African Christianity and the Bible

Exploring Approaches to Contextual Hermeneutics

Abstract

Historically, issues relating to the critical role of the Bible in gospel proclamation and its contextual relevance across diverse socio-political milieus have dominated the theological and missiological landscapes of the Christian Church. In the African context, concerns have been raised about the challenges associated with Eurocentric approaches to biblical hermeneutics, which provide a largely uncritical appraisal of the African socio-cultural milieu by Western missionaries. This work’s burden is first, to appraise Eurocentric approaches to biblical interpretation and gospel communication in Africa, and second, to underscore how the apparent misalignment of Western methodological approaches makes contextual biblical hermeneutics much better suited for the African context. A piece of analytic-historical research, the present work places the inherent disparity of Western missionaries’ approaches to biblical Christianity in Africa in juxtaposition with Africa’s socio-cultural realities and milieu. This will demonstrate the value of contextual hermeneutical approaches in Africa and beyond. The overarching assertion of this paper is that African contextual hermeneutics is not merely an adaptation or expansion of Western evangelical interpretation, but a fundamentally different hermeneutical posture – one grounded in, and attentive to, the social-cultural and religious realities of African contexts.