TAKES ISSUE WITH “TIV CHURCH AND WHITE PATERNALISM” ARTICLE
EUGENE RUBINGH
Dr. Stephen Monsma’s article, The Tiv Church of Christ and White Paternalism, is a significant contribution but I believe it needs some correction. The correction is not, in my opinion, with regard to the viability of the Reformed seminary sponsored by the Tiv Church. I have said publicly and in my book, Sons of Tiv, that the demand for a Reformed seminary cannot be denied, and that the Nigerian church itself must chart its destiny, as a fully autonomous church, under God.
Dr. Monsma’s article needs correction, rather, in its main thesis, viz. that our missionaries act out of an attitude of paternalism. This proposition gets its support from arguments such as; a. The Banner was seen more in missionary homes than the Lagos Times. b. Stewards were called “boys.” c. Missionaries rode in the first class section of the train, etc., etc.
Dr. Monsma noted such points several years ago on a trip to Nigeria. Undoubtedly he noted them in the missionaries who were for the Tiv seminary as well as in those who were against it. On the one hand it is apparently paternalism, but not on the other. Or are the supporters of the Reformed seminary also paternalistic?
The answer is that Dr. Monsma on one short trip was unable to sense that paternalism is an attitude which a Nigerian can spot a mile away. As far as the items mentioned above are concerned, it would have been instructive for Dr. Monsma to have observed his Nigerian peers. It is truly Nigerian, truly authentic, to act according to your station. On Dr. Monsma’s train ride, where were the Nigerian university graduates, the professors, the business men? In the first-class section, you may be sure. A Nigerian spots someone who wants to be condescending at once, and condescension includes acting as someone you aren’t. Missionaries who play poor Nigerians today are spotted at once, and pegged as false and unreal.
Of course, missionaries want to bridge the artificial walls that separate men. Has Dr. Monsma not seen Nigerian and American nurses working together up to their elbows in filth? Does he not know of missionaries and Nigerians tramping through miles of mud to reach a remote village? The touchstone of such sweat is humility and that’s an attitude, a state of the heart. Such missionaries may indeed never have time to get to Port Harcourt and the other big cities (neither did I in nine years), because they were too busy living into the pulse-beat of the tribe they served.
The missionary, rather, must walk the line between an inauthentic intimacy on the one hand and an uncaring aloofness on the other. Between those poles is the land where the missionary must pour out his love for the Nigerian, embracing them in their joys and sorrows, and being sensitive to the culture which formed them long before he came. That, I want it known, is not paternalism.
Eugene Rubingh is Nigeria Secretary for the Christian Reformed Board of Foreign Missions.
REPLY
STEPHEN V. MONSMA
I am afraid that I did not make my main thesis sufficiently clear. It is not that missionaries to the Tiv “act out of an attitude of paternalism,” as Dr. Rubingh puts it. It is, rather, that ‘ the refusal by some missionaries and official Christian Reformed bodies to accept and to defer to the Tiv church’s decision to establish their own seminary is paternalistic. The evidence of this paternalism does not lie in the observations I made to which Dr. Rubingh makes reference, but in the assumption that the Christian Reformed Church and its bodies have a right to determine the best way of meeting the Tiv Church’s theological training needs.
My observations to which Dr. Rubingh makes reference were used to illustrate my belief that the missionaries to the Tiv have, to a significant degree, “failed to enter into the political, social, and cultural life of Nigeria.” This contention, in turn, was used to argue that the missionaries’ judgments of the best means of training Tiv theological students is not necessarily superior to that of the Tiv leaders’ judgments.
Dr. Rubingh’s comments have led me to conclude, however, that perhaps I did not sufficiently stress the difficulties inherent in white Americans attempting to enter into the life and culture of Nigeria. I agree, as Dr. Rubingh states in his last paragraph, that the missionary must steer between an uncaring aloofness and an unauthentic intimacy. A foreign missionary attempting to out-Nigerianize the Nigerians and to live fully as they do would, I agree, be phony and immediately recognized as such by the Nigerians.
