THE PRAXIS OF GOSPEL AS GOOD NEWS: AN AFRICAN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE

FR EVANGELOS THIANI

GREEK ORTHODOX PATRIARCHATE OF ALEXANDRIA:

ORTHODOX ARCHBISHORIC OF KENYA

INTRODUCING THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN AFRICA AND EAST AFRICA (GREEK ORTHODOX TRADITION)

ORTHODOX CHURCH IN AFRICA

• The Orthodox Church has been in Africa since AD43 when Apostle and Evangelist Mark the companion and helper of Apostle Peter is said to have arrived in Egypt.
• Since then he is recognized as the first hierarch of the renowned ancient Patriarchate of Alexandria
• Today 130 hierarchs have sat on the same throne, the present one since 2004, being Pope and Patriarch Theodoros II (Choreftakis)

ORTHODOX CHURCH IN EAST AFRICA

• Western missionaries started Evangelizing East Africa mainly in the 1800s
• They were unfortunately against the local cultures and they in many ways were seen to work with the colonial governments that oppressed the Africans
• This made some Africans to think on how they could continue being Christians but not under these missionaries
• Such a group in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) decided to initiate their own Churches and schools for their children. They had enough teachers but not ordained clergy, and thus sort for a Church that would ordain them some

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ORTHODOX CHURCH IN EAST AFRICA

• These East Africans found the 1900s Negro World Journal published by Marcus Garvey, and in it found one African Orthodox Church (AOC), which was founded by African-American that had left the white skinned American led churches, and had in the early 1920s ordained a South African Archbishop, Daniel William Alexander
• This Archbishop Alexander of South Africa was invited by the East Africans to come and help theologically educate some Africans and even ordained them
• The East Africans later found out that this was a pseudo-Orthodox church and through Fr.Nicodemos Sarikas, a Greek Orthodox missionary priest living in the neighboring Tanzania, got the existing connection with the Patriarchate of Alexandria in the 1940-50s.

ORTHODOX CHURCH IN KENYA

• Kenya, a country with a 43 Million population is 82% Christian
• The Orthodox Church in Kenya started with only one parish in Waithaka in the outskirts of Nairobi, and one priest, the initiator of Orthodoxy in Kenya, Fr.George Gathuna, who would later become the first indigenous hierarch of Kenya
• Today Kenya has around 400 indigenous Orthodox clergy serving the 1.5 million Orthodox faithful and almost 1000 churches/parishes spread evenly in Kenya; making her the largest diocese of the Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa
• This diocese also houses the single major seminary for all Africa for the Greek Orthodox Christians, which is taught by fifteen postgraduate level indigenous theologians

HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL AS GOOD NEWS THROUGH BRINGING FAITH AND HOPE IN THE WORLD

LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI, LEX VIVENDI: ORTHODOXIA AND ORTHOPRAXIA

• The Way we pray is the way we believe and it’s the way we live
• Christianity is an authentic and holistic transformation of life and so no dualism of secular and sacred life
• Orthodoxy is a way of life that works the same in the Church building as well as outside it: in the street
• Therefore Orthodoxy as a way of life connects both the true faith (orthodoxia) and the true practice of that faith (orthopraxia)
• Any disconnect of either practice or faith jeopardizes what the Church really is
• If we pray for peace, we must believe in peace and must live in peace
• If we pray for the poor, we must believe in helping them and we must then help them
• If we pray for love, we must believe in love and we must therefore love

LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI, LEX VIVENDI: ORTHODOXIA AND ORTHOPRAXIA

• This rule is explicitly taught by Christ; starting with the incarnation and the life of Christ on earth, as told in the scriptures where we see
• How Christ went to the prayer centers of Israel and even did His personal prayers
• How Christ taught the true faith, in His many evangelizing missions in the Temple, synagogues, along the water banks, in the streets, and in people’s homes, among others
• How Christ practically lived that faith through helping out the suffering, raising the dead, forgiving so many including His persecutors, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick, among others

CHRIST AS THE GOSPEL AND THE GOSPEL

• While initiating His ministry, Christ made His mission very clear
• “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has appointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19)
• Christ was clear on His priorities of delivering the gospel, that is, helping those who are in pain and suffering;
• He as the gospel, would bring the spiritually ailing humanity to God and maintain them in this right faith – orthodoxia, and
• Through His message of the gospel as Diakonia by practising this right faith through offering to the needy - orthopraxia

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THE GOSPEL OF HOPE TO THE POOR

