Filling the gap in African traditional religious practices

Pastor Samuel and I wrote the following Mission observer ...See below for bibliography.
-----------

In northern Ghana church members routinely face confessional crises as they are confronted with traditional religious practices- especially at the time of death, suffering, or catastrophe- that can compromise their faith in Christ alone.

African traditional religion mandates that when ‘bad’ events occur, there is often some purification that needs to take place in the family and sometimes the community. To use Old Testament language, something ‘unclean’ is still present in a Christian and in his larger family when these things happen. However the solution that traditional religion provides is often not suitable for a Christian as it often involves a blood sacrifice or somekind of reverence to a god/s in addition to the one true God. When a church member does not participate in the traditional ritual, the extended family (many of whom are often not Christian) and the believer may feel that something is missing, some uncleaness still exists, and something needs to be done to fill the gap and to purify the uncleaness. If the believer does participate, in many cases he is breaking the first commandment and publically compromising his faith in Christ.

A Lutheran woman from a village called Gbongbik in northern Ghana lost her husband, who was not a believer. The religious tradition prescribes that the elders had to give her some special water to drink and to make her confess any previous unfaithfulness to her husband. But she refused to drink it. If a woman does not drink it, the community may assume that she has been unfaithful to her husband and is refusing to confess her unfaithfulness. But apparently because this woman was so old no one forced her to take the drink. Soon after there came a time when the widows (since the man had multiple wives) and the children were to be purified through a ritual of shaving their heads and wearing white robes. All of the other family members were purified through the ritual, but the Christians were left unpurified. In such a situation, the popular perception is that if the Christians are not purified their uncleaness will remain in the family, which may cause future problems. Also the Christians themselves may feel a strong sense of the law that they indeed are unclean and need to be cleaned. If the church says, this kind of thinking is nonsense or superstitious and does not ‘fill the gap’ left by traditional religion, it is likely the woman will look outside of the church and be purified in the traditional way even though it goes against her conscience.

In this instance the church leaders and pastors came to the funeral house on the purification day and they composed a liturgy of readings, gave a short sermon, and celebrated a communion liturgy for the woman and those family members who were confirmed. Non believers observed. This communion practice, though not practiced as such in the West, freed the woman’s conscience from the threats of the law and gave her a solution from inside the Christian church. The traditional believers also accepted this solution that she was no longer unclean and no longer made them unclean either. Hence she was freed from the crisis of being forced to do the non Christian practice and made a confession that the church has the true remedy inside its gates for the communal experience of death.

Many African Lutherans are experiencing similar confessional crises in their traditional cultural practices. Lutheran pastors and churches need to come together to carefully develop (and use!) faithful Lutheran rites and rituals that apply to the African believers’ experience of the law in a multi-religious family setting, in order to turn our members toward faith in the one true gospel and to make a clear confession of the same to non-believers.

Konlaan, Samuel and Esala, Nathan. (2006). Missio Apostolica. Volume XIV No. 2 Issue 28: 122-123.
www.lsfmissiology.org