Abstract
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible, and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land. (Desmond Tutu)
We live in a global society, which means there is an indisputable connection of cultures, countries, and continents around the world. Although the interrelationship of cultures can prove to be enriching and rewarding, multiculturalism often faces challenges that limit underrepresented social groups from realizing social equality. In fact, cultural relativism and hegemony often precedes multicultural appreciation and inclusivity. Christianity is an example of a powerful cultural institution that has shaped the social dynamics of the globe. The impact of Western Christianity has been particularly influential in the Global South, including many areas in Africa (Miller and Yamamori, 2007; Ranger, 2008; Robbins, 2004). Over the last century, African Christianity has manifested itself differently from the West, resulting in a variety of religious experiences and expressions that fuse African culture and Western Christianity. In recent years, scholars have begun to document African church communities in and out of Africa, leading to a variety of social responses including cultural and religious inclusion, exclusion, and/or cultural ‘othering.’
Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism: Europe, Africa, and North America is a series of essays, compiled by R Drew Smith, William Ackah, and Anthony G Reddie. The book is written by sociologists, theologians, historians, and ministers, and concentrates on the relationship between black African congregations within Africa, as well as in Western Europe, Canada, and the United States. Although not disregarding the impact of Latin American or Asian cultures, the book gives particular attention to the cultural challenges directly facing the black African church; challenges that cannot be understood apart from the historical context, the neocolonial relationship between African people with Westerners, and the social constructions of racial binaries that exist in Western societies.
The book is divided into three parts: the foundations of the church, the impact of the black church in the community, and the predicaments in which these church communities and leaders find themselves. Within each of these broad categories is a series of specialized, more nuanced, thematic chapters that capture the complexity of the influence of the black African church around the world.
Part I is a collection of four essays, focusing on the birth of the black African church around the world. This section, ‘Foundational Dimensions of Nascent Twentieth-Century Multiculturalisms,’ incorporates case studies of communities in Britain, Canada, and the role of women in the Nigerian church. Part I also captures the rise of significant black or African movements, and the role of faith and culture in the development and sustainability of these movements. Specific attention is given to the US civil rights movement, and the theologies that guided the leaders of the movement. Each essay in this section captures the social complexities of religious inclusion, noting that these communities are not isolated from external social factors that may influence the experiences of black African Christians. For example, in Canada the black church is affected by the growth of Islam in the country, the increasing need for interreligious dialogue, and the cultural differences between African and Jamaican church communities such that, ‘a common marker of the various expressions of black Christianity in Canada is its interrelatedness to other religions’ (Carol Duncan, p. 41).
Part II, ‘Expanding Contemporary Diversities and Entrenched Majority Cultures,’ is comprised of eight chapters, each of which describes the experiences and challenges of multicultural church communities. This section includes the work of scholars and ministers directly challenging the black–white religious binary. Each of the case studies in this section demonstrates the ways in which multicultural congregations are engaged in an ongoing effort to unite, rather than divide, the church as one body. Part II also highlights efforts at building community in multicultural congregations by intentionally organizing cultural activities and programs with the purpose of creating a more inclusive community. Some communities have had to deconstruct the social dynamics of race through education, whereas others are confronted with racism from law enforcement agencies who possess limited perspectives of how Christian worship should look and sound. Part II concludes with a provocative essay on the theological imperative to incorporate multiculturalism into Christian communities, which essentially involves ‘living and learning to do difference differently’ (Gordon Dames, p. 180).
Part III, ‘Resistant Blackness, Persistent Poverty and Hesitant Multiculturalisms,’ is a compilation of five essays investigating religious responses to contemporary race issues in society. Case studies range from the London riots, to the church response to hip hop culture to the LGBTQ community within and outside of the church. In one chapter, Aurélien Gampiot captures the complexity of African Christianity by analyzing the content of African Christian hymns inspired by black theologies. He demonstrates the social realities facing black churches, and the ways in which these communities read and interpret scripture, thereby bringing a radically different, distinctively African, social perspective to Western Christian thought.
Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism effectively documents the conflicts that multicultural and black churches experience outside their communities. In addition, a number of essays in the book detail instances of religious and cultural conflict internally. For example, Michael B McCormack describes instances of ministers and laypeople disagreeing with particular elements of black culture outside of the church. Another chapter reflects on the challenges of maintaining a purely multicultural church community that ‘reflects the congregation, and a congregation that reflects the demographics of its community’ (Israel Olofinjana, p. 85). Still other chapters illuminate how social identities such as gender and sexuality could divide black church communities (Ekwutosi Offiong, Gayle Baldwin).
Sociologists may find it difficult to find a common theoretical thread weaving these chapters together, though the tone evokes the work of postcolonial theorists. The black African people and communities represented in these essays seem to be aware of their distinct social positioning as ‘others’ in Western contexts as they struggle for ethnic and cultural autonomy. Moreover, black Christian communities have recognized how their distinctively African religious expressions may have infused many elements of European or North American Christian culture. Nonetheless, the rise of multicultural churches provides social spaces for the subaltern to speak and worship in a manner that represents their own cultures.
The themes and stories in Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism are broad, as intended by the editors, providing wide representation of stories, case studies, and analyses. Although each essay provides a unique lens on the experiences of the black African church, the book as a whole seems disjointed, and its thesis a bit muddled. The book does not have a concluding chapter that summarizes the arguments presented in the previous chapters. Yet, perhaps this was the intention of the editors, for there is no way to summarize the challenges facing black churches in the various cultural settings in which they find themselves.
Notwithstanding, a significant strength of the book is the authors’ recognition of cultural and religious diversity within the black African church. As was clearly articulated in the book, black cultural and religious expressions, and the responses to them, are highly diverse. Indeed, rather than providing a single story of black African churchgoers around the world, Smith, Ackah, and Reddie present us with histories, tales, and tribulations of communities working to make multicultural religious inclusivity a reality.