African Theocology: A Theocentric Paradigm for Creation Care in the African Church

The theologies underscoring Western missionary work in Africa during the colonial period encouraged the domination of creation and overrode theologies of care and concern for the natural order. Further, the proffered dominion theology that discouraged African Indigenous religious ecological conceptions was undergirded by a mechanistic worldview foreign to African understandings of creation. Thus, one challenge to effective cooperation in addressing ecological problems in Africa is that Western Christian creation care approaches perpetuate this mismatch. Consequently, this article argues that African theocology, which integrates Christian theology of nature with insights from both African Indigenous practices and the ecological sciences, may be a preferable alternative paradigm for developing creation care culture in Africa. It explains creation care culture as the life-long transformation of our moral consciousness and instinctual actions to improve our relationships with God, ourselves, other-than-human creatures, and the environment. This article analyzes the role that eco-cultural practices, particularly birthing and funerary rites in Ghana, play in this approach. Specifically, it shows their implicit potency to prime and orient people in ways that promote the development of personal character and church cultures that embody Christian creation care.