van Klinken, A orcid.org/0000-0003-2011-5537 (2022) Wangari Maathai’s Environmental Bible as an African Knowledge: Eco-spirituality, Christianity, and Decolonial Thought. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, 8 (3). pp. 156-175. ISSN 2327-7408
Abstract
Recent scholarship has acknowledged the contribution of the environmental activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai (1940–2011), to African ecological and decolonial thinking. As far as Maathai’s engagement with religion is concerned, scholarship emphasises her critique of Christianity for its links to colonialism and environmental degradation, and foregrounds her reclaiming of Kikuyu religion and culture as a form of indigenous African knowledge that enhances environmental awareness. However, Maathai’s simultaneous creative and constructive engagement with Christian traditions, in particular the Bible, tends to be systematically overlooked, perhaps because it seems at odds with her status as a decolonial thinker. This article examines Maathai’s engagement with the Bible, arguing that it presents an interrogation of the category of indigenous knowledge, which for her is not static but dynamic and can incorporate biblical scripture as an African knowledge. Hence, Maathai challenges scholars to take the Bible seriously as a relevant resource for environmental activism as well as for ecological and decolonial thought.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author. Co-published by NISC Pty (Ltd) and Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | Bible, Christianity, Wangari Maathai, indigenous knowledge, decolonial thought, environment, African cultural studies |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > Theology and Religious Studies (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Apr 2021 14:18 |
Last Modified: | 23 Oct 2022 06:11 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | National Inquiry Services Centre (NISC) |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/23277408.2021.1922129 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:173276 |