By Noel Bruyns
Harare, 12 December (ENI)--The general secretary of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), Densen Mafinyani, has urged the World Council of Churches (WCC) to stop quibbling over whether an African church which tolerates polygamy should be accepted as a WCC member.

The Celestial Church of Christ, an "African Instituted" ( indigenous) church established in Nigeria after the Second World War, is one of nine churches seeking membership of the WCC, whose eighth assembly taking place in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. Eight of the churches have been accepted as members, but a decision on whether or not to admit the Celestial Church was initially deferred, apparently because the church tolerates polygamy among clergy.

According to a statement from the Celestial Church, the church admitted polygamous clergy only until 1986, the year in which the church's founder, S. B. J. Oshoffa died, although clergy who lived in polygamous unions before that date could continue to do so. The church did not condone divorce, the statement added.

Although the assembly voted on 10 December to reject the Nigerian-based church's bid for membership, this vote was declared invalid on a constitutional technicality and the matter has now been referred to the WCC's central committee which will meet next August.

Asked by Jubilee, the WCC daily newspaper being published during the Harare assembly, to comment on the Celestial Church's membership application, Mafinyani said the WCC was intellectually refined and theologically advanced, but out of touch with real people.

Polygamy, Mafinyani said, was not a problem for local churches in Africa.

To underline his point, Mafinyani said that the general secretary of Fambidzano, an umbrella body of about 100 African Instituted Churches (AIC), attended the annual general meeting of the ZCC as an associate member.

"Many of the [AIC] church leaders are polygamous," he said. "This is not a problem for the local churches. These leaders are accepted in their churches, their followers accept the cultural dimension where the tribal headman had more than one wife. The local churches see nothing wrong with this."

He added: "The new [WCC] central committee [elected on 10 December] must form a space where real people can speak," he said. "Otherwise, the WCC is just like the UN - very organised, but cannot to relate to simple people.

"Can the WCC please open a door where the African spirituality can be rediscovered?" he pleaded. "We don't want our Christian faith to be limited by the mindset of Europe, where it came from, a theology too narrow to accommodate what God has done with Africans long before the missionaries came - those missionaries who threw out our ancient religious experiences and sacred beliefs as pagan."

This gave, he said, the impression that God spoke only through Western theology, and not in Africa. "I, personally and speaking on behalf of the ZCC, appreciate very much what the WCC has done and is doing, but it must please create more space so that our faith can be enriched," Mafinyani said.

Professor Frans Verstraelen, of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, told Jubilee that the first missionaries told those wanting to be baptised they had to choose one wife and send the rest away.

"This, of course, was unjust," he said. "Often a young wife was kept, and the first wife and the older wives were chased away. This was a subject of intense debate in the 1970s, and today many churches are not forcing polygamous marriages to be dissolved if people want to become Christians.

"Polygamy in the African mindset can reflect status and is not something wrong or evil. And if the ZCC accepts the AIC, it is probably because it has a better idea of what is acceptable in the African context than someone from, say, Sweden," said Professor Verstraelen. [644 words]

Photographs of the assembly are available from Photo Oikoumene

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