Last weekend’s church services, beginning with Good Friday, then Holy Saturday and finally Resurrection Sunday, offered an opportunity to reflect on how the Anglican Church in black townships has spent the past decade responding to competition from other denominations.
The occasion is a reminder of the haemorrhage in membership that the Anglican Church has suffered to churches of charismatic worship, most notably born-again Christians or Abazalwane, as they are called in Nguni languages.
In my church and community, the loss of membership accelerated in the 1990s, mostly among young people but also among those in their late 30s — lifelong members of the Anglican Church. And the roots of this exodus are not hard to trace.
African people are attracted to charismatic worship by the evocative nature of the vernacular choruses. In the Anglican Church, tradition dictates that congregants recite hymns primarily from Hymns, Ancient and Modern. The trouble with this practice is that singing becomes a chore for non-English speakers. Even with the guidance of a hymn book it degenerates into a meaningless recitation.
Of course, these hymns are translated, but even then they retain the structures of the melodies from the original texts. African-language choruses on the other hand, have an immediate, uplifting effect when sung.
Another factor that drove people away was a perceived lack of spiritual depth of the Anglican faith. This is because the structure of the service does not emphasise a deliberation on the word. The two lessons of the day are read at the beginning of the service and are never touched on again. Late arrivals, even by 15 minutes, miss out on a crucial part of the service.
The Anglican Church responded in two ways. The first was to move the Bible to the centre of worship by introducing home-based prayer and Bible study. The second was to embrace elements of charismatic worship.
Father Joseph Khanye, an Anglican priest and ethics scholar, has noted this change in methods of praise. He says that what the Anglican Church is doing now is exactly what gave rise to the now famous Methodist Male Choir, Amadodana ase Wesile.
The choir is renowned for its moving, tenor-driven, Xhosa-based melodies. It grew in the early 1900s as an attempt by missionaries to make the Methodist movement relevant to young Xhosa men in the Eastern Cape as well as on mines in the reef, hence the predominant use of Xhosa in their music.
A century later, the church seeks relevance in young lives. Now Anglican services are also different from those of 10 years ago. The ancient and modern hymns are interspersed with a selection of Amadodana’s repertoire and music of the Apostolic faith sung in Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho. The result has been to reinforce and enrich, rather than diminish, the Anglican way of worship.
Occasions like Good Friday attain a deeper meaning. The mood is unmistakably sombre. The altar servers and lay ministers look different — almost gothic — without their white surpluses, dressed only in red or black cassocks. The service retains some of its old features from more than a decade ago. One of these is a church elder’s prayer — in a shrill and untamed voice. When she reaches a crescendo, she trembles with sobs and, with a bit of imagination, you can picture Calvary all those 2 000 years ago.
The challenge now is to impart this renewed sense of spirituality to the little girl next to me at the Holy Saturday candle-lighting service that includes meditation and telling of the Acts of God throughout history and the renewal of baptismal vow. Sensing the weight and importance of this moment she has to bear the pain of dripping, hot wax without causing a disturbance. It is hard to tell whether the battle for souls has been won. There is still a trickle of people who toy with the idea of leaving to join Abazalwane.
Besides, there are other challenges. Aids and unemployment present a social, economic and moral dilemma that requires a collective, interdenominational response that will strengthen, rather than weaken, the church.