Malakoi (Effeminates) and Avrsenokoitai (Homosexuals): A Reflection on 1 Corinthians 6:9 from a Ghanaian (Akan) Perspective

Homosexuality and the rights of LGBTQ+ people have in recent times become one of the most discussed topics. In Ghana especially, there are massive debates, comments and advocacy of various kinds on the print, mass and electronic media on the subject. Politicians, religious leaders, among others have had to add their voice to the ongoing discussion as to whether or not to accept homosexuality. It appears the majority of Ghanaians are anti-gay and believe that the activities of homosexuals or LGBTQ+ people are unnatural and foreign to Ghanaian primal thought and thus are calling for proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values. This paper examines Paul’s use of malakoi (effeminates) and avrsenokoi/tai (homosexuals) in 1 Corinthians 6:9 from the perspective of the Ghanaian (Akan) culture. The researcher brings out Paul’s understanding and theology of malakoi and avrsenokoi/tai, and then engages these with the Akan understanding of homosexuality. This way, the Akan culture is factored into the interpretation of the selected Pauline passage as it forms the basis of the researcher’s theological reflection on the subject under discussion among the Akan. The researcher uses Kwame Bediako’s “scripture as the hermeneutic of culture and tradition” as an interpretive tool, to interpret the Akan philosophy on homosexuality and how that compares to Paul’s concept of homosexuality. This study serves as a contribution to knowledge as it brings new insights to the ongoing discussion throughout the world regarding the understanding of human sexuality especially from cultural and biblical perspectives. KEYWORDS: Effeminates, homosexuals, homosexuality, unrighteous, hermeneutic, culture.

Values and Behaviour: The Literary Concept of “Bosom” in the Akan Culture

This paper sees the Akan concept of “bosom”, translated into English as “lesser god”, as a very powerful socializing instrument used in constructing social order in the community. The aim of this paper is not to discount or dismiss the spiritual powers of the “bosom” but to use oral literature as a platform to investigate the role of the Akan people in the construction of what is known as “bosom”. This study has recourse to qualitative research methods in gathering data, the researcher immersing in the culture through formal and informal interviews and participant observation. The study also goes further to use the literary stylistics approach in analyzing the data. The findings are that man makes the taboos and the lesser gods execute the punishment. Again, taboos are values which constitute the tracks on which the society moves. These values “disguised” as “bosom” work, thanks to the fear factor in the Akan concept of “bosom”, making Akans literally worship these values in the form of “bosom”. Keywords: Cultural values, taboos, punishment, Akan lesser gods, stylistics

Christian Faith and Akan Culture in Ghana: A Review of Major Works of Sidney George Williamson

Christian growth must not only be considered in terms of the growth of numbers. The growth in the church must also be considered in the level of depth and the quality of Christian conversion within a cultural milieu. The depth of the faith has a lot to do with how the Gospel speaks directly to the minds and hearts of its hearers. Moreover, the Gospel can speak to the hearts and minds of its hearers when the indigenous world views that condition the inner lives of the people are given serious consideration. The study is a review of the major works of Sidney George Williamson on the Christian faith and Akan culture in Ghana. As an early student of the tension between the Christian faith and Akan culture and the challenges of Christian identity, Williamson draws attention to the fact that Christianity can adequately meet Akan Christian needs when it pays attention to the cultural worldview of the people it seeks to serve. The study as a qualitative one uses both primary and secondary sources. Interviews and observations were conducted in some Akan communities on the integration of Christian faith and Akan cultural worldview. The study points to the fact that the construction of theology among Akan Christians must be done from the inside to the outside and not from outside to the inside, the approach that Western missionaries adopted. The spiritual needs of Akan Christians will be adequately met when they hear the Gospel in their own cultural understandings rather than theology done in the West offered to the Akan in European worldview. The study further calls attention to the preparedness of the churches in the Akan cultural environment for paradigm shifts in the Christian faith and Akan Cultural engagements in post-missionary African Christianity. Keywords: Akan Culture, Christian Faith, Local Theologies, Sidney George Williamson

