Afro-Christianity at the Grassroots

Afro-Christianity at the Grassroots PDF Author: G. Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004100350
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This publication clearly indicates the dynamics of indigenous Christianity in Southern Africa with its holistic approach addressing the needs of their flocks in all dimensions of their existence. Their own church problems also receive attention.

Afro-Christianity at the Grassroots

Afro-Christianity at the Grassroots PDF Author: G. Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004100350
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This publication clearly indicates the dynamics of indigenous Christianity in Southern Africa with its holistic approach addressing the needs of their flocks in all dimensions of their existence. Their own church problems also receive attention.

Afro-Christian Religion at the Grassroots in Southern Africa

Afro-Christian Religion at the Grassroots in Southern Africa PDF Author: Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780889461758
Category : Christian sects
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description


Re-imagining African Christologies

Re-imagining African Christologies PDF Author: Victor I. Ezigbo
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 160608822X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
"Who do you say that I am" (Mark 8:29) is the question of Christology. By asking this question, Jesus invites his followers to interpret him from within their own contexts-history, experience, and social location. Therefore, all responses to Jesus's invitation are contextual. But for too long, many theologians particularly in the West have continued to see Christology as a universal endeavor that is devoid of any contextual influences. This understanding of Christology undermines Jesus's expectations from us to imagine and appropriate him from within our own contexts. In Re-imagining African Christologies, Victor I. Ezigbo presents a constructive exposition of the unique ways that many African theologians and lay Christians from various church denominations have interpreted and appropriated Jesus Christ in their own contexts. He also articulates the constructive contributions that these African Christologies can make to the development of Christological discourse in non-African Christian communities.

Kwame Bediako

Kwame Bediako PDF Author: Tim Hartman
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN: 1506480454
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako presses all Christians to question their own theological commitments. He does so by rethinking Christian identity in light of cultural identity and the shortcomings of colonialism. Bediako's quest to be both African and Christian informs what it means to be Christian in a secularized Europe and North America. Far more than just chronological and biographical, Tim Hartman's analysis of the arc of Bediako's theology demonstrates that Bediako's vision of Christianity as a non-Western religion allows it to serve as a resource for World Christianity amid the exponential growth of Christianity in the Global South. Hartman points to how Bediako sidesteps the influence of Western thought by rooting African Christianity in a twin heritage of pre-Christendom patristic theology and precolonial traditional religious practices of Africa. Bediako expands the canon of theological resources available for Christians by eliminating the distinction between gospel and culture. Since there is no such thing as a pure theology for Bediako, culture itself becomes a source of divine revelation through the incarnation. Hartman's study of Bediako helpfully corrects inaccurate portrayals of African Christianity. The growth of African Christianity should not be feared, nor mischaracterized as narrow-minded or too conservative. Bediako asserts a polycentric understanding of the Christian faith based in grassroots theologies and the beliefs of actual Christians. While Bediako agrees that Christianity in Africa (and the Global South) is the future of the Christian faith, he rejects assumptions that the Christian faith needs to be yoked to political power. Instead, Bediako offers an alternative understanding of politics based on democracy and nondominating power. Both Bediako and the book offer a way forward in thinking about questions of religious pluralism. African Christianity has never known cultural hegemony as African Christians have always lived with Islam and African traditional religions. Bediako offers a theology of "Jesus is Lord" while appreciating the integrity of Islam and traditional African religions. In the end, the book presents an African Christian theologian who values--and does not simply reject--African traditional religions. Bediako believed that traditional African religions, far from being demonic, served as evangelical preparation for the Christian faith and as the substructure of African Christianity, and that African religious imagination was the foundation for the Christian faith worldwide. As Hartman shows, the more distinctively African Bediako's Christianity became, the more suited that theology became for the world.

All Things Hold Together

All Things Hold Together PDF Author: M. L. Daneel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The African Initiated Churches (AICs) in many parts of Southern Africa represent up to 50% and more of African Christianity. They have often been negatively characterised as 'sects' of a dubious Christian nature or as 'separatists', growing mainly by virtue of African reaction to the mission endeavours of Western denominations. In-depth studies appearing in this series, however, have convincingly illustrated that in terms of growth rates, indigenized evangelisation, missionary campaigns, and ecclesiastical contextualisation the AICs can no longer be regarded as a peripheral phenomenon. They belong to the mainstream of African Christianity and have developed innovative mission methods of their own which can only rate as a major contribution to the expanding Church in Africa. Although the individual essays focus on AIC leadership, worship, sacraments, healing, dialogue with practitioners of African Traditional Religion, and earthkeeping, the narration as a whole portrays the richness of AIC life and faith. The composite picture reflects the attraction this form of inculturated Christianity holds for African people - an attraction which stimulates recruitment and rapid church expansion.

