CHRISTIANS AMONG MUSLIMS: THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY IN THE NORTHERN SUDAN

2002 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
HEATHER J. SHARKEY

Church Missionary Society missionaries arrived in the northern Sudan in 1899 with the goal of converting Muslims. Restricted by the Anglo-Egyptian government and by local opposition to their evangelism, they gained only one Muslim convert during sixty years of work. The missionaries nevertheless provided medical and education services in urban centers and in the Nuba Mountains, and pioneered girls' schools. Yet few of their Sudanese graduates achieved functional Arabic literacy, since missionaries taught ‘romanized Arabic', a form of written colloquial Arabic, in Latin print, that lacked practical applications. Thus the history of the CMS in the northern Sudan yields insights into issues of education, power and religious identity within a colonial context.

Author(s):  
Н. Н. Грибов ◽  
Т. А. Марьенкина ◽  
Н. В. Иванова

В статье представлены предварительные результаты первых масштабных археологических исследований в нижней части Нижегородского кремля. Раскоп, заложенный в зоне воссоздания храма Святого Симеона Столпника, вскрыл культурные отложения двух периодов - XIII - начала XV в. и XVI - середины XVIII в. Впервые средневековая усадебная застройка Нижнего Новгорода зафиксирована на таком элементе волжской долины, как береговой склон. Выдающееся значение для нижегородской археологии имеют обнаружение стратифицированных культурных напластований XIII - начала XV в. и зафиксированный на стратиграфических разрезах перерыв в активном освоении городской территории, соответствующий большей части XV в. Предложена реконструкция истории освоения раскопанного участка. Выяснилось, что связанный с храмом малоизвестный нижегородский Симеоновский монастырь вряд ли существовал до строительства Нижегородского кремля. Наиболее раннее, предположительно, монастырское сооружение, возникшее после исчезновения усадебной застройки XIII - начала XV в., датировано концом XV - серединой XVI в. С этим периодом связано строительство деревянного моста, обеспечивавшего транспортное сообщение между «нагорным» и приречным районами города. Обнаружение остатков этого свайного сооружения существенно корректирует известную реконструкцию застройки кремлевской территории начала XVII в., выполненную по письменным источникам. Дано обоснование времени функционирования обнаруженного некрополя Симеоновского монастыря в пределах середины XVI - начала XVIII в., приведена общая характеристика изученных погребений. В общеисторическом контексте материалы исследований представляют интерес для изучения процессов, сопровождающих превращение удельных городских центров в города Московской Руси. The article presents preliminary results of the first large-scale archaeological research in the lower part of the Nizhniy Novgorod Kremlin. The excavation, laid in the area of the reconstruction of the Church of St. Simeon the Stylite, uncovered cultural layer of two periods - the XIII - early XV centuries and the XVI - mid XVIII centuries. For the first time, the medieval estate development of Nizhniy Novgorod was recorded on such an element of the Volga valley as the coastal slope. The discovery of stratified cultural strata of the XIII - early XV centuries and the break in the active development of urban territory recorded on stratigraphic sections, corresponding to most of the XV century, are of outstanding significance for Nizhniy Novgorod archeology. The reconstruction of the history of development of the excavated site is proposed. It turned out that the little-known Nizhniy Novgorod Simeon monastery associated with the temple hardly existed before the construction of the Nizhniy Novgorod Kremlin. The earliest, presumably, monastic structure that arose after the disappearance of the manor buildings of the XIII -early XV centuries., dated to the end of the XV - mid XVI centuries. This period is associated with the construction of a wooden bridge that provided transport links between the «Nagorny» and riverine districts of the city. The discovery of the remains of this pile structure significantly corrects the well-known reconstruction of the Kremlin territory of the beginning of the XVII century, made according to written sources. The justification for the functioning of the necropolis discovered Simeon monastery in the middle of the XVI century - beginning of the XVIII centuries, the general characteristics of the studied burials. In the general historical context, the research materials are of interest for studying the processes that accompany the transformation of specific urban centers into cities of Muscovite Russia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Patrick W. Otim

Abstract:In 1953, Lacito Okech, a precolonial royal messenger, Christian convert, and colonial chief, became the first Acholi to write and publish a history of his people. The book was instantly popular, inspiring many other Acholi to write histories of their respective chiefdoms. However, although these works constitute the bulk of vernacular Acholi histories, scholars have not paid attention to them, partly because of language limitations and partly due to limited scholarly interest in the history of the region. This article uses Okech’s life and book to explore important questions about the production of local history in colonial Acholiland. In particular, it explores Okech’s adroit manipulation of his complex circumstances at the intersection of the roles of messenger, convert, and colonial employee, his dilemmas as a local historian, and the influence of his roles as an intermediary between the Acholi on the one hand and the Church Missionary Society and the colonial regime on the other on his writing of history.


Author(s):  
Donna Giver-Johnston

Claiming the Call to Preach traces the history of call through the nineteenth century, at a time when the question of women’s call to preach, although seemingly fixed by ecclesial authority and cultural convention, was being raised by courageous women in different settings, through different genres, and to different effect. This book recovers the neglected narrative of women’s call to preach through the historical accounts and rhetorical witness of four groundbreaking women preachers: Jarena Lee, Frances Willard, Louisa Woosley, and Florence Spearing Randolph. Scholarship has been written on women who have preached in history, but not on how they managed to claim their call to preach despite the restrictions of gender inequality. This project explores the question: how did women claim their call to preach? Through feminist hermeneutics, this book examines call narratives which used rhetorical strategies to articulate effective arguments for women’s call to the preaching ministry of the church. In response, these women received endorsement of their claims to pulpit places, engaged in sacred persuasive speech, and preached as ministers of the sacred office. This project examines women’s call to preach—the history and theology, rhetoric and practice, struggle and success, and the necessary work of interpretation and re-interpretation through call narratives. This book concludes with practical applications for contemporary homiletics, showing how historical tradition can be re-invented in order to give women—and anyone struggling with their call to preach—rhetorical tactics and narrative scripts in order to make effective claims to preach today.


