6 - Southern Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Tinyiko Maluleke has rightly stated that:
It is impossible for one single theologian to be completely up to date with all the developments in all African Theology. Africa is a vast and diverse continent – diverse in religions, Christian confessions, language, cultures and so forth.
(Maluleke 2002, 150)This statement is true for me as I attempt to engage with the developments and contents of contextual theologies of Southern Africa. Christians in Southern Africa are asking different questions about their faith depending on how they experience their culture, politics, economy and the church. Even within one country, one notices that there are different theologies based on gender, culture, race, class, and political and economic environment. The context and the theology are not static either. There is a progression taking place all the time. The concentration of the theologians in Southern Africa is not balanced either. Not much is heard from Swaziland, Lesotho and Zambia. Mozambique is out of reach due to language barriers. Malawi, Botswana and Zimbabwe have a handful of writing African theologians. South Africa has the highest concentration of Black and African theologians.
What I am suggesting is that the theology coming out of Southern Africa is not homogenous because there are a variety of contexts that raise different theological questions. In this chapter I will therefore limit myself to a discussion of Southern African theology (with examples from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Malawi); South African Black theology; and Southern African Women's Theology (with examples from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Malawi).
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- Information
- An Introduction to Third World Theologies , pp. 137 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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