Resource use as hindrance to sustainable overseas development intervention: A view focused on Pentecostal Christianity

Introduction

Postmodern philosophy tells us that people’s interpretation of the world they are in is always dependent on “fore-having, fore-sight and fore-concept.” ¹ This article considers the impact of the presence of such underlying presuppositions in life on the overseas development project, focusing especially on Africa. The article is unique in relation to other writing that I have done in that it illustrates what it advocates through a careful dissecting of then expounding on a case study. It advocates active engagement with fore-knowledge as a prime route to the achieving of helpful socioeconomic change. It proposes that differing presuppositional postures affect prospects for sustainable economic and social development.

This article addresses westerners, therefore is written in western English. Whether in Christian mission or in development intervention, westerners consider themselves justified in intervening in the lives of the poor. What should such intervention look like? Traditional mission, or certainly development interventions, usually ignore the underlying working presuppositions of a particular target people. ² In this article I will look at how westerners can engage the underlying worldview, rather than just give material aid. I give a case study in which I address assumptions about witchcraft occurring during a health crisis, suggesting that it is important to do this, rather than just providing material aid.

This article suggests that the depth of western intervention into complex African societies is often limited as a result of its almost inevitable piggybacking on superior resources. “Something was very wrong indeed” with this system, said Schwartz. ³ Resourcelessness of the outsider, it is proposed, could be a vital if not necessary means of engaging at the presuppositional level. A resource-free outsider can engage people’s ontological reality, the superstructure that supports their presuppositions, in ways that are bypassed when resources dominate relationships. Given life’s dependency on pre-theoretical presuppositions, I argue that the ontological and the theological are the most appropriate platforms for intercultural engagement that can in due course lead to socioeconomic lift that does not prove unsustainable or create unhealthy dependency.

Resource domination of communication: Africa vs. the west

Western people who travel to the poor world have resources. Often their resources are the reason they go. Once they are there, their resources usually form the basis of what they do. The possession of superior resources always appears to be integral to what western people do. Resources are very prominent even in the way the west defines the other. People of the Third World, that is, the poor, are so classified because of the level of their possession of resources. Their very problem, that they do not have sufficient resources, is the problem that the west seeks to help them to resolve.

Westerners are typically better informed on how to provide material resources than on how to address underlying worldview issues. One could even say that resources almost constantly are the operative agendas. That is, in the impact of the west on the so-called poor world, resources create agendas and then determine their course. Once resources are there they must be allocated, used, desired, distributed, fought over, publicly accounted for, and consumed. Perhaps the same applies wherever resources are introduced. My suspicion is that this focus on management of resources does not transfer well into African ontology, where sacred and secular are not distinct. ⁴ In the African mindset, material resources have sacred origins and the procurement and use of them has sacred implications.

The dynamic between material resources and the sacred plays out one way within the western world and another way when the west interacts with the poor in Africa. Any westerner will agree that while there is a place for making money, there is also something else sometimes known as leisure, which does not have such a pragmatic objective in mind. Examples of “leisure” pursuits abound:

These leisure pursuits followed by western people consume material resources but are not oriented to material profit. Examples include: reading of literature that requires purchase of books, painting that requires brushes, drama that requires costumes, visiting monuments like castles, that requires a car, and so on. Furthermore, many westerners put a high value on these activities, believing that they “enrich” a person in non-material ways. Some might even use words like “spiritual” or “sacred” to describe how these activities contribute to their life experience.

An African, on the other hand, does not put a high value on leisure or personal enrichment in the same way. As a result, when well-intentioned westerners design and promote projects to develop the poor through education, relationships, and preservation of cultural heritage, the resource components of these initiatives easily achieve prominence. This is why Fred Lewis and myself were able to argue that supposedly diverse western mission initiatives ⁵ are not received in as diverse a way as they are initiated. ⁶ Instead what they hold in common on reaching Africa is that they are accompanied by money. As a result, resources (usually reducible to money) are what the west is perceived as offering, that is giving a fish, and not teaching how to fish, to use a popular aphorism.

