christiankongopaper

Rachel Speer

Religion 32

April 8, 2002

The Emergence and Africanization of Catholic Christianity in the Kongo



   When the nation of Kongo ?converted? to Christianity around the turn of the 16th century, the Catholicism that developed over the next century is best understood as primarily a superficial layer added onto Kongolese traditional religion. The kings of Kongo did not try to replace previous beliefs and practices with Christianity, nor did they simply mask their traditional religion, but rather they incorporated Christian doctrines, rituals, and some aspects of Portuguese Christian culture such as literacy and medicine, into the framework of the traditional Kongolese lifestyle. Three ways by which we can evaluate the Catholicism that developed in the kingdom of Kongo are through examining how the Kings? personal religious beliefs and practices changed; how royal policy and sociopolitical infrastructure changed to resemble that of European Christian nations or remained the same; and how the religious beliefs and practices of the majority of common people in the nation changed.

      Because two kings of Kongo played the fundamental role in the introduction and development of Christianity in the Kongo, examining those kings? personal religious beliefs and practices enlightens our understanding of Kongolese Catholicism. The Kongolese King Nzinga Mbemba (Joao I) willingly converted to Christianity that was introduced by a small band of missionary traders, and the subsequent king, Afonso I, advanced the spread of Christianity in his Kongo and saw that his relatives were educated and that some attained prominent positions in the European Christian community. Though many documents, most notably a letter to Portuguese monarch Manuel I from Rui d?Aguiar, report the piety of Afonso I, it is impossible to know how Afonso, or any Kongolese for that matter, truly perceived Christianity in relation to traditional Kongolese religion. Afonso I was certainly familiar with the Portuguese language and with many documents of Christian doctrine, but this familiarity may be seen either as a route to enriching his own faith or as a route toward understanding the Europeans, whom he saw as wealthy and technologically superior, either because of their knowledge or because their religion gave them access to spiritual power comparable to the power contained in nkisi.

      Much easier to examine than personal beliefs and motivations are the diplomatic efforts of King Afonso and their consequences at home in the Kongo. In a letter attributed to Afonso to the Portuguese King, the account of Afonso?s conquest in the battle for the crown, though certainly exaggerated, claims the victory was ?inspired by grace and assisted by God? accompanied by a vision of ?a white cross in the air and the blessed Apostle Saint James with many armed horsemen dressed in white armor.? Afonso I thus associated Christianity with political and military power against threats within his kingdom, and no doubt realized that support from the Portuguese, as Baladier notes, ?reinforced the central power materially and spiritually. [The Portuguese] altered a precarious balance [within Kongo], in favor of royalty.? Afonso?s adoption of Christianity led to a Portuguese-guided foreign policy, the construction of churches, and the incorporation of Christian rituals into already established rituals. For example, he merged the annual celebration commemorating his rise to kingship with the feast of Saint James, and he had the ne vunda, the traditional priest of the coronation, oversee the construction of churches. This incorporation of Christianity into Kongolese life rather than a replacement of Kongolese traditions with solely Christian rituals and institutions, as Thornton suggests, ?helped to nationalize the religion and probably explains its success.?

      The political advantages of centralizing power and increasing and controlling trade with Europe that Afonso I gained with his conversion raises the question of the sincerity of his faith since he obviously gained materially from his conversion. It seems as though maintaining political power was at least as important to Afonso as nurturing his new spirituality was, but this was normal among Christian monarchs in Europe who warred with one another over temporal matters without their faith being called into question. Afonso?s faith cannot be reprimanded based on his complaining about Portuguese abuses in the slave trade, or rejecting the Portuguese suggestion to amend the traditional system of taxation and distribution of government grants, or asking Rome to allow dispensations for polygamy, the ordination of natives, and the creation of a separate Diocese. The conclusion we may draw from these acts is not that Afonso was a bad Christian, but that he intended for the introduction of Christianity to strengthen his sovereignty rather than weaken it. In this way, he is like European monarchs, but the Christianity he adopts and promotes in his nations is not European Christianity. It seems more likely that, as Baladier has argued, ?Christianity was adopted fundamentally as a source of ngolo, or power, which placed it in a political context ?Christianity was conceived as a supplementary method of reinforcement, not as a religion exclusive of the old beliefs.?

      That Afonso?s Christian faith was inclusive of tradition religion, and that it was subordinate to, and often used to further, his political ambitions, does not necessitate that it was insincere. Nor does the sincerity of Afonso?s faith determine the extent to which Christianity took hold among the common people of Kongo. Understanding the faith of the common people, in fact, may be considered more important than the faith of royals to evaluating the nature of Kongolese Catholicism. Studying the religious beliefs and practices of the common people of Kongo is problematic because we have only sporadic reports from European missionaries and no regular records kept by churches. There may have been a very different set of beliefs and practices perpetuated in urban compared with rural areas, and it?s certain that state support of Christianity was much stronger a presence in Sao Salvador than in the countryside. Among the people, the continuance of polygamy and the practice of other ?fetishes? and, as is seen in the writings of Angelo and di Carli, the eagerness of Kongolese generations later to be baptized without any evidence that they are being instructed about their newly adopted faith, both indicate that the Catholicism adopted in Kongo was not understood by the people in the same way that Catholicism was understood in Europe. Priests were welcomed by the people and were kept busy performing sacraments, but there is no mention in the report of the Carmelite Mission in 1583 or in the Angelo/di Carli account of 1667 of the lay people who Thornton asserts ?taught the rural people Christian prayers and hymns, prepared the way for the priest and ensured instruction.? The documents indicate that the rural people knew enough about Catholicism to recognize it, and in one instance even initiated a flagellant procession, but were not necessarily educated about its doctrines, and were certainly not made to reshape their conceptions of the spiritual world from Kongolese to European cosmology. The description of the dancing that ensued after Father di Carli baptizes Anne is evidence that the Kongolese celebrate Christian rituals in a distinctly African, rather than an imposed European, way. If traditional forms of celebration continued to surround Christian rituals, it is not hard to see how traditional conceptions of religious cosmology would continue to surround Christian teachings, so that traditional religion was enhanced rather than transformed.

      Regardless of the extent to which Kongolese kings and commoners accepted Christian doctrine, Christianity in Kongo was inexorably tied up with politics in that it helped the monarchy solidify his authority and in that king Afonso took an active role in shaping and administering Christian practice in his nation rather than becoming the pawn of Portugal or Rome. Being a Christian nation allowed Kongo at first to trade with Portugal as a relative equal, and later to reassert its sovereignty with Papal backing when relations with Portugal went sour, mainly over the issue of the slave trade. Christianity became a part of Kongolese life in a form that did mimicked European Christianity in some ways, but it was fundamentally different in that it was laid on top of a very different conceptual framework of the relationships between the living, the dead, and spiritual power. This conceptual framework, as well as many particular aspects of Kongolese traditional religion which were tolerated as fetishes of a converted people, survived the introduction of Christianity. Christian rituals became an important part of Kongolese life, but Christianity was Africanized rather than the nation of Kongo becoming Europeanized.