Leading virtue

‘Leading Virtue’ explores the use of Alasdair MacIntyre’s tradition based model of ethics as a heuristic tool in analysing the contextualisation of Christian ethics. Ethical contextualisation is understood as the interaction and synthesis of particular Christian moral traditions with the moral traditions encountered in the different cultures where the Christian faith was established. This study argues that morality in African cultures may be better understood as discrete traditions. This claim is substantiated by historical and empirical studies of the Fante (Akan) and Methodist moral traditions and their interaction. These studies yield credible evidence that a Fante-Methodist moral tradition is emerging out of the encounter between the two traditions at the level of leadership practice. The resulting synthesis can serve as a model for the contextualisation of Christian ethics in other cultures.