Naval Blockade

This week is Banned Books Week which is an annual celebration of the freedom to read, first celebrated in 1982. I don’t like everything that everyone celebrates during banned books week, but I would like to celebrate a particular case.

Do you know what country mounted a military operation, including deploying its navy to prevent a book from being imported into the country? And do you know what book that might be?

Given the subject of this blog, you have probably guessed that the banned book was the Bible.

William Tyndale

Years before the King James translation was commissioned, some wool merchants secretly sponsored an Oxford scholar named William Tyndale to do a translation of the Bible into English. But King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, the head of the church, banned the Bible in English. Not only that, they set up a network of spies to seek out translators, arrest them and burn them at the stake. So Tyndale fled to continental Europe where he completed his translation and had it printed. But King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey heard of Tyndale’s translation and that he was planning to smuggle into England. Their reaction was dramatic. Here’s what Melvyn Bragg wrote about it in his book The Adventure of English:

It now seems quite extraordinary, but the whole country was put on alert. In order to prevent the word of God in English landing in the land of the English, naval ships patrolled the coastal waters, boats were stopped and searched, men were arrested and a great many Bibles were intercepted. The action taken was indistinguishable from being on a war footing and to Henry VIII and Wolsey it was just that. Latin was the only word of God allowed by the state and now the state came out in full armed force to defend its most loyal ally, the Church.

There are two competing ideas about religious truth. One is that it is known by experts who tell the rest of us what we should believe. That was the view of Henry VIII and Wolsey, one they were willing to defend to the extent of deploying the military. For them, the Bible should be in Latin and accessible only to the clergy who would interpret it for everyone else. Lamin Sanneh points out that this idea is found in some cultures:

In many traditional societies, religious language has tended to be confined to a small elite of professionals.

Ghanaian girls with Bibles in their languages

In contrast to this view, Tyndale held the view that God created every person with the ability to know what is true when they have the Word of God to consult and the Holy Spirit to guide them. Tyndale subscribed to that idea. To a member of the clergy critical that he was translating the Bible into English, he said:

If God spare my life, I will see to it that the boy who drives the plowshare knows more of the scripture than you, Sir!

Lammin Sanneh points out that Bible translation is the enemy of the “expert” approach to religious truth:

The Christian approach to translatability strikes at the heart of such gnostic tendencies, first by contending that the greatest and most profound religious truths are compatible with everyday language, and second, by targeting ordinary men and women as worthy bearers of the religious message.

Jesus said:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 13:16)
“Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth.” (John 17:17)

Ghanaian man reading the Bible in his language at a church service

Today, few Christians subscribe openly to the idea that we should blindly follow religious experts. But sometimes our actions are not fully aligned with the idea every person can know the truth when they have the Word of God to consult and the Holy Spirit to guide them. I have seen missionaries and churches willing to put resources into propagating their doctrines but not into giving people the Word in their language. That approach is closer to Wolsey’s than it is to Tyndale’s. I have full confidence that making God’s Word widely accessible is good for Christian faith, the church, families and all of society. Research into the impact of Bibles in Ghanaian languages confirms this.

During banned books week, let’s celebrate Tyndale. Let’s also check the practices of our churches and missionary endeavors to make sure that they do not subtly elevate something else to the place where it eclipses the Bible.

Tyndale Bible

Official languages

Official languages of African countries

Most countries in Sub-Saharan (Africa south of the Sahara Desert) Africa have one official language. Furthermore, the official language of most of those countries is only spoken by a small percentage of its citizens, and only a few of those speak it as their heart language (mother tongue). In general, the official language is the language of the former colonial power. In former French colonies the official language is French; in former British colonies it is English; and in former Portuguese colonies it is Portuguese. Sometimes an African language is given official status in addition to the language of the former colonial power. So Sango is an official language of the Central African Republic alongside French. In most of those cases, the European language still dominates. Laws and regulations, for example, are generally distributed only in the European language in spite of the official status of the African language.

Since the 1960s, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have spent all their educational resources to teach their citizens to speak, read and write their official languages. They are still far from accomplishing that goal. Let’s take Ghana as an example. English is the official language of Ghana. When you arrive at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, you will be greeted by officials who speak English. You will find taxi drivers who speak English eager to give you a lift. If you go to a hotel, a restaurant or a store, you will find staff who speak English. You might get the impression that everyone speaks English. Understandable, but false nevertheless.

Bilingualism is a funny thing. A person can be very good in a second language in one area and not in another. For example, my Ghanaian car mechanic whose mother tongue is not English knows the names of car parts in English that I don’t know. That does not mean that he can talk about every topic in English with the same proficiency I have. It is mistake to have a satisfactory talk with hotel staff in English about hotel stuff and conclude that they can also carry on a conversation in English about politics, family life or religion with the same degree of fluency. It is possible to learn another language in a way that is deep yet narrow. People do it all the time. Then other people hear them talk fluently in that one area and conclude, wrongly, that they know English perfectly. When someone says: “Everyone speaks English”, I always take that with a grain of salt.

In Accra, Ghana’s capital, there is a proliferation of businesses that help Ghanaian high school and university graduates improve their English to get jobs or to prepare them for English proficiency tests some employers and universities require of Ghanaian applicants. If the secondary schools and universities were giving Ghanaians excellent English, these would have no reason to exist, much less abound.

Professor Gilbert Ansre is one of the leading authorities on languages in Ghana. As a linguist, he did research into the use of languages in Ghana. At an event a few months back, he said this about English in Ghana.

There is an erroneous belief that English is actually preponderantly used in Ghana. This is really true only of its enforced use in the educational system, on government and civic official functions such as now, in documentation and when the speaker is unable to use the commonly used language of the locality. Even the most highly educated Ghanaian prefers and frequently uses a Ghanaian language commonly shared.

The use and actual usefulness of English as a tool for wide spectrum National Development, especially at the “grass-roots” level is highly debatable to say the least.

Professor Ansre with his family

He went on to say that:

… the quality of English as spoken and written in Ghana is drastically on the decline …

The official language of a country tells us in what language its laws are written and what language its elites master. The language(s) in which the people can grasp the Gospel, or even needed health information, might not be the same at all.

Countries have official languages. God’s people, the church and God’s Word should not.