DECOLONIZING GOD-TALK

Beyond the present scholarly ideology that governs inculturation this book proposes a retrieval of the West African sacred space as the very foundation for West African ecclesiology. It is a structural roadmap to West African church-life hinged on contextual theological raw materials able to correct the anomalies of alien structures on which present ecclesiology thrives. Anchored on the fluid conceptualization of divine embodiment and revelation a string of tradition extant in the Hebrew Scriptures in traditions that lay claim to the Hebrew Bible (notably Catholicism) and in African traditional religious cosmology the book cuts the Gordian knot in the effort to develop an ecclesiology that is both African and Christian yet founded on the structures of an African revelatory space. It demonstrates its practical relevance in the areas of episcopal authority and gender issues underscoring that Catholicism’s undue emphasis on the anti-fluidity model is a theological inconsistency. A new ecclesiological scheme that though different from western categories does not diminish faith in Jesus Christ nor destabilize the oneness of God’s people in the universal church.