The CET in COCZ is discussed through threefold critiques of ‘power, privilege and position’.

Entitlement on mission stations here cannot be succinctly stated, except their denial to create an indigenous church. This article attempts to capture this for contemporary Christian audiences not initiated in colonial-missionary history. Progress in the church is intermittently connected to statuses of mission stations. This article unapologetically presents a theoretical description, comparative illustration and applicability of CET in the COCZ.

In section ‘Paternal inheritance in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe’, the article engages elimination, conservation and reconstruction as contemporary discourses of mission station entitlements. Reconstruction takes into account how ‘power, privilege and position’ are historically constituted using capitalism, liberalism and individualism as constitutive categories that conserve, reconstruct or eliminate the COCZ governing ideology (Masengwe & Chimhanda 2020). Total elimination of autonomy can be replaced by its total opposite, heteronomy, which cleaves towards African philosophy (Masengwe 2020; Masengwe & Magwidi 2020).

The section entitled ‘Towards Critical Entitlement Theory in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe’ explores broader and diverse issues of ownership and administration to appreciate lack of material on CET in colonial history of missions in the COCZ. It generates themes that are elaborated and briefly commented on in the section ‘Paternalism and the constitution in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe’. They relate to the purpose of the church in society, criticising personalised and unaccountable family ministries (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021). Use of CET here does not prescribe or proscribe how to assess the canonical doctrines of property ownership in the COCZ, but to disprove foundations of austere doctrines of colonial missions. This requires us to discuss the CET.

Critical Entitlement Theory is being developed to assess the legacy and history of mission churches in Zimbabwe. A church is ‘ekklesia’, which means ‘called out ones’ or ‘assembly’ (Banana 1991:75) of the ‘saved ones’ (Ac 19:39). Christians act in keeping with the purpose of interpreting ‘God’s will in order to align their lives and the lives of those around them to God’s will’ (Gundani 2008:124). In Athens, Greece, ‘assembly’ represented a meeting of free citizens convening to decide on state laws, elections, appointing judges, declaring wars, making treaties, electing generals, assigning troops for military operations and allocating funds. William Barclay (1955) said:

Greek ‘ekklesia’ was Christianised to mean the assembled congregation of God’s people through faith in Jesus Christ. Interchangeably, it refers to congregation or denomination (Williams 2003:171). Thus, a church is (M’Clintock & Strong 1969):

It is a living organism and a functioning organisation (Van Reken 1999). God resides there, but it is run by humans. Mission stations are instruments used by principled heralds to convey this grace to the world (Dulles 1987:76). Mission stations are places where missionaries resided and carried out their activities in given areas. They facilitated colonisation. For the COCZ, they had three groups: American conservatives at Nhowe Mission (Mashonaland East), American liberals at Mashoko Mission (Masvingo) and New Zealanders at Dadaya Mission, Zvishavane (Midlands) (ColenBrander Avenue Church of Christ [CBACC] 1948–1965). Religious communities affected the real lives of indigenous populations through charities, education and health (Bowen 1996:70). Their funding come from donations and state funds and members understand future accountability as the basis of how they handle their Christian call (Dulles 1987:96). Authentic churches use relevant and impactful modes of ministry (ed. Villa-Vicencio 1986:viii) not hindered by governing ideologies (Halencreutz 1998:101–102) or existential issues to liberate people. This article criticises missionary unilateralism and black professionals’ entitlement to mission stations.

Firstly, entitlement uses ‘power, privilege and position’ by elites because mission entities are family enterprises (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021). This negates the assertion that the COCZ is not a denomination, requiring us to use critical denominational studies (CDS) to expose narrative instruments used on their entitlements. Missionary paternalism is perpetuated by contemporary references to their former glories. Critical denominational study criticises the use of appointees in ecclesial structures to perpetuate missionary paternalism that interferes with the context and particularity of black worship. Revolutionising this begins with radical dissatisfaction with the status quo, embracing its antithesis: freedom and liberation (Calmore 1992:62). Both CET and CDS combine to debunk dominant conceptions of perpetual white missionary ownership and administration of mission stations through ethical-legal calls to accept subjective experiences and living conditions of Africans.

