02/02/2020
Coming soon from Eastern Light Publishing - THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WITNESS IN EAST AFRICA by the Rev. Dr. Archimandrite Anastasios Elekiah Andago Kihali.
Will be available in Paperback, Amazon Kindle and other E-reader (EPUB) formats.
Father Anastasios is a priest under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria serving in the Church of Kenya. He received his Master of Divinity (M. Div.) in 1993, with Distinction and also his Theology Master (Th. M) 2002 in Canon Law and History with high Distinction, from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline Massachusetts. In addition, he received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2009, in History and Missiology from the Aristotelean State University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Here are some sample key points raised in the book. The reader will find many of his suggested solutions to the current issues are equally applicable to other diasporas.
"Researchers need to appreciate the suffering that the Greek Orthodox Church past through since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 AD, while at the same time we need to caution ourselves, as Orthodox Christians that we cannot not afford to continue hiding behind the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. The Orthodox Church has come to an age, a new era where she is no longer imprisoned or enslaved by her tormenting, imperial masters but has been now a free entity for over a century. She needs to begin in earnest to formulate her theology clearly on Ecclesiology and Mission. She need to appreciate also the fact that now she is a mother to many new found Orthodox communities all over the world that are now crying for fair treatment and freedom under her Greek leadership, and that she finds herself today in the powerful new position unlike the Ottoman age, where she is the one shepherding and controlling the Christian Empire of those new Universal Orthodox communities and she risks becoming an imperial enslaver and master herself, unless she exercises the wisdom of Solomon in the governance of the same. (...) It’s also time that the Orthodox Church should come out of her past enslaver mode, move out of her compounded and restricted enclosures, caves, her fears of the rest of cosmos that seems always to be plotting against her somehow, and as brave soldiers, swiftly move to confront the present mission-world challenging agendas and the pressing needs of Church in mission today. At the same time, remembering that she is not alone in the Christian world but that she shares it with other faiths that have stuck their legitimate claim also on the mission of Christ, and that we belong to a greater community of the kingdom of God that has no spiritual boundaries known to the human intellect.
The Orthodox churches in missions are challenged to transform themselves into Christ-like entities full of love for the other and driven by bountiful mercies of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Orthodox Church must cut itself out in the mission field as a faith that brings true and authentically certified Christian message, bound by an ancient tradition that demands that its leaders be spiritually endowed and morally inspired and balanced in mission. Our Orthodox Missions must be recognized the world over as more open to other races and not the opposite as it presently and demonstrate its awareness of racial spheres and their problematic. Its leaders must surely be guided by the Spirit of Christ at all times and be seen in practice to exude it with full saving force of new visions, thought, and projections in mission that must be imbued with modern mission practical trends without necessarily conforming to secularism in tune with the changing world thought, life style and the societal needs of its mission communities and their desires and demands.
The Orthodox missionary agencies need to preach not only the unity of the Church that St. Paul talks about in Ephesians, but also to preach an African culture friendly Gospel of unity in love in its missionary administration. The church needs to open up its charity in a more selfless manner and stretch its open and loving hands in gentleness and patience to Africans, to embrace them and to reassure them of its love and recognition of them as equal partners in the holy communion of the unity of faith through the saving mysteries of Christ Jesus. I strongly recommend that this effort be undertaken in order that we are together united as one body of the Orthodox Church, put racial differences aside and seek to bridge the gap between Greeks and Africans which was created during the animosities of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The Orthodox Church does not seem to have a clear mission theology model after the ancient church of the antiquity. Either our missionary endeavors were never planned, but rudimentary and spearheaded by God-fearing and very spiritual and wise leaders, or hard nuts of those times. That era of wisdom and controversy, so to speak, that seemed to have officially drowned its curtains, ended by the missionary efforts of St. Photios the Great in the Ninth Century of sending out missionaries. In the cause of time there were isolated missionary thinkers and models of action like that championed by Saint Cosmas Aitolos of Northern Greece and Archbishop Anastasios of our own time in Africa and Albania.
