Praying through the Lord’s Prayer with Meaning and Significance: Mother-tongue Theological Hermeneutical Study of Mathew 6:9-13

Abstract

The Lord’s Prayer seems to be the best-known prayer among Christian communities. In liturgical contexts, it appears to be the most memorized and recited text of the New Testament. The popularity of the Lord’s Prayer, on one hand, indicates its significance within Christianity. On the other hand, its popularity implies that many people recite it without reflecting on its theological meaning and significance. The main purpose of this work was to read the Matthean text of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) from the perspective of the Akan mother-tongue theological hermeneutics. The paper thus joins with a contemporary few selected voices in the African exegetical enterprise to suggest that a mother-tongue theological hermeneutical reading of scripture contributes to an enhanced understanding of biblical texts which is of ecumenical relevance in the contemporary glocal (global and local) contexts. Keywords: The Lord’s Prayer, Mother-tongue, Theological Hermeneutics, Akan, Matthew 6:9-13