Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Mostly African Thoughts, But Some Heavenly Ones, Too

Mostly African Thoughts, But Some Heavenly Ones, Too

Last updated on: February 26, 2021 at 10:42 am by Dan Peterson

Mostly African Thoughts, But Some Heavenly Ones, Too 2021-02-26T10:42:01-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The movie poster for “Remembering Heaven”

My wife and I attended a screening of Heart of Africa 2: Companions last night at the LDS Film Festival. It is, to some extent, a retelling of the story in the first Heart of Africa movie, but this time the story is told from the standpoint of the white American half of the service-missionary companionship, rather than from that of the black African missionary. Still, it depicts a culture and a missionary experience that could scarcely be more different from my own in German-speaking Switzerland. The film opens today (Friday) in several Utah theaters.

Here’s a blog entry that I posted last year about the first film of the pair:

“In Support of Heart of Africa“

***

I’ll be spending part of today (Friday) with a couple of people that we are interviewing for our docudrama, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, which we’re currently preparing for release, we hope and intend, on or near the date of the premiere of the Witnesses theatrical film. (And please remember that that premiere has now been set for Friday, 4 June 2021.) Then, assuming that we’re done in time, I hope to attend a screening at the LDS Film Festival of the new documentary film Remembering Heaven, which, among other things, includes interviews with both Terryl Givens and . . . well, another, rather seedier, academic type who shall remain nameless so as not to blight the film’s prospects of success.

You can read an article about Remembering Heaven at this link.

“Remembering Heaven: A New Documentary about Pre-mortality”

And you can watch the trailer for the film here:

“Remembering Heaven”

***

I have recently read Things Fall Apart, which was written in 1958 by the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (1930-2013). I’ve owned a copy of it, and I’ve been meaning to read it, for a very long time. Finally, I did. And, like Heart of Africa, it gave me a glimpse of a world quite unlike my own and yet, in several ways, not so very different from mine. I really do believe that novels and short stories written from within a different culture — the stories of the late Egyptian writer Yusuf Idris (1927-1991) come to mind, for example, along with such works as the “Cairo Trilogy” and the novel Midaq Alley by the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature — can supply readers with a much deeper understanding of that foreign culture, certainly a very different understanding, than can large volumes of sociology and anthropology.

One very shallow and superficial matter for which Things Fall Apart made me grateful is the variety of food that’s available to pampered modern Americans like myself. In just the past few days, I’ve had Mexican food and Thai food, a large variety of fruits and berries, milk and cheese, almond milk, a bit more chocolate than I should have, fish, chicken, beef, wheat and oats and bread, vegetable soups, and on and on and on. By contrast, for Achebe’s characters, living in a few small Igbo or Ibo villages under British colonial rule (at first so distant as to be unfelt and then, rather suddenly, very much not), it’s almost entirely yams — with the occasional bit of palm wine to wash them down. And I don’t even like yams.

But on to a trio of passages from Chinua Achebe’s novel that I marked in passing:

Behind them was the big and ancient silk-cotton tree which was sacred. Spirits of good children lived in that tree waiting to be born. On ordinary days young women who desired children came to sit under its shade. (46)

That, of course, accords nicely with the theme of the film Remembering Heaven.

Have you not heard the song they sing when a woman dies?

“For whom is it well, for whom is it well?

There is no one for whom it is well.” (135)

That passage caught my attention because it sounds the theme that every life is touched by sorrow. All human relationships end with death, if not before. Few people exit this life feeling entirely complete or fulfilled, “no song unsung, no wine untasted.”

The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church there, won a handful of converts, and were already sending evangelists to the surrounding towns and villages. That was a source of great sorrow to the leaders of the clan, but many of them believed that the strange faith and the white man’s god would not last. None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in the assembly of the people. None of them was a man of title. They were mostly the kind of people that were called efulefu, worthless, empty men. The imagery of an efulefu in the language of the clan was a man who sold his machete and wore the sheath to battle. Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, called the converts the excrement of the clan, and the new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up. (143)

Reading this, I could not help but think of the experience of many Latter-day Saint missionaries, myself included, and of scriptural passages like 1 Corinthians 1:26-29:

For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.

See, too, 1 Nephi 8:26-27 and 1 Nephi 11:35-36.

(Achebe was himself the son of devoutly Christian-convert parents, but he fleshes out his description of the early converts to Christianity as being of lower social status on pages 155-157 of the novel, in his brief account of the osu, or outcasts, and their entry into the church in Umuofia.)

The page references above are to Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor Books, 1994). I found the novel quite interesting, and, after all this time, well worth the time.

Book of Mormon Witnesses

Chinua Achebe

Christian

Christianity

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

cinema

Congo

Congolese

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Interpreter Foundation

Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon

Previous Post

February 25, 2021

Companion Films

Next Post

February 26, 2021 "That Which You Have Translated, Which You Have Retained"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Christian group emphasizes "The Inner Light" as guidance from God?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Baptists Methodists Pentecostals Quakers