UMKM Goes Online Regulasi E-Commerce

Masyarakat pada era revolusi industri 4.0 menyadari pertumbuhan ekonomi yang sangat dinamis dan progresif. Fenomena tersebut harus dibarengi dengan skill serta kompetensi mumpuni didalam berbagai bidang. Salah satunya adalah bidang perekonomian. Telah terjadi pergerakan yang masiv baik dalam skala mikro maupun makro terkait pertumbuhan ekonomi tersebut. Kekhawatiran akan culture shock pada kalangan masyarakat pelaku ekonomi mikro pun muncul. Keberadaan teknologi sebagai penunjang roda perekonomian selain memberikan dampak yang positif memungkinkan pula timbulnya potensi pelanggaran terkait regulasi perdagangan. Dunia digital merupakan wilayah tanpa batas. Dimana setiap orang yang berada didalamnya harus bersedia mempersiapkan diri atas berbagai pengetahuan, paling tidak pengetahuan umum terkait suatu topik. Karena bisa saja terjadi informasi yang diterima oleh pengguna belum tentu sesuai dengan fakta dan realita. Dan buku ini disusun dalam rangka memberikan pengetahuan terkait regulasi e-commerce

The ethnopragmatics of Akan advice

This paper discusses Akan Advice under ethnopragmatics. It adopts persuasion, speech acts of directives and expressives, and Akan proverbs to discuss advice with the insight from Akan culture. The adviser expresses some feelings and emotions and directs the advisee to act and behave towards the benefits of the individual, the group or society. The paper taps data from participant observations and audio taped recordings at arbitrations, marriage and naming ceremonies. There is another data from Adi’s (1973) Akan literature book, Brako that covers pieces of advice on travelling, settlement and occupation. The Akan texts are translated into English and analysed. The analysis covers semantics, pragmatics, stylistic devices, and proverbs.

Toward a Dialogic Hermeneutics

Since the rise of African Biblical Hermeneutics, several different approaches have been developed in order to contextualize the Word within the African continent. However, excessive emphasis on context and culture runs the risk of generating a pseudo-biblical theology, not concretely founded on the Scriptures. Using Gen 4:1-16 as a study case, the article explores a dialogic approach to interpretation, respectful of both the biblical text and the receiving culture. Text and culture are placed “face to face” so that from their dialogue a call to action may arise addressed to the community of believers living in Ghana. After proposing an exegetical analysis of the text, the call to action in the text is brought into dialogue with a specific culture of Ghana (the Akan). With the help of traditional proverbs, the article analyses the assumptions with which the Akan culture encounters the text and the challenges that the text poses to the culture.

Reincarnation, Predestination and Moral Responsibility: Critical Issues in Akan Philosophy

African scholars such as Bolaji Idowu and John Mbiti have argued that belief in reincarnation is alien to African thought. However, this article argues that an adequate understanding of the Ghanaian Akan culture points to the presence of reincarnation in Akan, and for that matter African, philosophy. Nevertheless, unlike in Indian philosophy, for instance, where reincarnation depends on the quality of an individual’s moral life and is a means of ensuring moral responsibility, in Akan philosophy reincarnation is not dependent on moral considerations. Yet there is the idea of moral responsibility in Akan philosophy. The article interrogates how moral responsibility, an idea which is ordinarily regarded as reasonable in the presence of free will, is in the case of the Akan held alongside predestination. The article also reveals some serious philosophical difficulties which this Akan conception of moral responsibility generates in respect of the ‘reincarnated’ person. KeywordsReincarnation, predestination, moral responsibility, Akan philosophy, immortality, dualism, life and death

A Motley Company: Differing Identities among Euro-Africans in Eighteenth-Century Elmina

Euro-Africans along the Gold Coast figure as a somewhat obscure minority in contemporary European literature. Perhaps this can be attributed to the kinship system of the coastal Akan that dominated the structure of Gold Coast society and accounted for the integration of Euro-Africans into the local lineages. In Akan culture, children belonged to the abusua or matrilineal family of their mothers, either as free members or as slaves. A different recruiting mechanism was also in operation in the other fundamental institution of the southern Akan polities, the asafo companies. Elmina boys were recruited by their father's asafo, and as a rule, male Euro-Africans had to do without the patrilineal affiliation to these prestigious power associations. The dearth of these ties encouraged a certain minority of Euro-Africans to initiate their own ‘company’, which might be considered a kernel in the development towards a Euro-African identity.