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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2019
This article examines the historic discourse on public discipline around sexuality in the African context and its ascendancy, through missionary emphasis on Christian marriage, across multiple denominations and cultural locations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Foreign missionaries and African leaders struggled with abuses of discipline and were aware of the inequity of discipline globally. Public discipline was extremely uncommon at this time in North Atlantic contexts, but became a foundational aspect of African Christian life.
This paper incorporates research sponsored by a 2017 Conant Grant as well as research presented at the 2009 American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting.
1 Miranda Hassett notes that Lambeth 1998 was expected to focus on debt and economic inequality issues, but moved instead to sexuality. Her interviews indicate that East African leaders, at least, do indeed see sexuality as the more pressing moral issue: Anglican communion in crisis: how Episcopal dissidents and their African allies are reshaping Anglicanism, Princeton 2007, 100Google Scholar.
2 For instance, a recent scholarly compendium on Christianity in the African context contains no index entry for discipline or excommunication; nor are those topics addressed in the chapters on gender or inculturation. The introductory article mentions the ‘shaming of pregnant girls’ in passing during a discussion of contemporary issues in ecclesiology: Ross, Kenneth R., Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena and Johnson, Todd (eds), Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa, Edinburgh 2017, 35Google Scholar. In the context of debates over sexuality in the Anglican Communion Frances Knight examines discipline in the more traditional sense of ‘bishops disciplining bishops’ – i.e. related to the discipline of clergy – rather than the local practice of disciplining the laity: “‘A Church without discipline is no Church at all”: discipline and diversity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglicanism', in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy (eds), Discipline and diversity (Studies in Church History xliii, 2007), 399–418Google Scholar.
3 In the Anglican and Presbyterian contexts, for instance, see Ivo MacNaughton Clark, A history of church discipline in Scotland, Aberdeen 1929; Melissa Hollander, ‘Discipline and domestic violence in Edinburgh, 1560–1625', in Cooper and Gregory, Discipline and diversity, 307–16; Jacob, W. M., ‘‘‘In love and charity with your neighbours…”: ecclesiastical courts and justices of the peace in England in the eighteenth century’, in Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy (eds), Retribution, repentance, and reconciliation (Studies in Church History, xl, 2004), 205–17Google Scholar; and Kinnear, Mary, ‘The correction court in the diocese of Carlisle, 1704–1756’, Church History lix/2 (1990), 191–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Among many others see also Davis, Kenneth R., ‘No discipline, no Church: an Anabaptist contribution to the Reformed tradition’, Sixteenth Century Journal xiii/4 (1982), 43–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ballor, Jordan J., ‘Church discipline and excommunication’, Reformation & Renaissance Review xv/1 (2013), 99–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the Lutheran denomination Erich Gritsch mentions refusal of communion in an eighteenth-century colonial American context but no later than this: A history of Lutheranism, Minneapolis, Mn 2002, 176Google Scholar. Many encyclopedias and dictionaries of Christianity do not have an entry for church discipline; one, for example, has a minor entry noting that it had disappeared during the Enlightenment, another a very general entry largely focused on canon law. Both of these volumes focus solely on the European context: Fahlbusch, Erwin and Bromiley, G. W. (eds), The encyclopedia of Christianity, Grand Rapids, Mi 1999Google Scholar; Balmer, Randall Herbert, Encyclopedia of evangelicalism, rev. and expanded edn, Waco, Tx 2004Google Scholar. One volume that does have an entry focused on the issue of marriage and sexuality, and quotes Walter Trobisch, is Moreau, A. Scott and others (eds), The Evangelical dictionary of world missions, Grand Rapids, Mi 2000Google Scholar.
4 Discipline Study Committee, General Conference Mennonite Church, Studies in church discipline, Newton, Ks 1958Google Scholar. Another exception would be some churches in the American South even through the late nineteenth century: Jim West, ‘Nineteenth-century Baptists and church discipline: case studies from Georgia, Baptist History and Heritage lxv/1 (2010), 80–90Google Scholar. There is some argument that Baptists were disciplined for slaveholding, which would also be an exception to the tendency towards disciplining only sexual sin.
