To Give a Good Account and Witness of Stewardship
JOHN S. POBEE*
Introduction
Yet one more festschrift celebrating the life, work, and contributions of Mercy Amba Oduyoye, aka Ama Ewudzewa! Two festschrifts when many others in the field do not get even one! That is testimony and testament of a life well-lived, and which advanced the cause of women in particular, the God-word in Africa and the Christian Church. I join in the celebration to thank her and God for her contribution and service to the African cause, theology, and issues of gender.
A contribution to a festschrift is a personal testimony, critique, and appreciation. In God’s wisdom Mercy Amba and myself came into each other’s lives in about 1958 at the Department of Divinity, today’s Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana, Legon. I soon learned she was a classmate of the wife of my most senior brother at the celebrated Achimota School. That was grounds for bonding together in spite of age difference. Achimota School was where the African (Gold Coast) celebrity, James Kwegyir Aggrey (1876-1927) had been a founding vice-principal. He was noted for wisdom and aphorisms in addition to scholarship. Two such sayings are important. The first was “the black and white keys of a piano make harmonious music.” Black and White, Caucasians and Negroids have legitimate space on this planet and are both God’s creation and children, as Akan society and wisdom put it. The school’s crest featured the black and white keys. Mercy Oduyoye must have been and remains ensouled with that wisdom. Need we be surprised that Mercy Oduyoye made a life and contribution in the Ecumenical Movement, where she served in the offices at the Youth Department of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), Nairobi, and the World Council of Churches (WCC), Geneva, Switzerland, the latter the celebrated instrument of the Ecumenical Movement and where she even became Deputy General Secretary? In all these capacities she was an African woman’s voice in action, at various stages and in various fora.
The same Aggrey had articulated another fundamental principle of the critical issue of gender. The gender issue is not so much identity politics and struggle as a fundamental issue of viable and vibrant civilization, society, and theology. According to Aggrey, “the surest way to keep a people down is to educate the men and neglect the women. If you educate a man, you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family.”[1] Aggrey offered a vision of national development and integrity in which women and men complement each other and are consciously identified as having viable critical contributions to make as partners. Achimota School, ensouled with such philosophy, produced a contingent of women like men who contributed substantively to Ghana’s development. Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Née Yamoah, was one of the contingents of the Gold Coast’s army for national development, and a fruit and product of Aggrey of Africa’s vision. She incarnated a vision of a world and society characterized by complementarity and mutuality. Aggrey of Africa already in the 1920s was laying the foundations of the gender agenda which today has caught fire.
Achimota School, (preparatory, secondary and teacher training) did not stop at the vision of black and white together, women and men together as vital and viable agents of the nation, consciousness, and development. The tertiary education was part of the overall vision and agenda. The University College of the Gold Coast was established on the western compound of the Achimota School site. That tertiary part was relocated at the present site of Legon and renamed University College of the Gold Coast, now Ghana. Mercy Yamoah, after some period of teaching, went to the University College of Ghana, at that time in special relationship with the University of London. She came into the Department of Divinity a year or two after me. From that point our lives were joined together, formed by such prized academics as Professor Noel Quinton King, (head of department, Anglo-Indian, and Anglican), the Rev. Christian Goncalves Baeta (Ghanaian, Evangelical Presbyterian), and the Rev. Sydney G. Williamson (English and Methodist). With such ecumenical and global actors in our theological formation, diversity and pluralism could not be overlooked as inputs into our ecumenical formation and conscientization. In such a setting we were imbued with the insight that theological education need not be sectarian; it was essentially formation (not indoctrination) in rational processes around the revelation of Divinity, hopefully with a goal of the renewal of humanity and society.
Of the several Department of Divinity, staff Noel King and C.G. Baeta became the prominent and special mentors of the two of us. They became special not only because they became mentors; it is more because of the formation and vision they inculcated in us. In the encounters with them, we learnt that the agenda was more than transfer of technical knowledge; it was equally formation and building of character and inculcating humanity. Consequently, our relationships transferred from professor-student to a family relationship. The professor became as in loco parentis and the model of our education and formation was more of a family, not so much professor-student. Mercy Oduyoye and I found ourselves addressing each of them as “Papa,” rather than Professor or Sir. Baeta called us “my daughter” and “my son,” respectively. This learning has informed our engagement with our students and impacted the dynamics of our relationships with colleagues and students.
