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Professor Christina Landman
MOTHER OF OUR STORIES
Research Institute for Theology and Religion University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Mercy Amba Oduyoye (1933-) is Africa’s first and foremost woman theologian. While her life reads like a story, Oduyoye’s theology itself can best be described as a theology of stories that have changed worldviews on gender, ecumenism and restorative historiography. This article deals with these three themes in Oduyoye’s work, and how she has journeyed with them through the three main periods of her life. At the beginning of her teaching career, during the 1970s, she taught students the history of dogma as people’s stories of their struggle to understand the divine. In the 1990s and at the height of her career as Deputy General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, we find her deconstructing the mythical stories of both the African and Judaeo-Christian traditions in order to retell these stories as healing stories to African women. And now, more than a decade after she retired from institutionalised labour, Oduyoye is still contributing prolifically to re-telling the stories of Africa as stories in which women are worthy human beings, and the African church is one with, and in, its cultural history. Indeed, hers is a life committed to the theological significance of stories, and to the power of stories to heal and to unite.
1 AIM AND METHOD
The aim of this article is to tell the story of Mercy Amba Oduyoye (b 21st October 1933),1 and her engagement with stories,
in the three phases of development that characterise her life. These phases encompass firstly a period of classical training
and teaching, stretching over a period of roughly 20 years (1953-1973). A second period of 20 years (1974-1994) testifies
to her critical and analytical reflection on patriarchal cultures and practices and their influence on church women’s lives.
A third period starts with the publication of Daughters of Anowa in 1995 and the shift from the woman theologian as
social critic to the woman theologian as society’s healer.
In terms of method I have centred the article around three themes. These themes are: gender, ecumenism and restorative
historiography. They are chosen as themes because they present themselves “blatantly” in Oduyoye’s publications. Choosing
them is furthermore supported by my own experience of Oduyoye’s work within the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians
of which I have been a member since 1989. I also interviewed Oduyoye (1998) at a meeting of the World Council of Churches
in Harare, Zimbabwe. From this interview much of the personal information on her younger years ensued. This article was
written for a Festschrift that was to appear in 1998 in the United States of America to celebrate Oduyoye’s
65th anniversary. The Festschrift never materialised, although two subsequent publications were dedicated
to Oduyoye (see Pui-lan, 2004, and Russell, 2006). I have, therefore, reworked this article, adding to it analyses of
Oduyoye’s main publications that have appeared during the last 10 years. This article, then, is published in anticipation
of Oduyoye’s 75th birthday anniversary in 2008.
2 THE FIRST PHASE: TRAINING AND TEACHING (1953-1973)
After she completed her secondary school education at the Achimota School in Accra in 1952, Mercy Amba Yamoah underwent
two years of teacher training at the University of Kumasi, and spent the next 20 years as a teacher at secondary schools
in Ghana and Nigeria. During this period the three themes that would dominate her later life as theologian were already
emerging:
2.1 Gender
As a secondary school teacher, Oduyoye published two books, Youth without jobs (1972) and Flight from the farm
(1973). Although these two books were not academic in nature and her ideas were expressed in cartoons, Oduyoye was already
showing her sensitivity to the contexts in which she lived, which at the time were the life worlds of the young people of
West Africa. And although young boys played the main parts in the books, Oduyoye (2004:xii) has testified that even then
she was thinking “about the education of girls, teenage pregnancy, early marriages, rumours of abortions and occasional
drop-outs for no apparent reason” (Oduyoye 2004).
2.2 Re-storying history
During this period, in the 1960s, Oduyoye interrupted her career as a teacher to undertake graduate studies in religion,
first at the University of Ghana (1959-1963) and then at the University of Cambridge (1963-1965).
