Shembe, Ancestors, and Christ

Shembe, Ancestors, and Christ PDF Author: Edley J. Moodley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1556358806
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Christian axis has shifted dramatically southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, so much so that today there are more Christians living in these southern regions than among their northern counterparts. In the case of Africa, the African Initiated Churches-founded by Africans and primarily for Africans-has largely contributed to the exponential growth and proliferation of the Christian faith in the continent. Yet, even more profoundly, these churches espouse a brand of Christianity that is indigenized and thoroughly contextual. Further, the power and popularity of the AICs, beyond the unprecedented numbers joining these churches, are attributed to their relevance to the existential everyday needs and concerns of their adherents in the context of a postcolonial Africa. At the heart of Christian theology is Christology-the confessed uniqueness of Christ in history and among world religions. Yet this key feature of Christianity, as with other important elements of the Christian faith, may be variously understood and re-interpreted in these indigenous churches. The focus of this study is the amaNazaretha Church, an influential religious group founded by the African charismatic prophet Isaiah Shembe in 1911 in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The movement today claims a following of some two million adherents and has proliferated beyond the borders of South Africa to neighboring countries in Southern Africa. The book addresses the complex and at times ambivalent understanding of the person and work of Christ in the amaNazaretha Church, presenting the genesis, history, beliefs, and practices of this significant religious movement in South Africa, with broader implications for similar movements across the continent of Africa and beyond.

Shembe, Ancestors, and Christ

Shembe, Ancestors, and Christ PDF Author: Edley J. Moodley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1556358806
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Christian axis has shifted dramatically southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America, so much so that today there are more Christians living in these southern regions than among their northern counterparts. In the case of Africa, the African Initiated Churches-founded by Africans and primarily for Africans-has largely contributed to the exponential growth and proliferation of the Christian faith in the continent. Yet, even more profoundly, these churches espouse a brand of Christianity that is indigenized and thoroughly contextual. Further, the power and popularity of the AICs, beyond the unprecedented numbers joining these churches, are attributed to their relevance to the existential everyday needs and concerns of their adherents in the context of a postcolonial Africa. At the heart of Christian theology is Christology-the confessed uniqueness of Christ in history and among world religions. Yet this key feature of Christianity, as with other important elements of the Christian faith, may be variously understood and re-interpreted in these indigenous churches. The focus of this study is the amaNazaretha Church, an influential religious group founded by the African charismatic prophet Isaiah Shembe in 1911 in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The movement today claims a following of some two million adherents and has proliferated beyond the borders of South Africa to neighboring countries in Southern Africa. The book addresses the complex and at times ambivalent understanding of the person and work of Christ in the amaNazaretha Church, presenting the genesis, history, beliefs, and practices of this significant religious movement in South Africa, with broader implications for similar movements across the continent of Africa and beyond.

Theology of a South African Messiah

Theology of a South African Messiah PDF Author: Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004669620
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description


Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church

Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church PDF Author: Joel Cabrita
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107054435
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book tells the story of one of the largest and most influential African churches in South Africa.

IziHlabelelo ZamaNazaretha

IziHlabelelo ZamaNazaretha PDF Author: Isaiah Shembe
Publisher: University of Natal Press
ISBN: 9781869141363
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
The texts comprise the original isiZulu hymns as well as English translations, and are brought to life with an accompanying compact disc of song, story and interview excerpts. These include detail about the seminal moment of change and controversy in the 1990s, when the organ was introduced by church member and ethnomusicologist, Bongani Mthethwa, to accompany the Shembe hymnal repertory. The initiative gave birth to dozens of youth choirs who sang the hymns in a new style, and began to compose their own repertory about Shembe in a more `gospel-inflected' musical version of their faith. --

Jesus Christ as Logos Incarnate and Resurrected Nana (Ancestor)

Jesus Christ as Logos Incarnate and Resurrected Nana (Ancestor) PDF Author: Rudolf K. Gaisie
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1725252856
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book seeks to demonstrate the significance of Ancestor Christology in African Christianity for christological developments in World Christianity. Ancestor Christology has developed in the process of an African conversion story of appropriating the mystery of Christ (Eph 3:4) in the category of ancestors. Logos Christology in early Christian history developed as an intricate byproduct in the conversion process of turning Hellenistic ideas towards the direction of Christ (A. F. Walls). Hellenistic Christian writers and modern African Christian writers thus share some things in common and when their efforts are examined within the conversion process framework there are discernible modes of engagement. The mode of Logos Christology that one finds in Origen, for example, is an innovative application of the understanding of Jesus Christ as Logos (incarnate); a new key but not discontinuous with the Johannine suggestive mode or the clarificatory mode of Justin Martyr. African Ancestor Christology is at the threshold of an innovative mode and the argument this book makes is that this strand of African Christology should be pursued in the indigenous languages aided by respective translated Bibles; a suggested way is a Logos-Ancestor (Nanasɛm) discourse in Akan Christianity.