5 Clark, History of church discipline.
6 For an exposition of this transition from the moral to the therapeutic in the context of sexuality see White, Heather Rachelle, Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the rise of gay rights, Chapel Hill, NC 2015, 15–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For aspects of this transition in a world Christian context see Jennifer C. Snow, ‘The Christian home in missional transition’, Studies in World Christianity, forthcoming.
7 The current disciplinary rubrics for the Episcopal Church are found in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer at p. 409. They specify that the priest should speak privately to the communicant.
8 Paret, William, The pastoral use of the prayer book: the substance of plain talks given to his students and younger clergy, Baltimore, Md 1904, 82Google Scholar.
9 The 2015 constitutions and canons of the Episcopal Church still include the canon regarding repelling from communion, for instance: canon i.17.6, <https://www.episcopalchurch.org/files/documents/2015_candc.pdf>, accessed 3 October 2018.
10 Endangered Archives Project EAP099, <https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP099-1>. I offer sincere thanks to Dr Adam Jones for sharing with me the transcription of the English portion of these minutes, part of a project of transcription and translation from largely German notes, handwritten by the missionary in charge.
11 Robert, Dana, ‘The “Christian home” as a cornerstone of Anglo-American missionary thought and practice’, in Robert, Dana (ed.), Converting colonialism: visions and realities in mission history, 1706–1914, Grand Rapids, Mi 2008, 134–65Google Scholar; Price, Thomas, African marriage, London 1954Google Scholar; Hastings, Adrian, Christian marriage in Africa: being a report commissioned by the archbishops of Cape Town, Central Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, London 1973Google Scholar; Kisembo, Benezeri, Magesa, Laurenti and Shorter, Aylward, African Christian marriage, London 1977Google Scholar.
12 All of these aspects of ‘problems’ in African marriage are outlined in Hastings, Christian marriage in Africa, and Church and mission in modern Africa, London 1967, 150–83Google Scholar, and Phillips, Arthur, Survey of African marriage and family life, New York 1953Google Scholar. In addition, see Falusi, Gabriel K, ‘African levirate and Christianity’, AFER xxiv/5 (1982), 300–8Google Scholar, and Erlank, Natasha, ‘Missionary views on sexuality in Xhosaland in the 19th century’, Le Fait missionaire xi (2001), 9–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘“Plain clean facts” and initiation schools: Christianity, Africans and “sex education” in South Africa, c. 1910–1940’, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity lxii (2004), 76–83Google Scholar.
13 The Methodist missionary and future scholar of world religions Geoffrey Parrinder noted that all denominations in West Africa forbade polygamy; some would permit polygamists to be baptised but they were not permitted to be communicants: ‘Christian marriage in French West Africa’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute xvii/4 (1947), 260–8Google Scholar. This began to be tempered somewhat in the later twentieth century as missionaries considered the ways in which polygamy might be beneficial to women: Blum, William G., Monogamy reconsidered, Kenya 1989, 105–7Google Scholar; Mann, Pamela S., ‘Toward a biblical understanding of polygamy’, Missiology xvii/1 (1989), 11–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. West African Christian leaders in the late twentieth century also believed that women preferred monogamy while men preferred polygyny: Falen, Douglas J., ‘Polygyny and Christian marriage in Africa: the case of Benin’, African Studies Review li/2 (2008), 51–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Erlank, ‘Missionary Views on Sexuality in Xhosaland’; Strayer, Robert W., The making of mission communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in colonial Kenya, 1875–1935, Albany 1977, esp. ch. viiiGoogle Scholar.
15 Colenso's radical ideas regarding polygamy led to quite a flurry of pamphlet responses and may have had some role in his trial for heresy, brought by the bishop of Cape Town: Colenso, John William, Remarks on the proper treatment of cases of polygamy, as found already existing in converts from heathenism [1855], 2nd edn, London 1862Google Scholar; Reply by an American missionary to Bishop Colenso's ‘Remarks on the proper treatment of cases of polygamy’, Pietermaritzburg 1856Google Scholar; Ross, F. A. (Frederick Augustus) and Colenso, J. W., Dr. Ross and Bishop Colenso: or, The truth restored in regard to polygamy and slavery, Philadelphia, Pa 1857Google Scholar; Draper, Jonathan A. (ed.), Eye of the storm: Bishop John William Colenso and the crisis of biblical inspiration, New York 2003Google Scholar. Alternative models for initiation rites were developed in East and South Africa with varying results: Erlank, ‘“Plain clean facts” and initiation schools’; Strayer, The making of mission communities. Kisembo, Magesa and Shorter describe the Nambyan as the only Shona-speaking culture with an initiation system involving sexual education still in use in the 1970s: Christian marriage in Africa, 125.
