Climate change and its global impact on all people, especially the marginalized communities, is widely recognized as the biggest crisis of our time. It is a context that invites all subjects and disciplines to bring their resources in diagnosing the problem and seeking the healing of the Earth. The African continent, especially its women, constitute the subalterns of global climate crisis. Can they speak? If they speak, can they be heard? Both the Earth and the Africa have been identified with the adjective “Mother.” This gender identity tells tales in patriarchal and imperial worlds that use the female gender to signal legitimation of oppression and exploitation. In this volume, African women theologians and their female-identifying colleagues, struggle with reading and interpreting religious texts in the context of environmental crisis that are threatening life on Earth. The chapters interrogate how biblical texts and African cultural resources imagine the Earth and our relationship with the Earth: Do these texts offer readers windows of hope for re-imagining liberating relationship with the Earth? How do they intersect with gender, race, empire, ethnicity, sexuality among others? Beginning with Genesis, journeying through Exodus, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of John, the authors seek to read in solidarity with the Earth, for the healing of the whole Earth community.

This chapter uses the word "motif" of healing to mean a theory of healing in the AICs.

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The most stressful periods in Setswana cultural history are mostly those that were dominated by extended drought. The cosmological interpretation of the cause of droughts is that the ancestors were displeased with the condition of the land and the harm inflicted on it had to be atoned for. In Setswana cosmology, the only person who could perform this act was the rainmaker. His/her role involved appeasing the ancestors and educating the people on the importance of ensuring harmony between nature and the ancestors. Under the direction of the rainmaker, the ceremonies and associated dances were practised and executed at specific times in the natural cycle, thereby expressing the community's gratitude for the roles of the environment and the ancestors, as well as promoting the understanding of cosmological interconnectedness. Following their mid-nineteenth century arrival in the Batswana tribal territories that constitute modern-day Botswana, the missionaries abolished the rainmaker leadership role, replaced it with Christian prayer meetings, and initiated environmental injustice in the land. This chapter utilises postcolonial and ecocritical theories to examine the cultural and environmental impact of this abolition and the waning of environmental ethics in Botswana.

The term Christ or Messiah describes a saviour and liberator, who is identified through his or her deeds of liberation in a particular context. In the Hebrew Bible, the Christ was an anointed figure, set apart by God to serve his or her community. And so, kings and prophets were anointed ones. As the Israelites fell under a series of empires, they began to expect a military Christ, from the house of David, who would liberate them from the oppression of powerful empires, who took their land and exiled them or reduced them to dependence and taxation. Jesus was identified by his followers as a Messianic figure, thus popularly known as the Christ or Messiah. Liberation theologians, facing various forms of oppression have constructed Christologies that speak to their contexts, cultures and issues. Consequently, we have a Black Christology; women's Christology; HIV and AIDS Christology, amongst many others.In this chapter, we acknowledge the environmental oppression and seek to shift the liberation paradigm from its anthropocentric focus to an environmentally based Christology. The chapter will use the Okavango Delta of Botswana to propose an environmental Christology. Describing the arrival of the living waters of the Okavango as the mighty sap of life that awakens and supports the fauna and flora; the numerous heads of wildlife, big and small, and the human communities of that area, the discussion argues that the Okavango Delta is a Christic place.