In literature and art, up until recent time, Africans hardly depicted as major contributors to Western Christian theology and pedagogy. The world, particularly the Western Christians are clueless that before the first convert of Anglo-Saxon, Christianity had ten generation in some part of Africa. Among other things, this course presents how the Western idea of university is born in the crucible of Africa, how exegesis of the scripture and Christian dogma matured in African continent, how Christian Neoplatonism emerge in Africa, and how rhetorical and dialectical skills are honed in Africa and how all these ideas were transplanted to the Western Christendom.
In order to understand our present and engage to the future in a meaningful and productive way, it is important to know our past. Students of this class will learn that World Christianity has such a long and diverse roots, so many different and independent actors and manifestations.
The general understanding of the majority of people in the world is that Christianity was introduced to the continent of Africa somewhere around the beginning of the European slave trade and colonialism of Africa. This notion is the result partly of ignorance of the history of Christianity and partly the result of a well-calculated curriculum designed to give a misleading history. This course untangles the myth from reality.
The course asserts that what makes Christianity biblical is not the culture, language, or the race of the actors. It is the authenticity of the message of the Scripture translated and interpreted correctly and scientifically within a particular culture. The course shows what kind of Bible scholars, pastors and missionaries the Alexandrian school of Theology produced.
Mission is the litmus test of authentic Christianity. The course explores the conversion of the Berbers, Egyptians, Sudanese, and Ethiopians and the impact of churches in their cultural context.
Christianity always attempts to answer the question that comes out of its cultural context. What does Christian Neoplatonism has to do with Africa? What concern or issue Augustine was trying to address in his book “The City of God”? How and why Christology took the shape it had in Alexandrian school of thought etc.?, answers how contextual early African Christianity was.
Like the church in Antioch, early Christianity in Africa and the African churches encompass people of different cultural and academic background.
How should I understand the God of the universe in the context of Africa and the black people? If God does not discriminate race, culture and language, what is man to think of himself superior than other human beings? These practical questions lead to practical actions. This course facilitates the path.
This course is developed and taught by a person of African origin. Through face-to-face interaction and other means of communication, students will have firsthand experience with an African. Students will have plenty of opportunities for Q & A and social interaction.
