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Father Edoh Bedjra CJM, a theologian, researcher and president of the Catholic University of West Africa in Cotonou, Benin. In this interview with La Croix Africa, the Eudist priest talks about the obstacles to an inculturated African Christianity.
La Croix: After a centenary of evangelization, we are still talking about the African Church today in terms of cultural specificities? Why? Why?
Father Edoh Bedjra: We cannot speak of an African Church that has integrated its culture into the Christian faith in a systematic or formal way but there is what is called an adaptation of African culture to the Christian faith.
This is a step that must evolve in order to achieve inculturation or the integration of this African reality into the Christian faith that we have received.
The Church has always functioned as if it were the only one in a position to give a message, forgetting that in some African cultures, the stranger who arrives is not the only one to have a message, and that he must also listen to the message of his host.
Our cultures have not been listened to.
To achieve this inculturation, there is still a long way to go.
The first African priests have been tackling this question ever since 1957. The Second Vatican Council subsequently paved the way for an opening in this direction.
At the 1994 African Synod, where the whole Church met, the pastors recognized that faith did not go deeply into the local culture depth and that they did not do everything to ensure that the Gospel penetrated all dimensions of the African way of life.
They only committed themselves to an in-depth evangelization.
So, with such an awareness, what is preventing the successful completion of the inculturation project?
First of all, there is an ecclesiological difficulty, that is, a problem in the conception of the Church, since it does not currently allow cultural disparities to be accepted in its functioning.
Despite the Second Vatican Council, this Church strongly preserves its tradition and gives a universal catechism to the whole Church. It is in a form of uniformity everywhere.
Secondly, African bishops sometimes lack motivation or see no particular interest or effectiveness in this endeavor that could nourish pastoral, liturgical and spiritual action.
There is the fact that most of the priests who are the backbone of pastoral action are no longer in contact with their cultural heritage because of their formation.
In the curriculum, the anthropological and cultural aspect has not yet been integrated as an important element for us, whereas we must take into account the recipient of the Gospel.
What is interesting is that we are fortunate to now have a pope who, in his apostolic exhortation "The Joy of the Gospel", gives the particular Churches a certain openness, a margin of expression by highlighting their cultural differences. We can use it today to relaunch the issue for Africa.
Is there not a risk with this desire for inculturation to fall into religious syncretism?
The Catholic faith, as we have it today, is itself a syncretism. Already at the level of the Jewish people, it is a faith in Jesus and the Judaic culture.
When it was transposed to Rome, it became a syncretism between the Jewish Christian faith and Roman culture. This is what gave us exactly what we have as an ecclesial tradition.
What is preventing us today from making a syncretism between African culture and what we have as faith, as a message that the Gospel brings us? Syncretism is not necessarily a bad thing.
It made no sense with the first missionaries, who avoided any contact with African culture. It is only through syncretism that a new society, a new culture is born.
Moreover, it is already there, because many of the songs we perform in the church, the procession of offerings, come from the culture, from the base. I come from Benin where many songs come from voodoo and the royal court.
This syncretism has already been initiated by evangelical movements around us — it is they who are precisely pushing the Catholic Church to pay attention to its culture.
Many Afro-Christian churches have developed this syncretism and sometimes it is wonderful. They have been able to combine African culture and the Gospel.
They make it an osmosis and it allows them to solve their daily problem and help others.
Of course, we need to know where this syncretism is leading us if we deviate, and at that moment, the hierarchy and theologians are there to think with us.
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