Introductory note by CIHA Blog Editorial Assistant, Bangirana Albert Billy: In three 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?” is 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 Decolonizing 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 “Is Decolonizing Theology Possible in Africa?” by Felisberto Juliana Dumbo.
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By Felisberto Juliana Dumbo, St Joseph’s Theological Institute – South Africa
Introduction
“We have eaten theology with you, will you now eat theology with us?” John Mbiti
Decolonization in theology has its roots in the historical past. Therefore, the peeling away of what Western influence has brought to the continent includes the way of living, moral criteria, theological paradigms, and languages with an aim of looking forward to a new and a “genuine African theology.”
Africans were “coerced” to inherit/absorb a colonial European Church. They were made to believe that to be saved, they had to behave and act as Europeans. One of the big mistakes in any kind of colonization is the way colonizers presented “non-essential” versus “essential” matters in morality, doctrine, theology, liturgy, and Canon law — as if the divisions and application of such principles were intrinsically part of Christianity. This Eurocentrism made missionaries demean African education and ways of worship. This is well captured in Pobee’s words,
“… it is often alleged that traditional African education is non-formal, unstructured and not scientific. I, however [says Pobee], wish to enter the plea that such judgments attempt to remove the African system out of its own context and to treat it according to the values of another ethos” (Pobee 1992:136).
Conceptualising a decolonized theology in Africa
To envision a decolonised theology, theologians are reminded that decolonisation demands a contextual theological approach. Contemporary western theologians such as Ratzinger, Yves Conger, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, just to name a few, advanced their theology through contextual lenses. Hence, we are bound to find Eurocentric theological tenets in their writings. According to Dussel (2013:28), “they creatively renewed European theologies, but they could not set their subjectivity (or even their physical being) in the ‘colonial space’, in the world of the colonized other.”
What has been missed by western scholarship is that there is “not one world but many, not one history but many, not one theology but many, not one space or milieu but many and these could be different and perhaps even antagonistic” (Mushete 1979:32). Therefore, decolonizing theology would imply theologizing with people from the grassroots through their own experiences, sufferings, needs, tears, happiness and hopes. On the other hand, decolonizing could also mean rejection of theological imports and imitations that comprise strictly of Western theological motifs and interpretations. In order to do so, Africans are called to face the new challenges of doing a contextual theology based on praxis, its possibilities and promises. African theologians are therefore invited to shift from the perspective of a theology from above (scholastic) and focus more on understanding the theology from below (contextual), where theological discussions focus more on the functions and values of Christ.
Towards an African “criterion” for theological decolonization
In order to decolonise African theology, one of the main criteria would be to build an African theology that engages seriously with “faith seeking understanding.” This theological motif draws from a critical reflection informed by faith in praxis and a life centred on Christ. According to Mugambi (1994:7), theology as discourse “may be theoretically expressed, as it has been in the history of Christianity in the West, or practically lived without expressive verbalization, as in the indigenous African religious heritage.”
However, faith in African theological experience cannot be confined only to intellectual views, as this could purport to fundamentalism with written texts and canons replacing the more important aspects of faith, which are, praxis and Christian living. Therefore, re-echoing the words of Kwame Bediako (2004:17), theologians doing theology in Africa should be aware that “academic or written theology alone cannot replace spontaneous or grassroots theology reminiscent of African faith experience, because the two are complementary aspects of one reality, and the ‘spontaneous’ is the foundation of the ‘academic’” within African theological scholarship.
References
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