Volume 17, Issue 1 e12453
ARTICLE
Open Access

Orality, gender, and West African Christian spirituality: Exploring women's voices

Jessie Ini Fubara-Manuel

Corresponding Author

Jessie Ini Fubara-Manuel

School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Correspondence

Jessie Ini Fubara-Manuel, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Email: [email protected]

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Sara Fretheim

Sara Fretheim

University of Münster, Munster, Germany

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First published: 14 December 2022

Abstract

This article explores orality in the context of West African Christian women's voices, arguing that their oral expressions highlight their lived faith experiences and function as a significant resource within the study of Christianity in Africa. The article first outlines concepts of orality in relation to gender, spirituality, language, and community engagement. We argue that women's oral contributions are a rich source of insight into West African Christian spirituality but are predominantly marginalised from more formal theological discourse. We further note that orality is not a stepping-stone to formal academic discourse but is instead an equal and important counterpoint requiring attention. These concepts are elucidated through two ethnographic case studies. The first engages Afua Kuma, a non-literate Ghanaian oral artist who adapted chiefly praises for Christologically centred prayers. The second focuses on Hannah (not her real name), a well-educated Nigerian woman living with a disability, for whom singing proved spiritually transformative. We conclude with some of the challenges and benefits of engaging orality.

1 INTRODUCTION

This article contributes to an understanding of the role and significance of orality within the framework of West African Christian women's spirituality. We argue that it is a frequently overlooked but rich resource offering important insights into lived faith experiences, particularly for those who may be marginalised and/or find themselves outside of mainstream ‘written Christian thinking’. We further argue that orality should be viewed as of equal significance, and going hand-in-hand with, text-based sources.

We will firstly define orality in relation to spirituality, gender, language, and community, highlighting some of the benefits and challenges of engaging with oral materials. Then, we will explore some of these themes more fully through two case studies of women from different West African regions, historical periods, socio-economic, and educational levels. The first engages Afua Kuma (1908–1987), a Ghanaian grassroots oral theologian, and the second, Hannah (pseudonym used for confidentiality), a well-educated contemporary Nigerian woman with a disability, whom we chose to illustrate some of the enduring similarities found within West African Christian women's oral expressions of faith. We further draw from the work of African women theologians or feminist theologians that ‘call attention … and suggest a process and method to bring about changes’ in the thinking and perception of who women are as human beings, and the ways they express their spirituality or theology (Oduyoye, 1994, p. 178).

When women are marginalised, oral expressions are often liberating tools providing a means of preserving and sustaining women's values and identities (Hale et al., 2013, pp. 1–8). We argue that for West African women, orality is a significant means of engaging their Christian spirituality, and therefore a crucial resource for scholarly engagement. Amenga et al. (2020, p. 114) argue that examining orality within the context of West African Christian spirituality is ‘a critical factor that can explain how traditional spiritual traits have survived and taken on new forms and meanings within contemporary African Christianity, especially through praise poems, prayers, storytelling, and music’. In outlining relevant theoretical and methodological concerns, as well as examining these case studies, this article highlights the importance of orality as a critical source for engaging West African women's lived faith experiences and offers a corrective to the ‘near-total absence of oral theologies from academic scholarship on African Christianity’ (Amenga et al., 2020, p. 114). However, while orality remains under-explored in text-based scholarship, we acknowledge that ‘women have [long] spoken about their inner feelings and experiences of sorrow in songs, dances, novels, stories, tears, deep silences and through the stripes on their bodies’ (Njoroge, 1990, p. 72).

1.1 Key terms

We use the term orality to broadly refer to the preferred use of spoken or sung words to convey and receive information, including the extra-verbal performative aspects of gesture, movement, and facial expression. Gender ‘refers to cultural distinctions between men and women and to the traits and behaviours ascribed to them’ (Grillo et al., 2019, p. 193). We are concerned here with female-gendered voices, as their spheres of influence and approaches to oral communication are often distinct from their male counterparts, and convey important insights into Christian thought, yet frequently remain hidden and undervalued. Building on that, spirituality here encompasses the values, expressions, and reflections on the daily lived experience of Christian faith, and here specifically in West African contexts. We likewise use the term (oral) theology throughout, again to indicate Christian reflection upon matters of life and faith. We reject notions that understand theology exclusively as an academic or otherwise professional practice and acknowledge the faith-inspired reflections of ‘ordinary’ believers as forms of grassroots theology.

