I am not sure who coined the phrase, “history repeats itself”, but it is characteristic of many cliches in that  it is simple and easy to blurt out while lacking both accuracy and clarity.  First of all, history does not repeat anything.  History is another way of referring to the past, a moment in time outside of the present or a past event.  Although the past may have continuing consequences put into motion by certain actions, history is not the subject of those actions.  In fact history does nothing.  History is a designation of time, nothing more.

Now if we want to say that history indicates that given a particular set of circumstances, people seem to have a proclivity for repeating certain decisions, or that people fail to learn from the past, or that people who are ignorant of the past fail to learn from other people’s mistakes, then I think we are now saying something that is both more accurate and clearer.

This may seem to be a silly point to make, but it does seem to me that the phrase “history repeats itself” occurs in settings where people seem intent on refusing or reassigning the responsibility for either the history that they or others created or the history they are in the process of creating.  It strikes me as being similar to the phrase, “well, that’s just the way I am!”  Really?  Like things could not be different, like other choices could not be made, like a different history could not be created, or a different story written.

Next time you think about saying, “well, after all, history just repeats itself”, reflect for a moment on the people who made the choices and their reasons for doing so and then assign them the responsibility for the decisions they made.  History does not repeat itself; people make choices.

What America experienced in the early nineteenth century, West Africa experienced in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth centuries.  Just as the religious landscape of America was carved out by men and women empowered by a democratic spirit and a populist gospel that called for all people to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, so the religious landscape of West Africa was shaped by powerful charismatic figures who harnessed the egalitarian power present in spiritual experience to empower poor and marginalized Africans.  These charismatic leaders laid the foundation for African Independent Churches.

 The nation state apparatus of Sub-Saharan Africa was created by Europeans in the late nineteenth century during a period known as the “scramble for Africa”.  At the Berlin Conference of 1884 the Europeans decided to carve up Africa among themselves in order to gain access to the continent’s rich mineral and human resources and to bring civilization/Christianity to this dark and pagan continent.

The problem was that no one bothered to consult the Africans about this plan to civilize them.  To quote Lord Salisbury, Britain’s Prime Minister, “We have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where we were or who lived there.”

By the early twentieth century there was growing unrest as Africans began to push back against European colonization.  In an attempt to find a voice in a colonial world that systematically disenfranchised them, Africans discovered that Christianity provided them with a powerful means of personal expression.  Much like it did for slaves in America, the biblical story provided Africans with a powerful tool for a addressing the many social and political injustices they suffered under colonial rule.  In the biblical story God used the mouths of humble but powerful prophets to pronounce his judgments against social and political oppression and injustice.  In West Africa in the early twentieth century two of these self proclaimed prophets were Garrick Sokari Braide and William Wade Harris.

 Braide was from the Niger Delta.  Known for his gifts of prayer, prophecy and healing, large crowds gathered whenever he preached.  He railed against the use of charms and other former pagan symbols and demanded a complete observance of Sunday as a day of rest and prayer.  It was said that he once called up a massive storm to punish those who defied Sabbath observance, but Braide focused his significant popularity and preaching on the eradication of alcoholism.  Three million gallons of gin and rum were consumed each year in the towns and villages of the Niger Delta.  His campaign was so effective it threatened the excise revenues being generated for the colonial powers making him a political problem.  Some of his many followers joined the Catholic Church but a large number joined together to create Christ Army Church.  One of the local newspapers declared that Braide was anointed by “the God of the Negro” to offer Africans an alternative to Western Christianity.

 The prophet of Liberia/Ivory Coast was William Wade Harris.  Harris was arrested for taking part in several political uprisings.  After his participation in the Glebo War of 1920 he was imprisoned and while in jail he reported that the angel Gabriel visited him and commissioned him a prophet.  He was to preach repentance, abolish fetish worship and baptize converts.  He preached against alcohol, demanded respect for authority, tolerated polygamy but forbade adultery.  During his services he would sing and dance while playing the “celestial harp”.  Harris provided Africans with a popular religious outlet for addressing the political and social issues of their day.  If they respected authority it was their choice, not because they were threatened.  Christianity did not need a European blessing or overseas sponsorship.  It found a home in African hearts without the need to offer civilization as a prerequisite.   Though he never promoted or organized them himself, many of his followers later created what became know as Harris Churches.