This festschrift has assembled “all sorts and condition of humanity.” Though her life and my life began to bond together at the University, we went to different pre-University institutions. She attended Achimota School, formerly Prince of Wales College, a product of the vision of the colonial governor Sir Gordon Guggisberg in the Accra Plains. I attended Adisadel College, the mission foundation initially called SPG Grammar School, through St. Nicholas Grammar School located on a prominent hill in Cape Coast. They were rival institutions. The latter school’s ode contains the following lines:
Others have labored and we share their glory
Ours to do exploits and add to their gain
Those who come after will take up our story
May it be worthy….
This line from the school’s ode chimes in well with a biblical insight from Hebrews 12:2, “since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us.” Noel King and C.G. Baeta may not be beatified, but they are indelibly etched on our memories in a way that has made them exemplars to and for our lives. That is the meaning and significance of reaching back to the festschrift for Oduyoye; it is a commitment to take the baton from her to win a race. The relationships instilled in us a vision of education as formation as in a family in which the younger generation follows in the footsteps and examples of their forbearers. Education is transfer of technical and book knowledge; it is also ensouling with a sense of the world as it can be.
Our teachers became for us paragons of passion and precision, commitment and creativity, excellence and fearlessness. Mercy’s lifestyle was some reflection of that model.
The University had a vision and programs of faculty development, by which there was a conscious program to educate and form natives of the soil to take ownership and leadership of the tertiary education curriculum, especially when the institution advanced from a university college in special relation with the University of London to a full-fledged national university. So, for that stage the plan was to give exposure and formation to nationals to equip them to lead and take ownership of the project. After a good and strong class at the first degree awarded by the University of London, I was sent to the University of Cambridge to specialize in New Testament Studies. About two years later, Mercy was sent to the same University of Cambridge to specialize in dogmatics. Here was the beginning and strengthening of the formation of not only degree holders but academics, hopefully with international currency.
The Divinity School of Cambridge had a program of study toward a degree. That was in three parts, I, II, III. The three parts were only in the disciplines of theology and mathematics. The degree, BA, was awarded upon successful completion of Part II. Part III was a program of specialization in one of the branches of divinity. It was reserved for those adjudged to be excellent and not for the faint-hearted. Such persons were looked upon like some stars from outer space. Mercy acquitted herself creditably at the Part III. That was the topping up of the formation of a black African woman in the universally acclaimed excellent institution of formation and education. Mercy thus had attained credentials from the Universities of London and Cambridge to make her a respectable player and contributor on a global stage and alongside men. The rest is history. She could be numbered with the educated and intellectual group of Africa and elsewhere. She has been a theologian in her own right. Cambridge Tripos Part III, specifically in dogmatics, was not for mere mortals; it is for the extraordinary. In the process the woman proudly stood in the community of women and men, even in the academy. Women match the men boot to boot.
Mercy grew up in a Christian clergy-person’s home. Her father was a Methodist pastor who ended his working days as president of the Methodist Conference of Ghana. Her mother, an educated lady in her own right, was a worthy and strong partner. Apart from signs of the children having been brought up well in Christian ways, her siblings were also educated, distinguishing themselves as nursing sister, woman lecturer in agriculture at the University, woman dentist, and man air-pilot. Thus, in the Yamoah family, all, including the women, had equal opportunity to distinguish themselves and for service to church, nation and world. It was clearly a home in which there was equal opportunity for excellence and the women were free to reach for the stars. The deduction is attractive as Mercy’s contribution to the feminist agenda has some of its roots in her formation in the Yamoah home. She had opportunity, took it, and put it to good and excellent use.
A fruit of all the foregoing history and story is that Mercy became familiar and comfortable with several languages. She was on top of her mother tongue, Akan, in its various forms; Gă, the language of the Accra area where Achimota and the University of Ghana were located; English, the official and international language of colonial Gold Coast and independent Ghana; and Latin, learnt at Achimota School. To these she added Greek and Hebrew, compulsory for honors courses in divinity, and French as she sojourned in Geneva and with the Ecumenical Movement. The language familiarity could not be but an advantage in the Ecumenical Movement. After all that familiarity with languages, Mercy to the end, is most alive in communicating and expounding scripture and theology in the vernacular. She seems to have a sense of theological education as the scales of a piano, as music. She is comfortable at each stage and pitch. She is ecumenical vision and imperative on wheels and human frame. She was no Roman Catholic, but she s catholic in disposition.
Mercy Yamoah Oduyoye spent some time in education. She started off as a teacher in the primary school system, in those days the noble occupation for women. She taught at the secondary level, at the Wesley Girls High School, a Methodist Mission foundation reaching back to the nineteenth century. She taught at the university level, e.g., the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. We believe she herself is particularly proud of her times with Sunday school pupils. With that record, it should be no surprise that she is regularly addressed as “Teacher.” She has been not only an intellectual; she has been as a mother who contributed to the formation of many a youth; she was truly human. In many an African society teachers may not be fat salary earners, but they are highly respected, often looked upon as in loco parentis.
