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Mercy Amba Eudziwa Oduyoye
Mercy Amba Eudziwa Oduyoye was born October 21, 1934, in Brong Asante Village (Chidilli, 12) the eldest of nine children of Charles Kwaw Yamoah and Mercy Yaa Dakwaa Yamoah. Her family was from the Akan ethnic group. Her father, an ordained Methodist minister and teacher eventually became the third President of the Conference Methodist Church in Ghana from 1973-1977 (Fiedler, Mercy, Her mother graduated from  Wesley Girls School and was an activist and leader in her own right for the liberation of women and children in the church. (Soujourners Magazine, 24)She states that she lives out of her "Christianized Akan background." (Russell, 36) Amba means born on Saturday and the name Eudziwa is after my grandfather, Kodwo Ewudzi. (Russell, 38)

Education
Oduyoye spent her first three years of primary school in Asamankese, Ghana. She continued her primary school education in a small Asante village called Akyinakrom. (https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye).

add this before college.  From 1953-1954 she attended the Teacher’s Training College at Kumasi College of Technology, This school continues today under the name, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. Here she completed a Post-Secondary Certificate of Education, called Teachers Certificate A, from the Ministry of Education Ghana. From 1954-1959 she taught at Asawase Methodist Girls Middle School near Kusami. https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye Noel Q. King, a church history professor at the University of Ghana, encouraged Oduyoye to pursue theology because the enterprise of theology needed women's voices. (Soujourner, 24) (Chilidi, 14-15)

add Chidili source to this sentence. In 1959, Oduyoye matriculated at the University of Ghana to study theology. She earned her Bachelor of Theology from the University of Ghana in 1963, becoming the first woman to graduate with the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in the Study of Religion from the University of Ghana, Legon. Until 1963 the University of Ghana, Legon was a college of the University of London. (Chidili, 14,15) She then won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge and earned her second bachelor's degree (1965) and her Master of Arts degree (1969), both in theology. https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye (Chidili, Bartholomew Udealo, "The vision of Mercy Amba Oduyoye an African feminist theologian and educator: Pedagogy of human dignity" (2003). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3081402. page 14)

Career
add to teaching after masters: Rather than teaching at the University, she return to Ghana in 1965 and taught two years at Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast, Ghana. (Soujouners, 24 )

Here I think is the place for activism. Teaching and activism has always been two sides of the same coin. In 1967.....

She held her second high school post from 1973 to 1974 at Lagelu Grammar School for Boys, a community school in Ibadan, Nigeria with about 80% Muslim children. At Lagelu she taught Biblical Studies and how to read the Bible from multiple Perspectives. (https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye) (Chidili)

In 1964, Oduyoye graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK with a Bachelors of Art (Honours) degree in theology focusing on Tripos Part III, Dogmatics (1963-1965). She went on to receive a Master of Arts (Honours) degree in theology from the same university in 1969 https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye

From 1967 - 1970 Oduyoye was the Youth Education Secretary at the World Council of Church. She was also the treasurer of the Student Christian Federation of Ghana. She met her husband during this period and married in 1968 and both lived in Geneva until 1970. (Chidili, 17) Adedoyin Modupe Oduyoye was a Yale graduate, a publisher, and the General Secretary of the Students Christian Movement (SCM) of which Mercy was also a member. (Fiedler, 18-20) She resigned from the WCC in Geneva in 1970. She moved to Nigeria where she took a job as Youth Secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) from 1970 - 1973 (Fiedler, 18-20) https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye She left the AACC when all employees were required to live in Nairobi. She began teaching first in high school and later in college. After a short stint teaching in a boys' school, she joined the Religious Studies faculty at the University of Ibadan in 1975. She became the first woman member of The Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) in 1976,(Fiedler p. 30) Here she created the Commission on Theology from Third World Women's Perspective. She also participated in a four-year study (1978-1981) titled the “Community of Women and Men in Church and Society.” This study uncovered inequalities in Church communities as well as sexism, racism, and classism in society as a whole. In 1987 she became the Deputy Secretary of the World Council of Churches, the first African to take this position. She remained in this position until 1994. (Oduyoye, 1990, Stone) (Chidili, 17). While at the WCC, Oduoyoe launched the "Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women," 1988 - 1998, in solidarity with the 1985 United Nations Conference of Women in Nairobi. She retired from the WCC in 1994. She founded the “Institute of African Women In Religions and Culture" in 1999 after four years of fundraising globally and promoting the idea for the institute. Today she heads this Institute. (Chidili, 18,)

