Listening, 2:3 (Autumn 1967), 214-221
NIGERIA 1966
ISLAM-CHRISTIANITY DIALOG - A CONVERSATIONKenny: Before we begin, Mr. McGreu, will you describe what you did in Sokoto?
McGreu: My actual job was teaching English and Health Science in the Arabic Training College. Before that I spent about eight months at the Provincial Secondary School, also in Sokoto. The accidental aspects of the job tended to be community involvement, such as living in the city itself rather than the GRA (government reservation area) and getting to know the people. If I could come up with anything to be done, I did it.
Peace Corps teachers are asked to undertake various activities within their own field during school vacations. For two vacations I worked on health projects. Then for three vacations I taught a Hausa course for Peace Corps volunteers, members of other voluntary organizations, and other people who might be interested in working on the language.
Now about your work. What was the function of the priests in Sokoto diocese?
Kenny: Until the recent war, our main function was serving the immigrant christians, most of whom were Ibos from the Eastern Region. When the Ibos left, few Christian immigrants from other places remained. In the past we've done little for the large numbers of native pagans, except for the medical work of the sisters, who serve the Muslims and pagans native to the diocese. We're now able to devote more of our energies to the non-Christians of the diocese.
McGreu: Now extensive have efforts been to convert Muslims?
Kenny: There has been no effort. The immigrant ghettos have absorbed most of our attention. Besides, we are under written government orders not to proselytize among the Muslims. It was always our intention, while abstaining from proselytizing, to build a bridge between the Christian and Muslim communities in Nigeria. We hoped to encourage cooperation and to help both sides discover their common spiritual heritage. We're in Nigeria for this purpose just as much as for establishing the Christian faith. that is why I'm here in Rome studying Arabic and Islamic culture.
McGreu: Ecumenical discussions with Muslims, if this is what you have in mind, strikes me as something that's great on a university campus when you're having a beer and hamburger. But there-? Africa is a completely different world, an other world, with the infant mortality rate about 500 out of 1,000, not to mention disease, illiteracy and other problems.
Everyone is impressed by the amazing work that missionaries do in practical areas. They run excellent hospitals and schools in Nigeria. They make quite a few contributions to linguistics, anthropology and similar studies. However, it seems that becoming involved in a religious problem at this time in Nigeria's history is really a waste of time. There is os much more that could be done on a serious practical level.
Furthermore, missionaries are basically being sent over to convert people. But what happens if you actually do convert Muslims? In many parts of Africa towns are divided between various Christian sects, almost to the point of civil war. Suppose there were only one Christian sect in the North (which there is not), what would the situation be? Still the spectacle of father against son, Christian brother against Muslim brother. The last thing Nigeria needs today is more tension. Why fool with a people's religion when it is a beautiful and good religion, which everyone admits is getting them to heaven. Doesn't it just cause more civil uproar, more trouble?
Finally, as for giving the Muslims an insight into their own background and heritage, aren't there places like the School for Arabic Studies, and especially Ahmadu Bello University, where very well educated Northern Nigerians can also offer such insights? For that matter, won't these things proceed at their own pace if the secular society is allowed its proper development?
Kenny: I certainly agree that the Church should do all it can do to provide material help and foster basic secular development. but that does not prevent it form being involved in promoting religious understanding and tolerance. The two works can go hand in hand.
As for the hospitals and schools, when they were begun there was no one else to provide them. When the government or other agencies of the country can take over these services, we eagerly turn them over, as we did with the primary schools in Sokoto diocese. Yet there remains a sizeable number of social services which the government cannot possibly provide by itself. So we continue to offer them.
Admittedly, behind our offering of social services there is also the idea of witnessing to Christian values and Christian life. Interest in material well-being and in the social progress of others is an integral part of Christian life. Ideally, promotion of material well-being should be a secular task. But I feel that the clergy should support these movements in every way possible. And that extends to providing these services themselves when there is no one else to do so. Furthermore, while providing material goods, a Christian should be able to convey spiritual values as well. Apart from any question of conversion, the Muslim's understanding of life should be enriched by their contact with Christians.
McGreu: I'm fascinated by your phrase, "apart from conversion", also with the idea that Muslims can attain salvation through Christ. For the older generation, it was "outside the Church there is no salvation", or salvation with extreme difficulty. You, certainly of another generation and another school of thought, seem to have an "even if" approach. It seems that the first thing, and the best thing, is to turn them into Christians. And if you can't do that, perhaps you can make them Muslims who accept Christianity as a good idea or a religion that can coexist with their own.
