The Crucified People: the Divinized African State and the De-divinized African People

Abstract

How are we to talk about a God who is revealed as love in a situation characterized by poverty and oppression, especially when such poverty is debilitating and vulgarizing? In addressing this question, this article will emphasize the essentiality of economic and anthropological categories in African political theology. It will proceed to explore the reality of the divinization of the African state as the trigger of African poverty. It will discuss the reality of African poverty as the de-subjectivation of African people, and the crucifixion theology of instrumentalized poverty in Africa. Finally, it will propose a theo-anthropological framework as the theo-political public thinking in Africa that will de-divinize the African state, divinize and subjectify the African person.