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Author: Joseph Quayesi-Amakye
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401210047
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 375
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Book Description
Pentecostalism has traditionally always been other-worldly in the sense that Pentecostals tend to believe that people’s lives are controlled by unseen powers that are responsible for both good and bad. This makes people look for a power that is stronger than those of evil and can ensure that believers enjoy good health and prosperity. Pentecostals find this power in Jesus Christ, who is victorious over all evil powers, and therefore pray that Jesus will save them. For them, life is characterised by suffering and evil, but in Christ they are conquerors, and life is full of concrete blessings. Using songs and sermons, this book shows the main widespread beliefs of the leadership and grassroots members of the Church of Pentecost (Ghanaian Pentecostals) on Christology and evil. It discusses their fear of evil and their finding solace in the power of Jesus. The author supplements this attitude by the biblical calling to help build a just and peaceful society. He thus develops a theology of the public domain in which the church can make a difference by developing its diaconal services, establishing more educational institutions, and helping—together with people who want to collaborate—build a just and more affluent society with good healthcare and a literate and thriving population. This book balances on the interface between traditional African religious ideas and practices and Christian ideals for a more humane society.
Author: Joseph Quayesi-Amakye
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401210047
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 375
Get Book Here
Book Description
Pentecostalism has traditionally always been other-worldly in the sense that Pentecostals tend to believe that people’s lives are controlled by unseen powers that are responsible for both good and bad. This makes people look for a power that is stronger than those of evil and can ensure that believers enjoy good health and prosperity. Pentecostals find this power in Jesus Christ, who is victorious over all evil powers, and therefore pray that Jesus will save them. For them, life is characterised by suffering and evil, but in Christ they are conquerors, and life is full of concrete blessings. Using songs and sermons, this book shows the main widespread beliefs of the leadership and grassroots members of the Church of Pentecost (Ghanaian Pentecostals) on Christology and evil. It discusses their fear of evil and their finding solace in the power of Jesus. The author supplements this attitude by the biblical calling to help build a just and peaceful society. He thus develops a theology of the public domain in which the church can make a difference by developing its diaconal services, establishing more educational institutions, and helping—together with people who want to collaborate—build a just and more affluent society with good healthcare and a literate and thriving population. This book balances on the interface between traditional African religious ideas and practices and Christian ideals for a more humane society.
Author: Lourens Minnema
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042023376
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Kwabena ASAMOAH-GYADU: Conquering Satan, Demons, Principalities, and Powers: Ghanaian Traditional and Christian Perspectives on Religion, Evil,
Author: Paul Gifford
Publisher: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
In sub-Saharan Africa over the last two decades there has been an explosion of Christianity. This book sets out to identify its particular character, focusing on a particular place: Greater Accra, the capital of Ghana. Paul Gifford examines a wide range of Accra's new churches, giving priority to mega-churches. Every dimension -- discourse, theological vision, worship, rituals, music, media involvement, use of the Bible, conventions, finances, clientele -- is analysed. Gifford argues that this Christianity is not otherworldly: its emphasis is on success, achievement, wealth here and now. Yet within this general orientation there is diversity. At one end of the spectrum are churches that, building on the traditional religious imagination, see demonic forces everywhere blocking personal success. In the churches the key factor is the special 'man of God' who is understood to have the 'anointing' to conquer these forces, to 'reverse the curse' that is holding the believer back. At the other end is a strain of this new Christianity that discounts spiritual forces and sees victory resulting from the believer's own education and skills, and from transforming culture.The book also joins the debate over the role of this Christianity in modernizing economic and political structures. It sets the scene by describing Ghana's political and economic situation in the decades when these churches were proliferating, and outlines the current debate on the reasons for Africa's economic plight. It is argued that although focusing on success and wealth can provide motivation in circumstances where it is so easy to despair, the pervasive emphasis on miracles militates against any natural fostering of a new work ethic. As for their political role, some churches are easily co-opted; others challenge the government, but for 'spiritual' reasons that provide little incentive to grapple with issues of governance; by contrast, Gifford finds one important church encouraging change of the entire political culture. No other book has set forth the complex nature of Africa's new Christianity with such clarity, or offered such a searching analysis of its power to tackle Africa's predicament.
