¹ “Mission to a Runaway World: Future Citizens of the Kingdom”, in Radcliffe, T., I Call You Friends, London: Continuum, 2001, p. 128Google Scholar. Radcliffe borrowed the expression ‘runaway world’ from Anthony Giddens. See Giddens, A., Runaway World. How Globalisation is Reshaping our Lives, London, 1999Google Scholar.

² Steger, M., Globalization. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: OUP, p. 1Google Scholar.

³ Heslam, P., Globalization. Unravelling the New Capitalism, Cambridge: Grove Books, p. 6Google Scholar.

⁴ Schreiter, R., The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local, NY, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, p. 13Google Scholar.

⁵ Mazrui, A., The African Condition, London: Heinemann, 1980, p. viiGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Gifford, P., African Christianity. Its Public Role, London, Hurst and Company, 1998, p. 9Google Scholar.

⁷ See Sedgwick, P., “Globalisation”, in Scott, P. & Cavanaugh, W. (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, p. 497Google Scholar.

⁸ Braaten, C., The Flaming Centre. A Theology of Christian Mission, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977, p. 2Google Scholar.

⁹ New York: Orbis Books, 1990.

¹⁰ Rahner, K., “Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II”, Theological Studies 40 (1979), pp. 716–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ See R. Schreiter, The New Catholicity especially pp. 116–33.

¹² Schreiter, Response to de Freitas, in Schreiter, R. (ed.), Mission in the Third Millennium, NY: Orbis, p. 120Google Scholar.

¹³ It is Ignatius of Antioch, who in the year 110 first uses the term (Symr 8,2): “Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

¹⁴ K. Rahner (“Towards a Fundamental Theological Interpretation of Vatican II”) had also divided Church history in three different epochs: the period of Jewish Christianity (just a few decades), the period of Gentile Christianity free from Judaic Law (a very long period) and the transition from a Western Church to a World Church (1960s to the present). In this paper I could have considered the early Church with the contributions of the great African Church fathers such as Augustine, Cyprian and Tertullian but I am restricting my analysis to the three main understandings of the beginning of globalisation as put forward by different scholars. See Schreiter, The New Catholicity, pp. 5–6.

¹⁵ Hegel, G.W.F., Lectures in Hoffmeister, J., ed., Sämtliche Werke, Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1955, 231–4Google Scholar.

¹⁶ R. Esteban, “Mission and Inculturation”, in Petit Echo, Special Issue 4, Missionaries of Africa: Rome, 16.

¹⁷ Sanneh, Lamin, Encountering the West. Christianity and the Global Cultural Process: The African Dimension, Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1992, p. 104Google Scholar; Here too, generalisations should be avoided. Sanneh (p. 77) points to the fact that in much of French and Portuguese‐speaking Africa, for example, vernacular scriptural translations were avoided. English‐speaking territories were more favourable to vernacular.

¹⁸ ‘Missionary Christianity’ is the term used to describe the period between the mid 19th Century and the early 60s (a time that coincides with independence and in the Roman Catholic Church with Vatican II Council). It is the time when the Churches of Africa were still strongly subordinated to the Western Churches.

¹⁹ “Following this idea of mission, the Bishops of Africa and Madagascar consider as being completely out‐of‐date, the so‐called theology of adaptation. Instead, they adopt the theology of incarnation”. Cf. “Africa's Bishops and the World Church, Relevant Documents of the Roman Synod 1974, published by AMECEA, Nairobi, p. 20.

²⁰ Shorter, A., Toward a Theology of Inculturation, London, 1988, 10Google Scholar, thinks that this term goes back to the Jesuits, especially to Joseph Masson, professor at the Gregorian University during the time of Vatican II. Masson wrote: “Today there is a more urgent need for a Catholicism that is inculturated” Cf. Masson, J., “L’Eglise ouverte sur le monde”, Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 84, 1962, pp. 1032–43Google Scholar. But according to A. Roest Crollius (“Inculturation”, in: Following Christ in Mission Nairobi: Pauline Publications 1995, p. 110) the term was first used by D. Segura P.B (M.Afr.), “L’ initiation, valeur permanente en vue de l’inculturation”. Mission et Cultures non‐chretiennes, Rapports et compte rendu de la XXIX ème Semaine de Missiologie, Louvain 1959, pp. 219–235. He adds: “However, it was only after the Internal Scientific Congress of Missiology, held at the Pontifical Urban University from October 5 to 12, 1975 and the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (1974–75) that the term gained wider acceptance”.

