The Spirit and the poor in West Africa and Tanzania: A Pentecostal response to David J. Bosch’s “mission in the wake of the Enlightenment”

Introduction

This article draws from data gathered in the Dreams and Visions Project for a response to South African missiologist David J. Bosch’s intuitions of emerging mission paradigms. ¹ In particular, it brings a Pentecostal response, that is, a response with pneumatological emphasis, to Bosch’s hugely significant volume Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Missions (1991). The thesis driving this discussion is that certain Africans on mission who rely on dream and vision (D/V) experiences derived from the Spirit employ a methodological approach that expresses Bosch’s concept of living in the “creative tension” between mission and eschatology. They also portray an “emerging ecumenical missionary paradigm,” but, as will be demonstrated here, an emergence that navigates continuity and change by negotiating among both non-Western and Western epistemic elements. ² The appreciation of D/Vs for mission is consequently the affirmation of African spirituality and epistemology within African Pentecostal-Charismatic contexts, resulting in the emergence of Pentecostal mission. This emergence represents a methodology for mission that is a response to, rather than a product of the Enlightenment philosophy which has funded Western theology and missions. The method of attentiveness to D/Vs is a demonstration of navigating around Western epistemic norms, rather than emerging, arising, or developing from within them. In keeping with Bosch’s anticipation of emerging paradigms, these visionaries on mission demonstrate an emergence particular to their contexts.

The article begins with a window into the link between dreams and visions and ministry to the poor in West Africa and Tanzania. The firsthand reports given by men and women indicate that visionary experiences are of high value as divine messages revealing the will of God. For many Pentecostals, Charismatics, and “Born-Agains,” the Spirit of God leads and directs mission through dreams and visions today. ³ Next, the discussion turns to concepts that David Bosch offers which are used here to navigate an assessment of the visionaries’ methodology vis-à-vis Enlightenment constructs. It will be argued that the missionaries of the Dreams and Visions Project display an epistemic “poverty of spirit,” bring eschatological hope through their ministries, and operate with a high value of D/Vs by means of recontextualizing the experiences for Pentecostal spirituality.

D/Vs and mission

A posture of receptivity to D/Vs is a trait evident among Pentecostal-Charismatics of certain African contexts who took part in the Dreams and Visions Project. For several of those interviewed, their D/V experiences and the interpretation of them as messages of the Spirit were pivotal to their sense of personal call to Christian faith and vocation. ⁴ Also, a type of D/V experience that resulted in the initiation of new projects of Christian mission on behalf of the poor was a prominent feature among interviewees. In regard to the significance of D/Vs for spirituality, as a wife and mother in Enugu, Nigeria put it, “God is looking for someone to talk to.”

Exemplary case studies include the reports from Magesté Meropé of Lomé, Togo and of Ayooluwa Kukoyi of Livingstar Church in Ibadan, Nigeria. For Meropé, the divine mandate came as a call to minister to the drug-addicted. He had a vision in which he saw a piece of white paper floating down from above. In the vision he went to pick it up and found a phrase written on it: “Jesus for addicts.” For Pastor Kukoyi, a vision directed him to care for the village children of outlying areas by bussing them to schools. In another part of Nigeria, in Jos of Plateau State, Sam Akaakaa experienced a peculiar dream in which he was given the mandate of starting a home for orphans. The dream directed him to the passage of Scripture in Jeremiah 35 and to the story of the Recabites, a people of principles. Akaakaa used the model of the Recabites as a rule for structuring his orphanage, the House of Recab, which is home today to over 200 orphans. ⁵ In an interview in Ibadab, Nigeria, Rotimi Onadipe mentioned 21 journals filled with dream reports. He voiced that through them God led him to begin his mission as founder and director of Onatech Centre for Research, Counseling, and Control of Internet Abuse. He now informs communities about the dangers of internet scamming networks and counsels youth and young adults and their parents to bring those caught in the activities out and to healing. In Tanzania, the dream of a map of Tanzania was interpreted by a woman of a church in Dar es Salaam as an indication that her passion for ministry to at-risk youth should spread nationwide.

