David Tonghou Ngong: Adriaan, thank you for writing this engaging and richly suggestive book. You position Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature as a field-defining intervention. You seek to connect the study of religion and literature more broadly, but, more specifically, to link the study of African religions and theology, world Christianity, and the study of African literature. Could you provide us with the contours of your argument in terms of how you link these apparently disparate fields of study?
Adriaan Van Klinken: Thank you, David—it’s wonderful to have you as a reader of, and conversation partner about, my book, as I remember and appreciate your valuable reflections on my previous book, Kenyan, Christian, Queer.
Indeed, I position Decolonizing Christianities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature in between and across various fields of study, such as religion and literature, African religions and theology, world Christianity, and African literature. Although that might sound complex, the case for it is, actually, relatively simple: the mere observation that Christianity—in its various manifestations and dimensions—is a central theme in quite a few recent African literary texts. For reasons of focus and scope, I ended up working specifically with twenty-first-century Nigerian fiction (novels and short stories), recognizing that Nigerian literature is one of the most prolific sub-fields of contemporary African literature, and Nigerian Christianity one of the most vibrant and dynamic components of contemporary African Christianity. Arguably, the demographics alone support the argument that Christianity in Nigeria is a significant part of both African religious and global Christian realities (by 2060, the Christian population of Nigeria is projected to grow to 197 million, and the country is projected to have the third largest Christian population in the world, and the largest in Africa). Beyond demographics, Nigerian Christian culture, as well as its leaders and institutions, shape African and global Christianities—affecting, for instance, the Anglican Communion, transnational Pentecostal networks, and popular Christian music and movie cultures. Considering these observations, my book seeks to explore how Nigerian literary texts help us to understand Nigerian Christianity—offering creative representations of it, but also critical commentaries on the socio-political impact of Christian beliefs and practices, as well as constructive imaginations for alternative Christian futures. Doing so, I present literary texts as source material for the study of African religions, African theology, and world Christianity, in an approach somewhat similar to yours in Senghor’s Eucharist.
David: Thank you for capturing the methodology of your book and for showing how it is connected to mine. Your explanation leads me to another key methodological move you make related to the idea of decolonization. Decolonization seems to be important for the futures the book imagines. You note that the novellas and novels you engage “acknowledge that realizing [the] decolonial possibilities” they gesture towards is “a work in progress” (180–81). Could you say more about the vision of decolonization these literary texts are working with and provide a couple of vignettes regarding what decolonized Christianities in Africa look, or could look, like?
Adriaan: Thanks for asking about this key term, which is central in the book’s title and to my motivation for writing it. Let me begin by highlighting that the title deliberately uses the word “decolonizing” rather than “decolonization,” to indicate that I am discussing an ongoing and open-ended process, and that the central question explored in this book is how literary texts engage, imagine, and contribute to this process. The underlying motivation is that in the twentieth-century classics of Nigerian and broader African literature, such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), Christianity is depicted as a foreign religion and is problematized for its intricate connection to European colonialism and mission, and its disruptive impact on Indigenous communities and their religious culture. I noticed, however, a renewed interest in Christianity in the work of a new generation of writers—born after independence, in a period during which Christianity had become part of the social fabric of postcolonial societies. This observation led me to examine this group’s relationship to Christianity, the religion in which most of them were raised and with which, in many cases, they still identify. What stood out for me, when reading the texts with this question in mind, is that these writers weren’t primarily concerned with colonialism as a historic problem. Instead, they are concerned with the colonial legacies that continue to manifest in contemporary Christianity, while also invested in developing visions of how these legacies can be interrogated and overcome.
Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2003) is the most obvious case in point. This novel contrasts two versions of Catholic faith and devotion in postcolonial Nigeria: one, represented by the character of Papa Eugene, rigidly adheres to European missionary traditions, is antagonistic towards Indigenous religion and culture, and is both colonial and patriarchal; another one, represented by Aunty Ifeoma, is contextualized, seeks affinities with indigenous spirituality by acknowledging that the God of Christianity is the same as Chukwu, the Creator-God of Igbo religion, and even dares to imagine the Virgin Mary as black and as appearing on Nigerian soil in a move that is empowering and liberating to Kambili, the teenage girl-protagonist of the novel. Adichie thus explores a vision of decolonization in which Christianity is respectful towards Indigenous traditions while simultaneously being (pro-)feminist and liberating to women.
The central concerns of gender in this text is complemented by other novels that address questions of ecology, sexual diversity, interethnic and interreligious relations, and moral corruption. They connect critical issues in contemporary Nigeria—such as patriarchy, homophobia, environmental degradation, the demonization of religious others, and the ongoing trauma of the Civil War—to colonial and mission histories. Yet simultaneously, they also explore resources within Christian traditions that can help build cultures of diversity, neighborliness, reconciliation, and social justice, thus sketching the contours of decolonized Christianities. Hence, I state in the Conclusion that, “These literary texts recognize that Christianity is not intrinsically connected to the violence of colonialism and its aftermaths but can be redeemed and has decolonial possibilities. If decoloniality, in the words of Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, is about “a necessary liberatory language of the future for Africa,” the writers under discussion suggest that Christianity is one of the discursive archives offering the idiom for such language” (180).
