c. 1997 Religion News Service
KINSHASA, Zaire _ At first the sprawling compound outside this giant African city has the look and feel of a free concert in Central Park: Families lounge beneath brightly colored umbrellas, quietly chatting while listening to one of four different choirs and two bands.
But then a hush falls over the choirs, the bands, and the people as smartly dressed ushers ply the crowd of thousands, collecting money in washbuckets. A priest from the Kimbanguist Church _ the Church of Jesus Christ on Earth through the Prophet Simon Kimbangu _ rises to give a prayer. Twenty-five minutes later he finishes.
Today’s Kimbanguist service is typical, starting at mid-morning and lasting until late afternoon. Very few will leave before it is over, but many enter during the service. And some will join the church before the end of the day.
Some church experts express surprise that the controversial church _ many of its members claim the founder, Simon Kimbangu, to be the Holy Spirit _ remains so strong in Zaire. Others, however, say the 6 million-member denomination, which combines traditional African beliefs and conventional Protestantism, is a portent of the way Christianity will develop in Africa.
They argue that the church’s structure and organization; the fact that it is not financially dependent on Western churches; its stress on economic self-sufficiency; and its emphasis on community development make it more appropriate for Zaire and the rest of Africa than more conventional Protestant churches.”I think the Kimbanguist way is the route Christianity in Africa is taking, and should take,”said Edward Antonio, a specialist in African indigenous churches and a professor of religion at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.”They are a model for other indigenous churches in Africa. Just look at how independent they are. They are self-supporting, they have never gotten any money from Europe or America, they run social programs, have their own seminary, and they have millions of members,”said Antonio.
The church traces its history to the early decades of the 20th century.
Simon Kimbangu, a young student in the Baptist Missionary Society, founded the Kimbanguist Church in 1921. Followers believe that Kimbangu was approached by the Holy Spirit and told to go about the countryside and heal the sick. He obeyed reluctantly and soon word of his powers spread rapidly through the country, then known as the Belgian Congo.
Before he realized it, Kimbangu had created a religious and nationalist movement within the Belgian Congo with indigenous leaders calling for the new movement, now with thousands of members, to rise up against Belgian colonial rulers.
The horrified Belgians issued a warrant for Kimbangu’s arrest even though Kimbangu said he wanted no quarrel with the colonial rulers and opposed any separation with the mission churches in the Belgian Congo.
But the Belgian authorities arrested him anyway. In late 1921, Kimbangu was sent into internal exile where he spent most of the rest of his life in solitary confinement. He died in 1951. The Belgians granted the church official recognition in 1959.
Today the church has communities throughout Zaire and in the neighboring countries of the Central African Republic, the Congo, Zambia, Gabon, Burundi, Kenya and Uganda. It also has a large following among Zairian communities in Paris, Brussels, and London, and it was the first African indigenous denomination to join the World Council of Churches.
Still, its theology is unsettling to conventional Protestants. The Kimbanguists argue, for example, that Kimbangu’s life was remarkably similar to that of Jesus: He ministered for a very short time _ less than a year; was 32 years old when arrested on his way to N’Kamba-Jerusalem, as his home village is now called; and sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) by the rulers of the land. Kimbangu was even betrayed by a trusted village chieftain before his arrest.
The crux of Kimbanguist theology is that messiahs and prophets have appeared on Earth in the past _ Moses, Jesus, Muhammad _ to save different people groups. Simon Kimbangu is seen as the messianic prophet sent to save the Africans.
By most accounts, the church has moved toward mainstream Christian theology in recent years, a natural progression of African indigenous churches, argues Edward Antonio.
It recognizes four sacraments: baptism, Eucharist (Holy Communion), marriage and priestly ordination. It celebrates the Eucharist at Easter and Christmas and adheres to the ancient Nicene Creed. Its theological school, in Kinshasa, was opened in 1970.”Most African churches begin with a powerful charismatic figure,”said Antonio.”After his death or, in Kimbangu’s case, imprisonment, the movement tends to go through a traumatic period with weak or splintered leadership. To draw the church back together the new leadership often makes the founder out to be the Messiah. When they get back on their feet again, the theology tends to moderate quite a bit. This is what happened in the case of the Kimbanguists.”But the theology is really secondary for most Kimbanguists. It is the liturgy, the style and presentation of the services, the African way of the service that attracts and holds people there,”he said.
Antonio says the same applies to the other huge African indigenous churches such as South Africa’s 3 million-strong Zion Christian Church, or Nigeria’s Aladura Church. The difference, according to Antonio, is that the Kimbanguists have laid a stronger foundation for the future than most other African indigenous churches, by effectively bridging the gap between Western churches and African tradition.
Bennetta Jules-Rosette, a sociologist at the University of California at San Diego, thinks the Kimbanguists have done a masterful job of combining the best of Western Christianity and African tradition.”Especially in terms of social and institutional organization the Kimbanguists are much closer to Euro-Christianity in structure than the other African churches,”said Jules-Rosette, who worked in Zaire among African independent churches from 1969 to 1971.”Although in theological terms they are very traditional, the Western influences have certainly made them much less autocratic than a lot of the other African churches,”she said.
Jules-Rosette also said the social involvement of the church has been impressive, especially in education, where the church runs a number of schools.”The Kimbanguists have been building schools and hospitals and running community health projects for years,”she said.”They have long been active in community building in Zaire but recently they have become very important in holding society together.” She said current theology in the church has Simon Kimbangu as a messenger of God, not on a par with the Holy Spirit. But the evolution in theology has not been shared with many of the followers. Asked if they thought Kimbangu was the Holy Spirit, many at the service outside Kinshasa responded with a resounding yes.”I have been in this church for over 20 years,”said a woman who only gave her name as Sophia.”We have always believed that Simon Kimbangu is the Holy Spirit, we don’t think differently now.” (OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)
Kimbanguists at the service also maintained that the church is growing and stronger than ever.”We are growing quite rapidly at the moment,”said Cyprieu Mukuka, an assistant to the Kimbanguist leadership.”In fact we are stronger now than we have been since I joined the church in the 1960s. We are drawing members from all over, including all those Assemblies of God churches in the city,”he said.
But some Western Christian missionaries in Zaire contend that the Kimbanguist Church is in a state of crisis and is weakening in the face of rapid Protestant growth.”They are losing a lot of members to the new Protestant churches,”said Dale Garcide, dean of the International Center of Evangelists, outside Kinshasa.”They have to make some changes if they want to survive.” Garcide, a minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a U.S.-based evangelical denomination, said Kimbanguists have come to him to ask if they could be included in Center of Evangelists courses that are aimed at teaching ministers the art of preaching.”I have had talks with them, and would love to accommodate them,”said Garcide.”But I am not really getting the feeling that they have given up this idea that Simon Kimbangu was the Holy Spirit. Many of them I have talked to tell me they don’t really believe it anymore, but there needs to be a stronger indication from the top leadership about a change in their thinking.”
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