Search Results (14)

This article addresses the underrepresentation of religion in historical accounts of apartheid’s gendered political economy. It asks how colonial missionary discourse and apartheid law interacted in constructing and regulating Black womanhood, and how intersectionality and Bosadi hermeneutics can expose and contest the theological legitimation of Black women’s labour, sacrifice, and endurance. The study uses a qualitative historical-theological and contextual biblical method. It analyses selected historical scholarship, South African legislation, the Constitutional Court’s Mahlangu judgment, and Proverbs 31:10–31 and Ruth, through the lens of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality and Madipoane Masenya’s Bosadi hermeneutics. The analysis finds that mission Christianity and the apartheid state were neither identical nor uniform, but influential Christian ideals of domesticity, respectability, service, and feminine sacrifice could converge with a racialised system that restricted African women’s land, mobility, residence, labour, and family life. Proverbs 31 and Ruth are therefore treated as contested resources: they can affirm women’s agency and economic intelligence, but they can also be appropriated to moralise overwork and precarious survival. The article contributes an integrated historical-theological account that links law, labour, religion, and biblical reception without reducing African women to passive victims. It recommends that churches and theological institutions audit the distribution of labour and authority, support decent work and shared care, and interpret biblical texts with women whose lives are shaped by racialised and gendered inequality. Full article

It has become taboo for a parent today to say “no” to a child. Children grow in this “supposed” freedom and child rights, and then some assume an attitude of always having their own way, a character devoid of “home wisdom”, also called “common sense”. It is only their way that matters; others must bow to them. They become arrogant, proud, selfish, insensitive, irresponsible, and lack initiative; simply put, they mold themselves into “beasts”. It is only when this beast of a child turns on their parents that they realize something went wrong and needs to be corrected, which is often too late. This adage has already applied: “it is easier to bend a tender tree than an old one”. In this sacred text, Luke 15:11–32, a father displayed an attitude, which causes the mind to inquire why he consented. Why did the father allow the son to have his way, knowing quite well that the son’s reasoning was wrong? Unfortunately, this is becoming the norm of the day. In the text, the son returned, but today, many children are so consumed in pride, self-righteousness, and arrogance that even when confronted, they will not agree that they are wrong. Others, who realize their abject situation, fail to make amends for fear of being laughed at, which is pride, and they perish in the process. This paper uses narrative criticism within the context of African biblical hermeneutics to explore the reason behind the father’s attitude and the wisdom behind the son’s final acceptance of his situation that motivates him to return. These reasons, this paper hopes, will help serve as a remedy. Full article

African immigrants in the UK, especially in places such as London, Birmingham, and Manchester, contend with institutional racism, xenophobia, and socio-economic marginalisation. This study analyses how first- and second-generation African diaspora communities understand Jeremiah 29: 4–7 to create resilience and belonging. This study uses desktop research from African diasporic churches and analyses the UK’s Inclusive Britain Strategy (2023) to contend that biblical tales are reinterpreted to confront modern issues, including the Windrush Scandal and racial inequalities in NHS maternal care. The document emphasises the influence of African-led churches in formulating integration plans and promoting policy reforms in the UK. The findings indicate that African diaspora churches reinterpret Jeremiah 29: 4–5 to promote resilience and structural involvement in combating systemic racism and socio-economic disadvantage in the UK. The paper concludes by reinterpreting biblical tales to connect spiritual resilience with systemic activism, promoting hybrid identities, and integrating legislative reforms with community-driven initiatives for equity. The paper recommends the decolonisation of curricula, the enhancement of culturally competent healthcare training, the expansion of church–state collaborations, and the modification of legislation such as the Hostile Environment to foster inclusiveness. This study enhances academic discourse by merging diaspora theology with policy analysis, presenting an innovative framework for the theological examination of migration and elevating African agency within UK socio-political environments through decolonial hermeneutics and hybrid identity paradigms. Full article