The Orthodox Church stands now in dire need to develop a modern day theology of mission that is practical, adhering to modern contextual societal mission needs, seeking to stand with indigenous peoples in their daily life struggles for spiritual human freedom, in search for their social, economic reliance, good political governance, religious efficiency and sufficiency freedoms. Such a mission theology would seek not only to herald God message of Agape love in freedom, but also to seek to alleviate the peoples social difficulties like disease such as: HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer, poverty eradication, famines, hunger, and other calamitous upheavals in the mission fields.
In order to accompish this, African leadership must be open to the idea of reconciliation and strive to honestly seek to reconcile with their Greek brothers and sisters for the sake of the unity of our faith, and its growth and spread in Africa. For Africans have wronged Greeks also by creating an atmosphere of war in the country that led to suspicion and mistrust on the part of the Greek Diaspora and missionaries, who thus sought to close themselves in their own enclave that gave birth to the present indifference on acute African needs in mission. Greek hierarch on the other hand need to acknowledge that they have acted aggressively and indifferently by neglecting the African theological, spiritual and administrative needs in the past and present, thus the need for the Church to embark on an open and honest missionary effort to reach out to African leadership for reconciliation, in order to right all the wrong that may have committed, to move towards seeking to bring African on board and to incorporate African thought, practical input, presence and principles in mission. This will help towards an appeasing to the disgruntled African majority and will I believe lead to reconciliation in the Greek Patriarchate.
The policy of race either way is greatly lacking in the critical understanding of the early Christian tenet of human care and loving approach in mission, and the spirit of equality expressed in the Bible of there being no Jew nor Greek, nor circumcised nor gentile but one community united by the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross for the redemption of the whole world. Therefore, the author Fr. Anastasios submits, there is neither black Africa, nor Greek in the service of Agape in the mission house, but only the abundance of the agape of Christ and the economy of the Holy Spirit in light of the Orthodox Christian canon law should abound among us.
Some missionaries are under pressure to preserve that which their ecclesial cultural identity in the diaspora represents missionary ethnicity, but this is a misconceived notion. The Greek missionary should not be worried that the Church is going to lose its Greek identity in Africa, but rather he should be worried that the new African church may lose its Africaness and become foreign to its local cultural identity. Orthodoxy throughout the ages always influenced and transformed cultures and it has never been the reverse. The message of the good news of Christ is a transforming agent and is never swallowed by a mission field culture that it aims to transform, because it has the power to transform cultures without having to force itself to assert its human dimension.
A policy of preservation needs to be rejected by Greeks and blacks of Africa or any race any where for that matter, in the world alike. This policy is bent on pure racist tendencies, ethnic bias and endeavours disguised as a missionary endeavour on the continent to evangelize black Africa. If Alexandria is sincerely committed one hundred percent to the mission of evangelization and the conversion of Black Africa to the faith, then truly they will have no problem to put ecclesial structures and black African leadership in place to foster their vision and agenda in mission. But as it is now this skewed policy of preservation is lacking in mission vision and is the one big obstacle that is keeping Orthodoxy from spreading fast, from taking root in many parts of Africa, from embracing modern logical administrative stractures of governace, and it has held the church captive and stagnated it, unable to realize tangible development conversant with its mission duration in Africa over the past ten or so decades. This policy is the one single reason why the Orthodox Church structurally is struggling to grow in terms of preaching and evangelization, and conversion of the masses.
It is imperative that in order for the Orthodox Church Universal to make any tangible contribution in Africa, it must move out of its cells, caves, ethnic nationalistic and racial parameters: extend her arm openly in a truly universal manner and spirit, to reach out in full unpretentious agape love, and embrace the otherness of the cosmos, Africa. Only in this way will the great faith of the fathers free itself from its perceived narrow traditional national ethnic enclosures that presently hold it hostage and be able to realize its full mission potential, or else it will continue to play self-preservation games as the 21st century slowly unfolds and move past it."
