I FIRST encountered Bénézet Bujo not in a lecture hall, but in the pages of his writings. His thought became a lifeline during my theological studies, when I wrestled with Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity. How could three persons be one God? The creeds were clear, but my imagination faltered. I longed for a way of understanding that spoke to my African upbringing, where ancestors and community shape moral life.
I’ve previously written about Jean-Marc Ela and his criticism of imported theologies. Bujo took me further. He gave me a conceptual home. His insight that Jesus can be understood as the Proto-Ancestor — the first, and ultimate, source of life — was transformative. Suddenly, Christology was not an abstract puzzle, but a living reality. In one assignment, drawing on Bujo’s work, I argued that Jesus is the Proto-Ancestor. Whether or not my tutors agreed, that moment gave me the confidence to bring my own worldview into theological conversation.
Bujo was clear: Africans do not worship ancestors per se. They honour them as mediators, guardians of life and harmony. His genius was to show that Christ fulfils this intuition. Jesus is not one ancestor among many: he is the ancestor par excellence; the unique mediator who reconciles humanity to God.
BORN on 4 April 1940 in Drodro, Ituri Province, in what was then the Belgian Congo, Bénézet Bujo was ordained a priest in the diocese of Bunia. He studied philosophy and theology in Bukavu, Isiro, and Kinshasa, before earning a doctorate in theology at the University of Würzburg, in Germany.
He taught at the Catholic University of Kinshasa, and the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, later serving as Professor of Moral Theology, Social Ethics, and African Theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He was appointed professor emeritus on his retirement in 2010.
Bujo died in November 2023, leaving a legacy as a pioneer of African inculturation theology: a voice that insisted that African culture was not an obstacle to faith, but a partner in dialogue.
IN AFRICAN thought, ancestors are revered as mediators and life-givers. They embody continuity and belonging. Bujo’s move was bold yet faithful: if mediation and communion are central to African moral imagination, then Christ — the one mediator, the giver of life — can be understood as the Proto-Ancestor; the source and fulfilment of all ancestral hopes.
This does not dilute doctrine. It clarifies it for African Christians. The New Testament calls Jesus the “firstborn”, the “head of the body”, the “mediator”. These titles resonate with ancestral motifs without collapsing into ancestor worship. For Bujo, Christ gathers the living and the dead into one communion, binding us in solidarity and hope.
Such a vision resists Western individualism. Salvation is not a private transaction, but a communal reality. It is about being woven into a living network: the communion of saints, ancestors, and descendants, all gathered into Christ’s life. For me, this was liberating. Theology suddenly became legible in my cultural grammar.
BUJO’s home discipline was moral theology, and his Christology has ethical consequences. If Christ, the Proto-Ancestor, binds us into a community of life, then ethics is about communion, justice, and care — not mere rule-keeping. In works such as The Ethical Dimension of Community and Foundations of an African Ethic: Beyond the universal claims of Western morality, Bujo is critical of universalist moral claims that ignore context. He calls for an ethic rooted in dialogue, solidarity, and responsibility — values deeply embedded in African life.
Some fear that inculturation relativises doctrine. Bujo shows the opposite. His theology holds Western tradition — Aquinas, Vatican II, natural law — in serious conversation, while affirming African categories as genuine partners. This is not theology of accommodation but theology of encounter. It is what Pope Francis called a “theology of dialogue”: listening to lived experience, and speaking to real communities.
Bujo’s Christology is not a local curiosity; it is a gift to the universal Church. It reminds us that the gospel is at home in every culture, and that each culture offers metaphors that illuminate Christ. For me, reading Bujo’s writings — notably those mentioned above, and African Theology in Its Social Context (1986) and African Christian Morality at the Age of Inculturation (1990) — alongside Western texts, returned theology to the street, the family compound, the ancestral homestead: to the places where moral life is lived.
HIGHER education is rightly debating identity and belonging. In theology, this matters profoundly. Students are not blank slates: we bring languages, rituals, and memories. Asking us to bracket these out impoverishes learning. Bujo’s work invites us to bring our worlds into dialogue with the gospel.
For me, growing up where ancestors were part of everyday conversation, Bujo’s perspective was intuitive. It helped me to hear the creed with African ears, and then to compare and enrich what I learned from Western sources. Far from undermining orthodoxy, such encounters deepen it. They make Jesus more than a doctrinal formula; they reveal him as the living bond of a people — the Proto-Ancestor who animates our common life.
AFRICAN Christians in the diaspora often have to navigate spaces where their moral instincts seem invisible. Bujo offers confidence that our cultural tools are not obstacles, but vehicles of understanding. Christ as mediator is no stranger to African thought: he is its fulfilment. Christ as life-giver does not cancel ancestral bonds: he transfigures them.
When young theologians see their own worlds reflected in doctrine, instead of walking away they lean in. Bujo’s vision dignifies African experience and enriches global theology.
Bujo taught me that theology breathes best when it remembers its home. For Africans, that home is not a museum of customs, but a living moral ecology where ancestors, elders, and children are woven into one story. Christ the Proto-Ancestor stands at the heart of that story: source, mediator, and destiny. He gathers our scattered threads and binds us into a communion that bridges cultures and invites the world to share in the life of God.
The Revd Dr Ericcson T. Mapfumo is Missional Priest-in-Charge of Christ Church, Moldgreen, and St James’s, Rawthorpe, in Leeds diocese, and Anglican Chaplain at the University of Huddersfield. He is a trustee of the William Temple Foundation.