But this very fact strengthens the contention that foreign missionaries do not possess a competence superior to the Tiv in evaluating the theological training needs of the Tiv. For the missionaries cannot-as Dr. Rubingh himself points out—enter fully into Nigerian life. Thus when the Christian Reformed Church’s Board of Foreign Missions or the Christian Reformed Synod must make decisions concerning theological training in the Tiv Church of Christ, they should remember that even the veteran missionary to the Tiv has not been able to enter into Tiv life fully enough to possess the same intimacy of knowledge and experience that Tiv church leaders themselves possess. To me the conclusion is inescapable; we should defer to the judgment of the Tiv church leaders in regard to theological training in their church.
Stephen V. Monsma is Chairman of the political science department at Calvin College.
MORE ON “THE TIMOTHY-LAWNDALE SITUATION”
EUGENE BRADFORD
The article by the Rev. Garrett H. Stoutmeyer entitled “The Timothy-Lawndale Situation” in the May 1971 issue of THE OUTLOOK calls for a response with respect to some specific items.
1. Rev. Stoutmeyer states that “the 1968 Declarations on Race got to Synod in a most irregular manner which completely violated the regulations of the Church Order of the Christian Reformed Church, and so Synod acknowledged!” (THE OUTLOOK, May 1971, p. 21). (Note: “completely violated the regulations of the Church Order” is the rhetoric of Rev. Stoutmeyer, not Synod.) It is true the overture that resulted in the 1968 Declarations came to Synod directly from a consistory. This is so because it was framed too late to go by way of c1assis. However, the preface to the overture made explicit reference to the extreme urgency of race problems at that time. What is more, Ciassis Chicago North itself, after lengthy discussion, endorsed, with relatively minor amendments, the very same overture and so informed Synod (Acts, 1968, pp. 588f.). After noting that the overture did not follow the prescribed route, Synod judged that “this matter is of extreme spiritual and moral importance,” and, as permitted under the Rules for Synodical Procedure, V, 1, accepted the overture and then proceeded to approve it (Acts, 1968, Art. 36, p. 18). Rev. Stoutmeyer’s lightly-veiled suggestion that Synod acted illegally is wrong. The fact that neither he nor any other person or assembly challenged the legality of the action is very significant. It should also be remembered that both in 1969 and 1970 the Synods took action which, in effect, reaffirmed the 1968 Declarations.
2. In two places (pages 20 and 21) Rev. Stoutmeyer interprets the 1968 Declarations as calling for discipline of non-ecclesiastical organizations. Clearly they do not. Synod declared that “if members of the Christian Reformed Church” advocate denial, by whatever means, of full Christian fellowship for reasons of race or color, “they must be reckoned as disobedient to Christ and be dealt with according to the provisions of the Church Order regarding Admonition and Discipline” (Acts, 1968, p. 19). One can easily imagine the necessity for admonition andl/or discipline of Christian school board members who knowingly vote to retain a proven heretical teacher on the faculty. Church members who vote for or advocate un-Christian actions in any organization are subject to the provisions contained in the Bible, the Church Order, or the decisions of church assemblies for dealing with offenses.
3. Rev. Stoutmeyer has not detected that “the Synod desires to assume the necessary role of ‘mediator’” (p. 21). Synod could not assume the role of mediator in the sense of seeking a compromise between the black Christians and the Timothy School Society simply because it took the position in both 1969 and 1970 that the black Christian children should not be barred from the Cicero Timothy schools. It saw no middle ground. But Synod did declare “the Church ready and willing to offer total support to Classis Chicago North and its constituency should it actually experience spiritual or physical distress in the fulfilment of its obligations to the black covenant children of its communities” (Acts, 1970, Mt. 119, pp. 641.).
In addition, the Race Commission, as a sub-committee responsible to Synod, has put forth whatever efforts it could to bring righteous peace in this matter.
Eugene Bradford is pastor of the Chr. Ref. Church of Franklin Lakes, N.J.
