Christianity encounters local culture

This small piece will take us back to Mua Mission.  Yesterday there was a major cultural festival with dances, plays and poems from the local communities.  Hundreds of local people and a few number of visitors from afar were crammed into the outdoor auditorium/theatre.

The day started with a Catholic Mass led by the founder and leader of the Kungoni Centre of Culture and Art, Fr. Claude Bouchet.

A significant part of the mass was the participation of a large group of traditional Ngoni dancers and singers.  Their traditional rhythms and songs were given texts that flowed with the progress of the mass.

The theme of the mass was “Nature and Culture”, inspired by the recently published encyclical by Pope Francis on Environment and Climate.  We heard the recital of the lamentation of the tree, and we witnessed the planting of a tree. 

All this in full harmony between the Christian mass and the traditional culture. The African philosopher John S Mbiti is describing in his book “African religions and philosophy” how African rites and traditions penetrate African individuals and communities in existential situations, involving life and death, and overrule Christian rituals.  His claim is that the missionaries left African Christianity too shallow because they were not willing to de-socialize their outlook from the European heritage and re-socialize Christianity to the local history and traditions.  Local traditions were dismissed and discarded outright, and were not explored in order to find confluent values and perspectives from where Christianity could bridge with local history and tradition. What we experienced yesterday was a result of Kungoni’s many years of promoting enculturation, an important attempt to blend global faith tradition with local culture.

                                       A Ngoni performance of a traditional wedding ceremony

The mass was followed by a number of performances of local groups, including dances, poetry, drama, comedy and speeches.  Mua Mission with its Kungoni Centre is indeed a unique institution!