The Challenge of Authenticity: African Culture and Faith Commitment

Authenticity - the external self in conformity with the inner self, to be sincere to oneself, is a state of genteel well being, and therefore of true happiness. It is the state of being whole, and in a sense, of experiencing holiness. It is the ideal of being a Christian in any cultural context, a challenge to all Christians everywhere. The response to the Word of God demands the readiness to be at its service. But this service is not simply allowing oneself to be an instrument, but also of actively being the agent, putting the word into action in the world. This means creatively activating the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Word, within the culture, in the world, in individuals and in peoples at any time and place. It means the challenge to break through the limiting structures of body and mind in order to get to people's hearts, whatever may be their stations in life. These structures may differ from place to place and from time to time because every time or place has its peculiar challenges. For the Christian faith, the challenge is to activate the best within the indigenous culture of its practitioners, parishioners and sympathisers. The point of departure is that the best elements of a typical indigenous African culture are openness, sincerity of spirit, spontaneity, in a word, authenticity. These are far different from the superficial emotionalism, which some uninformed scholars and commentators have made these out to be. The reflections in the book suggest how the challenges to faith commitment in general, and in African socio-cultural context in particular, could be converted into opportunities to make faith-commitment a truly self-fulfilling vocation that will in turn create authentic discipleship.