84 ‘RITUALS OF RESISTANCE, WEAPONS OF THE WEAK’: TOWARD AN AFRICAN PENTECOSTAL TRANSFORMATIVE HOLY COMMUNION MISSIOLOGY1 C J Kaunda University of South Africa Abstract: The article defines symbolic inversion as transgressive behaviour which most traditional Zambian societies re- enacted in the ritual context as a dynamic cultural form. It argues for critical reclamation and reconstitution of sym- bolic resistance dimension of Ndembu ritual (people of North-west Zambia) to construct transformative Holy Communion missiology within Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Zambia (PAOG-Z). The symbolic resistance of Ndembu ritual seems to have potential to give fresh per- spective on how Holy Communion could function as mun- dus inversus (world-upside-down) - a way of resisting neg- ative prevailing social order. Finally some contours for Ho- ly Communion Missiology are suggested on methodologi- cal and practical level to help the community of faith refo- cus its Holy Communion performances to resisting anti-life and death-dealing forces. Keywords: PAOGZ, Holy Communion Missiology, Sym- bolic Inversion, weapons of the weak 1This article draws on the interviews for the Book Project funded by John Templeton Foundation, administered by the Nagel Institute of Calvin Col- lege under the theme “Christianity Theology: African Realities and African Hope.” ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 85 INTRODUCTION The Holy Communion (the Lord's Supper)2 is foundational to the faith of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Zambia (hereafter PAOG-Z) community and is one of the only two ordinances3 recognised. The ritual is understood as a sym- bolic remembrance of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ for humanity’s salvation (The Constitution and By- Laws of PAOG-Z- hereafter the Constitution). In most PAOG-Z churches, the Holy Communion is often observed the first Sunday of every month. It consists of the elements of bread and the grape juice4 as re-enactment of Christ’s suffering and death as symbol expressing the mission of God as “God’s interruptions in daily experiences of human beings. It is symbolic participation in all that Christ intends to achieve in the world. The participation in the Holy Commun- ion is missiological confrontation with veritable incubus of existential experiences of humanity. The Holy Communion brings the community of faith into missional agreement with God’s activities in and for the world. It is a ritual “enjoined in the Scripture” through which believ- ers re-enact human injustice and violence which found deci- sive injurious and despicability in the death of Christ on the cross (The Constitution n.d: 40). The Holy Communion is understood as “encapsulating Christ’s incarnation, life, death and resurrection through which he challenged violence and social injustice” (Nyirenda). Thus, the Holy Communion as 2The Holy Communion and the Lord’s Table are the two specific terms used in describing the Eucharist in the Constitution and By-laws of PAOG- Z. It is also known as the Lord’s Supper, or the Last Supper depending on the tradition. 3 The other ordinance is water baptism by immersion. 4 The juice is never referred to as wine but fruit of the vine, or just juice. Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 86 an eschatological event could be considered as mundus in- versus (symbolic inversion). It was a messianic missiological resistance to prevailing social order in respect to realities of injustice, oppression, poverty, discrimination, inequality and violence. Thus the aim is to engage PAOG-Z notion of Holy Commun- ion through anthropological theory of the rituals of resistance which is used to demonstrate the missional nature of the Holy Communion. The argument of this article is that sym- bolic inversion as a theoretical tool to engage the Holy Communion has potential to transform the way the ritual is done and understood by recasting it to serve as a form of socio-political and economic criticism that could call atten- tion to the struggles of those on the margins. RITUALS OF RESISTANCE: MUNDUS INVERSUS IM- AGINATION The Ndembu people, whose ritual thinking is used as point of departure in this article, occupy western portion of Mwini- lunga District in North-western Province of Zambia. I am aware that symbolic inversion is a widespread cultural phe- nomenon in most cultures around the world. The Ndembu rituals are deeply entrenched in symbolic inversion. But for the sake of this paper, I refer to Ndembu symbolic actions, a way of thinking that tends to reverse normative values of society. In the Reversible world, Barbara Babcock (1978:14) offers the following characterization of this topos as “any act of expressive behavior which inverts, contradicts, abrogates, or in some fashion presents an alternative to common held cultural codes, values, and norms be they linguistic, literary or artistic, religious or social and political.” The early anthro- pologists who researched in Africa such as Max Gluckman (1954), characterised such ritual actions