• Christ would later ask His disciples to continue with this same Gospel in Faith and Practice, a path that has since had many witnesses along the centuries to the present age
• The Apostles went ahead and even initiated a new social ministry; Deacons, in Church to help them cater for the needy, while they continued preaching the word (Acts 6)
• Spreading the gospel of hope to the afflicted will then became a permanent ministry of the Church,
• The Apostles and those after them must have remembered not only what Christ had taught them as said above, but also His exact words to them that
• “You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you to do” (John 15:14)

THE GOSPEL OF HOPE TO THE POOR

• Emulating the life of the gospel demanded a complete change of one’s life, and even following others who had known the way as St Athanasius puts it
• But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life… anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, ch.57).
• Secondly, the Church had to not only preach the gospel with a focus of the soul, but also in relation to the body, for a human being is both soul and body, otherwise a soul separated from the body is only a ghost and a corpse

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GOSPEL OF HOPE IN CHURCH HISTORY

• Many examples exist in the life of the Church and her leaders on how the Gospel became good news in many places of the world through social-practical ministries and which we need to emulate
• Dionysios the Patriarch of Alexandria during the 3^rd plague in Alexandria mobilized all his Christians to help the ailing, the orphans and widows that came out of this scourge. (Epiphanios d.403),
• The Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, gave his Patrimony and Church surplus to the needy, influencing his entire island to do the same.
• One 4^th century hierarch of Maiuma went back into “weaving linen” to help raise philanthropic funds, although weaving baskets was a task for monks and not bishops,

GOSPEL OF HOPE IN CHURCH HISTORY

• The 4^th and 5^th century Church saints, hierarchs and Fathers of the Church Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, on the other hand, found time in their busy pastoral, administrative and academic life to initiate in their diverse ministries social ministries including hospitals, xenones (hospices), orphanages and gerocomeia (homes for the aged),
• In the 7^th century, St John IV the Patriarch of Alexandria (609-620), came only next to Basil and Chrysostom in almsgiving, to the extent of earning himself the name John the Eleemosynary (the almsgiver). Before beginning his ministry, St John had listed all the poor in Alexandria, to ease his ministry and to make sure he offered help to all needy people and all refugees whom he housed in the philanthropic centers he had erected

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GOSPEL AND FAITH IN CHURCH HISTORY

• The Orthodox Church has always been a Church that proclaimed the scriptural message, that is the good news, for the sake of prayer and faith
• The reading, singing, and praying with scripture was done in the Church services due to the fact that
• The clergy who had the theological understanding and the phronema of the Church would be found there
• The fact that biblical texts as we know them today would not be owned by individuals for their expense
• The communal reading and partaking of Christ as the Word was demanded in worship
• It was here that the gospel was used to reshape faith that lost direction, renew subsiding faith, and give birth to new membership of faith
• Many great eastern theologians and their ministry can prove this along the centuries, including Chrysostom, Basil, and Gregory the Theologian

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THE GOSPEL AS GOOD NEWS AND HOPE IN AFRICA

AFRICA AND HER ISSUES

• The African continent has many challenges when it comes to poverty related issues, most people lacking even the most basic of necessities like freedom, peace, food, shelter, clothing, education and health care.
• The Orthodox Church in Kenya has had many ways of dealing with these challenges using the Gospel as will be shown in this presentation in both instilling orthodoxia by teaching the right faith through evangelization helping feed the soul and in initiating social ministries to instill orthopraxia helping feed the body

THE GOSPEL OF HOPE IN AFRICA

• As a Church we recognize the dire need for the good news to be preached in both words and actions, and we recognize the need to keep the words of the gospel as told to us so well by scripture and as the scriptures are explained by the Church Fathers
• Saint James, who says;
• “If one of the brethren is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on, and one of you says to them, ‘I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty,’ without giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is that?” (James 2:15-16)

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THE GOSPEL OF HOPE IN AFRICA

• The parable of the Sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46)
• Where Christ point out what we did or did not do in Diakonia while in this life
• For I was hungry and you gave/didn’t give me food, I was thirsty and you gave /didn’t give me drink, I was a stranger and you took/ didn’t take me in, I was naked and you clothed/didn’t clothe me, I was sick and you visited/didn’t visit me, I was in prison and you came/didn’t come to see me,
• And finally says
• “In as much as you have done it to the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me”

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THE GOSPEL OF HOPE IN AFRICA