 God seems to be okay about allowing some wild and crazy guys into the safe, secure and structured world of His church at times.  Elias Smith, Lorenzo Dow, Garrick Braide and William Harris are not the first and they will not be the last.  After all, folks weren’t too sure what to make of the locust and honey eating John the Baptist either.

After more than two thousand years, how does the Christian faith remain vital, energetic, compelling and relevant for life, generation after generation?  What keeps it from becoming tepid, boring, perfunctory and irrelevant?  I would suggest that part of the answer can be found in periods of Christian history when things got a little crazy, a little out of control, times when all efforts by church authorities to enforce conformity seemed to be wasted efforts.  I am not sure that one can or should plan these crazy, wild, out of control times nor am I sure that trying to do so is such a good idea; nevertheless, it would seem that there are historical periods in the life of the church when God seems to be okay with a little craziness that shakes things up a bit and restores some sense of vitality and relevance to a faith that sometimes lacks energy and life.

Over the next two weeks I will explore two such “crazy periods” in Christian history.  One occurred in the America in the early nineteenth century and the other happened in West Africa in the early twentieth century.  What I find interesting is the similar circumstances in which these events occurred and the similar personalities that emerged from those circumstances. 

First, America in the early nineteenth century, a time Nathan Hatch described as a period when “assertive common people wanted their leaders unpretentious, their doctrines self-evident and down to earth, their music lively and singable, and their churches in local hands.”  During this period following the Revolutionary War many of the traditional political, social and religious authorities imported from Europe were neutralized and many of the previous constraints that controlled religious behaviors and beliefs were thrown off.  The result was the rise of men like Elias Smith and Lorenzo Dow who stormed heaven by the back door with little more than their own charismatic personalities and a unique brand of democratic language that drew the common people to hear their latest version of the Christian faith.

Elias Smith was a self-taught Yankee, committed Jeffersonian and former Baptist preacher who decided to reshape the faith in accordance with his own conscience and personal biblical interpretation.  His primary influence was as a publisher writing pamphlets, tracts, books, gospel songs and newspapers.  He used these publications to promote his idea that people are free to think for themselves and search the Bible for themselves without the need for theological training or clerical permission.  His views led him to reject conventional medicine for more home grown remedies.

Lorenzo Dow was a self-promoting revivalist preacher and writer who traveled the country delivering hundreds of sermons with humorous and dramatic flair.  He was an actor by profession who utilized his talents to communicate a gospel that was lively, earthy, and utterly entertaining.  He claimed that God guided him through dreams and visions, that he could see into people’s hearts and predict the future. His theology was a combination of simple biblicism and common sense meant to appeal to the average person with no formal theological or biblical training.

And how did the traditional church authorities of the day respond to men like Smith and Dow?  The German Reformed theologian and preacher Philip Schaff made this observation upon his arrival in America, “Every theological vagabond and peddler may drive here his bungling trade, without passport or license, and sell his false wares at pleasure.  What is to become of such confusion is not now to be seen.”

 If you think what Schaff described was strange or unique, next week we will look at similar events that occurred in West Africa in the early twentieth century.

We are in week four of a series that began by asking the following question, why do some organizations find it next to impossible to affect real cultural change even when faced with the clear signs of decline or with a crisis that threatens to undermine or destabilize them?  My answer, they have not developed the muscular leadership and courage necessary to overcome their own history.  Overcoming your history could be defined as the ability to critique and honor your history simultaneously.

I have been using Edgar H. Schein’s work on organization culture to get at this issue of overcoming history. Schein identifies three levels to any organization that must be recognized and evaluated if one is to understand the culture of that organization.  For three weeks I have offered reasons why each of these organizational levels offer significant challenges to any organization trying to overcome its history in order to move forward and claim a healthier and more productive future.

