THE NATIONAL MISSIONARY SEMINARY OF ST PAUL,

GWAGWALADA ABUJA

FACULTY: DIVINITY

DEPARTMENT: THEOLOGY

COURSE:
DOGMA IV (GRACE/ORIGINAL SIN)

TOPIC:
A SUMMARY NOTE ON CHAPTER SIX OF EMMANUEL KATANGOLE’S THE
SACRIFICE OF AFRICA: A POLITICAL THEOLOGY FOR AFRICA

STUDENT’S NUMBER:
NMS/659/19

CLASS: THEOLOGY THREE

LECTURER:
REV. FR. CLEMENT KANU, MSP (PhD)

DATE:
19TH JANUARY, 2022

1
Emmanuel Katangole begins the 6th chapter of his book The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political

Theology for Africa by recasting the tragic plot of the book Things fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

as the framework for his reflection on the dynamism of a despotic understanding of power as

domination and invincibility. This status quo of the notion of power in Africa was intensified

through the clash with the violence of colonialism. Katangole develops this theme by a close

examination of the character of Okwonkwo and his ambitions to rise to power and greatness in

Umuofia, in a cultural background that celebrate heroism. Okwonkwo is portrayed as an emblem

of a patriarchal figure consumed with the thirst for power and invincibility of failure, yet afraid

of failure and weakness. He infers that such a society is characterized by violence as all

becoming its victim; preying both on the weak and strong, evident in Okwonkwo’s suicide.

This violence, he describes as the product of two politics– traditional and colonial. Accordingly,

in the face of the resultant struggle, Katangole points two concerns for a social ethics in Africa.

Firstly, if this form of aspiration for power to dominate seem to pervade all nations; Africans

must construct a different perception of power and vision of the society in order to be liberated.

Secondly, the author cites the existence of two mutually exclusive religious outlooks to power in

the novel; one of dominance and the other of Christian virtues. Thus, as long as the Church in

Africa is soaked in this vision of power, there would be no redemption from the concentric chain

of domination under subtle and cloaked ecclesial ideologies. Accordingly, the feasibility of

Christianity breaking free of this politics of domination and liberating postcolonial Africa from

violence, consists in looking beyond the status quo. He proposes the doctrine of the incarnation

as the grounding for a new paradigm of power in Africa, and an ecclesiology that is serving and

sustaining, in contrast to the trends of modernity that “readily sacrifice Africa”.