Issues in the Reconstruction of African Theology: African Hermeneutics as Key to Understanding the Dynamics of African Theology
This paper reflects on the process of reformulating African religion in a postcolonial and postmissionary environment with special reference to the postapartheid context in South Africa. Special attention is given to hermeneutic problems in this regard. The distinctive nature of African theology (ta...
| Published in: | Research in the social scientific study of religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2000
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| In: |
Research in the social scientific study of religion
Year: 2000, Volume: 11, Pages: 37-64 |
| Further subjects: | B
History of religion
B Social sciences B Religionswissenschaften B Religion & Gesellschaft |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This paper reflects on the process of reformulating African religion in a postcolonial and postmissionary environment with special reference to the postapartheid context in South Africa. Special attention is given to hermeneutic problems in this regard. The distinctive nature of African theology (taking the oral tradition into account) is indicated. African theology is seen as the contextual formulation of African religious experience by taking both African traditional religion and Christianity as sources, and without simply reverting to indigenization, eclecticism, or syncretism. African theologians have today become more confident about what one might call African Christianity. This means following a hermeneutic demanded by the African text, which is much broader than a certain phase in Western Biblical hermeneutics. African hermeneutics is a contextual hermeneutics, aware of the legacy of colonialism, the history of African oppression and exploitation, but determined to recover African identity and formulate a theology which takes cognizance of African culture and African traditional religions. It is proposed that African symbolism must replace the cultural presuppositions of Western Christianity, namely logos and ratio. The God of missionary preaching was a distant God, foreign to the history of the colonized peoples. Exploited and oppressed, they found it difficult to identify this God with the God of Exodus. The primary role of the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is seen in African religious movements as supporting the reaction and revolt of African Christians. A Western kind of individualism, typical of modernism, is foreign to African people who hold a hermeneutic of potential or initial trust because of shared beliefs, practices, conventions, and traditions. African hermeneutics comes naturally in the sense that most aspects of African life are integrated into a harmonious unity. The African Initiated Churches (AICs) can be seen as accomplishing the task of bridging Western mainline traditions and the world of African traditional religion. Against the broader background of third world hermeneutics, black hermeneutics, liberation hermeneutics, and the distinctive hermeneutics of African theology are examined. Third world hermeneutics stresses the contextual nature of hermeneutics in third world countries where theologians cannot ignore the poverty, exploitation, illiteracy, and suffering of their people. The essay concludes with the conflicts of opinion between the so-called old-guard and newer theologians. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004493278_005 |