D/Vs were also pivotal to securing spiritual victory over evil forces, whether they be the activities of evil humans or of evil spirits. These visionary experiences are therefore understood as demonstrations of the power of the Spirit in an oppressive spirit-filled world. This is important to a discussion of mission because Christian mission is understood, in the contexts of these visionaries, as extending to the whole being. This scope of mission is in tune with the ministry of Jesus himself. As David Bosch describes it, “the missionary nature of Jesus’ ministry” was revealed in his power over evil. ⁶ “God’s reign arrives wherever Jesus overcomes the power of evil. Then, as it does now, evil took many forms: pain, sickness, death, demon-possession, personal sin and immorality.” ⁷ Pentecostal-Charismatics, likewise, understand the Spirit of Christ as the liberator who desires that there be release from every impediment to living in peace and complete physical and spiritual healing. Interviews with visionaries revealed that D/Vs are diagnostic for ferreting out root spiritual causes of an individual’s struggle for well-being. In both Nigeria and Tanzania (West and East Africa), pastors involved in deliverance ministry paid close attention to the dreams of their congregants. In Enugu, Nigeria, for example, the prayer counselor who founded a parachurch center for spiritual counseling and deliverance requires that new clients fill out a form describing their recent dreams. A deliverance minister in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania also uses dream reports to diagnose clients who have knowingly or unwittingly become victims of water spirits of the Mami Wataa cult.

The way that Christian visionaries in African contexts have approached D/V experiences through a biblical lens, and how they have retained a high valuation of these experiences which have been traditionally valued as sources of insight within their cultures, will be explored up ahead. It has sometimes required resistance to Western assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge. In preparation for that part of the discussion, we proceed now to Bosch’s assessment of the affects of the Enlightenment era upon the theology and missional history of the church, and to his intuitions about emerging paradigms for missions.

Bosch on the Enlightenment and Christian missions

In Transforming Mission, Bosch offers a comprehensive examination of the church on mission, tracing the trajectory from the Gospels and Paul through the patristic, medieval, and Reformation eras and on through the Enlightenment to present-day postmodernity. The text has made worldwide impact as an authoritative commentary on the church’s navigation of sociocultural and historical trends on her missional journey. Its significance is no doubt due to the retrospective mood that has been guiding the church’s reflections in the recent decades on past and present missional impact. But Bosch’s goal was not just to make observations regarding the paradigms guiding missiological history. In a posture of expectancy toward new, contemporary paradigms (or “old” paradigms, as the case may be, as in the “rediscovery of the sense of mystery and enchantment”) Bosch envisioned a holistic missiology. ⁸ That missiology would bring value to contextual theologies (over against missiology from “above”), heed important contributions from the voice of liberation theology, take seriously the awareness of the significant role of the laity, and grapple with the missional call to interreligious dialogue.

One of the points Bosch brings out is that the Enlightenment thinking of the past centuries has had a marked influence, both negatively and positively, on the missional ventures of the church. He writes, “The entire Western missionary movement of the past three centuries emerged from the matrix of the Enlightenment,” and, “In our own time, however, the Christian missionary enterprise is, slowly but irrevocably, moving away from the shadow of the Enlightenment.” ⁹ Among the failures of the church was the complicity with ideas of cultural superiority that accompanied colonial imperialism, the intertwining with nationalist agendas, and the marriage of the church to the ideology of progress, all of which followed the rise of science and notions of rationalism that blossomed during the Enlightenment. Bosch notes that “missionizing” and “colonizing” were understood as synonymous. ¹⁰ But Enlightenment thinking impacted theology as well, in particular, Bosch notes, in the fact that experience was removed from its rightful place as part of “true rationality.” He adds, “This is where the significance of Schleiermacher’s theological approach lies, as well as the validity of the Pentecostal movement, the Charismatic Renewal . . . and many other manifestations of ‘experiential’ religion.” ¹¹ Therefore, Bosch was aware of the reductionism of rationalist philosophy and instinctively set the table for a discussion of Pentecostal knowing.