It was during her studies at these two universities that she was influenced towards the de-dogmatising and re-storying of
Christian beliefs. At the University of Ghana Noel King, church historian turned historian of religions, taught her that
“theology was something you struggle to do – not something you receive” (Oduyoye, interview 1998) . And at the University
of Cambridge Maurice Wiles brought this truth to her attention: doctrines are not from heaven; they are crafted out, by
struggling human beings, to feed their spirituality. It was this insight which eventually led Oduyoye to believe that
stories, as human constructs of experience, are the places where doctrine and life meet.
2.3 Ecumenism
Oduyoye has been a practicing Methodist all her life; her father, Charles Kwaw Yamoah, was a Methodist minister. However,
already as a secondary school pupil at Achimota School (Accra, Ghana), Oduyoye became comfortable with ecumenical ways of
worshipping, rudiments of ecumenism that were later strengthened at Cambridge University with her joining the Students
Christian Movement. “It was SCM connections that got me to Geneva (as Deputy General Secretary of the WCC) and SCM formed
Modupe Oduyoye, the Nigerian SCM General Secretary, who became my spouse”, she later wrote (Oduyoye 2004:xii).
Her passion for ecumenism in Africa also fed the other two themes in her work. In the first place, it led to her founding
the ecumenical “Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians” in 1987 as a space for African women theologians of all
denominations, and eventually all religions, to express their thoughts academically. Secondly, it led to numerous
publications from her pen re-storying the history of religion in Africa as one of ecumenical co-operation, her latest
contribution to A history of the ecumenical movement 1968-2000 (Oduyoye 2004a) crowning three decades of her own
scholarship.
At the end of this period in her life, that is, at the end of her career as a secondary school teacher, Oduyoye was 30 years
old. During this period she had published only two cartoon books. It was during the next period that Oduyoye was to emerge
as a prolific writer and a social critic of growing influence.
3 THE SECOND PHASE: CRITICAL AND ANALYTICAL REFLECTION (1974-1994)
In September 1974 Mercy Amba Oduyoye commenced her career as a university lecturer when she was appointed in the Department
of Religious Studies at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. This career was interrupted 13 years later, in 1987, when
Oduyoye took up the post of Deputy General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. She remained in the latter position
until 1994, when she resumed her lecturing career on a freelance basis. She is presently teaching at Trinity Theological
College in Accra, Ghana, which, because of her doing, is now specialising in theological education for women.
Two-thirds of the 20 year period dealt with in this section (1974-1994) thus consists of Oduyoye lecturing in West Africa
at tertiary level (1974-1987), and one-third in an executive position at the World Council of Churches in Geneva (1987-1994).
During this time, Oduyoye focussed her stories on the three themes already mentioned, namely the rewriting of African
religious history, the need for ecumenism, and the empowerment of women. Her insights into these themes commenced in West
Africa and were vigorously pursued in writing in Geneva.
3.1 Rewriting African religious history
In December 1977 the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians was held in Ghana. Oduyoye delivered a paper at this
conference entitled “The value of African religious beliefs and practices for Christian theology” (Oduyoye 1979). In this
paper she identified points of contact between African Traditional Religions and Christian Theology. Since Oduyoye’s
historiography, and her subsequent use of stories, is basically concerned with the Christian presence in an African
environment, note should be taken of the presuppositions for their coexistence and mutual influencing suggested by Oduyoye
at a relatively early date in her academic career. Both African and Christian myths of origin, she says, affirm that God
is the Creator of the world and that God has appointed humankind to be its steward. The myths of both these beliefs
furthermore acknowledge God as the Originator of all humanity, so that past, present and future generations form one
community – of which women are an integral part.
In short, in 1977 Oduyoye believed that African Traditional Religions and Christianity shared views on the wholeness of
humanity during a mythical past, and that they should share more of each other’s heritage in future for humanity to move
towards greater reconciliation. In all this Oduyoye emphasised her own position within Christianity, seeing Christianity
as a legitimate development on African soil.