Secondly, unilateralism continuously discriminates or excludes locals from mission stations (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021). They are dominated by chosen families, which replays domination, inequality and injustice from larger capitalist machineries interested in profit, accumulation, property and labour exploitation in globalised–liberal–capitalist models called ‘Symbols of a New Humanity’ (Cornell & Panfilio 2010:125–149). Mission stations thus become capitalist investments connected to paternal founders. Church ideals are sold out for foreign support in the world order of global democracy, information and technology and capital accumulation (Mills 2003). These ideals lay an oppressive foundation that alienates newer Christians from full adoption. Entitlements become reified through formalist modes of connection to missionaries, with utter disregard for ordinary believers (Masengwe, Machingura & Magwidi 2012). Reification here is idolisation of missionaries that disenfranchises new members. This article thus calls for eradication of foreign churches in Africa that promote yesteryear glories to disenfranchise contemporary believers.

Lastly, CET examines transformation of the church into an indigenous institution. It deals with persistent idiosyncrasies of black Christians as objects rather than subjects. Past narratives hinder such Christians to go beyond pervasive and brutal structures of oppression in socially engineered ecclesial ideologies. Rectification of the racialised ‘past’ was not in replacing white faces with black faces but radical transformation capturing the hermeneutic of existentialism in these pervasively colonised African spaces. The COCZ through the 2015 ‘historic bridge’ tried to break away from the past by crafting a new constitution (COCZ 2015). This new foundation transitions the ‘foreign-owned missionary COCZ to an indigenous owned COCZ’. It reduces past contrasts by engaging with local Christians. This accepts difference to increase dignity, freedom and equality in a multicultural, self-determined African Church (Masengwe & Chimhanda 2019, 2020). As a result of the haphazard transfer of mission stations at the departure of white missionaries, not conterminous with majority of members, the COCZ is currently in the middle of the metaphorical bridge, failing ‘to transform from a movement into Church’ (Magwidi 2019).

Thoughts and feelings of elimination interestingly are pampered by both mission administrators and ordinary Christians (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021). The contemporary status of mission stations using missionary paternalism help us to understand how entitlement contributed to historical divisions of mission societies such as the American and the New Zealander Missionary groups (Dadaya) and the sub-groups within the American group of instrumental (Mashoko) and non-instrumental (Nhowe) churches. They used paternal privilege to advance racism, ethnocentrism and tribalism, rather than Martin Luther King Junior’s hope that his children would be judged … by the ‘content of their character’ (Marle 1968:15). With CET, institutional boards cannot be appointed through familial adoption but by modern elite standards as stated by Chikwanda, a male paster at the Tshovani Church of Christ. Standards are usually not ambiguous; they reward hard-working individuals. Paternalists created dubious instruments that need to be eliminated. Eliminativism thus critically disaffirms the status quo but cannot claim to totally abandon paternalism, which must be collectively applied to reduce retrogressive effects of privatised practices in COCZ entities today. However, there are no unified perceptions to these critiques.

Conservativism advances the idea that names and certain labels need to be retained, including legal protection, whilst reviewing paternal attitudes, practices and systems. Wanton practice of eliminativism thus can be a serious error as missions originated with individuals and have shaped identities and dignities of families. Abstractions in Restoration churches unfortunately ‘evoked a false sense of continuity between past, present and future and had helped to preserve [paternal] injustice’ (Williams, Foster & Blowers 2013:3). Paternal identities have psychological and material relevance to mission life, providing its ethical and moral resources to predict the future COCZ. This means paternalism remains a viable and valuable concept on contemporary statuses of mission stations in the COCZ despite its attack and criticism for oppressing women, girls and children.

