Verbum et Ecclesia 2024 – 2025 topical collection: We invite you to submit

AOSIS calls on all authors to participate in the 2024 – 2025 topical collection, titled Decolonialism in Theology Today, to be published in the open-access scholarly journal Verbum et Ecclesia. Submit your latest research for consideration, contribute to the open-access content available to everyone, and share your expertise with a wider audience.

Timelines:

• Submissions open: 08 January 2024
• Extended deadline for submissions: 31 December 2024
• Expected publication date: Rolling publication, Topical Collection to be published by 30 June 2025

We would be honoured to receive your positive reply and look forward to receiving your manuscript.

Decolonialism in Theology Today: (South) African Voices

In recent years, calls for decolonisation have received increasing priority in higher education and a range of academic disciplines. Over the past decade, South African student movements under the #MustFall banner have been vital to this call locally and globally. In addition, the actual conceptualisation of decolonisation has been at the fore in many academic disciplines and political discourses. Mignolo calls decolonisation a delinking process (Mignolo: 2018, 127).  This process has  “two major routes: decoloniality (delinking from state forms of governance) and de-westernisation (delinking from westernisation and confronting re-westernisation by means of strong States).” (Mignolo: 2018, 127). Decolonisation remained hostage to Western notions of emancipation that did not seriously question the ontological and epistemic essence of colonial modernity from the snares of which it tried to free Africans. (Ndlovu-Gatsheni: 2013, 95) It is these discursive threads that the #MustFall movement drew upon in the calls for the decolonisation of knowledge.

Theologians have responded in support of this^[1]. The Theological Society of South Africa (TSSA) has made this the theme of its conference in 2021, and a working group on decolonising theology within the TSSA has been in existence for some time. The time is now ripe to evaluate how this conversation has developed in South Africa and consider the agenda for further work in the coming years. Therefore, the Guest Editors emanating from this decolonising theology working group invite papers reflecting on this topic.

While theological disciplines and individual theologians have contributed in important ways to the conversation on decolonisation and decoloniality, both historically through various forms of liberation theologies and more recently in conversation with a renewed wave of theoretical engagements on decoloniality, Christian theology is also deeply intertwined with the historical justification of colonisation and apartheid, and theology as a discipline has been fundamentally transformed through its development within a colonial framework and era.

The TSSA invites you to contribute to a collection of articles addressing the fundamental question related to questions of decolonisation from a theological standpoint. The phrase “decolonising theology” leaves one with different impressions. The first and most common impression is that theology needs to be decolonised.  This has been shown to be true over the decades by a variety of scholars, and it remains so to this day. The second impression is that theology can be a decolonising force. So that we can construct theologies that are decolonising. The third and less discussed one is that decolonisation has a theological thrust. Out of these impressions emerges a set of questions:

• What conceptual foundations can be found in a decolonising theology
• How was and still is theology intertwined with the justification of colonisation, and how do these logics continue to operate in the present?
• What is the relationship between colonisation and Christianisation, and what would Christian identity imply, given the call for decolonisation?
• What are the epistemological and methodological drivers for a decolonised theology?
• How could contemporary theoretical work in decolonisation transform theology?
• What would theologies which contribute to the process of decolonisation look like?
• How do we reimagine various doctrinal loci in the light of a decolonial vision?
• What are the different approaches to decolonisation that are available to theology?

We invite articles that examine the historical impact of colonisation on theology in South Africa and the continent of Africa, the ongoing implications of coloniality on Christian theology in South Africa and the continent of Africa, and the possibilities of a decolonial theology in the present and future.

[1] http://bit.ly/2eHH9cU – A Call for Critical Engagement – A Study Document

Reference list:

• Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. 2013. Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization. Dakar: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa.
• Mignolo, W. 2018. What Does It Mean to Decolonize?, in W. Mignolo & C. Walsh (eds.). On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham : Duke University Press. 105-134.

Manuscript information

Manuscript contributions may consist of the following:

• Manuscript submissions should be in English.
• Original Research articles must fully comply with journal guidelines for manuscripts (maximum 7000 words, 60 or fewer references with limited self-referencing; no more than seven table/Figures).
• Manuscripts must fully comply with the journal guidelines for manuscripts.
• Interested authors must consult the journal’s procedures for manuscript submissions.

Submission procedure

To submit your manuscript to Verbum et Ecclesia, please visit verbumetecclesia.org.za and log in with your user credentials. When you submit the manuscript, select ‘Decolonialism in Theology today: (South) African Voices ’ as the article type. All submissions will undergo anonymous review to guarantee high scientific quality and relevance to the subject. The final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers and at the sole discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

All inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

• Journal support: submissions@verbumetecclesia.org.za
• Guest Editor Mr Obakeng Africa, University of South Africa: Africog@unisa.ac.za
• Guest Editor Miss Ntandoyenkosi Mlambo, University of South Africa: mlambnnn@unisa.ac.za