically think of family in terms of the nuclear family. And yet whatever the connectivity of social media and other new technologies, American culture and family life alike suffer from this loss of fleshly encounter, leading to growing experiences of isolation, loneliness, mistrust, anxiety, depression, and the mutual suspicion that is such a hallmark of political polarization. To be fair, intimate, family-based cultures are not a panacea; they can be particularly susceptible to tribalism, provincialism, nepotism, and xenophobia. However, the church as family of God metaphor pushes against ethnocentrism by calling Christians into intimate communion with those beyond their family or ethnic group. Likewise, in embracing an ecclesiology of small Christian communities, American churches can facilitate the formation of more genuine, intimate lay communities that move beyond the confines of the parish building and beyond the polarities and identity politics that mark so much of mass culture and media in modern America.

The Congolese model could also help American religious communities recognize that “the CEVB should serve the entire quartier,” reaching out to all, whether Catholic or not, who occupy a particular neighborhood. ¹¹⁴ As Congolese theologian Josée Ngalula has noted, ecumenical and interreligious engagement in Kinshasa neighborhoods has extended to developing mourning rituals at the deaths of non-Catholic neighbors, including songs, biblical readings, and financial donations. ¹¹⁵ This pastoral approach enables the church to move from simply providing social services to actually accompanying and encountering the poor in their spiritual and material lives. ¹¹⁶ This type of broad communal engagement in service to the common good, accompanied by a preferential option to the poor, also reduces the ever-present dangers of religious elitism and avoidance of the social dimension of spirituality that can accompany renewal efforts in the American church. ¹¹⁷

CEVBs also have something to teach the broader Catholic world in light of Pope Francis’s calls for a more synodal church. If synodality is first and foremost about “journeying” or “walking together” as “baptized persons, in the diversity of charisms, vocations, and ministries,” all the while integrating “communion, mission, and participation,” ¹¹⁸ then it is difficult to imagine a better grassroots embodiment of a synodal church than CEVBs. It is in these intimate, local ecclesial communities that women and men not only exemplify “co-responsibility,” but also live out their mission to the world in communion with their neighbors, both Catholic and non-Catholic. In CEVBs, all the baptized are called to full participation in learning, sharing, and applying the Word of God, all while listening, dialoguing, and discerning together. It is not surprising that the 2023 first general assembly of the Synod on Synodality praised small Christian communities for exemplifying “structures for participation,” as they “live the closeness day-to-day, around the Word of God and the Eucharist.” ¹¹⁹

There is nothing uniquely African about this understanding of church, and advocates for small Christian communities have highlighted their global reach and diverse embodiment across every region of the world. ¹²⁰ And a growing number of American Catholic dioceses, including my own Archdiocese of Omaha, have embraced small faith communities as a pastoral priority for renewing parish life. But I would highlight two areas for growth. First, as in Congo, American parishes could organize themselves more foundationally as a “communion of communities,” for example by automatically enrolling new parish members in a small faith community. Second, parishes could also organize consultative and leadership structures around these communities. Parish councils, for example, could be composed of SCC leaders, recognizing with Pope Francis that synodal organs must be “connected to the base and start from people and their daily problems.” ¹²¹

A church based in small Christian communities also offers further potential to extend synodal practices at the diocesan level. From Malawi to Uganda, a smattering of African dioceses have instituted synodal gatherings over the past several decades. ¹²² Synodal practices have long been established in the Diocese of Tshumbe and provide the primary venues for the ongoing catechetical training of CEVB leaders. ¹²³ Importantly, these synods bridge religious catechism and the social needs of daily life. In Tshumbe, an Assumption feast synod in 2022 focused on how to protect the community from disease through better hygienic practices. ¹²⁴ The CEVBs also provide a structural means for disseminating Catholic teaching beyond elite circles to the grassroots. For example, after receiving religious instruction on the nature of sacramental marriage, a CEVB leadership team set up further catechetical and dialogue sessions on marriage within their own small village. ¹²⁵ Whereas American churches often rely on email blasts, pulpit announcements, or voluntary parish hall sessions to convey such information, small Christian communities could deepen formation around catechetical and social needs. Such conversations could unfold in an atmosphere of trust and preexisting relationships, and SCCs could even tangibly implement Catholic social teachings in practice (as one saw with Tshumbe’s salungo community work). This would require moving beyond seeing American small faith groups only through the lens of individual faith appropriation or engaging the Sunday Mass readings, however.

