Teresia Mbari Hinga | |
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Died | March 31, 2023 | (aged 68)
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Discipline | Theology |
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Teresia Mbari Hinga (January 25, 1955 – March 31, 2023) was a Kenyan Christian feminist theologian and a professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University in California. She was a founding member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.[1]
Hinga was born in Kenya on January 25, 1955, to Agnes Wairimu and Ernest Hinga, pioneer African Catholics who treated their male and female children equally, including in education.[2] Hinga attended a Loreto high school.[3] She received a bachelor's degree in English Literature and Religious Studies from Kenyatta University in 1977 and a master's in Religious Studies from Nairobi University in 1980.[4][1] She earned in PhD from the University of Lancaster in the UK in 1990 with a thesis titled Women, Power and Liberation in an African Church: A Theological Case Study of the Legio Maria Church in Kenya on the role of women in African Christianity.[4][5] Hinga was a founding member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians and a member of the Kenyan Chapter of the Circle.[6]
Hinga was one of the co-founders of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians,[4] established in 1989 at a gathering of African women theologians in Ghana.[2] She was associate professor of religion at DePaul University in Chicago.[7]
Hinga was on the faculty at Santa Clara University from 2005.[4] She was a member of the Black Catholic Symposium of the American Academy of Religion and of the Association for the Academic Study of Religion in Africa.[4] She was on the editorial board of the Journal of Global Catholicism.[8]
Hinga died on March 31, 2023 after a protracted battle with cancer.[9]
Hinga's research interests included religion and women, African religious history, and the ethics of globalization.[4] She argued that the Christ of the missionary enterprise was "ambivalent", both a conqueror legitimizing subjugation and a liberator.[7] Women, in particular, need to reject any christology that "smacks of sexism and functions to entrench lopsided gender relations."[7]
Hinga's 2017 book, African, Christian, Feminist:The Enduring Search for What Matters is a collection of essays that examine her journey from Africa to Silicon Valley, seeking to show the concrete impact of feminist work in religion in areas including HIV/AIDS and violence against women.[2][10][11] It includes the story of Kimpa Vita, an African Catholic woman in the 1700s who was martyred for challenging missionary Christianity and its support of colonialism and slavery.[2]
Hinga was a single mother to two children, Pauline and Anthony, and two grandchildren.[3]