It is this ideal – Christianity interacting with the African past, both with the mythical concepts they have in common and
with the histories they have not (yet) shared – that Oduyoye endeavoured to realise in the mission histories she wrote
during the time she lectured in Nigeria. In The Wesleyan presence in Nigeria and in Leadership development in the Methodist
church, Nigeria, 1842-1962,2 Oduyoye tells the story of Christian (Protestant) missions in Nigeria as one of constant
interaction with African culture. Not only does she emphasise the African identity of this movement, which took its
inception from black missionaries, she also tells the story of ecumenical sharing in church-building in Nigeria, giving
full scope to women’s participation in this process. In this way she roots the ideal of wholeness in the story of Nigerian
Christianity in very much the same way in which she envisaged the rewriting of African religious history in 1977.
3.2 Ecumenism
In 1982 Oduyoye published an article in Voices of unity which consisted of essays in honour of WA Visser’t Hooft, then
General Secretary of the World Council of Churches since 1972. In this article she tells the story of “A decade and a
half of ecumenism in Africa” (Oduyoye 1982), remaining true to her initial claim that Africa at heart yearns and aims
towards wholeness and unity. She argues that history testifies to this fact and that Western ecumenism is liberal
lip-service by white mission churches who, after all, send endless personnel to Africa to uphold their distinctive
positions as churches, while the Africans themselves have no problems in participating in ecumenical services and ministries.
She also points to fundamentalism (“conservative evangelism”) as one of the ways in which preachers from abroad force
Africans into exclusivist church-formation.
3.3 Women
Since the early 1980s Oduyoye has published abundantly on women’s issues. As far as the previous themes of rewriting African
religious history and ecumenism are concerned, Oduyoye has managed to uphold the ideal of African wholeness and has
successfully defended it against Western fragmentation and individualism. However, on the issue of women and their
liberation, Oduyoye remains critical of African society, both past and present. In a paper entitled “Reflections from a
third world women’s perspective: Women’s experience and liberation theologies”, delivered at the Fifth International
Conference of EATWOT in 1981, Oduyoye, while still honouring the views of African myths on human wholeness, became extremely
critical of the ability of these myths to integrate women in a liberative way into this wholeness of life. Her point of
departure is this story from West Africa (Oduyoye 1983:246):
The story illustrates Oduyoye’s view of male and female relationships at the time: while the (African) ideal of unity exists
also as far as women and men are concerned, in reality it is a false unity at the expense of both parties. Domestic and
economic violence against women creates a traditionally acceptable but detrimental peace for both the oppressor and the
oppressed. Oduyoye then recommended a theology of relationships which would open up new horizons to both men and women to
live their humanity to the full.
1986 proved to be an eventful one for Oduyoye. She concluded her lecturing career in Nigeria, and spent time studying and
teaching in the United States of America, at Harvard Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary in New York. This was
the year before she joined the WCC as its General Deputy Secretary.
It was also the year in which her book, Hearing and knowing: Theological reflections on Christianity in Africa (Oduyoye 1986)
was published. One chapter of this book is dedicated to feminism. However, it seems that Oduyoye was influenced at this time
by American feminism’s criticism of culture and church to such an extent that she handled the topic of feminism solely from
this perspective without reference to the mythical wholeness of Africa. But this was soon to change.
At the end of the same year, in December 1986, Oduyoye delivered a paper with Elizabeth Amoah (from Ghana) at an EATWOT
conference entitled “The Christ for African women”. In this essay Oduyoye demythologises the historical and dogmatic
singularity of (the male) Christ and finds Christ-like women amongst both mythical African and Christian African women. She
finds Christ himself in the everyday experiences of the women of Africa, that is, in African women creating wholeness amidst
burdens and suffering (Oduyoye 1988:35):
Having accepted Christ as refugee and guest of Africa, the woman seeks to make Christ at home and to order life in such a
way as to enable the whole household to feel at home with Christ. The woman sees the whole space of Africa as a realm to be
ordered, as a place where Christ has truly “tabernacled.” Fears are not swept under the beds and mats but are brought out
to be dealt with by the presence of the Christ. Christ becomes truly friend and companion, liberating women from assumptions
of patriarchal societies, and honouring, accepting, and sanctifying the single life as well as the married life, parenthood
as well as the absence of progeny. The Christ of the women of Africa upholds not only motherhood, but all who, like Jesus
of Nazareth, perform “mothering” roles of bringing out the best in all around them. This is the Christ, high priest,
advocate, and just judge in whose kingdom we pray to be.
