Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Biblical Studies : Interpretations in the Context of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change and its global impact on all people, especially the marginalized communities, is widely recognized as the biggest crisis of our time. It is a context that invites all subjects and disciplines to bring their resources in diagnosing the problem and seeking the healing of the Earth. The African continent, especially its women, constitute the subalterns of global climate crisis. Can they speak? If they speak, can they be heard? Both the Earth and the Africa have been identified with the adjective “Mother.” This gender identity tells tales in patriarchal and imperial worlds that use the female gender to signal legitimation of oppression and exploitation. In this volume, African women theologians and their female-identifying colleagues, struggle with reading and interpreting religious texts in the context of environmental crisis that are threatening life on Earth. The chapters interrogate how biblical texts and African cultural resources imagine the Earth and our relationship with the Earth: Do these texts offer readers windows of hope for re-imagining liberating relationship with the Earth? How do they intersect with gender, race, empire, ethnicity, sexuality among others? Beginning with Genesis, journeying through Exodus, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of John, the authors seek to read in solidarity with the Earth, for the healing of the whole Earth community.