Why, then, is the Society for the Propagation of the Faith spending money on the missions? In fact, I remember that back in parochial school when you had five dollars you could ransom some pagan baby. It would be baptized and named after you. I suppose this accounts for some of the strange names people now have in Africa.
Kenny: That's horrible. Luckily I never experienced this when I was in school, and never learned about it until I came to Nigeria. But when the society begs for money, it speaks about leprosaria in Asia and Africa and not just about baptizing. Ransoming pagan babies isn't the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. The real aim of the missions is not to increase the number of baptisms, but to bring the presence and influence of Christianity to areas where it does not exist. Our work in Nigeria is to help the Muslims develop normally, especially in the area of human and religious values, without doing violence to their culture and traditions.
McGreu: But why a Christian influence? The Muslims have seen examples of Southern Christians, who are certainly more faithful than the average Catholic in most places in the world. Is there conduct noticeably better than that of their Muslim brothers? I don't think so. I've never been anywhere where I found religion taken so seriously by so many people as I've found among the Muslims in Northern Nigeria.
I think they have a good cause for saying, "Why don't you stay home and work with your own?" I can honestly come to a country like Nigeria and preach material progress, holding up my own country as an example. You can't very well come to them preaching spirituality and hold up your home country as an example of any higher spirituality than they now possess. What is there in this spirituality that you're giving them but, say, handing out some leprosy tablets; and a Fort Foundation nurse is doing the same thing in the next town, just as efficiently and with the same spirit of friendship. Furthermore, in your case, there seem to be strings attached, while in the other there aren't.
Kenny: In the social services offered by the missions, the strings are all on the missionary. He is tied to an outlook that includes yet extends beyond material help. There are no strings attached for those who receive what we offer.
As for Muslim spirituality and religious practice in Northern Nigeria, certainly it's a model for anywhere in the world. But will it stay that way? At the moment, Islamic practice is fostered by a feudal system and traditional family pressure linked to a subsistence agricultural economy. What happens when this changes? As the people progress materially, as they go to the cities, get jobs and an education, their religious values decline. In Kaduna or the new quarters of any of the bigger cities in the North, you find a great amount of religious non-practice among the uprooted people. They move to the city and simply stop practising their religion. It just doesn't mean anything to them. For many Muslims, the choice is between faith and material progress. they can't bridge the gap between their traditional world of faith and the modern world.
Western Christianity faced this problem before Islam, and to a certain degree has solved it. Certainly Islam has many values which should be preserved. Shouldn't Christians in the North work with the Muslims to preserve their common values in a changing society? We are working for the kingdom of God, whether it is proclaimed by a Muslim malam or by a Christian missionary. The kingdom of God is the people's spiritual values, which should not be lost.
McGreu: We seem to have different approaches. You have the practical springing out of the religious. I have the practical springing out of a need felt and met. Practical activities don't have to be an outpouring of the Christian life. In the Peace Corps, which is divided religiously, you find a sizeable number of agnostics engaged in the same type of activities. But their work springs from a belief in man himself.
You are coming to these people with some of the tools of progress in your hands and saying to them, "Well, we'd like you to become Christians, but if you can't, certainly don't lose the values of Islam along the way." Now, whether or not Islam gets lost in the shuffle of progress is something Islam is going to have to work out for itself, just as Christianity did. This is something any community of faith has to do for itself. What I have in mind is working toward the development of the country along its own lines. What you have in mind, I think is bending those lines, or even substituting lines of your own. I don't want to tamper with the spirituality; you do.
Kenny: Tampering is affecting something in as violent or harmful way. but there are two ways of reaching their faith which will not harm it. One is a dialog on belief or outlook upon life. The other is the witness of living with the Hausa people. Such witness is offered by the sisters living in Agades. They neither do social service nor evangelize, but lead a sort of contemplative life among the people.
McGreu: Then, what are we in the Peace Corps doing? What was I doing working in Sokoto? Supposedly we are showing people what can be done with relatively little, how you can make the most of a minimum of material things. We too are supposed to have this friendliness, this outgoing spirit. And if only because we are relatively younger and perhaps less prejudiced, we do it better. But we are not trying to touch what these people believe. I think that you are guided by the basic colonial assumption that you know better than these people what are their own best interests.
