When is Prayer Misused?

When is Prayer Misplaced?

I recently picked up fellow anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann’s much regarded book titled When God talks Back (2012) in which she seeks to establish how Americans at Vineyard Church, which she has studied for a number of years, “can hear the voice of God replying to their questions, even the most mundane and everyday.” Tanya is not alone in the quest to understand Christianity from an anthropological perspective. Christianity, a subject left out of anthropology’s study of societies and cultures for a long time, has recently become an important topic that has even led to the emergence of an area referred to as the “anthropology of Christianity,” complete with specialists (think here of Joel Robbins) and a very active bibliography blog (www.anthrocybib.net) that posts entries almost every week. So I got wondering about what it takes to study Christianity as a Christian and found myself going back to some of my own qualms with the way sometimes the faith is operationalized in our daily lives or the ways in which people may attribute Christianity to certain cultural practices that (in my humble opinion) seem quite unrelated to the faith itself. I want to explore one such practice here—the ways sometimes prayer or what some call “giving things to God” can be misplaced. I ask that as you read this bear with me here before you start thinking that I am bashing my own faith. While we may agree with some observers that prayer is central to the every day life of Christians, we might want to critically look at how some of the things we want to “put to prayer” say a lot about our willingness to allow reason and common sense to fly away than really about matters of faith. Let me share some examples. 

I am aware of two cases in 2014 and 2012 where Pentecostal pastors in the US southern States (Kentucky and West Virginia) where snake-handling pastors have died of snake bites after believing that they will be healed of those bites through prayer.

In June 2003 members of staff from Ghana’s national airline, Ghana Airways, held a “prayer vigil” as their desperate response to the ailing corporation that had continually been facing many financial and management challenges. They brought in a prominent Pentecostal preacher to spiritually “heal” and “deliver” the public corporation from the evils besetting it. As Ghanaian scholar J Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu has shown in his paper titled,“"’Christ Is the Answer": What Is the Question?’ A Ghana Airways Prayer Vigil and Its Implications for Religion, Evil and Public Space,” there were many indications that the airline was run poorly. It was leasing old jets that were not fuel efficient, could not keep regular schedules, had rude counter clerks, and over-issuance of complimentary tickets. The airline management had also been politicized and there were claims of corruption in its operations. How then was prayer going to respond to these matters?

Further south in Tanzania there was a parliamentary debate focused on the country’s 2012 national budget. Honorable Rev. Peter Msigwa who represents Iringa (Central Tanzania, Southwest of Dar es Salaam) was contributing to the government’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2012/2013 when one of his colleagues mentioned the need for prayer as a way of responding to the socioeconomic challenges facing the nation. In response, Hon Msigwa (right) said,

“I see no economic theory that states, if you want to solve economic problems you pray. Even Paul says whoever does not work should not eat [He was referring to 2 Thessalonians 3:10], not that he/she be prayed for, he/she is denied food, but the contributor says we should pray for him. As a reverend we pray for fornicators, those caught with other people’s wives. As a reverend we pray for those who are possessed by evil spirits. What we are doing here is apply an economic principle: there are more consumers than there are producers so we have to produce more. We should find ways of producing more. You don’t have to pray about this.”[1]

Does this worldview of spiritual causality pervade many societies or is it an isolated case? Why are people resigning to prayer instead of seeking practical ways of solving their problems that they can see the real causes? Why can't prayer be accompanied by other actions that help lead the person to the desired goal? Is prayer supposed to be the ONLY solution? Kenya’s award-winning photographer and activist Boniface Mwangi (right), has sought to provide an answer to this question. He says that he got involved in activism because he learned from his own experiences the need to be proactive in making the changes he wants in society. He gives an example of how he often observed his mother disappear every few weeks into Karura forest (near Nairobi) and return tired and famished. When he would ask her where she had been she would respond that she had been in the forest praying for Moi (then president) to die. Mwangi notes that his mother died in 2000 and Moi is still alive. His mother’s response to the hard days of Moi’s rule, he adds, was prayer because she was afraid of being arrested, being detained or tortured so all she did was pray. She died a poor woman who was upset with the system. So he thought instead of just going to pray, which he does, he decided he has to do something more because his mother prayed but there was no action and so she did not get the response she wanted. He decided if he is going to pray about something he also is going to act.[2] He has since been involved in many forms of civil protest against members of parliament’s greed that led to their exorbitant salaries when poverty continues to grip many Kenyans, against corruption, and against electoral malpractices among other social challenges of the day.

