ECUMENICAL REVIEW最新文献

The development and key features of African women’s theologies, primarily through the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, has entered the mainstream of theological education, which could provide insights for Black theology. In the landscape of theological education, which has been dominated by western-centric approaches, Black theology and the quest for liberation have made some inroads in challenging dominant discourses. However, aspirations for a liberative Afrocentric curriculum and pedagogy are yet to be realized. This paper will briefly survey the development of Black theology, primarily in the South African context, where theology was dominated by universal Western claims to theological education and repressive anti-Black theology. Second, the development of African women’s theologies, primarily through the work of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, will be explored with particular features which created inroads in theological education despite its marginal position. Finally, the paper will review how robust engagement with the lived realities of African women and their communities through engendering theological education has broadened the scope of the educational enterprise. The intersectional methodological and pedagogical approaches of African women’s theologies open up space to focus on praxis and the lived realities of Africans, which could be instructive to proponents of Black theology.

Intended as a review of the first volume of the new multi-volume publication A History of the Desire for Christian Unity, this article also considers approaches to the writing of ecumenical history, which can, it asserts, quickly become contested history, and on two fronts. First, ecumenical history cannot isolate itself from the modern, secular approach to historiography, where historical developments are accounted for within the framework of human, social, psychological, economic, and cultural forces without regard to specifically religious factors (still less, divine involvement). Second, advocacy for Christian unity takes different forms, promoted variously by particular churches and traditions, or by the ecumenical organizations themselves, or by certain interest groups.

The rise in the public visibility of anti-Black racism and intra-Black xenophobia and racism has created a renewed thirst for responses that are unashamedly “Black centred” across disciplines and spheres. Can “Black theology” capitalize on this renewed thirst to recalibrate itself into a relevant response with the potential to impact lives outside of its traditional contexts of the US and South Africa? Using feminist methodologies, this article seeks to investigate the relationship between Black theology in Africa and African women’s theologies. Framed within similar concerns as feminist theologies, African women's theologies are also characterized by a commitment to prioritize women's experiences where traditionally, only men's experiences have been valued and prioritized. From this methodological approach, two critical questions will be brought to the fore: Where are the women in Black theology? What would Black theology look like if it considered gender a critical variable for theologizing? This article puts forward the following assertions: First, that Black theology in Africa has mainly been South African and failed to make its mark north of Limpopo due to its commitment to dismantle the political system of apartheid. Second, that Black theology in South Africa did not privilege gender as a variable worthy of pursuing because it focused more on what undermined the (South) African man. Third, that within Black theology lies the largely untapped potential to address not only growing waves of anti-Black racism, but also, using an intentional intersectionality lens, to privilege gender, disability, and ethnicity in its purview.

Deploying a decolonial epistemological framework that brings critical race and identity theory into conversation with African and Black theologies, this article explores the phenomenon of Pinkster Kerk as a productive site for indigenous meaning-making within studies on Black theology and African Pentecostalism. Through an autobiographical account of Pinkster and a systematic critical review of the literature on Black theology and African Pentecostalism, I argue that South African Black theology, and studies of Pentecostalism in particular, have much to gain from this unique expression of Pentecostalism found on the Cape Flats. This conversation reflects on three interrelated areas – indigenous religion, Black theology, and African Pentecostalism – and offers some theoretical insights and philosophical signposts for expanding discussion on issues of identity, politics, and race within each of these fields of study.

This paper contributes to the panoply of theological discourses in Africa that seek to identify the role and the place of Black theology in post-apartheid South Africa and the broader context of postcolonial Africa. This task is premised on two assertions. First is the argument of Alistair Kee that Black theology would have become redundant with the end of apartheid if racism remained its only subject of critical analysis. Second, Kee’s assertion corroborates Allan Boesak’s observation that beyond its goal to support the end of apartheid, Black theology is an ongoing discourse to rediscover and reclaim human dignity and identity. These two arguments underscore the need for a reassessment of South African Black theologies, redefining this theology’s foundational ideals and casting new visions for emerging theological concerns today, including for the wider African context. The paper therefore explores the intersecting identities of “black, queer, and Christian” as an imperative for Black theologies’ discourses in Africa today. Using a queer Black consciousness as a theoretical lens, these identities are examined through the eucharistic ritual of an LGBT church in Kenya where the phrase “this is my body,” on the institution of the eucharistic meal in the gospels, has become concretized and performed as a liberative praxis for people who identify as LGBT. As such, it is argued that the eucharistic ritual becomes a symbol, an art, and an act of resistance in Africa, where LGBT people continue to assert and affirm their identity and dignity of blackness, queerness, and faith (Christian).