Personal Memories of Three Dutch “Saints”: Hendrik Kraemer

The hundredth anniversary of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, 1910, has led me to revisit in thought the most fruitful years of my intensive doctoral studies at the Free University of Amsterdam during the 1960s. I “spoke” again to the late theological luminaries who profoundly influenced my life abroad. Hendrik Kraemer, his publications, and particularly his crucial role in the International Missionary Conference at Tambaram in 1938, in his opposition to relativistic missiological appraisals of non-Christian religions, had made a great impression on me. I was fortunate to attend his last great conference address on Kirche und Mission in Basel.

It so happened that I was traveling back to Amsterdam on an old Lambretta scooter after months of traversing European countries. The travel adventure included attendance of a World Council conference in Geneva; spending many hours of discussion at Château de Bossey with the then still young and promising African theologian, John Mbiti; crossing the Pyrenees – where I had to de-coke the scooter cylinder heads with improvised tools next to the road, to find enough power for my two-wheeler, camp-equipped ‘work-horse’, to clear those mountains; camping at Barcelona to watch bull-fights and take a breather to read Hemingway's impressions on such primal spectacle; watching the gypsies dancing in the caves of their sacro monte in Granada; crossing over to Morocco to get the feel of northern Africa, to watch the illicit drug trade in Tetuan, Ceuta and Algiers, etc.

Back at Château de Bossey in Geneva, Hans Ruedi Weber told me about Kraemer's visit to Basel and insisted that I attend. I was travel weary and without a shred of clean clothes, after three months on the road. Winter was setting in and I was apprehensive of many hours of scooter-travel in the cold. I refused! But Hans insisted, had me rest up for many hours and sent my measurements ahead to Herr Witschi, director of the Basel Mission. In Basel the Kantonen-ministers held a collection for the ‘poor African student’ who lacked appropriate clothes for the Kraemer event. And of course, upon arrival – embarrassed as I was--- I found myself fitted out in a new suit, with many new shirts, ties and shoes to choose from, more refined even than most of the conference participants were wearing. Suddenly the adventurer had gone into hiding, with only a darkly tanned face hinting at a kind of ‘tropical connection.’
           
Listening to an aged Kraemer, still defining and emphasizing some of the basic ideas of the integral unity of Mission and Church, the Barthian-related ‘Biblical realism’ behind his views on continuity and discontinuity in the dialogical relationship between Christianity and non-Christian religions, and his plea for greater understanding and respect for ‘other cultures’ – as originally presented in his epic Tambaran book Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, was for me a compelling and wonderful experience.

            The initial meeting in Basel led to follow-up visits at Kraemer's house in Oegstgeest, Holland. Extensive discussions on African religions and especially J.V Taylor's contribution in his classic study, Primal Vision (1963) – on which I had at the time produced a pre-doctoral mini-thesis – revealed that we shared substantial missiological common ground. Subsequently Kraemer advised and supported me when I planned to do fieldwork among African Initiated Churches in Africa, endorsed my final proposals and joined Prof. Johan H. Bavinck, my main advisor at the Free University, in creating a research position for me at the African Study Centre (Leiden University), next to the senior lectureship I already held at the Free University. The project itself provided sufficient funding for 3 years of AIC research in Zimbabwe. I felt utterly honoured with an unusual opportunity of a life-time, backed up by the blessings and full support of two outstanding mission leaders, both of whom already stood on the threshold of their final departure to the Beyond.