On April 19, 2018 Mercy Amba Oduyoye, the director of the Institute for Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological Seminary in Ghana, delivered the 33rd Madeleva Lecture at St. Mary's College, founded by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who have their international novitiate and motherhouse on the campus. Oduyoye is the first person from outside the United States to give the lecture. https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/spirituality-equality/ghanian-theologian-mercy-amba-oduyoye-offers-madeleva-lecture-53361

''Who Will Roll the Stone Away? The Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women'' (1990), Oduyoye records the first two years of the Decade. (Oduyoye, 1990, p. 68).Through this text, she provides an historical overview of the key events that led to the implementation of the Ecumenical Decade including the Community Study and the UN Decade for Women. Emphasizing the importance of churches in solidarity with women, she further delineates the major activities surrounding the launch of the Decade from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean to Latin America, the Middle East, North America, and the Pacific. Accents of women’s leadership roles and meticulous work during the launch and promotion of the Decade emerge throughout the book showcasing their vital role in its success. Her concluding comments reflect her vision and hope for the Decade “Ten Years Hence?” In the Decade 1988-98 “we seek justice for women, to dream ‘bold dreams’ for a new community, and to act both locally and globally for the conversion of church and society towards the recognition of the full humanity of women”

Oduyoye had also launched the WCC "Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women" (1988 - 1998) and the United Nations had concluded its "Decade on Women" (1976 - 1985) that was launched in Mexico City and concluded with the 1985 UN Conference of Women in Nairobi.https://www.un.org/en/conferences/women/nairobi1985 (Global,194)

The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians
In 1989 Dr. Oduyoye, convened and launched the first meeting of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians at Trinity College in Accra, Ghana. An International Planning Committee helped plan the convening. Seventy-nine women gathered from across the African continent to see how they could address patriarchy, racism, and sexism rooted in both culture and religion, a theological method Oduyoye developed at Harvard. The attendees named themselves the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians evoking a non-hierarchical and inclusive, methodology. While the first group was primarily Christian, the Circle nourishes "communality," face-to-face encounters, that encourage solidarity in the struggle with the multiple religious traditions that find expression on the African continent. Hinga, Teresia M. African, Christian, feminist: the enduring search for what matters" 2017 Orbis Books isbn=978-1-62698-249-9) (Hinga, Teresia, 2002 African Feminist Theologies, the Global Village, and the Imperative of Solidarity across Borders: The Case of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol.18, p79-86JSTOR.)

Rachel Fiedler insists that the birth of the Circle is rooted in ecumenical movements such as the World Council of Churches where Oduyoye was Deputy General Secretary and in EATWOT. The Circle focuses on injustice rooted in religion and culture. The International Planning Committee was international in scope with some Africans based in Western Universities, so there were influences from Feminist, Murjista, Asian, and Womanist Theologies that were tackling the problems of the marginalization of women in liberation theologies that were breaking into theological discourse. Dr. Teresia Hinga, who attended this first conference of the Circle said that Dr. Oduyoye was frustrated at not seeing African women represented in global liberation theologies. The primary goal of the circle is to systematically apply a "hermeneutics of suspicion" to both religion and culture and promote publications and research that "examines systematically the role of religion and culture in facilitating injustices, particularly sexism." (194) Hinga, Teresia M. "Tapping the moral wisdom of Africa's Triple Plus heritage of religion and culture: in Multi-religious perspectives on a global ethic: in search of a common morality 2021 Renaud, Myriam and Schweiker, William Routledge ISBN 9780367819958, ISBN 9781003011279

== Sources == Oredein, Oluwatomisin. "GUARD YOUR CIRCLE SISTERS." Sojourners Magazine, 12, 2020, 22-27, http://libproxy.tulane.edu:2048/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/guard-your-circle-sisters/docview/2511382355/se-2.