1.2 Methodology

Drawing from ethnographic research in Ghana (Fretheim) and Port-Harcourt, Nigeria (Fubara-Manuel), as well as critical textual engagement, this article demonstrates some ways in which West African Christian women express their spirituality and empower themselves through diverse oral means. In doing so, they offer a whole new creative and important theological ‘library’ often missed in text-based reflections.

Fretheim conducted extensive field research within the late Afua Kuma's community (May–July 2018; June–July 2019), including interviews with family, community, and church members, and interviews with experts in Akan linguistics and oral praise genres. This research revealed that Afua Kuma was far more than the reductionistic descriptions of her as ‘wife’, ‘mother’, ‘farmer’, ‘midwife’, and ‘non-literate African Pentecostal woman’ in some literature.1 Generous philanthropist, insightful theologian, and gifted linguist, Afua Kuma was a pioneer in Ghanaian women's oral Christian expressions. This discovery allowed for a reframing and clarification of themes displayed in her praises, while alerting us both to possible gender biases when engaging women's oral spirituality, and to the fact that text-based scholars (and here we include ourselves) can easily misjudge, misunderstand, and/or overlook aspects of oral contributions, in part by uncritically using western lenses to identify, describe, and assess someone's life and words without fully understanding their context.2

Fubara-Manuel's ethnographic field research in Port Harcourt, Nigeria (July–December 2019) included participant observation, interviews, and focus group discussions examining the impact of Christian faith for women living with disabilities and/or HIV. This included Hannah, a well-educated participant with a physical disability. Hannah's experience, representative of many women in the study, demonstrates orality as key to the expressions of Christian faith, especially for those experiencing multiple marginalisation, and for whom text-based literature often remains silent.

This article also benefits from the text-based scholarship of some members of the Circle of African Women Theologians (‘the Circle’), including Isabel Phiri, Musimbi Kanyoro, Mercy Oduyoye, and Nyambura Njoroge, who have long advocated for women's voices to be recognised as credible sources of religious knowledge. Consequently, in adopting a focus on women and their concerns, this article aligns with feminist methodological approaches that seek to capture the lived experiences of women in a respectful manner and to recognise these as a form of theology, orally practiced, in its own right.3

2 ORALITY

When discussing ‘orality’ or ‘oral expressions’, it is important to note that this includes both those who are non-literate and equally those who are literate but who are ‘oral preference communicators’—i.e., those who simply find greater ease and connection using oral expressions, which is estimated to be more than 80% of the world's population.4

As many scholars are (re)discovering, it is important to (re)engage with orality as a methodological key within the study of religions in Africa. Stinton (2012, p. 14) reminds us that ‘it is common knowledge that Christians in Africa have always theologised, if not formally, at least informally, for example, in singing, praying, and preaching’. Likewise, pioneering and prolific linguistic anthropologist Finnegan (2012, p. 165)5 points out that ‘[t]here is a great variety of religious poetry in Africa. There are hymns, prayers, praises, possession songs, and oracular poetry, all with their varying conventions, content, and function in different cultures’.

It should be remembered that orality as a key source within Christian spirituality is not new. Half a century ago, Kenyan theologian John Mbiti reminded us that orality is likewise at play in the biblical text, much of which was based on oral sources. He further highlighted that in the teachings of Jesus, we see important examples of the interplay between orality and text: Jesus conveyed his teachings orally, while others later committed them to text (Mbiti, 1994, pp. 30–31). Oral and text-based expressions are thus different, but complementary, often functioning hand-in-hand.

