Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:29:59.213Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coloniality and Theological Method in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Robert S. Heaney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to approach the heuristic potency of coloniality illustrated by reference to the emergence of African theologies. Coloniality refers to subjugating strategies found in mission discourses which are not unrelated to wider colonial violence. It will be argued that such an analytic category, which arises from historical experiences of mission malpractice, has particular theological and methodological significance. Consequently, post-colonial Anglicanisms will affirm particularism, experiential interfaces and inductive theologizing.

Keywords

African TheologyAnglicanismcolonialityexperienceinductiveMbitiparticularismpost-colonialism
Type
Introduction to Postcolonial Articles
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , May 2009 , pp. 55 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

Robert S. Heaney is an Anglican priest ordained in the Church of Ireland. He is a member of Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford.

References

2. Welbourn, F.B. and Ogot, B.A., A Place to Feel at Home: A Study of Two Independent Churches in Western Kenya (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 143.Google Scholar

3. As will be seen in this article, my own concern, without ignoring more recent developments, is to re-examine the significance of first-generation African theologians through a post-colonial lens. Besides the works referred to elsewhere in this article, for recent introductions to and issues in African theologies see, for example, Bediako, Kwame, ‘African Theology’, in David F. Ford (ed.), The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edn, 1997), pp. 426–444); Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Introducing African Women’s Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); J.N.K. Mugambi and Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike (eds.), Moral and Ethical Issues in African Christianity (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 3rd edn, 2003); Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Musimbi R.A. Kanyoro (eds.), The Will to Arise: Women, Tradition, and The Church in Africa (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2006); Diane B. Stinton, Jesus of Africa: Voices of Contemporary African Christology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2006); Kwame Bediako, Jesus and the Gospel in Africa: History and Experience (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2007).Google Scholar

4. For example, see Temu, A.J., British Protestant Missions (London: Longman, 1972); Robert W. Strayer, The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1978). See also Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004), pp. 220–30, 302–313. Norman Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

5. Discourse here refers to how particular knowledge comes to be seen as legitimate by the practice and networking of, in this case, particular missionaries, scholars and institutions. See Kim, Uriah Y., Decolonizing Josiah: Toward a Postcolonial Reading of the Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005), pp. 20–21); Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 385–410.Google Scholar

6. See Strong, Rowan, Anglicanism and the British Empire c. 1700–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 1–40, 283–94.Google Scholar

7. Warren, M.A.C., Caesar The Beloved Enemy: Three Studies in the Relation of Church and State (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 30–41.Google Scholar

8. Robert Gray (1809–1872) was consecrated as Bishop of Cape Town. Bosher, Robert S., The American Church and the Formation of the Anglican Communion, 1823–1853 (Evanston: Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, 1962), pp. 16–17. See G.C. Boase, ‘Fulford, Francis (1830–1868)’, rev. H.C.G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [Accessed on April 29, 2008 at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10223].Google Scholar

9. ‘Extension of the Reformed Catholic Church’, Colonial Church Chronicle (July 1847–June 1848), pp. 3–5 (3). See ‘Systematic Colonization’, Colonial Church Chronicle (July 1848), pp. 2–6. For the history of the term ‘Anglican’ and ‘Anglican Communion’ see Kevin Ward A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 3–5, 296–318; W.M. Jacob, The Making of the Anglican Church Worldwide (London: SPCK, 1997), pp. 144–93.Google Scholar

10. Warren, Caesar The Beloved Enemy, pp. 26–40. This same notion of the inability of societies to relate to broadening horizons has also been employed to explain conversion. See Horton, Robin., ‘African Conversion’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 41.2 (1971), pp. 85–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Sugirtharajah, R.S., Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 25–28. See Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 1–11.Google Scholar

12. Metz, John B., ‘Religion and Society in the Light of a Political Theology’, Harvard Theological Review 61.4 (1968), pp. 507–523 (507). See Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, pp. 2, 117–22; Elaine L. Graham, Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty (London: Mowbray, 1996), pp. 130–41.Google Scholar