as ‘rituals of rebel- ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 87 lion’ (termed here as rituals of resistance).5 As to the fact that there are such rituals of resistance in most African ritual performances, Ndembu to be more precise, anthropologists6 are in agreement and have given ethnographic examples of contrary or non-normative behaviours in certain ritual con- texts. Ethnographic contentions arise typically over the question of how such rituals of resistance impact or con- tribute to the transformation of the nature of structured so- cieties more broadly. The fact is that there can be no ritual performance among Ndembu people without engaging in such oppositional behaviours however that might be inter- preted by ethnographers. Ndembu rituals are deeply entrenched with oppositional be- haviours include lewd conduct, gender swaps or adopting genderless behaviour, same-sex intercourse, social status reversals, and various other forms of symbolic resistance to normative social influence (Kaunda 2015). Jacob Pandian (2001) rightly argues that it is possible to identify such con- trary non-normative behaviours collectively as anti-structure mundus inversus, thereby contrast them with the normative cognitive or social structure of society. In his book, Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual, Victor Turner (1975:31) who did numerous publications on Ndembu ritual, wrote that he began his research among 5Gluckman was one of the earliest anthropologists who research among the Zulu people of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and some ethnic groups in Zambia. He presented his finds as the Frazer lecture at the University of Glasgow in 1952 under the title, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa. 6Some anthropologists have criticised Gluckman for failing to give specific ethnographical accounts on the African attitudes toward symbolic inversion. For various criticisms and validations see Hilda Kuper (1961);Edward Norbeck (1963); Victor Turner (1969); Su- sanne Schröter (2004); Jane T Creider and Chet A. Creider (1997) and Todd Sanders (2000:469) Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 88 them “as an agnostic and monistic Materialist.” And later acknowledged; I learned from the Ndembu that ritual and its symbolism are not merely epiphenomena or disguises of deeper so- cial and psychological processes, but have ontological value, in some way related to man's (sic) condition as an evolving species, whose evolution takes place principally through its cultural innovations. In Ndembu society, socio-cultural landscapes are created, recreated and transformed and retransformed by human symbolic actions of the community through rituals. The peo- ple perform these rituals as social mechanism for resisting and reaffirming their humanity and develop new ways of be- ing and becoming a more just community so that social healing can follow in the community. In reference to Ndem- bu cosmology, Catherine Bell (1997:40) argues, rituals do not merely restore social equilibrium, rather are “part of the ongoing process by which the community was continually redefining and renewing itself.” Turner (1964:30-31) writes that any symbol in ritual involves a dynamic exchange between their two poles that is the sensory and ideological. The sensory or normative pole concentrates on the very literal physiognomies of the symbol as a way to provoke desire and feelings. The second is the ideological pole which challenges status quo and seeks to rearrange social norms and cultural values of people. Ac- cording to Turner (1969:108), ideologically, Ndembu sym- bolic actions in the ritual have been utilized as “the power of the weak” that enabled the weak to break free from cultural bounds of society as long as they remained within the spac- es of the ritual. This does not mean that the symbolic inver- sion had an immediate impact on the general society broad- ly after the ritual but points to the fact that traditional people ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 89 have instruments to critique, subvert and resist dominant social order. The subversive nature of rituals in some African societies made Gluckman to classify them as “rituals of rebellion”. They are rituals of rebellion as they demand resistance to life denying socio-cultural, economic and political arrange- ment through enactment of the possible just social order. As Bell (1997:41) observes, the sensory pole is an inversion of the sensual experiences associated with a particular symbol which are expected to shape the resultant associated ideo- logical values into people’s consciousness, “endowing the ideological with sensory power and the sensory with moral power.” Therefore, the ritual is more than just presenting the social realities by a symbol but a more subtle means for en- gaging in the process of transformation of social order and reordering of power relations. That is why there are various rituals entrenched with a specific symbolic inversion. For instance, they are those in which people went on a kind