²¹ J. Blomjous, “Inculturation and Interculturation”, in AFER, 22, n. 6, (1980) pp. 93–398.

²² D. Bosch, Transforming Mission, p. 457.

²³ R. Esteban, “Mission and Inculturation”, p. 20.

²⁴ P. Kalilombe, “African Diaspora”, in Petit Echo, p. 88.

²⁵ Liberation Theology in Africa has been mainly a specialty of South African theologians with their version of “Black Theology”, which had similarities with the North American Black Theology. The racial situation of oppression in South Africa (Apartheid) was an obvious reason for these affinities.

²⁶ J. M. Ela, Le Cri de l’Homme Africain, Paris, 1980; La Ville en Afrique noire, Paris 1983; Ma Foi d’Africain, Paris 1985.

²⁷ M. Neels, “Inculturation and Justice”, in Petit Echo, p. 78.

²⁸ Martey, E., African Theology. Inculturation and Liberation, NY: Orbis, 1993, p. 144Google Scholar.

²⁹ See, for example, Oduyoye, M. A./Kanyoro, M., The Will to Arise, Women, Tradition & the Church, New York: Orbis 1992Google Scholar.

³⁰ A. Nasimiyu‐Wasike, “Polygamy. A Feminist Critique”, in ibid. p. 101.

³¹ B. Mbuy Beya, “La Femme dans l’Eglise en Afrique: possibilités d’une présence et promesses, in: Holzen, W. von, Fagan, S. (eds.)AFRICA. The Kairos of a Synod, Sedos Rome 1994, p. 41 ffGoogle Scholar.

³² E. Martey, African Theology, p. 125.

³³ Ibid., p. 144.

³⁴ Schreiter, The New Catholicity, p. 126.

³⁵ Schreiter, R., “Globalization and Reconciliation. Challenges to Mission”, in Schreiter, R. (ed.), Mission in the Third Millennium, NY: Orbis Books, 2001, 138Google Scholar.

³⁶ The question whether Tutsi and Hutu are two different ethnic categories is still debated today. Recent research would point to seeing them as ‘political’, and ‘racial’ identities constructed by Belgian colonialism. The Hutu and Tutsi speak the same language, have lived together and intermarried for centuries. This makes it difficult to see them as two different ethnic groups. See Mamdani, M., When Victims Become Killers. Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001, 76–103Google Scholar.

³⁷ See Kagame, A., La Philosophie Bantou‐Rwandaise, Bruxelles: Academie royale des sciences colonials, 1956Google Scholar.

³⁸ There does not seem to be a sort of ‘interruption’ similar to European theology after the Holocaust – particularly represented in the theologies of J.B. Metz and J. Moltmann.

³⁹ Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, p. 185.

⁴⁰ Ibid. p. 14: “to understand the logic of genocide, I argue it is necessary to think through the political world that colonialism set into motion. This was the world of the settler and the native, a world organised around a binary preoccupation that was as compelling as it was confining. It is in this context that Tutsi, got constructed as a group with a privileged alien settler presence, first by the great nativist revolution of 1959, and then by the Hutu Power Propaganda after 1990.”

⁴¹ Ibid. pp. 266–82.

⁴² The Twa are another group often ignored in Rwandan society.

⁴³ D. Tutu, “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission”– Longford Lecture in The Independent, 16 February 2004.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ See Hastings, A.’ editorial in “Religion and War in the 1990s”, Journal of Religion in Africa, Volume xxxi, 2, 2001, p. 2Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Schreiter, “Globalization and Reconciliation. Challenges to Mission”, 140f.

⁴⁷ See R. Shreiter, The New Catholicity, p. 128.

⁴⁸ Schreiter, 131.

⁴⁹ bid 132.

⁵⁰ C. Braaten, The Flaming Centre, p. 2.