Introduction
It is facile to be controversial. You know, that act of throwing an ideological grenade in a playground packed with children. That bold arrogance that pokes a bear in the eye. That brazen suspicion of the Great Christian tradition—a tradition handed down to us by faithful men and women (2 Timothy 1:14). That claim that Christianity is inadequate, incorrect, and even invalid.
This is what I experienced at a recent conference where a keynote speaker made outlandish claims like “there is no great commission in the Bible”1 and “we should stop using the word ‘mission’ because it is an expression of coloniality.”2 And the most infuriating, “we shouldn’t work with categories of sin or acknowledge the existence of Satan.”3
Now, I cannot stay silent when wolves howl in the company of believers, especially when their howling becomes an exercise in promulgating heresy. It is the duty of the believing theologian to muzzle and banish a wolf for the sake of doctrinal purity and the protection of the vulnerable. It does not matter if heresy is spun from the mouth of an angel or a would-be sage (Galatians 1:6–12). If it smells like heresy, looks like heresy, and behaves like heresy, then it should be flushed out like heresy.
While some may say, “easy Bat, that is too harsh,” I would posit a rejoinder. Heresy is a ravenous beast that preys on the innocent and uninformed. It is the work of faithless hirelings who prey on the vulnerable (Matthew 18:6; 2 Peter 2:1–3). We protect the church from it by announcing and re-announcing the Gospel, challenging the deviant and speculative, and affirming the apocalyptic and eschatological uniqueness of the Christ event (1 Corinthians 2:12). This much I know because I was graciously rescued from the cyanide of many a heresy by the faithful proclamation and application of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I begin by noting the boom in theological reflection on the African continent. Where our colleagues in the global north have recognised the inadequacies of their thoughts that had not been informed by the global church, many on the African continent and in the African diaspora have sought to close the gap by building bridges for meaningful dialogue that serves the church and the theological guild. The groundswell of such a rally is yielding significant fruit in research outputs, tempering excesses, and correcting the erroneous. While there is much to commend about this noble endeavour, what I witnessed from the keynote speaker was of a different motivation and was a harbinger of a different gospel. Thus, although we are reluctant to write for the sake of writing, this practitioner cannot keep silent when ‘Evangelical Identity’ is being assaulted by African liberal theology4—a theology that aims to elevate the value of culture and contemporary African experience above Scripture’s authorial intent. Like a ravenous mosquito, African liberal theology draws blood while infecting the church with claims that live far from the Bible and are contradictory to the person and mission of God.
To be Evangelical
The term ‘evangelical’ points to a tradition that celebrates the person and work of Christ. It places these at the heart of redemptive history and the mission of God (Luke 24:25–26).
To be evangelical is to acknowledge the special revelation of God in Christ (Hebrews 1:1–4), the special revelation of God through the Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16), and to prize the cross and resurrection of Christ as the only means through which salvation and eschatological hope are secured.
To be evangelical is to acknowledge that salvation does not originate in subjective experience but is initiated in the love and mercy of God (John 3:16; Romans 3:22–26; Titus 3:3-7).
To be evangelical is to recognise that the world was corrupted by sin (Romans 6:23; 8:19–21), and we need a cosmic champion to rid us of our enslavement to the powers of Satan, sin, and death (Colossians 2:13–15).
To be evangelical is to preach, teach, live, and disciple the church into the knowledge and transformation that comes from the cross of Christ through the power of the Spirit (Matthew 28:18–20).
Finally, to be evangelical is to live with an eye fixed on the return of Christ (Acts 1:11), God’s judgment of the living and the dead (1 Peter 4:5), and the establishment of the New Heavens and New Earth (Isaiah 65:17; Revelation 21:1).
At the conference, the keynote speaker neither affirmed nor defended these hallmarks of Evangelical tradition. Instead, the speculative adventure characteristic of deconstruction agendas was on full display in his delivery. He brazenly paraded and celebrated this as wisdom when in fact, he was championing a different gospel. This is a problem.
Evangelical Theology is under siege in Africa
Evangelical theology is under siege in Africa and the African diaspora. We currently have a constituency of theological practitioners preoccupied with the collective trauma of colonisation, the impact of colonisation on the African social fabric, and the retrieval of African identity through a retrojected nativist strategy. I, like many Africans, am clear about the ills of colonisation and the abuses and excesses it installed in the African social arena. We know how colonisation was born of prejudice and plunder and how its architects sat around a table in Berlin in 1884.5
We know about the laws that wrestled lands from indigenous people and placed them in the ownership of minority settlers. We know of the racist structures that policed and preserved the way of life for a few at the expense of the many. We know our immediate history, the independence Africa received, and the lingering vestiges connected to the colonial project.
However, to read the message of the Gospel through the event of colonisation is to undermine the apocalyptic uniqueness of the Gospel. It is to treat colonisation as the normative ill in all African experiences, ignoring that before colonisation, Africans still needed a Saviour. In other words, colonisation is presented as the monolithic sin that the African theological practitioner is being called to expunge through the cryptic crusade of decolonisation.
The uncritical and pejorative use of ‘western’, ‘Eurocentric’, and ‘missionary’ is a marker for those in the outgroup of this endeavour. Absent is the multinational and multilingual family of God pictured in Revelation 7:9–10. Absent is the union believers share in, regardless of ethnicity and history, by being in Christ (Romans 12:4–6; Ephesians 2:5–6). Absent is the call to identify with the mission of God and the discipleship of those who come to faith. Decolonisation has become an African utopia where the liberal African theologian is a midwife hoping to will life into existence while standing on the graves of unbelief. This is a problem.