of hunger strike, those in which the king/leaders are reduced to servants especially before coronation, in some people be- haved like certain animals, others are based on gender re- versals and many other rituals of symbolic resistances have been reported by various anthropologists across the conti- nent (Kuper 1961; Norbeck 1963; Turner 1969; Schröter 2004; Creider and Creider 1997; Sanders 2000). This sug- gests that the ritual can never be an end in itself it always points to the way people must live out their lives once emerge out of the liminalities of the ritual. It points to what must be changed in the ordering of life and society. It is in a kind of a context that Jesus instituted the Holy Communion as a resistance to the injustices that he struggled against such as gender inequality, poverty, disease, ideological en- slavement, violence and all forms of marginalisation, dis- Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 90 crimination and injustice. As explained below, Holy Com- munion was ritualization of human resistance against anti- life forces. THE HOLY COMMUNION MISSIO DEI AS MUNDUS IN- VERSUS In order to demonstrated the missiological implications of the Holy Communion as mundus inversus, I draw on the inter- views I conducted in Zambia in the first half of 2016 for the research project funded by the John Templeton Foundation, administered by the Nagel Institute of Calvin College under the theme “Christianity Theology: African Realities and Afri- can Hope.” I wanted to find out how PAOG-Z ministers un- derstand the Holy Communion both in relation to the mission of God and in Zambian society in particular. What became clear during this research was the extraordinary missiologi- cal imagination with which some pastors conceptualise the Holy Communion. This was born out of the interviews I con- ducted with five pastors in PAOG-Z in different churches in various cities in Zambia. For example, Clement Kunda of PAOG-Z in Ndola describes Holy Communion in missiologi- cal terms: The Holy communion, it had a symbol beyond just his [Jesus] death but also as a ritual of engaging with social issues of his context at that time, because the people he ministered to, many of them had no bread … the people in need of food in Palestine had no food there were peasants … Holy Communion had more than just a sym- bol of his death but a symbol of challenging the status quo of his society those who had no food, so that is why people ate as a resistance of those or to the powers of that time who had neglected the masses and they had acquired wealth for themselves. ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 91 In Christians and Roman Rule in the New Testa- ment, Richard J. Cassidy (2001) describes the political and economic conditions of Augustus’ rule in more detail. He writes that Roman elite enjoyed great wealth from the purse of conquered colonies and the trade that increased as the borders moved outward. The largest population of 95 per- cent of Roman Empire at the time of Jesus was peasant and lived in abject poverty. They were impoverished to the bone. G.E.M.D.S. Croix (1981:14) in The Class Struggle in the An- cient Greek World argues that the peasantry community in the Roman Empire was “thoroughly and effectively exploited than most other societies which rely largely upon peasant population for their food supplied.” In agreement with Croix, Amos Yong (2010:44), in his book, In the Days of Caesar, details how the peasant provided cheap labour and produce goods for elite consumption besides paying all kinds of tax- es on produce, sales taxes, temple taxes, occupational tax- es, custom taxes, transit taxes, and many others. Raymond Nyirenda of the Northmead Assembly of God in Lusaka ar- gues that, The ordinance of Holy Communion in my view ushers in a new order and if you look at the life of Christ, he was ushering a new order. That did not settle well with the then status quo because even the way Christ expected people to relate to one another in this new order is very different … from what was obtaining then. That is why you find that when the Apostles broke bread which was kind of communion was a follow up from this institution. They did not only break bread but they shared what they had in common, they reached out to each other’s needs and so forth. So it was really ushering in a new order where people in this order because he gave us his body, his body was broken for each one of us that we might be whole, that we must receive the newness of life. New- ness of life based on kingdom values, based on his teaching and values which was to reach out to one an- Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 92 other, care for one another which was not to look out to our own interests. This argument seems to be suggested that participation in the Holy Communion signifies belonging to ‘a new order.’ The church as an agent of ‘a new order’ is sustained by its practice of the Holy Communion. Yet this practice is not for the church itself but for sake of the whole world— participa- tion in the Holy Communion has implications for participation in the mission of God. This means that the ritual has signifi- cance only as God’s means for engaging the whole world. Nyirenda brings a contextual dimension to the church’s par- ticipation in the Holy Communion. He stresses, “it has social implications in as far as the social order is concerned be- cause this new life has to be lived out in our context and if we are going to live out in a context where there is lack, bro- kenness and so forth. So this new life must affect positively our social context.” Aaron Ngwira, Bishop in PAOG-Z and senior pastor at Evangel Assembly of God in Chingola agrees, “I believe so, it does. Knowing what it represents and practising it as an ordinance, makes one to lead a sub- jective social engagement.” Similarly Kunda explains, “Em- blems, visual, carries more message which has implications for social engagement than Just words. It reminds believers about the everlasting love of God - God sent his Son to die for the world - this suggests the mission of God.” Even more forcefully is the argument coming from Nyirenda: This is because of the new life we have received in Christ that expects no less than engaging holistically. In fact in my view then Holy Communion should not only remind us of the new life only but the unity we have in Christ be- cause this new dispensation that has been ushered by the new covenant reminds us that we are one in Christ. There is neither Greek nor Jew, [neither] Gentile nor Greek. It also reminds us of coming against issues of so- ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 93 cial injustice because in the day of Jesus Christ there were divisions, there were issues of favouritism, segrega- tion, marginalisation, gender injustice, poverty, poor leadership, putting one race above the other and so forth. But in this new dispensation this is to be discarded. Nyirenda further argues: What is wrong about gender injustice, tribalism, racism and nepotism and discrimination is when we now start marginalising or start considering other people inferior or start disadvantaging other people then we have departed from the norms of Christ from the teachings or dictates of this new life or from the dictates of this new unity. Be- cause what is condemned is when you start this segrega- tion, this marginalisation, this disadvantaging of people that is what is condemned but working on the footing, re- lating on the same footing there been equity, there been equality of all … no one comes in before the other then we are living in keeping with the teachings of Jesus Christ, we are living in keeping with the norms of this new life. So we should affect society to the extent that they realise that … Christ preaches that there is no one who is more human than the other, there is no [one] that is supe- rior [to] the other... So really, Holy Communion talks of this new dispensation, ushers in a new order that re- quires us to live as one, that requires us to live selfless lives, to consider others, to minister to others, and to reach out to the needs of others, to really care for one another and the world. The interesting aspect of the above statements is that Holy Communion is understood as not only a ritual that unites the Christian community but the very act of practicing it is itself an engagement in the mission of God. In his The Symbolic Imagination, Robert Barth (2001) argues that the Holy Communion is encrypted in a symbol language – a primary language through which human beings have always made sense of the mysteries of God. The ritual, as Kunda also Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 94 explains that the Holy Communion reveals that which can be known about “the mystery of God and divine mission on earth”. Kunda further notes, “The Holy Communion takes a ritual form, this is well known in African culture, as this is be- lieved to open an access to God who in turn endows the rit- ual with its sacredness”. This means that the ritual makes sense to be understood as a ritual of resistance in keeping with African worldview, Ndembu in particular. RECLAIMING TRANSFORMATIVE HOLY COMMUNION MISSIOLOGY The very existence of the church as ‘a new order’ in the world is meant to be a divine symbolic resistance to injustice and evil in the world. The church resists evil in the world by enabling its member to live contrary to prevailing social or- der permeated by injustice, inequality, consumerism, vio- lence, discrimination, racism, ethnocentrism, corruption and all evils that define it. The argument here is that the Holy Communion, then, is a set of symbols that Jesus chose to use as symbolic inver- sion of everything that has gone wrong in the world. It is God’s missional vehicle for engaging the world. The church, through its regular re-enactment of the Holy Communion functions as both a concrete expression of “God’s yes” to the world which is also “God’s no” to injustice and violence in the world. In the institution of the Holy Communion Jesus chose two symbols which were common in Palestine in the first century, namely, ‘bread’ and ‘wine’ (Luke 22:14-20). There are lessons that can be gleaned from the context of the Holy Communion: ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 95 First, these symbols therefore, point to pervasiveness of sin in human life and society which is the root of all evil.7 Ngwira explains, The emblems of bread and wine represent the broken body of Christ which is a symbol of broken world, starva- tion, hunger or suffering. The blood he shed on Calvary for the remission of sin…also can represent thirsty and lack in the world. Kunda stresses, “ultimately these symbols point to more than just violent and unjust death of Jesus but to the realities of human struggles during Jesus’ time.” “If the Holy Com- munion has to do with the new covenant as understood in Assemblies”, Nyirenda argues, then that indicates “a new community – formation of a new order different from the one that existed. This can only be possible when the church live differently from the way of the world.” These perspectives are similar to R. Alan Streett’s (2013) argument. He high- lights that the symbols of bread and wine were the most basic need of the majority of people in first century Pales- tine. Even today, food (bread) and drinking (wine) remain indispensable need in human lives. The right to good deity is the right to life. Life and food can- not be artificially separated. It is food that sustains life. In Zambia today, every day, most of unemployed men and women; street kids wake up every day searching for food wherever it can be found, mostly in the garbage (Dube 1997). Musa Dube (1997) writes that those who have jobs work hard to ensure that food is available in their homes. Nations around the world are working tirelessly developing and reformulating economic strategies that can guarantee 7 R. Alan Streett (2013) in his interesting work engages with human torture in Latin America from Eucharistic perspective and demonstrates how tor- ture was implicated in Jesus’ institution of Eucharist. Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 96 food security. That how essential food is in sustaining hu- man life, without which life cannot be sustained. The same could be said about drinking, especially clean wa- ter. The recent discussions on Biblical archaeology have demonstrated how wine is also historically, archaeologically indispensable and there is written evidence for its central place across ancient Mediterranean. In the Roman period, wine was cheap enough for almost everyone to afford (though some of it was of low quality). Archeologists, Ran- dall Heskett and Joel Butler (2012) in their ground-breaking book, Divine Vintage: Following the Wine Trail from Genesis to Modern unearthed that wine was drunk for health and hy- gienic purposes as most water was polluted. Wine was also added to water as purifying agent. Thus, wine may have functioned as water which is necessary for human survival. Second, Jesus reclined at the table with the marginal and the poor. Dennis Smith (1987:623) who has done an exten- sive research on the Greco-Roman tradition of reclining at the table noted that the practice of reclining for the meal was fundamentally a mark of social status and determined boundaries in which one might transverse. He (2012:24) ob- serves that those who reclined at the same table had their ranks relative to one another. The mixing of social classes was forbidden. In fact, Smith (2012, 1987) believes that the practice was universal throughout the Greco-Roman world. At the time of Jesus not everyone had the right to recline at the table. Reclining was extended only to the freemen, par- ticularly Roman citizens. Part of the banquet discourse was to remind those who reclined of their social status by the fact that they reclined. Smith (1987:623) notes, in the Greco- Roman tradition of reclining at the table, women, children, foreigners and slaves were to sit when they ate as they had no rights to recline. In contrast, at the Holy Communion, ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 97 people who seemed to have no rights to recline at the table reclined with Jesus. In doing so, Jesus symbolically resisted the reciprocity and status-seeking of Roman and Jewish re- ligious leaders’ meals, by reclining on the same table with those who society denied the rights to equality. Less obviously, Jesus engaged in the mundus inversus not just by his choice of symbolisms of bread and wine but also by his choice of people who reclined with him at the table. He used the already well established elements, essential to human survival, which are at the base of global human struggle (violence and injustice). He used them figuratively as tools for resisting the powerful and the rich in the Roman Empire. He used the Greco-Roman meal etiquette that pro- moted injustice and inequality to subvert the empire. Thus, the disciples who shared in the Holy Communion were aware of Jesus’ subliminal message. This was a simple but clear reminder to the community of faith that God’s will is that there should be food and clean water for all but that