Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye is a brilliant Ghanaian Methodist theologian, and the founder and former director of the Institute of African Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological Seminary in Ghana. I referenced her work this past Sunday when I talked about reframing our theology around wilderness and suffering. Oduyoye stresses that when it comes to our wilderness experiences, we need to see God as “with” us, not “waiting” for us.
That shift is critical. But according to Oduyoye, it is also cultural.
One of the gifts of this Black History Month for me has been researching and learning about all the ways in which African scholarship has not only influenced our faith, but in many ways directly helped shape it. It was St. Athanasius, a North African bishop, who argued vehemently that Jesus should not be seen as a creation of God, but instead as being of the same substance as God—homoousios—fully divine, co-eternal with the Father. It was Tertullian, an African theologian, who first gave us the Latin language of Trinitas—Trinity—and helped articulate the mystery of one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He used metaphors drawn from the natural world to help people grasp what words alone could not hold; metaphors drawn from the Central African KiKongo theology referencing God as “creator,” Jesus as “the bridge,” and the Holy Spirit as “wind.”
These moments, and others like them, are what Oduyoye’s work helps point us toward. They give us permission to re-examine biblical texts and challenge the assumption that Christian theology is solely a Western construct. In many ways, the real history of our faith—rooted deeply in Africa—helps free us now to see God with fresh eyes in our wilderness!
So, here are three takeaways for me during this Black History Month journey:
- Acts 2, the Pentecost moment when the Church is born, is a critical starting point.
We see in Acts 2:10 that Egypt and Libya were present at Pentecost. Africa was in the room when the Church received its breath. - While the twenty seven (27) books of the New Testament focus mainly on what was happening around the Roman world, that does not mean Christianity wasn’t simultaneously spreading throughout Africa. We have powerful witnesses in the writings and lives of African Christians like St. Perpetua of Carthage, St. Pachomius of Egypt, and the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers: African believers who shaped Christian spirituality, monasticism, and theology in ways that still form us today.
- Africa has something to say.
Our Christian faith does not begin in the 1600s on the shores of America with enslaved Africans. Our faith is older than that. It is Nubian! It is Egyptian! It is Ethiopian! It is North African! It is from the Kongo. It is carried in the memory of the early Church and preserved in the witness of our ancestors. It is cultured, rooted, and connected to who we are. And if we look for it, we can find it.
All of this is important!
It is important because when we can see ourselves in the text—see ourselves not just as recipients of the faith but as participants in its shaping and proclamation—it changes something.
It changes how we pray.
It changes how we suffer.
It changes how we see God in our wilderness.
Beloved, may you be changed.
May you be transformed.
May you know that you are loved, seen, and held. Amen.
Dr. Ron Bell, II
