Redeemed from the earth? Environmental change and salvation theology in African Christianity

Abstract

The growth and development within African Christianity have attracted the attention of Christian theological researchers in recent decades. However, this has obviously not witnessed a corresponding growth in environmental theology. This paper argues that this is due to the human-centred and otherworldly nature of the thinking about salvation – a way of thinking which African Christians have not only inherited from missionary Christianity but also radicalised. The paper argues that for African Christians to better configure salvation theology to creation faith there is the need for configuring Jesus Christ through an ecological lens and consequently correlating the implications of the theological claims to salvation wrought through Him to the salvation of creation. Consequently, in this paper, I do a theological ecological anatomy of salvation theology in African Christianity, as it is currently, and explore a constructive configuration of salvation theology from the perspective of creation faith.