Reading African-Wise: Exodus 3.1-14 as Interpreted in the Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina in Zambia

Introduction

The Lumpa Church was founded by Alice Lubisha Mulenga Lenshina, born in 1920 in Kasoma village of Chinsali in Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia). ¹ She started the Lumpa Church in September 1953 after claiming to have been resurrected from the dead. Allan Anderson records that Lenshina had died and came back to life after 3 days. ² She claimed to have met Jesus Christ who sent her back to a life on earth and to evangelise, delivering people from the burdens of fearing witchcraft and evil powers. ³ The Lumpa Church became one of the largest African Initiated Churches (AICs) on the continent. ⁴ Lenshina founded the Lumpa Church as a reaction to the teachings and beliefs of the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland at Lubwa mission in Chinsali. ⁵ Lenshina’s ministry was characterised by divination, prophecy, witchcraft eradication, predictions of the future, the healing of diseases, and advocacy for the participation of women in the work of the church, including in the priesthood. ⁶ The Lumpa Church attracted many Africans who, in their efforts to avert witchcraft and evil powers, were looking for personal and spiritual help. ⁷ An important shortcoming of Western missionaries at Lubwa mission was their failure to accept that Africans had a strong belief in the existence of spirits and evil powers. Africans were in need of a church that would address the day-to-day challenges of averting such threatening realities. ⁸

Africans longed for a church that would eliminate the evil powers which interfered with good health and prevented them from making progress in their lives. The Western missionaries however insisted that ‘spirits did not inhabit and influence this world’. ⁹ As regards the failure of the missionaries to pay attention to the African worldview and spirituality, Gordon observes that for the missionaries ‘spirits are distant, appearing only in an afterlife, in heaven and hell, instead of having a direct influence over happenings in the material world and the health and wealth of living beings’. ¹⁰ As a result, the Lumpa Church looked to free itself from the influence of Western missionaries. The Lumpa Church also objected to the participation of its members in political activities and proscribed cultural practices that in Lenshina’s opinion were contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Lenshina preached with deep conviction against witchcraft, alcohol, polygamy and the participation of Christians in the movement for independence. The United Independence Party (UIP) considered Lenshina and her church as a hindrance in the struggle for independence. In July 1964, a bloody battle took place between government forces and followers of Lenshina. ¹¹ Over 1000 members of the Lumpa Church were killed. Lenshina was arrested and jailed. However, the reading of the Bible by the members of the Lumpa Church was ahead of their time. They brought the biblical text and the African context into dialogue, as becomes obvious from their interpretation of Exodus 3:1-14.

Reading African-wise

Reading the Bible in contextual ways is not new to Africa. ¹² Justin Ukpong identifies two approaches to reading the Bible in Africa one of which follows the predominant Western way, whereas the second way consists in the ‘African pattern of linking the text with the African context’. ¹³ The latter approach, in which the African context shapes the interpretation of biblical texts, is common in African Initiated Churches, among these the Lumpa Church of Lenshina. ¹⁴ This way of reading the Bible is also common among ordinary readers of the Bible in Africa. ¹⁵ African readers of the Bible – general as well as highly educated readers – bring the biblical texts and the African context into dialogue. ¹⁶ It means that this way of reading biblical texts takes into account ‘the agency of indigenous Africans and the community that exists between their forms of African Christianity and African Religion’. ¹⁷ Special attention is paid to matters arising from the African context. When Bible texts are read in this way, the African context provides resources for positive, life-giving interpretations. In this article, I refer to this process as ‘reading African-wise’. Reading African-wise is a form of what Gerald West calls ‘ordinary African biblical hermeneutics’. ¹⁸ The African context provides the lens through which the reader considers and interprets the biblical text. ¹⁹ It involves drawing on socially and culturally engaged ways of reading the Bible in Africa and thereby transgressing dominant Western modes of Bible reading. Other socially engaged approaches in Africa include what Gerald West describes as ‘reading other-wise’ and what Musa Dube refers to as ‘other ways of reading’. ²⁰

Reading the Bible consciously and critically in the African context, allows for different issues defining African reality to inform interpretations of Bible texts and to influence the type of questions raised by the text and its interpretations. ²¹ In North Eastern Zambia, Africans have tended to relate the Bible, especially the Old Testament, to African culture. As a result, African culture came to be recognised as a preparation for the coming of Christianity and for the works of Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament. African culture became thus foundational to the reading of the Bible and biblical texts came to be linked to an African context. In the Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina, Exodus 3.1-14 was read in such a way that the African context became the actual subject of interpretation. Lenshina’s use of the African context as an essential topic of interpretation becomes clear when we locate Exodus 3.1-14 in its socio-historical background and subsequently look at Lenshina’s appropriation of the same text.