A Christ-like woman, according to Oduyoye (and Amoah), is one sent by God to suffer on behalf of the destitute but who does
not, however, accept deprivations as the destiny of humanity. Taking on a “mothering” role, the Christ-like African woman
heals society through listening, caring and telling stories of hope and paradise.
In 1987 Mercy Amba Oduyoye became the first black (and only the second African)3 woman to become Deputy General
Secretary of the World Council of Churches. One of her main achievements during this period was to institutionalise and
structure the voices of African women theologians, resulting in the formation of the Circle of Concerned African Women
Theologians in 1989 in Accra, Ghana. This, in turn, resulted in a charming looking book in strong colours, The will to
arise: Women, tradition and the Church in Africa, published in 1992 as the first in a series of publications by members
of the Circle (see Oduyoye 1992b).
In this book, Oduyoye published an article entitled “Women and ritual in Africa”. She finds that traditional African rituals
pertaining to birth, puberty and marriage curb women’s sexuality and are meant to direct women’s biological potency and
energy towards male needs. She therefore encourages both African Traditional Religions and Christianity to rethink and
re-“ritualise” women’s sexuality, with insights from women’s religious experiences, for women to be able to feel both “holy”
and “whole” in practising their sexuality. She concludes with these powerful words in which women’s holiness is directly
linked to their wholeness as human beings in a liberative and creative way (Oduyoye 1992b:9):
Women are persons-in-communion, not persons who “complete” the other … We may need to reorient our thinking so that we see
communion as a relationship devoid of hierarchical relations and power-seeking. When we have learned more about our humanity
perhaps we will also be able to understand what God is telling us about divinity.
In summary, then, for Oduyoye the second period of 20 years after she entered the world of tertiary learning is a period in
which she developed and explicated her socio-critical skills on three subjects, which were, as mentioned, rewriting history,
revisualising ecumenism and reviving women. Her criticism of church and society on these issues follows two directions. On
the one hand, she accuses Western role players of following false alternatives in both historiography and ecumenicity by
ignoring the idea of unity and wholeness which has blossomed in African story-telling since mythical times. On the other
hand she fearlessly retrieves and fiercely attacks the patriarchy inherent in African traditions. During this period she
starts presenting healing solutions to the problems of Westernism and African patriarchy.
However, this period is mainly one of putting words to problems; the healing words would follow in the next period of her
life, a period highlighted by two main events, namely the publication of her book Daughters of Anowa in 1995, and her
appointment as director of the Institute of Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological College in Accra, Ghana,
in 1998.
4 THE THIRD PHASE: THE HEALING OF CHURCH AND SOCIETY (1995-)
4.1 Healing the daughters of Africa
Daughters of Anowa: African women and patriarchy is one of Oduyoye’s major works. It is indeed her major work as an
historian, in which she retrieves sources from an African heritage to place African religious historiography on track,
after it has been taken on a detour by Western historiographical norms and sources. She identifies norms in Ghanaian and
Nigerian myths and uses them as a point of departure for finding values for the Christian future in Africa. She does not
suggest that there is an historical link between the African mythical past and Christianity, although she states that
African myths do bind African Christians to a common past (Oduyoye 1995:14). The true link between African Christians and
traditional African myths lies in the values of humanness portrayed in African myths with which, according to Oduyoye,
African Christians should identify.