An earlier reference was made to C.G. Baeta, who was so proud of Mercy and myself and used to call us “my daughter” and “my son,” respectively, to the very end. He was quite a name in the Ecumenical Movement. He had been in the mission stream of the Ecumenical Movement, becoming even the president of the Mission and Evangelism stream of the Ecumenical Movement. It was he who led the Commission of World Mission and Evangelism into merging with the Faith and Order Movement and Commission on Church and Society to become the World Council of Churches.
Through him, our names surfaced in the Ecumenical Movement’s principal expression, the World Council of Churches, Geneva. I found myself invited to serve on the Advisory Committee of the Theological Education Fund (TEF)—then based in London—and later, the successor Program on Theological Education (PTE), subsequently the Program on Ecumenical Theological Education (PETE). From being a member of the board I became executive director. Mercy also got invited to the staff of the Youth Department of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), Nairobi, Kenya; she became, down the line, a member of Commission of Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches and finally, a Deputy General Secretary of the WCC. In that capacity she was Moderator of Unit III which included Faith and Order; Program on Theological Education, Youth Department, Department of Spirituality and Renewal, and Department on Women. So, in this context Mercy was head of the unit where I served.
The World Council of Churches is neither a church above all churches nor as incipient “world church” nor yet a super-church. It understood herself as an instrument for common witness to Christ’s search for the unity of the churches. The operational hermeneutical ideas are unity, renewal and accountability of all creation, the whole church and totality of humankind as well as holistic religion, religiosity, and spirituality. By using “holistic,” it is our attempt to capture St. John Chrysostom’s striking phrase “worship at the altar in the sanctuary as at the altar in the marketplace.” It is a commitment to letting the other person have their space. It is rallying the world against all injustices.
In the World Council of Churches context, a director was not primarily a boss but was the conductor of an orchestra, leading the diverse instruments into sonorous music. Leadership is not primarily power and authoritarian position. It is service in an enabling role. What a different model and example in a world seemingly beholden to naked use of force and power!
However, as political and divergent ideologies are regularly manifest in a community, my relationship with Mercy in the context of the World Council of Churches could not be just formal; we watched each other’s back. This is broached to underscore the idea that the diversity shows in multiplicity of peoples, religions, ideology and even nasty politics in the world and society and community of faith. Even a society that makes avowals of equality and communion could on occasion manifest nasty politics. After denunciation of apartheid in South Africa, discrimination of different shapes and forms could be evident in the self-confessed religious institution. In wicked humor, I have on occasions said that because of original sin, the Ecumenical Movement itself could not escape occasional aberrations of St Augustine’s idea of the common good, peace and justice, racism and sexism. And, therefore, politics of one kind or other is inescapable. Further, being black who did not and cannot blush, it was difficult to easily assess one’s disposition and policies! Living in Geneva, the city of Calvin, we could not but be reminded that even in an ecclesiastical setting we are “at once justified and sinners.”
In the orbit of the Ecumenical Movement, we were conscientized that education—in addition to commitment to rational enquiry with the canons of fact, theory, and objectivity[2]—should have commitment to renewal, making all things new, physically and internally and spiritually, all humanity and creation.
Mercy Amba collaborated with me in a number of programs of which I was the originator, primary organizer and resource. These were not only programs and projects; they were essentially creating platforms for different and diverse peoples, races, nations, genders, and religions to engage each other, see and hear and perceive and understand, in the hope of mutual enrichment. First, when I took the invitation to serve as associate director of the Program on Theological Education, World Council of Churches, Geneva, with responsibilities for the Africa Region, I initiated a process of study throughout Africa to hear out and learn from African’s own mouth, about their hopes and fears regarding theological and ministerial education and formation. I refused to see myself as some all-knowing, all-wise specialist and authority in the area, especially when I had taken the office already a full professor. With extensive travels for encounters throughout the African continent, the learning went on. The point of the travel was in contribution to shaping a vision for my assignment in Geneva. That process concluded in Accra, Ghana, in an All-Africa consultation, July 20-28, 1986, on “Theological Education in Africa: Quo Vadimus?”[3] Mercy Oduyoye was my collaborator, alongside the Board of PTE Advisory Committee, Missionary Agencies, which had been financing theological education and church leaders in Africa. The end product was a vision that guided my service through PTE. Mercy was there, a distinct voice, who would not allow the men participants to forget the women and their roles.