Exodus 3.1-14 in Socio-Historical Context

The book of Exodus is the second of the first five books of the Old Testament, together called the Pentateuch. ‘Exodus’ derives from Shemot, a Hebrew word meaning ‘names’, translated into Greek as ‘going out’. ²² The book of Exodus, as we have it today, is a product of different traditional perceptions of the Exodus story put together in the course of several centuries. For a long time now, scholars have referred to these traditions as the Yahwist (J) account, the Elohistic (E) account, the Priestly (P) element and the Deuteronomist (D) account. ²³ The book of Exodus is a product of editors identified as Yahwist (J), Elohistic (E), Priestly (P) and Deuteronomist (D), who put together different traditional perceptions of the Exodus story, as these followed each other in the course of several centuries.

It is becoming increasingly clear that many traditions in the book of Exodus can be ascribed to the priestly editors who were active during the Babylonian exile between 587 and 539 BCE. ²⁴ These editors reconstructed stories of the ancestors from as far back as the thirteenth century BCE, reflecting on factors that led to Israel’s bondage in Babylon. The aim was to underscore the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt as well as the urgency of keeping their covenant with God. The editors conclude that it was Israel’s departure from the covenant that had led to the Israelites being taken into captivity in Babylon. The Israelites were reminded of the belief in God’s deliverance from bondage, God’s sovereignty, the limitations of human empires, and God’s forgiveness of disobedient people who repent. ²⁵ Bruce Birch et al. argue the following:

The book of Exodus is not history writing; it is kerygma, that is, the book is theological proclamation seeking to tell the community’s salvation story to subsequent generations, so that they too will know and encounter the liberating God of the Exodus story. Modern interest in recovering the originating events of this story in historiographic detail is bound to end in frustration. There can be no doubt that the exodus story assumes an originating series of events in the past, but the concern of the text is with the ongoing theological meaning of those events, not with the historical details of the originating context. ²⁶

Chapter 3 of the book of Exodus is part of a section that deals with the themes of slavery, liberation and exodus (i.e. the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt). The chapter presents God as creator of all things and as liberator. God is in control of human beings as well as of non-human forms of life as represented by the burning bush. ²⁷ Pharaoh and slavery in Egypt symbolise oppression and evil forces that deny people the fullness of life. The burning bush stands for God’s presence, liberation and purification. ²⁸

Exodus 3.1–4.17 offers the first account of how Moses is called to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. ²⁹ The account is a combination of the Yahwist and Elohist sources. ³⁰ The narrator presents a theophany (God’s disclosure): God confronts Moses on Mount Horeb and commissions him to fight slavery in Egypt. Appearing in a burning bush (Exod. 3.6), God tells Moses that he is aware of the oppression of the Israelites and will deliver them from slavery. The Israelites had ‘cried out’ (za’aq) to God, begging to be rescued (Exod.3.7). In response to these cries God states: ‘I know all about their suffering’ (Exod. 3.7). The Hebrew word translated as ‘to know’ is yada. It implies that God is entering into, and experiencing, ‘Israel’s suffering’. ³¹ The text confirms God’s solidarity with the Israelites and God’s willingness to enter into their situation with the aim of delivering them.

Moses was not sure of the identity of the God, or the burning bush commissioning him. In Exodus 3.13-14, Moses asks for the identity of God. In response, God reveals the name to be Ehyeh asher ehyeh, which means ‘one who is’ or ‘one who causes what is’ or ‘I am who I am’ (Exod. 3.14, cf. Exod. 6.2-3). ³² The narrator (from E-source) states that the name of God was revealed for the first time on Mount Horeb. The narrator (from P-source) in Exodus 6.2-3 reiterates this claim. As Birch et al. rightly observe, the giving of a name in the Ancient Near East was a sign of an intimate relationship. ³³ Given that Yahweh might have been the God of creation for the Midianites, as some biblical scholars postulate, and that Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, and Zipporah, Moses’ wife, were Midianites, the giving of the name might have been an invitation to the Israelites to join the worship of the Midianite God – Yahweh. ³⁴ Yahweh is presented as the God of the Israelites and Israel becomes God’s people – a people who carry the name of Yahweh the God of creation, one who is sovereign, a deliverer and one who is ‘to be’ (hayah). ³⁵

