African Christianity and Public Theology
Decolonization, Culture, and Islam
Paul S. Chung
Abstract
This paper researches African Christianity and public theology in dealing with discourse clarification of decolonization and significance of public justice, while involving world construction with inculturation and Islam. A sociological study of African Christianity and public theology can be articulated in a cultural theory of life-world and narrative of colonized experience. An analysis of religious discourse is undertaken in explicating its elective affinities with material interests, cultural privilege, transformation, and power relations. To further African public theology, I take into account Islamic theory of epistemological break a la Averroes, which presents a promising and viable project fostering Islamic interaction with Christianity. Issues of mutual collaboration and dignity of women can be furthered in Islamic scholars and African theologians, which will elicit a future course in African Christianity and public theology.
Keywords. Polycentrism, Effective History, African Public Theology, Ijtihad, Christian-Islamic Feminism
Introduction
A notion of World Christianity necessitates a polycentric map because a demographic shift has occurred. The majority of Christians, 60 % in the year 2000, is reported to live in the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania). By 2015 the decline of Christians in the Global North had dropped to a low point of 32.2 percent. By 2050 it is anticipated that 77 percent of all Christians would live in the regions of the Global South.[1]
The global demographic shift enlarges “the horizon of the classical church historiography” and it considers “the multitude of local initiatives, specific experiences and varieties of Christianity in very diverse cultural contexts.”[2]
Polycentric structures become the background for fostering post-Eurocentric principle in drawing attention to the voices from other centers and from the margins, which speak from different perspectives.[3]
Give this, I consider significance of historical-sociological inquiry in assessing a tranregional or interregional mission as important contribution, as undertaken by African Christianity. The interregional mission can be seen, especially in Coptic Orthodox Church and Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. They provide an inspiration for the movement of AIC (African Independent Churches) movement associated with Ethiopianism. It was to emerge in the nineteenth century and shapes its contemporary character imbued with African cultural dignity, independence, and decolonization. I further to observe that East Syrian Church found its footing in Sassanian (Persian) Empire and was involved in transrelgional and global connection with Islam, China, and India.
This said, I seek to articulate significance of African Christianity and public theology. A project of public theology focuses on the way in which religious discourse comes to terms with role of agency, while combined with its material interests and power relations in analyzing the history of African Christianity and problem of public sphere in African society.
This public position requires historical, sociological method in conceptualizing a theory of effective history in taking issue with reality of African Christianity, its colonial experience, problem of public sphere, and civil society. Public theology in this regard entails a problematic method, which is concerned with epistemology circle in terms of discontinuity, rupture, and transformation; it can be seen in the analysis of early history of African Christianity and its division at Chalcedon, which caused Coptic Christianity and East Syrian Christianity.
African Christianity and its Distinctive Character
Seen in the historical sociology, African Christianity and its distinctive character can be assessed in its pursuit of its identity and cultural authenticity, which are meaningful and relevant to African Christian integrity, faith, and confession.
As John Mbiti writes: “Even though attempts are made to give Christianity an African character, its Western form is in many ways foreign to African peoples. This foreignness is a drawback because it means that Christianity is kept on the surface and is not free to deepen its influence in all areas of African life and problems.”[4]
Christianity in its historical development is rooted in African soil, in particular Alexandria, in which Greek philosophical and cultural system reached its climax in conceptualizing and communicating the meaning of the Gospel.
In Thomas Oden’s view, African scholars on the African continent are concerned with primitive African Christianity of the earliest seven centuries, with the period of early African martyrdom. Their relationship in the earliest years before Chalcedon (451) was involved in such brilliant writers as Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Athanasius, Augustine and Cyril the Great, among others. Such legacy still pertain to contemporary Africa and its diaspora, while providing the theological resources for them to cope with their contemporary issue in a confident and independent manner. Oden calls for retrieval of early African Christianity with “its faith, courage, tenacity and remarkable intellectual strength.”[5]
This appraisal takes into account Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), the influential German liberal historian in early twentieth century. Christianity from the very start ran forward with a spirit of universalism, in which Jesus was interpreted and declared as the Logos. Its powers of attraction enable Christianity to absorb and subordinate the whole of Hellenism to Christianity; it blended with coefficients of the most diverse nature and culture.[6]
Harnack seeks to highlight Christianity as essence, arguing that the early Christianity and its dogma lay in its accommodation to Greek philosophical language, culture, and Hellenistic mind. His quest of the essence of the Gospel needs to be discussed in early African intellectual engagement with Hellenistic Greek environment.
In fact, Ernst Troletsch takes issue with Harnack’s essence of Christianity, because essence can only be undertaken in correlation with the universal history-of-religions.[7] It acknowledges early African Christianity as the classic example of constructing dogmatic theology and belief system in a creative and constructive manner.