African Christology

African Christology PDF Author: Clifton Clarke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781608994335
Category : Africa, Sub-Saharan
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The degree to which Christianity has been embraced by Africa south of the Sahara has been a phenomenon that has led to a closer examination of the mutual impact of the Christian faith and African culture. A very important question in this continuing debate is how African Christians can embrace a faith, which came to them via Europe and North America, in a way that is true to the Bible and at the same time be the religion of African people. For many, the African Indigenous churches epitomize this tension between faith and culture. At the center of this debate lies Jesus Christ. How are Africans in post-missionary Africa to speak of Christ in a way that is truly meaningful to the African and through the worldview that is their own? Clarke questions the theological axis on which Christology in Africa has revolved and upon which Christological discourse has been developed. He advocates a re-examination of the language and symbolism, or orality, as a means of articulating who Jesus is for Africans in ways that are suitable to their context and worldview. Drawing upon a large-scale questionnaire survey, other qualitative research methods, and theologians and researchers of African religions and culture, Clarke represents a grassroots perspective of the way Christ is experienced in Akan African Indigenous Churches in Ghana. ""Chafing for too long under the yoke of a Western Christianity that was irrelevant to their context, African Spirit churches have emerged with a vigorous, inculturated faith pitched at the wavelength of African need. The biblical Christ they joyfully worship resembles, thinks like, and speaks like an African. African Christology adds this significant voice to the Christological conversation, expanding and enriching it with unique, illuminating insights and perspectives. A needed contribution to theological scholarship and global Christianity!"" --Trevor Grizzle Professor of New Testament Oral Roberts University ""Clarke's African Christology is a must read, not only for those interested in African theology nor only for scholars, historians, and missiologists of African Christianity, but for all interested in and called to the Christian theological enterprise in a post-western, post-Enlightenment, and post-Christendom world. Systematicians, dogmaticians, and academic theologians across the discipline who take up this book will be challenged to rethink their methodological paradigms for Christian theological discourse in the twenty-first century. --Amos Yong J. Rodman Williams Professor of Theology Regent University ""Much has been written on the mission history of the African Independent Churches, arguably the most significant development in African Christianity within the last century. Clifton's useful study takes us into their understanding of Jesus Christ. The extensive use it makes of their oral theological discourses on Jesus Christ enables us to appreciate the Christological significance of Christian religious innovation in Africa."" --J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu Professor of African Christianity and Pentecostal Theology Trinity Theological Seminary, Ghana Clifton Clarke is Associate Professor of Global Missions and World Christianity at Regent University and is an ordained bishop in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN).

Inside the Whirlwind

Inside the Whirlwind PDF Author: Jason Alan Carter
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498230695
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
How would ordinary African Christians interpret the figure and book of Job--the quintessential biblical book on suffering--from contexts of extreme poverty, tropical disease, and rampant suffering? How do African Christians culturally understand issues of theodicy and the nature of evil? What role does the devil play in African Pentecostalism? How does the biblical lament empower faith and foster hope for people living with HIV/AIDS? In what way does a theology of (eschatological) hope inform the spirituality and prayers of ordinary African believers in the midst of suffering? Inside the Whirlwind offers insight on these fascinating questions. Based upon the perspectives of Fang Christians in Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea (Central Africa), the thematic and theological reflections on evil, suffering, and hope emerging from sermons and Bible studies on the book of Job offer a remarkable window to view the main theological issues shaping grassroots African Christianity in the twenty-first century.

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind PDF Author: Thomas C. Oden
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830837051
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Thomas C. Oden surveys the decisive role of African Christians and theologians in shaping the doctrines and practices of the church of the first five centuries, and makes an impassioned plea for the rediscovery of that heritage. Christians throughout the world will benefit from this reclaiming of an important heritage.

Must God Remain Greek?

Must God Remain Greek? PDF Author: Robert Earl Hood
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451417265
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"Must God Remain Greek? brings together, in a fascinating and readable way, the cultural and religious thought and activities of African peoples, Caribbeans, and Afro-Americans to bear upon Christian theology. As a scholar Dr. Hood is at home in the three regions, as well as in the Western Christian tradition. He raises fundamental questions for theology, which have tremendous consequences in the present day of Christian expansion and ecumenical movement.... It is refreshing to see an old problem recast in cultural areas where Christianity is throbbing and thriving."? John S. Mbiti

African Christianity

African Christianity PDF Author: Ogbu Kalu
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
It is ideologically driven to build a group of church historians who will tell the story of African Christianity, not Christianity in Africa, as an African story, by intentionally privileging the patterns of African agency without neglecting the noble roles played by missionaries. The effort has been to identify the major themes or story lines in African encounters and in the appropriation of the gospel. --from publisher description.