Download or read book Afro Christianity at the Grassroots written by G. Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1994 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Afro Christian Religion at the Grassroots in Southern Africa written by Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen and published by Edwin Mellen Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Re imagining African Christologies written by Victor I. Ezigbo and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2010-02-08 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Download or read book Kwame Bediako written by Tim Hartman and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book All Things Hold Together written by M. L. Daneel and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book African Christology written by Clifton Clarke and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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).
Download or read book Inside the Whirlwind written by Jason Alan Carter and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-12-09 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Must God Remain Greek written by Robert Earl Hood and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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
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 Christianity and the African Imagination written by Adrian Hastings and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2002 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book charts Christianity s advance in Africa, exploring how African agents (priests, prophets, martyrs, missionaries) made the religion their own. It shows Christianity empowering Africans, through faith, to deal with concerns for health and wealth, and overcoming evil. It demonstrates how Christianity captured the African imagination.
Download or read book Doing Theology at the Grassroots written by Patrick A. Kalilombe and published by Kachere Series. This book was released on 1999 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Christianity written by Ogbu Kalu and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Upon This Rock written by Okechukwu Ogbonnaya and published by Urban Ministries Inc. This book was released on 1999 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Resources and curricula "planned for use during Black history month, but may be used during Sunday School, youth meetings, and youth services. They are designed to discover the role of Africans in the growth and development of the church and its teachings."
Download or read book Drums of Redemption written by Harvey J. Sindima and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christianity and African Culture written by Klaus Fiedler and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-14 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The common charge laid against missionaries that they are destroyers of African culture is shown to be untrue of the missionaries treated in this book, who worked with considerable success to integrate Christianity and African culture. The author examines the endeavours of the missionaries from the perspective of the local Christians, who were not themselves interested in Africanization as such. One can thus find some missionaries defending - against the elected African Church leadership - the right of the Chagga Christians to circumcise their daughters, and Nyakyusa Christians refusing to use African tunes because the missionaries - influenced by National Socialism - professed both love for African culture and White superiority. This informative book, based on local and archival research at Daressalam University, is eminently readable. It features the first historical study of Bruno Gutmann, and provides case study material for teaching.
Download or read book Biblical Interpretation and African Traditional Religion written by Helen C. John and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Biblical Interpretation and African Traditional Religion, Helen C. John juxtaposes grassroots biblical interpretations from Owamboland, Namibia, with professional interpretations of selected New Testament texts, effectively demonstrating the capacity of grassroots interpretations to destabilise, challenge and nuance dominant professional interpretations.
Download or read book Theology and Identity written by Kwame Bediako and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kwame Bediako examines the question of Christian identity in the context of the Greco-Roman culture of the early Roman Empire. He then addresses the modern African predicament of quests for identity and integration. Theology and Identity was one of the finalists for the 1992 HarperCollins Religious Book Award.