For instance, an idea of Christian universalism (anima naturaliter Christiana) was critically elaborated in the thought of Tertullian, in which a scriptural interpretation (the prologue of Fourth gospel) comes in encounter with Greek and Hellenistic thought (Philo of Alexandria or Justin Martyr). Such fusion of horizon in the process of universalism underwent through confrontation with philosophy or dissidents, exclusive claim of orthodox teaching in power, and finally self-transformation in the Montanist movement.
Tertullian appears to be a Montanist catholic, in which a rich heritage of prophecy and biblical exposition shapes narrative of African Christianity and its distinctive character today in its prophetic-Pentecostal profile at large.
Narratives, Life-world, and Decolonization
In Ogbu U. Kalu’s African Christianity: An African Story an attempt is done to tell “the story of African Christianity, not Christianity in Africa, as an African story by intentionally privileging the patterns of African agency without neglecting the noble roles played by missionaries.”[8]
Story telling or narrative is central in shaping one’s identity and cultural authenticity. Many stories of African or Asian or Latin America churches have uniqueness and validity of their cultural life-world, which underlays a project of African Christianity and public theology in the formation of comparative religions and cultures. Such story also becomes crucial in open minded Muslims in their tracing back their identity and cultural authenticity woven in African history and culture.
In many life-worlds in different cultures, each narrative provides universally shared value by telling self-identity, while enriching its cultural authenticity in encounter with other story of life-world. As noted earlier, the mission history features an interregional character and the shared reality of correlation in the development of African Christianity.
This perspective upholds a decolonizing turn, which problematizes what is sedimented and transmitted in obscurity, prejudice, ignorance, and oppressive system in the colonial time. In fact, “Christian and Muslim relationships have been affected historically by Africa’s encounter with colonialism and the western world. One of the first important moments of contact took place through transatlantic trade, particularly in slaves, and again, both religions have had an ambivalent relationship under this dark period….Many Muslims had little problem trading slaves with Christian Europeans.”[9]
In the age of ‘discovery’ or conquest, Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) granted through papal bulls the Portuguese the right of expansion of black African slavery within early Iberian colonies. Cape Verde (located nearby Senegal) and Sao Tome and Principe (located in the gulf of Guinea in West Africa) were colonized by the Portuguese (1486), known as the slave islands for the transatlantic slave trade to work plantations in Portuguese colony of Brazil.
Long before Portugal expedition to West Africa, however, there had already been Islam as spread into northern Africa by the mid-seventh century. North African Muslims intensified the trans-Saharan trade by spreading the Islam. The Mali Empire (1215-1450) at its height composed most of modern Mali, Senegal, parts of Mauriania and Guinea.
But slave trade was one of important trades in Timbuku, located near the Niger river –
though known as the center of learning, scholarship, and civilization at the time—and it was also true in the subsequent Songhai Empire (1464-1591).
Furthermore, Zanziba (in modern-day Tanzania) fell under the control of the Sultan of Oman (1698) and soon the slave trade flourished in Zanzibar, East Africa’s slave hub to Middle East, North Africa, or the clove plantations on Zanzibar, Pemba or Mauritius.[10]
In recent investigation of the relation between slavery and Dutch Protestantism in colonial times, a team of historians and experts in theology in the Netherlands has unveiled that religious ideas were misused to support slavery in terms of the inferiority of black people.[11] Religious discourse (such as hyper-Calvinist double predestination) would be easily bound to material interests by justifying power relations in colonial time and becoming privileged from the colonial wealth.
Given this historical-sociological analysis, the colonized experience becomes central in African public theology in interpretation of the Scripture, which strives to liberate the colonially ‘misused’ Scripture through a decolonizing lens. We hear this suspicion in the popular African saying: “When the white man came to our country he had the Bible and we had the land. The white man said to us, ‘let us pray’. After the prayer, the white man had the land and we had the Bible.”[12]
Postcolonial Mission, Public Theology, and Intertextuality
African scholars conceptualize African Christianity and God’s mission in postcolonial society by analyzing the extent to which European historiography as ideological armor would be embedded with a political and cultural mode of representation in public sphere through domination and hegemony. This post-Eurocentric position takes issue with the unilateral relation between Western missionary “transmission” and indigenous “appropriation” of the Gospel.
Cultures or religions could serve as the semantic texts for public theology to consider their encounter with a Christian religion—to put it differently, a horizon of intertextuality comes to reconstruct the subject matter of God’s mission in terms of reconciliation, recognition, and prophetic critique of colonizing narrative of civilizing mission.
