Abstract:
ABSTRACT
Pre-Christian African communities were environmentally friendly. The communities
developed taboos, myths, sayings and ethics, and enforced them to conserve, protect
and nourish the environment for later generations. On the contrary, in spite of the
Bible’s teachings about the need to conserve the environment, Christian African
communities pollute the environment to a high rate of deterioration. The purpose of the
study is to draw the attention of the Church in Africa to the level of filth resulting from
failure to play her role in environmental sustainability and to provoke her into action.
The study employed qualitative method to gather and analyse non-numerical data such
as text for proper understanding of people’s own social reality, which included their
beliefs, attitudes and motivation, and those of others. The phenomenological approach
focussed on studying human experiences, particularly how individuals perceive and
communicate their lived experiences. The discussions showed that pre-Christian Africa
served as an effective agent of environmental sustainability than Christian Africa. It is
recommended that African Christians change their hearts, take hermeneutics and
theology seriously, promote environmental awareness, change their negative attitudes
towards African environmental taboos and be careful of the wholesale borrowing of
Western philosophy and science at the expense of traditional African beliefs and
practices. The study concluded that the church in Africa has a duty to learn from pre
Christian African communities to help sustain the environment. The study has
contributed towards scholars’ efforts to finding causes and possible solutions to
environmental degradation in African communities and encourage African scholars to
pay attention to traditional African methods of environmental issues.
Keywords: pre-Christian, Christian, Africa, environment, sustainability
