BOOK REVIEWS155Theology of Promise: The Dynamics of Self-Refiance By C.S. Banana.Harare, College Press, 1982, 156 pp., Z$4.25.This book by the Revd Canaan Banana challenges the Church, in the words of theForeword which has been written by the Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, 'toidentify itself with the cause of social justice, equality and the development of thepoor... through joint purposeful action with the state'. Its centra! theme, expressedin one way and another throughout the book, is that 'Christianity is Socialism', It isargued with vigour, conviction and a wide range of example. It is clearly ofconsiderable importance that the author is, in fact, the President of Zimbabwe.Neither he, nor his readers, can possibly be forgetful of that fact. He is at once arecognized minister of the Church and the formal head of the State, So any call for'joint purposeful action' of Church and State in a book written by him clearlycarries a special weight. Nevertheless he does not write as president. It is Mspersonal approach which he is putting forward here and it is to be reviewed as such.The sources of Banana's thought are explicitly Marxist socialist upon the onehand, Christian upon the other. The Marxism, however, is much modified byZimbabwean experience. Equally, the Christian tradition here represented is aspecial one, that of liberation theology and Black theologyŠthe theologicalthinking of Assmann, Fierro, Cone and Segun'do. Despite a good deal of criticismof academic theology, it is still in large part two essentially academic, indeedliterary, traditions which are coming together here; yet both traditions areprofoundly concerned with praxis. Both Christianity and Socialism are concernedto change the world rather than to understand it; but practitioners of both know thatit is not possible to change Yery much unless one understands a good deal.There has been little liberation theology written in Africa hitherto, at leastnorth of the Limpopo, and Banana's contribution to it both now and in Ms earlierbook The Gospel according to the Ghetto will be widely welcomed. It remains, itcan be argued, a selective approach to Christianity, to the gospels, indeed to Christhimself. All theologies are, however, necessarily selective. It is no condemnation tosay that this quite short book is selective too. It is focused on an exceedinglyimportant aspect of the Christian message; it is relevant and practical in purpose; itis forceful in it appeal. That is surely sufficient. For Banana the most basicChristian commitment is to justice, the revolutionary struggle for a better world, thebuilding up of an equitable society. Christ challenged the powerful and theoppressive, but too often the Church has become instead a part of a system ofoppression and privilege. Banana's theology is explicitly a theology of revolution.The Church he wants is a 'Proletarian Church*. He believes that the true Christianshould be committed to a ceaseless struggle for socialism and against neo-colonialism.For many people Banana's message must be an irrelevant one because theydo not believe in Christianity-Šor any religion. Such people would, of course,include, Marx, Engels, Lenin and all old-fashioned Marxists. For them it is apointless attempt to salvage religion in a secular age and within a Marxist contextwhere it can have no abiding home. For many Christians, on the other hand, thetraditional Christian concern for the spiritual rather than the material, for anotherworld rather than this one, the belief that original sin is pervasive in every humansociety and must make every vision of Banana's type essentially Utopian, all thisremains Christianity's true message. For them liberation theology is too one-sided156BOOK REVIEWSin its use of scripture. The traditional church was wrong in some things but its basicmessage was not as misleading as Banana would have it.Personally I write as one who belongs to neither of these two groups but whoshares the author's basic stance and does believe that Christianity is, or should be,far more 'materialist' and this-worldly than has often seemed to be the case. If I stillwant to offer some criticism it is from a position of considerable underlyingagreement. The great danger with liberation theology is over-simplification: thepast is blackened, the Marxist analysis accepted uncritically, the post-revolutionarysituation idealized.'Since the great revolutions man has come to realize that politics and daily lifego together' (p. 41). Is this not a progressive realization which goes back at least asfar as ancient Greece? The generalizations that one reads here about somethingcalled 'western culture' or 'western capitalist society' do not commend the author'ssense of cultural understanding. We read, for instance, that 'in western capitalistsociety . . . personal critical insight and alertness is never encouraged' (p. 48), or'western culture ... perceives man as naturally deformed, basically sinful' (p. 47)or again that 'in most western societies' political awareness 'is completelyneglected. The system is designed in such a way that the public remain completelyunconscious of and alienated from the political and decision-making processes'(p. 42). Such assertions are so far from the reality that they can throw doubt uponthe reliability of the author in his wider assessment of the contemporary world.'To be married to patterns of the past is all that foreign ideologies intend to doby imposing their own solutions on us' (p. 84). I am not sure that an 'ideology' canintend anything, but if this warning is true, why does it not apply to Marxism, whichis certainly a 'foreign ideology' devised by a gentleman living in London over onehundred years ago and later developed by various other Europeans? Why is thisone expression of European intellectual history to be treated so entirely differentlyfrom all the rest?The principal weakness of Christianity in the recent past was, as I see it, that'the kingdom of God' came far too close to being identified with a certain temporarypattern of Western power and civilization. The danger that I sense in this book is astrangely comparable one: to identify God's kingdom with a certain post-revolutionary state based upon a particular historic ideology. Liberation theologyneeds to stand free of every state and, ultimately, every ideology in a stance ofprophetic independence. Banana's message seems near to being that in post-revolutionary Zimbabwe, and a few other comparable countries, salvation has asgood as arrived. He takes the text of Luke 7:10-23 and adapts it to here and now ina way that is genuinely moving: 'Go back and tell your masters in Europe and theUnited States what you have seen and heard: land is given to peasants ... the sickare looked after and the ignorant are educated; co-operatives are formed . . . thehungry are filled with good things and the rich sent away empty' (p. 119).Personally, I can recognize that picture in post-independence Zimbabwewithout difficulty. So many good things have happened. It is indeed exciting. Butthe task of the prophet is less to underline the failings of the past than to point afinger at the present, to cry out that the hungry are very much still with us, that therich are doing pretty well, that many a squatter would not recognize Banana'spicture at all. There are, of course, plenty of complex reasons why the newJerusalem has not yet arrived, but then there always were, and one of the reasons isthat old-fashioned Christian one labelled 'original sin': it continues to thrive even inBOOK REVIEWS157post-revolutionary society. Denying it will not help matters. A book published in1982, only three years after the coming of Independence, may legitimately beconcerned more with the castigation of the past than with the moral ambiguity of theon-going straggle. Nevertheless it is the latter that now matters and, in a way, theauthor seems too confidently sure that in an avowedly socialist society all mannerof things will be well to be, for this reviewer at least, a wholly safe guide fortomorrow's Christian.University of ZimbabweA. HASTINGS