Mercy and I collaborated in another process which came to its climax in the “First Convocation of the Circle of Africa Women in Theology,” Accra, September 25-30, 1989.[4] It was that agenda that issued in the coming into being of the dynamic Circle of African Women Theologians which brought together the women in theology from their isolations in distant parts on a vast and extensive continent, not to forget their denominations, provenance and captivity. That vision initiated by Mercy Amba Oduyoye in respect of women in theology was a significant landmark in the development of a truly ecumenical perspective on theological and ministerial education and formation. I was personally renewed in my vision of Community of Women and Men in Church and Society.
Mercy collaborated with me, at the end of my sojourn as an executive of “the privileged instrument of the Ecumenical Movement” in the pursuit of Viability of Theological Education and Ministerial Formation which came to a climax in a Global Consultation on Ecumenical Theological Education in Oslo, Norway, August 1996.[5] Mercy was part of the process from the regional and sub-regional consultations to the global one.
Mercy Amba Oduyoye was a most helpful and resourceful collaborator with me in my exploration of relevant viable theological education and ministerial formation in service to local and global, denominational and ecumenical contexts.
Mercy Oduyoye was not only a collaborator; being a serious theologian in her own right she has several publications to her name.[6] Mercy was one of the first black African women theologians to have her ruminations in print form. The titles of the publications were tell-tales of the issues and agenda of women. The title, “Talitha Qumi” of the Accra assembly was a rousing call to action by the women. It presupposed a situation of submerged voices and identity of women in the shadows. Without militant rhetoric, with biblical language of enabling, women were exhorted to action. First, the presupposition is that men themselves and their well-being are short-changed when women are ignored and seemingly voiceless. Second, patriarchy undermines and short-changes the fullness of truth and viability of the God-Word and of churches’ mission and ministry in the world. Third, the inherited structures and artifacts of being church, theological education, and formation have within them processes that became systems of obstruction of truly total viability. That is the import of the question “Who will…?” It suggests that all are called to engagement; none may be an onlooker. Women themselves are challenged to active involvement in the theological agenda which may not be left to the specialists. It is a challenge to each and all to “Get Involved.” It is a call to inclusivity in church and theology. This is a hint at a place for oral and popular, narrative theology. In that light the production of theology may be likened to a scale measuring from the Sunday school to the propositional style of theology in the academy. I submit such a vision is valid as theology has three constituencies, the academy, the church, and the society. That vision is what Mercy Oduyoye’s contribution attests to.
As part of Mercy’s vision regarding the goal of the inclusion of women, the convocation of women at Legon issued in the establishment of the Institute of Gender Studies on the site of Trinity Seminary, Legon, to pursue the vision. The striking thing is that Mercy single-handedly raised huge sums of money for the establishment and running of the institute, independently of Trinity Seminary. Mercy put her pocket where her mouth was. She has spent and been spent in the service of a vibrant, viable inclusive academy, church, and society.
What has been articulated in the preceding paragraphs is veiled reference and invocation of the ecumenical vision and imperative of the Gospel (Psalm 24:1, John 17, and Ephesians 1:10), with the latter verse summing up to God brings all things together through Jesus Christ). The Ecumenical Movement, which Mercy Oduyoye served, having picked up the bug from her mentor C.G. Baeta, captured that vision with the word koinonia, the communion, fellowship, community, participation, solidarity, sharing.[7] That vision is not possible without communication, and a vital, vibrant, viable one at that. Hence, the earlier invocation of the imagery of scales of communication, from the Sunday school to the academy.
Thus far I have traced some of the contours of the life and work of Mercy Amba Oduyoye née Yamoah—a woman from Ghana who married a Nigerian, thus living some part of the ecumenical vision and imperative to date—to move beyond boundaries because “the (whole) earth is the Lords’ and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1), and that may not be condemned to exclusion ab initio. She was a daughter of the Methodist Church, but she dared to move in the oikomene. In the conviction of a woman who could not be held in boundaries, I have proceeded on the style of a narrative theology, though not totally ignoring the traditional propositional style of the academy. Her life and work dared to build community of communities and those of us who were privileged to engage her are the richer for it, because we came to a more profound appreciation of the ecumenical vision of koinonia.
The theme of the festschrift picks up on the essence of the parable of the talents in which, ultimately, we are accountable to the Creator for the use to which we put our talents. I dare not assume the proper role of the Creator of all to make a pronouncement on Mercy Amba Oduyoye. But I dare submit that the witness I bear to her life and contributions, especially her service to the youth and the women, the half of humanity and society, in Ghana, Africa, the world, leads me to believe Mercy Amba Oduyoye has a good account to give to her Creator, indeed the Creator of us of all.
