Book Review: Postcolonializing God: New Perspectives in Pastoral and Practical Theology

In Postcolonializing God: An African Practical Theology, Emmaneul Y. Lartey declares that “African practical theology must pursue and engage in the activities of postcolonializing God as a counter-hegemonic practice” (129). Lartey in this volume performs theological examinations of African postcolonializing activities in cooperation with the Divine especially as found in African indigenous religious, spiritual, and cultural heritages. For him, African agents’ postcolonializing praxis, whether they are indigenous Africans or diasporan Africans, is innovative practical theological work that subverts hierarchical European Christianity’s misinterpretation and mischaracterization of African life, religions, and thoughts. This postcolonializing task, the author hopes, will eventually contribute to (African) human liberation specifically through pastoral theological work, community-building, and culture-transforming work. Throughout the book, he tries to unveil postcolonial discourses and performances in African faith communities in the effort of constructing unique African practical theology. His work is truly an interdisciplinary dialogue between biblical studies, postcolonial theory, pastoral theology, and Black theology, just to name a few