David: This clarification dovetails into the issue of the public roles of the literary texts you engage in the book. You suggest that the novels you engage in the book bring to the public square important issues in Nigerian social and political life, thus, raising the possibility of public engagement with these issues. Could you say a little more about what you mean by this? Have any of the novels or novellas you engage in the book generated public conversations about a pertinent issue such as interreligious relations, queer oppression, the Biafra war, among others, in Nigeria?
Adriaan: Ah, the public role of literature is an interesting one, yet not straightforward. Indeed, a key argument I make is that Nigerian writers are social and religious thinkers, who in their work engage a range of current questions in Nigerian society. Doing so, they hold up a mirror to readers and to society more generally, stimulating awareness, reflection, and empathy. Thus, for instance, Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus engages the widespread problem of domestic and gender-based violence, and Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc (2014) draws critical attention to capitalist moral corruption, while E. E. Sule’s Sterile Sky (2012) interrogates the all-important question of Christian-Muslim relations and interreligious violence. In some cases, literary writing is a direct intervention in social and political affairs. A case in point is Chinelo Okparanta’s novel Under the Udala Trees (2015), which was written in response to the passing of the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (2013) that restricted LGBTQ+ rights in Nigeria.
Each of these texts bring important issues from and to the public square, questioning prevalent social attitudes and dominant modes of thinking, while also opening up alternative perspectives and thus enabling new social imaginations. Yet, the reception of such texts, the response to them, and their impact, is, of course, difficult to measure—and it would require a different research methodology than the one I used in my book, which is focused on the texts themselves.
Of course, a well-known writer such as Adichie is a public figure in Nigeria, and even though I haven’t examined the public reception of Purple Hibiscus as such, her commentary on gender issues, most notably through her essay “We Should All Be Feminists” (2014), has circulated widely and has generated public debate. A South African friend of mine, who is a teacher, recently told me that they use Purple Hibiscus in their class as a tool to open up conversations about religion, patriarchy, and gender-based violence. The same might happen in Nigerian schools, and with some of the other novels.
It is important to acknowledge that the reading public of these texts is a global one, certainly not limited to Nigeria. In fact, most of the texts I discuss in my book were first published in the United States or in the United Kingdom, suggesting that they are primarily aimed at a readership in the global North (although when I recently visited a bookshop in Abuja, I was pleased to see copies of most of the titles I discuss in my book, some of them in a local edition, suggesting that they circulate locally, too). Clearly, these books have a potential for public engagement globally that shouldn’t be underestimated. For instance, I learned about an LGBTQ+ book reading group in Belgium, which discussed Under the Udala Trees. For several members of the group, the novel debunked their stereotypes about religion, homophobia, and the (im)possibility of queer love in an African context.
For me, this and other examples illustrate the significant potential of literary texts not only to address critical social issues, but to educate and sensitize readers, wherever they are based. In other words, they allude to the world-making abilities of novels and other forms of creative writing.
David: I think you are right that these literary writers raise public awareness of pertinent issues and that the reception of their work may be more dispersed than circumscribed to Nigeria. The public roles of these writers remind me of your argument that they are also theologians, a point that is not often recognized when we read literary texts. One of the arguments of my book, Senghor’s Eucharist, is that Senghor, a poet, is also a theologian. Could you close us with a brief statement of what you would consider to be the theological visions of the writers you engage?
Adriaan: Let me try to answer this question by beginning to say something about theological methods. Obviously, literary texts are not systematic theological treatises, yet they creatively engage in religious thought. Sometimes, theologizing happens explicitly within the text, by certain characters engaging in theological arguments. For instance, in Under the Udala Trees, the teenage protagonist questions her mother’s claim that same-sex relationships are un-biblical and offers an alternative reading of the Bible. Similarly, Sterile Sky includes a conversation between two characters about whether religion(s) are inherently violent and how this relates to the nature of God. In other texts, theologizing happens more symbolically, such as through the appearance of sacred symbols, like a crucifix in Chris Abani’s Song for Night, or a painting of a black Virgin Mary in Purple Hibiscus, or a hymn in The Fishermen. Either way, the religious thinking that happens within, and emerges from, these texts is partial, dialogical, and incomplete, creatively suggesting directions and possibilities without nailing down religious truths. These literary theological methods themselves also reveal an underlying vision of theology as a contextual, dialogical, and open-ended quest for meaning, in response to the postcolonial conditions, the challenges of decolonization, and the threats to human and planetary life in Nigeria, Africa, and the world at large. Or, thinking about it, perhaps not a quest for meaning as such, in an abstract philosophical sense, but a quest for identity, community, and humanity, and the religious-ethical principles enabling this, such as compassion, empathy, justice, solidarity, reconciliation, and liberation.