16 Ludwig, Frieder, ‘Tambaram: the West African experience,’ Journal of Religion in Africa xxxi/1 (2001), 49–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erlank, Natasha, ‘Strange bedfellows: the International Missionary Council, the International African Institute, and research into African marriage and family’, in The spiritual in the secular: missionaries and knowledge about Africa, Grand Rapids, Mi 2012, 267–92Google Scholar. Ludwig argues that the few African leaders attending the 1938 Tambaram meeting of the International Missionary Council requested a full investigation of whether monogamy was required for Christians, although the published statement from the meeting does not note this fact.
17 On African leaders enforcing Christian marriage through discipline see Mills, Wallace G., ‘Missionaries, Xhosa clergy and the suppression of traditional customs’, in Breidekamp, Henry and Ross, Robert (eds), Missions and Christianity in South African history, Johannesburg 1995, 153–72Google Scholar. Sechele's discipline is mentioned in Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A history of the Church in Africa, Cambridge 1998, 437. On accepting and expecting discipline in a variety of denominations see Hastings, Church and mission, 165–75, and Ross, Kenneth R., ‘Current ecclesiological trends in northern Malawi', Journal of Religion in Africa xxix/4 (1999), 465–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Wendy Urban-Mead, The gender of piety: family, faith, and colonial rule in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, Athens, Oh 2015. In the context explored by Urban-Mead, the mission church also disciplined church members for becoming active in a political group. Regarding differences of opinion between men and women on polygamy, Kisembo, Magesa and Shorter report that in a survey in 1970s Uganda, women favoured divorce over polygamy, and men favoured both divorce and polygamy by much larger margins than women: Christian marriage in Africa, 78.
19 Peterson, Derek R., Ethnic patriotism and the East African Revival: a history of dissent, c. 1935 to 1972, Cambridge 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Hopkins, A. J. in Dougall, James W. C., Christianity and the sex-education of the African, London 1937, 111Google Scholar.
21 Douglas Webster, ‘Some very tentative reflections and suggestions on the church in an African diocese’, typescript, n.d., p. 4. WCC Archives, Geneva, 26.6.003. The reference to ‘inhibitions around childbirth’ may be to a taboo against intercourse during lactation in some African cultures, which could extend from two to five years; missionary observers believed that this led directly to polygamy.
22 Hopkins in Dougall, Christianity and the sex-education of the African, 112.
23 Peterson, Ethnic patriotism; Ward, Kevin and Wild-Wood, Emma (eds), East African Revival: history and legacies, New York 2017Google Scholar.
24 Msomi, K. J., ‘Church discipline and African character’, in Marangu: a record of the All-Africa Lutheran Conference, Marangu, Tanganyika, East Africa, November 12–22, 1955, Geneva 1956, 135–6Google Scholar.
25 Stefano Moshi, ‘Church discipline in the African churches’, n.d., late 1950s, ELCA archive, Elk Grove, Illinois, Pa 033 b53 f06.
26 Moshi, ‘Church discipline in the African churches’.
27 Parrinder, ‘Christian marriage in French West Africa’, 263.
28 Trobisch, Walter, ‘Ein Briefwechsel uber Berichte und Kirchenzucht’, Evangelisches Missions Magazin cviii/2 (1964), 69–80Google Scholar.
29 Idem, ‘Church discipline in Africa’, 2. The quotation here is from a draft version held at the ECLA archive, PA033b53f07; the published article appeared in Practical Anthropology in 1961.