2.1 Orality and gender

For many West African women, orality is a preferred option for engaging faith. Therefore, it should be considered a significant source for examining Christianity in West Africa, and by extension, Africa. Oral forms of communication are often used by those who find themselves ‘well outside the domains of public power’ as a ‘potential means of exerting pressure upon or transforming social conditions and power relations’ (Gunner, 2000, p. 6).6 Women are one such example. Ogundipe-Leslie and Boyce Davies (1994, p. 2) argue that ‘there has been a conceptual blind spot which has allowed the construction of the field of African oral literature to develop without major consideration of the existence of women as oral artists. Except for cursory and passing reference in several texts on oral literature, the field has continued to operate on that assumption’.

Along these lines, leading African female theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye has reiterated the need for women's stories to be heard in ways that bring their distinctive voices and experiences to the fore in discourses on African Christianity (Oduyoye, 2006). As evidenced in our case studies, whether literate or not, women often articulate their relationship with God in what Oduyoye describes as ‘impromptu lyrics that Africans s[i]ng to interpret biblical events’ (Oduyoye, 1986, p. 74). She further contends that ‘women's spirituality is qualitatively different from that of men because women's experience of socioeconomic realities differs from that of men’ (Oduyoye, 1994, p. 167).

Njoroge (1997) similarly speaks of women's religious reflections—what she calls ‘doing theology’—evidenced in the voices, cries, tears, fears, silences, images, songs, sermons, and prayers that are heard and stored in the memory of the community of faith and in society as people struggle to live out their faith. Isabel Phiri further argues that women use ‘story telling as a method, just like poetry, songs, the use of proverbs and dance’, as a way of distinguishing themselves from male academics (Phiri et al., 2002, p. 10).

While there has been some increased focus on women, those who are additionally marginalised, such as those with disabilities or who are not literate, are not given adequate attention (Chisale, 2018). However, research indicates that oral expressions of women's faith within religious and social spaces provides an effective form of agency against patriarchal and political structures that exclude them; thus, such voices should be leading the way. Oduyoye (2001, p. 10) calls for ‘women-centred’ theological engagement that ‘highlights women as actors, agents, and thinkers’, while Kanyoro refers to an ‘engendering cultural hermeneutics’ that reflects the challenges that African women bring to theology…by examining culture with women's eyes (2002, p. 27). They recognise orality as a potent means by which women's voices and contributions may take their place within wider African Christian engagement.

2.2 Orality as event: Words and power

A further important aspect of orality is the reality that in oral contexts, words are an inherently powerful and efficacious event. Walter J. Ong argues that ‘deeply typographic folk forget to think of words as primarily oral, as events, and hence as necessarily powered…’ (Ong, 1982, 2002, p. 32). Our case studies highlight this. As Afua Kuma (unpub.) variously proclaims, ‘The name of Jesus makes me brave!’, ‘The name of Jesus brings me home!’, ‘The name of Jesus kills robbers!’, ‘The name of Jesus is my companion!’, ‘The name of Jesus transforms me!’, ‘The name of Jesus does wonders!’7 As confirmed by interviewees, such statements were used within specific moments of need, fear or vulnerability, with the belief that the verbal expressions of Jesus' name contained within it the power to bring resolution. In this way, orality bridges the physical and supernatural realms, wherein the spoken name of Jesus (as one example) functions as an empowered word, effectively inviting divine intervention with the expectation of response.

Hannah similarly talked about the empowerment she felt when singing, often using words that address peculiar challenges and words that offer hope. Here she speaks of having a sense of connectedness to God in ways that provided succor and strength to face the challenges associated with her disability. Orality, therefore, is not abstract or removed from women's realities. Instead, it is a way in which women give voice to their lived experiences, experiencing divine encounters and spiritual empowerment.

3 ORAL SPIRITUALITY

Turning our attention to orality and Christian spirituality, Kanyoro reminds us that while oral media was once ‘the most legitimate form of communication’, it was quickly ‘overtaken by print media’ as the accepted source of truth. According to Kanyoro, and as evidenced in our ethnographies, ‘the power of the written word’ creates the marginalisation of a great number of oral communicators globally, especially those who are literate (Kanyoro, 2002, p. 11). It should therefore be approached as a matter of justice for the ‘experiences of rural communities and of women to be included’ in the reflection and interpretation of biblical texts and Christian spirituality.