REPLY
GARRETT H. STOUTMEYER
The response of Rev. Bradford to my article was both expected and welcome. I did not originally intend to respond to anyone. But to keep the matter before us clear, just a brief response to the three points raised by the brother:
1) It is simply not true that the Berwyn Overture came to Synod directly from that Consistory “BECAUSE IT WAS FRAMED TOO LATE TO GO BY WAY OF CLASSIS.” If the Berwyn Overture, which later became the 1968 Declarations on Race, could meet the February deadline for inclusion in the Synodical Agenda, then pray tell why couldn’t it meet the April deadline for inclusion in the Classical Agenda via the regularly prescribed rules for Synodical procedure? The fact is, of course, that it was included in the Classical Agenda too, but ONLY after it had been forwarded to Synod and published. It is an undeniable fact that many, many Overtures come to Synod after the May meetings of the various classes. These are not printed in the Agenda but are given the same consideration as those that are included in the published Agenda. As J sec it, the only reason for bypassing the Classis with the Berwyn Overture was to gain the wide pre-Synodical publicity which it achieved by publishing it in the printed Agenda.
It is also not true that no protest came to Synod questioning the “legality of the action.” What is significant is that Rev. Bradford has apparently forgotten Overture 48 from the Elmhurst Consistory printed on page 590 of the Acts of Synod 1968. The Overture, by the: way, which Synod acknowledged to be correct, namely, “did not fulfill the stipulation for Synodical Procedure of Rule V, B. before it was forwarded to Synod” (Acts 1968, pg. 18, IV, B. 1).
2) I will do nothing more than take the liberty of quoting the remarks of Rev. Bradford addressed to a motion to delete the reference to “related organizations.” In the published record of the debate that appeared in the September, 1968, TORCH AND TRUMPET, Rev. Bradford is quoted as saying: “We need to spell things out today on this subject. We say a lot more in this declaration than we do in the previous one. There is an idea abroad that our institutions are our own little cultic possessions. We must say that if we call them Christian institutions, then they’d better be Christian with an open Christian policy.”
3) It is true that Synod “saw no middle ground.” It is not true, however, that no middle ground exists!
Garrett H. Stoutmeyer is pastor of the Chr. Ref. Church of Elmhurst, Illinois.
COMMENDS ARTICLES IN MAY ISSUE
Dear Mr. Editor:
THE OUTLOOK for the month of May 1971, carried many lively and splendid articles.
I especially want to express my sincere appreciation to Rev. Garrett H. Stouhneyer for his very articulate treatment given to “the Timothy-Lawndale situation.” When I first learned of this grave situation, via The Banner, I was dismayed and wanted to shout: “Shame, Shame, Shame!” However, it wasn’t until I read Rev. Benjamin Essenburg’s letter in “Voices” [The Banner] that I had a change of attitude.
I am of the opinion that our Synods, at times, act more like a people’s court than like an ecclesiastical body. Synod 1970, I feel, had absolutely no jurisdiction over a school board which is not controlled by the church. Christian school boards receive their authority first of all from God, secondly, they receive their authority from 9. parent-controlled organization, and not from any synod of the church. The Christian Reformed Church as such does not own privately-run schools. Calvin College, with its Board made up of ministers from each classis and lay members from church districts, is a different case.
I, too, was dismayed by Synod’s reprimand of Classis Chicago North of the CRC. Especially by its use of the words: “Contempt of synod.” The race problem is not limited to Chicago; it exists far beyond the environs of Chicago.
Dr. Stephen Monsma, discussing “The Tiv Church . . .” gave us a very knowledgeable presentation of the situation which exists among our Tiv brethren.
I also delighted in reading the sound views of Dr. R. O. De Groot, whose keen intellect is in evidence in the article: “Synod Faces ‘New Theology’ of Amsterdam.”
I also want to add my Amen! to the article about “Schism: Another Point of View,” by Rev. C. J. Van Schouwen. May sound preaching be restored and elevated to its rightful place.
Keep up the good work, Mr. Editor. The great care and the expertise that go into publishing a very readable and profitable periodical is stupendous, but such is not without its rewards.
