Christian Love and the Tribe in South African Literature: Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country and Head’s The Collector of Treasures

Kumalo takes off his hat and he and his wife and his friend join in also, while the girl stands and watches in wonder. It is a hymn of thanksgiving, and man remembers God in it, and prostrates himself and gives thanks for the Everlasting Mercy. And it echoes in the bare red hills and over the bare red fields of the broken tribe. And it is sung in love and humility and gratitude, and the humble simple people pour their lives into the song.

(Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), by Alan Paton, book 3, chapter 1. Penguin Modern Classics 1982 printing, pp. 189-190.)

The God might be all right, he explained, but there was something wrong with the people who had brought the word of the Gospel to the land. Their love was enslaving black people and he could not stand it. [...] They had brought a new order of things into the land and they made the people cry for love. One never had to cry for love in the customary way of life.

("Heaven is not Closed", from The Collector of Treasures (1977), by Bessie Head. African Writers Series 1983 printing, pp. 9-10.)

The two passages above reflect widely different approaches to Christianity and its relation to the "tribe" in South Africa in the works that they are taken from, with a particular focus on the concept of "love" in Christianity. Both consider the traditional tribal structure to be important, but while Paton’s approach to Christian love focuses on unity and community within the tribal structure, Head’s depiction is more concerned with the harm done by forcing Christianity on native Africans, subjugating them in the name of Christian love, suppressing native traditional practices, and destroying the tribal cohesion.

Cry, the Beloved Country is largely told from the perspective of Stephen Kumalo, who is a Christian priest. Throughout the novel, we encounter multiple priests, such as Msimangu and Father Vincent, and other figures acting in the "service of God", such as the lawyer who takes Absalom’s case. Christianity acts as a motivator for Arthur Jarvis to seek justice and equality, on the basis of Christianity’s universalism, as well as for other characters to behave morally, such as Gertrude.

A positive, liberal Christianity is depicted consistently throughout the novel, as Andrew Foley discusses in his 1999 article "Christianity and Liberalism in Cry, the Beloved Country".

In this particular passage, Christian concepts such as "Everlasting Mercy" are used in relation to Paton's conception of the “broken tribe”; the tribe embraces Everlasting Mercy with "love and humility and gratitude". The tribe is brought up in the passage through mentioning their fields, invoking the novel’s binary divide between the urban and nature, which places native Africans in the realm of nature, positioning the city as harmful and a disruption to the traditional way of life, and instead looks towards the “tribe” as the ideal social environment for the natives. In the third act especially, Stephen Kumalo, with the help of James Jarvis, works to rebuild the traditional tribal environment, including enlisting the “chief” to act as a leader, even though the tasks at hand, such as building a dam, are outside the scope of the chief's understanding.

The first step in revitalizing Ndotsheni, though, is repairing the church. Paton positions the church as the focal point of Ndotsheni's renewal; the leaky church, repaired through the generosity of Jarvis, represents the village as a whole. It is in the church that Kumalo learns of Jarvis’s plans to revitalize Ndotsheni, and it is through religious figures and actions that the “tribe's” unity is restored. The "humble simple people" – i.e., the natives – "pour their lives" into Christianity as a uniting, rebuilding, and positive experience, that acts to restore the traditional tribal structure of the native society.

In The Collector of Treasures, however, and vocalized particularly explicitly in “Heaven is not Closed”, the church is what breaks the tribe in the first place. Missionaries force Christianity upon the native population, leading to abandonment of the traditional beliefs and customs and disrupting the traditional way of life. Like in Cry, the Beloved Country, the cohesion of the traditional tribal structure is considered significant, but in The Collector of Treasures, the church does not unite - it drives people apart.

In "Heaven is not Closed" specifically, Christianity is presented in a more complicated manner, and ultimately much more negatively than in Cry, the Beloved Country. Galethebege is a devoted Christian and a good person, but the story negatively depicts the missionary who turns Galethebege away and eventually excommunicates her, recounts Ralokae’s charges against Christianity, and criticizes Christianity in the narrative voice of the story itself. "Heaven is not Closed", through Ralokae, calls out Christianity in Africa as being inherently hypocritical; it claims to be founded on love and salvation for everyone, but in fact was forced upon the natives and used to destroy the traditional way of life.

The most obvious criticism of Christianity in "Heaven is Not Closed" is when the text describes Christianity as a "miserable religion which terrified people" (p. 11). However, the story also, in several different ways, pointedly raises the question of who Christianity considers righteous, and insinuates that there is not necessarily a relationship between being a good person and being a good Christian – the first and clearest example being Galethebege herself.

Galethebege is described as being unquestionably a good person, as "[a]nyone with eyes to see" (p. 8) would understand. Throughout the story, her devotion to God is emphasized, and she strives to live as a good Christian. However, despite her devotion, she is excommunicated from the church after marrying Ralokae; she is not allowed to enter the church, and the missionary informs her that "heaven is closed to the unbeliever" (p. 11). Despite being a good person, she is no longer considered a good Christian.

The missionary plays the opposite role. The missionary is the representative of God and Christianity, yet he is represented as xenophobic and vengeful; he is disgusted by the "superficial stories" (p. 10) that he hears about the native customs, and excommunicates Galethebege out of "rage" and "hatred" (p. 11) because he cannot do anything to Ralokae, who has rejected Christianity in favor of the traditional beliefs.

Ralokae rejects Christianity because of the people who brought it. The Christians make the natives "cry for love" (p. 10) – an inversion of the concept of unconditional Christian love. Christianity, in Ralokae’s view, is hypocritical in its treatment of love; it claims to unconditionally love everyone equally, but the people who are promoting this worldview do not actually love the natives, but love enslaving and oppressing them.

In the passage from Cry, the Beloved Country, love is a defining part of the "hymn" that Kumalo sings. The people of Ndotsheni are suffering, with that suffering encapsulated in the description of the "bare red" hills and fields, but they still sing out in love, reflecting the Christian ideal of Jesus suffering and still forgiving and loving all. The idea of "cry for love" from "Heaven is not Closed" critiques the conceptualization of love and suffering being associated with each other, and points out that the traditional native customs – the ones being repressed by the Christians – did not induce or romanticize suffering in the name of love; love was simply present.

When placed next to each other, the two passages, while both recognize the importance of traditional practices and the cohesion of the "tribe", represent vastly different perspectives on Christianity as a whole and Christian love in particular as it relates to the tribal structure; Cry, the Beloved Country presents a Christian view of people who have suffered and still believe in Christian love, with Christian love providing a basis for rebuilding the traditional tribal cohesion, while "Heaven is not Closed" critiques the concept of Christian love from the perspective of people who have suffered at the hands of Christianity and had Christianity forced upon them, and view Christianity and the practical application of "Christian love" as destroying tribal cohesion. Both are written from the perspective of native Africans, but one by a white, Christian author, and the other by a Black, ex-Christian author, reflecting different worldviews and experiences with Christianity.