Toward an African Theology of Fraternal Solidarity

UBE NWANNE

Ikenna Ugochukwu Okafor

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630875275
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

In this book, Ikenna Okafor tackles an interesting and timely topic and demonstrates competence and maturity in developing his insight into Igbo humanism--to make liberation theology from an African perspective into a theology of solidarity and fraternity. With a good narrative style, Okafor critiques the Latin American liberation theological project. And inspired by the hermeneutical implications of "UBE NAWANNE, " the evangelical positioning of material poverty and pathos for the poor as defining Christian discipleship is persuasively presented. The potent nwanne idiom guides his critical evaluation of the social teachings and praxis of the Catholic Church.In fact, it is clear that Okafor embarked on a subject matter that is of theological moment and has creative pastoral implications for the Church of Nigeria, the Churches of Africa, and the World Church.

Part I

General Critique of Liberation Theology

1

History and Tenets in African Liberation Theology

Understanding African Liberation Theology

Since I have chosen liberation theology as my point of departure in this book, it is only fair to recognize its Latin American roots. As Fiorenza rightly states, historically and specifically liberation theology refers to a theological line of thought within Latin America that focuses on the political, economic, and ideological causes of social inequality and makes liberation rather than development its central theological, economic, and political category. It analyzes the concrete Latin-American situation, but also argues that all theology should begin by analyzing its concrete social situation and by returning to its religious sources for means to rectify it.13 Note that liberation theology focuses on the “political, economic, and ideological” causes, but after studying liberation theology’s tenets for some time I have come to observe that these factors do not actually exhaust the causes of social inequality. Such a psychological factor like the way we think about others in relation to ourselves play important role in determining how we value them. Such judgments of values which normally occur at the private personal level of human interactions always have multiplying effects that significantly impact on politics, economics, and ideology. If our judgment is impaired by lack of knowledge, for example, the fear of the unknown might trigger some negative attitudes that will create an unjust social environment. This is why I speak of “aberrant perception” of others as the major impediment to social justice and equality in the world today. It is from this perspective, therefore, that the concrete situations of Africa are analyzed historically and theologically.

Inspired by the Latin American context, it was such analyses of concrete social situations in Africa which led to the discourse that eventually came to be known as “African Theology.” This term was allegedly used for the first time in 1955 when a group of African and Haitian priests studying in Rome met to discuss the problem of relating the Christian message to the life and thought of their people.14 Hence, the conscious and systematic efforts to build such a theology were not earlier than the 1960s. With less than hundred years of evangelization African missions were still concerned with the questions of how the Christian message could be “incarnated” in the African culture. The economic and political situation then in the 1960s and 1970s, as portrayed by Patrick Masanja, was characterized by the underlying struggle between imperialism in its neocolonial form and real economic and political independence. It was a struggle between, on the one hand, foreign multinationals allied to local dominant classes who want to continue the exploitation of the natural resources and wealth of African countries, and, on the other hand, the workers and peasants who would favor social transformation and real economic independence.15 The multinational companies have invested in Africa with the intention of reaping great benefits. Agricultural and mineral industries were largely foreign-owned or foreign dominated. Commerce and transport were monopolized by western countries and the pricing system as well was determined by these foreign market forces. So-called foreign aid, foreign investments and loans, through which capital inflow was always exceeded by profit outflow, were examples of forms of foreign domination. There were also more subtle forms of exploitation by multinational corporations in joint “partnership” with local private capital or even state investments, designed to guarantee them monopoly control of the market as well as control of the labor force.16 The capitalist exploitation and colonization went hand in hand with racial oppression.