13. For a recent attempt at this see Rieger, Joerg, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). See also Ian T. Douglas and Kwok Pui-Lan (eds.), Beyond Colonial Anglicanism: The Anglican Communion in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2001); Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds.), Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2004); Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005); Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007).Google Scholar

14. Sugirtharajah, , Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, p. 201.Google Scholar

15. Gugelberger, Georg M. and Brydon, Diana., ‘Postcolonial Cultural Studies’ in Michael Groden, Martin Kreiswirth and Imre Szeman (eds.), The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2nd edn, 2005), pp. 756–768 (757).Google Scholar

16. That is to say, it is possible to understand it as post-colonial literature in the more technical sense of displaying themes present in other writings well established as post-colonial literature. It is of course uncontroversial to refer to African theology as post-colonial literature in the sense that much of it was produced in the era of Independence.Google Scholar

17. Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth. and Tiffin, Helen., The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 2002), p. 197.Google Scholar

18. For the possible indebtedness post-colonial theology might have to liberation theology, see the introduction to Keller, Nausner and Rivera (eds.), Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire, pp. 1–19. See J.N.K. Mugambi, From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology After the Cold War (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1995), pp. 160–80.Google Scholar

19. Young, Robert J.C., Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 2. See Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson; Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988), pp. 23–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. This, it appears, changes with the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. See Mugambi, J.N.K., African Christian Theology: An Introduction (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1989), pp. 52–57; Christopher Rowland, ‘Render to God what belongs to God’, New Blackfriars 70.830 (2007), pp. 365–371. It is worthy of note that, as far as I am aware, not one of the papers presented at the ‘Church Identity/ies and Postcolonialism’ conference at the University of Manchester in May 2008 dealt directly with relationships between church and state. Undoubtedly, Anglican theologians engaging with the post-colonial will need to address the issue of the (dis)establishment of the Church of England.Google Scholar

21. See Mugambi’s, J.N.K., ‘Introduction’, in John V. Taylor, The Primal Vision: Christian Presence Amid African Religion (London: SCM Press, 2001 [1963]), pp. xi–xxxv. For the debate on the profitability of the British Empire see Avner Offer, ‘The British empire, 1870–1914: a waste of money?’, Economic History Review 46.2 (1993), pp. 215–38; Patrick K. O’Brien, ‘The Cost and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846–1914’, Past and Present 120.1 (1988), pp. 163–200 (175–86); Young, Postcolonialism, pp. 15–43.Google Scholar

22. Mugambi, J.N.K., ‘Religions in East Africa in the Context of Globalization’, in J.N.K. Mugambi and Mary N. Getui (eds.), Religions in Eastern Africa Under Globalization (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2004), pp. 3–29 (10); See Ivan Petrella, Beyond Liberation Theology: A Polemic (London: SCM Press, 2008), pp. 20–24.Google Scholar

23. Young, Postcolonialism, p. 338.Google Scholar

24. Particularism refers to the theological point of departure. It should not be assumed that it is synonymous with isolationism. Rather, it is hoped that what one might term, ‘particularisms in relation’ will develop.Google Scholar

25. Mbiti, John S., ‘Christian Eschatology in Relation to the Evangelization of Tribal Africa’, PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1963; John S. Mbiti, New Testament Eschatology in an African Background (London: SPCK, 1971).Google Scholar

26. Young, Josiah U., African Theology: A Critical Analysis and Annotated Bibliography (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp. 13–24.Google Scholar

27. Stanley, Brian, ‘Conversion to Christianity: The Colonization of the Mind?’, International Review of Mission 92.366 (2003), pp. 315–331 (317). See Robert S. Heaney, ‘Conversion to Coloniality: Avoiding the Colonization of Method’, International Review of Mission 97.384/5 (2008), pp. 65–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. See Heaney, , ‘Conversion to Coloniality’, pp. 71–77.Google Scholar

29. See Mbiti, John S., African Religions and Philosophy (New York: Anchor Books, 1970 [1969]), pp. 19–36.Google Scholar