At a Glance
Postcolonialism is a hot topic these days as many groups are eager to divide us up into oppressors and the oppressed–but do these categories help? Young and influential Zambian writer and speaker Lennox Kalifungwa says that there is much more to be considered than ethnicity, culture, and nationality. If we want true freedom and flourishing as individuals and societies, we need to promote truth, beauty, and goodness, looking beyond worldly categories that perpetuate brokenness and victimhood. There is no short-changing the effort it takes to move beyond the syncretism that is found in churches around the world. Join us as we discuss these important topics together.
What You'll Hear
- Introduction (00:58)
- What are the predominant worldviews of Africa? (18:00)
- Chrisianity has spread throughout Africa, but has it changed the worldview? (24:37)
- Zambia wants to be a “Christian nation.” Why? (38:11)
- The new secular colonialism (49:22)
- The opening of the Bible revives cultures. (1:01:20)
- How to speak truth to inconsistent worldviews (1:07:02)
- Conclusion (1:13:10)
Lennox Kalifungwa is a writer and speaker on culture, politics, and community development from a Christian perspective. He currently resides in Lusaka, Zambia, where he is involved in numerous efforts to build a distinctly Christian culture through media and education. His work has appeared on Forbes, Zenger News, American Thinker, The Sentinel, and various other media and news outlets. Connect with Lennox on Twitter, Substack, or Instagram.
Using the link above, you can read the transcript, listen along, and adjust the speed of the podcast while you listen.
The Christian worldview is the solution to many of Africa's problems and many of the world's problems. If we can propagate the truth, goodness, and beauty of God's Word in our cultures, we will see a world that is truly flourishing.
Lennox Kalifungwa (15:00)
Quotes
- 27:20 “I think what we have had here by and large in Africa is a sort of Christianity that only appeals to someone’s personal salvation–the sort of Christianity that only appeals to what they might do on a Sunday morning but that doesn’t actually appeal to the rest of life.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 29:11 “if we really understand and believe that God is sovereign, then we must understand and believe that there’s no realm over which he is not Lord, over which he is not King, over which he has not spoken.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 29:21 “If we can begin to show people how the Bible applies into every single area of life, we are fundamentally showing people how big our God is in the realm over which he is King.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 29:35 “For as long as a people remain ignorant of God, ignorant of his word and the far-reaching implications of his word, I think a people will struggle with things like poverty… and will never really fully realize freedom and flourishing.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 34:11 “the fundamental problem with all these ideas, of statism, postcolonialism, of course, the Marxism which is very tied to the postcolonialism, is all these ideas are an attempt to dismiss or ignore God in reality, and that makes it harder, certainly, to want to bring up Christianity or to want to bring up the Bible. But that also means that for as long as people remain shackled to these ideas, they will never really be free, even though the irony of some of these ideas is that they actually claim to promote and propagate freedom, but they never seem to achieve it.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 35:09 “My controversial take on a lot of this is I actually think that the alternatives that a lot of the African countries bought into after colonialism were actually a lot more destructive than colonialism ever was.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 54:53 “we tend to think of ourselves in terms of where we come from and what our ethnicity looks like, even before we think of ourselves as those who are made in the image of God, and because of that, then we tend to think that, oh, what’s true for the West doesn’t have to be true for us, and I think that’s false. I think truth has this amazing way of transcending those kinds of distinctions, and I think if we really understood that, then we wouldn’t try to make it a sort of war against two earthly cultures, so to speak, when fundamentally this is really a war against truth in an effort to propagate lies. And so it’s not Westernism that’s the problem here, it’s the fact that lies have been propagated in Africa.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 59:34 “The LGBTQ movement, it’s a very “luxury” movement, like when you’re well-fed and you’ve got clothes on your back… when that’s your biggest social issue clearly, you’ve got a lot of other things going well for you. In Africa, people are still trying to make ends meet.” Lennox Kalifungwa
- 1:03:34 “What we need to be doing is making sure that the King’s voice is the loudest voice in the room, the loudest voice in our homes, the loudest voice in our churches, the loudest voice in our nations, because there are other voices that are at war with the truth.” Lennox Kalifungwa
In Zambia, it seems the “gospel of salvation” came, but the worldview of the people never changed. What is the best way to combat the kind of syncretism that still exists?
1:09:40 People have very watered down ideas of what the Gospel is, so they need to be given the whole counsel of God’s word. It’s doing more than to just punch their tickets to heaven… it’s opening up the whole book, opening up God’s law and really just teaching people what it says and what it means to live by it, while also setting an example of what humble obedience to Christ really does look like in all areas of life. Showing people that we can worship our God in economics, we can worship our God in marriage, we worship our God in law, in science, and showing them, in God’s word, through God’s word, what that looks like, rather than simply limiting the Bible to a John 3:16. –Lennox Kalifungwa
Go Deeper
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Against All Hope: Hope for Africa
By Darrow Miller with Scott Allen
Africa has been mightily blessed. Her natural resources make her the wealthiest of the world’s seven continents. She possesses a rich heritage as the womb of the Judeo-Christian faith. Her people comprise her greatest wealth. Being imago Dei, they possess vast internal capital. On top of all this; there is the incredible potential that exists through the dramatic recent growth of the church. Yet despite these countless blessings and riches, Africa remains undeniably the most poverty-stricken and broken continent on the planet. When one examines global poverty indices and measurements, it becomes apparent that things are improving everywhere in the world with one glaring exception – Africa. How can it be that Africa continues to languish?
This free 60-page booklet examines the situation in Africa today from the vantage point of a distinctively biblical worldview and argues that true hope for transformation lies with the rapidly expanding African Church practicing a wholistic ministry and taking biblical truth boldly into every sphere of society. Also available in other languages.
Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures
The power of the gospel to transform individual lives has been clearly evident throughout New Testament history. But what of the darkness and poverty that enslaves entire cultures, even nations? Have Christians underestimated the power of God’s truth to transform entire societies? Have Christians underestimated the power of God’s truth to transform entire societies? In Discipling Nations, Darrow Miller builds a powerful and convincing thesis that God’s truth not only breaks the spiritual bonds of sin and death but can free whole societies from deception and poverty. Completely revised and updated for the third edition, Discipling Nations will challenge, reenergize, and equip Christians everywhere who labor to see His kingdom come, His will be done. Also available in other languages.
African Christian University
Africans are traditionally very spiritual, but many maintain a strong focus on the need for “gratifying the spirits of the dead,” which is not in alignment with the biblical teaching that says there is no need for any intermediaries between us and God apart from Jesus Christ.
African Christian University (ACU) was founded on the vision of seeking knowledge that is ultimately established in God’s grand narrative of Scripture. ACU aims to build upon this foundation, embracing the breadth of all history and cultures to cultivate the knowledge of the humanities and sciences with a particular relevance to the past, present and future of Africa.