Admittedly, it is very difficult to make headway without some offer of resources to accompany what the west has to offer to Africa. Someone may want to point to education. Surely education is more than money, they might argue. By way of response I suggest removing western subsidy from education, which in Africa is perceived as a means of acquiring resources from the west. Try, in other words, to encourage African people to carry out education in their own languages instead of borrowed European languages. Many in Africa may look at you as if you are stupid! Why? Because African languages do not assist in generating relationships with westerners. Plus outside resources do not back education that is carried out in Africa’s own languages. As a result, no one is seriously interested in facilitating and funding the translation of standard math, history, philosophy, economic, and literature texts into an obscure indigenous language.

Deprive westerners of their resource-advantage, and they won’t know what to do in Africa. Deprive westerners of their resource advantage, and Africans also will not know how to relate to them. ⁷ The way the west relates to Africa is (almost) always as a patron, and the way Africa responds is as a client. When a westerner enters Africa, the African people are in the majority. As a result it is the interpretation of the patron–client situation that arises from the African tradition that will dominate. ⁸

The above process of gross miscommunication across the intercultural divide, in which westerners may not realize the existence or implications of the label of patron that has been attached to them, is extremely widespread across Africa. It is aided by the fact that English and other European languages are dominant in intercultural communication. I have elaborated on this problematic situation in more detail elsewhere. ⁹ For our purposes now to simplify a little, use of a European language helps the African get some understanding of where the European is coming from, but it renders complexities of African culture invisible to the European.

I want to consider by way of case study what can happen when a westerner who does not have resources impacts an African community. The case study I use is personal, so I will relate it using the first person. The case study will open an important vista that pertains to our concern here about the relationship between the west and Africa and sustainable development. It is a true account that occurred on November 16, 2012.

What is enabled by resourcelessness? A case study

Moving under the shade of the tree gave my sweaty body temporary relief from the scorching midday sun. Holding my bicycle in one hand, I greeted the young man with my free arm. We were standing alongside a mattress and some bedding material under the same tree outside of the man’s mud-thatched house in the heart of East Africa. While he was slashing grass, a woman was lying motionless, wrapped in this bedding, on the ground. “Ma chiegi” (is that your wife) I asked? “Kamano” (indeed) he replied (all our conversations were in Dholuo). She was obviously very seriously sick. Wanting to visit the old man (the young man’s father) first, I assured the young man that I would come back to him and his wife. As I moved forward, I noticed a lad of about 17 years sat on a rock under another tree. I recognized him as the same lad with severe epilepsy that I had last visited a few years previously. He gesticulated with his arm as he struggled to speak. A few words came out. He pointed to the back of his father’s house. The other brother had in fact already gone to call his father from the same place. A rather unkemptly dressed grey-haired man emerged and welcomed me into his abode. We sat. I knew the man was a widower. I knew also that he had devoted himself to looking after his severely disabled son.

I already had an advantage in being fluent in the man’s mother tongue (Dholuo) as well as in the regional language (Swahili). I had lived in the area for 19 years. Now as we sat in the dark, unkempt sitting room end of his small, square mud-thatched hut, the question that loomed large was: What had I come to say or do? This poverty-stricken (certainly by British standards—my country of origin), old widower living in a dirty compound in a mud house with a leaking roof who constantly carried the burden of nurturing his seriously disabled son and was about to watch his daughter-in-law die, was sitting in front of me.

The typical response from a westerner would be something like—“I have, or I can give you access to, resources that will help you.” On these lines my approach could have been to say:

And so on. Each of the above approaches would be one that takes advantage of a superior access to resources on my part. I will not here go into detail about the many deep problems that this resource approach on the part of foreigners brings. For this I point my reader to Harries. ¹⁰ My focus here is on the alternative options that this resource approach occludes.

An alternative approach I could have taken would be a counselling approach. I could have encouraged the old man to reveal all his problems as I mmm’d and ahhed my encouragements in response. Then I could have left him content in the knowledge that he had shared his burden with a careful listener. But what if, having heard about and perceived his burden, I wanted to share something more?

