DARING TO EMBRACE A CONTEXTUAL CHRISTIANITY

As is the case with the prophetic tradition, when there is a crisis in the relational expressions of a faith people to the divine, the prophets rise up to speak truth to the structures of power to help undo such structures that systematically lead to a dehumanization and the aridity of existence that empire helps to uphold. It is at this juncture that the prophetic turn helps to call attention to the richness of a people’s context as a the locus of encounter with the divine. A good example of this can be found in the prophetic intervention of Donna Beatriz Kimpa Vita, a Catholic of the Kingdom of Kongo which comprises parts of present day, Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola during the tail end of the 17th century and at the beginning of the 18th century as the Kingdom of Kongo struggled to shake off the shackles of slavery brought upon it by the Portuguese.

As the Christian Kingdom of Kongo was being decimated by the strategic exploitation of the kingdom both by internal agents struggling for royal domination and by the Kings of Portugal intending to reduce Kongo to a protectorate of theirs and using the sacraments of the Church as weapons of subjugation, a prophetic voice arose in the Kingdom of Kongo in the person of Kimpa Vita. She was a Kongolese Catholic who, after falling ill in 1704, claimed to be receiving visions from Saint Anthony of Padua. Saint Anthony gave her the recipe for addressing the crises that had befallen her homeland. As Alexander Ives Bortolot notes:

She was trained as an nganga marinda, an individual who consults the supernatural world to solve problems within the community. Speaking as a medium for Saint Anthony, Dona Beatriz called for the revitalization of the kingdom through adherence to a vision of Catholicism that was set firmly within Kongo history and geography. This divine communication with Heaven revealed an African Holy Family. According to this vision, Jesus was born in Mbanza Kongo and baptized not at Nazareth but in the northern province of Nsundi, while Mary’s mother was a slave of the Kongo nobleman Nzimba Mpangi. Dona Beatriz also disclosed new versions of the Ave Maria and Salve Regina that were more relevant to Kongolese modes of thought. Although the movement recognized papal authority, it was hostile to European missionaries, whom it considered corrupt and unsympathetic to the spiritual needs of Kongolese Catholics. Dona Beatriz and her followers briefly occupied Mbanza Kongo, from which she sent emissaries to spread her teachings and urge rulers of the divided Kongo territories to unite under one king. In 1706, however, she was captured by King Pedro II and burned as a heretic at the behest of Capuchin monks.^[1]

            The story of Vita Kimpa is a story that needs to be retold using a decolonial lens. As Teresa Mbari Hinga rightly notes, “the story of Kimpa Vita epitomizes the fact that historians of Africa and her peoples tend to be literally “His-storians.” They are inclined to speak and write about history as if only men have been actors therein.^[2] Hinga’s retelling of Kimpa Vita’s story as ‘her-story’ needs to be respected. I do not intend to diminish it by rendering a decolonial reading of the life and prophetic mission of this “Prophet of Kongo.” The praxis of delegitimization of Christian teachings and values; the weaponization of the sacraments; and the refusal to allow bishops to ordain priests for the Church in the Kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese monarchs and the tepid response by the popes of the day to address the concerns brought to them by the monarchs of the Kingdom of Kongo serve as the background for understanding the prophetic vocation and visions of healing of the divided nation that was experiencing an existential crisis  by Kimpa Vita.^[3] Kimpa Vita comes from a rich tradition of lay Catholics who continued the ministry and evangelizing role of the Church in Kongo even when Portugal chose to weaponize the administration of the sacraments by strategically withdrawing Portuguese clergy from the kingdom and preventing missionaries from entering the kingdom as well. The retelling of the salvific story allows for a decentering of power that Portuguese Christianity has hijacked in its embrace of empire politics. Kimpa Vita upends empire Christianity by relocating the story of salvation to allow for an embrace of the dignity of the Kongolese in an era of slavery and disintegration of the world of her people. The intentional destruction of the Christian faith in her homeland by agents of empire is subverted by a mimetic appropriation of the religious narrative and agency of Portuguese religious sensibilities. Saint Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese member of the Franciscan Order, who lived in the thirteenth century is said to have been described by Pope Gregory IX as Doctor arca testamenti (Ark of the Testament) due to his profound knowledge of scripture and adherence to the Christian faith and virtues. The story goes that when he was preaching to the citizens of the City of Rimini, the citizens, comprised mostly of heretics, refused to listen to him. He turned to the fishes in the river and began to preach the Christian faith to them. The fishes gathered and listened to him. This miraculous event led to the conversion of many citizens of the city^[4] Kimpa Vita’s close link to Saint Anthony, the Ark of the Testament, is a form of speaking back to the heretical idolatry of the weaponization of the Christian message and identity strategically introduced into the interactions between the Portuguese Church and the Kongolese Church. Kimpa Vita’s Antonian Movement serves as a corrective appropriation of the authentic kerygma that has escaped from the domain of the Portuguese imperial ambitions at the expense of their Christian identity. The call to all the warring parties of Kongo to gather at the ancient capital with the intent to unite the kingdom serves as an anamnetic consciousness of what the Christian faith ought to do for all who claim the identity of followers of Christ – that they may be one (John 17:21). Again, by retelling the story of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as a slave woman, Kimpa Vita renders a mimetic narrative of resistance to all forms of subjugation experienced by her people. The agents and the benefactors of the slave trade that was spearheaded by the Portuguese knew exactly the power of her mimetic rendition of the actors of the salvific story at the core of Christianity. It is not surprising then that her ability to upend imperial Christianity through her appropriation of radical mimesis led to her death. All who dare to speak back to empire most often end up being killed as was the fate of Jesus the Christ in the hands of the Romans. Hinga captures Kimpa Vita’s prophetic agency in the following words: “In her pioneering Africanist career, then, Kimpa Vita becomes the forerunner of many such leaders in African history who have sought to reclaim and nurture the true humanity and dignity of Africans wherever they have been greatly compromised by forces of history, particularly colonialism.”^[5]

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^[1] Alexander Ives Bortolot, Women Leaders in African History: Dona Beatriz, Kongo Prophet,” in Heillbrunn Timeline of Art History(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_4/hd_pwmn_4.htm.

^[2] Teresia Mbari Hinga, African, Christian, Feminist. The Enduring Search for What Matters (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2017), xvi.

^[3] See John Thornton, “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750,” Journal of African History, 25, no. 2, Cambridge University Press (1984): 147 – 167. See also John Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641 – 1718 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). See also John Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684 – 1706 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

^[4] Arnald of Sarrant, Chronicle of the Twenty-Four Generals of the Order of Friars Minor, trans. Noel Muscat (Malta: TAU Franciscan Communications, 2010), 122 – 125.

^[5] Hinga, African, Christian, Feminist, xvii.

Excerpts from: SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai. “Deconstructing the Idolatry of White Supremacy: Embracing a Trinitarian Identity as Solidarity with Others.” Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions. Themed Issue: Honorary Whiteness: Delusions of Racial Hierarchy. Volume 11. No. 3 (2022): 19 – 32.