E-Journal of Religious and Theological Studies (ERATS) - ISSN 2458-7338

The papers published in this special issue originated in a theological consultation held at the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, on May 15-19, 2023. Eight Methodist theologians, representing Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Mozambique, gathered to explore the theme “African Methodist Theology: Intercultural Explorations.”  The aim of our work together was to create a venue where Methodist theologians from different parts of Africa could engage in intercultural theological exchange about salient concerns facing Methodists in various contexts on the continent. Serving as facilitators were Hendrik Pieterse (Namibia/USA) and Robert Hunt (USA). Framing the aim of the gathering were two interrelated concerns: First, the need and desire for greater theological exchange between African Methodist theologians in different cultural locations to learn from one another and to identify transcontextual challenges facing African Methodist theology as a whole. Second was the challenge to employ decolonial analysis more resolutely in theological deliberations about the lingering effects of colonialism and the dynamics of culture, context, and power in shaping African Methodist identity and ecclesial practice into the future. The question of what constitutes an authentically African Methodist identity threads through all the essays in different ways and in service of different topics.

Drawing on extensive empirical data, Martin Mujinga in “Toward Inculturating the Theology of Healing Ministry in the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe” explores the issues underlying the historic and contemporary conflicts over this ministry in the Methodist Church of Zimbabwe. At the heart of the conflict lies past missionary efforts to construct theologies of ministry that sought to displace African culture—a dynamic still present in the church today. The result has been conflict between clergy and between clergy and laity, leading to confusion and membership loss. To remedy matters, the MCZ simply must allow its theology of healing ministry to dialogue with African culture, employing African language, proverbs, and idioms.  

Isaac Boaheng, in his essay titled “From Personal Holiness to Ecological Holiness: A Wesleyan-Theological Response to Creation’s Cry in Contemporary Ghana,” explores the detrimental effects of illegal gold mining on the social, economic, spiritual, and ecological wellbeing of his native Ghana. This illicit practice is actually making the nation poorer, since the government is forced to spend significant resources to remedy the ecological devastation left in its wake. Boaheng, drawing on extensive empirical and theological research, suggests that a contextual interpretation of the Wesleyan emphasis on holiness and spirituality furnishes Methodists (and other Christians) with moral resources for constructing a potent environmental ethic for ecological stewardship in this crisis.

In “New Wine in Old Wine Skins: Wesleyan Methodism within the Contemporary Religious Market Place in Kenya,” Alice Muthoni Mwila examines the challenges that competition within the new religious marketplace in Kenya raises for the ongoing effectiveness of the Methodist Church in Kenya. Pressures of religious commodification, growing Pentecostal spirituality, mass and social media influence, spiritual lethargy, and “quick fix mentality” confront church structures and organization that have changed little since independence from the British Methodist Church. Effective mission in this new environment requires that the MCK undergo a paradigm shift in how it conceives and practices its mission, with particular focus on its structural organization.

In his essay, titled “Is the Methodist Church of Southern Africa an African Church or a Church in Africa? A Decoloniality Paradigm,” Jacob Mokhutso affirms the MCSA’s significant role in confronting the social, economic, and political challenges that all South Africans face. However, the church has yet to adequately attend to questions central to the identity of its Black African members, involving ancestral calling, cultural rituals, death, and marriage. To fully be an African church, the MCSA must engage African epistemologies in the construction of its doctrine and polity.