Or what if, through my listening, I was actually implicitly legitimizing something destructive? While Carl Rogers’s approach to counselling certainly has its place even in Africa, ¹¹ it tends to ignore the possibility that someone may be misguidedly directing their blame on supposed witches. Most people in Africa look for deep meanings and interpersonal causes for the misfortunes that overtake them. They perceive a relationship between their level of personal prosperity and any ill-feeling of their family and neighbors. Ideas about behaviors leading to certain types of misfortune are codified in customary laws that prohibit them. While often oral rather than written, these customary law codes are extremely complex (for an example of a set of laws that have been written down see Raringo). ¹² Given their complexity, there is room for a lot of variety in ideas on how one’s behavior and that of others links to one’s level of prosperity. As a result, people approach the prevention of misfortune from different angles. African societies are no different from other societies in that they have specialists in means of avoiding misfortune (shamans, sages, priests, diviners, and so on). The ideas themselves have an impact on the prosperity or misfortune of those who hold them.

A set of ideas connected to witchcraft beliefs demonstrates a good example of how behaviors and prosperity interact in African thinking. Misfortune ascribed to another’s ill feelings requires revenge even on someone who is not (in a western sense) directly responsible and even may not be aware that others consider them responsible for particular misfortune. This is a very widespread and clearly destructive interpersonal dynamic. Hence a ‘counselling approach’ that was not prescriptive might not be appropriate in this African context.

Sitting in the old man’s house, I was very aware of the above witchcraft beliefs. Had I had resources, I would have been able to attempt to sidestep such dominant belief systems by providing a resource-means of compensating for any perceived damage caused by witchcraft. ¹³ Now what to do if I do not have resources available? Then I can no longer sidestep these issues. Being forced thus to engage the issues concerned is important, as they urgently need to be engaged for the sake of long-term sustainable change. ¹⁴

The question that looms large is not whether I will engage with the mass of presuppositions about causation that this man is deeply aware of, but how I will engage with them. The above counselling practice—merely saying hmm if he tells me that he considers Mr. or Mrs. X to be killing his daughter-in-law by witchcraft, would be encouraging an unhelpful fear. Do I have anything to say to the old man? If I do not, why am I there in the first place? Am I there to gawp, or to bewitch someone, or to glean information for purposes of gossip, or just to have pity on the poor old fellow? A problem with many approaches to Third World development is that they have nothing to share that does not relate to or require outside resources.

If I am going to make such visits without the purpose of handing out resources, and dependence creation, and all the other problems that result from outside aid ¹⁵ then clearly I will need an ontology that will enable me to do this. I need to avoid, at least in this negative view, making myself simply an actor in a possibly very destructive drama going on in the heads of villagers. It so happens that I do have such an ontology—it is called the gospel of Jesus Christ. I do have something to say, and I have the Scripture as authority to say it.

I had a copy of the Christian Scripture in the Luo language in my hands. As a result I was able to encourage the old man by pointing him to others whose faithfulness to God had seen them through difficulties. My interpretation of his difficulties was that God can send trials to the children whom he loves. I had something to say to the disabled brother that was not a platitude: I read a portion of Scripture that related how Christ had given himself for others. I trust that he understood something, or at least appreciated my effort at communicating with him. I had something to say to the very sick woman. I knelt beside her and held her hand, with the father-in-law and husband standing behind me, as I appealed to my God on her behalf to take note of her case. I was able to give her hope for recovery that was not the identification of a witch; by recounting from Scripture how Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law. I was able to reduce the terror of death in this poor woman by telling her that God desired to live in her and had a plan for her for eternity!