Following on Mbiti's reminder that orality and textuality function in partnership, Kwame Bediako asserts that oral contributions to African Christianity should be correctly understood as significant sources of Christian thought in and of themselves, not as either stepping-stones to text-based scholarship or as ‘exotic’ examples of African performance (Bediako, 2000, pp. 17–18). Women's oral expressions should be similarly understood. Moyo (2002) argues that songs and dance are sources and expressions of African feminist theology and portray the importance of orality to the formulation and understanding of African spirituality.

3.1 Misunderstanding oral spiritualities: The risks and pitfalls of relying on transcribed, translated texts

There are, of course, various challenges and pitfalls when engaging oral expressions. To engage oral communicators using transcribed/translated texts without sufficient exploration of their context can leave oral communicators vulnerable to misinterpretation or misuse by ‘mainline’ or ‘text-based’ academic scholarship. This is perhaps especially so among western scholars analysing African oral theologians from across geographic, historical, textual, and contextual distances.

One brief example here is the mis-categorisation of Afua Kuma's Jesus of the Deep Forest as an ‘oral epic’ by Princeton theologian Fox Young (2013). Young holds up her work as an important example of oral Christian thought but bases his research solely on the body of praises in the translated/published text, incorrectly reading it as one long ‘epic poem’ rather than what it is: a collection of loosely linked praises (the customary Ghanaian apae format) which were recorded over the course of several years and later transcribed, translated, and edited together. While not a critical error, this nevertheless alerts us to the vulnerability of oral communicators and their work in the hands of text-based academics when we fail to engage them from within their wider socio-cultural-linguistic contexts and solely rely upon the transcribed/translated text as a limited mediator.

Here we agree with Kanyoro and Oduyoye that African women must do theology differently by exploring new avenues and new ways to promote the voices and works of African women. Kanyoro asks for a rejection of academic endeavours that exclude women from participating in theological reflection, but advocates for those that carry the voice of women in ‘poetry, proverbs and dirges’ (Kanyoro, 2002, p. 30). For Oduyoye, women's spirituality is often expressed ‘more overtly… [with] messages transmitted through symbols and songs and prayers and action…that are received differently by different people’ (Oduyoye, 1994, p. 167). Consequently, it has been argued that ‘academic theological discourse will need to connect with the less academic but fundamental reality of the “implicit” and predominantly oral theologies found at the grassroots of many, if not all, African Christian communities’ (Bediako, 1996, p. 63).

Despite their importance and prevalence, oral contributions remain significantly underexplored within the study of African Christianity. This is problematic not only because ‘academic theological discourse’ is missing important dialogue partners, but because many oral preference communicators represent marginalised but significant voices, who reflect and shed light upon the lived experiences of many West African Christian women. By not engaging these oral sources and attentively exploring their contexts, we run the risk of missing out on, or misinterpreting, grassroots expressions of African women's Christian spirituality.

3.2 Oral theologies and community engagement

Oral theologies necessarily include a significant community aspect, whether as listeners or as active participants. Aminta Arrington highlights this in her work on the theological significance of community hymn singing among the Lisu of Southwest China: ‘[k]nowledge of Bible characters or well-known Bible stories or sequences often appeared sketchy. I contend that this situation has less to do with the level of faith or commitment, and more to do with the interplay of literacy and orality, of individual and community, and the overall Lisu linguistic situation’ (2015, p. 399).8 It can be easy to categorise and even dismiss these oral expressions as ‘pleasant community activities’ but not ‘serious’ spiritual reflection. In agreement with Arrington, Stuart Foster, analysing communal singing in Mozambique, makes the important point that while participants thoroughly enjoy their times of singing, this is ‘in fact oral theology’ and should not be mistaken for ‘mere entertainment’ (2008, p. 130).