Bosch was not the first to locate deficiencies in a constrictive definition of rationality or the problems that assumptions about rationality pose for a knowing associated with religious experience. In the 18th century, the discourse regarding whether authoritative value may be placed upon dream and vision experiences for Christian spirituality might be succinctly expressed in the interaction between two theologians, Immanuel Kant and Emanuel Swedenborg. In his polemic on dreams and metaphysics, Kant railed against Swedenborg’s dreams and visions as “hopelessly ill-conceived and absurd testimony.” ¹² Yet, Swedenborg did not yield and, in an interesting twist, Kant made an unusual return to the topics after the publication of his polemic. Gottlieb Florschütz comments, “The elderly Kant returned in a startling, radical way to Swedenborg as an individual and to his basic conviction that the sensible world was permeated by the other, spiritual world and affirmed this esoteric doctrine.” ¹³

Kantian assumptions and Enlightenment thinking has continued to be challenged in the West. The Transcendentalists of 19th-century America led waves of an intellectual movement that challenged “Enlightenment religion,” also referred to as “Enlightenment fundamentalism.” According to Donald J. Gelpi, a Roman Catholic scholar, “They sought to rescue religious experience from the skeptical consequences of Enlightenment nominalism by developing an account of religious intuition.” ¹⁴ At the same time, American Methodism was expressing what historian Vinson Synan reports as a swing away from “creedal rigidity and liturgical strictness” toward a “heart religion” characterized by John Wesley’s sensitivity to feelings and experiences. ¹⁵ In the 20th century, and not only in North America, that move from the head (intellectualism) to the heart blossomed into the religious experience of early Pentecostals and subsequent expressions of a Christian spirituality with more elastic epistemological coordinates. ¹⁶ A recent study that speaks to the trend toward the redefining of rationality on religious terms is the research of anthropologist Tanya M. Luhrmann in the work When God Talks Back (2012). Her work describes knowing God through dreams, visions, and intuitions in the quest for hearing the voice of God in certain Vineyard churches of the USA.

Bosch also decries the penchant for lifting the individual up as an autonomous agent in Enlightenment epistemology. Bosch suggests countering that individualism with an “epistemology of participation” that would foster togetherness and interdependence. It is necessary, he offers, “since human existence is by definition intersubjective existence.” ¹⁷ Springing from Bosch’s concern for intersubjectivity is his concept of interculturation and its importance for the church at this present time. For Bosch, interculturation involves the exchange of theological thought on missional praxis and requires humility between the West and non-Western representatives of the church. Therefore, since Bosch was keen to challenge the muddying presented by vested interests of an elite theological few in favor, rather, of welcoming interaction with long-overlooked local contextual theologies, this article is an attempt to take up the invitation to present just such a theology. Here it is argued that mission praxis funded by knowing through D/V experiences offers a mission of the Spirit that is distinctive. That methodology contributes to theological discussion on missions by pointing out a Pentecostal approach at work in many African contexts.

Epistemic poverty of spirit and eschatological hope

Bosch explains that the terms of rationality as handed down by Enlightenment thinkers are in need of expansion. He mention’s N. Frye’s suspicion of “intellectual mortality” in discourse on doctrines, Frances Young’s critique of rationality, Raymond Aron’s description of “scientific base ideologies” as “the opiate of the intellectuals,” and the current attention being given to narrative theology. In other words, it is time to question the epistemological coordinates set by Enlightenment philosophy. In this section, it is suggested that a biblical rationale which promotes a certain type of “poverty of spirit”—one which demonstrates an epistemic posture distinct from the rationalist posture of Enlightenment thinking—explains the openness toward dream and vision experiences as they are understood as the leading of the Holy Spirit.

In the passage known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares that the “poor in spirit” will have the “kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). The idea of “epistemic poverty of spirit” envisions a rendering of these words of Jesus. It suggests an attitude of humility in the one who makes room for the possibility of deriving substance from God, and in terms relevant to this discussion, the substance of divine wisdom or knowledge. Biblical precedence is found in the reports of those who did receive from God through dreams or visions. They sprinkle the pages of both Old and New Testaments and are especially apparent in the narrative surrounding Jesus’ birth. Dreams were the means by which the magi and also Joseph were given crucial divine directives (Matt. 1:20; 2:12, 13, 19, 22). The converse of the concept would describe a different epistemic posture or mentality. Those satisfied with their own store of knowledge describes men and women closed to the idea of receiving from God. It characterizes the stance of those in the church of Laodicea who received the rebuke, “You say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17).