God’s mission, according to Barth, seeks to decolonize alliance between throne and altar and challenge the church to adopt a prophetic stance against reality of impersonal forces (herrenlose Gewalten) such as economic mammon, political absolutism, ideology, technological colonization of human life under chthonic powers, and cultural reification.[13]
Barth expressed in his lecture (organized by Basel mission for three hundred students mostly from developing countries) a hope for the post-Eurocentric Christianity in Asia and Africa. “There may be a religious West, but the is not a Christian West: there is only Western man confronted with Jesus Christ…It could be that one day true Christianity will be understood and lived better in Asia and in Africa than in our aged Europe.”[14]
This perspective may find its significance in civil society initiative (Ufugamano Church Movement); it is led by church leaders in Kenya in solidarity with other religious and secular groups opposing parliament’s control of constitutional reform and struggling for constitutional changes (1999-2005).[15]
The civil society initiative becomes one of resources for African public theologians to strive to undertake the wider public issues in terms of discourse clarification in a prophetic critique of problem of political leadership and worldwide construction for participatory democracy and civil society. Alfred Sebahene, a Tanzanian theologian, accentuates a need for public theology in Africa and challenges the church to speak out against problem of bad governance and its domination, which are tainted with corruption, socioeconomic injustice, tribal and ethnic conflicts.[16]
Remarkable in the project of African public theology is a postcolonial position involving public health and HIV/AIDS. Musa Dube, a professor of New Testament at the University of Botswana, makes a great contribution to deepening hermeneutical horizon of the Biblical scholarship in connection with body politics and biomedical justice in the public sphere for a prophetically healing scholarship.[17]
In the biopolitical era of the pandemics African public theology is required to take seriously the significance of theology of nature and its public ethics, while taking into account biomedical justice, public health, and gene-ethics in dealing with COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS. Some countries in West Africa are vulnerable to Malaria and Tuberculosis due to the weakened healthcare system which has caused the Ebola epidemic. If scientists argue that “pandemics should reform Africa’s public health system,”[18] such challenge becomes one of the most important realms for African public theology to incorporate theology of nature and its public ethics into its theological reflection and practice of common good, beneficence, and human dignity in public sphere.[19]
Furthermore, a prophetic legacy of postcolonial God’s mission continues to be an intercultural interpretation of biblical narrative in encounter with African culture and religions and Islam. This brings social justice and cultural dignity by translating and communicating Christian message in its versatility and adaptability to many different streams in African societies. African spirituality touches on the everyday or mundane way of life, in which a belief in ancestors characterizes the inclusive, holistic nature of traditional African spirituality and cultural value. Traditional religious value in African societies functions like fulcrum revolving around every facet of the life, while shaping their distinctive identity and underlying cultural authenticity.
This intercultural mix testifies to a regime of problem in matters pertaining to encounter with Islam and Christianity. It raises a serious question whether one could maintain one’s religious integrity, while embracing an African worldview.
According to Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School, there is a concept of a supreme being or the creator of the universe in some African cosmologies. African tradition religion is a fabric of living, as bound inseparably to cultural pattern of meaning, which is deeply woven into one’s identity and cultural authenticity.
In so doing, Christians and Muslims in African context are told to take part in one form of indigenous religious rituals and practices. In an old African adage, we hear: “the sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.”[20]
Life-world has enough space and large horizon for African Christians to cope with their distinctive issues such as the indigenous mixed big, which provincializes European mission church. We witness its historical example, especially in Democratic Republic of the Congo: Dona Beatrice Kimpa Vital the Antonian movement in pre-colonial time (1684-1706) as well as Eglise de Jésus Christ sur la Terre par le prophète Simon Kimbangu (recognized on the eve of Independence in 1959).
Archeology and Effective History
I employ archeology as a technical term, which implies unearthing the past materials, religious classics, wisdom, and life of the indigenous or the margins; it is to be explicated in genealogical analysis of different knowledge, dispersion, and power relations in colonial regime. This belongs to a regime of effective history in undertaking a critical analysis of religious discourse, European metaphysic of origin, and its false appraisal and calculations. “It disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unified;…Genealogy, however, seeks to reestablish the various systems of subjection: not the anticipatory power of meaning, but the hazardous play of dominations.”[21]
Effective history in this regard introduces discontinuity, transformation, and rupture. It contrasts with a traditional history of meta-discourse of justifying a marching history of Western progress, scientific technology, and capitalist modernity as a Scramble for Africa. It becomes obvious in David Livingstone’s (1813-1873) motto: “Christianity, Commerce and Civilization.”
A historical reality of the Scramble for Africa was imperially bound to Western European colonization (1870-1914), in which a genealogy is laid upon problems: the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, its grant to Leopold II of Belgium—with the service of Henry Morton Stanley—to possess the Congo Free State (1885-1908), and its final unveiling of the heart of darkness.
Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness denounces the brutal reality of colonial politics and racism. A heavenly mission to civilizing lives of Africans turned into the heart of darkness, in which the most wicked looting and violence was done in disfiguration of the colonial conscience as a crime against humanity.[22]
Nonetheless, Conrad’s book received a blistering critique on the part of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, who condemned Conrad as a bloody racist for his de-humanizing portrayal of Africans. On the contrary, Maya Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard, tolerates a dated prejudice at his time because of its coexistence with some “elements of exceptional clairvoyance.”[23]
Given this, public theology concerns effective history, which denounces the European civilizing project as a perpetration of the violence and domination against people in the Congo Free State. What defines colonialism? There are many elements involved in colonization: Economic strategy (freed trade type of colonial system), biopolitical governance in settlement over against an indigenous majority, relation between metropolis and periphery, cultural hegemony, national prestige, racial mixed relation of hybridity, and religious sanction.