The story, however, does not stop with her. She spent and was spent on behalf of many others, especially the women, the next generation of theological educators, and ministers. The story suggests that she has a story to tell, and humanly speaking, a good account to give. She does not appear to belong to the category of people in Ecclesiasticus 44:9 among those “of others no memory remains, for when they perished, they perished, as if they had never lived.” No. Mercy Amba Oduyoye may be numbered with the category of those about whom the Good Book says, “Some of them left a name so that people recount their praises” (Ecclesiasticus 44:8). This festschrift represents the foregoing insight of the Good Book.
The other side of this assessment is that Mercy Amba Oduyoye’s story has presented us with an example to be imitated. I have no blasphemous ambitions, but I dare employ the language of St. Paul to “be imitators of me and the Lord Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 1:6, 2:14; 1 Corinthians 4:16, 11:1; II Thessalonians 3:9). We shall be able to give meaning and significance to the contribution of Mercy Amba Oduyoye, née Yamoah when we, the theologians are rooted in a view of solidarity in Christ thoroughly following the example of Christ and sharing in his teaching and example, especially in the cross not just glorification in the talents the Creator of us all endowed us.
With this humble contribution to the festschrift I proclaim that my encounter with Mercy Amba Oduyoye has enriched my life and rebounded in my service to church and society. The overall lesson is that theology may not only be intellectual gymnastics, competition, and excellence; it is, more importantly, creative and meaningful encounter and engagement with the God-Word and peoples for mutual enrichment, renewal and recreation. And I am grateful for that conscientization gleaned from my encounter with Mercy Amba Oduyoye aka Ama Ewudzewa. This contribution has been consciously written in the form of narrative theology rather than in the propositioned style. That is deliberate following a style of Amba.
NOTES
Edwin Smith, Aggrey of Africa: A Study of Black and White (New York: Smith, 1930), 139. ↑
Cheryl Bridges-Johns, “From Babel to Pentecost: The Renewal of Theological Education” in Towards Viable Theological Educatio: Ecumenical Imperative, Catalyst of Renewal, ed. John S. Pobee (Geneva: WCC 1997). ↑
John S. Pobee, ed., Theological Education in Africa: Quo Vadimus? (Accra: Asempa, 1986). ↑
Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Musimbi Kanyoro, eds., Talitha, Qumi! Proceedings of the Convocation of African Women Theologians, Trinity College, Legon-Accra, September 24-October 2, 1989 (Ibadan: Daystar, 1990). ↑
John S. Pobee, ed., Viable Theological Education: Ecumenical Imperative, Catalyst of Renewal (Geneva: WCC, 1997). ↑
Mercy Amba Oduyoye, “An African Woman’s Christ” Voices from the Third World 2, no. 2 (1988): 119-124; Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Mercy Amaba Oduyoye, Who Will Roll the Stone Away? The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women (Geneva: WCC, 1990). ↑
Thomas F. Best and Gunther Gassmann, eds., On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth Conference on Faith and Order (Geneva: WCC, 1994); André Birmelé, La Communion Ecclésiale: Progrés Oecuménique et Enjeux Méthodologiques (Paris: Cers, 2000).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Best, Thomas F. and Gunther Gassmann, Editors. On the Way to Fuller Koinonia: Official Report of the Fifth Conference on Faith and Order. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1994.
Birmelé, André. La Communion Ecclésiale: Progrés Oecuménique et Enjeux Méthodologiques. Paris: Cers, 2000.
Bridges-Johns, Cheryl. “From Babel to Pentecost: The Renewal of Theological Education.” In Towards Viable Theological Education: Ecumenical Imperative Catalyst of Renewal, edited by John S. Pobee. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1997.
Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. “An African Woman’s Christ.” Voices from the Third World 2, no. 2 (1988): 119-124.
Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy. Maryknoll: Orbis 1995.
Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Who Will Roll the Stone Away? The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1990.
Oduyoye, Mercy Amba and Musimbi Kanyoro, Editors. Talitha, Qumi! Proceedings of the Convocation of African Women Theologians, Trinity College, Legon-Accra, September 24-October 2, 1989. Ibadan: Daystar 1990.
Pobee, John S., Editor. Theological Education in Africa: Quo Vadimus? Accra: Asempa, 1986.
Pobee, John S., Editor. Towards Viable Theological Education: Ecumenical Imperative, Catalyst of Renewal. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1997.
Smith, Edwin. Aggrey of Africa: A Study of Black and White. New York: Smith, 1930. ↑