The self-disclosure of God in a burning bush is of the utmost importance in this narrative. David Adamo notes that fire is used in many biblical texts to symbolise the presence of God. ³⁶ It is used to show God’s judgement in the form of destruction or to indicate God’s power to purify. In Exodus 3, fire functions as a symbol of both God’s self-revelation and God’s power to purify the bush and the land. ³⁷ As Adamo emphasises,

Fire/lightning/thunder as a theophany of existence communicates the very presence of the divine in the Old Testament. This is quite evident in the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3:1-6. In Exodus 9:23-25 when Moses stretched his staff toward heaven, the Lord sent down a fire in form of thunder and lightning . . . and it destroyed human beings, plants and every tree in the field. In Exodus 19:16-18, Yahweh descended on Mt. Sinai in the form of fire, lightning and thunder. This event also was reflected in Deuteronomy 4:11-15, 33, and 36. ³⁸

The Old Testament understanding of fire presents striking similarities with fire as understood by many tribes in Sub-Saharan Africa. As Adamo notes, the understanding of fire as a symbol of the divine presence of God is common among African tribes, for example, the Yoruba of Nigeria. ³⁹ Among the Bemba-speaking people of Zambia, fire symbolises the power of God to cause fertility and create life. The soil is regarded as the mother earth. Fire represents the power of God to fertilise the soil so that seeds can germinate and grow. During the farming season, branches of trees are cut down in what is called chitemene (shifting cultivation). A fire burns the branches and the grass on which they rest, and produces ashes that fertilise the land. The combination of fire and rainwater makes the black soil fertile and productive, so that it can support life on earth. ⁴⁰

Fire is also symbolically used in marriage rituals that govern sex and reproduction. During the wedding ceremony, the bridegroom (shibwinga) is asked to light a torch made of dry grass or twigs (umwenge) and move it across the head of the bride (nabwinga). ⁴¹ In this ritual, the fire represents the male organ that fertilises the female organ, enabling reproduction. ⁴² The fire is believed to ignite the fertility of the bride. The ritual readies the couple for reproduction when sexual intercourse occurs. Before and during the wedding ceremony, the bridegroom eats food cooked by his in-laws. ⁴³ After the ceremony, the newly married couple is not allowed to cook their own food or touch fire, until they are given a hearth or fireplace (ishiko) in their house by the ‘marriage tutors’ (bana chimbusa), or by the assigned paternal aunt of the bride (Nyina senge). ⁴⁴ The newly married couple is required to touch the hearth early in the morning whenever they have had sex during the night. They are not allowed to touch the hearth if one of them has committed adultery. ⁴⁵ In this ritual, fire gives the couple the power of fecundity to ensure that reproduction takes place. If there is no sexual intercourse in marriage, or if the man is impotent, the woman would say ‘Umulilo walishima mu ng’anda’, meaning ‘there is no fire in our home’.

In association with farming, marriage, and worship, fire did carry notions of purification and fidelity. In the context of farming, fire purifies the bush and brings the land into readiness for cultivation, planting, and the growth of new life. ⁴⁶ As regards marriage, purity and fidelity are expected and confirmed by touching the hearth whenever the couple has had sex. Touching the hearth was a form of swearing before God that they had not committed adultery. Fire represented the presence of God. The various symbolic ritual meanings of fire can be identified in the interpretation of Exodus 3.1-14 in the Lumpa Church in Zambia.

Appropriation of Exodus 3.1-14 in the Lumpa Church

Lenshina and the members of the Lumpa Church did read the Bible through African lenses. They connected the biblical texts to their present contextual realities. Their reading of the biblical text seriously engaged with issues of witchcraft, agriculture, cultural oppression, discrimination against women in society and the colonisation of Africans by Europeans. ⁴⁷ The Bible was used to counteract the teachings of the European missionaries, that were by Lenshina and the members of the Lumpa Church perceived as being unfair to the Africans. Their reading of the Bible transgressed Western ways of reading and interpreting the texts.

