The Bible and Politics in AfricaAdriaan van Klinken (PhD) is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the De-
partment of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London. He
holds a doctorate from Utrecht University, the Netherlands (2011). His
research focuses on issues of gender, masculinity and homosexuality in
African Christianities. His forthcoming book Transforming Masculinities
in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of AIDS will soon
be published with Ashgate.
Elizabeth Vengeyi is a PhD candidate at University of Bamberg, Germany.
As a Feminist scholar, her research interests focus on the interface be-
tween the Bible, gender issues and culture. She is an active member of
Concerned African Women Theologians and Tsena Malalaka, a project,
which tries to engage African and European women theologians to dia-
logue on issues such as biblical interpretation and contextual differ-
ences.
Obvious Vengeyi is a Zimbabwean. After printing his thesis (forthcoming as
BiAS 9) he will hold a PhD in Interkulturelle Bibelwissenschaft (Inter-
cultural Biblical Studies) from Bayreuth University in Germany. He is
former lecturer of Biblical Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at the
University of Zimbabwe. He has published extensively on the role of
the Bible (and religion) in politics in the Zimbabwean society.
Pieter Verster (PhD) holds two doctorates from the University of Pretoria (in
Missiology and Religious Studies and also in Dogmatics and Ethics). At
present he is Head of the Department of Missiology at the Faculty of
Theology at the University of the Free State. He is a member and or-
dained minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 2008 his book: A
Theology of Christian Mission: What Should the Church Seek to Accom-
plish. New York: Edwin Mellen Press was published. He is also a graded
researcher of the National Research Foundation of South Africa (C3).
Gerald West (PhD) is Professor of Old Testament and African Biblical Her-
meneutics in the School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He is
also the coordinator of Contextual Bible Study work within the Ujamaa
Centre for Community Development and Research. He has published
extensively on aspects of the Bible's presence in Africa and is one of the
most famous scholars in the field of Contextual Biblical Studies. West’s
theories on how to read the Bible have influenced many biblical schol-
ars in Africa and in the West.