Mission As Dialogue In African Context: Proposing The Model Of Mutual Enrichment And Syn-Culturation

Abstract

The story of Christian mission and Africa has been a tensive story with mixed feelings, involving abuses of human beings and resources, deception, destruction and theft, but also education, science and technology, and human developments. The arrival of Christianity in Africa has three different junctures. Early Christianity was basically construed partly by Africans, in Africa, and through African religious thought-structures. The 15" century Christianity in Africa was an episode, darkened by slavery and inhumane enterprises. It was devastating for Africa and adverse to true Christianity. Both Africa and authentic Christianity were victims of this episode. The 18" and 19" centuries Christianity came hand in hand with colonization, practically inducing Africans into relegating their history and identities in order to be saved. This episode laid the structures of Christianity in Africa today. All these phases of Christianity in Africa have their peculiar missionary approach and agenda. It would appear that their missionizations have been, not only incompatible with Africa and its socio-political development, but also left Africa confused and disorientated over its religious identity and what being an African Christian should mean. This article, therefore, challenges the different phases of missionization in Africa, and proposes a missionization that has dialogic approach and orientation as the next approach for a successful Christianization in Africa; an approach that engages, respects and secks to understand the African in his/her African spiritualities and cultures. It proposcs the model of mutual enrichment and suggests syn-culturation as a process that would guide mission as dialogue in Africa.