So, contrary to the perceived strictures of materialist thinkers in the west, who have of late been very dominant on the scene of western interventions into the poor world, ¹⁶ I had a mass of options open to me. Those options were not simple. I needed to engage in prayerful and understanding thought: given this woman, or old man, and handicapped son and their circumstances, how should I speak and what should I say? This can be considered in two ways. First, from the point of view of need. In the case of the lady, to enable me to do this I needed an understanding of what was in her mind as she faced this life-threatening calamity. Second, in order to have something to say, I had to draw on an ontology. Drawing on a private ontology would have meant I was really no more than a quack. I needed to use an ontology that was known, shared by others, had clear boundaries, a long history, numerous heroic figures, and an absolute truth claim. I had to prayerfully engage my understanding of God, of Christ, of the Scriptures, of the history of the church, with this woman’s predicament, so as to carefully choose the Dholuo terms to use and the Scripture to read that made me into a part of God’s plan for this woman’s life. I left her, I trust, more optimistic, more encouraged, more empowered, more at peace and closer to Christ than I found her (and the others at the homestead the same). The way they all heartily and warmly encouraged me to come again indicated that indeed I had done this—or rather that God had done it through me.

I want to consider a further effect of my above activity. That is: my presence, actions, and words had added to and changed the perceived ontology of that community in whatever small way, and hopefully in terms of all Christians and all churches in that community accumulatively in a much larger way. I had reduced those people’s fear of witchcraft. I had done so without leaving a physical resource to show for my presence. In fact, I believe my impact was the better for not having been connected to a physical resource, as the latter would have been generating dependency. Some may want to ask: Was my impact consequential? Could I have been wasting my time? Does a community’s ontology actually matter? Or, as suggested by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, are not ontologies changed by material inputs and not the other way around? ¹⁷ I will respond to Sachs below. Regarding the other points, yes, I did have an impact. It was easy to see how that impact was for good, even as Sachs may recognize good. The encounter had an impact also on me—on my heart and soul. It was an impact to good: it was an impact that revealed something of the truth of God. It was an impact that lifted people’s spirits.

Christians who know what they know

In the case study above, my material resourcelessness forced me to have an impact rooted in something other than material resources. It thus forced me to move away from the identity that westerners have had in Africa for hundreds of years, of superiority, and of being better and knowing better on the basis that they have access to resources. ¹⁸ If one does not have resources then one is as a westerner faced with the very important challenge: What does one have to give or to share that is of value to the people? It is only by facing this challenge directly that one can begin to avoid creating dependency through one’s actions and begin to impart something sustainable.

Much of the west seems to continue running on the leftover steam of a system that has exhausted itself. Alvin Plantinga is renowned (amongst others) for pointing out that there is no longer a foundation for the kinds of beliefs that ushered in the modern era in the west. ¹⁹ In simple terms, there is no objective basis from which one ought to believe in objectivity. Faith in objectivity, that is, science, is an outcome of a choice which is (given the complex whole of human existence) really as arbitrary as any other choice. Hence Smith tells us that late in the twentieth century “religion was re-introduced as a legitimate mainstream topic of consideration [in philosophy] … and religion was admitted as a legitimate orienting perspective for philosophical research and reflection.” ²⁰ Philosophers really had no choice, as they were left with nowhere else to root epistemology. Religion, in the broad sense of the term, had to be recognized as being the foundation for all other knowledge. Not everyone in the west has yet realized this.

Pentecostal and charismatic people now make up more than a quarter of the world’s largest religion: Christianity. ²¹ With an African foundation from the beginning, specifically in the form of William J. Seymour in the Azusa Street Revival, ²² Pentecostal Christianity is providing a basis for living for an ever-increasing proportion of the global population. Smith explores the philosophical underpinnings that set Pentecostalism apart from non-Christians, and from non-Pentecostal Christians. ²³ He describes one of the tacit foundations of Pentecostal belief, a movement of counter-modernity, ²⁴ as being “I know that I know that I know.” ²⁵ In the absence of previously supposed but now undermined “neutrality and universality of reason,” ²⁶ Pentecostals interpret “their daily life and worship in terms of the significant events of Biblical history” such that “each person’s private struggles somehow soar above the merely private and reappear in a framework that span[s] the millennia.” ²⁷ In a way that is really an “effective seizure of [their] desire … ordinary believers are gripped by divine revelation in a way that is irreducible to the cognitive.” ²⁸

