"A critical assessment of the concept of culture in the first wave of African Christian theology"

Abstract

The concept of "culture" has been at the centre of attention in African Christian theology in the post-colonial era. This has to be understood within the context of the legacy of colonialism, the rise of African forms of cultural nationalism, the resistance against Westernisation and the widespread call for authentic expressions of Christianity within the African context. It is within this context that calls for inculturation, indigenisation and contextualisation should be understood. In what may be termed the first wave of post-colonial African Christian theology, theologians such as John Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu, Gabriel Setiloane, Charles Nyamiti and John Pobee responded to such calls through a retrieval of an African identity, through ethnographic studies of specific African cultures and through an analysis of specific aspects of African culture. This preoccupation with the concept of culture, with particular African cultures and with aspects of African culture has been severely criticised amongst social critics, in African philosophy as well as in a number of more recent schools of African Christian theology, including African liberation theology (Jean-Marc Ela), reconstruction theology (Jesse Mugambi), evangelical theologies (Byang Kato) and African women's theology (Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Musimbi Kanyoro). These criticisms beg the question whether the interest in culture in the first wave of African Christian theology should be more or less abandoned in order to focus on a range of other, more urgent contemporary concerns.