Evangelicalism and African Christian Theology

T he idea to write on this subject has been with me for some time now, but its urgency was brought about by the reading of Richard Gehman's book, Doing African Christian Theology: An Evangelical Perspective . However, it is one thing to have a thought and quite another to put it on paper in order to share it with a larger public, so the thought remained latent until I read a review of the book by Ernst Wendland in Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology, Vol. 11.1, 1992. In the review, Wendland stated "I ' would now like to see an African response to this material, specifically with respect to Gehman's criticism and assessment of the current state of African Christian theology (ACT), and also in response to his proposals for setting the situation right by restoring the basis for Christian theologizing in African to a more solidly biblical foundation." My initial intention to write was prompted by the important and courageous effort the book was attempting in determining the foundations for an ACT that was true to scriptures and the Gospel, and by actually mapping out a method for achieving this. There were also things which I considered serious omissions in Gehman's consideration of a viable biblically based ACT.