Tempels learned Kiluba and ethnology after missionaries failed to convert Congolese

Evidence

As a missionary, Tempels’s primary concern was to find an efficient method that could help him successfully evangelize or Christianize the Congolese people in the dioceses of Kamina and Kolwezi. Dialogue with Africans emerged as a necessity in light of what he considered to be the failure of missionaries and himself to convince Africans to fully embrace Christianity. He started by learning local languages, especially Kiluba and Kiswahili, and did extensive ethnological study of local cultures in order to grasp people’s worldview, their understanding of God, their moral compass, the raison d’être of human existence, the meaning of life and their vision of the afterlife. This enabled him to convince Africans to embrace Christ and Christianity as the ultimate fulfillment of what is already found in African ancestral wisdom and spirituality. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 655

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Explains the genesis of Bantu Philosophy tempels studies; frames his project as finding common ground between Christianity and African spirituality — relevant to the fulfillment theology debate in African philosophy.

Related

• Tempels’s ethnographic study of African cultures served his goal of Christianization (similarity 0.94)
• Tempels’s dialogue with Africans arose from failed missionary conversion efforts (similarity 0.92)
• Tempels sought to understand Bantu thought only after missionary conversion failed (similarity 0.91)
• Tempels’s Congo work spawned the Jamaa movement despite church wariness of schism (similarity 0.90)
• Tempels’s thought is best understood through his whole corpus, not just Bantu Philosophy (similarity 0.89)
• Tempels’s missionary intent inverted into codifying Bantu philosophy (similarity 0.89)
• Questioning African intellect forced rethinking of colonial administration and mission methods. (similarity 0.88)
• Tempels transcended colonial dichotomies yet still framed Christianity as the standard of humanity. (similarity 0.87)
• Evangelization failure led Tempels to dialogue-based mission methods. (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels generalized Luba religious conclusions to all Africans, overwriting local voices (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels addressed Bantu Philosophy to colonizers seeking to Christianize Africans (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy aimed at more effective Christianization of the Bantu. (similarity 0.87)
• Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy was written as evangelization strategy responding to Luba resistance (similarity 0.86)
• Tempels argued Bantu culture merits philosophical recognition partly through resemblance to Christian Europe (similarity 0.86)
• Tempels urged missionaries to abandon European methodologies for African dialogue. (similarity 0.86)