Introductory note by CIHA Blog Editorial Assistant, Bangirana Albert Billy: In the upcoming posts, we draw our readers to one of the major ongoing critical debates within African theological scholarship. Two African theology students undertaking their studies at St Joseph’s Theological Institute in South Africa present the theme in a series of reflections. In their work, they grapple with the notion of “a decolonised African Theology” from a purely Afrocentric perspective.
The first piece by Kevin Banda titled “What should a decolonised African Theology entail?” will be posted in two parts. In this piece, Banda examines “traditional theology” as ideologically informed by Western culture and the colonial agenda and goes on to challenge its deficiency in enabling African theological causes and scholarship.
In the second piece titled “Is Decolonising Theology Possible in Africa?,” Felisberto Juliana Dumbo problematizes the coercive nature of the Eurocentric theological exercise as propounded by the Missionaries. He goes on to argue for an African theological hermeneutic based on African religious values and the exercise of a Christocentric faith in praxis.
Today, we run part 1 of “What should a decolonised African Theology entail?” by Kevin Banda.
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By Kevin Banda, St Joseph’s Theological Institute – South Africa
Introduction
The history of the Church and the culture within which the Church finds herself are not the only vessels within which a feasible theology can be shaped and formulated (Ross 1997:97). The main aim of this paper is to explore what a decolonised African theology should entail within Africa. Smith (2010:569) argues that “decolonisation” is a guiding principle for African scholarship and activism against colonialising African mentalities. Decolonisation calls on African scholars to go beyond politics of inclusion and build Africa into a continent where Africans are not governed by a settler colonial state. Before attempting to argue for “what should a decolonised African theology entail?,” one should endeavour to understand the development of African theology, African identity, colonisation, Western theology, decolonisation of African theology and to give a critique of a decolonised African theology.
Development of African Theology
According to de Gruchy (1994:236), the development of African theology is due to political independence, especially in many former British colonies in Africa. There was also an increasing disillusionment with traditional Western theology, and that this traditional approach to theology was not really making sense within African cultural patterns and thought forms. The rediscovery of the value of traditional African culture contributed to the development of African theology. For example, in South Africa the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s with its stress on “blackness” reaffirmed the centrality of African thought and values (Ibid.). This self-discovery led to the conviction that the African heritage is not and never was “of the devil” but needed to be taken seriously in the context of the Christian faith. Because of the impact of Black Consciousness, black people began to wake up to the fact that the colonial mentality did not necessarily convey the full truth. African people began to realise that there are values in their cultures that are just as good as, if not better than, those of their colonisers.
In the mid-20th century, African theology as a theological field came into being. This movement began to protest against negative colonial and missionary interpretations of the religion and culture in Africa. Realising that theology is a contextual phenomenon, African Christians began to read the Bible using their own cultural lens, which of course resulted in some interpretations that did not always agree with how Western theology interpreted things. African theology stands on the shoulders of the early African independent Churches that broke away from missionary Churches in the late 19th century or early 20th century. African theology is engaged to shape Christianity in an African way by adapting and using African concepts and ideas (Nwibo 2010).
Furthermore, African theologians who are involved in the development of African theology find that African traditional religion is one of their chief sources. Muzorewa (2000:7) says that, concepts such as “God, ancestral spirits, the concept of good and evil, and humanity” are ingredients of traditional religion that have provided African theologians with a skeleton for African theology. Harry Sawyer articulates that, “there is a strong case for a ‘Theologia Africana’ which will seek to interpret Christ to the African in such a way that Christ feels at home in the new faith” (cited in Muzorewa 2000:7). To be at home is for the African to experience continuity between traditional life and Christian faith. The traditional beliefs in ancestors or Creator indicate the importance of traditional religion for the development of African theology. This indicates that there is a search for theological understanding of Christian truths viewed from an African background (Muzorewa 2000:8).
Most African theologians understand that the idea of God in African traditional religion influences African theology. This is because most of them agree that Africans believe in one God, despite the presence of divergent conceptions of the divinity. The Sotho-Tswana peoples, the Bemba, the Zulus, Shonas, etc., believe in one God. Africans have always believed in one God. Idowu (1975:140) articulates that, “there is no place, age or generation which did not receive at some point in its history some form of revelation.” In developing African theology, its theological base is on the one God whose self-revelation has occurred in many forms to several races and generations. The fact that several communities may have different names for God does not imply polytheistic practices in African religion; it is the same God whose self-revelation happened throughout the world. This interpretation is affirmed by Malcolm J. McVeigh (1974:81) who states that: “the God of African traditional religion and Christianity is in fact the same. God who revealed himself fully in Jesus Christ is none other than the one who has continually made himself known to African religious experience.” From this assertion, it can be stated that African theologians are developing a doctrine of God that enriches the present Christian understanding of God in Africa.
Bediako gives the context and development of African theological thought. He says that the context out of which African theology came forth is twofold. In Bediako’s (1997:426-443) view, “the struggle for the social and political transformation of the conditions of inequality and oppression gave rise to ‘Black theology’, which, in his view is a theology of liberation in the African setting” (Magezi and Igba 2018:3). For example, in South Africa, African theology was encouraged as a tool to get rid of apartheid and transformation of South African society was the chief goal.
Identity as a Hermeneutical Key
African Theology is coupled with identity as the hermeneutical key – this is an “anthropological” concern of African theology “to rehabilitate Africa’s rich cultural heritage and religious consciousness” (Tutu 1978:366) which has been made as a self-consciously Christian and theological effort. It can be said to have been an effort to demonstrate the true character of African Christian identity. In this sense, the African theologian’s concern is with the pre-Christian religious heritage that becomes an attempt to clarify the nature and meaning of African Christian identity (Bediako 1989:1). Fashole-Luke (1975:26) has argued that,
“ … if the quest for African Christian theologies amounts to attempting to make clear the fact that conversion to Christianity must be coupled with cultural continuity, then it becomes understandable that what African theologians have been endeavouring to do is to draw together the various and disparate sources which make up the total religious experience of Christians in Africa into a coherent and meaningful pattern.”
