Christian Baëta

Christian Goncalves Kwami Baëta (born May 23, 1908 in Keta , Ghana , † December 29, 1994 in Accra ) was a Ghanaian Protestant theologian and church leader of the Presbyterian Church .

Life

Baëta was a son of the Presbyterian pastor Robert Domingo Baëta. One of his sisters was the lawyer and women's rights activist Annie Jiagge . Baëta studied at the Scottish Mission Teacher Training College in Akropong , Ghana, from 1930 to 1935 at the Evangelical Mission Seminar of the Basel Mission and at King's College London , where he received his doctorate in 1959 with his doctoral thesis on Prophetism in Ghana . In 1936 he was appointed parish priest ordained and became an instructor at the Training College in Akropong. From 1945 to 1949 he was general secretary ( synod clerk ) of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church Ghana and at the same time chairman of the Ghanaian Christian Council and the negotiating commission for the Ghanaian Church Union.

Between 1949 and 1971, Baëta worked in the Department of Religion at the University of Ghana ; first as senior lecturer , from 1962 as professor and head of the department. From 1966 to 1968 he served as procurator of the university, from 1967 to 1969 as dean of the faculty of humanities. He ensured that the department, which was explicitly committed to Christian theology, was transformed into a faculty for religion and theology in a pluralistic world. He was appointed Henry Winters Luce Visiting Professor of World Christianity at Union Theological Seminary , New York (1958–1959), and Henry W. Luce Visiting Professor at Selly Oak Colleges , Birmingham , England (1965–1970).

Since participating in the World Mission Conference in Tambaram , India , in 1938, Baëta has been involved in the ecumenical movement . In 1958 he became vice chairman of the International Missionary Council (IMC) and oversaw the merger of the IMC with the World Council of Churches (WCC). He later served on the central and executive committees and on the WCC's Commission of the Churches on International Affairs . He was also a member of the Anglican Reformed Commission for Church Unity. He was a member of the Christian Peace Conference (CFK) and took part in the IV and V All-Christian Peace Meetings in Prague in 1971 and 1978, respectively. In 1971 he was elected to the Continuation of Work Committee.

Baëta strongly advocated that the missionary endeavors of the young churches on the African continent should change from an understanding of mission as a worldwide expansion of Christianity to the encounter and peaceful coexistence of people of different faiths. In his thinking, ecumenical thinking and mission were not mutually exclusive. He worked on a Bible translation into the Ewe language .

Baëta also assumed political responsibilities: as a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Gold Coast (1946 to 1950); as a member of the Coussey Committee on Constitutional Reform for the Gold Coast ; as a member of the Constituent Assembly which paved the way for a return to civil order after the fall of Kwame Nkrumah in 1966.

Several universities, including the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Reformed Faculty in Debrecen, awarded Baëta an honorary doctorate . In 1951 he received the Order of the British Empire .

Fonts (selection)

• Prophetism in Ghana. SCM, London 1963.
• The Relationship of Christians with Men of Other Living Faiths , 1971

Essays

• In memoriam Karl Hartenstein , in: For work and reflection 7, 1953, p. 211f.
• My Pilgrimage in Mission , IBMR 12, no. 4 (1984): 165-168. John S. Pobee, ed., Religion in Pluralistic Society: Essays In Honor of Professor CG Baëta (1976)
• Ethiopianism Past and Present , in CG Baeta, ed .: Christianity in Tropical Africa, Oxford, 1968

As a co-author

• History of Christianity outside of Europe (Asia, Africa, Latin America) 1450 - 1990 , ed. by Klaus Koschorke, Frieder Ludwig and Mariano Delgado with the participation of Roland Spliesgart, series: Church and Theological History in Sources Vol. VI. In it: Christian G. Baëta: Church and Culture in Africa (1962), Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2nd edition, 2006, ISBN 3-7887-2045-X

As editor

• Christianity in Tropical Africa , London 1968

literature

• Walter Ringwald : Christian GK Baëta. Leading Christian of his African Church. In: Günter Gloede (Ed.): Ecumenical Profiles. Bridge builders of the one church. Vol. 2. Evangelischer Missionsverlag, Stuttgart 1963, pp. 66–75.
• John S. Pobee (Ed.): Religion in a Pluralistic Society: Essays Presented to Christian Goncalves Kwami Baeta in Celebration of His Retirement from the Service of the University of Ghana, September 1971, by Friends and Colleagues Scattered Over the Globe. Brill, Leiden 1976 (therein pp. 1-4: Christian Goncalves Kwami Baëta. A personal appreciation ).
• Theo Sundermeier : On the Way of an African Church. Christian G. Baëta, Ghana . In: Third World Theologians (1982)
• Samuel Gyanfosu:  Baëta, Christian Goncalves Kwami . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 1, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, Sp. 1059-1060.
• Theo Sundermeier: Christian G. Baëta. In: Metzler Lexicon of Christian Thinkers. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, p. 56.

Web links

• Entry in the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (based on the entry in the iographical Dictionary of Christian Missions , 1998)
• Robert and Christian Baeta

Individual evidence

1. ^ According to Ringwald: Christian GK Baëta , p. 66, in Lomé , Togo ; here too, however, a self-testimony from Baëta is cited, according to which Keta is his hometown.