Why I Am No Longer a (Traditional) Church Historian: Towards a New Church History Dynamic

Ntandoyenkosi Mlambo

doi:10.25159/2412-4265/18387

Authors

Ntandoyenkosi Mlambo University of South Africa https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6502-794X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-4265/18387

Keywords:

Africa, history, methodology, church history

Abstract

History over centuries has been seen as the recording of past events. From Eusebius to Denis, the role of history has been to record past events for the archive by using time as the primary mode of analysis. Time, according to philosophers such as Bergson and Deleuze, is a continuous and impenetrable concept. However, philosophers like Foucault disagree. Many African ontologies reflect nature, discussions on ancestors, and land as actualities that form history. With these dynamics in mind, a decolonial and African dynamic of church history and the history of Christianity is attempted in this article. Using Foucault’s concepts of discontinuity and embodiment as well as African ontologies, this article explores and discusses new dynamics in historical methodology. Firstly, the article provides an overview of modernity and postmodernity and their effects on the discipline of history as well as Southern African historical methodology and historiography and its developments. Secondly, the article analyses Foucault’s concepts of discontinuity and embodiment, and African ontologies and their alternative modes of analysis for history. Finally, it proposes new opportunities for decolonial and Africanised storytelling within church history and/or the history of Christianity.

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