“The Future is Ancestral”: Towards the Eschatology of Ancestry from the Ecodomy of Quilombola Ways of Life

Abstract

The climate crisis, pandemics and countless environmental catastrophes force us to confront the future we can expect for humanity and all of creation. Black women and the earth are the most affected in this context, which is shaped by patriarchy and a predatory economic system. Asking about the future means engaging the eschatological imagination to generate creative power and action capable of anticipating God’s desire for humanity and creation. We ask whether the Black diaspora, with its unique particularities, can contribute to Global theology. Can we reconfigure eschatology based on this particularity and, in doing so, nourish the hope of peoples who are massacred by the current system? To weave a black eschatology – an “eschatology of ancestry” – we use the threads of African ecofeminism and Afrodiasporic thought. We point to the ecodomy of quilombola ways of life as a practical eschatology.

KEYWORDS: End of the World. Eschatology. African Ecofeminism. Afrodiasporic Thought. Ancestry. Ecodomy.