Such was the situation in Africa when the Catholic Church convoked the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The situation inspired across Africa national liberation movements, which were understandably anticolonial and anti-imperialist. The cry was for independence, but it was not yet clear what kind of society would emerge after the political independence. Eventually, due partly to the colonial legacy and partly to the invitation of foreign companies, the indigenous governments became agents of foreign capital in their own countries but the exploitation and oppression of peasants continued. African churches soon realized, with the illusion of political independence, that they are faced with new tasks and responsibilities, which include cultural adaptation of the gospel to African cultures. Hence, African theology was born and, as its name indicates, it is meant to signify an otherness that edifies Christian thought, thus implying that Africans have broken away from Eurocentric theologies which virtually ignore the unpleasant legacies of slavery and colonization that afflict African people. From its inception, therefore, what is known today as African theology has always been a theology of liberation, emerging from the “underside of history” in order to give expression to the social and religio-cultural analysis of the African world in the light of the gospel. African theology is, in fact, part of the history of Christianity in Africa. Even though to talk of the history of African theology would actually mean to go back to the time of ancient Christian traditions which recorded the contributions of no less eminent theologians as Clement of Alexandria (third century), Origen (185–254), Athanasius (296–373), Tertullian (160–220), Cyprian (200–258), and Augustine (354–430). Although these church Fathers rightly belong to the history of theology in Africa, African theology is taken here to refer to the more recent history of the post-Vatican II theological reflections in Africa.

The spirit of aggiornamento, which pervaded the Church and led to the Second Vatican Council, actually laid the foundation for the theology of liberation in Latin America as well as in Africa and Asia. No doubt, dominant on the list of themes discussed in the Council were the concerns and problems of the European Churches. However, the Council opened the doors and windows of the Church so that all regional and local Churches would ask themselves how the Gospel is to be proclaimed in the light of particular situations. It offered opportunity for Latin American and African theologians to engage themselves with their situations and cultural facticity in the light of the Gospel. From 5th to 12th August 1976, a theological summit took place in Dar es Salaam17 where the best theologians from Asia, Africa and Latin America had the opportunity to meet each other and discuss the situations of colonialism and oppression, which their people suffered or were still suffering. This became the birth of Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT), an organ through which liberation theology was integrated into the wider context of the theology of the so-called*18 Third World. African theologians thus entered into dialogue and mutual sharing of perspectives with their Asian and Latin American colleagues.

Now it has become obvious that after a long period of European influence and domination of the Christian tradition a new demographic phenomenon has emerged, which has been recently described as a modern shift of the center of gravity of Christianity from the northern to the southern hemisphere. This shift, which began after the Second Vatican Council, has been accompanied by an intellectual movement in Africa that struggled to define the African self no longer from the categories of the “white man.” African theology, emerging out of this intellectual movement, seeks to reinterpret Christianity from the point of view of African narratives, myths, and idioms. Having inherited a Christianity that was heavily dressed in European garb and motivated by colonial independence, African theologians began to see the incongruity of a “good news” of salvation which was transported in the language and culture of perceived oppressors. The coming to maturity of the gospel in Africa, therefore, inspired also a strong desire for de-europeanization of Christianity, for it was no longer possible to ignore the cultural alienation that the western-oriented Church imposed on African religious mind. Hence, inculturation and acculturation became dominant themes of a theology that understood itself as a liberation theology. Borrowing Oduyoye’s distinction, acculturation pertains to the efforts of Africans to use things African in their practice of Christianity, whereas inculturation refers to the manifestation of changes that ha...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• African Christian Studies Series
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Maps of Africa, Nigeria, and Igboland
• Introduction
• Part 1: General Critique of Liberation Theology
• Chapter 1: History and Tenets in African Liberation Theology
• Chapter 2: The Centrality of Christology in Liberation Discourse
• Chapter 3: The Church and the Poor
• Part 2: Igbo Experience of Need for Liberation in the African Context
• Chapter 4: Africa: The Crucibles
• Chapter 5: The Secular and Theological Liberation Struggles in Africa
• Part 3: Ọ nụrụ ube nwanne agbala ọsọ: Prolegomenon to a Theology of Frayernity in the African Igbo Context
• Chapter 6: An Exigent Hermeneutic Shift
• Chapter 7: Christology of Fraternity
• Chapter 8: Mysticism of Compassion
• Chapter 9: Conclusion
• Bibliography