Moji Ruele
Contextual Theological Reading of the Bible with
Indigenous communities:
The Case of the Basarwa/San in Botswana.
Introduction
To discern the role that the Bible plays, or can play in any political setup,
particularly in an African contemporary context, it is necessary to reflect
on a series of Christian moral beliefs in relation to the social and politi-
cal needs of the day. The most fundamental discussion about the rela-
tionship between Bible and Politics results from how mankind reaches a
point in history when problems such as oppression, violence, poverty,
and HIV/AIDS threaten our very survival. It is because of the above
topical issues that I want to root the discussion of this paper around
Bible and politics in an African situation. In this case we must ground
the concept of Bible and politics in the concrete lives of the people as
they struggle with these challenges. And so we begin at the bottom with
how the Bible relates to political issues or the other way round. This may
call for an understanding of Christian’s moral beliefs which are depend-
ent not only on the Bible, but tradition and experience. In this paper an
attempt is made to define Bible and politics before showing how the two
concepts relates in the African context, the role of Jesus in the Bible and
politics. The paper ends by making a contextual reading of Psalm 137:4
with Basarwa/San in Botswana as an exemplar of how Bible and politics
relates.
Defining Bible?
In order for us to understand the relationship between the Bible and
politics, it is important first and foremost to understand what we mean
by the Bible. Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, has
reminded us that the Bible is the sacred book of Christian church. It is
the word of God which contains all that is necessary for the salvation of
human kind (Ramsey, 1977:1-7). Etymologically the English word Bible
derives from the word biblion, plural biblia “book” or “scroll” (Gringrith,
1958).The English word Bible comes from the Greek ta biblia which
means the Books, a name well-chosen since the Bible is a collection of