Word: churches
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...three Wise Men bear gifts of kola nuts and chickens. More saucily, South African linocut artist John Muafangejo shows Satan urinating in fear before an angel. Sometimes even modest experiments produce scandal. Cheap reproductions hang beneath the Stations of the Cross carved by Kanutu Chenge for a Catholic church near Lubumbashi, Zaire. They are there to appease a congregation shocked to see Pilate dressed as an African chieftain and women with tribal headbands witnessing the Crucifixion...
Serious theological problems can arise when Africanization uses symbols and myths from the pre-Christian faiths. Fearing syncretism in a continent where communion with the spirits and ancestors remains a powerful belief, most Protestants are exceedingly cautious about all the visual arts. Zaire's indigenous Kimbanguist Church strictly forbids decoration except on preachers' and singers' robes. But many Anglicans, once hesitant, are enthusiasts for the new church art. Methodist theologian Dkalimbo Kajoba encourages art so long as it is for "decoration," not "adoration...
Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Roman Catholicism has shown the most readiness to embrace Africanization. One of the boldest steps came in 1967, when the newly built St. Paul's Church in Lagos opened its doors to reveal frankly pagan symbols and statues. A black Nigerian priest protested at the time, "You are taking us back from whence we came -- paganism." But prominent Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya notes that the Yorubas "worship God through the spirit Orisha, who will pray to God for them and obtain the blessings they desire -- not so very different from parishioners kneeling before...
...birth of a child, coming of age, marriage, death and the spirits of our ancestors -- all these needed to be illustrated and represented as supernatural manifestations. This is the basis of our art. We are still interlinked with nature." More radically, Cameroon's Father Mveng wants to fling the church doors wide open to fetishes and magic charms. In Africa's interreligious melange, Muslims are creating images for Christian churches that are not allowed in mosques. Animists are decorating Christian churches. Father Carroll's school produced, as well as Christian art, pillars for temples serving ancestral faiths...
...opposition agreed to hold elections for a second chamber of parliament, a revived senate that would include non-Communist candidates. Party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski, who presided over the crackdown outlawing Solidarity in 1981, was uncharacteristically exuberant: "Significant progress is being made to construct parliamentary democracy in Poland." In a church basement across the city, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa told his supporters that Poland was entering a decisive stage "we hope will lead to democracy and freedom...