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 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 part 2 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
Decolonisation of African Theology
Decolonisation is Africanisation.[1] As Martey (1993:63) states, “this phenomenon did not just begin with decolonisation of Africa. It began with Ghana in the 1950’s. The Church was not the first to use it.” It was first used in the political arena and was associated with the nationalist movement, as colonial domination was beginning to give way to African liberation. One of the visible areas of the Church’s Africanization process has been in the field of theology. In this regard, Africanisation represented the beginning of a new decolonisation within theological trends that were interested in the search for an authentically relevant African perspective on the Christian faith (Maluleke 1998:9). African theologians seek spontaneously a more universal Christian theology that will connect them and their people with the whole of humanity and the history of salvation. Thus, in the writings of African Christian theologians, one sees this endeavour to link the African world view with the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Theology of decolonisation is a reverse to the idea of Western theology.
To decolonise means to set the politically, socially, economically and spiritually colonised free. It is to set the captive free (Wa Said 1971:503). Regarding the decolonisation of African theology, Nkrumah famously said: “Seek ye first the political kingdom and everything else shall be added unto it.” This means that the political kingdom in Africa, which is the power of Africans, must lead Africa out of the condition of impotence to which it had been reduced by European colonialism. When Jesus of Nazareth spoke about his own mission of decolonisation, he took the Book of Isaiah 61:1 and told his audience the nature of his mission here on earth:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19 NRSV).
African theology needs to be decolonised from the political, social, economic and spiritual yoke of colonialism. Political colonialism demands a political decolonisation. It is this political “decolonisation which sets out to change the order of the world, which is a program of complete disorder” (Fanon 1968:36-37). Decolonisation needs to bring about a natural rhythm into existence, introduced by new man/woman, and with it a new language and new humanity. David Hume’s derogative assertion still resonates in the minds of some whites: “I am inclined to believe that Negroes are naturally inferior to whites” (Washington 1967:18). This assertion has some whites believing that they are superior to blacks. A person who cannot think naturally, can be dominated forever – cannot make any logical decision. It is not different from a person who is insane.
Furthermore, to decolonise African Theology, we need to call for a radical theological reflection – a complete rejection of white Christianity, white God, and white Jesus and replacing this anti-Christ theological nonsense by more human, more biblical truths or both political and spiritual salvation for all children of God (Wa Said 1971). This decolonisation must be derived from Scriptures that speak to Africans in a true sense. For example, Ethiopianist Theology is derived from the biblical Psalms 68:31: “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God.” This is a slogan for Ethiopianist theology – Africa for Africans. This theology stands for (I) radical recapture of the lost land; (II) radical withdrawal of whiteanity from all African institutions – including white God and white Jesus; (III) joint action of local African, ant-colonial movements of liberation, (IV) unconditional recognition and radical affirmation of Blackness through Black Sainthood, for example Benedict Daswa. For Knighton (2004:153), until theology is done in the language of the people, Christian belief is neither going to arise from them nor come home to them. This entails that, there is need to re-root Africans in their own culture through which local theologies can be formulated using the indigenous languages, which are already used and present in Christian worship.
A Critique of Decolonisation of African Theology
A decolonised African theology requires assessing the weaknesses of what has been in mission theology. Mission theology assumed that the Western model of the Church was going to fit Africa forgetting that the Church is a social institution within a society (Knighton 2004:155). For Vanden, Western missionaries overlooked the role of the African traditional worldview in their style of presenting the Gospel to Africans. They saw these traditional perspectives on spirituality as purely superstitious and thus did not help to find adequate alternative solutions to them. The consequence of this approach led Christians to live a double life, understood by the missionaries as hypocrisy (Vanden 2013:7-8). As a response to the negative attitude of the Western missionary towards the worldview of the indigenous, a decolonised African theology needs to decolonise African praxis by integrating African culture into African singing, drumming and dancing as Africans praise and worship God.
In line with MacRobert (1992:4-5, 79), a decolonised African theology should be largely “flavoured by a distinctively African culture that can produce an African form of Christianity, which can be seen in African vibrant approach to worship and joyous celebration.” A decolonised African theology needs to start in the context of Africa, then theology can work with three sources – biblical revelation, reason and history (Knighton 2004:155). Rosino (1994) says that it is “important to look at African tradition and Christian tradition, yet not to try to replace African tradition with the history of the Christian Church elsewhere as the context is African.” African reason is essential to the process of forming creative syntheses, which itself will begin to affect the way people think as their key term in their language are redefined. There is a need to inhabit the material cultures as we live, breath and experience them.
In addition to the above, a decolonised African theology is needed to encourage Black Theology, which is a survival theology. For Cone (1969:117), black theology is “a theology which is an attempt to liberate Africans from the yoke of Western oppression.” “The task of Black Theology is to analyse the condition of Africans in the light of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ with the purpose of creating a new understanding of African dignity among African people, and providing the necessary soul in African people, to destroy racism” (Ibid.). Black theology should also analyse the nature of the African Christian faith in such a way that African people can say Yes to African-ness and No to Western-ness and mean it.
A decolonised African theology should persuade Black theology to critically call for Christ to walk every day in African communities, call for his teachings to be acted out every day. If the teachings of Christ are acted out, there would be no problems with social justice, no problems with political, social, economic and spiritual oppression (Craig 1970). A decolonised African theology should refrain from accepting any doctrine of God which is irrelevant to the existential conditions of the oppressed. Black theology is a critique rooted in oppression, in the pains of African people on African continent and in the world. The critique calls for a critical analysis of the whole of Western theology, to try to bring more of Christ who freed people from political, social, economic and spiritual colonialism, imperialism and neo colonialism (Wa Said 1971:517).
Black theology represents a theology of decolonisation as Black Theology is a scientific innovativeness whose main purpose is the liberation of the African people from spiritual-socio-politico-economic colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism (Wa Said 1971:518). As Graham (2017:9) articulates, “decolonisation should also be concerned with mental habits that have been internalised where the West retains possibilities of superiority – most notably in education.” A decolonised African theology also needs to decolonise habits of mind, sensibility, and ways of feeling, experiencing and valuing ourselves.
Conclusion
Decolonisation of African theology is not only a project to be undertaken by the former colonies; just as feminist or queer thinking is not only for women or gays. Decolonisation of African theology is a long process. This is because cultures are not layered like cakes, so one can skim off the cream or icing and arrive at the real substance of what is African. The absolute complexity of mother tongues and their histories in Africa make such a model of decolonisation a long process. However, in that long process lies a certain truth about cultural conditions: they are vast, complex, multidimensional networks of interactive parts. They are composed of ever-shifting discourses, artefacts, institutions, languages, histories (among many other entities), and people who live and internalise these networks as ways of making sense of what they experience. In finding better ways of decolonising African theology, African theologians must be careful never to repeat what the colonisers did, to reverse colonisation to fellow Africans, or to replicate the colonial project.
A decolonised African theology must be rooted in the African way of life. It must come from below, not from above. Theological reflections are lived out among ordinary people and currently it is well advance ecumenically. The decolonisation of African theology must also take place in the educational system that frequently has to humble itself to listen, learn and become informed. As De Gruchy (1991) concluded, the program for a decolonised African theology, must have three emphases: it has to be guided biblically based and contextual. A decolonised African theology must be a theological reflection, informed by African traditions, morals, values, ethos and cultures from which the lives and experiences of African people are derived and understood.
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[1] Africanisation is about liberation – the comprehensive liberation of all Africa and all Africans – but more specifically the liberation of the poor, the Black, the women and most specifically Black or African women.