Advocacy for contextualization of Christian worship in Africa

Abstract

Though Christianity is the biggest religion in Africa (Johnson, 2018) its liturgy remains predominantly Western. Religion being a link between a community and its deity must be authentic and contextualized for it to have meaning. The introduction of Christianity and the damnation of the African culture by early missionaries, has contributed to the current worship style that can only truly be defined as foreign. Consequently, there has been retrogression over time of positive traditional worship practices that otherwise contribute to an authentic African liturgy. This paper seeks to demystify the notion that the African culture and its worship is entirely based on pagan practices and therefore void of emulative practices that can be used to enhance and contextualize worship. It seeks to illuminate the role that music plays in liturgy and worship within the African context. The method adopted for this study is qualitative and comparative approach. This study elucidates the fact that Africans are religious and contextualization of worship enhances and authenticates worship. It is a call on elite African musicians to educate church leaders and congregants on the need for contextualized worship based on idioms inherent within the African culture and worship. Recommendations on the incubation of contextualized African worship models; for both religious leaders and church musicians has therefore been made an integral part of this study.