Ethics, Gender, and Philosophy of Puleng LenkaBula

This chapter explores Puleng LenkaBula’s contribution to African feminist ethics and theologies, highlighting her emphasis on realizing economic justice based on life-affirming theological, ethical, eco-political, and social resources. LenkaBula, a second-generation African Christian feminist ethicist, an academic, a leader, and an ecumenical advocate for economic justice, is concerned with the plight of the poor, those who are victims of unjust sharing and use of the world’s resources. To her, poor women, men, and children in Africa continue to suffer because they have lived all their lives under systems and structures that oppress them. LenkaBula, therefore, calls on African feminist theologians and ethicists to unearth, imagine, reconfigure, and re-create other life-affirming expressions of being human in Africa and the world at large. To her, such a deliberate action is in line with the agenda of liberation theology, which speaks to living passionately and abundantly in life-respecting relations with the earth by current and all future generations. With this backdrop, the current chapter challenges African scholars, especially feminist theologians and ethicists, to relook at their methodologies of engaging in justice issues regarding the poor’s social, economic, and environmental landscape. It maintains that the contextual and relevant voice of low-income people should be noticed by the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (the Circle) but should catalyze the life-giving economic, environmental, and eco-political justice that LenkaBula proposes.