Conservativism ensures the status quo is maintained. In the Church of Christ, liberals and conservatives contested, with liberals winning (Garrison 1961:35) and determining how the church engaged on public life issues of peace and justice, war, identity and difference, and human rights (Williams et al. 2013:380). Creativity is encouraged to those who did not get a hill start in life. Paternalism is unfortunately nuanced because one rides on parental historical opportunity rather than personal aptitude. Paternalism reconstructs history, militating against repairing serious past disparities and inequalities in families that support paternal greed in Church. Using paternal privilege fails the religious fiction of paternal equality in Jesus Christ as it intractably aligns itself with racial history of exploitation, subordination and discrimination. Accepting paternalism runs the risk of reinforcing harmful stereotypes that are insensitive to particular identities in different church groups. Henceforth, conservativism is critical for addressing paternal injustices; hence, it must be upheld for its positive contributions towards engagement in the COCZ.

Reconstructivism is not a new thing in the COCZ as ‘the movement had never been uniform, but had included differing, even conflicting ideas and views from its very beginning’ (Williams et al. 2013:3). This assumes that religious concepts need to be continuously reconstructed to address the legacies and ramifications of missionary history, mindful of errors of greed that subordinated local converts to demeaning and dehumanising treatment by church leaders. It helps to confront and embrace concrete differences between people. It counterbalances conformity, reductionism and sameness emphasised by dogmatic Christian thinking. Equality in structural power demands plurality towards paternally constructed issues faced by religious institutions in contemporary Africa. Confrontation must be done mindful of paternalism, classicism, elitism and ageism traps tied to conceptualisations of postmodernist human relations (Masengwe & Chimhanda 2020; Masengwe & Magwidi 2021). Paternalism brings stability in human relations henceforth it needs to be approached conscious of its effects on boys and girls in the construction of their worlds as argued in the next section of this article.

Insistence on Restoration faith accepts exclusive capitalistic, liberalist and individualist tendencies (Masengwe & Chimhanda 2019, 2020). Critical Entitlement Theory attempts to create a new and radical account of paternalism that departs from, and is incomparable with, western liberal paternalism. Radical paternalism sides with the marginalised whereas scholarship of conservative liberal paternalism sides with the status quo. Causation (power), procedure (privilege) and locus standi (position) are normal approaches. Using influence, status and affluence to undermine identities and dignities is deviation from fair and impartial ways of treating other humans by whom we share jobs, services, spaces and resources. Paternalism of that kind is systematically ingrained in mission cultures, reinforced by appointment methods and reproduced through entitlements.

This subordinates and traps African Christians into corollary disorientation from the historically and legally connected members (Masengwe et al. 2012). Religion, which is in the sacred, may not be defined as qualitatively different from paternalism in liberal scholarship because of these ideological differences (Masengwe et al. 2019:278–289). Paternalism however is imbedded in religious power and normative assumptions with which religion organises human relations in Church. This leads us to the indeterminacy of entitlement on Hippo Valley Christian Mission and associated mission stations such as Mashoko, Devure, Chidamoyo and Makonde (Masengwe 2020).

The theoretical and intellectual disjuncture between religion and paternalism may be indeterminable, however, frustration with religious pedagogy of western liberalism that produces false concepts of autonomy as depoliticised and technocratic animates the CET. Autonomy in the COCZ is individualistic, liberalistic and capitalistic and therefore colonial, which veers the Church away from its sacredness because instruments being applied are foreign and secular. The concept was borrowed from western business practices (Casey 2004:490) to complete the reformation of the 16th century (Williams et al. 2013:1) by adhering to sola scriptura (Dowling 2011:118). Autonomy disorientates untitled families and hence ‘minimised how locals shared leadership functions with missionaries’ (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021:4) at mission stations. Systematic discrimination is unnoticeable when things work well, but CET proposes to reinforce moral engagement on these structures to incorporate African contributions as Africans received raw deals in all of their past. ‘Dependent African church leaders became disoriented emotionally and economically’ (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021:4). Autonomy is ingrained in the banal nature of systematic subjugation that objectifies the black person. Religion thus falls into the apologetic ambivalence of missionary politics that continue to produce contradictions on African communities (Crenshaw 2000:21–24).