Drawing on the Old Testament concept of Zion, Lenshina gave the headquarters of the Lumpa Church at Kasomo village in Chinsali the name of Sioni ⁴⁸ and built a large church with a seating capacity of 5000. ⁴⁹ Leaders of the Lumpa Church – who included deacons, preachers and choir leaders from all parts of Zambia and neighbouring countries – gathered in the church at Kasomo village for Bible study and to learn new songs and hymns, composed by Lenshina and her husband. The leaders returned to their respective villages where they shared the sermons Lenshina preached and the hymns they had learned with other members of the Lumpa Church. ⁵⁰ Lumpa Churches in all villages displayed a sign post which read: ‘Lumpa, the Great meeting place of African people’. ⁵¹ Sermons, preached by Lenshina, were repeated by preachers in all Lumpa Churches. After the sermon, preachers would invite congregants to surrender their witchcraft beliefs to Lenshina. A record of the sermon on Exodus 3.1-11, delivered in 1956 by a woman preacher to Lumpa congregants in the village of Mukuni, states the following:

God had sent the Roman Catholic missionaries to burn the bush, but they did not burn it. They only stole the treasure. Then God sent the Presbyterian Church of Scotland missionaries and the Jehovah’s Witnesses popularly called the Watchtower. They both failed to burn the bush. Then God sent his sister Lenshina, and she burned the bush. ⁵²

The sermon drives home four important points regarding the interpretation of the Bible in the Lumpa Church. First, the preacher applies the biblical story of the burning bush to the ‘shifting cultivation’ (ichitemene) which the Bemba-speaking people were practising at the time. ‘Shifting cultivation’ involves the lopping of branches from trees between July and September. The branches are laid out to dry and afterwards gathered to form a heap in the centre of the cut area. The heap is burnt just before the coming of the rains in November. As stated, the ashes served to fertilise the field. Finger millet (amale) and sorghum (amasaka) were usually the first crops to be sown in the plot. Cassava (kalundwe) was often planted as an intercrop with millet in the first year, and was harvested gradually from the second year onwards. Groundnuts and beans were planted the year following on the harvest of millet and sorghum. The field would lose its fertility after 4 or 5 years due to soil erosion. It was then left to lie fallow for 15 to 30 years. ⁵³

The preacher draws parallels between the biblical story of the burning bush and the practice of ‘shifting cultivation’ among Bemba-speaking people. Gordon notes that, ‘but for the Bemba, who relied on the burning of the bush to fertilise their fields – the Chitemene style of agriculture that sustained the Bemba in the sandy soils of the northern plateau – the miracle was that the bush did burn and created life’. ⁵⁴ The burning of the bush increased the fertility of the land prior to planting the seed. The fire symbolised the element of God which fertilised the mother earth (soil) in order to give life. The members of the Lumpa Church appropriated the text as speaking to their agricultural concerns. The liberation of the Israelites in the book of Exodus is related to their liberation from hunger (insala) and poverty (ubupina).

Second, the appropriation of the biblical text elevated Lenshina to the position of prophetess – a true messenger of God. In the book of Exodus, God manifested in the burning bush and commissioned Moses to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In the same manner, God (and Jesus Christ) appeared to Lenshina on her deathbed and commissioned her to liberate Africans from the bondage of witchcraft, the oppression of women and from evil powers in any form. This elevation of Lenshina in the reading of Exodus 3.1-11 in the Lumpa Church, led to the deconstruction of the understanding of ministry and leadership in the Free Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic mission stations where only men were ministers. ⁵⁵ The male-dominated mission church failed to protect people from witchcraft and excluded women from leadership positions. God now had called Lenshina – a woman fulfilling the role of the biblical Moses – to eradicate oppressive witchcraft beliefs in church and society. The Lumpa Church pointed out similarities between Moses and Lenshina. In Exodus, God commissions Moses, a male prophet, to liberate the Israelites from slavery, while in the Lumpa Church, God commissions Lenshina, a prophetess, to free people from concerns about witchcraft and evil powers that limited their experience of life’s fullness. Lenshina developed viewpoints and regulations aimed at liberating women from the oppressive elements of African culture and of missionary beliefs. Oppressive aspects of female initiation rites were, for example, forbidden. Lenshina also allowed women in the Lumpa Church to remarry without undergoing the dehumanising ritual of widow cleansing. ⁵⁶

