Jesus as a Model of Social Change for Kenya
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Date
1996-02-21
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Tangaza University College
Abstract
African Theology seems to have been dominated by its quest to find a historical justification for it.
History, say many African theologians, is the cornerstone for the development of and understanding in
theological terms. It is through an historical approach that African theology finds its agenda. Looking at the
past provides the framework for giving Christianity its deeper intellectual roots.
However, while history is important to developing a fully fledged theology that can interpret the
message of Christ for Africans, it does seem that it focuses too much on the past, to the extent that it ignores
the present, and presents a skewed African Theology that seems mostly an attempt to blame and to justify,
rather than to explain and to understand. African Theology seems to be one that essentially tries to bring back
and glorify the past. This past is rapidly loosing it's relevance to the present. The search for elements of African
Christian theology that can be incorporated into Christianity; the time spent exploring colonialism, and saying
that it is the cause of all Africa's current problems, without an equal look at post - colonial independent Africa,
has left African theology virtually irrelevant to modern day Africa. This seems to be creating a crisis for
modern day African theological studies.
If African Theology is to move forward into the 21st Century, it seems that it will need to begin to get
a grip on the question," What is African Reality ? " Is African Reality the Past? Is it the continued effects
of Colonialism and Western Imperialism on African Society? Is it the impact of the diversity of cultures thatmake up the African Continent ? Is it the unity expressed by the people's in their traditional ways of life, a unity
that combined the humanity and spirituality of the person into one single act of living?
Is African Reality the Present 7 Is it an Africa moving into the 21st Century with a 19th Century
mentality? Is it a reality that is flexible and prepared to change 7 Is it a reality that is prepared to face the
present and deal with it effectively?
Is the African theological reality one that is able to acknowledge that quite possibly Jesus Christ and
his message of salvation and the Kingdom of God are not time and space bound, but transcendent and universal
7 If Jesus 'message is transcendent, can it be relevant to a complex Africa moving towards the 21st Century,
without having to address a past that seems more and more at loose ends with the present 7 If African theology
is going to find an agenda that will incorporate Jesus Christ, then it seems that this will more likely come from
a look at the present. This Present provides conflict and tension between the reality and Jesus Christ. The Past,
on the other hand, does not seems to have any notion of Jesus Christ, but dwelt largely on the level of humanity,
Ancestors and the Supreme Being. Those are time and space bound concepts that suited a pre - Christian era
. Christianity has introduced Jesus Christ into the African Religious sphere. He did not exist in pre - Christian
Africa. Therefore, an African theology that seems to spend most of its energies and efforts on trying to bring
Jesus into its past, pre - Christian era seems to be loosing a lot of time. My point of departure with much of
current African theology will be to focus on the Present and try to find out if Jesus Christ is relevant to present
day socio - economic and political realities of Africa. This examination will lay more specific emphasis on
what seems to be the Africa of the 21st Century - namely a complex, multi - cultural and very urban Africa.
To do this, I will focus largely on the situation that I know best; living and growing up in Nairobi, and with
an experience of Nairobi in its extremes, To find out if Jesus was relevant, one would have to look at what his
socio - economic and political messages were, and to see what kind of impact these had on his society, and
compare this with the socio - economic and political situation of present day Kenya, and offer up Jesus as a
rebuke of this situation. This kind of analysis assumes that Urbanization is one of the ways Africa is going as
She heads into the 21st Century. This does seems to be a fair assumption to make as we shall discover later
in the analysis. If this is a major direction, then it surely deserves the guidelines that can be offered up by some theological reflection. This is not to ignore the fact that a large portion of the African population lives in the
country - side. It does, however, stress that urbanization is a relatively new phenomenon on the African
Continent, and besides being a situation that is likely to persist well into the future, urbanization offers a
situation of tension, conflict and change - vital ingredients to help an evolving theology.
The African social reality and the African theological reality need to find a meeting point, and it seems that
this meeting point could be found in what has come to be called "the anthropological pauperization of the
African person. " 21n a quote taken from the "African Report " presented at the Second General Assembly of
the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT), at Oaxtepe,c, Mexico, the authors express
the reality of this anthropological pauperization of the African person. They say,If one takes an historical perspective of this understanding then one gets bogged down in the
anthropological aspect which inevitably deals with the past, at the expense of the " becoming or making poor
"aspect, which seems to deal more with the present. Theologically, we need to deal with the pauperization
of Africa, and particularly as it makes itself evident in our urban centres. Poverty is probably the greatest
challenge facing African society today, especially as it seems to be increasing unabatedly, and manifesting
itself in a variety of serious social problems, as will be seen in an indepth look at the political ,social and
economic situation of present day Kenya in a later chapter.
What I hope that this paper will achieve is the beginning of a redirection and refocussing on the African
Reality that takes into more account the present, so that theologically, as Africa moves into the 21st Century,
there is a beginning of an understanding of the 20th Century, and not this stagnation in the 19th Century pre-Christian Africa that seems so dominant in current African theology.
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Keywords
Social Change, Model, Social Stance of Jesus, Political Stance of Jesus, Socio-Economic, Political Situation, Present Day Kenya