Let’s finish this series on a more positive note shall we?  So, if an organization learns to overcome its history, what are the benefits?  What would it be like to serve in an institution that had discovered the critical balance between honoring its history while practicing a healthy form of self-criticism?

First, you would spend your time and energy shaping a future based on a clear set of mutual values that supported a clearly articulated and shared mission.  The organization’s history, successes and failures, would be accessible and open for all to see whether they had been on the team for ten years, five years, or five days; therefore, assumptions, beliefs, perceptions and feelings about the organization’s direction and purpose would actually match the stated mission and vision of its leaders.  All strategies, goals and procedures would be filtered through the mission to ensure that structures and processes were efficient and effective and if it were discovered that the current structures and processes were not consistent with and supportive of the mission, they would be changed.

Second, the key to overcoming history is leadership.  There is absolutely no substitute for good leadership.  By opening up the past as a learning process leaders provide others with the freedom to focus on the future.   If leaders refuse to become the gatekeepers of that history by opening it up for scrutiny and question they create a work environment that encourages creativity, builds morale and gives good people a reason to stay.  A well led and healthy organization works hard at being conscious of its shared assumptions by openly sharing its history.    It intentionally helps newcomers to understand how and why the values of the institution emerged from its history.  It responds to crisis as an opportunity to grow rather than a threat to its stability.  It fosters an environment of participation in which questions and dialogue are encouraged and it invites critiques of structure and process without fearing that its current strategies, goals, or philosophies will be threatened.

The point is, with good leadership and a commitment to buidling a healthy culture through honest communication, you can overcome your history.

We are in week three of a series that began by asking the following question, why do some organizations find it next to impossible to affect real cultural change even when faced with the clear signs of decline or with a crisis that threatens to undermine or destabilize them?  My answer, they have not developed the muscular leadership and courage necessary to overcome their own history.  Overcoming your history could be defined as the ability to critique and honor your history simultaneously.  

I have been using Edgar H. Schein’s work on organization culture to get at this issue of overcoming history.  This week we examine level three, structures and processes.  It is at this level that the dysfunctional nature of an organization is most clearly evident.  Dysfunction can be defined as an environment where employees use most of their imagination and energy to create processes that maintain a broken system.  Over time these valuable people become accustom to the dysfunction and begin to view it as normal until a new hire arrives that needs to be trained.

Level three-organizational structures and processes:  Why do we do it that way?  Does that make sense?  Is this an efficient, cost-effective or a good use of time and energy? Are these decisions being filtered through the organization’s vision and mission?  Anyone who has experienced a rookie year in an organization knows about the honeymoon period when you are allowed to ask obvious, disturbing and often accurate questions about the organization’s unique structures and processes. This honeymoon period is allowed in order to bring a newcomer up to speed on how things are done.  Certain amounts of history and information must be shared in order to acclimate this person to the convoluted way that the culture has learned to cope with the crisis and change that occasionally threatens its values and shared assumptions.  This orientation is done to help a new colleague learn the copping mechanisms necessary to function in a dysfunctional manner.  The result is a culture given to passive-aggressive tendencies where employees are taught to survive by smiling, not disagreeing and flying below the radar.  People in these cultures are afraid to criticize and reluctant to change because they are exhausted by continual directives to implement one hair-brained scheme after another that promise to fix the problems on level three but ignore the obvious failures at levels one and two.  This is not change, it is insanity disguised as innovation.

Quick Point:  most organizations do something known as “exit interviews” when supposedly departing employees are asked for their insights and observations regarding their experience with the organization.  Rumor has it that upper management distills these insights and observations for data that could be used to make the organization more effective or efficient.  This is just a rumor.  My suggestion is that organizations do “entrance interviews” immediately following the training of a new hire.  The new person is asked if anything seemed strange, bizarre, inefficient or just plain bonkers.  Then they are asked if they have any ideas or suggestions for correcting the situation.  I know this sounds crazy but it’s worth a try.

