African Christianity: The Stranger Within

3. Theological Education

Theological Education CHAPTER THREE Theological Education Introduction I n a paper published in the 90s, C.B. Peter observes that “There is need to wean Christian Theology away from the Western breast and feed it onAfrican porridge.”1 This observation stands as true as when it was first written. Ironically,African Christianity today is growing faster than that of the West but on the theological diet of Western Christianity. Could this account for the fact that African Christianity’s numerical strength is not matched by its theological depth? How comes that Christianity in Africa is one of the fastest growing, yet suffers such a puzzling superficiality and disconnects, which we outlined in chapter one above? In this chapter, we propose that lack of relevant and adequate theological education could account for such paradoxes. We contend that right theological education is the key to the realization of a strong Christianity that can be effective in bringing about the transformative power of the Gospel. African Christianity: Phenomenal Numerical Strength Philip Jenkins in his book, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity writes: _______________________________________ 1 C. B. Peter, “African Hyphenated Christians – an Alternate Model of Theologizing in Africa,” in Nordic Journal of African Studies 3(1), 1994, 103. African Christianity: The Stranger Within We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide. Over the past five centuries or so, the story of Christianity has been inextricably bound up with that of Europe and European derived civilizations overseas, above all in North America. Until recently the overwhelming majority of Christians have lived in White nations, allowing theorists to speak smugly, arrogantly, of “European Christian” civilization. Conversely, radical writers have seen Christianity as the religion of the “West” or, to use another popular metaphor, the global North.2 It appears that Christianity is finding ‘new homes’ in places where Christianity has traditionally been a minority religion. As Jenkins again observes, “Over the past century … the centre of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, toAfrica,Asia, and Latin America.”3 Although Jenkins’ observation is spot on, the theologies and Christianity of these new churches (The Global South) are in themselves a perpetuation of ‘Western’Christianity. There is an increasing sense of disillusionment with the use of ‘Western’ models in the teaching of theology inAfrica. Most of the new churches are struggling to find their true identity and grounding when it comes to a theology that can nurture and sustain an authentic and truly indigenous Christianity. The quest for an indigenous Christianity, identity and relevant theology has been hampered by a variety of factors, and not least due to an overbearing western cultural domination and perpetual mentorship. To ascertain the strength of ‘emerging’ Christianity one may need to critically examine history of Christianity, its present trends, demographic distribution of Christian communities, the effectiveness with regard to the power of the Gospel in transforming societies, and more importantly, the quality and strength of contextualization to guide the interpretation and appropriation of beliefs. It is important to acknowledge that numbers may in themselves, not necessarily be the sufficient yardstick to measure the strength, mission, relevance _______________________________________ 2 2002, 1-2. 3 ibid, 2. 50 Theological Education and the theological depth of any church. The churches of the twothirds world are definitely registering phenomenal success in terms of numbers. In some of these places churches are registering the fastest growth rates ever recorded in the history of Christianity. The existing records and projections are really remarkable.According to World Christian Encyclopedia: Some 2 billion Christians are alive today, about one-third of the planetary total. The largest single bloc, some 560 million people, is still to be found in Europe. Latin America, though, is already close behind with 480 million. Africa has 360 million, and 313 million Asians profess Christianity. North America claims about 260 million believers.4 Jenkins, who makes a detailed study of these figures, also makes this helpful projection: If we extrapolate these figures to 2025, and assume no great gains or losses through conversion, then there would be around 2.6 billion Christians, of whom 633 million would live in Africa, 640 million in Latin America, and 460 million in Asia. Europe with 555 million, would have slipped to third place.5 It is worth noting that two of the third world continents, Africa and Latin America will be neck to neck competing...