Essays on Decolonisation and Adventism from a South African Seventh-day Adventist Philosopher (2020)

Blessing Mbele, Think Upon These Things: Essays on Decolonisation and Adventism. Our Most Loved, 2020. 72 pp.

”In 2015-17 there was a student uprising, the “#Fallist” movement, in which South African university students protested, calling for a “fall” of the colonial and apartheid heritage of the South African academy. To us, young Black Adventists on campus at the time, this movement and its call for a decolonizing of the academy ignited a new generation of young Black Adventists, motivated to think through what their Adventism meant for them in the post-apartheid socio-political atmosphere they found themselves in. Coming from a past of racial discrimination and a present systemic racism, how does the modern Black African Adventist confront and understand his/her Adventism in an Africa struggling against Western colonization? is, and other questions were contentious at this time.

Having lived through and participated in that uprising, the author and this book are a product of that young Black “fallist” generation and its struggle for the realization of a decolonized Africa. Raising questions on the meaning of Adventism to Africanism, the formation of doctrine and its implications for Africa, the impact of Western interpretations on biblical prophetic narratives, and the relation of Adventism to colonization, this text aims at illuminating the Eurocentric basis upon which Adventist thought is entrenched. At its heart, it's an attempt to raise serious theoretical problems African Adventists must confront as they continue their socio-political and economic struggle for the decolonization of Africa. The text is more of a journey than it is a destination, more a question than it is an answer, more of a problem than a solution; the intention is so that the African Adventist may think upon these things.”

Description from the publisher’s website.