30 Idem, ‘Church discipline in Africa’, 2.
31 Trobisch's correspondence was astoundingly diverse in its scope and demonstrates, in great detail, in the voices of Africans themselves, their many difficulties with ‘Christian marriage’ and ‘Christian’ expectations of sexual practice: idem, I loved a girl: young Africans speak; a private correspondence between two young Africans and their pastor, New York 1965; Anneke Helen Stasson, ‘Love, sex, and marriage in the global mission of Walter and Ingrid Trobisch’, unpubl. PhD diss. Boston 2013, <https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/14087>. Trobisch's papers are held at the ELCA archives.
32 Hastings, Christian marriage in Africa, 58–9, 160, and Church and mission in modern Africa, 169–71. Hastings's conclusions on the widespread effects of discipline were largely supported by a follow-up study, focused on East Africa: Kisembo, Magesa and Shorter, African Christian marriage. The conclusions of Hastings and Kisembo, Magesa and Shorter are supported by the more recent scholarship of Urban-Mead, who also points out that exclusion from sacramental life could be heavily gendered: Gender of piety.
33 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America (ed.), Africa is here: report of the North American Assembly of African Affairs, held at Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, June 16–25, 1952, New York 1952, 191Google Scholar.
34 Urban-Mead, Gender of piety.
35 B. K. to Trobisch, Uganda, 1966, ELCA archives. When examined in 2009 these letters had not yet been catalogued and thus the archive numbers now in place could not be provided: listed initials and locations of correspondents are given instead.
36 Lutheran World Federation (ed.), All Africa Lutheran Consultation, Gaborone, Botswana, 7–16 February, 1977: Report, Geneva 1977, 41–4Google Scholar, reporting on the 1973 consultation in Arusha, Tanzania.
37 Okullu, Henry, Church and marriage in East Africa, Nairobi 1977, 33Google Scholar.
38 Ibid. 56. On Trobisch's critical and condemnatory response to women who had become pregnant out of wedlock see Trobisch to E. G., Senegal, 1968, and Trobisch to A. H., Ethiopia, 1969; on denying information on contraception to an unmarried woman see Trobisch to L. M., Zambia, 1968. Compare this with Trobisch's helpful guide to contraception for male, married M. F., Lesotho, 1965: ELCA archives.
39 Okullu, Church and marriage, 62–7.
40 Ibid. 69–70.
41 Mkumbo, Alex, ‘Church discipline that is inconsistent with the Gospel’, in Bloomquist, Karen (ed.), Theological practices that matter, Minneapolis, Mn 2009, 103–10Google Scholar. Faith Lugazia describes an almost identical process: ‘Church discipline and the Christian family: a Lutheran perspective’, in Kyomo, Andrew A. and Selvan, Sahaya G. (eds), Marriage and family in African Christianity, Nairobi 2004Google Scholar.
42 Stefano Moshi, cited by Trobisch, ‘Church discipline’, 1. That this continues to be an issue in the Lutheran Churches of Tanzania and Kenya is demonstrated by Peter Matano Mnene, ‘Use of sacraments in church discipline as a challenge to missional transformation in Kenya's mainstream Churches: a case study of Kenya Evangelical Lutheran Church’, unpubl. MA diss. Luther Seminary, Minneapolis, Mn 2013.
43 Ross, ‘Current ecclesiological trends in northern Malawi’. Anecdotal conversations with African Christians reinforce scholarly claims that discipline in East Africa, at least, is currently common across a wide swathe of denominational contexts: Pastor Rura Mwebo (Pentecostal), Kenya, personal communication, 14 September 2017, courtesy of Christine Mangale; Dr Peter Ajer (Catholic), Uganda, personal communication, 15 September 2017; Revd Appolinary Hakizamana (Anglican), Rwanda, classroom discussion, 15 March 2018.
44 Ward and Wild-Wood, East African Revival; Mkumbo, ‘Church discipline that is inconsistent with the Gospel’; John S. Mbiti, Love and marriage in Africa, n.p. 1973; Okullu, Church and marriage; Peterson, Ethnic patriotism; Amenga-Etego, Rose Mary, ‘Critiquing African traditional philosophy of chastity’, in Omengo, Cephas N. and Anum, Eric B. (eds), Trajectories of religion in Africa: essays in honour of John S. Pobee, Amsterdam–New York 2014, 251–70Google Scholar; Lugazia, ‘Church discipline and the Christian family’.