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Jul 9, 2024Keywords:
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Decoloniality in Theology Today: The Quest to Liberate United Theological College’s Curriculum from Foreign God Talk
Martin Mujinga
Abstract
United Theological College is one of the oldest and largest ecumenical institutions in Southern Africa. The institution brings together six Protestant churches in Zimbabwe. For years, the institution produced competent theologians. Unfortunately, these theologians drunk from some foreign theological calabashes whose contents are divorced from the Zimbabwean realities. The College had been clinging to the Western, far distant, and neighbouring African theologies and theologians for its curriculum forgetting to scratch where Zimbabweans are itching. This collection of different theologies into one combination was an attempt by the College to equip students with diversified theologies from different sociopolitical, economic, and religious environments, ignoring that the context is divorced from Zimbabwe’s milieu. This paper sought to invoke the institution’s continual addressing of contextual theological issues using borrowed theological epistemologies. Using a decolonial framework and qualitative research methodology, the paper challenged the institution to decolonise its curriculum by liberating it from armchair theories of foreign God talk. Structurally, the paper discussed the theoretical framework, methodology, and identity of the College and proceeded to present the curriculum of the institution and the findings from the interviews with special reference to four modules. The paper stressed that the perpetual pontification of foreign theological themes by the institution will continue to create theologians whose heads and the body are separated. The conclusion challenged the College to decolonise its curriculum and advocate for a theology that speaks with the language and idioms of the Zimbabwean milieu regardless of the challenges associated with the move. This paper contributes significantly to scholarship as it challenges United Theological College to use relevant resources to do theology.