PETER J. SLUYS, 912 James Street Kalamazoo, Michigan 49001
EUGENE RUBINGH
Dr. Stephen Monsma’s article, The Tiv Church of Christ and White Paternalism, is a significant contribution but I believe it needs some correction. The correction is not, in my opinion, with regard to the viability of the Reformed seminary sponsored by the Tiv Church. I have said publicly and in my book, Sons of Tiv, that the demand for a Reformed seminary cannot be denied, and that the Nigerian church itself must chart its destiny, as a fully autonomous church, under God.
Dr. Monsma’s article needs correction, rather, in its main thesis, viz. that our missionaries act out of an attitude of paternalism. This proposition gets its support from arguments such as; a. The Banner was seen more in missionary homes than the Lagos Times. b. Stewards were called “boys.” c. Missionaries rode in the first class section of the train, etc., etc.
Dr. Monsma noted such points several years ago on a trip to Nigeria. Undoubtedly he noted them in the missionaries who were for the Tiv seminary as well as in those who were against it. On the one hand it is apparently paternalism, but not on the other. Or are the supporters of the Reformed seminary also paternalistic?
The answer is that Dr. Monsma on one short trip was unable to sense that paternalism is an attitude which a Nigerian can spot a mile away. As far as the items mentioned above are concerned, it would have been instructive for Dr. Monsma to have observed his Nigerian peers. It is truly Nigerian, truly authentic, to act according to your station. On Dr. Monsma’s train ride, where were the Nigerian university graduates, the professors, the business men? In the first-class section, you may be sure. A Nigerian spots someone who wants to be condescending at once, and condescension includes acting as someone you aren’t. Missionaries who play poor Nigerians today are spotted at once, and pegged as false and unreal.
Of course, missionaries want to bridge the artificial walls that separate men. Has Dr. Monsma not seen Nigerian and American nurses working together up to their elbows in filth? Does he not know of missionaries and Nigerians tramping through miles of mud to reach a remote village? The touchstone of such sweat is humility and that’s an attitude, a state of the heart. Such missionaries may indeed never have time to get to Port Harcourt and the other big cities (neither did I in nine years), because they were too busy living into the pulse-beat of the tribe they served.
The missionary, rather, must walk the line between an inauthentic intimacy on the one hand and an uncaring aloofness on the other. Between those poles is the land where the missionary must pour out his love for the Nigerian, embracing them in their joys and sorrows, and being sensitive to the culture which formed them long before he came. That, I want it known, is not paternalism.
Eugene Rubingh is Nigeria Secretary for the Christian Reformed Board of Foreign Missions.
REPLY
STEPHEN V. MONSMA
I am afraid that I did not make my main thesis sufficiently clear. It is not that missionaries to the Tiv “act out of an attitude of paternalism,” as Dr. Rubingh puts it. It is, rather, that ‘ the refusal by some missionaries and official Christian Reformed bodies to accept and to defer to the Tiv church’s decision to establish their own seminary is paternalistic. The evidence of this paternalism does not lie in the observations I made to which Dr. Rubingh makes reference, but in the assumption that the Christian Reformed Church and its bodies have a right to determine the best way of meeting the Tiv Church’s theological training needs.
My observations to which Dr. Rubingh makes reference were used to illustrate my belief that the missionaries to the Tiv have, to a significant degree, “failed to enter into the political, social, and cultural life of Nigeria.” This contention, in turn, was used to argue that the missionaries’ judgments of the best means of training Tiv theological students is not necessarily superior to that of the Tiv leaders’ judgments.
Dr. Rubingh’s comments have led me to conclude, however, that perhaps I did not sufficiently stress the difficulties inherent in white Americans attempting to enter into the life and culture of Nigeria. I agree, as Dr. Rubingh states in his last paragraph, that the missionary must steer between an uncaring aloofness and an unauthentic intimacy. A foreign missionary attempting to out-Nigerianize the Nigerians and to live fully as they do would, I agree, be phony and immediately recognized as such by the Nigerians.
