Sègbégnon Mathieu Gnonhossou, BA, (Université d’Abomey-Calavi, Benin), MA (Fresno Pacific University Biblical Seminary), DMin (Asbury Theological Seminary), PhD (NTC)
“Imperial Kenosis As A Political Medicine: An Afro-Wesleyan Public Theology of the Cross” (2019).
Mathieu used a blend of Gluckman’s Manchester School of Anthropology and Malinowski Participant-Observation to analyse ethnographic data on atonement and political activism among Beninese evangelicals. He initially aimed to discover theological bases for socio-political activism locally but ended up with Imperial Kenosis as a broader alternative understanding of atonement. Imperial Kenosis offers a corrective to democracy soteriology and speaks both to local and foreign Christians on Africa’s socio-political woes as an unbroken historical pattern. Mathieu found this construction through a close engagement with the literature on Western legacies of the penal and Christus Victor discourses, which he also gathered from Beninese evangelicals. He examined these discourse in the light of ongoing spiritual and socio-political crises. Working with evangelical Beninese seeking an alternative theoretical basis for public witness, Mathieu discovered Imperial Kenosis as a theoretical and theological model able to undo complex local and foreign forces of oppression that have created entrenched poverty. To this end, he engaged African legacy as well as John and Charles Wesley’s theopolitical thinking on slavery, with a special reference to the Wesleys’ various responses to the plight of eighteenth century enslaved Africans. He proposes this enslaving African condition as currently manifested among Francophone Africans in the form of Francafrique. Based on an African reading of Wesleyan soteriology integrating political concerns, Imperial Kenosis offers an alternative to the failed experiment of African evangelical political activism.
Mathieu began his studies in January 2011 with Dr Michael Rynkiewich and Dr David McCulloch as supervisors. During his research, he served as an Adjunct Faculty of African and African American studies at Eastern Kentucky University and as a local Methodist pastor among African Immigrants in Lexington, KY. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Seattle Pacific University. Mathieu continues his pursuit of church renewal with public effects among Francophone Methodists through teaching Wesleyan Missiology at Université Protestante de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (UPAO) in Porto-Novo, Republic of Benin, West Africa. Mathieu is a Board Certified Coach and a Certified Candidate in the Order of the Elder Track of the United Methodist Church.