Another point to consider is that the Lumpa Church in its interpretation of the biblical story of the burning bush elevated Lenshina to the level of queen – as she was performing duties that were a preserve of the Bemba King Chitimukulu. ⁵⁷ This means that Lenshina was presumed to control the agricultural processes followed by the Bemba-speaking people. As a high priest, King Chitimukulu was responsible for blessing the seeds and the land in which they were to be planted. The King also had to perform rain-making rituals, especially in case of drought. ⁵⁸ The King monitored ecological processes to ensure the good health and prosperity of the people. However, with the advent of colonial government and Christian missions, traditional rituals and prayers had been condemned and the King lost control of rituals that had agricultural and ecological significance. In their liturgy and theological teaching, the Western missionaries did not offer a meaningful replacement for the priestly role of the Bemba King. ⁵⁹ The resulting spiritual and liturgical vacuum left many Africans dissatisfied with Western Christianity. They longed for a form of Christianity that would respond to their needs as Africans.

In view of the need to attend to African concerns, the Lumpa Church elevated Lenshina to the level of a queen so that she could perform liturgical and ritual roles that ensured the community’s ecological and agricultural wellbeing. Gordon remarks that Lenshina made intercession for the people to ensure ecological and economic success of the village. ⁶⁰ She preached against the use of charms (umuti) to improve the harvests. To replace the traditional blessing ceremonies, she introduced a Christian ritual to bless the seeds, the land, and the farming produce at the time of harvesting. ⁶¹ The use of the Bible to respond to issues that in the African context were perceived as crucial, led to many Africans leaving the mission churches (both Presbyterian and Catholic) to join the Lumpa Church. ⁶²

Finally, the removing of the shoes by Moses in the story of the burning bush was by members of the Lumpa Church linked to the removing of shoes when visiting a place considered as sacred in African culture. The Lumpa Church at Kasomo village soon came to be regarded as a sacred place that all members of the church had to visit to undergo spiritual cleansing. Persons who were tormented by witchcraft or other evil powers would visit Lenshina at Kasomo village for deliverance. The charms collected in the church included human bones, amulets, beads, horns, baskets and other objects used in witchcraft. ⁶³ Witchcraft is perceived as real in Africa where many used to live in fear of its disruption of peace and social order. Lenshina did not discriminate against anyone who went to the Lumpa Church for deliverance. She emphasised as follows:

Pakutemwa kwakwa Lesa, Lesa atemenwe ifwe bonse, imitundu ne mitundu. Aleti mube pamo. We wakana walishama kubwite bwakwa Lesa (God loves people of all tribes. And God wants all people, from all walks of life, to unite and be one). ⁶⁴

It has been well documented by historians that the composing of indigenous hymns by Lenshina contributed to the growth of the Lumpa Church. ⁶⁵ It must however be emphasised that the hymns made by Lenshina were based on her interpretation of the Bible, as seen through an African lens. ⁶⁶ Most of the hymns are drawn from sermons she preached while others were adaptations of folk songs. As is clear from the interpretation of Exodus 3.1-14 in the Lumpa Church, Africans were interested in salvation from present realities – from the ‘here and now’. Lenshina’s Bible interpretation and teachings gave Africans relief from their fears of witchcraft as well as social, economic and political problems experienced by the Bemba-speaking people. ⁶⁷ The African context determined the way in which Lenshina and her followers understood the Bible.

Context as a Precursor of Biblical Interpretation

Musa Dube, Stanley Fish and Roy Ciampa help us understand that in any given context the meaning of the biblical text is determined by the community engaging with it. ⁶⁸ This community consists of readers who share a belief and have a worldview in common. As Fish observes, a certain philosophical worldview and some suppositions ‘exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around’. ⁶⁹ Thus, the interpretative community determines the meaning it extracts from the biblical text and the type of interpretation that it will find acceptable. ⁷⁰ The interpretative community will thus adopt a particular viewpoint, based on its validity and reliability as a life-supporting interpretation. Any interpretation of the biblical text which is perceived as life-denying will be rejected, even if such a type of interpretation may be regarded as authentic elsewhere. In other words, the context of the reader is the precursor of biblical interpretation and a starting point of any life-giving theological reflection.

