ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role and linkages of the African Christian church in issues of development. From its inception, the African church has provided the motivation for development packages to uplift the lives of the people in their situatedness. In this way, African Christianity continues to be durable in the transformation of society, particularly the rural communities in the African context. The study argues that the engagement of the rural communities in development activities is buttressed by the power of religion. There is no separation between religion (African Christianity) and development. Today, one of the common assumptions of secularism is that religion is confined to the private sphere of life. This study contends that the reality of the human life must re-deploy religion to the public arena of society that can neither be ignored nor contained within certain boundaries (Deneulin and Baro, 2009: 6). Accordingly, this study analyses some case-studies drawn from one historical or mainline African church, the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (hereinafter, UCCZ) on the ways it has grappled with development; thus it is specifically a historical-theological exploration on the theme of the ‘African church and development’ in Zimbabwe.
The UCCZ is a transmutation of what formerly was known by several names (File, 2/173, 1973: 4). For instance, it was the East Central African Mission in Gazaland (ECAMG), Northern Branch of the American Zulu Mission in Southern Africa (NBAZMSA), Rhodesian Mission of the American Board (RMAB), and American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM). The UCCZ was an outreach movement that made up the Disciples of Christ in the USA and Canada. The historical metamorphosis of the ABCFM into the United Church
of Christ (UCC) in America was celebrated on 25 June 1957 at Cleveland in Ohio (US) (Gunnemann, 1977: 13). The essence of the UCCZ mission work was captured in the Draft Policy Statement of 1906:
