A Historical Appraisal of the du and au Controversy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cameroon
[Thesis]
Betare Ndoe, Denis
Vethanayagamony, Peter
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
2020
400 p.
Ph.D.
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
2020
This dissertation sheds light on the causes of recurrent conflicts that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon (ELCC) endures since its inception in 1960. From the analysis of the recent conflict which had divided the ELCC into two, namely the au and du controversy had underscored that conflicts which usually shake the ELCC are deep rooted in the negotiations between the two Lutheran mission societies, the Sudan Mission (SM) and the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS), whose work resulted into the formation of an indigenous Lutheran church body, the ELCC. The study shows discussions between these two Lutheran mission bodies had emphasized much more on the Lutheran identity of the future indigenous Lutheran church on the one hand and the joint work on the other hand. Of course, their collaboration resulted into the formation of a Lutheran denominational church which, however, did not take into consideration the sociological context of the indigenous people living in the French Sudan and the imbalance development in each of the mission field. Indeed, the missionaries worked to form a church in one synod which did not reflect their dual missionary legacies, and which did not match with the ethnic plurality of the ELCC. The distribution of the leadership which they adopted as a mode of government to solve the issue of the plurality of tribes that comprises the church was a very artificial and inadequate solution. Consequently, the ELCC usually experiences conflict during electoral periods and for issues that the synodical form of church should have solved without endangering the unity of the indigenous Lutheran church they desired to establish in the French Sudan.