These complex realities are underlined in the alliance between colonialism, economic exploitation (extractive type of the Congo Free State), political governance, and heavenly civilizing mission. In fact, “White Man’s Burden” and European civilization turns out to be “Black Man’s Burden.” Christian character of capital accumulation can be as seen first of all in Spanish colonialism of the Americas in the previous era, which was characterized by a mercantilist type of extractive settler colonialism (encomienda labor system) in terms of natural slavery theory.
A new type of extractive colonialism and civilizing mission perpetuates itself through unrestrained and inordinate revolution of greed, colonial racism, and genocidal crime through indirect rule in the Congo Fee State.
On the other hand, European exploration is unveiled as a form of appropriation and learning, which is dependent on the knowledge of local peoples. This reality problematizes what is taken for granted as the European myth of discovery by way of interrogation. “You’re nothing but a cheat and a liar, Livingstone-I-presume. Without Africans, you couldn’t have done anything.”[24]
However, this unfortunate charge does not necessarily discard a symbol of Livingstone (heart in Zambia and body in Westminster Abbey). It does not blame his strenuous endeavor to end the slave trade, which complements his humanitarian spirit in the treatise between Britain and Zanziba in the 1870s; it struck a mortal blow to the Arab slave trade.
In pubic theological clarification of a religious discourse of a civilizing mission, it focuses on its social functionality as politically overcharged in connection with social Darwinism underlying racial hierarchal world construction. A discourse clarification facilitates us in comprehending how collective consciousness is imbricated with power strategy in pathological justification of racial politics and its resurgence in the desire of apartheid.
In contrast to apartheid, Desmond Tutu emphasizes an importance of anti-racial collaboration in the South African Council of Churches (1978): “We in the SACC believe in a non-racial South Africa where people count because they are made in the image of God. So the SACC is neither a black nor a white organization. It is a Christian organization with a definite bias in favor of the oppressed and the exploited ones of our society.”[25]
Historical Encounter: Non-Chalcedon Christianity and Islam
In taking on Christian movement from Islamic perspective, Lamin Sanneh holds, the Eastern Church failed to provide haven for Arab Christians to making Christianity on their own way. Christianity in the Arab world was seen as a Greek religion in Byzantine Constantinople (founded by Constantine in 324), since the collapse of the Western part of Roman Empire (in 476). Constantinople reached its heyday in the sixth century under Justinian (527–65). It expanded its imperial domain under Heraclius (610–41) to embrace Asia Minor, Syro-Palestine, and Egypt (including a protectorate over Abyssinia).
However, the Greek conception of ‘Christ’ replaced Jewish Jesus and failed to translate the latter as fitting into Arab mind, which later embraced Islam. Thus, Sannah claims, “Arabs were bypassed by the religion [Christianity]. In contrast, Islam was effective in responding to this social basis of religious allegiance, and in its urban and imperial sequel Islam provided amply for allegiance through power and by rewards, incentives, bonuses, and a status to go with them.”[26]
I clarify this argument by analyzing and qualifying it in historical and sociological context, taking on a relation between Arab Christianity (included African Christianity) and Islam. There are political factor, cultural privilege, and geographical lines at a deeper level than intercultural unfit.
Christological dispute in subsequent development was politically involved and culturally motivated, when it comes to the power struggle and alliance between Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch over the ecclesiastical primacy. In a doctrinal dispute occurred in the fifteenth century, Nestorius (386-451), the Patriarch of Constantinople, was in rivalry with Cyril (c. 376-444), Patriarch of Alexandria, who defended one incarnate nature of the Word of God. In his negotiation with John of Antioch, Cyril came to agree with the Formula of Reunion (433), which affirms a hypostatic union of the two natures in Jesus Christ.[27]
However, Alexandrian formula concerning the one nature of Christ (mia-physis) does not necessarily avert the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ. Indeed, Cyril’s phrase “One nature of God the Word incarnate” is not conflated with a total absorption of the human properties into divinity like Euthyches (c.378-454).[28] It is unfortunate that the Coptic Orthodox Church was accused of Monophysitism because of its rejection of Chalcedonian definition of Christ’s nature (451).
On the other hand, Nestorius drew an explicit distinction (conjunction) between the human and divine natures of Christ. The eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity, is not conflated with the man Jesus, rather God has united the divine nature to a human nature in Jesus Christ, while allowing for each of the two complete natures (or hypostases) in the distinctive manner after the incarnation. Thus he accepts Mary as Mother of Christ instead of Mother of God.[29]
The formula of Christ “in two natures” at Chalcedon would have a space for Nestorian distinction, because the latter appreciates Pope Leo’s Tome. “And as the Word does not cease to be on an equality with His Father’s glory, so the flesh does not forgo the nature of our race.”[30] However, this position runs counter to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which defends Miaphysite position “of two natures,” as expounded in its genuine sense by Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria.
