Archives

  • Hekima Review No. 66 May 2023

    In his literary classic What Is Not Sacred, Laurenti Magesa alludes to a triadic empirical-transcendental-sacramental constituent of African spirituality. This manière d’être resonates with the biblical claim (Gen 1:31) that everything created is good. However, human relation with creation does not always guarantee sacramental and transcendental experiences. How then should creation be appropriately admired without tragic consequences? An aesthetic assessment of what is (not) sacred deserves due investigation.

  • Hekima Review No. 67 (Dec 2023)

    The discourse on reforms has increasingly become multi-disciplinary. In many cases, conservative versus liberal opinions mar the process of reforms. Yet, engaging in reforms simply implies the readiness for perspectival shifts, embracing new changes, and rebranding good old habits. Reforms imply a thoughtful and deliberate back-and-forth shift in responding to existential realities.

     

     

  • Hekima Review No. 65 Dec 2022

    Attention is shifting in recent times from contextual theology to intercultural theology, from inculturation to interculturation. The discourse on this practice is not new. About thirty years ago, in 1993, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger declared to the Bishops of Asia: “We should no longer speak of inculturation but the meeting of cultures or interculturality.”

  • Hekima Review No. 64 May 2022

    On the eve of African independence, the Christian theological discourse in Africa was still elaborated in the logical continuation of the foundation of Christianity, that of a pre-Christian culture from a historicist perspective. By 1956, African priests had begun to radically question Christian colonial salvation, a fact that some have seen as the beginning of African theology. After nearly 65 years, one wonders where we are in the practice of this discipline, which was initially very promising. Indeed, African theology had the wind in its sails after the Second Vatican Council. During this assembly, Pope John XXIII opened the windows of the Church to the world.

  • Hekima Review No. 63 Dec 2021

    The year 2021/2022 offers a unique opportunity to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Conversion of St Ignatius to a radical following of Christ. Injured in battle at Pamplona on 12th May 1521, Ignatius lay convalescing in his family home in Loyola reading the Life of Christ and the Lives of the Saints through much of July and August. By September, those around him began to suspect that ‘he wanted to make a very great change’ in his life, having seen several outward changes. Among those changes was his growing appreciation of the value of religious poverty, a value which was to characterize the life of the religious order he founded, the Jesuits.

  • Hekima Review No.62 Dec 2020

    “But, where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more” (Rom. 5:20b), declares St. Paul. The biblical text echoes hope in apparently hopeless situations. The COVID-19 pandemic, arguably, constitutes a sin that has brought about lots of suffering around the globe. People cannot travel as much as they would like to for fear of contracting or spreading the disease. Churches have experienced closure to the effect that religious practitioners cannot freely gather to give praise to their Creator. Schools closed pending amelioration of the COVID-19 pandemic. People have prematurely lost their jobs, and an endless list of lamentations accompany the pandemic.

  • Hekima Review No. 61 May 2020

    Over the past few decades, there has been an increased level of self-consciousness on the African continent. Our political self-consciousness has grown, our economic self-consciousness continues to see a steady rise, and our theological self-consciousness has significantly advanced. One factor that explains this growth in consciousness is the realization of the value of Socrates’ famous aphorism, which I paraphrase as Africa know thyself and to thyself be true. Self-knowledge and self-examination are, therefore, a critical determinant in the development of our theological consciousness into theological self-consciousness.

  • Hekima Review No. 60 Dec 2019

    In Mark 12:13-17, we see an encounter between Jesus, the Pharisees, and the Herodians. The latter groups of people attempt to trap Jesus through their questions about paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus is clever enough not to fall into this trap. He eventually silences the Pharisees and the Herodians with what has become a famous maxim: "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's:' This encounter Jesus had needs to be unpacked for it bears important consequences, not just in a religious paradigm, but also in a socio-political framework. The various characters in this narrative can be given symbolic meaning.

  • Hekima Review No. 59 (Dec 2018)

    Ten years ago, I had an immersion experience at the Ossiomo Leper Settlement in the South-southern part of Nigeria. For many of the inmates that I met, leprosy represented a tragic turning point in their lives. Each one told me stories about what life used to be before leprosy, and how all that changed like the snap of a finger. One of the inmates, a jovial woman would often reminisce about the beauty of her younger days, how no man could pass her by without turning, at least for a second look. “Where is such a man?” she would ask. Another inmate, a man, would tell me stories of how he had to leave everything he had worked for – his business, his properties, and his family – to begin life in this “no man’s land.” Their stories more often than not, climaxed with a decipherable pattern: how the infections hit them and things fell apart; how they were dropped at Ossiomo; how they were told that it would be just for a while and everything would soon be fine; how after the initial treatments, regular visits became occasional, then rare and eventually no more. Leprosy had made them citizens of nowhere.

  • Hekima Review No. 58 (May 2018)

    In October this year, the Church gathered in Rome for the “Synod on Youth.” In the Preparatory Document released last year ahead of the Synod, “Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment,” Pope Francis points out two goals at the heart of the Synod. First, accompaniment – to help the church “examine herself on how she can lead young people to accept the call to fullness of life and love;” and second, renewal - “to ask young people to help her in identifying the most effective ways to announce the good news today.” 

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