Download or read book Phenomenological Approaches to Religion and Spirituality written by Essien, Essien D. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an interesting knowledge trajectory that God remains incomprehensible, not imperceptible. This lends credence to the fact that religious study since the Enlightenment has dedicated itself almost entirely to the problem of reconciling the non-existence of God in the physical world with his necessary existence in the metaphysical world. When seriously examined, it would be discovered that these two aspects are logically contradictory, and this is a problem with no solution. But interpreting God not as a physical being but as a phenomenological thing changes the nature of the problem enough that a solution emerges almost automatically. In this phenomenological model, the crux of the matter is that God does not exist, but God is real. Therefore, it is imperative to return to experience and verifiability, hence, purging it of unexamined and often hidden assumptions. Phenomenological Approaches to Religion and Spirituality brings together the different disciplines and research approaches to provide a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenology of God and spirituality, as well as offering an effective epistemological apparatus capable of dealing with this concept. The book employs multidisciplinary approaches from religious studies, theology, philosophy, anthropology, and other segments to dissect the subject matter for efficient evaluation and all-inclusive findings. While covering various aspects of religion such as the testaments of the Bible, the church, the religious experience, and various aspects of spirituality, this book is intended for theologians, philosophers, religious leaders, policymakers, academicians, researchers, students, public institutions, and agencies with a special interest in religious matters, values, knowledge, and truth.
Download or read book African Religions written by Jacob K. Olupona and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.
Download or read book Morality Truly Christian Truly African written by Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2014-11-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the largely Eurocentric nature of moral theology in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, what will it take to invest the theological community in the history and moral challenges of the Church in other parts of the world, especially Africa? What is to be gained for the whole Church when this happens in a deep and lasting way? In this timely and important study, Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor brings greater theological clarity to the issue of the relationship between Christianity and African tradition in the area of ethical foundations. He also provides a constructive example of what fundamental moral theology done from an African and Christian (especially Catholic) moral theological point of view could look like. Following a brief history of the development of African Christian theology, Odozor examines responses of African theologians to African tradition and Christian responses to the reality of non-Christian religions. In a context where the African religious experience and heritage are powerful sources of meaning and identity, Christian evangelization raises questions both about the African primal religions and about Christianity itself and its claims. Odozor takes up the subject of moral reasoning in an African Christian theological ethics and concludes with case studies that show how the African Church has tried to inculturate moral discourse on a religiously pluralistic continent and relate the healing gospel message to African situations. Students and scholars of moral theology and ethics and church leaders will profit from the issues raised in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African.
Download or read book Introduction to African Religion written by John S. Mbiti and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his widely acclaimed survey, John Mbiti sheds light on the survival and prosperity of African Religion in different historical, geographical, sociological, cultural, and physical environments. He presents a constellation of African worldviews, beliefs in God, use of symbols, valued traditions, and practices that have taken root with African peoples throughout the vast continent. Mbiti’s accessible writing style sympathetically portrays how African Religion manifests itself in ritual, festival, healing, the human life cycle, and interplay with the mystical and invisible world. The account embraces foundational traditions, while touching on elements that spawn transitions, including migration, the spread of Christianity and Islam, political-economic development, and modern communication. This popular introduction leaves readers with informed knowledge of the riches of African heritage.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of African Religion written by Molefi Kete Asante and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2009 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects almost five hundred entries that cover the African response to spirituality, taboos, ethics, sacred space, and objects.
Download or read book The Gods of Africa Or the God of the Bible The Snares of African Traditional Religion in Biblical Perspective written by Leonard Nyirongo and published by Authentic Christianity. This book was released on 2018-08-29 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our problem on the African continent at the moment is the following: Western people in general and Christian missionaries in particular, were mostly uncritical about their own (European) culture and over-critical about African culture. In reaction, African Christians in general and theologians in particular are today, on the one hand, very critical about the Western type of Christianity which has been transplanted to the continent, but, on the other hand, not critical enough about their own African culture and traditional religion. Many African theologians, for instance, claim that before the Gospel came to our continent, Africans already correctly worshiped the true God. They say that the Gospel was not the beginning of the true knowledge of God, but merely a continuation or fulfillment of true faith that already existed in the pre-Christian African's heart. Some even go so far as to suggest that the African's method of approaching God is as valid as the way of salvation through the Gospel. Such ideas are emphatically denied in this book. The whole book is more than an attempt to present African indigenous beliefs in a systematic manner, comparing it with Biblical teaching. It is not only against Western secularism, but also strongly opposed to the very strong syncretistic tendency in African church life and in African theology. It convincingly argues that the idea of adaptation should be replaced by the idea of transformation in the light of God's Word. We cannot have a peaceful accommodation but only a powerful confrontation between traditional African religion and real Biblical Christian faith. This clash of irreconcilable spiritual powers becomes clear on every page - a struggle between life and death, a struggle for control of the hearts and minds of the African people. The writer pleads with his fellow African to make a definite choice (either the Gospel or traditional beliefs) and not to opt for a
Download or read book Tongnaab written by Jean Allman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many Africanist historians, traditional religion is simply a starting point for measuring the historic impact of Christianity and Islam. In Tongnaab, Jean Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine, Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade to the tourist trade.
