Jean-Marc Ela

Jean -Marc Ela ( born September 27, 1937 in Ebolowa, Cameroon, † December 26, 2008 in Vancouver, Canada) was a Cameroonian liberation theologian and sociologist.

Life

Ela was born in Ebolowa in southern Cameroon. His parents were peasants who cultivated cocoa; He had seven siblings. Ela attended a mission school and was ordained a priest in 1964. He then studied philosophy, theology and sociology in Strasbourg and at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1969 he received his doctorate in Strasbourg as a doctor of theology with a thesis Transcendance de Dieu et existence humaine selon Luther. Essai d' introduction à la logique d'une théologie. In 1978 the PhD in sociology on the subject of Structures sociales traditionnelles et changements économiques chez les Montagnards du Nord - Cameroun at the Sorbonne.

From 1971 to Ela was over ten years as a missionary among impoverished members of Kirdi in northern Cameroon. This activity greatly influenced the development and elaboration of his Afrocentric liberation theology. Later Ela taught at the Faculty of the University of Yaoundé Protestant theology and became in 1985 Professor of Sociology. He also participated in teaching activities and visiting professor at Louvain- la -Neuve and Brussels was.

Ela was a staunch critic of the authoritarian regime of Paul Biya. In the early 1990s he celebrated mass regularly in a parish in Yaounde and held socially critical sermons that were popular particularly among students. He has published newspaper articles, in which he called for the democratization of the political system. From pro-government circles Elah, who was President Biya as the Bulu ethnic group, but the ruling party RDPC kept his distance, as a "traitor " branded. After Ela had been warned by family members against possible attempts on his life, or he went into exile in 1995 to Canada, where he taught sociology at the University of Laval in Quebec City and at the University of Québec in Montréal.

Compared to its reputation abroad Elas position in the Catholic Church of Cameroon was marginal. He claimed that the African Church should undergo a process of inculturation and be economically independent. As a result, Ela has never taught at the Catholic University of Yaoundé. In 1994 he took part in the Synod of Bishops in Rome, without belonging to the official Cameroonian delegation.

2008 Ela died in a hospital in Vancouver after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years earlier.

Honor

Jean -Marc Ela was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1999.

Writings (selection )

• My faith as an African. The Gospel in Black African reality of life. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1997 ( Third World Theology. Band 10).
• God freed. New ways of African theology. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2003 ( Third World Theology. Band 30).