food is not readily available because of structural injustice (Dube 1997).8 The fact that PAOG-Z functions with an open invitation to Holy Communion, means anyone, everyone who believes in Jesus – baptized or not baptized - can choose to partake of the Holy Communion. This demonstrates that all are equal and must have access to life-giving resources that humanis- es. It means that to eat bread and drink wine in the Holy Communion ritual is to resist against poverty, water pollution which encapsulates all anti-life and death dealing forces wherever they are found. This means that partaking of the 8Musa W. Shomanah Dube (1997) discusses the Lord Prayer in the context of globalisation which she sees as grandchild of colonialism and imperial- ism. She gives a very interest discussion on the priority of food in the Lord’s Prayer. Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 98 Holy Communion is not a pleasant thing, for in the ritual, be- lievers are confronted with their own contribution and per- petuation of evil and collective human injustice and violence experienced daily in their communities. It is eating and drink- ing for resistance against child starvation, gender injustice, for the minority and all those denied human rights, ecologi- cal destruction, poor governance, corruption, life-denying public policies and all anti-life forces. This raises some ques- tions: in what ways does participation in the Holy Commun- ion help the Christian community become social conscious? How can we practice the Holy Communion for social trans- formation? It is not just a ritual of reconciliation for the es- tranged but also a ritual of radical but silent resistance against anti-life forces in society.9 In Africa today, Holy Communion presents the enduring vio- lence and systemic injustice manifesting through massive poverty, terrorism and extremism, migration, ecological cri- sis, Ebola, HIV and AIDS, gender injustice and inequality, rape, civil wars, religious violence, ethnicity, racism, greedi- ness, xenophobia, corruption, capitalism, consumerism and many other life-destroying forces. Is the church promoting “a new social order” based on justice and equality through its practice of Holy Communion? How can the church deliber- ately and decisively engage in Holy Communion bearing in mind its symbolic inverse nature? According to the re- spondents, the Holy Communion has to be done within the context of prevailing social challenges to proclaim the dawn of an alternative or new social order, commonly referred to as the World Turned Upside Down, which Jesus demon- 9 It is important to also note that in the context of the ritual of the Holy Communion, Jesus also gave a discourse on the kind of leadership he expected to aid people in symbolic resistance (Luke 22). ‘Rituals of resistance, weapons of the weak’: Toward an African Pentecostal transformative Holy Communion Missilogy. 99 strated in symbolisms of the Holy Communion. For during the inauguration of Jesus - Jesus refused to eat bread and drink wine for these are the foundation of human needs and are a result of much injustice and violence in the world. By resisting, he introduces a new community that should look out for the needs of each and thereby become an extension of the incarnation of Christ. The Holy Communion demands alternative living for it reaffirms Jesus alternative community which reenacts the Kingdom of God’s principles of justice, peace and righteousness. Thus, symbolisms of bread and wine are related to God’s mission in the world that is transmitted by them and its pur- pose. This can be termed as Holy Communion from the margins which seeks to counteract injustices in life, church, and society. This is the kind of Holy Communion that can contribute to the formation of transformative spirituality and mission. It can be argued that transformative Holy Commun- ion in the sanctuary only has full integrity when the commu- nity of faith choose to re-enact both symbolically and practi- cally specific social challenges in their daily life. It seeks to be an alternative Holy Communion consciousness against the perception that Holy Communion is only about unsocially engaged remembrance based on cerebral, psychological exercise to recollect past events of Jesus thereby it contin- ues monotonous into the limbo of meaningless ritual which are done for the sake of fulfilling certain religious duties. It is participation in Messianic resistance against social death, anti-life forces. This is why the church’s neglect of symbolic inverse in the Holy Communion has been so catastrophic, and is closely linked to consumerism, capitalism and other injustice and violence. The call is to reclaim the symbolic inversion of the Holy Communion as it missiological motif. Theologia Viatotum 40-2-2016 100 CONCLUSION It can be concluded that the Holy Communion is a paradig- matic ritual of resistance which has as its paramount con- cern with bread and wine as instruments for reordering of social relationships for justice and equality. 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