Between Englishness and Ethiopianism: Making a Space for Intercultural Theology

Abstract

Originally an address delivered to open the 2010-11 academic year at Princeton Theological Seminary, the essay grounds itself in the Ephesian's vision of a New Humanity and articulates a theological orientation that discourages trivialization of cultural particularities. It then opens a
conversation on the necessity of intercultural theology. As theological curricula are usually overcrowded, a case is argued that to make space, someone (a discipline, etc.) will have to yield space. To envision the possibility, I use a Ghanaian novel, Ethiopia Unbound (1911), as evidence of the creative power unleashed, theologically, when the practice of having cross-cultural interlocutors is fostered in students. So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called 'the uncircumcision' by those who are called 'the circumcision'- a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands - remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to
the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh, he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.