I do not know what to make of these stories other than wonder when does one decide that prayer allows one to use interventions available or as I would see it, made available to one for use, instead of making what is clearly a dangerous and many times irrational decisions. Why would someone want to assume that God does not work through biomedicine that one gets at a hospital for snake bites, or through economic theory that shows the specific gaps created by specific social and cultural practices that hinder a company’s profitability? How do I emphasize the value of prayer and yet look at the reality of what we have been given to work with?

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[1] video of his presentation (mostly in Kiswahili) can be watched here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3wgDb2PRAI

[2] Video interview with Larry Madowo of Nation Television’s #Trend found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXb8-k2ppJ8 posted online Mar 3, 2013 and accessed December 3, 2013.

What Makes a Christian University Christian?

Between August 12 and 16, 2013 the International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education. (IAPCHE)-the association I work for-held a seminar for professors/lecturers and administrators from six Christian universities in the Eastern African region. There were representatives from Africa Nazarene University, Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Daystar University (Kenya), Bilingual Christian University of the Congo, Uganda Christian University, and St John University of Tanzania. Along with me were a colleague from Calvin College and another from Azusa Pacific University. We spent the week responding to the question of what makes our institutions Christian. We started by looking at what universities are and what they have stood for over the years; noting that there are many shared traits between universities shaped by our faith in Christ and those that are not. For both the goal is the pursuit of knowledge that informs and is informed by the social realities of the places and times they inhabit. Such knowledge is pursued without fear and favor and when done well it should be unsettling to the status quo. For Christian universities there is the dimension of forming students by inhabiting the Biblical drama that culminates in glorifying God and deeply loving His creation. They are places where we live God with our hearts, hands, and minds. 

We talked about the importance of avoiding a common practice of Bible "verse hunting" where we look for specific verses to attach to our practices and instead asked that we consider the entire story of the Bible and align our work with it. The danger with verse hunting is that we often do not articulate the contexts within which those verses emanate and can often limit their meaning or even provide opportunities for others that contradict them. Similarly, it is not enough to start class with prayer if we do not use a Biblical perspective to look at and even critique our disciplines or course content. We do not want to treat faith like a neighbor to our disciplines in which case as one participant asked "if we removed those neighbors (the prayer before class or verses at the beginning of the syllabus) how would the rest of the course and its content be different from a similar availed in a non-Christian institution?" In response to this very important question we discussed the need to have a "sociology of our disciplines"-the critical analyses of the history and assumptions of the disciplines since they are culturally constructed. Disciplines are ways of seeing and analyzing the world (they do not create it) and are shaped by certain questions that were and have been asked by specific people located in specific places at specific time periods.

For instance, within the social sciences there are theoretical frames that locate human "problems" in structural or systemic struggles between those that have and the have-nots. As much as we appreciate this reality we do know that humans are fallen and we might change the structures/system and still not get rid of the problems (apartheid ended but many in South Africa are not better off neither are many other Africans in their post-independence nations after the end of colonial occupation). By understanding the history and assumptions of our disciplines we are able to utilize them as tools of looking at God's created world in ways that honor our faith commitments. This approach is critical especially given that the kind of education system that operates in this region, as it is in many other parts of the world, is derived from the German university model which was brought by the British and Belgians to Eastern Africa during the colonial period. After independence, our institutions were not able to fully take ownership of these education systems in ways that responded to local realities but instead became places that produce graduates with some of the similar qualifications that were meant to serve narrow colonial goals. While this is a challenge even today (for many universities around the  world) it is an opportunity for Christian universities: they can take this old colonial model of education and reshape it to faithfully inhabit the biblical worldview that reflects the local realities and aspirations of the people. The Bilingual Christian University of the Congo has started to do this because it is starting from the ground up. The reality of what we do is in knowing that there is no intellectually neutral ground, that knowledge is produced from a specific location/standpoint. Quite often many of us have taken our disciplines, our subjects, to be neutral as if they came from heaven and can only be given out as they are. 

