Twin Lakes (III)
Ligon Duncan interviewing Thabiti Anyabwile by telephone
This is the first of the “tele-interviews” that will be a part of TLF. Thabiti Anyabwile was a speaker at TLF last year. Ligon interviewed him with special reference to Thabiti’s first two books.
~Notes from Anyabwile Interview~
Ligon asked Thabiti to briefly give testimony to his salvation in Christ. Thabiti followed with the powerful story of God’s faithfulness to him leading to Christ after spiritual bondage to Islam and the sorrow of a miscarriage. He went on to tell of his time at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and how he ended up in Grand Cayman.
At Ligon’s request, Thabiti went on to explain why he had written The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors. Ligon–no stranger to the study of church history–expressed his own gratitude to Thabiti for retelling the lives of the men chronicled in The Faithful Preacher.
The discussion of The Faithful Preacher led to a more thorough discussion of Thabiti’s other book, The Decline of African-American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Accommodation. Thabiti explained how he used the standard categories of systematic theology to show the departure of African-American theology from traditional biblical orthodoxy.
Ligon particularly noted appreciation for Thabiti’s prescription for the recovery of African-American theology. Ligon suggested that those four points were applicable not just to African-American theology but to any church including the one that Ligon pastors.
Thabiti briefly explained that four point prescription.
- Re-center the Bible
- Re-exalt God
- Re-cover the gospel
- Re-vitalize the church
