Between Englishness and Ethiopianism: Making a Space for Intercultural Theology

Abstract

Originally an address delivered to open the 2010-11 academic year at Princeton Theological Seminary, the essay grounds itself in the Ephesians vision of a New Humanity and articulates a theological orientation that discourages trivialization of cultural particularities. It then opens a
conversation on the necessity of intercultural theology. As theological curricula are usually overcrowded, a case is argued that to make space, someone (a discipline, etc.) will have to yield space. To envision the possibility, I use a Ghanaian novel, Ethiopia Unbound (1911), as evidence of the creative power unleashed, theologically, when the practice of having crosscultural interlocutors is fostered in students.