I planned to stop at this point but I changed my mind.  Next week I will discuss how an organization overcomes its history to create a healthy, creative and thriving community.

Last week we began this conversation about why some organizations find it next to impossible to affect real cultural change even when faced with the clear signs of decline or with a crisis that threatens to undermine or destabilize them.  I believe that a primary skill all growing and healthy organizations must acquire is the ability to overcome their own history.  Overcoming your history could be defined as the ability to critique and honor your history simultaneously.  Most organizations are all about the honor part but it is the ability to critique one’s own history that allows the freedom to create a new future.

I am using the work of Edgar H. Schein to highlight the three levels of organization culture that if not understood and addressed will prevent an organization from realizing the kind of changes that allow it to overcome its history and create a new future.   Schein’s three levels of organizational culture from the least visible level to the most visible they are:  1) underlying assumptions, beliefs, perceptions and feelings, 2) values expressed in terms of strategies, goals and philosophies, and 3) structures and processes. This week we will discuss level two.

Level two contains the values that have been constructed to maintain the underlying assumptions of the organization.  These values are often attributed to the previous leader or to the founder of the organization and they reflect the institution’s strategies, goals, and philosophies that are the source of the culture’s shared assumptions.  Originally these values are productive, successful and provided the organization with a sense of stability and security.  The organization comes to depend on these values in times of crisis and instability; however, if over time they begin to prove inadequate or inappropriate for managing crisis the organization can be faced with a high level of anxiety caused by the growing discrepancy between its underlying assumptions and the failure of its values.  Rather than questioning its assumptions and assessing its values, some institutions resort to distorting, denying, projecting or falsifying the data as a defense mechanism against the possibility that its shared assumptions and values are no longer accurate or adequate.  Even if those in the organization know that the values have become mere words used to market the organization to its external constituents, the very idea of challenging either the assumptions or the values is taboo.  The point where this dysfunctional response of denial has the most immediate and visible effect is at level three, the structures and the processes of the organization. 

So if your wondering what it looks like to work in one of these organizations,  tune in next week for Part III.

Have you ever wondered why it is that some organizations just cannot seem to create or facilitate real change no matter how much they talk about it or how many meetings, confabs and informal discussions they schedule?  Well, there are many reasons but one of the most ignored reasons is that they are unable to overcome their own history.  This problem of  institutional history is especially difficult if the organization experienced a period or periods of significant success.   Affecting change in any organization presupposes the ability to do two things simultaneously:  celebrate and honor your history while also allowing an honest critique of it.  This honor/critique balance is what provides an organization the freedom to create its future by thinking strategically and empowering its leaders to make the needed changes necessary to realize that future. 

Over the next three weeks I will be utilizing the work of Edgar H. Schein to highlight the three levels of organizational culture that if not understood and addressed will prevent an organization from realizing the kind of changes that allow it to overcome its history and create a new future.   Schein identifies three levels to any organization that must be recognized and evaluated if one is to understand the culture of that organization. From the least visible level to the most visible they are 1) underlying assumptions, beliefs, perceptions and feelings, 2) values expressed in terms of strategies, goals and philosophies, and 3) structures and processes. This week we will discuss level one. 

Level one, underlying assumptions, poses the most difficult challenge because it is the least conscious level of an organization but drives most of the decision-making.  One of the reasons this level is unconscious or subconscious is because its power to shape the culture depends on a shared history, but that shared history is not fully understood or shared by everyone in the organization.   Most people working in a organization have little if any knowledge of the “whole history” that has shaped the institution.  Their knowledge comes in bits and pieces and is seldom accompanied by an interpretive grid that helps them negotiate the rituals, behaviors and practices that have become institutional tradition.  If an institutional history has been written, it is seldom a critical piece of scholarship that serves as a helpful road map for the organization as it attempts to evaluate the more dysfunctional habits that frustrate attempts at real change. 