Russell, Letty M. Inheriting Our Mothers’ Gardens Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988. ISBN 066425019X ; ISBN 978-0664250195

Fiedler, Rachel NyaGondwe. “Mercy Amba Oduyoye as Mother and Leader of the Circle (1989 - 1996).” A History of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians 1989-2007, Mzuni Press, 2017, pp. 10–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh8r2j5.4. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023.

Ogunbiyi, David Oluwabukunmi African Theologians and Christian Theology: The Contributions of Selected African Theologians and Scholars to African Christian Theology in Nigeria: Mercy Oduyoye. (ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BQZ7JHWD)

https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/mercy-amba-oduyoye

Oduyoye, M. A. (2004). Beads and strands: Reflections of an African woman on Christianity in Africa. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. p. xii; Amoah, p. xx).

Chidili, Bartholomew Udealo, "The vision of Mercy Amba Oduyoye an African feminist theologian and educator: Pedagogy of human dignity" (2003). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI3081402.

https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI3081402

Oduyoye, M. A. (1990). ''Who will roll the stone away? The ecumenical decade of the churches in solidarity with women.'' Geneva, Switzerland: World Council of Churches.

Renaud, Miriam., & Schweiker,William. eds. ‎2020. Multi-Religious Perspectives on a Global Ethic: In Search of a Common Morality. New York:  Routledge:  ISBN 9780367640026

Hinga, Teresia M. “African Feminist Theologies, the Global Village, and the Imperative of Solidarity across Borders: The Case of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, vol. 18, no. 1, 2002, pp. 79–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25002427. Accessed 6 Mar. 2023. The book is ISBN 9781626982499

Adriaan van Klinken. Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa https://lucas.leeds.ac.uk/article/reimagining-christianity-and-sexual-diversity-in-africa/ LEEDS AFRICAN STUDIES BULLETIN NO. 82 (2021)THURSDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2021

Adriaan van Klinken - Mercy Oduyoya: The Theology of Mercy Amba Oduyoye: Ecumenism, Feminism, and Communal Practice (Notre Dame Studies in African Theology) Hardcover – May 15, 2023

Oredein, Oluwatomisin Word and Witness: A Theological Account of the Life and Voice of Mercy Amba Oduyoye dissertation, Duke Divinity School Duke University 2017 https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/handle/10161/16431  https://www.brite.edu/staff/OluwatomisinOredein/

Kotzé, M.,  2019,  ‘Mothering  as  sacred  duty  and  metaphor:  The  theology  of  Mercy  Oduyoye’,  in  M.  Kotzé,  N.  Marais  &  N.  Müller  van  Velden  (eds.),  Reconceiving Reproductive Health: Theological and Christian Ethical Reflections (Reformed Theology in Africa Series Volume 1), pp. 81–94, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2019.BK151.06

Kwok Pui-lan Mercy Amba Oduyoye and African Women's Theology Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 7-22 (16 pages) Published By: Indiana University Press

Phiri, I.A.,  2006,  ‘Introduction:  Treading  softly  but  firmly’,  in  I.A.  Phiri  &  S.  Nadar (eds.), African  women,  religion,  and  health:  Essays  in  Honor  of  Mercy  Amba  Ewudziwa Oduyoye, pp. 1–16, Cluster Publications, Pietermaritzbur  ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1620320924

(Isabel Phiri notes that for a  long time   Oduyoye  was  ‘the  only  African  woman [...] to write and publish theological reflections of any significance’. ((Phiri  and  Nadar  (2006:2, )Furthermore, Oduyoye is regarded as the mother of  the  Circle  of  Concerned  African  Women  Theologians  and  while various descriptions have been ascribed to her work, as summarised  by  Marais  (2015:172),  one  of  the  best-known  monikers  assigned  to  her  is  ‘the  mother  of  African  women’s  theologies’ (Phiri & Nadar 2006:10). Kotze (above, 81)) Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. (1995) Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy. (Maryknoll: Orbis Press)

Essay critiquing John Mbiti's Love and Marriage in Africa. 1993.