Download or read book The Kingdom of God in Africa written by Mark Shaw and published by Langham Global Library. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Christianity is not an imported religion but rather one of the oldest forms of Christianity in the world. In The Kingdom of God in Africa, Mark Shaw and Wanjiru M. Gitau trace the development and spread of African Christianity through its two-thousand year history, demonstrating how the African church has faithfully testified to the power and diversity of God’s kingdom. Both history students and casual readers will gain greater understanding of how key churches, figures and movements across the continent conceptualized the kingdom of God and manifested it through their actions. The only up-to- date, single-volume study of its kind, this book also includes maps and statistics that aid readers to absorb the rich history of African Christianity and discover its impact on the rest of the world.
Download or read book African Religion Defined written by Anthony Ephirim-Donkor and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African religion is ancestor worship; that is, funeral preparations, burial of the dead with ceremony and pomp, belief in eternal existence of souls of the dead as ancestors, periodic remembrance of ancestors, and belief that they influence the affairs of their living descendants. Whether called Akw?sidai, Homowo, Voodoo, Nyant?r (Aboakyir), CandomblZ, or Santeria in Africa or the African Diaspora, ancestor worship centers on the ancestors and deities. This makes it a tenably viable religion, because living descendants are genetically linked to their ancestors. The author, a traditional king and professor, studies the Akan in Ghana to demonstrate that ancestor worship is as pragmatic, systematic, theological, teleological, soteriological — with a highly trained clerical body and elders as mediators — and symbolic as any other religion in the world. Ancestor worship follows prescribed rites and rituals, formulas, precepts for ritual efficacy, and festivities of honor with music and dances to provoke ancestors and deities into joining in the celebration.
Download or read book How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind written by Thomas C. Oden and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2010-07-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Faces of the Gods written by Leslie G. Desmangles and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vodou, the folk religion of Haiti, is a by-product of the contact between Roman Catholicism and African and Amerindian traditional religions. In this book, Leslie Desmangles analyzes the mythology and rituals of Vodou, focusing particularly on the inclusion of West African and European elements in Vodouisants' beliefs and practices. Desmangles sees Vodou not simply as a grafting of European religious traditions onto African stock, but as a true creole phenomenon, born out of the oppressive conditions of slavery and the necessary adaptation of slaves to a New World environment. Desmangles uses Haitian history to explain this phenomenon, paying particular attention to the role of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maroon communities in preserving African traditions and the attempts by the Catholic, educated elite to suppress African-based "superstitions." The result is a society in which one religion, Catholicism, is visible and official; the other, Vodou, is unofficial and largely secretive.
Download or read book Religion Politics and Cults in East Africa written by Emmanuel K. Twesigye and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religion, Politics and Cults in East Africa is the first major, original, and extensive research-based study of the apocalyptic and doomsday Catholic Marian Movement and its Benedictine monastic moral and religious practices, including vows of poverty, celibacy, obedience, daily contemplation in silence, and hard work. The Marian Movement is presented within the cultural, historical, political, and religious context of the East African Revival Movement, the Anglican Balokole Movement, Alice Lakwena's Holy Spirit Movement, Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and other religio-political liberation movements, including the Maji Maji, the Mau Mau, and Nyabingi Liberation Movement. The Marian Movement was locally known as "Abanyabugoto" and "The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God". It began in 1989 as a Catholic women's Marian devotional and moral reformation movement, founded and headed by Keledonia Mwerinde. Faced with African cultural patriarchy and male-dominated Catholic Church hierarchy, Mwerinde recruited Joseph Kibwetere and the Rev. Fr. Dominic Kataribabo to serve as the public face of the Marian Movement. In response to Catholic hierarchy's opposition and persecution, Fr. Kataribabo designed a theology of ritual sacrifice, atonement, and martyrdoms for the devout Marian Catholics, who were devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He martyred the Marian devotees in March 2000, in order to transform them into Mary's saints, and to liberate their souls and send them to heaven, where they would instantly attain eternal life, lasting peace, and happiness."--Publisher's website.
Download or read book African Traditional Religion written by E. Bọlaji Idowu and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Religions Philosophy written by John S. Mbiti and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1990 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "African Religions and Philosophy" is a systematic study of the attitudes of mind and belief that have evolved in the many societies of Africa. In this second edition, Dr Mbiti has updated his material to include the involvement of women in religion, and the potential unity to be found in what was once thought to be a mass of quite separate religions. Mbiti adds a new dimension to the understanding of the history, thinking, and life throughout the African continent. Religion is approached from an African point of view but is as accessible to readers who belong to non-African societies as it is to those who have grown up in African nations. Since its first publication, this book has become acknowledged as the standard work in the field of study, and it is essential reading for anyone concerned with African religion, history, philosophy, anthropology or general African studies.
Download or read book West Africa s Women of God written by Robert M. Baum and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Africa's Women of God examines the history of direct revelation from Emitai, the Supreme Being, which has been central to the Diola religion from before European colonization to the present day. Robert M. Baum charts the evolution of this movement from its origins as an exclusively male tradition to one that is largely female. He traces the response of Diola to the distinct challenges presented by conquest, colonial rule, and the post-colonial era. Looking specifically at the work of the most famous Diola woman prophet, Alinesitoué, Baum addresses the history of prophecy in West Africa and its impact on colonialism, the development of local religious traditions, and the role of women in religious communities.
Download or read book God in Africa written by Malcolm J. McVeigh and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combines clarity and simplicity of style with intuitive and scholarly depth, bringing the Christian and African concepts of God into focus.
Download or read book God and Man in African Religion written by Emefie Ikenga Metuh and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
