A Fractured Understanding

Later today, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor will be awarded the $1.5 million Templeton Prize for his lifetime's work of arguing that problems such as violence and racism can only be solved by considering both their secular and spiritual dimensions.

This award will come as a surprise to many who draw a sharp line between the secular and spiritual realms. Many Christians in the West compartmentalize our lives in this way, limiting prayer to spiritual problems and our own intelligence and hard work to solving "real" problems. Atheists dismiss prayer as a psychological exercise at best.

"We will pay a high price," Taylor says, "if we continue to allow this muddled thinking to prevail."

Taylor's work would be received by most Africans as being, well, obvious. He might as well have won a boatload of cash for arguing that the sun is hot or that the rain comes from clouds.

Africans readily accept the role of spiritual influences and causes underlying physical events. Many access traditional spirits for protection, divination, and healing from witchcraft.

Several people have impressed upon us that these practices are "very, very common," and every time I'm struck by the emphasis that they use. A Mozambican woman with whom Laura works was bold enough to say that easily 95% of people still practice traditional beliefs. "If they say they don't, they're probably just hiding it."

Mario's mother recently asked to borrow money from him to buy a goat to bring to a sangoma. He wouldn't lend it to her, but faces pressure to abide. Sangomas often ask for goats or chickens. They use the heads and feet to make healing potions, and keep the good meat for themselves. It's a good deal for the witch doctor, Mario thought. They're well-fed.

Africans who engage the services of such traditional spiritualists are often looking to detect and cure physical or spiritual ailments, looking to foretell or alter the future. Perhaps they want to identify and punish someone who has committed a crime against them.

The practice is pervasive, though often hidden beneath society's veneer. I've heard stories of Christian ministers consulting these practitioners in an attempt to secure leadership positions within their churches. I've heard similar stories of government leaders.

This inclination towards seeing the world in its unfractured reality leads African Christians to be very spiritual people, and leads Africans of many faith practices to be keenly interested in discussions of gods and spiritual powers -- often moreso than the Western missionaries who have come wanting to teach them.

Some African traditional practices, like divination and witchcraft, are clearly inconsistent with Christianity, just as those of us in the West who rely on rugged individualism rather than on God are similarly inconsistent.

That notwithstanding, African Christians struggle to see why some Western missionaries preach that reliance on God is incompatible with healing using the natural restorative properties of tree roots and bark, while these same missionaries can themselves pop a Tylenol Gelcap to soothe their own aches and pains. Africans wonder whether Westerners dance dangerously close to an idolatrous devotion to science, while Westerners believe that tradition-adhering Africans are themselves tapping their toes clearly in the polytheistic danger zone.

Each group, focused on the faults of the other, believes that its own practices are safely within the acceptable bounds of Christianity.

Charles Taylor is onto something. But it's not enough to look at the world through our own physical and spiritual lens: we must try to look through our neighbour's as well. Even those of us, like Charles Taylor, who acknowledge an integrated spiritual-physical world, lack the wisdom of God. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.