Although basing his account in the west, James Smith captures some elements of Pentecostalism that are common also to Africa. In much of Africa, Pentecostals are substituting a set of their people’s own traditions and beliefs with an alternative that is rooted in a faith that has become global, and a context (i.e. Christian belief) that has already transformed the rest of the known world. There is no false or misleading claim to being rooted in objectivity or reason that could subsequently in being undermined threaten that which is cementing an ever-increasing number of communities in Africa and beyond. Rather, Pentecostals are, through subjective and effective means such as knowing that they know that they know, bringing vast populations to order by initiating and then cementing an allegiance to the Christian canon and tradition. Although evident also at other levels, being rooted in the spiritual/affective ensures that deep changes occurring are in the presuppositional realm. Pentecostals in particular in our day and age, and with them Christians in general, do have some important and valuable things that they can share even if they do not have access to western resources. ²⁹ These are things that challenge preconceived understandings at the presuppositional level.

Pre-theoretical presuppositions

I want to explore the area of presuppositions in a little more detail. I will show how failure to engage indigenous presuppositions trips up efforts at encouraging homegrown development. The failure to recognize the pre-theoretical ³⁰ or the importance of the impact of the presuppositional on everything done in life has been a significant Achilles’ heel of modernism. Modernism that has been dominant in recent decades presupposed a degree of sameness across human communities that has more recently become unacceptable. Actually, “rivers of difference run very deep,” shared Bryan Harmelink. ³¹ The notion that there is a neutrality and universality of reason, referred to by Paul Hiebert as ontological realism ³² and supported linguistically by Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, ³³ is replaced in Pentecostalism by a “performative postmodernism.” ³⁴ The full implications of the existence and reality of a religious substrata to understanding in the human condition are still barely being felt in the world today, so great has been the momentum of what was the hegemony of the modern. ³⁵ It has major implications regarding what should be appropriate educational policies in African nations. I have considered in depth elsewhere the resulting necessity for an emphasis on the use of indigenous languages in formal sectors such as education and governance in Africa. ³⁶ For our purposes here I want to look a little more closely at the nature of some of the underlying presuppositions that modernism ignored.

Note that presuppositions being invisible to modernists does not prevent them from having an impact. Comparison with science and exploration of the nature of matter can help us to explain the nature of these presuppositions. According to the theory of Brownian motion, invisible molecules result in visible vibration of particles of smoke suspended in air. ³⁷ The presence of distant objects in space is often realized through the impact of their gravitational field on the orbits of other bodies (hence the discovery of Pluto). ³⁸ That is to say—as with invisible objects, so also observations of the impacts of otherwise invisible presuppositions could be the means for their location and identification. Indigenous cultures operate on the basis of many such presuppositions. During the process of intercultural engagement, these presuppositions impact westerners’ efforts to bring about sustainable development. ³⁹

When westerners attempt to provide development in Africa, their use of western languages may negate their efforts to truly understand the African worldview. These days westerners usually engage with Africans using their own western English (or French) language. In due course they usually find that the response to a particular use of language will be different from that which they would expect if the African respondent had been a fellow westerner. If astute, they will realize that this arises because another system is interfering with clear communication in English, just as invisible molecules visibly vibrate smoke particles or the gravitational pull of a hidden celestial body produces aberrant motion in a visible one. This applies even when English teaching and use attempt to follow western (e.g. British) standards, as it does for example in Kenya. ⁴⁰ Careful observation may well reveal mother-tongue interference as a source of misunderstandings. For example, a mother-tongue translation of borrow may imply that borrowing is permanent. A definition of borrow in an English-language dictionary will not prevent this effect.

I am suggesting that the impact of mother tongue on the use of English is comparable to the impact of religious presuppositions on overt thinking more generally. Mother-tongue uses affect the way an African person will use a European language. Similarly, religious beliefs will influence the usage and interpretation of words in both western and African languages. Believing that dead people can haunt the living (or not) would be an example. Someone may not even be consciously aware that they are holding onto such a belief. Such may only become evident in a crisis. These deeper beliefs are not significantly challenged by secular education or resource-based interventions. They are impacted, challenged, and in some cases eventually transformed or even uprooted by teachings of the Christian faith in Africa. The latter process is greatly aided when Christian belief is expressed in indigenous languages.

