Tracking the Decolonial in African Christian Theology

Abstract

Drawing on the framework and pluriversalist vision of decoloniality, this article offers a conceptual mapping of theoretical debates and trends in recent discourse on the decolonization of theology in the Southern African context with a view to outlining key missiological implications of such debates. It posits a view of African decolonial theology as the foregrounding of local, indigenous, contextual knowledge in discourse and as the praxis of faith rooted in contextual analysis of historical realities. This contribution articulates the notion of “mission from the margins,” derived from Together towards Life, as a decolonial mode of mission that gestures toward an epistemological shift in missional thinking. An initial version of this paper was presented at the seminar on decolonization organized by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism that was held in Lisbon, Portugal, in June 2023.