Expanding on this, Kanyoro (2002, p. 30) argues that African women's success at articulating their spirituality ‘depends entirely’ on the ability to make theology a ‘communal theology’ and not an ‘individualistic struggle’. Communal engagement and collaboration are key to the Circle's drive to have a Christian environment that reflects the experiences and challenges of African women. For Njoroge, such communal spiritual reflection ‘must affirm and ensure women's full participation in both studying and teaching theology’; otherwise, the ‘truth will remain hidden, and the life-affirming African theology is doomed to fail’ (Kaunda, 2020, pp. 480–491).

Another critical issue for orality and community is that of language. It has been argued that it is our mother tongues that ‘provide the historical, socio-cultural, intellectual and emotional matrices that give shape to the human responses to transcendence’. (Bediako, 2002, p. 1). For many, the vernacular is the preferred medium for oral communication, especially in matters of faith and spirituality.

4 CASE STUDY #1: AFUA KUMA (1908–1987): THE WOMAN BEHIND THE WORDS

Afua Kuma was born into a Christian family in the town of Obo-Kwahu in the Eastern Region of Ghana and grew up in a family of successful farmers and traders, practices which she continued in her marriage. After her husband's death in 1961, she trained as a traditional birth attendant. She lived quite simply, was known as a generous philanthropist, and was widely respected as wise and fair-minded.

While she did not have the opportunity to attend school, a common reality for girl-children at that time, she was an oral learner with excellent linguistic abilities in Twi, her mother tongue. As a Christian, she felt at home across all denominations, worshiping variously in Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Christ Apostolic, and Church of Pentecost congregations. However, it was not until after her husband's death that she began performing her praises publicly. Conjuring the image of Jesus as chief, Afua Kuma announces:

image

Creatively envisioning Jesus within the familiar Akan proverb ‘you cannot tie the knot without the thumb’, she declares, ‘[Jesus] is the Thumb, without which we cannot tie a knot!’ (1981, p. 7).

These offer a glimpse of her poetic style and her well-developed Christology, which weaves together familiar images from her community, references to Akan proverbs, and biblical allusions. Her poetic use of ‘impossible’ or ‘contradictory’ images is reminiscent of the hyperbolic approach used in apae and underscores her primary emphasis on Jesus' miraculous, delightful, positive engagement with humanity.

Regarding her appropriation of a traditionally male-held role (chiefly praise singer), Afua Kuma confidently addresses her role as a woman directly, while conjuring up an image of a traditional Akan celebration with men and women taking up their specific roles in the chiefly procession:

image

The fact that she as a woman claims equality to a priestly position at a time when such roles would only have been held by men, based on her assessment of being similarly ‘anointed and ordained’, is not to be missed! Arguably, it may point to the fact that the marginalisation of women within formal African theological engagement and/or academic discourse is, in fact, more a result of western engagement and western theological approaches, and is instead a reminder that within pre-colonial, pre-missional West African contexts, women were recognised as holding spiritual authority. Indeed, from her perspective, it was rather these male priests who came to join her in what she was already doing!

Notably, a number of female interviewees remarked that her example also encouraged them as women to similarly feel confident to compose and offer their own praises publicly. Oduyoye (2006, p. 153) is thus correct when she describes Afua Kuma as a ‘trailblazer’, including for subsequent African women ‘writing theologians’, for whom ‘she paved the way by pointing to the central theme of Christology. She became our first source and will represent the women who weave lyrics about Jesus and always pour their hearts out in prayer and praise and in all places, the women whose theology gets “reduced” into writing by those who write’.

5 CASE STUDY #2: HANNAH: SONGS FOR LETTERS

Hannah was born in 1978 in the South-South of Nigeria. Before her first birthday, she suffered from rickets, a condition affecting bone development in children. As is customary for many African Christians who live at the intersection of religious and indigenous practices, her parents took her to numerous Christian prayer houses as well as to traditional bone healers in attempts to fix her weakening legs.9 She was five when her parents accepted the fact that she would need a walking aid for mobility. With the help of a Catholic charity, she underwent surgery and was fitted with a calliper. Today, she walks with the aid of crutches.