Using African myths as a point of departure for a Christian perspective on church and society allows Oduyoye to keep
Westerners at bay, while empowering African Christians to identify with the traditionally African values which affirm the
wholeness of human life. Having assumed an African identity through a common mythical past, Oduyoye furthermore allows
herself to criticise patriarchal ideologies in myths, while at the same time opening these myths up to deliver messages of
healing. While pointing to African women as “victims of a culture whose life-giving aspects they seek to protect”
(Oduyoye 1995:15), she empowers and heals them with the image of African women in the myths who “stretched their hands to
the global sisterhood of life-loving women” (Oduyoye 1995:2). Oduyoye points to the presence of a Creator Goddess in
African myths, and the absence of an Eve-like figure who, in Christian myths, represents fallen womanhood. Both these
concepts are used by Oduyoye as a means of healing African Christian women from their religiously battered past.
Oduyoye as critic has become Oduyoye the healer.
While Oduyoye still uses sharp language to address issues such as “cultural sexism” (Oduyoye 1995:159) and “sacralizing
the marginalization of women’s experience” (Oduyoye 1995:175), a strong urge to lead society towards healing, healthy
change and communion between sexes dawns in the book, as is displayed in this concluding myth which is a recreation of the
creation stories of both the Judaeo-Christian and the African traditionalist traditions (Oduyoye 1995:218):
And it came to pass in those days that a boy of six years sat with his mother, munching the bread she had baked, and
watching her knead the dough for the bread he would eat in the evening.
4.2 Subsequent publications
4.2.1 Overview
In the years since her retirement from the WCC in 1994 at the age of 60, Oduyoye has pursued her ideal of rewriting African
religious history, exchanging a colonialist perspective for one that honours African initiatives. She furthermore
continuously uses history, mythical history and proverbs, in a story-telling manner, as intertexts to explain her ideals
of healing African society.
All three of the themes in Oduyoye’s work are well represented in this post-retirement period: entitling women, re-storying
history, establishing ecumenism. The latter theme is magnificently realised in her editorship of and contribution to the
third volume of A history of the ecumenical movement: 1968-2000 that was published by the World Council of Churches in 2004
(Oduyoye 2004a). In the remaining pages of this article I am going to concentrate on her work on women, their history and
their future in the years after her retirement in 1994. Most of her work during this time centers around EATWOT and the
Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Also, because of growing international recognition, Oduyoye is publishing
lavishly in American and European feminist anthologies.
4.2.2 Women
4.2.2.1 EATWOT
In December 1994 EATWOT went into dialogue with women theologians on the topic of violence against women at a conference in
San Jose, Costa Rica. The title of Oduyoye’s talk was “Violence against women: window on Africa” (Oduyoye 1995a). The paper
deals with the topic in a healing manner, using three steps. First she identifies the “factors of control, exploitation and
dehumanisation noted in African proverbs such as “Woman is like the earth; everyone sits down on her” and “He who is not
smart in speech and argument should not take a talkative wife”, suggesting that the verbal abuse apparent in these proverbs
points to, and even legitimates, physical violence against women in public and private life. Secondly Oduyoye uses this
same technique of demythologising mythical history and exposing its sexist orientation on both Christian mythical texts and
church theology, indicating that both the traditionalist and the Christian approach to women are out of touch with women’s
experience of and longing for wholenessness. In the third place Oduyoye offers a healing solution to the situation, which
is education. Girls should be educated to develop a feminist consciousness and boys “to learn that gender is not a valid
basis for ranking”.
In her keynote address to EATWOT in January 1996 in New York, Oduyoye (1996) offered another means of healing to her
listeners, apart from that of education. This is cross-gender dialogue. She suggested the Circle of Concerned African Women
Theologians as a forum for such a dialogue.
