This book presents the phenomenon and relevance of Latin America-born Liberation Theology in the African postcolony of Eritrea. The authors describe the advent, context, and significance of Liberation Theology by historicizing and revisiting the global role of the Catholic Church and its stances on social justice in different places and historical times. Throughout the book, the authors engage in deep intergenerational conversations to unpack—and in the process understand—the stances of the Eritrean Catholic Church on the evolving sociopolitical and economic conditions in Eritrea since independence in 1991. They critically examine the country’s variegated path to its current state and invoke visionary legacies of Eritrean and African intellectuals and spiritual leaders in search for answers to the complex questions of democracy, nationalism, and identity. Consisting of four chapters, the book provides fresh perspectives on what it takes to initiate critical, constructive, and intergenerational dialogue so essential in the contemporary reality of the African postcolony, in general, and Eritrea, in particular.
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African Liberation Theology is a text framed by two interlocking questions. A quest(ion), after all, points to a quest, a search. As exemplary interrogative text, Negash and Weldemichael’s book employs brilliant maieutic strategies that undergird the need for “intergenerational conversations on Eritrea’s futures.” The plural construction of the operative terms in the subtitle underpins a thesis that is polysemous, open-ended and writerly. Negash’s rhetorical question—“The Priests have spoken: Beginnings of Liberation Theology in Eritrea?”—supplements the original questions in that it allows all subsequent interlocutors to have their say. In this sense, the book unsettles the hermeneutic and interpretative intent and horizon of inherited analytic categories. To participate in this dialectical discussion, all future interlocutors must observe the drift and intent of the Eritrean adage, "Say to the malicious and ignoble wasp; If thou dost not give honey, do not sting."
―Ali Jimale Ahmed, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Comparative Literature Queens College, CUNY
In this groundbreaking book, Ghirmai Negash and Awet T. Weldemichael engage, in a spirit of intergenerational dialogue, with Eritrea’s wounded identity in relation to its history, Africa, African diaspora, and the world. The daring May 2014 dissident letter of the Eritrean Catholic priests inside Eritrea under the title, “Where Is Your Brother?”, establishes the departure and foundation for critique, as a representative of African Liberation Theology. As a way out for Eritrea’s current malaise—and by extension to all obsessions with uniqueness and exceptionalism in Africa—they argue that the nation and its people will need to come to grips with the dangers of exceptionalism and, instead, embrace the emerging theological and literary movements in Eritrea that would connect them organically to the broader and Pan-African movements in Africa and in Diaspora.
―Tekle Woldemikael, Professor, Department of Sociology, Chapman University
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GHIRMAI NEGASH is a professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures, and the Director of the African Studies Program at Ohio University. He is also a member of the African Academy of Sciences, and current Research Fellow of the University of Free State, South Africa.
AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL is Associate Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in African History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. He is also an Associate of the Indian Ocean World Center at McGill University.