Kenny: But can we consider these people as entirely other? Are we coming in as foreign colonials to tell them what there own best interests are? Throughout the modern world there are commercial, scientific and cultural exchanges at every level. Universities form every part of the world exchange professors. Why shouldn't there be the same communication in the area of religion? There has been a Christian community in Ethiopia since the very early centuries of Christianity. But it has been isolated for hundreds of years because of political circumstances, and now is in a floundering state. Ethiopian Christianity is surviving, but it needs a transfusion to get it back to full vigour. So Haile Selassie has asked the Orthodox Church of Kerala in India to send priest to help. He realizes that there has to be intercommunication of religious organizations if they are to survive and grow in a changing world. The beliefs held in common by Christians and Muslims, such as monotheism, the final judgement and an after-life to come, are shared by only a minority of people in the world. Groups of believers in various parts of the world can benefit by contact with one another. We are one human community.
It is not like a colonialist coming in to dictate solutions. There the exchange is all one way. When you come in to help with the material development, the exchange is all one way. You give to them, and receive nothing by way of material return. But when the Christian Churches dialog with Islam in the matter of spiritual values, we are on a more equal footing; there is a mutual exchange.
Social services, as you said, don't have to be linked with Christian belief. When they are, it doesn't mean that the Christian is superior or practices his faith any better than the Muslim. But the christian, whether he worked for the church, the Peace Corps or any other organization, can offer the Muslim a new slant on values. All he need do is faithfully live his religion. These new insights may not be aline to Muslim belief; it may simply be that the Muslim never thought of them before. On the other hand, we can learn a great deal from the Muslims, even Christian values we never realized before.
Muslims I have met like to talk about fundamental things like human happiness, basic political theory, history or any subject that is relevant to them or their community. It is easy to develop personal trust with them and even to discuss religious subjects. Above all, I constantly have to listen and learn from them. It's too easy merely to think we understand them, and then build a relationship on false foundations. There is no point in discussing differences, much less think about conversations, before we have searched our completely different experiences and discovered common interests.
McGreu: I have done a fair amount of discussing religion with the Muslims, mostly because I wanted to learn as much as I could about their cultural heritage. I too found it quite easy to establish friendships with these people. Needless to say, the deeper the insight one has into a total culture, the better he is able to give what he has to offer. Since you know Hausa and Arabic,and have a good knowledge of Islamic culture, why not join the Peace corps, AID, or something like that? In areas such as agriculture and industrial development there is a desperate need for people who know something about Islam.
Kenny: That's an idea I consider very valuable. Some day I may have the opportunity to do something along that line. but I don't consider it the only possible area in which I could do something worthwhile. Certainly Nigeria is aware of its enormous material needs and is grateful for the work international organizations and church missions are doing to hasten material development. But Nigeria also has gone forward in developing wider human values such as higher education and cultural and religious knowledge, while not neglecting economics, industry and agriculture. Perhaps they should develop in areas of elementary need before getting into cultural affairs, but Nigerians are the ones to decide how they want to develop. If they want to study the cultural and religious heritage of Nigeria in their universities, I think we should be prepared to cooperate with them in seeing that they're able to do this. I believe that educating Christians in proper attitudes towards Muslims and promoting Muslim-Christian understanding is very important if the various groups are to live and work together peacefully for the progress of Nigeria.
McGreu: Anything is good that fosters peace or at least coexistence between Christians and Muslims, and also between Christian communities themselves. That's what I think Christianity is about.
I believe that the work for peace among the Christian communities of Nigeria is very badly needed. I've seen towns split apart, with each half of the tow belonging to a different Christian group. The people were not speaking to one another, not intermarrying, not doing anything in common. Muslims seem to be getting along more amiably among themselves (discounting questions of tribe) than Christians do. I think it's a question of setting one's own house in order first.
Kenny: A well made point. Steps have been taken in this direction by both Protestants and Catholics, but much more needs to be done.
Nigeria has enormous and complex problems in many areas, but these are only part of an enormous and complex potentiality. I'm sure you'll agree that someone who hasn't lived in Nigeria will have a very hard time understanding that.
McGreu: One aim of the Peace Corps is to give Americans a greater knowledge of other countries in the world. As you said, this is almost impossible. Even better travelled and presumably better educated Americans I've met in Europe haven't the vaguest idea of what Nigeria is like. I hope we can disseminate information in the States that will affect American policies toward the underdeveloped countries in general, and Nigeria in particular. But this is something that just has to happen at its own pace.
Kenny: On my part, I hope I too can convey to Americans some idea of the situation and needs of Nigeria, and to Christians in particular, an idea of the work of a missionary who answers the call of Christ to bring his message to every part of the world and comes to an area where part of Christ's message had already arrived and woven itself inextricably into a complicated cultural complex before any missionary arrived.