The success of a lot of development-related practices is dependent not only on overt educational processes, but also on achieving appropriate understanding at presuppositional level. Because the presuppositional level is impacted by religion, development success is linked to religious belief and practice. This means that the person with their finger on the pulse who can make or break developments (of all kinds) in (say) Africa—is the religious missionary. On the basis that development in the sense that we know it in today’s world arose from historically Christian countries, there is a case to be made for the Christian missionary as being the real harbinger of economic and social progress. Such a missionary would need to be engaging with people using an indigenous language and should avoid being identified with resource distribution. The resourcelessness of a missionary may be a precondition to their having sufficient impact at presuppositional level so as to enable changes in a community that are essential for socioeconomic progress.

Problems with conventional development education

Unfortunately a lot of academia, even if it acknowledges the role of the presuppositional, does not know how to handle the possibility that inputs into human truth may originate from outside of its own currently recognized borders. ⁴¹ Hence I recently had an article rejected for publication on the basis that it was an opinion piece insufficiently backed by scholarly literature. Even Christian publishers have had to wear straightjackets of academic procedure in order to gain legitimacy in a world still often dominated by already-undermined modern presuppositions. Because the literature is full of supposedly objectively rooted rather than presuppositional or pre-theoretical content, this means that scholarship that is strongly rooted in modern conventions is bound to a (partly at least) defunct system. Similar to Smith’s Pentecostals above, as a missionary who has lived close to a grassroots African community since 1988, I know that I know what I know. To use Polanyi’s terminology, I know more than I can tell. ⁴² I constantly work, that is, on the basis of presuppositions largely unfamiliar to the west that are held (even if unknowingly) in the African contexts with which I am familiar. ⁴³ To communicate on the basis of those presuppositions can be appearing to give an opinion piece. Alternatively, not to communicate on such a basis could amount to half-truth or even deception with regard to representing the African view to westerners.

The above is not to condemn academic method. It could indeed be a bizarre free-for-all if scholars were to be permitted to publish without covert or overt reference to previous scholarship. Yet something needs to be done. The solution I advocate is that scholars be allowed to develop on their own communities’ presuppositional foundations. If built on unfamiliar presuppositions, scholarship will not be able to make headway. Differences at a presuppositional level will be like stumbling blocks put in the way of progress. At the moment such stumble-blocking occurs between the west and Africa; westerners fault African scholars’ attempts at being true to themselves, because African scholarship does not fit western presuppositions.

In order to be freed from the above constant scrutiny, there should be a focus on increasing African participation in academia so that development initiatives will be conceived on the basis of African ontology from the beginning. This alternative scholarship for Africa must be in a language other than English. In terms of our interest in Africa, it should be in an African language, such as Swahili. The matured products of such a separate source of scholarship can subsequently interact with other scholarship. This ought to be in the light of appreciation that they will not be correcting each other, because differences between them are rooted in a largely invisible presuppositional level. That is, apparent contradictions in the scholarship arising from different cultural/linguistic communities must be identified as arising from differences in presuppositional levels of thinking. Unfortunately, if scholarship is not allowed to develop in a different language and without coming under constant critique from a dominant global language, then the people of that alternative language/culture may always be upstaged or caused to stumble, that is, may always be in the position of protégés, ⁴⁴ left behind, subject, and undermined.