The appropriation of Exodus 3.1-14 in the Lumpa Church confirms how the context provides the lens through which the Bible is read. Lenshina was disturbed by the fact that European missionaries largely ignored the local context in their Bible interpretation. The Free Church of Scotland missionaries at Lubwa Mission in Chinsali accused Lenshina of distorting the message of the Bible by considering it in the light of African realities. But Lenshina refused to be intimidated by the missionaries. In her turn, she accused the missionaries of promoting witchcraft beliefs in the community by protecting witches and wizards. Andrew Roberts records as follows:

In one telling incident, a visiting Protestant missionary accused Lenshina of distorting God’s message and ignoring the Bible. Lenshina responded by asking whether a servant or a Master should reprimand another servant. The missionary said, ‘The Master’. Lenshina then told him: ‘You are the servant of Jesus and I am the servant of Jesus, so you cannot dismiss me’. To this, the missionary asked whether one servant should warn a blind servant if he notices her walking into a pit. But the missionary was left without an answer when Lenshina replied, ‘We are all blind’. ⁷¹

What comes to the fore is that the African worldview influencing Lenshina and the members of the Lumpa Church differed from that of the European missionaries. It was therefore not right that the European missionaries should impose their methods of reading the Bible without taking the context and the needs and aspirations of local communities into account.

Lenshina was disappointed that the European missionaries identified themselves with the Israelites – a chosen people – while rejecting most elements of African culture in their ambition to promote civilisation, commerce and the spread of Christianity. Therefore, Lenshina and the members of the Lumpa Church looked upon the missionaries as traitors who presented the God of the Bible as a conqueror of Africans rather than in the role of deliverer as recorded in Exodus 3.1-14.

Members of the Lumpa Church have come up with an alternative way of reading the Bible, by drawing parallels between the biblical stories and their African context. As noted above, Moses as God’s messenger, raised to deliver the Israelites, is identified with Lenshina, raised by God to deliver the Africans. Slavery in Egypt is identified with problems experienced by Africans. Canaan, the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, is identified with an African community where witchcraft, oppression of women and evil powers of any kind are eradicated. Fire is identified with the presence of God. Anything that denied Africans the fullness of life – such as witchcraft – had to be cleansed. Unlike the mission churches, Lenshina allowed both ordinary men and women to preach in church and deacons were allowed to officiate at weddings. People who were healed by Lenshina, were baptised, admitted to the Lumpa Church and given African names rather than the European names preferred by Western missionaries. ⁷²

The reading of the Bible in the Lumpa Church is consistent with the observation made by Gerald West that the encounter between the Bible and the African context is a ‘transaction’ – implying that it is not an innocent enterprise. ⁷³ The missionaries and the colonialists collaborated to promote commerce, civilisation, and Christianity in a manner that marginalised Africans and African worldviews. The Bible was read through Western and Euro-centric lenses. ⁷⁴ Musa Dube makes a similar observation when she notes as follows:

. . . in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Bible translations were carried out primarily by foreign missionaries and were heavily informed by colonial ideology. The subversion of African deities was often carried out in these translations by equating them with demons. Further, while most African languages are gender-neutral, with names of deities and other divine figures bearing gender-neutral names, deities in the Bible were given male genders. ⁷⁵

In order to make Christianity their own, Africans devised their own way of reading the Bible and, as Tinyiko Maluleke notes, ‘While oppression and imperialism have been real and ruthless, Africans have at a deeper level negotiated and survived the scourge – by relativising it, resisting it and modifying it with uncanny creativity’. ⁷⁶ African women such as Alice Lenshina have creatively used the Bible as a source of liberation.

Conclusion

Lenshina and the members of the Lumpa Church read Exodus 3.1-14 African-wise. Their reading challenged the conventional, predominantly Western ways of reading the Bible. Members of the Lumpa Church recognised the need to apply Bible-texts to the real concerns in society such as oppression, colonialism, witchcraft, the marginalisation of women, and poverty. For them the biblical story of the burning bush was not just about the bondage of Israelites in Egypt. It was also concerned with the liberation of Africans as God’s people in the colonial context. The Bible was used as a resource for the struggle against evil powers and against all that denied Africans fullness of life.

Contextual methods of reading Bible-texts use insights resulting from a historical analysis of the Bible as a springboard for rereading the text against the background of a contemporary context. ⁷⁷ Lenshina and the members of the Lumpa Church can thus be justified for reading the Bible using African lenses. ⁷⁸ In doing so, they were ahead of their time. Their approach to Bible reading presents contemporary readers of the Bible in Africa as well as in other parts of the world with the challenge to engage in their Bible interpretations with actual local realities.