4.2.2.2 Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians
In 1997 this Circle held a Pan-African conference in Nairobi, Kenya. At this point the Circle had not yet established itself
as a forum for cross-gender dialogue and it was on the issue of education that Oduyoye addressed the Circle. Oduyoye
visited nine theological seminaries in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Cameroun during 1996 and this paper was a report
on her findings. She found that women were participating in theological education at these seminaries, but that the
contents of the courses were not addressing women’s concerns and experiences. Women students were scarce since churches
were not willing to sponsor them. Graduate scholarships for women were rare. Oduyoye then called on the Circle to engage
affirmatively in women’s theological education as a means of healing not only women, but society as a whole.
Actually, cross-gender dialogue never became a focus point of the Circle. During the 1990s the Circle concentrated on women’s
place in the “household of God” (see Kanyoro & Njoroge 1996; Oduyoye 1997). How are women to be exposed to education, and
especially theological education? How are they to achieve access to authority and power, especially in the church/faith
community? And when they have been educated equally with men, and when they have acquired authority and power, how are
they – as women of faith – to use these things so as not to become oppressive themselves? How are Scripture and culture to
be reinterpreted to support women in their quest for equality and human dignity? These were the questions dominating the
biennial meetings of the Circle during the 1990s.
In the 2000s the focus of the Circle shifted, in a time of HIV/Aids, to women’s health issues. Yet, in my opinion, the
basis for making women of faith strong in the face of this pandemic was laid during the 1990s by Oduyoye’s theology of
“transforming power”, a theology that empowered women in the household of God on their earthly journey. In her paper given
at the 1995 conference of the Circle that dealt with “Transforming power: Women in the household of God”, Oduyoye gives the
most powerful definition of power ever: “Power is for the well-being of the community” (Oduyoye 2001:223). With this simple
definition she distributed power equally amongst men and women, rich and poor, the politically powerful and the economically
disadvantaged – for the common goal of protecting the health of everybody in the community.
4.2.2.3 American/European feminist publications
Women theologians around the world know that both academia and faith communities expect them to be experts in all fields of
theology. Oduyoye, too, is expected to give voice to African women’s theologies on a variety of subjects, and in a variety
of publications. In the past 15 years we find Oduyoye contributing on all possible aspects of theology in anthologies of
American (e.g. Thistlethwaite & Engel 1990) and European (e.g. Parsons 2001) feminists.
Most important in Oduyoye’s recent efforts to establish African women’s theologies at the core of women’s theologies
worldwide is the publication of her book Introducing African Women’s Theology as the sixth in the series of “Introducing
Feminist Theology” published by Sheffield Academic Press in England (Oduyoye 2001a). Her life of theological story-telling
is summarised well when she introduces her readership to the method of African women’s theology: “… African women accept
story as a source of theology and so tell their own stories as well as study the experiences of other women including those
outside their own continent, but especially those in Africa whose stories remain unwritten” (Oduyoye 2001a:10). Oduyoye
then explains in the rest of the book how stories informed African women in reading the Bible from the perspective of
cultural hermeneutics, in interpreting the multireligious and multicultural contexts in which they are living from the
perspective of inter-relatedness, in developing compassion and solidarity amongst women in their struggle for human dignity,
in finding ways to live God-centred and Jesus-like for the improvement of society, and in practicing and finding hospitality
in the household of God.
5 CONCLUSION
Fifteen years ago, third world women theologians, including myself, were forced to use the work of first world feminist
theologians as their intertexts and points of departure, simply because we ourselves had not identified the sources for
third world women’s theologies clearly. Oduyoye has, since then, brought us back to our sources. She presents in her work
African myths and proverbs as legitimate sources for a women’s theology. As positive sources these myths and proverbs point
to wholeness as a basis for a woman-friendly anthropology. However, Oduyoye also uses the negative references to women in
these sources as a basis for identifying patriarchy, and for demobilising and desacralising it, especially in its cultural
context.
During her life, Oduyoye has placed at least seven points on the agenda of African women theologians. These are
Oduyoye has already contributed extensively to these issues, leading the process of identifying them and planning to extend
their boundaries in future.