The unhealthy power of subconsciously shared assumptions is that they utilize a fragmentary history of former institutional success to create an environment in which any attempt to question the current leadership or decision making is viewed as awkward, inappropriate or just plain disloyal.  Dysfunctional cultures tend to produce dysfunctional leaders entrusted with the task of being true to the organization, which being interpreted means, they try to maintain the institution as it was when it was at its best.  Another way of saying this, the organization’s future is based on its past success and its leaders will be chosen based on how well they can create a future that reflects its past.

Next week, Overcoming Your History-Part II.

The Christian faith is full of tensions that make living the faith difficult at times.  Christians have been wrestling with these tensions for over two thousand years.  Though we would like to finally resolve some of these tensions and be done with them, I would suggest that a great part of learning to live life with true joy and freedom is found in learning to navigate life’s tensions rather than trying to fix or control them.  I just thought that I would list a few of the tensions apparent in the Christian faith that make it a challenging way to think and live, because after all, Christianity is a faith that demands both orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  That, by the way, is the first tension.

Trintitarian Theology- God is 3 and 1, that is not even good math but it is the long standing testimony of the church since the first century.  How this understanding of God works itself out logically and theologically is, well, it’s a tension.

Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, simultaneously, one person, two natures, where the two natures are not in conflict with one another.

The Church is the body of Christ, visible and invisible, one and many, born of the spirit yet struggling with sin.

Christians claim to be citizens of two worlds, heaven and earth.  How does that work exactly?  So do we strive for justice and mercy in this world or believe that God will provide them in heaven?  Or is the answer yes?

According to our faith, Christians are incarnate spirits living through the power of Jesus’ resurrection.  So we are more than our bodies and we live everyday via a power that defeated death. 

I think that is enough for today.  Just listing these six tensions left me needing a nap.  If you manage to resolve any one of these during the next week please let me know so I can cross it off my list.  Oh, and explain to me how you did it so I’ll have material for my next blog.

The last couple of posts have focused on the theme of cross-cultural Christianity.  The Christian faith has been re-translated and communicated across many cultures over the past two thousand years.  Because Christianity has no privileged culture that carries the faith, it has been the responsibility of Christians to share the gosepl of Jesus Christ and then allow other cultures to translate and communicate the gospel in a way that is true and authentic to who they are.  This process is messy, unpredictable and dependent on the Holy Spirit because there is no guarantee that people will “get it right”.  What if they screw it up, fail to say it right or communicate it in a way that makes no sense to us?  What if they use different ideas, language, idioms and concepts to re-translate the gospel?  Is it possible for the gospel to move from culture to culture to culture while maintaining the unity of the faith and being true to the Jesus narrative without also carrying the language, ideas, concepts and idioms of the previous culture that “got it right”?

I will leave you with the following three creeds that represent three cultural approaches to the gospel:  The Apostles Creed (one of the earliest if not the earliest creed of the faith), The Nicene Creed (created out of the trinitarian controversies of the fourth century), The Maasai Creed (created by the Maasai tribe of Africa in the nineteenth century)

Apostles Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:  Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell.  The third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;  from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.

Nicene Creed: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.  Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.  And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.  And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Maasai Creed: A man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village,  who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the  power of God, until finally he was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed  hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the  grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day he rose from  the grave. We are waiting for Him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

So who got it right?

I asked some questions last week about the ways in which Christianity engages or fails to engage culture.  One reader responded by writing that Christians have often made the mistake of trying to turn their faith and the church into an ideal rather than allowing it to be what it was intended to be, a living, transformational experience with Christ.

This practice of trying to make the Christian faith or the church an ideal reminded me of two quotes, the first by Albert Schweitzer and the second by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“History can destroy the present, or reconcile the present to the past.  It can even, to an extent, allow the present to project itself into the past, but it cannot construct the present.”  And I would add that neither can history construct the future.

“The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself.  He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly…When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure.  When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash.  So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself…Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”

For all the times that Christians have turned the faith into an ideal,  how often has that ideal become a pseudo-gospel that shuts others out?