The failure to consider the disconnect between western and African ontologies handicaps and disrupts western development initiatives in Africa and the rest of the world. Development that is planned in the west using western languages falls far short of what is required for implementation outside of the west. This is because it has invariably misconstrued the presuppositional base (cf. local linguistic foundation) into which it is to be planted. The global educational system and global scholarship increasingly having only one foundation, that of western English, is resulting in more and more of globalization being controlled by the west and dependent on the west—especially America and to a lesser extent the UK. This creates an enormous and dangerous unhealthy dependency elsewhere in the world. These kinds of difficulties can only be avoided through designing development in African languages, and in the light of real African social, political, and religious as well as physical contexts. Some may baulk at the difficulties that are inherent in this process. Indeed there are many difficulties; yet avoiding the difficulties results in development in Africa retaining not only an Achilles’ heel, but Achilles’ feet and legs.

The process of presuppositional change

Cultures are not fixed entities. Cultures themselves, and their associated languages, flex and change. It is sometimes thought, ironically enough, that the use of African languages in education in Africa is a way of going back to static cultures. No parallel concern is raised when the question pertains to which language is to be used in education in the west. Contrary to apparent popular opinion, it is use of a language that enables it to change. It is when a language and culture are ignored by the dominant system in a country that the people can end up stuck with an out-of-date language and way of life. Cultures and languages benefit from the push and pull of outside inputs. Cultures and languages end up traumatized when they are bypassed because certain sectors of life are conducted in foreign-controlled language systems.

I will take Milbank’s examination of the development or rise of the secular as case study. “Once there was no secular,” Milbank tells us. ⁴⁵ The invention of the secular was “a theological achievement.” ⁴⁶ It was not a matter of the secular being any less fictional than any other understanding. ⁴⁷ Milbank tells us that “hence it can be seen how theology stakes out factum [a person’s own act and deed] as an area of human autonomy by making dominium [dominion, control] into a matter of absolute sovereignty and absolute ownership. This is a space where there can be a secular or secular knowledge of the secular—and it is just as fictional as all other human topographies.” ⁴⁸ According to Milbank, secular social theory’s governing assumptions “are bound up with the modification or the rejection of orthodox Christian positions.” ⁴⁹ He emphasizes that there is no “social or economic reality that is permanently more basic than the religious.” ⁵⁰

Milbank looks at how theology has been at the root of the development of secular reason. My purpose is to draw on Milbank to point out that profound social changes emerge from theological shifts and religious changes. These are key to the effecting of lasting sustainable socioeconomic development. The task of development begins with the preacher, pastor, priest, and prophet. In order to carry out these tasks effectively, preachers, pastors, priests, and prophets should not be confined to building only on outside resources or languages.

Conclusion

This article points out that almost all contemporary development and missionary intervention from the outside into Africa works on the back of access to western resources. Although resources can enable a great deal, they are here found also to have severe limitations and debilitating effects. Specifically, intervention rooted in access to resources is found to seriously curtail engagement at depth with the pre-theoretical presuppositional levels of people’s lives. The same presuppositions are found often to be intricately determinative of particular people’s actions. Heavy reliance on outside resources by missionaries and development workers in Africa has reinforced primal worldviews, and has hence curtailed intelligent rational engagement by people with their contexts. As a result, rooting by outside agents of their actions in resource superiority has blocked arenas of impact that are vital for the achievement of sustainable positive socioeconomic change.

This article does not decry the use of all resources. It does, however, suggest that, at the point of impact with non-western (such as African) communities by the west, some people ought to function in an essentially resource-free mode. A case study illustrates how resource access provides westerners with an easy route to avoiding uncomfortable in-depth engagement with African people. Especially in the light of postmodern insights regarding the relativity of understanding and interpretation, it is exactly the latter engagements that are the most critical.

The tools of the resource-free interventionist are ontological and religious, to be communicated for maximum effect in indigenous languages. Contrary to what should surely now be recognized as the defunct modernist myth, life’s foundational presuppositions are laid in the sands and onto the rocks of religious beliefs concerning meaning, value, existence, and God. Sensitive understanding and intelligent thoughtful and prayerful responses to life’s predicaments are advocated as means towards bringing deep ontological shifts away from recognized evils such as witchcraft and towards the kinds of healthy ontologies that enable human prospering. Theology that touches on areas of life below the radar screen of traditional scholarship and that results in deep religious change, must be engaged.