Since Nestorian view was popular among Christian subjects in the Persian Empire, their political loyalty to the Roman Empire remained suspect. Resentment among the Nestorians and Miaphysites in Egypt and Syria was intensified because of political suppression on the part of the Byzantine Church.
In the sixth century Arabia was not a part of either the Byzantine Empire or the Sassanian Persian Empire. The Christian churches were well-established on the frontiers of Arabia beginning in the fourth century. The Christian church was present and influential in the areas on the borders of Arabia.
By 642 the Muslim had conquered and controlled over the majority of the Sassaniam Persian Empire, while including a large part of the Byzantine Empire. Islamic conquer was accepted as a judgment of God among the non-Chalcedon Christians against the decision of the Council of Chalcedon.
The Coptic editor of the Egyptian History of Patriarchs, Severus of Asmounein wrote: “The Lord abandoned the army of the Romans as a punishment for their corrupt faith, and because of the anathemas uttered against them by the ancient fathers, on account of the Council of Chalcedon.”[31]
Byzantium’s yoke upon the Copts was removed with regard to the heavy imperial tax revenues (as much as 30 percent) from the Prefecture of the East. Its financial contributions were substantial to feeding Byzantine fiscal integrity until about 617.[32]
In the initial stage of the Muslim rule, they was friendship prevailed in the relations between Pope of Alexandria Benjamin (626-655) and the governor Amr-Ibu-Alaas in a spirit of indulgence.[33]
On the other hand, Nestorian Christians find their refugee in Khosrau I (r. 531-579) in the Sassanian dynasty (224-651). Several Christian scholars had studied at the medical school of Gondeshapur, the intellectual center of learning and scholarship, while involved in translating Greek literature, philosophy, and medicine.
The Abbasid caliph in Bagdad was deeply influenced in Persian culture and administration, while keeping Christians with legal protection (dhimini). The caliph al-Mahdı’ (775–85) is assumed to engage in a religious debate with the Nestorian patriarch, Timothy I (779–823), though it was literary fiction. A Nestorian Christian, Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809-873) during the period of Abbasid caliph was regarded as the greatest translator by facilitating Arabic cultural renaissance in Bagdad, the capital of the Abbasid Islamic Empire.
Averroes and Epistemological Break
North Africa as a whole flourished during the Roman period. Carthage became the capital of Roman Africa, and it was a Roman/African center of learning. In this region there were the churches of Tertullian (160-225), Cyprian (c. 200-258), and Augustine (354-430).
Arabs conquered Egypt in 642, and later in the century they went on to the rest of North Africa, converting the Berbers in these religions. From Morocco the Arabs were reinforced with Berbers and moved on to and conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Moors remained masters until late in the 11th century. They were finally driven out by the 15th century through Christian Reconquista.
In Caliphate of Corodova (929-1031) and Almohad Caliphate (1121-1269), scholarship and cultural renaissance played a major role in the history of European scholasticism and its early Renaissance. Later, Ahmad al-Mansur (1549-1603), the Saadi Sultan of Morocco, was strengthened in alliance with Elizabeth I of England and controlled and ended the empires of Mali and Songhai in West Africa through the Pashalik of Timbuktu.[34] Interestingly enough, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 -1892) in the Victorian era envisions high civilization in the interior of Africa in his poem “Timbuktu.”
Islamic cultural renaissance took place and thrived in Cordova (under Umayyad dynasty from 929 to 1031, especially under al-Hakam II), as embodied later in philosophical figure like Ibn Rushd (1126-1198; Latinized as Averroes), who was a grand judge in Seville and Cordova under Almohad Caliph. He emerged as the foremost scholar and the commentator of Aristotle in his day. In the University of Padua of northern Italy, which was the stronghold of Averroism for three centuries, there was an influencing component in fostering European Renaissance.
Although Averroeism in the Medieval Ages acquired a heretical reputation, Averroes himself sought to harmonize faith with reason. His principle of non-contradiction between the truths does not separate faith from reason. Rather, it stands for mutual witness to the truth rather than double truth with priority on the reason over against faith.
According to Han Kung, European Christianity inherited and benefited from Arabic philosophy of Islam and Aristotle and Averroes was cited as ‘the commentator’ in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.[35] In fact, Averroes helped the Latin scholars how to read Aristotle, and all scholastic scholars appropriated his commentaries at their disposal since the translation (after 1230) at the University of Paris, the center of Christian scholasticism.