The Restoration Movement was formed with an emphasis on five domineering marks of identity, namely, Christian unity, evangelism, restoration, peace and justice (DeGroot 1956:2; Dowling 2011:118; Williams et al. 2013:380). Unity did not affix people into single human experiences based on uniformity but accepted categories of human identity such as gender, age, class, ethnicity and race. Elites clamour for uniformity and not diversity in attempting to define belonging and not belonging using the essence of sameness and difference that creates convergence on monolithic accounts of African identity and destroys divergence as apostasy (Masengwe et al. 2019:278–289). Critical Entitlement Theory is a critical attempt to redefine experiences of African communities and especially unitary experiences of black people. This counters monolithic perspectives that ignore different concerns of African Christians (Masengwe et al. 2012). African identities need to be strategically articulated without arrogating itself to universalising African voices. The CET criticises paternalism in COCZ mission stations that attempt to create a univocal black experience as a static, reified and fetishized experience.

In this way, the COCZ cannot use an essentialist approach to policies that fail to recognise the tentativeness of identity and relations (Masengwe 2020). It is not akin to issues of identity amongst its people (Mills 1983:16), including multiplicity of names churches are called (Dowling 2011:120–121). Magwidi (2019) sarcastically says COCZ congregations are in a deeper identity crisis because ‘church names are like surnames’. The crisis arises from persistent reliance on nuanced past categories in their legislative processes. Critical Entitlement Theory criticises this inherent rigidity with fondness for uniformity, collectivisation and abstraction that oppresses continually (Masengwe et al. 2012), without encouraging team spirit and kinship realities in shaping history and identity of black Christians.

Critical Entitlement Theory understands that people are defined by more than one category because we ‘are simultaneously raced, classed and gendered’ (Modiri 2011:418). It is the intersection of these categories that induce discrimination and oppression. This study examined how intersections of race, sexuality, class, gender, religion, nationality, culture, (dis)ability and sexual orientation induce domination and prejudice (Masengwe et al. 2019:278–289). The CET identifies and analyses how African Christians are disadvantaged by use of entitlement on mission stations if there is no critical engagement with stated differences. Critical engagement with minority groups helps to redress church laws that justify religious oppression (Crenshaw 1989:139, 1991:43; Hooks 1981; Wing 2008). Critical Entitlement Theory criticises oversimplification of human experience that produces fixed categories of identity found in various church settings (Masengwe et al. 2019:278–289). It engages in multiple attempts to address social ills in human life (Crenshaw 2011:43; Delgado & Stefanie 1993:79; Hutchinson 2004:53). It criticises emphasis on sameness rather than difference because there are no two people who are the same including monozygotic twins. The national laws continue to change to empower marginalised groups whose categories also continue to change. These categories demonstrate relevance of intersectional analyses that need interrogation in the COCZ.

The encumbered values in the COCZ determining religiosity and spirituality need to be re-examined in relationship to entitlements. Structure categorises values that protect interests. Critical Entitlement Theory interrogates these structural dimensions to assess how religious conservatism is instructive on the entitlement outcome. Conservatism is in the contemporary COCZ as the church is characterised by a strong religious-traditional culture, biblical textual literalism and certitude on use of mission stations for evangelism and church growth. Biblical interpretation in the COCZ tends to be highly structured, literal, culture-bound and misogynist (Machingura & Nyakuhwa 2015:92ff). This opposes the founding principles of the Restoration faith based on the Baconian principles of interpretation (Casey 2001:151–66). Baconian philosophy is no longer a single interpretive-hermeneutical principle because African philosophy is unavoidable (Casey 2001:151–166). Patriarch in African philosophy accepts difference as opposed to western paternalism (Masengwe & Magwidi 2021). Western paternalism has rationalised COCZ religiosity along formalist structures in instruction and practice, which undermines universal values of salvation, mission and ministry by all believers. With African philosophy, these values entrench accountability and responsibility (Mills 1983:15). Missionaries divided followers by undermining accountability and emphasising faithfulness to human paternity (Dowling 2011:73).

