Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs

Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs PDF Author: Kwesi Dickson
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
ISBN: 071889779X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this reprinted edition of Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs, the contents of traditional African religions and their relevance to Christian ideas are explored. Through presenting the principal papers of a consultation of African theologians, Dickson and Ellingworth offer an extensive exploration of how these traditional religions and their ideas can enrich and enlighten Christianity in Africa. Rejecting a Eurocentric vision of Christianity in Africa, Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs explores ideas such as the knowledge of God, the notion of power, time, and man, as well as examining the ethical content of African traditional religion and when it can be reconciled to Christian ethics. This group of esteemed African theologians offers a framework for a synthesis between the Christian gospel and African theology, which is illuminating for historians and Christian theologians alike.

Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs

Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs PDF Author: Kwesi Dickson
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
ISBN: 071889779X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this reprinted edition of Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs, the contents of traditional African religions and their relevance to Christian ideas are explored. Through presenting the principal papers of a consultation of African theologians, Dickson and Ellingworth offer an extensive exploration of how these traditional religions and their ideas can enrich and enlighten Christianity in Africa. Rejecting a Eurocentric vision of Christianity in Africa, Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs explores ideas such as the knowledge of God, the notion of power, time, and man, as well as examining the ethical content of African traditional religion and when it can be reconciled to Christian ethics. This group of esteemed African theologians offers a framework for a synthesis between the Christian gospel and African theology, which is illuminating for historians and Christian theologians alike.

Re-imagining African Christologies

Re-imagining African Christologies PDF Author: Victor I. Ezigbo
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1630878030
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

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.

Plantation Church

Plantation Church PDF Author: Noel Leo Erskine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195369149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Plantation Church, Noel Leo Erskine investigates the history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Typically, when people talk about the "Black Church" they are referring to African-American churches in the U.S., but in fact, the majority of African slaves were brought to the Caribbean. It was there, Erskine argues, that the Black religious experience was born. The massive Afro-Caribbean population was able to establish a form of Christianity that preserved African Gods and practices, but fused them with Christian teachings, resulting in religions such as Cuba's Santería. Despite their common ancestry, the Black religious experience in the U.S. was markedly different because African Americans were a political and cultural minority. The Plantation Church became a place of solace and resistance that provided its members with a sense of kinship, not only to each other but also to their ancestral past. Despite their common origins, the Caribbean and African American Church are almost never studied together. This book investigates the parallel histories of these two strands of the Black Church, showing where their historical ties remain strong and where different circumstances have led them down unexpectedly divergent paths. The result will be a work that illuminates the histories, theologies, politics, and practices of both branches of the Black Church. This project presses beyond the nation state framework and raises intercultural and interregional questions with implications for gender, race and class. Noel Leo Erskine employs a comparative method that opens up the possibility of rethinking the language and grammar of how Black churches have been understood in the Americas and extends the notion of church beyond the United States. The forging of a Black Christianity from sources African and European, allows for an examination of the meaning of church when people of African descent are culturally and politically in the majority. Erskine also asks the pertinent question of what meaning the church holds when the converse is true: when African Americans are a cultural and political minority.

Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America

Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America PDF Author: Irving Zaretsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000517527
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book Here

Book Description
Originally published in 1978 Spirit Possession and Spirit Mediumship in Africa and Afro-America is an incredibly diverse and comprehensive bibliography on published works containing ethnographic data on, and analysis of, spirit possession and spirit mediumship in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and in some Afro-American communities in the Western Hemisphere. The sources on Western Afro-American communities were chosen to shed light on the African continent and the Americas. The bibliography, while not exhaustive, provides extensive research on the area of research in spiritualism in Africa and Afro-America. The bibliography also provides unique sources on spirit cults, ritual or ethnic groups and will be of especial interest to researchers. Although published in the late 70s, this book will still provide an incredibly useful research tool for academics in the area of religion, with a focus on spiritualism and non-western religions.

Explaining Evil

Explaining Evil PDF Author: J. Harold Ellens
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313387168
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1046

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this three-volume set, international scholars from across a broad spectrum of scholarly fields examine the concept of evil throughout history and world cultures from religious, scientific, psychological, and political perspectives. The manifestation of evil has provided a convenient theme for popular culture entertainment, ranging from the classic film The Exorcist, to almost all of Stephen King's horror novels, to video games such as Resident Evil. Unfortunately, dealing with—and attempting to overcome—the forces of evil is a pervasive problem in the real world as well. Explaining Evil addresses incidents of evil from ancient times to modern day around the globe. Concepts of evil within the big three religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—are examined, as well as in Chinese philosophy and Native American beliefs. The political or national expressions of evil are explored, such as the "axis of evil" that culminated in World War II. These volumes identify the causes and effects of evil, and suggest possible remedies to humanity's inescapable flaw.