In recent studies, some scholars critically examine Thomas Aquinas with original writings of Averroes, despite their divergence. Aquinas’ critique of Averroes is regarded to be insufficient and restrained, because of absence of sufficient translation.[36]
In the modern context of reformist thinkers in Islam, Averroes remains one of the most important inspirations for fostering harmony between religion and philosophy, rationalist thinking, and a critique of Arab reason.
An Egyptian-born Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) revived a legacy of Averroes by advocating for ijtihad (independent reasoning) with recourse to Islam’s consultative democratic tradition (shura).[37] In The Theology of Unity Abduh focuses on the philosophy of Islamic prophecy in connection to the fundamental truth of Islamic revelation. His principle of tawhid (divine unity), which is a foundation for universal ethics and Islamic science, is much inspired by rational tendencies of the Mutazilite and Averroes. An emphasis on the divine unity affirms the created nature of Quran in light of divine transcendence.[38]
Abdhu respects Christianity in Egypt and advocated the rights of Coptic Christians. His politics of recognition is well expressed: “I hope to see the two great religions, Islam and Christianity hand-in-hand, embracing each other. Then the Torah and the Bible and the Quran become books supporting one another being read everywhere, and respected by every nation.”[39]
Here, we see Averroes’ principle of non-contradiction between truths reviving in
Abdhu’s theology of the unity. In January 2012, al-Azhar released a bill of basic freedoms and rights with emphasis on religious beliefs and practices of the Abrahamic faiths to be respected for national unity and security.[40]
On the other hand, Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (1936-2010), born in southeastern Morocco, is regarded to be one of the most distinguished philosophers, who revives and strengthens the intellectual legacy and insights of Averroes through his theory of epistemological break. In al-Jabris’ critique of Arab-Islamic reason, he critiques intellectual tradition of Persian Avicenna and al-Ghazali as de-rationalizing and mystifying Arab-Islamic mind. In al-Jabri’s theory of epistemological break with Persian model, Averroes is retrieved as the most import source, in difference from other Islamic intellectual tradition.[41]
A theory of epistemological break can be further qualified in Averroes’s position in his Decisive Treatise: “Now…we the Muslim community know definitely that demonstrative study does not lead to [conclusions] conflicting with what Scripture has given us; for truth does not oppose truth but accords with it and bears witness to it.”[42]
Mutual Collaboration and Place of Woman
There is no contradiction between truths, and its principle can be embodied in the mutual witness and collaboration. This perspective can be seen even in Leopold Senghor (1906-2001) with a Catholic background; he was committed to social democratic commitment, Black African dignity, and cultural authenticity of negritude. African life-world of negritude is “the sum of the cultural values of the black world, that is, “a certain active presence in the world, or better, in the universe.”[43] It should become a defining contribution to the civilization of the universal through its African intuitive and sympathetic reason, which underlays one’s participation in and sympathy with the Other in the network of life forces.
He served as the national President of Senegal in dominant Muslim population. He advocates for a necessity for collaboration between the Muslim and Christians, while accelerating the de-colonizing process together through cultural authenticity of negritude. Without fostering fruitful collaboration between Christians and Muslims, true independence cannot be achieved, and modern African nation cannot be established.[44]
Such interfaith cooperation finds also its actuality in the former President of Iran, Khatami in his article on “Dialogue between East and West” (1999). He proposed the “dialogue of civilizations and cultures.” The United Nations adopted the formula of dialogue of civilizations as a theme for worldwide discussions in 2001. The project of dialogue of civilization reacts against Samuel Huntington’s theory of clash of civilizations (1993) which is seen as a reversion to colonial doctrines of European supremacy. In a project of mutual collaboration he adopts a stance of Islamic spirituality and wisdom, while claiming that Europe and America need to take a major step toward the realization of dialogue-among-civilizations project.[45]
Remarkable in a project of collaboration is the role of women in Islam and African culture. The Quran says that spouses were created by God to find comfort in one another and to be bound by “love and kindness” (30:21). The Qur’an also stresses the importance of bonds of affection and rebukes a man who is ashamed, when a daughter, rather than a son, was born.
Amina Wadud elaborates a, exegetical hermeneutic of the text in analyzing the contextual character of the text, while emphasizing the whole text in the light of Quranic universal concept of justice toward humanity. Wadud’s exegetical skill can be obviously seen in her linguistic innovation of Quran 4:34—“men are caretakers (qawwamuna) of women.” This verse has been misused to support Islamic patriarchy.
However, Amina Wadud draws attention to a subsequent addition ‘on the basis of, which’ is better than ‘because of’ in a traditionally favored sense. In her invocation, men are caretakers of women, “on the basis of what Allah has preferred some of them over others, and on the basis of what they spend of their property (for support of women” “in a socioeconomic norm and ideals.”[46]
Given this, men are caretakers only if they follow the two conditions: Allah’s preference and men’s support of women for their means. This position calls into question the problem of domestic violence among Muslims. A man’s striking (daraba) his wife is not permitted by Quran 4:34, because daraba does not necessarily indicate violence or force.
