Inculturation of some Christian beliefs in Unubi: Roles for the Anglican Community

Abstract

With the increase of culture revival and great number of Igbo youths going back to idol/ancestral worship, one wonder the depth of Christianity they received and practiced. After about ten decades of gospel presence in Unubi, and in spite of the large Christian faithful therein, the church still seems to be far from making solid foundation when it comes to incarnating some Christian practices into Unubi culture. The increase in conflicts between the Church and the traditional Unubi people, and the great wave of culture revival that engulf Unubi in the recent times point to the fact that the gospel message has not fully come to life into Unubi culture. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the rationalization for, and the process of inculturation as a feasible and healthy strategy for consolidating the Christian faith among the Unubi cultural people and the roles of the Anglican Church in the process. The research, in part, will also serve as a panacea to the calls of Unubi students to have Unubi traditional values documented. The work combines historical and case-study methods of research. The research traced the history of Christianity in Unubi and her interaction with Unubi traditional religion. The result of an analysis of data from various field works and the study of literature on this theme shows that in general, average Unubi man is cultural and is attached to traditions of his culture. And because culture is a way of life and is gluey, it seems to have a strong grip on the people such that the mere reception of Christian baptism and profession of Christ seem unable to separate. In that case, many Christians appear to show double loyalty: loyalty to the Church and loyalty to a certain aspect of the traditional system. The implication of this culture misunderstanding is that the traditional religion is apparently fading while the Christian faith still does not seem to be firm. The effective means for consolidating the Christian faith in the land is most probably a feasible process of inculturation, which makes the person faithful to Christianity while remaining truly African.