As well as suggesting the expansion of terms of rationality, Bosch’s concept of a “creative tension” between mission and eschatology interfaces with the missional theory and praxis of the African visionaries of this discussion. Not unlike Roland Allen and Harry Boer, both noted by Bosch as having emphasized pneumatology and the link between the Spirit’s coming (Pentecost) and mission, visionaries who draw from knowledge derived from Spirit-encounters make claim to divine sources of eschatological hope. ¹⁸ Access to the Spirit of Christ is made possible through the gift of Christ and the promise of the kingdom now, albeit through faith. The grace of spiritual wisdom, insight, and knowledge derived from D/Vs translates into spiritual flourishing in the personal life of the visionary, but also in the lives of others, as their missions demonstrate. The eschatological hope, the presence and power of God which is the evidence of the kingdom of God, is therefore made tangible. As Bosch comments on the witnesses of the book of Acts, “It was Pentecost that gave them boldness.” A similar boldness seems to animate visionaries once they are convinced that they have received understanding regarding the will of God through a dream or vision. Boldness of this type is referred to by Bosch as a feature of “the new epistemology.” It constitutes an “epistemological break” with theological constructs which “were actually designed to serve the interests of the West,” and demonstrates, on the other hand, a turn toward serving the interests of the poor and marginalized. ¹⁹

An “emerging ecumenical paradigm” of the Spirit

In this and the next section, the way in which the method of attention to D/Vs for mission fits the description of an “emerging ecumenical paradigm” is addressed. Bosch’s concept for such a paradigm was understandably embedded with Western theological categories, “ecumenism” itself being one of those categories. For Bosch, the new paradigm would draw from but transform or enhance missiological elements of Western experience, as in bringing an emphasis on dialogue to the issue of witness amidst plurality of religions, or the rediscovery of the need for interdependence in mission for a healthy ecumenical approach. ²⁰ Remembering Bosch’s anticipation of hearing the contributions of contextual theologies beyond the Western sphere, it is fair to lift the concept of an emerging ecumenical paradigm and transpose it to glean its meaning in the contexts of the African visionaries.

There is a sense in which this methodology of the Spirit can be viewed as emergent to the Western theological horizon, but it should be noted that this is a matter of purview, since attention to D/Vs has been in place for at least 100 years of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement on the African continent. Examples abound, such as a notable vision that was experienced by Liberian prophet Wadé Harris in or before 1913. He received a mandate from an angel to preach the gospel of Christ. ²¹ Another is the dream of the Bawku chief who received revelation of the arrival of the Assemblies of God missionaries to his region in Ghana in 1937. ²² Also, in the highly acclaimed ethnography of Christianity among the Bantu of South Africa written by Bengt Sundkler, he records the story of a woman named Asiyena Zulu who had heard about the Christians and then dreamt that she should go to the mission station and prepare for Christian baptism. The dream even indicated the Christian name she should take, Anna. Sundkler also reports that converts among the Sotho were known to advise “heathens” curious about Christian faith, “To be converted, one must see visions.” ²³ Therefore, heeding D/Vs in Christian spirituality may be emergent as a theological topic of mission in the West, but not as a missional technique within African contexts.

There is another sense, though, in which Christian appreciation of D/Vs may be seen as an emerging phenomenon. That is in terms of the recontextualization of D/V valuation by Christians who have done the work of critically assessing traditional customs through a biblical lens. Here, visionaries move beyond acknowledgement of an experience to asking the question, “But is this in line with biblical revelation?” That process includes looking with spiritual discernment at one’s culture, but also moving forward around negative Western assumptions which are the residue of Western missions in some contexts.