For Amina Wadud the fundamental Quranic ethos is featured as “justice towards humankind, human dignity, [and] equal rights”[47] before the law and God; it is derived from a holistic understanding of the Quran and that ethos which includes gender justice.
Such interpretation finds parallel and commonality with African feminist or postcolonial approach to the Bible in its gender-sensitive ethical force, which seeks to liberate African women by confrontation with patriarchy, gender inequality, and domestic violence. Gender justice has much in common as shared among feminist scholars between African theology and Islam.
Mercy Amba Oduyoye undertakes a pivotal concern in advocating the significance of inculturation as a major issue of African Christianity. She engages in multiple scriptures in the African context by relocating them with reference to biblical texts.[48]
A creation story (Gen 1:27) is consonant with African mythical creation stories, in which creation is a communal ideal of life companion. Such reading finds significance in affirming Gen 2:18 as the major advocacy for monogamy as a helping partner in contrast to polygamy. This creation story is echoed and shared in the African myths of the origin of human life.[49]
The Scripture cannot be monopolized, because biblical texts or Quranic verses have multiple meanings in surplus. A fruitful collaboration between Islam and African Christianity begins in deep engagement with the sacred texts in light of universally shared value and human dignity.
Concluding Reflection
In a project of African Christianity and public theology, I have attempted to address history of African Christianity as a global religion in terms of polycentric structures. A critical analysis of religious discourse is undertaken, at archeological level, in explicating its elective affinity with material interests and cultural authenticity along with a genealogy of knowledge/power doublet.
In 1994 ecumenical agreement from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Formula of Union (433) becomes the textual basis, which provides a common point of departure for Antioch and Alexandria.[50]
A classic formula at Chalcedon implies a lack of conceptual clarity in dealing with Jewish character of Jesus to God of Israel. Christ the Son of God is really Jesus of Nazareth. This is featured in assumption of human flesh by the word (John 1: 14) in the dynamic-noetic and empirical sense. The eternal Word of God became participant in human nature and existence, by actualizing it into divine self, but without ceasing to be God for all. This perspective qualifies divine solidarity with Christ’s suffering, in which theologia crucis reinforces God’s participation in those suffering on the margins in the world of injustice: God for and from the margins.
On the other hand, Islamic project of reformist modernity and critique of Arab-Islamic reason is a promising and viable contribution, which facilitates Islamic relationship with Christianity.
In the biopolitical times of the pandemics, theology of nature and biomedical ethics for common good, human dignity, and beneficence become an indispensable ream of problematic in reinforcing African public theology in appraising scientific rationality, public health, and gene-ethics in social and public institutions in accordance with a prophetic notion of common good, solidarity and civil society movement. African public theology in postcolonial societies dose not necessary discard incomplete project of late modernity as chimera of dialectic of enlightenment and colonialism without a further ado.
Last but not least, the Quran itself, in contrast to Hadith, does not contain the issue of homosexuality as punishable by death. The conception of homosexual love in pre-modern Islamic societies is seen in Persian love lyrics. It was a key symbolic issue throughout the Middle Ages in Andalus society. Today we see the Al-Fitrah Foundation by Imam Mushsin Hendricks (one of the first queer Muslim organizations founded in 1996).
Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa advocates respect for sexual minority. Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, Anglican Church of Uganda, takes into account sexual and gender diversity and promotes advocacy his ministry for LGBTQ rights.[51]
Christianity in contemporary Africa is highly dynamically evolving, internally diverse, and theologically liberative, and politically decolonizing. In the project of African Christianity and public theology, anthropological study of sexuality and gender marks a new regime of problem, which becomes crucial in the study of polycentric World Christianity.
[1] Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, World Christianity Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 4.
[2] Klaus Koschorke et al, eds., A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990: A Documentary Sourcebook (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007), xxix.
[3] Justo L. Gonzáles, The Changing Shape of Church History (St. Louis, MO: Chalice,
2002), 17.
[4] John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion (London: Heinemann, 1975), 185.
[5] Thomas C. Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western
Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2007), 11.
[6] Adolf von Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries. 2 vols. (New York: Putnam, 1908), 2:145.
[7] Hans G. Drescher, Ernst Troeltsch: His Life and Work (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 172.
[8] Ogbu U. Kalu, ed., African Christianity: An African Story (Pretoria: University of Pretoria Press, 2005), iv.
[9] Jacob Olupona, “Muslim-Christian Encounter in Africa,” in Anthology of African Christianity, eds., Isabel Apawo Phiri et al. (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2016), 100.
[10] Moses D. E. Nwulia, “The Role of Missionaries in the Emancipation of Slaves in Zanzibar,” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 1975), 268-87.
[11] “Netherlands investigates Protestant church ties to slavery” https://newsineurope.com/netherlands-investigates-protestant-church-ties-to-slavery-international/
[12] Musa Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretations of the Bible (St Louis: Chalice, 2000), 3.