This angle on universities led us to another issue. We focused on two questions: first, do we have universities in Africa or African universities? Second, are our institutions Christian universities or universities where Christians are employed? As we listened to accounts of our colleagues from the different institutions represented it was clear that some of the work of reshaping them to respond to local realities (especially through service as well as graduating individuals prepared to make a difference) is already happening and/or that many acknowledge the challenge and are addressing it. We also discussed leadership strategies and practices that advance the missions of our institutions and how we can learn from the work carried out by scholars not necessarily aligned with our faith. From this discussion came a number of specific tasks to be undertaken on different campuses to better serve students and colleagues. 

So what makes a university Christian? It is its ability to faithfully address these issues along with its hiring and training practices, focus on faith formation inside and outside of the classroom, the continuous focus on disciplines as tools that are shaped for the specific purposes of revealing/analyzing/affirming the created world, and offering leadership that seeks to glorify God by deeply loving His created world. In a phrase it is "faith-shaped learning and service."  

As all 27 of us shook hands and hugged on the last day, we went back to our institutions refreshed and with some suggestions to share with our leaders and colleagues as well as our own individual action plans that we will "test out" in the coming semester(s) and report back to the same team when we meet again in early May 2014.

For me it was such a privilege to spend such focused time with colleagues interested in similar issues in higher education and to learn of all the great work they are undertaking despite the challenges. I am looking forward to staying in touch and then regathering in May 2014.

Parenting blues

Yesterday (August 4, 2013) my colleague Susan Felch and I attended a church service at the Nairobi Baptist Church in Nairobi. My cousin Stephen Kinoti is a youth pastor at the church (a Methodist minister seconded to a Baptist church) and so it was not a chance attendance. We had thought of trying to walk to church but it would have taken us probably over an hour and we did not have that much time so we chose to take a matatu and were able to make the 10:00 o'clock "family service" (kids stay in the main sanctuary but leave just before offertory and sermon). The preacher was Dr. Timothy Wachira VC (president) of Daystar University which is the immediate neighbor of the church. I must note that while the church is strongly rooted in the Baptist tradition it draws from other denominations and has mostly an interdenominational identity even though the name remains distinct. I learned that in the current search for a senior pastor the church council can get someone from other closely linked denominations. During the service, there was an announcement by one of the pastors about the challenges facing Kenyan youth and even mentioned that majority of them leave their faith by first year of college (familiar note for many in the US) which made me wonder where his statistics were coming from but didn't get a chance to ask. I am not totally convinced of that claim but do not have any data to support my claim either. The theme for the month of August (a month when school children are on break) is "family." Dr. Wachira preached on how to make sure parents are able to raise their children grounded in their faith. He was able to connect Psalm 8 (children able to know an otherwise majestic and almost unknowable God) and Mark 10 (let the children come to me) showing that knowing God is a gift (not dependent on our human attributes but by God's grace) and that no one should hinder children from approaching Christ (that we too ought to come to Christ like children). Yet the role of parents, Dr. Wachira noted, is critical in three way: not to hinder them but instead point them to Christ; prioritize their lives so that their commitment to Christ comes first; and modeling Christ-like living. He then asked the congregation to consider if taking their children to boarding school (a very common practice in Kenya) was hurting the chances of cultivating the right relationship with their children as they nurture them in the faith; or would taking another job be dependent on how a parent's relationship with children will pan out?; and if they make decisions as a family. These are very important questions to ask and especially for this context where there is a high level of children's socialization being handled by house helps (locally termed "house girls"-a relic from the colonial times probably). Moreover there are few, if any, families known to me where decisions are made in consultation with the children especially younger children. This is not the norm-children are told what to do after their parents (mostly the fathers) have made the decisions. So Dr. Wachira was touching on a critical sociocultural reality that is best understood by someone who knows the culture as he does. Every time we visit out friends in Kenya we quickly notice how many of them have little time spent with their children and how the children spend more time (and at times confide more) with their house helps. Having experienced raising our daughters in both Kenya and now in the US I clearly recognize this reality. I am definitely much more closer to our daughters than I was when we lived in Kenya (part of it is the reality of having to give up the luxury of house help we had in Kenya when we moved to the US and also the reality of living in a new place where your most stable and important social links are your family). In that sense I empathize with the message Dr. Wachira shared but I am also cognizant of how this is not just a Kenyan challenge only because I know of many families in the US that struggle and which in the absence of house helps have peers and technology socializing their children. My hope is that places like the Baptist church in Kenya will be catalysts for a more concerted effort for steering parents towards a good relationship with their children. I am convinced that there are no short cuts to such social interactions.  Incidentally it seems like this patenting challenge seems to be a sermon focus every time we attend church in Kenya because, as Margaret reminded me when I shared this story with her, a few years back we heard a similar message at the Nairobi Pentecostal Church when a pastor talked about his experiences counseling youth who had no affirming relations with their parents.  These parenting blues seem to be growing. What has been your experience? Share your comments. 