The Nation That Fears God Prospers

The Nation That Fears God Prospers PDF Author: Chammah J. Kaunda
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506447074
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through its strength in numbers and remarkable presence in politics, Pentecostalism has become a force to reckon with in twenty-first-century Zambian society. Yet, some fundamental questions in the study of Zambian Pentecostalism and politics remain largely unaddressed by African scholars. Situated within an interdisciplinary perspective, this unique volume explores the challenge of continuity in the Zambian Pentecostal understanding and practice of spiritual power in relation to political engagement. Chammah J. Kaunda argues that the challenge of Pentecostal political imagination is found in the inculturation of spiritual power with political praxis. The result of this inculturation is that Zambian Pentecostals sacralize the political authority of state power through the charisma of the national president and other major political personalities. It has also contributed to the construction of Zambian Pentecostal leadership that is deified rather than leadership that is formed through the struggles and experiences of the marginalized and powerless. Kaunda argues that the solution does not lie either in desacralization of powers or the separation between the church and the state, but rather in rethinking the Christ event as a paradigm for the recovery of Pentecostalism's sociopolitical prophetic dynamism.

Marriage and Life After Death

Marriage and Life After Death PDF Author: Anthony Onyekwe
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1499093357
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 715

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Africa, the emphasis on family, marriage, and offspring suggest that there is a kind of an unwritten ancestral law that imposes on every male the duty of begetting a son. The reason is because the core of African soteriology is centered on offspring. The predicament of the childless couples, therefore, stems from the desire for immortality and salvation that culminates in the admission of the dead into the ancestral world. This quest for salvation and immortality constitute social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual problems for Christian as well as non-Christian childless couples.

The Holy People of God

The Holy People of God PDF Author: Svetlana Khobnya
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666772712
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays addresses aspects of Christian identity formation as God’s holy people in a global context in the midst of various challenges. The contributors offer interdisciplinary explorations on what it means to live as God’s holy people in different settings and consider challenging questions from biblical, historical, theological, missiological, and pastoral perspectives.

Whose Historical Jesus?

Whose Historical Jesus? PDF Author: William E. Arnal
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889203849
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Get Book Here

Book Description
The figure of Jesus has fascinated Western civilization for centuries. As the year 2000 approaches, eliciting connections with Jesus’ birth and return, excitement grows — as does the number of studies about Jesus. Cutting through this mass of material, Whose Historical Jesus? provides a collection of penetrating, jargon-free, intelligently organized essays that convey well both the centrality and the complexity of deciphering the historical Jesus. Contributors include such eminent scholars as John Dominic Crossan, Burton L. Mack, Seán Freyne and Peter Richardson. Essays range from traditional to modern and postmodern and address both recent and enduring concerns. Introductions and reflections augment these lucid essays, provide context and help the reader focus on the issues at stake. Whose Historical Jesus? will be of interest to all who wish to understand the current controversies and historical debates, who want insightful critiques of those views or who would like guidance on the direction of future studies.

Theologizing in Black

Theologizing in Black PDF Author: Celucien L. Joseph
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532699956
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
Theologizing in Black is a creative and rigorous comparative study on black theological musings and liberative intellectual contemplations engaging the theological ethics and anthropology of both continental African theologians (Tanzania, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and black theologians in the African Diaspora (Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, United States). Using the pluralist approach to religion promoted by the philosopher of religion and theologian John Hick, the book is also an attempt to bridge an important gap in the comparative study of religion, Africana Studies, and Liberation theology, both in Africa and its diaspora. The book provides an analytical framework and intellectual critique of white Christian theologians who deliberately disengage with and exclude black and Africana theologians in their theological writings and conversations. From this vantage point, Africana critical theology is said to be a theology of contestation as it seeks to deconstruct white supremacy in the theological enterprise. This book not only articulates a rhetoric of protest about the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of the humanity of African and black people in white theological imagination; it also enunciates a positive image of black humanity and congruently promulgates a constructive representation of blackness. The paramount goal of Africana theological anthropology and ethics is the preservation of life and promotion of human dignity and the sheer acknowledgement that the African people and people of African descent are bearers of the image of God.