The Church of the Brethren General Mission Board gave permission for H. Stover Kulp and Dr. Albert D.Helser to come to Africa as missionaries. The two men arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, on December29, 1922. In the early days of 1923, they received permission to settle in Garkida and began mission work (cobnews@brethren.org). They operated mainly among the tribes that speak the Mandara line of languages. These include: Bura, Glavda, Kibaku, Kilba, Marghi and Mbulanations with a single message of reconciling the people to God. To reconcile people to God would require that such nations, tribes and cultures must necessarily also become one, patterned into one baptism, one faith and then one Lord. This unity is the virtue which the missionaries desired most to build a family of believers in the region, to create a forum of understanding and forge a brotherhood in line with the ‘brethren’ thinking. This paper examines the cultural dances of the five tribes that are mostly captured within the CBM mission work in the North East Sub-region of Nigeria, it tries to identify from the performance techniques of the dances whether or not there are factors of unity, and how these factors could have been valuable in uniting the people of the region. The conclusion points to the fact that the observed cultural dances of the peoples listed, and which were neglected by the earlier missionaries in the region would have contributed to their reconciling effort among the peoples and between God and Man. The central argument of this essay stems from the work of Acquah Francis (2011), that although a large percentage of indigenous peoples under study are converts to Christianity, it is the indigenous beliefs and values which mainly serve as the mediation for their religious and cultural expressions. “This indigenous influence has enhanced harmonious relationships” among these tribes prior to the arrival of the missionaries, but was treated with disdain.
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