Hannah shared about the disappointment that her parents felt with her early disability. In her farming community, the disability of a girl-child who is expected to help with the work was considered a significant loss. Her parents told her how humiliated they felt, especially with the stigma surrounding her disability, due to popular beliefs surrounding disability as a curse from the ancestors or punishment from God for wrongdoing within the family (Sinyo, 2011).

At 6 years old, Hannah was sent to a boarding school for disabled children because her parents did not know how to further care for or relate with a child with a disability. Her mother visited periodically, bringing gifts and tales about her younger siblings, whom Hannah did not see until she left the boarding school at the age of 21.

For Hannah, the experience of her disability and of being away from home and family adversely affected her. She became introverted and was often isolated from communal spaces. Without friendship, people with disabilities often face exclusion from society (Fubara-Manuel, 2019). At the boarding house, however, she had vivid recollections of positively engaging with Christian rituals of prayers, Bible study, church attendance, and singing. At the age of 20, she joined the choir and things changed. Singing gave her a voice. According to Hannah, ‘songs help you say what you are ordinarily unable to say’.

She recounted her desire to attend university; something no family member had done, and which seemed impossible given her family's poverty. Her faith was strengthened through communal singing. As she sang, she felt a sense of connectedness with God in ways that convinced her that God would answer her prayers. In what she considers a miracle, she was offered a fully funded scholarship at a Nigerian university. In a beautiful reversal, today she holds a professional position and now cares for her ageing parents and siblings.

For Hannah, oral forms of worship, communal or personal, including songs, beating the drums, or other musical instruments, provided a way for her Christian spirituality and faith to grow and flourish. While her disability initially left her feeling isolated and burdensome, the unifying and equalising nature of oral spirituality—in this case participating in a choir with other women—helped her to develop a confident sense of self and to reimagine her potential beyond her disability.

Unlike Afua Kuma, Hannah said she had never composed any complete songs or written any poems herself. However, she sometimes changes the words of well-known gospel artists to words that she feels are relevant to her specific situation. In her words, ‘I don't know how God does it, that he gave gospel composers words that agree with your spirit and those words cover all the prayers you may be trying to pray, so you just sing the songs’. Her favourite song, however, is one in her Kogana dialect, which speaks of God's incomparable power:

Bari o Bor … God you are great

Tor nu na e niba e … nothing is difficult for you

Bari o Bor zoka … God, you are greatly mighty

Hannah's story is evidence of how, for marginalised people—including those who are formally educated—orality frequently remains a comfortable means of spiritual expression that can be personally created or adapted. While Hannah did not initially see herself or her experience as worth much, she represents a different way of theologising that is both private and public, and which vividly portrays the power of orality to function as a transformative agent within West African women's Christian spirituality.

6 CONCLUSION

In exploring these concepts of orality, we have seen both literate and non-literate West African women from different backgrounds, places, and historical periods who similarly discovered and conveyed significant meaning and spiritual edification through public oral expressions. However, oral expressions nevertheless pose some practical challenges even while offering exciting and creative avenues for exploring (West African) women's theological contributions. Access: as locally-based oral events, the wider Christian and/or scholarly community cannot experience and analyse these unique spiritual reflections without some form of recording. Language is another challenge. With mother-tongue expression being key, transcription and frequently translation are necessary if others are to engage the words/text, yet this can leave the oral artist vulnerable to misinterpretation.

This means that while women in West Africa often form a majority within Christian communities, and likewise often engage in their Christian reflections orally, we have fewer examples, and they may prove challenging to acquire. Nevertheless, we do have some rich resources that offer a helpful starting point to engaging with oral spirituality. And we can be certain that while Afua Kuma and Hannah are in some ways unique, they are not alone, but are representative of many other West African Christian women who raise their voices in praise and song.