Author: Birgit Meyer
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474471005
Category : SOCIAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
This book offers an ethnography of the emergence of a local Christianity and its relation to changing social, political and economic formations among the Peki Ewe in Ghana. Focusing on the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which arose from encounters between the Ewe and German Piestist missionaries, the author examines recent conflicts leading to the secession of many pentecostally oriented members, which it places in a historical perspective. The main argument is that, for the Ewe, involvement with modernity goes hand in hand with new enchantment, rather than disenchantment, of the world. At the grassroots level, the study focuses on the image of the Devil, which the missionaries communicated to the Ewe through translation and which currently receives much attention in the Pentecostal churches. It is shown that this image played and still plays a crucial role in the local appropriation of Christianity, since diabolisation confirmed the existence of local gods and witchcraft and incorporated them into Christian belief as demons. Comparing the discourses and practices of mission and Pentecostal churches, the study reveals that the latter pay much more attention to Satan - especially through 'deliverance' rituals. Pentecostalism's increasing popularity thus stems from the fact that it ties into historically generated local understandings of Christianity, which, despite a declared dislike of non-Christian religious practices, stand much closer to Ewe religion than missionary Christianity. With its emphasis on the hybrid image of the Devil and people's obsessions with occult forces as a way to mediate the attractions and discontents of modernity, this book sheds light on a hitherto neglected dimension in studies of African Christianity.
Author: Charles Sarpong Aye-Addo
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1621897745
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
As Christianity expands and grows in Africa, there is deep new interest in African theology in general, and the way in which some African theologians are interpreting the significance of Christ within African culture, in particular. This volume explores the Christology of two of the foremost African thinkers against the background of the West African Akan culture. The result is a rare and fascinating look at some of the key cultural symbols of African culture, the struggle to reinterpret the "white, blond, blue-eyed Christ" presented by pioneering missionaries to Africa, and the pitfalls and promises that attend the exercise. The selected theologians, John Samuel Pobee and Kwame Bediako, are put into a critical conversation with Karl Barth in order to initiate a dialogue between Western theology and African theology that brings to the fore some of the pertinent issues about the particularity and universality of Christ. The volume, while seeking to make Christ relevant for Africa, moves away from romanticizing African culture and insists on being faithful to the biblical witness to Christ. The result is an attempt to present an engaging piece of work that makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on Christology and indigenous theology.
Author: C. G. Baeta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
This was probably the first serious theological study by an African scholar of the African response to the Christian faith. It opened the research field, provided a reference point, and paved the way for future investigation. It is now regarded as a seminal work, central to historical understandings of the theology of indigenous African Christianity, its relationship with indigenous African religions, African prophet movements and the independent churches. To this day, it remains one of the most authoritative academic sources on religious innovation in Africa in the twentieth century.
Author: Mookgo Solomon Kgatle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000451631
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
This book explores recent developments in South African Pentecostalism, focusing on new prophetic churches. The chapters engage with a number of paradigm shifts in Christology, identified as complementing Christ, competing with Christ, removing Christ and replacing Christ. What are the implications of these shifts? Does it mean that believers no longer believe in Christ but in their leaders? Does it shift believers’ faith towards materiality than the person of Christ? This volume will be valuable for scholars of African Christianity and in particular those interested in the neo-prophetic movement and Christology in a South African context.
Author: Karen Lauterbach
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319334948
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
This book centers around mid-level charismatic pastors in Ghana. Karen Lauterbach analyzes pastorship as a pathway to becoming small “big men” and achieving status, wealth, and power in the country. The volume investigates both the social processes of becoming a pastor and the spiritual dimensions of how power and wealth are conceptualized, achieved, and legitimized in the particular context of Asante in Ghana. Lauterbach integrates her analysis of charismatic Christianity with a historically informed examination of social mobility—how people in subordinate positions seek to join up with power. She explores how the ideas and experiences surrounding the achievement of wealth and performance of power are shaped and re-shaped. In this way, the book historicizes current expressions of charismatic Christianity in Ghana while also bringing the role of religion and belief to bear on our understanding of wealth and power as they function more broadly in African societies.
Author: Marius Nel
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532660863
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
The face of African Christianity is becoming Pentecostal. African Pentecostalism is a diverse movement, but its collective interest in baptism in the Spirit and the result of Pentecost in daily living binds it together. Pentecostals read the Bible with the expectation that the Spirit who inspired the authors will again inspire them to hear it as God’s word. They emphasize the experiential, at times at the cost of proper doctrine and practice. This book sketches an African hermeneutic that provides guidance to a diverse movement with many faces, and serves as corrective for doctrine and practice in the face of some excesses and abuses (especially in some parts of the neo-Pentecostal movement). African Pentecostalism’s contribution to the hermeneutical debate is described before three points are discussed that define it: the centrality of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible, the eschatological lens that Pentecostals use when they read the Bible, and the faith community as normative for the interpretation of the Bible.
Author: Paul Gifford
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253217233
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
A sober, firsthand look at evangelical Christian churches in Accra, Ghana.