The recontextualization of dreams and visions for Pentecostal spirituality

Ghanaian scholar Opoku Onyinah is helpful to refer to for a look at how D/Vs are deemed valuable for Christianity, that is, how the process of recontextualization is important to D/V appreciation. Onyinah is former Chairman of the Church of Pentecost denomination, one of the Classical Pentecostal movements originating in the first decades of the 20th century and one which is growing rapidly worldwide. The denomination presently has international impact in over 90 nations. Onyinah earned the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology at the University of Birmingham in the UK. He participated in the Dreams and Visions Project with an interview.

Onyinah exemplifies resistance to a Euro-western interpretation of Pentecostal spiritual practice by demonstrating the recontextualization of abisa—the Akan word for divinatory consultation—in terms of appropriating the practice in the stewardship of the prophetic gifts for revelation in the church. ²⁴ The process is explained in his seminal work on Pentecostal exorcism in the Church of Pentecost of Ghana. Onyinah reports how the practice of abisa was reframed as prophetic counseling, and how that counseling often precedes exorcism. He also writes that the practice is made subject to testing by the church. He makes it clear that salvaging the practice is due to its importance as an aspect of tradition but also of Christian spirituality. He writes, “Abisa needs to be contextualised into the framework of the NT concept of the prophethood of all believers.” ²⁵ Therefore, abisa is not considered in contradiction to a biblical understanding of the role of the Spirit and revelation. Onyinah includes dreams as part of prophetic ministry. Dreams are noted as diagnostic for addressing spiritual needs, especially for those with emotional disturbances, bondages through witchcraft, and addictions. ²⁶ In regard to abisa, Onyinah relays how the CoP have recontextualized it as an epistemological form while using a biblical approach to evaluate the prophetic content for a Pentecostal epistemology. ²⁷ Therefore, resonating with British theologian and missiologist Allan Anderson’s evaluation of the continuity–discontinuity tensions involved in assessing culture through a biblical lens, this example of retaining abisa and the value of D/Vs as spiritual practice speaks to continuity for the sake of reframing cultural practices for Pentecostal spirituality. ²⁸

Attention now to the ecumenical aspect of this missionary motif completes this analysis of how visionaries who value D/Vs offer an emerging ecumenical paradigm. It is made evident in the transcultural, and transdenominational aspect of the Spirit demonstrated, for example, in the way certain Western Pentecostals resonated with the concern for valuing D/V experiences in African contexts. This fact was reported by Togolese pastors who took part in the Dreams and Visions Project. In Togo, Western missionaries of the Assemblies of God not only taught on the value of dreams using the Bible, but shared their own dream experiences with the people. It is also apparent from the data gathered in the Dreams and Visions Project that those from classical Pentecostal backgrounds as well as those from independent charismatic congregations shared in the conviction of the value of D/Vs to Christian faith and spirituality. It can be concluded that, as in all things, the Spirit unites and fosters mutual understanding in this aspect as well.

Concluding thoughts

David J. Bosch captured the imaginations of missiologists with his insight regarding the need for emerging mission motifs. This article has sought to contribute to that discussion by putting the missiological practice of certain Pentecostal-Charismatic Africans on display for the enrichment of theological understanding. The focus on D/Vs gives rise, nevertheless, to questions that have been on the table among missiologists and the international development community for some time. What approaches should be used for evaluating the efficacy of mission methodology? For cross-cultural efforts, does respecting community history and engagement with local knowledge require checking Western knowledge “at the door?” And likewise, are non-Western sensibilities without value in the landscape of what is being called “reverse missions”? ²⁹

A case in point is the issue of institutionalized child care, or the problems dealing with the orphanage as a paradigm for meeting the needs of children. Empirical studies brought out within the last 30 years have shown the damaging effects of care in large facilities, especially in the case of children over the age of 24 months, due to the lack of the consistent presence of warm and interactive adult care. Might the recent studies carried out, for example, in three Central American orphanages, and those done in Bucharest, Romania, and in Eritrea offer substantially to informing and, if necessary, critiquing a vision for housing over 200 children in Nigeria? ³⁰ The access to research seems to prove as invaluable to informing the missional paradigm as does the divine mandate. Hence, the concept of emerging paradigms of mission loses nothing but can only gain through engagement with rationality on all of its perceived terms. This author is inclined to believe that Bosch would have agreed.