In establishing the Christian faith on African soil, the first missionaries to Africa came along with the Bible. They were determined to share the word of God with the indigenous Africans. This was undertaken effectively; however, it came at a cost. In an attempt to produce translated versions of the Bible for the natives, they ended up producing translations, some of which did not reflect the thoughts of the indigenous people. This has called for an enterprise whereby these texts need to be retranslated and interpreted to reflect the thoughts of the indigenous people. Mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics in Ghana has been advantageous to this enterprise since it seeks to remedy the situation by examining the mother-tongue translations and making proposals for retranslations and interpretation. This has attracted some scholars to come up with a methodology and approaches that would be appropriate in this direction. This paper seeks to assess and evaluate the use of the mother-tongue interpretation, as well as its methodology and approaches in Ghana in the light of African biblical hermeneutics. Though this enterprise is recommendable to African exegetes, it is a special area of biblical studies in search of a standard methodological approach. The paper calls for much attention to how the mother-tongue interpretation could bring the meaning of the text closer to the culture of the Ghanaian reader—however, not at the expense of neglecting the cultural milieu of the original author in which the text was couched. Full article

Deuteronomy 23:3, says: “No … Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord”. This verse is motivated by a discriminatory tendency embedded in the ontology of the Deuteronomist. Interestingly, Deuteronomy 23:3 was used by Ezra-Nehemiah to discriminate against the “Moabites” during the Second Temple. Such ontology is countered by the author of Ruth in the narrative of Ruth during the Second Temple. This demonstrates an ontological “war” within the Bible itself. The primary contestation lies in whether God is exclusive or inclusive. This development necessitates a hermeneutics of suspicion. In the course of history, the “theology” of Deuteronomy has been used to grossly violate the human dignity of many God-fearing African people and many other people of the South for colonial purposes. To exacerbate the situation, there were persistent attempts from some quarters to universalise such a discriminatory biblical perspective. This would feed into the centre–periphery arrangement, with the centre feeding the periphery with such hermeneutics. For this reason, African scholars are implored to be very vigilant against ardent pressures put on the biblical texts by ontological, epistemological, and contextual biases of interpretations. Accordingly, Andrew Mbuvi identifies African Biblical Hermeneutics perfectly when he says it seeks to undo “the very construct of the ‘centre-periphery’ binary by allowing the possibility of multiple centres”). Kenneth Ngwa, thus, rightly asserts that African Biblical Hermeneutics considers African epistemologies and conditions “to be invaluable and legitimate contexts and resources in biblical interpretation”), drinking from our own wells). In consequence, this paper intends to set a dialogue between Deuteronomy 23:3 and Ruth 4:18–22. This paper aims to examine the understanding of God behind these verses. This paper will then compare the two theologies with the African philosophical concept of God. Harnessing the African concept of Ubuntu, this paper will de-ideologise the two texts and thus will provide a recommendation concerning the two texts. Full article

Ethnic disharmony exists among the people of Ghana. What are the reasons for this? Ghana is an amalgamation of different ethnic groups, cultures, peoples and states to form one entity. The partition of Africa is mainly responsible for this, though there are other contributing factors. The project to partition Africa led, in large measure, to the erosion of the African identity. The 19th- and 20th-century European Christian mission to southern West Africa exploited this reality to their mission advantage. Unfortunately, the result seems to be counterproductive because the mission project, for the most part, produced a version of Christianity that failed to affirm the African identity. Concerned Africans, now on a mission to deconstruct the imperialist, European mission-constructed West African Christian identity, realise that biblical interpretation is one major source of this decolonial agenda. How does a mother-tongue reading of Ephesians 2 help decolonise Eυe Christianity and promote ethnic harmony in Ghana? Using mother-tongue biblical hermeneutics, this paper argues that the pursuit of ethnic harmony in Ghana is a decolonial hermeneutic with potential for fostering ethnic harmony in Ghana. Full article

