Surveying Christianity's African Roots (Paperback) PDF Download

Author: Jimmie Compton
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0940123029
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
"... pre-Constantinian Christian intellect apparently found a richer thought environment in Africa than elsewhere. It discovered itself in the intellectual centers of Africa before Europe had produced such centers. Eventually it offered its rich wisdom to the cultures of the northern side of the Mediterranean ..." - Dr. Thomas C. Oden. This book surveys the rational, organized, thriving, Scripturally informed and Holy Spirit-inspired roots of indigenous Christianity in Africa from 33 A.D. through 537 A.D. The intent is to supplement existing Church history resources.

Author: Thomas C. Oden
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830837051
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
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.

Author: Thomas C. Oden
Publisher: IVP Academic
ISBN: 9780830839438
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Buried for more than a millennium beneath sand and the erosions of time are the remnants of a vital, formative Christian presence in Libya. From about A.D. 68 till the Muslim conquest of A.D. 643, Libya housed a vibrant, creative Christian community that contributed to the shape of the faith even as we know it today. By the mid-190s A.D., Leptis Magna could claim favorite sons as the Roman pontiff, Victor the African, and as the Roman emperor, Septimius Severus. A rich and energetic community produced a wide variety of key players from early martyrs to great thinkers to archheretics. Tertullian, the great theologian, and Sabellius, the heretic, are relatively well known. Less well known are the martyrs Wasilla and Theodore and the great poet-philosopher-bishop Synesius of Cyrene. Uncovering this North African tradition and offering it to a wide reading audience is the task that Tom Oden sets for himself in this fascinating tour de force. The book, originating as lectures delivered at the Islamic Da'wa University in Tripoli in 2008 and later expanded as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures in 2009 at Dallas Theological Seminary, has been expanded and refined to provide additional insights and references, surveying the texts, architecture and landmarks of this important period of Christian history. It also serves as a valuable companion to Oden's earlier offerings in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind and The African Memory of Mark.

Author: R. Murray Thomas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440832048
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book traces the development of Haiti's combined Vodou-Christian religion from 1500 to the present and explains how this combination of distinct faiths coalesces in a coherent belief system. What are the historical reasons for the popularity of two contradictory worldviews in Haiti, Vodou and Catholicism? What elements of Vodou and Catholicism are alike, and how are they drastically different? What is the connection between indigenous African religions and Vodou? And why has religion in Haiti evidenced an accelerating rate of change in recent decades? Roots of Haiti's Vodou-Christian Faith: African and Catholic Origins answers these questions and more in its examination of the highly unique and often-misunderstood religious practices in Haiti. Reaching back half a millennium to the European conquest of the island of Haiti, author R. Murray Thomas inspects the origins and nature of these two competing and complementary religious traditions: the traditional African faiths brought by the slaves who were imported to Haiti to labor in the fields and mines, and the Catholicism promoted—often violently—by Spanish and French colonial authorities. Following a historical background, the subsequent chapters focus on the organization of Haitian religion, spirits, creation belief, causes and ceremonies, maxims and tales, symbols and sacred objects, sacred sites, religious societies, and the future of the Vodou-Christian faith.

Author: Isabel Apawo Phiri
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781506474922
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1240

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Book Description
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christianity has taken shape and established roots in all areas of African reality. It has come to stay. Therefore, we welcome Christianity afresh in Africa, where it has arrived to continue the ancient and vibrant Christianity in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. It is appropriate that the Anthology of African Christianity presents, in valuable detail, this new reality that describes its African landscape in totality.

