Critical-24

All the postcolonial approaches mentioned above in one way or another assist and support the postcolonial reading in order to retrieve and liberate the Mara primal religion out of the folds of the western colonial mission paradigm.

Firstly, when the missionaries branded the Mara primal religion as animism, there was a concrete element of worshipping the Supreme Being in the Mara traditional religion. Therefore, Mara traditional religion cannot be categorized as animism even though it was far from perfect and a more appropriate categorization should be ‘henotheism’.

Secondly, all postcolonial approaches retrieve the revelation of God to the Mara people and this confirmed that the Mara traditional religion was a religion of epiphany, revelation of God to human beings out of Mara primal religion.

Thirdly, the concept of Supreme Being and celestial god, and the concept of Khazohno, Paw Khazo pave the way to accept the classical Christian doctrine of trinity. Moreover, the concept of guardian spirit also helps the understanding of angels in the Bible and it reveals the close relationship of human beings to supernatural beings.

Fourthly, the concept of life after death and peihrâh expectation enabled the Maras to accept the concept of heaven in Christianity without much difficulty although the purpose might be slightly different.

With respect to the traditional Mara culture, the following points are vital: the administration of the chief and council of elders in the village, the function and and how the apiepasaihna hro shaped the Mara community life. It is worthwhile to point out that the concept of chieftainship later contributed to the administrative structure of the Mara church and the philosophy of apiepasaihna hro contributed to church growth and Christian ethics in Mara Christianity.

Kosuke Koyama writes, “Theophany creates changes in human culture.”[1] Therefore, how these elements in the Mara context had been transformed, modified and used as theological hermeneutics with the theophany brought by the colonial power and the Christian missionaries will be critically examined in the following chapter.

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[1] Kosuke Koyama, ‘Participation of culture in the Transfiguration of Humanity: Forms of Ecumenical Theology’ in Asia Journal of Theology, Vol. 7, No. 2, October, 1993, 219.