[13] Karl Barth, The Christian Life, Church Dogmatics IV, pt.4. Lecture Fragments (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1981), § 78.2. “The Lordless Powers.”
[14] Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994), 468.
[15] Jacob Mwathi Mati, Political Protest in Contemporary Kenya: Change and Continuities (London: Routledge, 2020).
[16] Alfred Sebahene, “The need for Public Theology in Africa, “Sunday Bobai Agang, et al. African Public Theology (Carisle, UK: Lanham Publishing Hippo Books, 2020), 379-399, at 382.
[17] Musa W. Dube, The HIV & AIDS Bible: Selected Essays (Chicago: University of Scranton Press, 2008).
[18] “HIV/AIDS Epidemic and COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa,” https://www.frontiersin.org/ articles/10.3389/fgene.2021.670511/full
[19] Ted Peters, “The Drumbeat African Public Theology of Mwaambi G Mbûûi,” Patheos, “Public Theology” (December 16, 2021) https://www.patheos.com/blogs/publictheology/2021/12/the-drumbeat-african-public-theology-of-mwaambi-g-mbuui/
[20] “The Spirituality of Africa,” https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/10/the-spirituality-of-africa/
[21] “Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History,” in The Essential Foucault, eds. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York: London: The New Press, 1994), 356-7.
[22] Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (London: Blackwood’s Magazine, 1902).
[23] Maya Jasanoff, “How Joseph Conrad foresaw the dark heart of Brexit Britain” https://www.theguardian.com/books/ 2017/oct/28/how-joseph-conrad-foresaw-the-dark-heart-of-brexit-britain
[24] Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence (Toronto: Mercury, 1991), 62.
[25] “Desmond Tutu,” in Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors (Gale, 2013).
[26] Lamin Sanneh, Disciples of all Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 65.
[27] Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon 1 (Nashville, Abingdon, 1970), 357.
[28] Maged Attia, The Coptic Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement (Abasseya, Cairo: Bishopric of Youth Affair 2001), 2-3.
[29] Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought I, 363-4.
[30] Ibid., 373.
[31] Cited in Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Chicago, Ivan R. Dee: New Amsterdam Books, 2000), 37.
[32] Walter E. Kaegi, “Egypt on the eve of the Muslim conquest,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt I: Islamic Egypt, 640-1 517. Ed. Carl F. Petry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 36.
[33] Tadros Y. Malaty, Introduction to the Coptic Orthodox Church (Alexandria, Egypt: ST. George’s Coptic Orthodox Church Sporting, 1993), 120.
[34] C. R. Pennell, Morocco from Empire to Independence (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 85-88.
[35] Hans Kung, Islam: Past, Present and Future, trans. John Bowden (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 380.
[36] Richard C. Taylor, “Averroes’ Epistemology and its Critique by Aquinas,” Medieval Masters: Essays in Memory of Msgr. E. A. Synan, ed. R. E.Houser (Houston, TX: University of St. Thomas, 1999), 147-77.
[37]Ahmad N. Amir, Muhammad Abduh’s Contributions to Science and Technology (Saarbrucken, Germany: Lambert, 2015), 82-3.
[38] Muhammad Abduh, The Theology of Unity, trans. Ishaq Musa‘ad, & Kenneth Cragg (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2004).
[39] Loubna Khalkhall, “Muhammad ‘Abdhu: Father of Islamic Feminism and Critical Thought.” https://aboutislam.net/family-life/culture/muhammad-abdu-father-islamic-feminism-critical-thought/
[40] Robeir al-Faris, “Freedoms endorsed,” Watani International, January 20, 2012, http://www.wataninet/com/watani_Article_Details.aspx?A=24479
[41] Issa Boullata, Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 45-55.
[42] Averroes, Decisive Treatise: On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, trans. George F. Hourani (London: Luzac, 1961), 50.
[43] Leopold S. Senghor, “Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century.” The African Reader: Independent Africa. Eds. W. Cartey and M. Kilson (New York: Random House, 1970), 180 [179-99].
[44] “Leopold Senghor: Islam and Christianity (1964),” in A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450-1990, 252.
[45] Muhammad Khatami, “Dialogue between East and West,” in Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives, 2nd ed. John J. Donohue et al. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 366-70.
[46] Amina Wadud, “Rights and Roles of Women,” ibid., 163.
[47] Ibid., 158.
[48] Mercy A. Oduyoye, Beads and Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa (New York: Orbis, 2004).
[49] Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike, “Polygamy: A Feminist Critique,” in The Will to Arise: Women, Tradition, and the Church in Africa, ed. Mercy A. Oduyoye et al. (New York: Orbis, 1992), 107.
[50] Maged Attia, The Coptic Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement (Abasseya, Cairo: Bishopric of Youth Affair, 2001), 169.
[51] In Defense of All God’s Children: The life and Ministry of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, ed. Senyonjo (New York: Morehouse, 2016).