Author: John Chitakure
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 149824419X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Right from the beginning of humankind, God has never deprived a people of his grace and revelation. In fact, God uses people's environment and culture to communicate his will. There is no single religion that can claim to have the exclusive possession of God's revelation, for God is too immense to be confined within one faith. Hence, it was erroneous, blasphemous, and misleading for some of the early Christian missionaries to Africa to claim that they had brought God to Africa, a mentality that implied the non-existence of God in Africa before their arrival. Of course, God was already in Africa, but the missionaries either failed to discern his presence or just disregarded the traces of his existence. This book explores the religious beliefs, practices, and values of the indigenous people of Africa at the time of the early missionaries' arrival, with particular reference to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It also evaluates the extent of the missionarie's successes and challenges in converting Africans to Christianity. It finally surveys how African Christians have remained attached to the indigenous religious beliefs that used to provide answers to their existential questions.

Author: Paul Bowers
Publisher: Langham Publishing
ISBN: 1783684453
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 980

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Book Description
This reference collection presents academic reviews of more than twelve-hundred contemporary Africa-related publications relevant for informed Christian reflection in and about Africa. The collection is based on the review journal BookNotes for Africa, a specialist resource dedicated to bringing to notice such publications, and furnishing them with a one-paragraph description and evaluation. Now assembled here for the first time is the entire collection of reviews through the first thirty issues of the journal’s history. The core intention, both of the journal and of this compilation, is to encourage and to facilitate informed Christian reflection and engagement in Africa, through a thoughtful encounter with the published intellectual life of the continent. Reviews have been provided by a team of more than one hundred contributors drawn from throughout Africa and overseas. The books and other media selected for review represent a broad cross-section of interests and issues, of personalities and interpretations, including the secular as well as the religious. The collection will be of special interest to academic scholars, theological educators, libraries, ministry leaders, and specialist researchers in Africa and throughout the world, but will also engage any reader looking for a convenient resource relating to modern Africa and Christian presence there.

Author: ISAIAH OLUWAJEMIRIYE OLATOYAN
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Christianity among the African people, whether on the soil of Africa or in diaspora, is perceived and defined differently by different people. For instance, among African traditional religious people and Muslims, Christianity is a foreign religion that must not be allowed to thrive in Africa. To several Africans who profess Jesus, Christianity is good, but it is not adequate and effective enough to handle all human needs. Still, among some Western Christians and missionaries, African Christianity is superficial and lacks total commitment to Christ. Of course, the Africans are a cultural people with profound religious inclinations. Their traditional religion (ATR) has tremendously shaped their worldviews and socioeconomic and political activities. Consequently, when traditional Africans are converted to Christianity, they do not break ties with their traditional religions completely. The examination of relevant biblical texts on syncretism, however, reveals that God condemns the worship of many gods and places a curse on anyone who offers sacrifices to carved images and bows to them in worship. Therefore, this work investigates the root cause of religious syncretism among African people. In the attempt to find answers to why the average African Christian finds it difficult, if not impossible, to abandon his/her traditional religious belief systems completely to embrace Christianity, the author concludes that unless the issues surrounding the African forgotten and secret covenants are exposed and decisively addressed in the light of biblical teaching, syncretism will continue to be a stigma on the fabric of African Christianity. Therefore, to overcome the threats of syncretism in African Christianity, there is a need to establish a sound theological and missiological framework that can address the problems associated with the African worldviews and belief systems. This task must be carried out under the searchlight of Scriptures.

Author:
Publisher: William Carey Library
ISBN: 0878086080
Category : Christian sects
Languages : en
Pages : 960

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Author: Katharine Gerbner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812294904
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, then how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Slave owners in the Caribbean and elsewhere established governments and legal codes based on an ideology of "Protestant Supremacy," which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from Christian communities. For slaveholders, Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies intending to convert enslaved Africans to Christianity in the 1670s, they were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion. Slaveholders regularly attacked missionaries, both verbally and physically, and blamed the evangelizing newcomers for slave rebellions. In response, Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries articulated a vision of "Christian Slavery," arguing that Christianity would make slaves hardworking and loyal. Over time, missionaries increasingly used the language of race to support their arguments for slave conversion. Enslaved Christians, meanwhile, developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom. Christian Slavery shows how the contentions between slave owners, enslaved people, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world.