“What is the future of women with no paradise behind them?”, I heard her asking once. Mercy Amba Oduyoye has taken up the
challenge of answering this question by reconstructing the stories of Africa’s mythical pasts for a healed future of wholenessness for both men and women.
And indeed, in one of her latest publications, A Letter to My Ancestors, she makes the following promise: “We vow
to you and to ourselves before this great cloud of global witnesses, seen and unseen. Never again shall we walk on tiptoe
around the globe which is God’s world and our common heritage” (Oduyoye 2005:xxii).
WORKS CONSULTED
Publications
Kanyoro, M R A & Njoroge, N J 1996. Groaning in faith: African women in the household of God. Nairobi: Acton.
Oduyoye, M A 1972. Youth without jobs. Ibadan: Daystar.
Oduyoye, M A 1973. Flight from the farm. Ibadan: Daystar.
Oduyoye, M A 1979. The value of African religious beliefs and practices for Christian theology, in Kofi, A-K & Sergio, T
(eds), African Theology en route, 109-116. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A 1982. A decade and a half of ecumenism in Africa, in Van der Bent, A J (ed), Voices of unity, 70-77.
Geneva: World Council of Churches.
Oduyoye, M A 1983. Reflections from a Third World women’s perspective: Women’s experience and liberation theologies,
in Fabella, V & Torres, S (eds), Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to theology, 246-255. Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A 1986. Hearing and knowing: Theological reflections on Christianity in Africa. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A 1988. The Christ for African women, in Fabella, V & Oduyoye, M A (eds), With passion and compassion: Third
world women doing theology. Reflections from the Women’s Commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World
Theologians, 35-46. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A 1992. The Wesleyan presence in Nigeria. Ibadan: Sefer.
Oduyoye, M A 1992a. Leadership development in the Methodist church, Nigeria, 1842-1962. Ibadan: Sefer.
Oduyoye, M A 1992b. Women and ritual in Africa, in Oduyoye, M A & Kanyoro, M R A (eds), The will to arise: Women,
tradition and the Church in Africa, 9-24. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A. 1995. Daughters of Anowa. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A 1995a. Violence against women: Window on Africa. Voices from the Third World 18(1), 168-176.
Oduyoye, M A 1996. EATWOT: Keynote address. Voices from the Third World 19(1), 11-34.
Oduyoye, M A 1997. Theological education for women in Africa: 1978-1996, in Oduyoye, M A (ed), Transforming power: women
in the household of God, 54-65. Ghana: Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.
Oduyoye, M A 2001. Transforming power: Paradigms from the novels of Buchi Emecheta, in Njoroge, N J & Dube, M W (eds),
Talitha cum! Theologies of African women, 222-244. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster.
Oduyoye, M A 2001a. Introducing African women’s theology. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Oduyoye, M A 2004. Beads and strands: Reflections of an African woman on Christianity in Africa. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Oduyoye, M A (co-editor and contributor of “Africa”) 2004a. A history of the ecumenical movement, 1968-2000.
Volume 3. Geneva: World Council of Churches.
Oduyoye, M A 2005. A letter to my ancestors, in Otieno, N & McCullum, H (eds), Journey of hope: Towards a new ecumenical
Africa, xv-xxii. Geneva: World Council of Churches.
Parsons, S F (ed) 2001. Feminist theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oduyoye: “Jesus Christ”, pp 151-170.
Pui-lan, K 2004. Mercy Amba Oduyoye and African women’s theology. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 20(1),
7-22.
Russell, L 2006. Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye: Wise woman bearing gifts, in Phiri, I A & Nadar, S (eds), African women,
religion, and health: Essays in honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis.
Thistlethwaite, S B & Engel, M P (eds) 1990. Constructing Christian theologies from the underside. San Francisco:
Harper & Row. Oduyoye: “The empowering spirit of religion”, pp 245-258.
Interview
Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. 1998. Interview of Christina Landman with Oduyoye at World Council of Churches Meeting in Harare on
11 December 1998.
ENDNOTES
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