But this very fact strengthens the contention that foreign missionaries do not possess a competence superior to the Tiv in evaluating the theological training needs of the Tiv. For the missionaries cannot-as Dr. Rubingh himself points out—enter fully into Nigerian life. Thus when the Christian Reformed Church’s Board of Foreign Missions or the Christian Reformed Synod must make decisions concerning theological training in the Tiv Church of Christ, they should remember that even the veteran missionary to the Tiv has not been able to enter into Tiv life fully enough to possess the same intimacy of knowledge and experience that Tiv church leaders themselves possess. To me the conclusion is inescapable; we should defer to the judgment of the Tiv church leaders in regard to theological training in their church.
Stephen V. Monsma is Chairman of the political science department at Calvin College.
MORE ON “THE TIMOTHY-LAWNDALE SITUATION”
EUGENE BRADFORD
The article by the Rev. Garrett H. Stoutmeyer entitled “The Timothy-Lawndale Situation” in the May 1971 issue of THE OUTLOOK calls for a response with respect to some specific items.
1. Rev. Stoutmeyer states that “the 1968 Declarations on Race got to Synod in a most irregular manner which completely violated the regulations of the Church Order of the Christian Reformed Church, and so Synod acknowledged!” (THE OUTLOOK, May 1971, p. 21). (Note: “completely violated the regulations of the Church Order” is the rhetoric of Rev. Stoutmeyer, not Synod.) It is true the overture that resulted in the 1968 Declarations came to Synod directly from a consistory. This is so because it was framed too late to go by way of c1assis. However, the preface to the overture made explicit reference to the extreme urgency of race problems at that time. What is more, Ciassis Chicago North itself, after lengthy discussion, endorsed, with relatively minor amendments, the very same overture and so informed Synod (Acts, 1968, pp. 588f.). After noting that the overture did not follow the prescribed route, Synod judged that “this matter is of extreme spiritual and moral importance,” and, as permitted under the Rules for Synodical Procedure, V, 1, accepted the overture and then proceeded to approve it (Acts, 1968, Art. 36, p. 18). Rev. Stoutmeyer’s lightly-veiled suggestion that Synod acted illegally is wrong. The fact that neither he nor any other person or assembly challenged the legality of the action is very significant. It should also be remembered that both in 1969 and 1970 the Synods took action which, in effect, reaffirmed the 1968 Declarations.
2. In two places (pages 20 and 21) Rev. Stoutmeyer interprets the 1968 Declarations as calling for discipline of non-ecclesiastical organizations. Clearly they do not. Synod declared that “if members of the Christian Reformed Church” advocate denial, by whatever means, of full Christian fellowship for reasons of race or color, “they must be reckoned as disobedient to Christ and be dealt with according to the provisions of the Church Order regarding Admonition and Discipline” (Acts, 1968, p. 19). One can easily imagine the necessity for admonition andl/or discipline of Christian school board members who knowingly vote to retain a proven heretical teacher on the faculty. Church members who vote for or advocate un-Christian actions in any organization are subject to the provisions contained in the Bible, the Church Order, or the decisions of church assemblies for dealing with offenses.
3. Rev. Stoutmeyer has not detected that “the Synod desires to assume the necessary role of ‘mediator’” (p. 21). Synod could not assume the role of mediator in the sense of seeking a compromise between the black Christians and the Timothy School Society simply because it took the position in both 1969 and 1970 that the black Christian children should not be barred from the Cicero Timothy schools. It saw no middle ground. But Synod did declare “the Church ready and willing to offer total support to Classis Chicago North and its constituency should it actually experience spiritual or physical distress in the fulfilment of its obligations to the black covenant children of its communities” (Acts, 1970, Mt. 119, pp. 641.).
In addition, the Race Commission, as a sub-committee responsible to Synod, has put forth whatever efforts it could to bring righteous peace in this matter.
Eugene Bradford is pastor of the Chr. Ref. Church of Franklin Lakes, N.J.