Orality represents another theological method, with distinct theological insights. As we have shown, this is due firstly to the fact that oral or grassroots theology is highly gendered in West Africa, with the voices of women, and thus their lived experiences, predominating in this arena. Secondly, the commonly held belief among oral communicators regarding oral reflections as events, and words as being empowered, offers a different window into Christian faith and praxis not always obvious to more formal ‘writing theologians’. Thus, by engaging oral theologies alongside of written theology, we discover more holistic and creatively nuanced theological insights from those whose voices may otherwise be excluded from more formal theological discourse.

We conclude with this reflection on Afua Kuma from a Ghanaian linguistics scholar. It equally applies to Hannah, and more broadly, to West African women's oral theologies:

Here was a lady from the forest with such pearls of wisdom—where is this coming from? My goodness! This didn’t come from the African theologians! This came from outside theological ‘respectability’—but surpasses it! So many ways of talking about God, about Jesus… we have a proverb [in Twi]: ‘Truth—or Wisdom or Knowledge—is like a baobab tree: one person’s arms can’t embrace it’… If we are to succeed in surrounding the baobab tree, we must hold hands. She offers us one hand to grasp, and her view of Jesus enables us to see Jesus in a new way.

(Fretheim, interview with Kofi Asare Opoku, 2018/DACB “Afua Kuma”)

ENDNOTES

  • 1 See, for example, Bediako (1995, 1997, 2000); Fox Young (2013): and Middleton (2005). See also Jon Kirby's introductory reflections in Kuma (1981, 2022).
  • 2 For a detailed biographical account and further discussion of the life and oral theology of Afua Kuma, as well as a PDF copy of Jesus of the Deep Forest, see: Fretheim (2020a), ‘Afua Kuma’, Dictionary of African Christian Biography: https://dacb.org/stories/ghana/afua-kuma/ and Fretheim (2020b), ‘“Jesus! Say it once and the matter is settled!”: The Life and Legacy of Oral Theologian Madam Afua Kuma of Ghana’, The Journal of African Christian Biography 5:3 (July 2020), pp. 18–38.
  • 3 For more information about the establishment and aims of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, see Kanyoro (2002, pp. 88–91).
  • 4 See Lausanne Movement, Issue Networks: Orality. https://www.lausanne.org/networks/issues/orality.
  • 5 Finnegan's foundational work Oral Literature in Africa, first published in 1970 (Oxford: Clarendon Press) was considered a cornerstone in the field for decades. However, with a desire to increase the text's reach, and with awareness of the growing significance of re-engaging orality within African contexts, it was updated and re-issued as an open-access online publication in 2012 as part of the World Oral Literature Series, in conjunction with the World Oral Literature Project (see http://www.oralliterature.org/about/project.html).
  • 6 While it is beyond the scope of our immediate focus here, for further reading on this point, Laura S. Grillo's ground-breaking study, An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in West Africa (Duke University Press, 2018) is a key resource for exploring women's embodied and performative approaches to engaging social transformation, which are indeed aspects of orality.
  • 7 Taken from unpublished praises by Afua Kuma. Some of these have more recently been revised and published; see Afua Kuma, The Surprising Jesus (Wipf & Stock, 2022).
  • 8 For a fuller discussion, see Aminta Arrington, Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2020).
  • 9 For a detailed conversation on causation for disability within the Nigerian context, see Fubara-Manuel (2016).

Biographies

  • Jessie Ini Fubara-Manuel is a post-doctoral researcher, researching emerging trends of semiotics pertaining to disability in Christianity in Africa, executed by the Nagel Institute of Calvin University, USA. She was a part-time lecturer at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Her research interests include faith, gender, disability and HIV and she is resource person and facilitator for the World Council of Churches programmes on HIV and Disability. Jessie is a member of the Circle of African Women Theologians and has published two books, several articles and book chapters in the areas of gender, disability, and HIV.

  • Sara Fretheim, PhD, is an assistant lecturer and research assistant at the Institute for Missiology and Non-European Theologies at the University of Münster, Germany, and an Assistant Editor for Mission Studies. Among other publications, she is the author of Kwame Bediako and African Christian Scholarship: Emerging Religious Discourse in Twentieth-Century Ghana (Wipf and Stock, 2018).