Colonisation had many sins, but to equate the sins of colonisation with the sins that live in the hearts of all peoples, Africans included, is to avoid a clear evangelical tenet: “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NIV). The African theologian, thus, must bring proper weighting to their theological vocation. Our preoccupation should be with theologising about the acts of God in Christ and, secondarily, how these interface with our context and experience. A reversed emphasis produces a different theological project, one preoccupied with agendas that do not necessarily square off with the telos of redemption. If the starting point of our theologising is not Christ—his death and resurrection—then we will theologise according to fleeting and occasional needs and opinions to the detriment of the Gospel message.
Evangelical Theology is being syncretised in Africa
Africa is not short of people with the epithet Dr or Prof. Yet many are walking tombs (cf. Matthew 23:27) who have read books and are champions of recycling old ideas, polishing them with great care to pass them off as new. Yet, when we raise our aerials to catch the substance of their contribution, we hear the distorted chatter of “deconstruct, decolonise, and dehistoricise.”
If the theologian’s task is to protect the church from wayward teaching that lands us in the quicksand of enslavement—enslavement to what Christ has liberated us from—then theological reflection should speak the truth in love to liberal tendencies that flow from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Instead, we have some who claim to be evangelical, professing ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12:1) in one breath, yet in the next assimilating all that the masters of suspicion dished out in previous generations.
To be a theologian is to love Jesus, first and foremost, to love the people of God—the church by nurturing our knowledge of the mystery revealed in Christ. It is to participate in the mission of God in the intellectual and public arena as we embody what it means to follow Christ in a world desperately awaiting the revelation of the sons of God. I, therefore, say, “Johannesburg, we have a problem”; the theology on the continent is not as healthy as we thought it was.
We have politicians masquerading as theologians, peppering their speeches with verses taken out of context and beating the drum of collective trauma in colonisation, yet ignoring the substance of the rescue and hope wrought and promised by the resurrected Suffering Servant of God (cf. Philippians 2:4–11). “Johannesburg, we have a problem,” we have among us theologians who do not love Jesus, speak about Jesus, or even know Jesus. We have a breed of “masters of speculation” who do nothing for the church except critique white missionaries while remaining silent on the human condition that equally plagues black and brown practitioners. “Johannesburg, we have a problem”; we have among us practitioners who don’t know the gospel but are experienced in curating public profiles that they think will redeem many through their non-Christ-infused scholarship. It is high time we tell those with big names to put their hubris in check and fall in love with Jesus again.
Evangelical Theology is being demonised in Africa
Evangelical theology is being demonised in Africa and the African diaspora. Many will look across the pond and see how so-called evangelicals are behaving and assume that the same constituency is stunting the development and realisation of an African utopia on the continent. Many blame the church, ridicule the church, and label the church for being ineffective in treating the ills in Africa. Yet, the very same individuals would seek to add to the message of Christ solutions that are incompatible with the redemptive arc of the Gospel. While missionaries were not perfect, they did something. While evangelical theology was transported to Africa in vehicles of questionable motives, the message of “Christ crucified” still rings true. While many do not want to admit it, many of us are educated because of the missional endeavours of those with an evangelical outlook. Many of us found healthcare, shelter, and dignity through the efforts of gospelizers from distant shores. Therefore, to demonise evangelical theology outright, one must work in the simplistic reductionistic binary of “them vs us.” Praise be to God that evangelical theology paints a different picture that presents Christ at the centre of God’s missional activity—a picture in which believers from every nation, tribe, and tongue are framed in the portrait of the family of God.
Conclusion
The role of the theologian is to announce what we stand for before we venture to address what we stand against. Our vocational rhythms are captured in a pendulum that swings from solution (Christ) to plight (sin and the effects of the Fall). It is, therefore, the role of the evangelical theologian to announce the words and work of Jesus and their responsible application to context. God tasks the theologian with the noble duty of resourcing the church with a clear understanding of the Christ event— in her preaching, liturgy, and sacraments.
While the reality on the ground is being tainted by those who hold a different message, driven by divergent motives, this is a call to the evangelical theologian to keep to the inspired repository of Scripture—Bible-based. Equally, it is a corrective–invitation to the wayward theologian to reinscribe Christ at the centre of their theologising. Finally, it is an announcement to those who love Christ and are called according to his purposes to keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25) as we serve a continent that needs what God has entrusted to us.
Notes:
1 This claim was made on a fallacious interpretation of Matthew 28:19–20. Here the speaker confused the function of the term “go” in Matthew 28:19, divorcing it from the main verb in the statement, which is to “make disciples.” The speaker instead interpreted the term “go” as “as you go.” The term “go” is a participle of attendant circumstance and it is linked to the main verb—make disciples—which is an imperative. So, “go … make disciples” is the right rendering.
2 The speaker’s jump from mission to coloniality and the conflation of the two demonstrates a lack of nuance and the absence of a regulating Gospel paradigm.
3 The speaker had an issue with me citing Ephesians 2:1–10 to demonstrate the universality of sin. When asked “What of Romans, and what of John the Baptist?” he could not register a plausible rejoinder.
4 Smith (2023) defines African Liberal Theology as “theology that attempts to make Christianity relevant to Africans by elevating culture above Scripture, the [African] context above text.” I borrow from his definition to proffer my point.
5 This was a conference that ran from November 1884–February 1885 in which thirteen European countries and the United States carved-up Africa in what is known as the ‘Scramble and Partition of Africa’.
