The Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch: “Look, Here is Water. What Hinders Me From Being Baptized?” (Acts 8:36 OSB)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Transatlantic slave trade had a determinative significance for the models and assumptions that set the framework for systems of thought and philosophies that dominated the “Academy” from at least the 15th Century until today. The philosophical justifications for the Western European subjugation of the non-European world, in general and the African in particular, through the highly profitable Transatlantic Slave Trade (the Arab, Iranian and Indian, Trans-Indian Ocean Slave Trades will be discussed elsewhere) and colonial efforts, would come to dominate many of the faculties of the Academy. From Biology, Linguistics and Anthropology to Philosophy and Theology, the faculties of the Academy sought to justify the sale of human beings and the “White Man’s Burden” or rather, the European and the European-descender’s (e.g. European-Americans) supposed burden to civilize a world of savages and wild natives. Until today, the effects of “White supremacist” worldviews and doctrines are to be found, for example, in the impetus for the relative absence of Africa and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church from histories of Early Christianity. The historical theological treatment of the biblical event of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch serves to illustrate the value of the reconsideration of the significance of this account from an Ethio-African perspective.