Christ Coming Home: Kwame Bediako's Oeuvre as an 'African Christianity Project'

‘CHRIST COMING HOME’ — KWAME BEDIAKO’S OEUVRE AS AN ‘AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY PROJECT’ The work of the Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako (1946-2008) is researched as an example of an African Christianity Project. The Project brings together several elements in Bediako’s work and life, whose aim is to revalue Africa’s primal religious outlook and the role the continent plays as a laboratory for Christianity. In his oeuvre Bediako looks for the possibility of an identity in which one can be fully African and fully Christian. The research focusses on the way in which Bediako defines the three elements of his African Christianity Project (ACP). Firstly, ‘Christianity’ is concentrated in Christ, the Word made flesh, as attested in the gospels. The presence of Christ can be best experienced when the Gospel is communicated in vernacular. The mother-tongue ties the African cultures closely to Christ. Secondly, with ‘Africa’ the focus is on the primal religious outlook, the function of the ancestors in it and the concept of time. Thirdly, the ‘Project’ character describes the way in which Bediako stipulates an African Christian identity and the way in which the current stage of African Christianity is a laboratory for Christianity worldwide. The background for Bediako’s ACP is the disparaging view of Western Enlightenment concerning Africa’s cultures and religions. Bediako performs an ironic reversal: the lowly regarded African animistic religion is transformed as the primal worldview into the centre piece of African Christianity, in which Christ functions as the Supreme Ancestor. This reversal, this coming home of Christ, is of relevance for the further shaping of Christianity that is moving out of the West and into the South. The critical questions concern the following three main components of Bediako’s ACP: ‘African’: does the ACP run the risk of creating a new African Christendom in its emancipatory drive away from the Western Enlightenment heritage? ‘Christianity’: can Bediako’s Christology stand the scrutiny of biblical, evangelical and ecumenical scholars, who detect problems concerning the eclipse of the Old Testament, the approach to conversion, and the lack of concern for the socio-economic context? ‘Project’: is Bediako’s effort concerted enough to keep all its elements together? Or will it prove that both Bediako and Christ are not coming home safely, but that the one or the other is harmed in this process? And if so, is that due to Bediako’s eclectic and kaleidoscopic approach? These considerations result in the question where the ‘African’ element fits in the wider relation between the Jews and the Gentiles, the Greeks and the barbarians, and what the implications are for the West. The final conclusion is that the propelling force of Bediako’s ACP resides in the ellipsoid structure of its Christology. His ancestor Christology combines the two centres of the ellipse, gospel and culture, Christ and ancestor. And thus, despite structural tensions in the project, Africa remains at present the place to learn the lessons that emerge from the primal worldview for the course of the gospel and the walk of Christ