This article is dedicated to the loving memory of Bénézet Bujo and Laurenti Magesa, two giants of African Theology. The portrait of the Jews in John’s Gospel has been the object of a great debate among Western scholars. The negative portrait of many of the Jews of the fourth canonical gospel has led some to qualify John’s Gospel as the most “anti-Jewish” writing of the New Testament. Recent Western history, in particular the Shoah, has certainly had a heavy weight on this negative interpretation of John’s Gospel. But another perspective, here African Biblical Hermeneutics, may give a different understanding of this disputed theme. Following this non-Western approach, we want to show that maybe it is not John’s Gospel’s characterization of the Jews which is problematic, but the hermeneutics used to interpret it. In the end, what is at stake, is not the Jews or Jewish people as such, but how one, Jew or non-Jew, responds to Jesus’ message and gift of abundant life. Full article

African contextual biblical hermeneutics, practiced mainly among those from the southern hemisphere, is framed by conflicting academic approaches, methods, epistemologies, rationalities, etc. The general challenge put before the Bible scholars in this part of the world mostly concerns methodologies. This paper focuses on the link between a biblical text and the context of its interpretation. To avoid any specific context or interpreter gaining hermeneutical hegemony over the text, in contextual biblical hermeneutics, the coherence should be first and foremost between the text and the context of its interpretation. The interpretation method of Ifá, the sacred orature of Yoruba and some non-Yoruba people in West Africa, helps to achieve that coherence. This paper is a theoretical presentation of what a contextual biblical hermeneutic can learn from this African Sacred literature reading in context. The hermeneutical rationale of Ifá stories is one of “speaking in proverbs”, considering both the stories and their interpretations as proverbs. In line with this rationale, the ideal link between a biblical text and its hermeneutical context is like the one between a “proverb story” and the many stories (contexts) of its harmonious utterances. The epistemological and hermeneutical functions of the context of interpretation are not to interpret the biblical text but to verify the validity of proposed interpretations. Full article

Joel is one of the 12 minor prophets (dōdekaprophēton). His prophecy aims at calling the nation and people to repentance through emphasizing that the Day of the Lord (yōm ădȏnay) is at hand (3:1–5 [2:28–32]). The locust plague (ʾarbbeh) in Joel’s message—which recalls the insects that threaten to destroy crops and vegetation in Africa and beyond, but which can also be used as food and livestock feed and offer other benefits as well—could be interpreted as Joel’s prophetic sign that the great Day of the Lord is near (1:2–2:17). Throughout history, scholars, theologians, and exegetes of differing schools of thought and from numerous locations have offered various interpretations for Joel’s prophecy and subjected it to diverse Eurocentric and Americo-centric hermeneutical methods. This work, however, with its focus on Africa, takes a different approach. Drawing from the work of many African hermeneuticians, it reads Joel’s prophecy using the tools of African Biblical Hermeneutics (ABH), a post-colonial enterprise, in light of the decolonial turn. The article exegetes and theologically analyzes the narrative of the locust plague (ʾarbbeh) in Joel 1:2–7, within the context of Joel 1–3, with the hopes that it will be transformational and beneficial for African readers within their faith context. Full article

Every society possesses systems for accessing, preserving, and transmitting its traditions. These are meant to ensure that privileged knowledge entrusted to reliable custodians is passed on unchanged between generations for the preservation of society. In Africa, scholars have advocated new hermeneutical approaches to the study of the Bible, arguing that the adoption of traditional methods of exegesis served as another instrument in the colonialists’ toolkit to undermine the reception and preservation of Africa’s sacred traditions. Using African Biblical Hermeneutics, this paper studies the processes for preserving Sacred Tradition in Psalm 40. Similar processes are found in African Indigenous Sacred Texts such as the mate masie of the Adinkra textual system. I argue, therefore, that a complementary reading of the texts of the two traditions could serve to de-link from the monocular vision of traditional exegesis and offer a much more fruitful approach to interpreting these texts and making them relevant to the contemporary African reader. Full article