Substantive changes in the transformation of the COCZ were suggested concerning church laws or policies and governing structures, leadership, membership and services (Sibanda 2016). Changes are important for thought and action on faith dialogues, power differences and systematic inequalities (Machingura & Nyakuhwa 2015). The past has not been good for the marginalised (Masengwe et al. 2012). It ignored Restoration history where trappings of denominationalism denied ‘modern church Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, General Assemblies, etc.’ (DeGroot 1956:2). Biblical interpretation became localised and contextualised. This did not however imply uncooperativeness, isolation, separation and division found in contemporary churches (DeGroot 1956:3; Dowling 2011:119). Contemporary challenges in mission stations thus need to be analysed using CET.

Critical Entitlement Theory in this study is used to probe into the convolutions of religious thinking and the recesses of difference that hypothesise, narrate, identify and illustrate new religious scholarship in the COCZ. Gift Masengwe’s PhD thesis, entitled ‘The Church of Christ in Zimbabwe: Mission and Identity Continuity [in Diversity]’ (2020), serves as a first serious review of the COCZ transformation on the church’s teaching and ministry on different perspectives of the church’s application of religious reasoning and decision-making. Critical Entitlement Theory standardises reflection on narratives by missionary conduits who always promise foreign generous funding to bail out the ever-bankrupt COCZ. It reviews how narratives, stories and allegories are used to undermine transformation (Masengwe & Chimhanda 2019, 2020).

The CET further reviews sets of church laws such as the constitution. Written and unwritten constitutions advance inequality and segregation and serve interests elites in the COCZ. Covenanting to assist people who are not in decision-making destroys their agency in all things, making them consumers of charity, the way they were treated by missionaries (CBACC 1948–1965). Africans were regarded as having depreciated racial-cognitive incompetence from the Darwinian theories hence had to accept mature decisions made for them. The 1972 undisclosed COCZ constitution is said to have had this inscription. Minutes kept at Colen Brander Church of Christ (CBSCC 1948–1965) indicate that missionaries ordered black people to perform special services and live ethically as expected by the government.

On the contrary, some missionaries such as Garfield Todd, John White, Shirley Cripps, Bishop Dodge and Grace Todd, lobbied for black agency and suffered for it (Casey 2007; Chigwedere 2017; White 2015; Woodhouse 2018). Todd supported the Zimbabwean armed liberation struggle (Mungazi 1999) because Africans constituted the critical workforce for Zimbabwe’s thriving enterprises (Woodhouse 2018:330). Africans lived in reserves, as reserved white labour (Woodhouse 2018:86). Liberating them would diminish white privilege and distract white supremacy on jobs, opportunities and resources (Mlambo 1972). Thus, after the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), brute force was used against protesters. Critical Entitlement Theory examines why Africans gained political independence, but retained religious colonisation in the COCZ (Wood 2005).

Contextualisation is a common feature in the COCZ as adapting to new changes by being open to new truth whilst upholding the restoration principles that always supported Christian unity and ecumenism (Garrison 1906:127–207). Contextualisation, incarnation and evangelisation are mutually inclusive terms that are not identical with an implication on the full inculturation of the Gospel in an African context. In this way, living life in the church is not worthy living until the church is fully inculturated (Masengwe 2020). This connects a believer to the original Church of Christ through going back to the founding roots (Latin, aggiornamento) as it lives in continuity and discontinuity with what Christ established on Pentecost (Masengwe 2020). Thus, Alfred Loisy (died 1940), a 20th-century Roman Catholic theologian, argued that ‘Christ established the kingdom but what came out was the church, which is found nowhere’ (Loisy 1929:153). Going back to the roots assists because the COCZ came in European garb, it needs to be inculturated to become African, rooted in the African cultural context (Williams et al. 2013:3). Mission stations were modelled along American and European institutions (Turner 1920:2) and to carry the Great Commission they need to be transformed. Racial superiority emerged with the economic boom and city life in the United States of America (Garrison 1931:49–58). It was carried into the mission field without consideration of local values. In Africa, unfortunately, communalism naturally and successfully drives the church towards ecumenism and Christian unity (Lipscomb 1916:19–29, 58–64); the only tests of a true Christian church (Blowers, Foster & Williams 2004:xxx–xxxi; Williams et al. 2013:6).