The Lynn White's challenge: African independent Churches (AIC) and ecological consciousnesSS

Abstract

This article examines the influence of the thesis of the American medieval scholar Lynn White that Christianity is responsible for environmental injustice and which has become a trigger for the formation of a new discipline in Christian theology - environmental theology and a new Christian environmental consciousness on the activities of African Independent Churches (AIC). On the African continent, it is the AICs who have made significant contributions to the development of contextual theology and environmental awareness. The main tenet of the African Independent Churches (AIC) after liberation from colonial dependence was that countries that received political liberation were to receive ecological liberation. However, it should be noted that still the main emphasis was placed on environmental action, which was an expression of the environmental consciousness of members of African independent churches. Attempts by African Independent Churches (AICs) to construct a system of ecological theology within contextual theology have relied on attempts to fit Christianity with the traditional African view, which traditionally defined certain trees, rivers, or animals as sacred or taboo. There are few such approaches in the literature on theological justification of ecology in churches initiated by Africans, but the ecological consciousness based on action has a well-rooted history in African independent churches and is, in fact, an Afro-Christian response to the challenge posed to Christianity by Lynn White.