5 - Era of Accommodation: Mission towards the Southern ‘Ethno-Religionists’

Summary

The lack of a well-trained youth might explain the conservatism of the Jesuits pioneers discussed in the previous chapters, as well as their reluctance to foster a Chadian clergy. Analysing their educational project in Chad, one can see a certain conservatism among the Muslims in the north, and, as this chapter argues, among ethno-religionists in the south. The anti-elitism of Jesuit education in Chad might have succeeded against Communism in the south. This strategy, however, also worked against the promotion of a Chadian clergy and leadership.

Among the ethno-religionists in the south, the Jesuits launched a massive educational and catechetical programme, aimed primarily at converting non-Christian Chadians to Christianity. The programme built the foundations of an African Church which the Vatican wished to be authentically Chadian, but which became, at least for a time, an example of ultra-Gallicanism. To comprehend ultra-Gallicanism, one has to understand the export of French Roman Catholicism in missions overseas. This export often happened in coordination with the French government, although with a diluted laïcité (secularism), if not an aggressive grassroots anti-secularism agenda. In southern Chad, this ultra-Gallicanism meant creating a Frenchified Church in its governance, school programmes, and catechetical contents. The Church aggressively pushed back against elitism and its atheistic materialistic trend. Gradually, social progress, including the opening of schools and hospitals, became a kind of evangelisation in its own right.

This chapter continues the discussion on Jesuit educational tradition. This tradition inspired the roots of the vernacularisation of the Church in Chad. Among the strategies employed for this vernacularisation were an anti-communist campaign in Chad and a shift towards the poor and the masses. This missionary approach challenges the perception of the elitism of Jesuit education worldwide that has dominated recent historiography. Jesuit elitism, or populism in this case, was shaped by a mixture of a top-down strategy and continuous adjustment to conditions in the mission field. The opposition to nationalistic, secularist, and materialistic trends among the southern Christian Évolué class made the Jesuit enterprise in Chad intentionally religious and openly suspicious of Christian elitism. Facing what they considered ‘a threat’ to Christianity and religion in southern Chad, European Jesuits launched a vast educational project aimed at curtailing this trend.