Intercultural Theology, Volume One

Intercultural Theology, Volume One PDF Author: Henning Wrogemann
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830873090
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Get Book Here

Book Description
Renowned missiologist Henning Wrogemann has written the most comprehensive textbook on the subject of Christianity and culture today. In three volumes his Intercultural Theology provides an exhaustive account of the history, theory, and practice of Christian mission. Volume 1 focuses on hermeneutical theories, concepts of culture, and contextual theologies.

Abrahamic Blessing

Abrahamic Blessing PDF Author: Sarita D. Gallagher
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1610979281
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Is the Abrahamic blessing of Genesis 12:1-3 still active in the world today? Does God still extend his blessing to the nations through his people? The author found the answer to these questions in one of the most isolated regions of the world, Papua New Guinea. In this book Sarita D. Gallagher compares the missional nature of the Abrahamic blessing motif in Scripture to a national revival that took place in Papua New Guinea. By identifying the shared missional patterns, she illustrates the continued fulfillment of the Abrahamic blessing through the Old and New Testaments and the contemporary Papua New Guinean Church. The significance of this research is multifaceted: the text contributes new insights to the global Church's understanding of the missio Dei, records an unexplored chapter of Melanesian indigenous mission history, and impacts the foundational motivations and methodology of contemporary mission praxis.

Understanding World Religions

Understanding World Religions PDF Author: Irving Hexham
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310314488
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Get Book Here

Book Description
Globalization and high-speed communication put twenty-first century people in contact with adherents to a wide variety of world religions, but usually, valuable knowledge of these other traditions is limited at best. On the one hand, religious stereotypes abound, hampering a serious exploration of unfamiliar philosophies and practices. On the other hand, the popular idea that all religions lead to the same God or the same moral life fails to account for the distinctive origins and radically different teachings found across the world’s many religions. Understanding World Religions presents religion as a complex and intriguing matrix of history, philosophy, culture, beliefs, and practices. Hexham believes that a certain degree of objectivity and critique is inherent in the study of religion, and he guides readers in responsible ways of carrying this out. Of particular importance is Hexham’s decision to explore African religions, which have frequently been absent from major religion texts. He surveys these in addition to varieties of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Kimbanguism

Kimbanguism PDF Author: Aurélien Mokoko Gampiot
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271079681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this volume, Aurélien Mokoko Gampiot, a sociologist and son of a Kimbanguist pastor, provides a fresh and insightful perspective on African Kimbanguism and its traditions. The largest of the African-initiated churches, Kimbanguism claims seventeen million followers worldwide. Like other such churches, it originated out of black African resistance to colonization in the early twentieth century and advocates reconstructing blackness by appropriating the parameters of Christian identity. Mokoko Gampiot provides a contextual history of the religion’s origins and development, compares Kimbanguism with other African-initiated churches and with earlier movements of political and spiritual liberation, and explores the implicit and explicit racial dynamics of Christian identity that inform church leaders and lay practitioners. He explains how Kimbanguists understand their own blackness as both a curse and a mission and how that underlying belief continuously spurs them to reinterpret the Bible through their own prisms. Drawing from an unprecedented investigation into Kimbanguism’s massive body of oral traditions—recorded sermons, participant observations of church services and healing sessions, and translations of hymns—and informed throughout by Mokoko Gampiot’s intimate knowledge of the customs and language of Kimbanguism, this is an unparalleled theological and sociological analysis of a unique African Christian movement.

Miracles : 2 Volumes

Miracles : 2 Volumes PDF Author: Craig S. Keener
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 1441239995
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1459

Get Book Here

Book Description
Christianity Today 2013 Book Award Winner Winner of The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship's 2012 Award of Excellence 2011 Book of the Year, Christianbook.com's Academic Blog Most modern prejudice against biblical miracle reports depends on David Hume's argument that uniform human experience precluded miracles. Yet current research shows that human experience is far from uniform. In fact, hundreds of millions of people today claim to have experienced miracles. New Testament scholar Craig Keener argues that it is time to rethink Hume's argument in light of the contemporary evidence available to us. This wide-ranging and meticulously researched two-volume study presents the most thorough current defense of the credibility of the miracle reports in the Gospels and Acts. Drawing on claims from a range of global cultures and taking a multidisciplinary approach to the topic, Keener suggests that many miracle accounts throughout history and from contemporary times are best explained as genuine divine acts, lending credence to the biblical miracle reports.