November has been my month

If there is a month that has allowed me to smile and be grateful it is November 2012. I am not talking about my personal life, no, that has been very good, my family is healthy and doing well in their various activities. I thank God for that. It is my professional side that has been really good. It started with my last few days of my time in Senegal where I was directing an institute on research on children and youth in Africa where the laureates were so kind and said how much they had learned from me and how I had shown them humanity. I was just trying to be myself and yet that seemed to touch a nerve for many of them who said I treated them as colleagues, something that they are not used to in their own universities. There were 14 laureates representing Senegal, DRC, Benin, Togo, Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, and Cameroon (3 had their PhDs, 10 were PhD candidates, and 1 was an MA candidate). You can see the whole team on the picture on the left where I am with the laureates and the staff members from CODESRIA.
The other highlight came a few days later when I received news that a proposal I had prepared along with a colleague seeking funding for a conference I am hosting at Calvin College in Internationalizing Christian Higher Education had been funded. You can see the conference announcement here: http://www.calvin.edu/scs/2013/conferences/iapche/call.html
At the American Anthropological Association meetings this past week (November 14-19) I was grateful to receive an award for "Outstanding Leadership and Scholarship in Africans Studies and Anthropology" (see trophy on the left) and then an honorable mention for my book "Reversed Gaze" from the Elliott Skinner Book Award for 2012, meaning my book was second to the winner (see certificate on right above and the cover of book below it). You can also read excerpts from the book here http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/27bgn6cx9780252035791.html
This has been a good month indeed. I am a very grateful person!

