Africa Day

The Revd Dr Vincent Jambawo, Stockton Circuit Superintendent Minister and Co-Chair of the Belonging Together Ministers Group, shares this reflection following Africa Day 2026.

Africa Day 2026 Reminiscence: Blackness, Identity and Humanity

As I write, the sun has set on Africa Day … I am tempted to say empire, in nostalgic recollection of the majestic empires of old that were ruthlessly put to the sword in the scramble for Africa, in the wake of the enslavement of entire kingdoms in one of the most brutal and horrendous enterprises of human “civilisation”. Yet on this Africa Day, we remember, or we must remember with gratitude and sober joy to celebrate this jewel in God’s crown, wherever we are in the world and whoever we are. On this day, I humbly offer this reflection, which is part of a wider study I am involved in exploring the intersection of language, religion and politics as manifested. A significant part of this enterprise crystallised during my sabbatical at Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary, where, with staff and seminarians, we pioneered a transformative language laboratory concept to equip for the understanding of how language constructs and construes reality as well as positions and repositions power dynamics.

Africa is not only a continent of diverse peoples and histories; as Zenab Zahawi and others have insisted, Africa is the Home of all human beings—a theological claim that reorients our imagination of belonging, responsibility and hospitality. In the life of the Methodist Church Connexion, this memory often appears in undertones: Aldersgate and Pentecost Sundays shape our liturgical year and our spiritual language, so Africa Day may be celebrated quietly rather than with prophetic imagination. Yet those undertones are rich soil for prophetic witness: the private, inward work of Aldersgate and the public, exuberant testimony of Pentecost are two expressions of the same Spirit. As I noted in my sermon at the small Carlton Methodist Church yesterday, there is a distinction worth holding together—public Pentecost crowd testimony and private Aldersgate room witness—both share the same Spirit that sends us into the world to love, to confess, and to repair. I rejoice that Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary celebrated Africa Day in their Sunday service of Pentecost renewal and Aldersgate inspiration.

Blackness As a Conceptual and Construal Identity
It is inescapable to think of and celebrate Africa without summoning black and blackness. Blackness must be reclaimed not merely as a descriptive label or cultural metaphor of ethnicity but as a conceptual and construal category that shapes how communities name reality and allocate moral weight. It is now more than an ethnocentric label as the notion of blackness (and all shades of colour) is hinged on sociocultural and geopolitical constituents that ironically have little to do with colour but everything to do with how power is systemically and structurally enshrined. From a theological and linguistic perspective, this matters because language does ideological work: the choices we make about who is named as subject or object, which memories are foregrounded or backgrounded, and how actions are predicated shape what becomes intelligible and what remains marginal. In my doctoral research (2011), I observed that the grammatical phenomenon of Thematisation in syntactic constructns accentuates the construal of political hegemony and dominance.” Equally foundational is the simple linguistic insight that Theme is the initial main element in a sentence, a small grammatical fact with large discursive consequences. When Blackness is treated as a construal, it becomes a hermeneutic: a way of reading Scripture, history and public rhetoric that centres dignity, remembers dispossession, and insists on reparative justice.

This is not identity politics for its own sake. It is a theological posture rooted in the biblical memory of liberation: God’s preferential concern for the poor and oppressed, the prophetic insistence that the last shall be first, and the incarnational truth that God dwells with the marginal. To construe Blackness is to name structural patterns—colonial dispossession, racialised violence, diasporic resilience—and to equip the church to respond with liturgies, advocacy and solidarity rather than assimilation or tokenism.

Naming whataboutism and refusing moral diversion Whataboutism is a discursive tactic that shifts moral focus away from specific harms by invoking other wrongs or hypothetical equivalences. From a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective, it functions as a thematic displacement: the clause-initial move that redirects attention and diffuses responsibility. 1 Theologically, it is a refusal of repentance. Pastoral practice must therefore cultivate rhetorical discernment: teach congregations to recognise diversionary moves, insist on specific accountability, and model practices of confession and repair. This is a spiritual discipline as much as an intellectual one—holding truth and mercy together, refusing to let moral conversation be derailed by false equivalences.

Resisting Christian Nationalism with Prophetic Public Theology Christian nationalism seeks to sacralise the nation, ethnicity or political power by reinterpreting Christian language to serve exclusionary ends. It often uses the same discursive devices—nomination, predication, perspectivation—to naturalise an exclusive “we.” The Methodist calling resists such capture: the gospel’s horizon is the neighbour, not the nation; the cross undermines triumphalism; the resurrection promises a new humanity that transcends borders. Our prophetic task is to name idolatry when the state is sacralised, to preach a gospel that refuses ethnic or national exclusivity, and to form ecumenical alliances that defend pluralism and human flourishing.

Practical Steps for the Connexion and All People of Goodwill

• Name and teach: Offer short resources that explain how language shapes power—simple introductions to thematic choices, nomination and predication—so congregations can read public rhetoric with discernment.
• Liturgies of memory and repair: Develop worship materials that remember African histories and diasporic ties, include prayers of confession for complicity in injustice, and commit to concrete reparative actions (education, partnerships, advocacy).
• Discursive audit: Encourage circuits to review public communications and sermons for patterns of exclusionary language; ask who is named as subject and whose memories are foregrounded.
• Formation and solidarity: Build study groups that combine CDA insights with biblical and liberation theology; strengthen partnerships with African churches and diaspora communities.
• Pastoral accompaniment: Where prophetic critique causes pain, hold listening spaces, teach the difference between prophetic challenge and personal condemnation, and accompany those who struggle to change.
  
  A Pastoral Benediction of Africa Day and Beyond
  On this Africa Day, let us hold Aldersgate and Pentecost together: the quiet, inward conversion that reorients the heart, and the public, Spirit-filled testimony that sends us into the streets. May the Spirit who moved at Pentecost and the grace that burned at Aldersgate empower us to reclaim Blackness as a liberative construal, to refuse the evasions of whataboutism, and to oppose any gospel that would be domesticated by the idols of nation or power. May our words be truthful, our repentance be real, and our solidarity be costly. Amen.