Chapter Six: Summary and discussion
6.2. Discussion
6.2.4. The Legacy of the Basel Mission
Although the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon propagates and ensures the success of a self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing Church, she has been slow with taking an official step towards an indigenous Church. The roots of discontinuity are traced back to the Basel Mission. The PCC state that she is the constitutional successor of the original Basel Mission Church in Cameroon established in 1886 and she maintains the spiritual and theological continuity of that Church.41 Does spiritual continuity mean that the PCC like the B.M. may be happy when a sixty-year-old woman who after three years of catechism classes is able to answer the questions to the satisfaction of the teachers? Spiritual continuity means not to swear by the Fon or his throne but to swear as the English do, not to honor one's dead parents or to take traditional medicine when one is sick?
6 2 5 The Way Forward
We opened this work by citing Herman Herzog who is said to have revolutionized theological education in the PCC, but who years after regretted that while writing the catechism they had failed to take the Cameroonian socio-cultural context into consideration. His hope therefore was for Cameroon theologians to consider this and come up with a catechism that will reflect the Cameroonian worldview. Yet there seems to be some fear of doing this. Dah in a presentation to PCC pastors in April 2004 wondered why pastors blame missionaries for attempting to destroy African categories of
40 Andrew F. Walls, "The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture", pp.7-9.
41 Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, Constitution, 1998, p. 1.
understanding spirituality while they themselves are scared of interpreting Scriptures as Africans.
The PCC takes very cautious steps towards the process of indigenisation as seen in the preface to the Book of Divine Services. It states:
A very difficult intention of the revision was the indigenisation of the liturgy.
Since indigenisation is not so much expressed in words as in music, in signs and symbols, and in Christian arts, the aspect of indigenous music is taken care of by a specially appointed committee; the other aspects will have to be dealt with in future as well.4
The last part of the statement vindicates the Church for saying they have implemented a progressive approach to the issue of indigenisation. The problem arises because the issue has been hardly brought up for discussion so far. Besides, the Church seeks to make an African Church only at the level of music, arts, symbols etc. Jacobs has pointed out that these things are merely actualizations or expressions of people's conceptualizations.
Change at this level does not affect the power level in anyway. On the other hand change that may have any meaningful effect should be at the level of the catechism, which is the tool of evangelization used as a means of convincing in order to convert and which is aimed at directing peoples' conception of powers from previously held convictions towards Christ as the new source of power.
The Right Reverend Jeremiah Chi Kangsen grasped the meaning of continuity in his speech on the occasion of the Basel Mission completely handing over to the PCC on the 24 April 1968. Kangsen had said among other things that the handing over corrects Cameroonian thinking which had for a long time thought that
The Church was an affair of the whiteman. In fact when I was a boy I thought that all angels were white...by handing over the Church and its institutions to Cameroonian leadership the Basel Mission has by this act shown that God has black angels and black saints in our Church.43
42 Preface to Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, The Book of Divine Services, n.p: n.p.
43 Jeremiah Chi Kangsen in handing over speech when the Basel Mission handed over all the schools and other Institutions to the Presbyterian Church on 24lh April 1968. Kangsen was at the time the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church. Cited in Werner Keller, The History of the Presbyterian Church, pp. 140-
142.
Kangsen also captured the essence that taking over from the Basel Mission did not mean a drastic cut away from them but then his use of African wisdom reveals that for him such continuity was the acceptance of the Christian's dual nationality; an acknowledgment that one's present is shaped by the one's past:
Today the Basel Mission is being swallowed up in a special sense by the Presbyterian Church. In some parts of Africa, it is believed, the king never dies. This is so because [according to this belief] when the king is at the point of death, his successor eats the heart of the dying king. This is done in order to ensure continuity. In the light of this, kingship does not really therefore consist of what kind of throne the king has, but of what kind of heart he has whether the heart is a continuity of what has gone before. So today the Presbyterian Church eats the heart of the Basel Mission, in order to live and in order to maintain continuity...in this part of Cameroon inheritance is not so much a matter of property. The main thing in inheritance is the old father's cup. The successor wants to have the father's cup however old it may be; because the spirit of the father is in it, he is taking upon himself the service of the family. That is the sense of inheritance.4
He went on to name the list of material things left by the Basel Mission, but indicated that though Cameroonians will love to take over those things since they are part of the inheritance, "that is not the main thing of inheritance".45 What was most essential was that " we inherit the old cup from the Basel Mission, and with it the spirit of service, the spirit of bringing the family together. This is the most essential thing we want to inherit".46 Inheritance did not depend on the material things "but the spirit in the father's cup and the heart of the king we have eaten cannot be taken away from us."47
Kangsen did not consider continuity from the Basel Mission to mean the inheritance of doctrine, for him inheritance meant inheriting the spirit of service and the spirit of being a uniting factor. He exhibited this in his practical life, as he became a Moderator of the Church, he was a politician. He was Minister of Education and Social Services in West Cameroon, and while in active service as Moderator was made traditional ruler of his
Werner Keller, The History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 142.
45 Werner Keller, The History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 142.
46 Werner Keller, The History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 142.
47 Werner Keller, The History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 142..
village, Kusu in Wum.48 We may say that Kangsen had set the pace, which the Church in Africa ought to adopt, and which will be an African approach to appreciating the inevitable necessary tension that exists between the pilgrim and indigenizing principles.
Sacral power in Africa did not distinguish between the sacred and the profane. The traditional ruler had sacral authority since he often doubled as priest and the politics of a nation state rested on his shoulders. And as we have noted in the Bali situation the Fon 's wish was law to his subjects.
The distinction between the sacred and the profane is a western construct which has been adopted without adaptation but which is harmful to spiritual growth. We therefore suggest that a coherent and meaningful understanding of Christ can only be realizable when the secular and the sacred realms are brought into oneness as was in the past where God is known to be quite transcendent yet also so close that a woman can conversationally ask him to give way lest she puts her pot on him. Perhaps there is no better way than this to understand the one who says "Behold I am with you always..."
This oneness may be an opportunity for further research.
Jonas N. Dah[ed.], A Century of Christianity in the Grassland of cameroon.p. 126.