Christology, African Folk

Missiologists, social scientists, and African writers have repeatedly stated that Africans find it difficult to integrate the person of Jesus Christ in their belief systems, either because he is automatically associated with the west and the colonial past, or because his very essence is supposed to be incompatible with autochthonous religious conceptions. That view seems implicitly confirmed by African Theology, which appears unable to reach even a modicum of consensus with regard to a suitable African paradigm for Christ (Schoffeleers 1989). Yet, at the level of folk theology, there exists at least one Christological paradigm that is used over large areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The paradigm is that of the medicine-person, known in Central and Southern African languages by the noun nganga, or one of its cognates. Outside professional theology, in the catechesis, hymns, and liturgy of African churches; however, that paradigm is frequently used because it is said to be an image that the...