An Investigation of Blending Inculturation and Liberation approaches towards new evangelization in Contemporary Africa

Abstract

In the endeavour towards propagating the Good News, there seems to be a dangerous categorization of Inculturation and liberation approaches as if they are dichotomized entitiesthat impacts negatively on Christianity’s Kerygma (proclamation) and Didache (catechesis). The paper assumes that an intrinsic combination of these two main approaches would result in a holistic mode of evangelization that would fruitfully inspire and significantly empower contemporary people in Africa to embrace the Gospel in their entire concrete existence while taking them separately would result in impoverished ministry. One may thus hypothesize that a merger of the two approaches would greatly influence the way agents of the Gospel accomplish Christ’s mandate to effectively propagate Christianity, in corroboration with the Holy Spirit, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the remotest parts of the world (Acts 1:8), including today’s Africa. Such an assertion merits investigation at erudition level since it has been either ignored or handled superficially. Going by the assumption that Inculturation approach and liberation perspective in significant ministering of the Gospel have an indispensable affinity and actually, not just factually, necessarily imply one another (Nyamiti,2005:3-5) the study endeavours to verify that the merger has the potentiality of bringing about a holistic more effective evangelization mode that would bear abundant fruits in Africa in accordance with respective people’s socio-religio-cultural realities and signs of the times. Based on the above, the study will be guided by questions like: What is the perception and engagement of Inculturation approach in evangelizing service? How does the Christian Church understand and utilize liberation approach in the role of evangelization? How does the merger of Inculturation and liberation approaches make evangelization more significant in contemporary Africa? In what manner can the integrated model in Christian ministry be applied by the contemporary agents of evangelization in Africa to maximize the benefit to contemporary recipients in their historical concrete life situations? The paper will thus give a brief historical theological setting on the subject then scrutinize the nature and engagement of Inculturation approach in the evangelization ministry. It will also explore the perception and employment of liberation approach towards evangelization endeavour. This will be followed by a brief discussion on the blending of Inculturation and liberation orientations as a more fruitful mode of evangelization. Inculturation theory together with general and special revelation theory will guide the study.