African Theology
So, what then is “African theology?” At the All African Conference of Churches Abidjan Assembly (1969), a tentative definition of African theology was given. African theology should entail “a theology that is based on the biblical faith and speaks to African souls in the categories of thought which arise out of the philosophy of African people” (Muzorewa 1985:96). Mbiti (1976:164) defines African theology as “theological reflection by African Christians.” This means that theology is generally understood as a reflection and discourse about God – African theology is that theological attempt, which is embarked upon mostly by Africans and non-Africans who are familiar with the African context, and who are seeking to respond to such issues theologically.
African theology is a reflection and a discourse that seeks to relate the African cultural and religious heritage to Christianity. Nyende (2005a:3) articulates that African theology is “a theology derived from the interplay of Christian tradition and African cosmology. The Bible is central to theology that seeks to be Christian.” Nyende uses the “Bible” because the Bible is in dialogue with African cosmologies and different African cultures. Therefore, the goal and purpose of African theology is geared towards the building and sustenance of African communities in faith, ethos[1] and cultus[2]. Nyende 2005:3-4). Moyo (1983:97) defines African theology as “an attempt by Christian in Africa to reflect systematically on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ… .” The Final Statement of the Conference of Ecumenical Dialogue of Third World Theologians, Dar es Salaam in 1976 rejects “an academic type of theology that is divorced from action” (Torres and Fabella 1978:269) and urges theologians to be with “the poor in their struggle for liberation” (Ibid.:70). It can then be stated that, African theology is the aspect of systematic presentation of Christian faith in African religio-cultural terms – the bridging of the Christian Gospel, an integration of faith, culture and African beliefs which must result in action.
Colonialisation
Kwame Nkrumah regarded colonisation as “a policy by which some foreign power binds territories to her own economic advantage” (Nkrumah 1957: vii). Minh (1963:29) defines colonisation as “an act of violence of the stronger against the weaker.” Colonisation involves the possibility of torturing, aggression, lies, killing, massacre, oppression and exploitation of humankind. Abraham (1962:152) affirms that “colonialisation is the most barbaric and inhuman process of ‘arresting and butchering’ the weak, the defenceless.” Colonisation means slavery. Colonisation is invading the territory of another people, appropriating the territory as their own, asserting control over and or essentially destroying the original inhabitants through absolute murder, hegemonic,[3] suppression, enslavement, removal or absorption into the society and culture of the colonisers (Smith 2010:570).
Graham (2017) holds that colonisation comes with “of-transplantation and translation – translation is always one of the first acts of colonialism; it possesses by reimagining the strange and foreign in terms of the familiar, the motherland. It is not simply that something is lost in the translation; something is erased.” In most cases, colonialism disregarded indigenous languages and cultures of the local people. There are accounts of people being punished and alienated if they did not use the mother tongue of the colonials – French, Portuguese, English, Dutch, for example. This was done to have total control over the local to the extent that colonisation became more like disassociation of the sensibility – colonial alienation (Wa Thiong’o 1987).
Spivak (1988) says that colonisation is an “epistemic violence.” What she means is that colonisation becomes not just an historical act whereby one group or category of people is subjugated to another, more powerful people, but as an imaginative act that changes the way people think about themselves, articulate and experience the world in which they live, or have come to live. It starts to forge a new collective memory, a new mentality, such that it becomes difficult and strange to think outside the box, outside of the categories that have been handed down and taught as normative, as universal. As translation and transplantation is taking place, the location of “great mirror of the imagination” for the local people remains that of the colonial masters. For Wa Thiong’o (1987:15-16), as for Fanon, language is the carrier of culture, and culture carries the entire body of values by which people come to perceive themselves. It is in the translation and transplantation through which the colonial supremacy was or is conducted. Colonisationis, therefore, rape; cannibalism which can be considered genocide. To remove it, one must be decolonised.
Western Theology
Before we deeply discuss decolonisation of African theology, we also need to briefly describe what Western theology is. Wa Said (1971:504) defines Western theology as “disbelieving, anti-Christ, inhuman, racist, colonial scientific ideology whose main purposes are (1) to save the white races by all means necessary, (2) to exploit non-whites, and (3) to dominate non-whites economically, politically, socially, and spiritually.” Western Theology is an ideology of dehumanisation and depersonalisation – is the embodiment of all forces of evil, which contributed to the misery of the world in general, and to the eternal pains and sufferings, especially of the people of African blood.
Dodge (1964:17) says that “many of the churches in Africa are agents of government in the oppression of the African people.” For example, during apartheid in South Africa, some missionaries used Romans 13 to support the injustices of the apartheid government. African theologians emphasise the conflict between missionaries and African Christians; the latter want both Christianity and freedom from colonial powers. Many Christian missionaries shared the psychology of the colonisers. Such a psychology preserved privileges, defended discrimination and extended domination to such a degree that it amounted to the organisation of society on the principle of the enslavement of black people. Nteta (1971) emphasises that, the greatest danger to Christianity in Africa is pseudo-Christianity. The latter always prefers stability to change; it always prefers order to freedom.[4] Therefore, Africans are now saying “Yes” to Jesus Christ, but “No” to white ecclesiology and theology.
[1] The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations.
[2] A system or variety of religious worship
[3] Control or dominating influence by one person or group, especially by one political group over society or one nation over others.