Author(s):  
Sylvio Fausto GIL FILHO

Nas transformações do catolicismo brasileiro, o foco regional se relaciona com a análise da escala local e global como dimensões extremamente articuladas. Esta articulação caracteriza a Igreja local de Curitiba (PR) com uma territorialidade de duas instâncias, influenciadas por tensões escalares de caráter global próprias da hierarquia universal da Igreja e tensões regionais específicas da Igreja local. Afora estas forças de caráter endógeno da estrutura eclesiástica, verificam-se também tensões exógenas à própria Igreja, representadas por instituições não-católicas e mesmo instituições seculares. O último quarto do século XX demonstrou uma crise da representação dominante da Igreja Católica Romana no Brasil. A conjuntura secular das cidades e a retração no espírito missionário da Igreja motivaram o diagnóstico de uma certa estagnação do domínio simbólico da Igreja. Com efeito, o pluralismo religioso dos grandes centros urbanos cunhou uma nova realidade, baseada em um crescente questionamento do mito do Brasil católico. O crescimento de movimentos religiosos pentecostais e neopentecostais representou nas décadas de 1980 e 1990 um impacto considerável na forma de a religiosidade popular fazer uma segunda identidade religiosa. Roman Catholic Church in Curitiba (PR): structures of territoriality under the religious pluralism Abstract In the transformation process of Brazilian Catholicism, the regional focus links with the analysis of the local and global scale as extremely articulated dimensions. This articulation characterizes the local Church of Curitiba (PR) with a territoriality of two instances, influenced by scale tensions of global character peculiar to the head of the universal hierarchy of the Church and regional tensions specific of the local Church. Beyond these forces of endogenous character of the ecclesiastical structure, we also verified exogenous tensions of the Church itself, represented by non-catholic institutions and even secular institutions. The last quarter of the 20th century demonstrates a crisis of the dominant representation of the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil. The secular conjuncture of the cities and the retraction of the missionary spirit of the Church motivated the diagnosis of a certain stagnation of the symbolic domain of the Church. Moreover, the religious pluralism of the great urban centers coined a new reality, based on the growing questionableness of the myth of Catholic Brazil. The growth of pentecostal and neopentecostal religious movements represented in the decades of 1980 and 1990 a considerable impact on the way by which popular religiosity makes a second definition of the religious identity.


1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilbert R. Shenk

In the relatively brief history of Protestant missiology, no name is more respected than that of Henry Venn. As one of his successors in the leadership of the Church Missionary Society, Max Warren, observed, “On almost any reckoning, Venn was the outstanding European missionary leader, thinker and administrator of the nineteenth century.” Author Shenk goes to the primary record of Venn's missiological thought — the Letters of Instructions to missionary appointees — and provides us with a balanced summary of his reflections on some major themes. Viewed realistically in his Victorian context, Venn was clearly a man on the cutting edge. An Anglican of firm evangelical principles, his writings mirror an irenic mind and an ecumenical spirit as he sought to develop the praxis of the Church Missionary Society.


2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fulford

AbstractThe Union Ibo Bible was more or less the Bible for the Igbo people of southern Nigeria from 1909 to 1970. The creation of Thomas Dennis of the Church Missionary Society and his co-workers, it has been, since its first conception in 1905, a source of ongoing controversy: the development and unification of the Igbo language was at stake. This article re-examines the history of this Bible, its conception, translation and early reception, and argues that the source of its shortcomings lies deeper than the method of translation or the contemporary Igbo desire to learn English. The Union Bible is the product of the missionary conception, fleshed out by a comparison with the Yoruba, of a single Igbo people speaking a single language. The failure of that translation is the result of the premise consequent to this conception of the Igbo, namely that the Igbo language was ready to be 'united'.


Horizons ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Phan

AbstractRecent social studies have show that there are, especially among young American Catholics, different conceptions of what constitutes a Catholic. Factors contributing to this new understanding of Catholic identity include religious pluralism and the divergent conceptualizations of catholicity and Catholicism in contemporary theology. As a consequence, different criteria are used to define what it means to be a Catholic. These variations pose serious challenges to religious educators whose task is to shape the religious identity of the students.The study begins with a survey of the history of the concept of catholicity as well as of the criteria for Catholic identity. In view of the variations in the understanding of catholicity, the work discerns four challenges for religious education with its task of fostering Catholic identity: how to maintain a fruitful balance between Vatican II's recognition of the ecclesial nature of non-Catholic Christian communities and its claim that the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of the means of salvation; between Vatican II's call for dialogue with non-Christian religions and its insistence on the distinctiveness of Catholic beliefs and practices; between the legitimate concerns of “communal Catholics” and the necessity for all Catholics to participate fully in the Catholic symbol and ethical system; and between the spiritual and institutional, the invisible and visible elements of the church. The article concludes by suggesting an indirect method to develop and strengthen Catholic identity by means of the “deep structures” of the Catholic faith, with particular focus on Christian doctrines.


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