In memoriam: Jean-Marc Ela, Africa’s "liberation theologian" is dead

“If Christianity seeks to be anything more than an effort to swindle a mass of mystified blacks, the churches of Africa must all join to come to terms with this question.”
 
"Liberation of the oppressed must be the primary condition for any authentic inculturation of the Christian message.” Father Jean Marc Ela.
 
The death has been announced of Father Jean Marc Ela, one of Cameroon's leading scholars, who has variously been described as “the nearest Africa has come to a liberation theologian in a Latin American sense “, the “Champion of a theology under the trees “, “Africa's first liberation theologian of note outside South Africa”, and as “one of the best known and most read African theologians not only in Africa but also elsewhere”. He died recently in Canada where he had been on exile since 1995.
 
Born in 1936 in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Jean-Marc Ela was ordained priest in 1964. He subsequently earned doctorate degrees in Theology from the University of Strasbourg, France (1969) and Sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris (1978).
 
A very prolific writer, Jean-Marc Ela published dozens books, the most popular being Ma foi d'Africain (My faith as an African) “which gave him world notoriety and African renown in particular”, Le cri de l'homme (African Cry) “which attracted attention the world over”, and Voici le temps des He´ritiers e´glises d'Afrique et voies nouvelles (co-authored with Christiane Ngendakuriyo; Vincent Cosmao; Rene´ Luneau but in which his contributions were so significant that he is generally referred to as the sole author). These three books have been described by many as his” essential contributions to African theology".

Jean-Marc Ela's theology was largely shaped by his 14-year stay among the non-Muslim Kirdi population of Northern Cameroon whose life was characterized by misery, marginalization and exploitation by the state. As a result, according to Sundkler, “no one else expressed the 'cry of the African' with as much prophetic pathos as Fr. Jean-Marc Ela”. As Fr. Ela stressed in one of his writings:
 
How can the African human being attain a condition that will enable him and her escape misery and inequality, silence and oppression? If Christianity seeks to be anything more than an effort to swindle a mass of mystified blacks, the churches of Africa must all join to come to terms with this question.
 
But Ela's theology was more than just about liberation. As Benezet Buju points out, “Jean Marc's theology cannot be reduced to theology of liberation as opposed to the so-called theology of inculturation”. In this regard, Fr. Ela called for:
 

...an African theology that incorporates oral culture, myths, symbols, etc. into its method and into the proclamation of the Gospel. For our theologian it is evident that his inculturating effort cannot be undertaken without taking into account liberation in a holistic sense, i.e. one that takes into account cultural identity and the political and socio-economic dimensions... For Jean-marc Ela, liberation and inculturation do not oppose each other. They ought to be placed in a relation of 'perichoresis' for an African theology that takes into account each and every person. (African Theology in the 21st century benezet Bujo, juvenal Ilunga Muya, 212).

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