• St Gregory the Theologians on the same subject says;
• O Servants of Christ, who are my friends and fellow heirs, let us while there is still time visit Christ in His time of need, let us care for Christ in His sickness, let us feed Christ, let us clothe Christ in His nakedness…. Let us give Him this honor in His poor, in those who lie on the ground before us this day, so that when we leave this world they may receive us into the eternal dwelling place, in Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory now and unto ages of ages. Amen

(St Gregory the Theologian, Homily on the Love of the Poor, 16)

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1. EVANGELIZATION AND MISSION INITIATIVES

EVANGELIZATION

• Through considerable missionary conscious efforts of the Kenyans that first became Orthodox, this church has grown from 1 temple to the present 800, and from 1 priest to the present almost 400 indigenous clergy, making it the first in her confession in Africa
• These efforts includes
• Embracing the local cultures,
• Using the local languages in the liturgical services & evangelization strategies,
• Translating the Gospel, Apostolos & all liturgical books in the concerned community’s ethnic language,
• Training both local lay and clergy to proclaim Christ to others
• The extensive use of Biblical preaching in all religious meetings in and outside the temple or church setting

2. PEACE AND LIBERATION INITIATIVES

LIBERATION AND SUFFERING

• After the first world war (1918-), the Africans that were co-opted by the British to participate in this fight brought some encouraging news on how Africans, in our case Kenya, could also fight to be free from colonialism
• This was taken very seriously by the Karinga Church (as the Orthodox Church was known then) and her school leaders
• They used their faith and education centers and forums to propagate for independency, making all her Christians and students members of the Mau Mau movement (the group that lead the liberation movement in Kenya)
• Although not much is recognized about this it remains in the hearts of the Orthodox that they were pivotal in the liberation movement of Kenya

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LIBERATION, SUFFERING AND RECONCILIATION

• After Kenya attained independence, most of the Orthodox people because they were involved in the liberation movement were not given back their lands and the confiscated property and herds of animals that they had left when they went to the forest for years to fight the colonists
• They were asked to settle in the newly created villages in their old or new localities, this time as poor inhabitants that owned nothing of what they fought for, while they watched the missionary collaborators live in their former lands, owning their former herds, living with their former wives and having married their own daughters
• The Orthodox Church at this period went through countless efforts asking her members to suffer silently unless they wanted to create another disruption in the new country or show that the Africans who fought the colonists so hard could not even manage to rule their country
• Patience, love, co-existence, perseverance was what was taught so firmly so that these families would at least start life from a different perspective
• Many of these families are still living in abject poverty because of this colonial situation, which has a great economic effect on running the Orthodox Churches in Kenya to the present

LIBERATION, SUFFERING AND RECONCILIATION

• This is the same message the Orthodox Church is trying out in Burundi and Rwanda, where one former Kenyan priest of Ugandan origin, now Bishop Innocentios Byakatonda, is serving there for two years now
• Christian leaders were involved deeply in the genocide, making citizens of the two countries reject the existing Churches in masses
• The Orthodox Church was not involved in any of these and so it is receiving these Christians
• In the last two years at least five thousand have joined the Orthodox Church
• The challenge is although they are Christians, it is still a challenge to reconcile with those who hurt them, even though they live and worship together

TRIBALISM

• Kenya has 43 official tribes making it a very multicultural society. This has its blessings and challenges, the worst being inter-ethnic wars and theft of livestock which has claimed many lives
• In some villages of Northern Kenya where cattle rustling is highly valued we have some villages full of widows and orphaned children, because the men of these villages were killed by armed bandits who came to steal their cattle
• The Orthodox Church in such areas, more so our missions in Lodwar, has propagated peace and joint living through drilling boreholes and building churches between warring tribes of this semi-arid area, to make it possible for them to start mingling and meeting on social and spiritual activities, and with it learn to co-exist and to need the others as well as understand the consequences of the attacks done on the other

3. DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES

ECOLOGY

• The Orthodox Church has used the communal aspects of the African societies to spread the ecological safeguard and ecosystem re-imaging agenda, helping steward and bring the beauty of the all good created world (Gen 1)
• Due to deforestation, we have very little rain, as well as many dry rivers and lakes are coming up, and in return most Kenyan families who rely heavily on farming have been affected
• Because African burials are always full of people from different areas and especially the concerned community, the Orthodox Church is making sure that during every burial there is a tree planting exercise, which the main celebrant of the burial is the first to do on the land of the believed family. In this way, the environment has been slowly by slowly transformed and the love for nature re-evaluated.

