Trajectories of religion in Africa : essays in honour of John S. Pobee /
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The book, in the main, discusses issues relating to mission, ecumenism, and theological education and is presented in four sections. The first segment discusses works on ecumenical and theological education and assesses the relevance of the World Council of Churches. Other issues discussed in this segment relate to the interrelationships that exist between academic theology, ecumenism, and Christianity. The World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, which set the agenda for world-wide mission in a promising manner in the 1920s, is also assessed in this section of the work. The second segment, which covers Religion and Public Space, discusses works that examine the relationships between religion and power, religion and development, religion and traditional religious beliefs, and religion and practices in Africa. The third segment of the book treats Religion and Cultural Practices in African and how all these work out in couching out an African theology and African Christianity. Some of the issues discussed in this section related to African traditional philosophy, spiritism, and the interrelationships that exist between African Christianity and African Traditional Religion. The last segment of the book discusses the issue of African biblical hermeneutics and specifically looks at contemporary hermeneutical approaches to biblical interpretations in Africa.
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1 online resource (414 pages) :
9789401210577 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Seeds of conflict in a haven of peace : from religious studies to interreligious studies in Africa /
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On 7 August 1998 the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed and 200 people lost their lives. These bombings shattered the image of Africa's tradition of peaceful religious coexistence. Since then inter-religious dialogue has been high on the agendas of ecclesial and religious organisations, but not so much of faculties of theology and departments of religion in East Africa. This book investigates why this is so. How are interreligious relations dealt with in Africa, and more particularly, how are they and how should they be taught in institutions of higher learning? This book is based on fieldwork in Nairobi from 2001 onwards. It shows why Africa's tradition of peaceful co-existence is not going to help Africa in the 21st century, and recommends a shift in the education in inter-religious relations: from religions studies to inter-religious studies.
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1 online resource (282 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-266) and index. :
9789401204286 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inculturation as dialogue : Igbo culture and the message of Christ /
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Although Africa is today often seen, because of its large number of Christians, as the future hope of the Church, a closer examination of African Christianity, however, shows that the Christian faith has not taken deep root in Africa. Many Africans today declare themselves to be Christians but still remain followers of their traditional African religions, especially in matters concerning the inner dimensions of their lives. It is evident that, in strictly personal matters relating to such issues as passage rites and crises, most Africans turn to their African traditional religions. As an incarnational faith, part of the history of Christianity has been its encounter with other cultures and its becoming deeply rooted in some of these cultures. The central question remains: Why has the Christian faith not taken deep root in Africa? This volume is concerned with answering this question.
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1 online resource (xvi, 227 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-227). :
9789401204606 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
AIDS and religious practice in Africa /
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This volume explores how AIDS is understood, confronted and lived with through religious ideas and practices, and how these, in turn, are reinterpreted and changed by the experience of AIDS. Examining the social production, and productivity, of AIDS - linking bodily and spiritual experiences, and religious, medical, political and economic discourses - the papers counter simplified notions of causal effects of AIDS on religion (or vice versa). Instead, they display people's resourcefulness in their struggle to move ahead in spite of adversity. This relativises the vision of doom widely associated with the African AIDS epidemic; and it allows to see AIDS, instead of a singular event, as the culmination of a century-long process of changing livelihoods, bodily well-being and spiritual imaginaries.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047442691 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Africas of the Americas : beyond the search for origins in the study of Afro-Atlantic religions /
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The anthropology and history of African American religious formations has long been dominated by approaches aiming to recover and authenticate the historical transatlantic continuities linking such traditions to identifiable African source cultures. While not denying such continuities, the contributors to this volume seek to transcend this research agenda by bracketing "Africa" and "African pasts" as objective givens, and asking instead what role notions of "Africanity" and "pastfulness" play in the social and ritual lives of historical and contemporary practitioners of Afro-Atlantic religious formations. The volume's goal is to open up contextually salient claims to "African origins" to empirical scrutiny, and so contribute to a broadening of the terms of debate in Afro-Atlantic studies.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047432708 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The doctrine of God in African Christian thought : the Holy Trinity, theological hermeneutics, and the African intellectual culture /
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The Christian faith knows and worships one God, who is revealed in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christian thought. Although Christian orthodoxy defines the doctrine of the Trinity, the intellectual tools used to capture it significantly vary. At different times and in different places, Western Christianity has, for instance, used neo-Platonism, German Idealism, and the conceptual tools of the second-century Greeks. Taking elements from the known African intellectual framework, this book argues that for African Christians, the respective pre-Christian African understanding of God and the Ntu -metaphysics, in particular, function as conceptual gates for an attempt towards articulating the Trinity for African Christian audiences.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (D. Th.)--University of Stellenbosch, 2000. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-292) and indexes. :
9789047420224 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.