African American biblical hermeneutics Research Papers (original) (raw)

The Bible, its interpretation, institutions and readers, in Sub-Saharan Africa will always be tied to the modern colonial history, preceding and succeeding the scramble for Africa. The scramble for Africa, was the scramble for Africa... more

The Bible, its interpretation, institutions and readers, in Sub-Saharan Africa will always be tied to the modern colonial history, preceding and succeeding the scramble for Africa. The scramble for Africa, was the scramble for Africa through the Bible. As we shall observe, the scramble to get Africa back from the colonial clutches was and it still is wedged through the Bible. That the scramble for Africa was a scramble through the Bible will always be an interpretation crux. The interpretation of The Bible is framed within the context preceding the scramble for Africa (characterized by the likes of Livingstone, Stanley and Mackience), Western Bible readers and interpreters, represented by missionaries, and sometimes traders, who articulated it in the package of three in western Cs (Christianity, Commerce and Civilization). This scramble did not end with Westerners sharing of the cakes among themselves. It was followed by Africans’ scramble to get Africa back from the colonizers in a history that is known as struggle for independence, which is often marked by post world war ii, to the recent post-apartheid era. The scramble for Africa continues today in the postindependence era, often known as neo-colonialism and globalization, for it has become evident that the struggle continues in the scramble for defining what constituents African Christianity, commerce and civilization and realization that the now is not at all separated from the historical scrambles for Africa. It means that Biblical interpretation in the Sub-Saharan Africa, cannot be separated from politics, economics and cultural identity, of the past and present. Biblical interpretation in the African continent is thus intimately locked in the framework of scramble for land, scramble for economic survival and scramble for cultural survival. Biblical interpretation remains wedged between western and African history of colonialism, struggle for independence, post-independence and the globalization era.