REPLY
GARRETT H. STOUTMEYER
The response of Rev. Bradford to my article was both expected and welcome. I did not originally intend to respond to anyone. But to keep the matter before us clear, just a brief response to the three points raised by the brother:
1) It is simply not true that the Berwyn Overture came to Synod directly from that Consistory “BECAUSE IT WAS FRAMED TOO LATE TO GO BY WAY OF CLASSIS.” If the Berwyn Overture, which later became the 1968 Declarations on Race, could meet the February deadline for inclusion in the Synodical Agenda, then pray tell why couldn’t it meet the April deadline for inclusion in the Classical Agenda via the regularly prescribed rules for Synodical procedure? The fact is, of course, that it was included in the Classical Agenda too, but ONLY after it had been forwarded to Synod and published. It is an undeniable fact that many, many Overtures come to Synod after the May meetings of the various classes. These are not printed in the Agenda but are given the same consideration as those that are included in the published Agenda. As J sec it, the only reason for bypassing the Classis with the Berwyn Overture was to gain the wide pre-Synodical publicity which it achieved by publishing it in the printed Agenda.
It is also not true that no protest came to Synod questioning the “legality of the action.” What is significant is that Rev. Bradford has apparently forgotten Overture 48 from the Elmhurst Consistory printed on page 590 of the Acts of Synod 1968. The Overture, by the: way, which Synod acknowledged to be correct, namely, “did not fulfill the stipulation for Synodical Procedure of Rule V, B. before it was forwarded to Synod” (Acts 1968, pg. 18, IV, B. 1).
2) I will do nothing more than take the liberty of quoting the remarks of Rev. Bradford addressed to a motion to delete the reference to “related organizations.” In the published record of the debate that appeared in the September, 1968, TORCH AND TRUMPET, Rev. Bradford is quoted as saying: “We need to spell things out today on this subject. We say a lot more in this declaration than we do in the previous one. There is an idea abroad that our institutions are our own little cultic possessions. We must say that if we call them Christian institutions, then they’d better be Christian with an open Christian policy.”
3) It is true that Synod “saw no middle ground.” It is not true, however, that no middle ground exists!
Garrett H. Stoutmeyer is pastor of the Chr. Ref. Church of Elmhurst, Illinois.
COMMENDS ARTICLES IN MAY ISSUE
Dear Mr. Editor:
THE OUTLOOK for the month of May 1971, carried many lively and splendid articles.
I especially want to express my sincere appreciation to Rev. Garrett H. Stouhneyer for his very articulate treatment given to “the Timothy-Lawndale situation.” When I first learned of this grave situation, via The Banner, I was dismayed and wanted to shout: “Shame, Shame, Shame!” However, it wasn’t until I read Rev. Benjamin Essenburg’s letter in “Voices” [The Banner] that I had a change of attitude.
I am of the opinion that our Synods, at times, act more like a people’s court than like an ecclesiastical body. Synod 1970, I feel, had absolutely no jurisdiction over a school board which is not controlled by the church. Christian school boards receive their authority first of all from God, secondly, they receive their authority from 9. parent-controlled organization, and not from any synod of the church. The Christian Reformed Church as such does not own privately-run schools. Calvin College, with its Board made up of ministers from each classis and lay members from church districts, is a different case.
I, too, was dismayed by Synod’s reprimand of Classis Chicago North of the CRC. Especially by its use of the words: “Contempt of synod.” The race problem is not limited to Chicago; it exists far beyond the environs of Chicago.
Dr. Stephen Monsma, discussing “The Tiv Church . . .” gave us a very knowledgeable presentation of the situation which exists among our Tiv brethren.
I also delighted in reading the sound views of Dr. R. O. De Groot, whose keen intellect is in evidence in the article: “Synod Faces ‘New Theology’ of Amsterdam.”
I also want to add my Amen! to the article about “Schism: Another Point of View,” by Rev. C. J. Van Schouwen. May sound preaching be restored and elevated to its rightful place.
Keep up the good work, Mr. Editor. The great care and the expertise that go into publishing a very readable and profitable periodical is stupendous, but such is not without its rewards.
PETER J. SLUYS, 912 James Street Kalamazoo, Michigan 49001