Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity by Lamin Sanneh

Lamin Sanneh was born in Gambia and later immigrated to the United States. Educated on four continents, he is currently Professor of History and World Christianity at Yale University, where he also heads the Council on African Studies. He is an editor-at-large of The Christian Century, an ecumenical magazine, is a contributing editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research and co-editor of the forthcoming The Changing Face of Christianity. He also wrote Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in “Secular” Britain with Lesslie Newbigin and Jenny Taylor.

Sanneh’s overarching assertion with Disciples of All Nations is that Christianity is an interpreted religion whose message must be translated rather than transmitted between cultures in order to truly take root in the hearts of the people. He demonstrates this by tracing the progression of Christianity through history, pointing out the times when Christian mission has been successful and when it has failed. Sanneh avers that the difference between the two lies in the attempt to translate the Christian message and Scriptures into the heart language, and therefore the cultural worldview, of those to whom the missionary comes.

Sanneh begins his argument by looking at the book of Acts in the New Testament, comparing the early Church’s expectations of Jewish Christians with the expectations of Gentile Christians. He describes how Greek Christians were empowered to practice Christianity in their own, different way rather than having to practice it exactly like the Jewish Christians and he attributes this empowerment to the inclusive actions of the early Church combined with Paul’s ability to translate the core message of Christianity from the Jewish culture to the Greek culture. It seems to me that this is where the original founders of Seventh Day Adventism went wrong. They were trying to transmit the exact practices of early Jewish Christians into their culture rather than translating them. But it also seems to me that Seventh Day Adventism has become its own culture, in a way, which mirrors Jewish culture to a large extent, and so it would not make sense, from a cultural standpoint, for SDAs to reject their practices now without having to also reject their native culture in some way.

Sanneh continues with a discussion of the Church, and then Christendom, up into the Middle Ages, particularly stopping to focus on the spread of Christianity in the British Isles and Iceland. He expresses how the Church Fathers had been “pagan for a purpose (42),” that is, they had deliberately used pagan holidays, symbolism and ideas in order to help them translate the message of Christianity into a form that was culturally understandable to those they were trying to reach. He then begins pointing out areas in which early Christianity did not survive as well, most notable in Northern Africa, asserting that in many of these places, the form of Christianity had been transmitted but that the Scriptures and message had not been translated into the heart language of the people. Thus, with the coming of Islam, thousands of Christians converted. Christianity is, then, dependent not upon practicing the exact right liturgy or conduct (as in legalism), but upon the heart’s understanding of Jesus’ love, which missionaries would do well to remember today.

Jumping forward to the era of colonial expansion, Sanneh further demonstrates his idea of cultural translation through the histories of Latin America and Africa. He shows that there really was no real indigenous attraction to Christianity, the religion of their oppressors, until it was translated into the indigenous culture (via the vision of the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Guadalupe). He again demonstrates this aversion to mission due to its attachment to colonization (and thus, transmission of simply the form of Christianity) in Africa with the coming of Catholicism via the Portuguese. However, in this case, the expression of Catholicism eventually died out because no indigenous translation occurred. It was somewhat surprising to me, however, to hear that certain African Catholics of this time chose to be martyred alongside their Portuguese rulers rather than deny their faith in the face of Muslim conquest, a reminder of the prevenient grace of God (in which God is already at work before, despite and through us).

The eventual actualization of African Christianity is then discussed through the use of two opposing models: that of David Livingstone (who advocated for the indigenous people), and that of Cecil Rhodes (founder of the highly discriminatory nation of Rhodesia). While Livingstone lifted the Africans up, Rhodes subjugated them. It was Livingstone that truly made an impact, valuing the Africans enough to take the time to attempt to translate the actual message of the gospel to them in their own culture rather than simply forcing them to practice the shape of Christianity. While it can also be argued in the two cases of Latin America and Africa that Christianity did not spread through the indigenous cultures while it was forced upon them by their colonial rulers, I think Sanneh is correct in his argument concerning linguistic and cultural translation because translation was the catalyst for Christianity when it DID spread naturally into the indigenous cultures.

Following, Sanneh describes the indigenous spread of Christianity throughout Africa. The catalyst for this, unsurprisingly, was the translation of the Scriptures into the native tongues of Africa by Holiness missionaries. The African experience, which knew much of the suffering of body and spirit, resonated with the gospel news of sin and grace; but in order to do so, the message had to be translated into the world view of the African cultures, rather than be simply imposed upon them by outsiders. Thus, translation was empowerment. Indeed, valuing the translated language (and thus the culture and people) is inherent within the act of translation. It is seeing value in the people and trusting them to be able to communicate with God. It also implicitly trusts God to be able to reach these people through their own culture, rather than through an imposed culture or language.

Sanneh then describes the charismatic renewal movements of West Africa and the impact of William Wade Harris, who taught that “salvation-without-strings was the antidote to conversion by civilization (201), but that what mattered more than the thought that the some Europeans were the Africans’ oppressors was the thought that God was their friend. This liberation from the control of European “civilization” brought with it freedom for Africans to interpret the Christian message in their own culture. Again, Christianity is not imposed through transmission, but reinterpreted (translated) in the light of a new culture and in this way, Christianity is to some degree inherently syncretistic, yet retains its essence and will always critique the culture it is being understood by.