EDUCATION

• To eliminate most of the poverty related challenges of Africa, education has been seen as key in many aspects
• Towards this agenda, the Orthodox Church of Kenya has initiated schools in all levels of concern including about 30 secondary schools, 60 primary schools, 100 pre-schools, a theological seminary, a humanities college, and she is working on initiating the first Orthodox University in Africa
• The Church offers as much help as is possible in these schools including food, school uniforms, medical care, rescue centers for girls being forced to stop school and get married, sanitary towels for girls, stationery, travel fees etc
• The idea of education is not only to uplift the livelihood of the present and future generations, but also to instill Christian ethics in the life of these young Africans, trying to re-educate them on all issues that have been a problem to the present generation e.g. corruption, radicalization, work ethic, etc, hoping for a better future

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DISEASE AND SICKNESS

• Africa remains to have the most extreme health related cases. The Orthodox Church coming from the Byzantine tradition that is said to have started hospitals, cannot shy-off from this devastating situation
• The Church has tried to provide as many health centers, maternities, and mobile health camps as possible in rural and urban areas including the dreaded slum areas like that of Kibera (the biggest slum in Africa carrying 50% of the 6 million population of Nairobi although occupying only 6% the land of Nairobi)
• Free health care is offered even where the Church has decided otherwise due to poverty levels and the fact that no one can be sent away sick for reasons of lack of money, to even pay the KShs.20/ ¼ Euro needed for consultation

WOMEN

• Women in most parts of Kenya are growing to be very active and involved in many nation building initiatives. Unfortunately this is not across-board
• The Church in her struggle to bring the largest group of Kenyans (women and youth) on the same level ground as the males have devised several methods
• We have different initiatives to help women including advocating for the end of cultural trends that affect the wellbeing and development of the African woman including
• The end of early marriages and rescuing those in such situations,
• Ending and teaching on genital mutilation of women,
• Ending gender based violence,
• Offering the girl child similar chances of education by giving them scholarships,
• Offering health camps on women related issues including cervical cancer screening,
• Offering maternity services to avoid traditional birth practices that are risky in many ways, and
• Offering sanitary towels in areas that are extremely poor and in our schools etc

SEMINARS AND OTHER ACTIVITIES

• The Church is involved in various seminars of faith related issues as well as contemporary challenges trying to come up with the local and Christian response for the same.
• The Church has devised mechanism to have annual seminars and festivities of the four segments of Church groups (Mothers’ Union, Men Association, Youth Association, and Sunday School Association) in parishes, vicarages and national levels.
• They also have theme based Sports&Athletics as well as Drama&Music festivals and competitions e.g.
• This year the Orthodox Mothers’ Union Sports&Athletics competition had a theme about Combating Alcoholism and the Place of Orthodox Women, while the end of year Drama&Music competition theme is the Family
• If we get the needed funding we shall hold an interreligious conference of around 200 youth to help discuss and listen to the Kenyan youth respond on radicalization among persons of their age

CHALLENGES

CHALLENGES IN MINISTRY

• Although all of these is being done to bring the orthopraxia part of the gospel, challenges still arise because the Church has no local methods of raising funds and so reliance on foreign funding is the norm, while the major challenge arise because the Orthodox Christians in Kenya are mainly from poor backgrounds
• While some items go well and some do not need changing, the gospel message is affected in many ways in the African context, when it comes to issues relating to the local cultures.
• For example the Orthodox Liturgy is similar to the African ways of offering to God and so its highly accepted, but the way it is sung has a complete disconnect with the local cultural music or ways of worshipping God. There is thus a definite need for change of Orthodox music in Africa to match some traditional African spirit and methods of worship music

CHALLENGES IN MINISTRY

• The question, “Where is God while I continue to suffer?”, is asked daily by many Africans, who have a prosperity ideology pasted in their theological understanding of the place of God in their lives
• Mainly because we have many televangelist who are allover the media offering the prosperity gospel as the most important model for the African Church, and secondly the dire need and desperation for having a break on poor living affects almost all African Christians including those in traditional Churches

CONCLUSION

• Until the return of Christ, we expect the poor in both spirit and material to continue as Christ tells us in Matthew 26:11, and thus the Church in her mission must continue offering hope through the gospel in both spiritual evangelization to achieve orthodoxia, and social evangelization through orthopraxia
• That is what makes the gospel the good news in the African Orthodox Church

THANK YOU!