The second annual conference of the Theological Society of Malawi was held at the historic Ekwendeni Campus of the University of Livingstonia from 14 to 16 September 2021. It took up the urgent theme of the decolonization of the theological curriculum. Though Malawi has been an independent country for 58 years, coloniality still stalks the land. This book calls theologians to take a lead in decolonization, while navigating the educational task in an online age. With more than twenty institutions teaching theology at tertiary level in Malawi, and now united in the Theological Society of Malawi, there is huge potential to learn from each other in developing the theological curriculum in the country. While the primary audience is unashamedly a Malawian one, this book might also prove relevant in other contexts where there is a reckoning with past and present experience of colonialism. The book is a call to action and is published in the hope that it will have lasting impact on the teaching and learning of theology in Malawi and beyond.

Although the arrival of the Bible in Africa has often been a tale of terror, the Bible has become an African book. This volume explores the many ways in which Africans have made the Bible their own. The essays in this book offer a glimpse of the rich resources that constitute Africa's engagement with the Bible. Among the topics are: the historical development of biblical interpretation in Africa, the relationship between African biblical scholarship and scholarship in the West, African resources for reading the Bible, the history and role of vernacular translation in particular African contexts, the ambiguity of the Bible in Africa, the power of the Bible as text and symbol, and the intersections between class, race, gender, and culture in African biblical interpretation. The book also contains an extensive bibliography of African biblical scholarship. In fact, it is one of the most comprehensive collections of African biblical scholarship available in print. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

This volume foregrounds biblical interpretation within the African history of colonial contact, from North Atlantic slavery to the current era of globalization. It reads of the prolonged struggle for justice and of hybrid identities from multifaceted contexts, where the Bible co-exists with African Indigenous Religions, Islam, and other religions. Showcasing the dynamic and creative approaches of an emerging and thriving community of biblical scholarship from the African continent and African diaspora, the volume critically examines the interaction of biblical texts with African people and their cultures within a postcolonial framework. While employing feminist/womanist, postcolonial, Afrocentric, social engagement, creative writing, reconstruction, and HIV/AIDS perspectives, the authors all engage with empire in their own ways: in specific times, forms, and geography. This volume is an important addition to postcolonial and empires studies in biblical scholarship. The contributors are David Tuesday Adamo, Lynn Darden, H. J. M. (Hans) van Deventer, Musa W. Dube, John D. K. Ekem, Ernest M. Ezeogu, Elelwani B. Farisani, Sylvester A. Johnson, Emmanuel Katongole, Malebogo Kgalemang, Temba L. J. Mafico, Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele), Andrew M. Mbuvi, Sarojini Nadar, Elivered Nasambu-Mulongo, Jeremy Punt, Gerrie Snyman, Lovemore Togarasei, Sam Tshehla, Robert Wafawanaka, Robert Wafula, Gerald West, Alice Y. Yafeh-Deigh, and Gosnell L. Yorke.

Andrew M. Mbuvi makes the case for African biblical studies as a vibrant and important emerging distinct discipline, while also using its postcolonial optic to critique biblical studies for its continued underlying racially and imperialistically motivated tendencies. Mbuvi argues that the emergence of biblical studies as a discipline in the West coincides with, and benefits from, the establishment of the colonial project that included African colonization. At the heart of the colonial project was the Bible, not only as ferried by missionaries, who often espoused racialized views, to convert “heathens in the distant lands,” but as the text used in the racialized justification of the colonial violence. Interpretive approaches established within these racist and colonialist matrices continue to dominate the discipline, perpetuating racialized interpretive methodology and frameworks. On these grounds, Mbuvi makes the case that the continued marginalization of non-western approaches is a reflection of the continuing colonialist structure and presuppositions in the discipline of biblical studies. African Biblical Studies not only exposes and critiques these persistent oppressive and subjugating tendencies but showcases how African postcolonial methodologies and studies, that prioritize readings from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed, offer an alternative framework for the discipline. These readings, while destabilizing and undermining the predominantly white Euro-American approaches and their ingrained prejudices, and problematizing the biblical text itself, posit the need for biblical interpretation that is anti-colonial and anti-racist.

This book is critically important for Bible translation theorists, postcolonial scholars, church leaders, and the general public interested in the history, politics, and nature of Bible translation work in Africa. It is also useful to students of gender studies, political science, biblical studies, and history-of-colonization studies. The book catalogs the major work that has been undertaken by African scholars. This work critiques and contests colonial Bible translation narratives by privileging the importance African oral vitality in rewriting the meaning of biblical texts in the African sociopolitical, political, and cultural contexts.