Tombstone, the practice of demarcating a grave and unveiling it in some instances, has been common since ancient times. The practice is related to marking the grave in order to remember its geographical location, and subsequently for future generations to identify with it. This practice is very common in a South African context, especially in African traditional religion (ATR). In addition, they would have other ceremonies to revisit the grave and/or the tombstone of their loved one as a way of remembering them. However, some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches prohibit this practice as ancestral worship. This article argues that the erection and unveiling of tombstones does not necessarily need to be understood as ancestral worship. A distinction needs to be made between ancestral worship and ancestral commemoration in an African context. The conclusion is that when the practice of unveiling tombstones is carried out as a way of remembering and showing respect to our ancestors, but not worshiping and revering them, this practice should be supported by Christians from Pentecostal and Charismatic churches as well. There is therefore a need, from a decolonial perspective, to use the missional hermeneutics of discernment and naked truth to provide a proper biblical and acceptable Christian practice of the unveiling of the tombstone in the South African context. Full article

There are at least four traumatic events that likely lie behind the Gospel of John: (1) Jesus’ death and inaccessibility, (2) the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, (3) the Johannine community’s excommunication from the synagogue, and (4) the loss of the Beloved Disciple. Evidence of all of these traumas can be found in the Gospel itself and, as extant, the Gospel exhibits a number of strategies for addressing these experiences of suffering. Working from Gaston Bachelard’s observations regarding literature produced in response to suffering, this paper outlines the textual evidence for each of these experiences of suffering, notes the responses to them that the Gospel displays, and seeks briefly to evaluate the responses for the TYPOI (patterns/examples/warnings) they provide. In short, the Fourth Gospel employs psychologically attractive, compensatory responses to experiences of loss. However, it deploys in parallel a toxic cocktail of anti-Jewish polemic, condemnation of “the world”, and self-protective, sectarian insularity. Regarding whether the text’s trauma response can be viewed as exemplary for ethically-minded Christians, Desmond Tutu’s 2009 statement, “there are certain parts [of the Bible] which you have to say no to”, is directly applicable, while the warning the text’s example suggests is significant. Full article

Humanity is not battling only against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) but also against gender-based violence (GBV), which has risen to epidemic proportions globally during the COVID-19 storm. There has been a rapid increase in domestic violence and other forms of GBV as nations imposed lockdown restrictions as a way to curb the COVID-19 storm. In this article, it is my contention that some of the people who were compelled to quarantine became vulnerable to GBV. In his presidential address to the nation on 18 June 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa identified GBV in South Africa as a second pandemic. There is also a considerable outcry in our inability, both as humanity at large and government, in particular, to deal with this scourge and find lasting solutions to it. This article locates the scourge of GBV within the ‘storm’ of COVID-19 using an African family unit as a case study. Upon presenting a practical-missiological reflection of the biblical narrative of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13—both through missional lenses and hermeneutic analysis—this article reimagines an ecclesial praxis that is life-affirming and liberating to victims of GBV as it applies in family contexts. It proposes tangible solutions to GBV within an African family, but the results can be replicated globally where GBV remains a pandemic to be dealt with. Full article

Foundational Black Womanist Christian Theology has suffered from the focus on Alice Walker’s 1983 four-part womanist definition at the exclusion of her 1979 short story, Coming Apart. The focus on the 1983 definition and the exclusion of Coming Apart has left an invisbilizing effect on the centrality of reliance on African-American lesbian literature and wisdom in womanist Christian methodology. The invisibilization can be corrected, in part, through interpolating Coming Apart with the 1983 definition, utilizing a Black Buddhist lesbian Womanist hermeneutic, and additional Womanist engagement in Womanist Consultations. This correction has implications for Christian theologies that may be heterosexist, homophobic, and patriarchal, Biblical interpretation, preaching, and epistemological processes. Full article