AAA in San Francisco

I am in San Francisco to attend the 111th annual meeting of the American anthropological Association. I have been attending these meetings regularly now since 2003 and I am kind of getting meeting fatigue. When I started attending I was all excited about listening to paper presentations and learn what new trends there are in our discipline. Today that excitement has dwindled and when I arrived yesterday and picked up my registration material I went through the program and there was nothing that struck me as exciting except the meetings I am involved in as president of our association (Association for Africanist Anthropology). As I was lying in my bed in my room I remembered an invitation to attend the inaugural AAA panel organized by the program chair Dr Carolyn Rouse of Princeton. I am glad I was able to attend because the panelists talked about the language of race in the just concluded electioneering process in the US. Thereafter I joined fellow members of the executive program committee for this year's meetings at a small reception in Carolyn's suite and met new folks and learned a little more about humans including the intriguing projections of what would happen if New York was flooded and the Japanese nuclear reactors failed. These scenarios were margined and presented publicly but when the actual disasters hit nothing had been done to prepare for them. I also learned about the complex lives of hunter gatherer societies that were involved in agriculture and trade in earlier centuries before reverting to hunting and gathering. This approach of course challenges what had been assumed in the pad about hunter gathering as the relics of our Stone Age economic practices. It is exciting to be at the AAA after all but I am finding that excitement outside of the regular paper presentations. I will try to go to a few presentations especially the ones where the presenters talk about issues relating to children and youth in Africa. So more next time.

TABASKI in Dakar, Senegal

As an Abrahamic faith tradition, Islam celebrates a day in October just about the end of Hajji (pilgrimage to Mecca) to commemorate Abraham's sacrifice when God provided a ram instead of his son. In Dakar this was celebrated on Friday October 26, 2012 and it was a big public holiday. Yesterday (Thursday October 25) the was quite deserted as the usual traffic jam we notice at 5:00PM were absent. There were billboards advertizing spices for Tabaski with a picture of a ram in them and wondered what it was all about until someone explained it to me. Well I was lucky to have a friend I met here in Dakar in 2008 who now works with CODESRIA and invited me to his house where I was able to see the entire ceremony and enjoy grilled meat with him and his family. You can see me happily getting ready to start feasting on grilled mutton on the picture on top left and the ram from which the meat came here on the top right. I had read about this celebration when I was an anthropology graduate student in Illinois in the early 1990s but the area of focus was Morocco. We had so much to eat that even as I write this at 8:15PM I am still so full. We started off with the first round of meat which was grilled liver and ribs then after having our fill we waited a few minutes and had Senegalese tea which has tea, sugar, and mint (my friend made it a little light knowing I was not a pro at it). It is supposed to assist in digesting the food which is a good thing because three hours later there was set another big tray of meat with french fries, baguette, sauted onions with olives, lettuce, soft corn and some cucumber and fresh tomatoes. After this second round we had another round of tea then some fruits (apples, bananas, and oranges) as we watched National Geographic featuring all kinds of snakes with narration in French. Watching teh whole process of Tabaski from slaughtering the sheep to skinning it and preparing it and then having it was a real treat for me and I am grateful for such rare opportunities.

Dispatches from Dakar

This is my room at the Marie Luciene Hotel in Dakar where I am staying for almost three weeks as I serve as director of CODESRIA's 2012 Child and Youth Studies Institute. CODESRIA stands for Council on the Development of Social Science Research in Africa and was established in 1973 to promote and facilitate social science across the continent. While driving from the airport Sunday morning (my South African Airways flight from DC arrived at 5:30AM) I was reminded of the many similarities one can find in African cities-stray dogs in the streets, a lot of people walking to various destinations as they weave through traffic, many old public transport vehicles where some passengers hang onto the cross bars with most of their bodies outside the vehicle, smell of vehicle fumes, and constant blowing of the horn. I also love the availability of all manner of wares on the streets, from roasted peanuts to USC football jerseys. And then there are the young ones who sit a little distance from the entrance to a popular fast food restaurant and quickly come to you with their hand out asking for some change. It is easy to ignore them but what about the older woman who crosses the street and says something in Wolof that you know is about some little food or change for her? Back in the hotel I am typing away and using some free internet from someone who has not protected their Wi-Fi with a password. You gotta love these macbooks and their ability to "smell" a Wi-Fi connection from miles away:). I am looking at the clock on my computer and it says 7:16PM and my wrist watch says 11:16PM local time which means my family in the US is just about to finish their dinner or probably coming from a volleyball practice while I am just about to get into bed and think about some intelligent things to tell my 15 colleagues from ten different African countries about trends in research on African children and youth. I think it's time to say bye bye.......