A truly synodal church exists in dialogue and subsidiarity rather than through a micromanaging, top-down, centralized “command and control” model of church. Although Tshumbe priests occasionally intervene in cases where a CEVB animator refuses to step down or teaches manifestly wrong Catholic doctrine, CEVBs are allowed to make communal decisions at synod gatherings without a parish priest’s endorsement. In turn, the priests rely on the CEVBs for both financial and food contributions, furthering a sense of mutual dependency. ¹²⁶ In other words, there is a give-and-take here that moves beyond the “pipeline ecclesiology,” where the parish center simply instructs the peripheries. ¹²⁷ This mutual dependency supports Francis’s call for a de-clericalized and dialogical church that grows through listening, encounter, and immersion. In the recent words of Kinshasa’s Fridolin Cardinal Ambongo, “The privileged space to experience the sense of family spirit and synodality is the Small Christian Communities . . . [this is] where they [the faithful] experience and live synodality as mission, communion, and participation.” ¹²⁸ Yet just as the “synodal assembly is not a parliament,” so a synodal church is not a democracy, a point that bears repeating in a North American context that tends to idealize democratic structures for all facets of life. ¹²⁹ At the parish and diocesan levels, respectively, the pastor and the bishop retain fundamental juridical and teaching authority. But priestly authority should always be exercised in a spirit of service, and episcopal discernment should be informed through active and regular consultation with the people of God. Likewise, rather than fragment into “autonomous congregations” that go their own way, ¹³⁰ healthy small Christian communities remain in communion with the broader parish, their pastors, and ultimately their bishop.

The CEVBs also offer a promising mode of ecclesial engagement with conflict transformation. Rather than simply call in a priest or outside expert after a crisis erupts, CEVBs are constantly navigating the inevitable differences and tensions that emerge in community life. As one Kinshasa leader of the Bolingani CEVB put it, “Where two people are gathered, there will be misunderstanding.” ¹³¹ Reflecting the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity, the CEVB offers extensive local knowledge and long-standing relationships that can facilitate the church’s conflict resolution efforts. Congolese priests and laity alike commented on the importance of married leaders counseling struggling married couples in their CEVBs, drawing on tangible life experience not available to celibate priests and women religious. This flexibility in turn depends on priests being open to the gifts of their lay brethren, which requires intentional seminary training to form a parish priest who sees himself as the “servant and promoter of the responsibilities of the laity.” ¹³²

Admittedly, this focus on conflict transformation may be the most difficult for American churches to adopt. In this country, faith communities are largely bystanders to a secular process dominated by courts, lawyers, and civil law. Within the church itself, an individualistic piety tends to take hold when it comes to the sacrament of reconciliation. The sacrament is typically understood as reconciling the individual sinner to God through the mediation of the individual priest, largely dispensing with the deeply social, public, and communal roots of the sacrament. ¹³³ Training lay leaders in a spirituality of discernment could, however, enable small Christian community leaders to have the wherewithal to informally mediate the inevitable conflicts that arise in any community, pointing toward a horizon of reconciliation that transcends the zero-sum, all-or-nothing polarities that mark so much of American judicial, political, and ecclesial life. After all, the core creedal mark of catholicity points to the church’s mission to exemplify “unity in difference,” or what Pope Francis likes to call a Spirit-guided “harmony” seen in a “bond of communion between dissimilar parts.” ¹³⁴ In comparison to large mega-parishes, the small size of the SCC offers much greater potential to live out this spirituality of communion in practice.

Finally, CEVBs can move Western narratives on the DRC beyond the standard tropes of warfare, political predation, and colonial exploitation. Although these are tragic but true dimensions of Congo’s history, repeating them ad nauseam risks becoming what the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie has called the “single story” of Africa in the Western mind. ¹³⁵ If anything, the CEVBs flip the script, with my Congolese interlocutors wondering how and why a country as developed and advanced as the US could lack something as obviously foundational as base Christian communities. ¹³⁶ At the same time, pastoral challenges common to an American audience also emerged in Congo. These include the Catholic Church’s struggle to engage urban youth and intellectuals, which reflects the shared impact of what the Congolese theologian Kä Mana has described as the “disoriented, disintegrated, and dislocated” nature of modernity, whether in Africa or the West. ¹³⁷ This reminds us that catholicity is not simply about dialoguing across difference, but also about responding to shared challenges from distinct cultural locations.

In the midst of a violent and often anticlerical postcolonial era, the Congolese Catholic Church of the 1960s and 1970s chose to embrace a new pastoral strategy that recentered the church in lay-led base communities. Over the past fifty years, these CEVBs have incarnated the church more deeply in regular Christians’ lives, while also bridging the gap between faith formation and community engagement. For sure, many Congolese CEVBs could learn from the Latin American and Filipino models of Christian social activism. Yet in an age of emerging synodality, CEVBs have much to teach in how they practically embody a “church that is the common responsibility of all Christians.” ¹³⁸