The Church and African culture : Father Rodrigue Gbédjinou and Professor Dodji Amouzouvi discuss it

Two currents have been clashing since May around the relationship between Culture and Development in the “written debate” organized as part of the five years of existence of the Eitp relayed by Bénin Intelligent. The first, Father Rodrigue Gbédjinou, doctor in dogmatic theology, specialist in Church and State relations. In this intellectual initiative, it represents the Roman Catholic Church whose history of establishment in Africa (mission et colonisation) is subject to controversy. The second, Professor Dodji Amouzouvi, full professor of religious sociology and pontiff of the deity Sakpata.

How can the Church be interested in culture? ? Read to form your opinion.

Professor Dodji AMOUZOUVI :

The Catholic Church can and must take an interest in the cultures of the populations it wishes to evangelize in order to know them better., find the best approach to not make Catholic Christians, morons, but rather men and women resolutely standing, proud of their traditions and cultures. Traditions and cultures which must change position in the software of Church actors in order to definitively say goodbye to a complex and denigrating pastoral care, lever for destroying the cultures of the other, to open perspectives for a fruitful interreligious dialogue. In this vision-program, the Church must absolutely separate and respect faith and belief from other elements of culture and refrain from investing in or appropriating these elements because it has neither the right to do so, nor the skill, nor the destination. Be interested without discernment or caution in the culture of others, it is corrupting one's own faith and belief as well as those of others. Unless the project is that !

Father GBÉDJINOU Rodrigue :

The Gospel, beyond all culture, integrates into all cultures. Culture is the soul of a people. To touch the soul and arouse the support of man, faith is interested in culture by purifying it and using the elements of this culture to express itself. This work was done with Greek culture and other cultures. And why not with our African cultures ? This is the condition for the advent of an African Christianity, recommended to Kampala by Paul VI, the 31 July 1969. And the Church in Africa, n° 67 request to “treat with great respect and esteem the followers of traditional religion, avoiding any inappropriate and disrespectful language”. Looking forward to reciprocity !

Professor Dodji AMOUZOUVI:

The Gospel is both a culture and the product of a culture. It is not beyond all culture. If it fits into a culture, it runs the risk of disintegrating, to disintegrate and take on local colors, those of the culture he integrates or into which he integrates. Unless once again, he bets on destroying the culture in which he is integrated. A faith cannot “purify” (I don't like this word which I find too loaded as Hountondji says speaking of another problem, I prefer to energize, enrich) that the culture that invented it, secreted, created. Every time one faith ventures into another, she runs two risks.

• It metamorphoses and becomes a new faith,
• it leads to a bat faith (which is neither bird nor mammal). I do not distinguish a Greek culture fundamentally different from a Judeo-Christian culture. For me it is the same European stock.

Father GBÉDJINOU Rodrigue :

Non ! Mr. Professor, the Gospel is not a culture. eh yes, that's the whole mistake. It is because the Gospel is not culture that the Jews refuse to welcome it and kill Christ. It is because the Gospel is not a culture that the Romans acceded to the Christian faith after having persecuted the Apostles, but without becoming Jewish. It is because the Gospel is not a culture only of the French, English people, of the Japanese, Filipinos, Chinese people abandon their religion, become Christians without adopting the culture of their evangelists. It is because the Gospel is not a culture that Africans can be African and Christian.. It’s because the Gospel is not a culture, that he can take on any culture.
But the Gospel, well received, creates a new culture, a new mentality. From its Greek etymology, it means Good News, for all people, any culture. This Good News, it is a person, it's Jesus Christ, which for the Christian that I am, is God, therefore beyond culture. You know this well, mister professor. You have professed it at least once, certainly.

Professor Dodji AMOUZOUVI :

Faux ! Dear father, the gospel is not only a culture or more precisely a set of cultures, a way of being and doing that refers to a specific people that is not mine, it is not universal, the Aramean peoples of the Middle East, the Judeo-Christians. Jesus of Nazareth is a Jew from Galilee, king of the Judeans (INRI). But it is also the expression of a culture. Written by men precisely identifiable with cultural elements, referents who are theirs. These are books in which the life and message of Jesus are recorded.. This is not a person. It is the life and teaching of one person told by others. In turn it induces a precise culture. « A way of life ! ».

Father GBÉDJINOU Rodrigue :

Mr. Professor, we cannot be so peremptory on a question over which we do not have sufficient control. The Gospel means Good News. And Jesus is the Good News for all people : he uniquely carried this claim to universality : “Savior of the world” ; “light of the world”. “There is no name given to men by which they can be saved” (Ac 4, 12) ; “I am the Path, the life, the truth " (Jn 4, 16). I'm not forcing you to join ; but at least, you can analyze biblical texts. Cultural coverings were certainly used in their writing, but the heart of the message is not cultural. It even goes beyond Jewish culture. This message can also use African cultural coverings. The Gospel announced by the missionaries was not written in their environment either. They had their cultures and their cults. But they received the Gospel.

Source Benin Intelligent