Kwame Bediako: the Ghanaian theologian who said Christianity had come home to Africa

He began as a French-speaking atheist intellectual. Kwame Bediako studied in France and was drawn to the existentialist thinking of the day. Then he became a Christian, and he spent the rest of his life arguing that African Christianity was not a copy of the European kind but one of the most important expressions of the faith in the world.

Early life

Bediako was born in Ghana in 1945. A gifted student, he studied French and went to France for doctoral work in literature. During his time there, he experienced a Christian conversion. He later trained in theology and earned a second doctorate, in theology, at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he worked with the missionary historian Andrew Walls.

Akropong

Bediako returned to Ghana and, with his wife, Mary Gillian Bediako, founded a research centre at Akropong-Akuapem in the Eastern Region. It began as the Akrofi-Christaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology and grew into the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture. He served as its rector. The name honours two figures in the history of Christianity in Ghana: Clement Anderson Akrofi, a Ghanaian linguist and Twi scholar, and Johann Gottlieb Christaller, the Basel missionary who translated the Bible into Twi.

Christianity in Africa

Bediako’s best-known book, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion, published in 1995, argued that Christianity had a long African history and that its modern growth in Africa was not simply a product of missionary work. Africans were taking the faith and expressing it through their own languages, cultures and spiritual experience.

The mother tongue

A central theme of his work was the importance of the Bible in African languages. He argued that when people hear God speaking in their mother tongue, the gospel becomes their own. Twi, Ga, Ewe, Yoruba and other languages were not obstacles to Christian faith but channels for it. Bediako also wrote about how African Christians understand Christ in relation to the ancestors. He suggested that Christ could be seen as the supreme ancestor, the one who truly mediates between God and humanity. These ideas were debated, but they showed his desire to take African religious experience seriously.

Influence

Bediako became one of the leading voices in what scholars call World Christianity. He taught and lectured internationally and mentored many African theologians. The Akrofi-Christaller Institute became a centre for research into African Christianity, mission and culture. Kwame Bediako died on 10 June 2008 after a serious illness. Tributes came from across the world. His work continues at Akropong, where students study the history and theology of African Christianity in the town where Basel missionaries once arrived.

Bediako’s argument is now widely accepted: the centre of Christianity has moved south. He was one of the first to explain what that meant from an African point of view.