scholarly journals The Bible in Africa: a novel usage in Africa's new churches

2008 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Gifford
Keyword(s):  
Historical Document ◽  
The West ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Fast Growing ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
New Churches ◽  
The Way ◽  
Academic Study

AbstractTo the extent there is an African academic approach, it is comparative (showing that the African world has similarities with the biblical). There are some “post-colonial” and similar readings, but this academic study is in the main done by Western-trained academics and directed at Western readers. There has been relatively little study of the way the Bible is actually used in churches, especially at the very grassroots. In mainline churches, the Bible is generally taken (as in the West) as a book of revelation which the preacher must expound and apply. In the new fast-growing Pentecostal sector the Bible is conceived quite differently, and understood as a record of covenants, promises, pledges and commitments between God and his chosen. It is not just a record of covenants and commitments to others in the past. It is not primarily a historical document at all. It is a contemporary document; it tells of God's covenant with and commitment to me, and to me now. These promises in scripture are effected in believers' lives through proclamation. The major biblical motifs in this emerging Christianity are thus those stressing victory, success, hope, achievement. The texts that are dominant are therefore prophetic texts, and narratives of those who can be made to illustrate success.

scholarly journals DEVELOPMENT OF THEOLOGICAL TRAINING AND HERMENEUTICS IN PENTECOSTALISM: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND ANALYSIS

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-207
Author(s):  
Marius Nel
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pentecostal Movement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
Theological Training

The article hypothesises that the historical development of Pentecostal hermeneutics is closely related to and illustrated by Pentecostals’ attitude towards theological training. A short survey is given of the development of theological training within the Pentecostal movement in order to demonstrate how it accompanied a change in the way the Bible was considered during the past century in terms of three phases. For the first three decades Pentecostals had no inclination towards any theological training; they considered that the Bible provided all they needed to know and what was important was not what people in biblical times experienced with or stated about God, but the way these narratives indicate contemporary believers to an encounter with God themselves, resulting in similar experiences. From the 1940s, Pentecostals for several reasons sought acceptance and approval and entered into partnerships with evangelicals, leading to their acceptance of evangelicals’ way of reading the Bible in a fundamentalist-literalist way. From the 1970s they established theological colleges and seminaries where theologians consciously developed Pentecostal hermeneutics in affinity with early Pentecostal hermeneutics, although most Pentecostals still read the Bible in a fundamentalist-literalistic way − as do the evangelicals. Its hermeneutics determined its anti-intellectual stance and the way Pentecostals arranged the training of its pastors. The history of the Pentecostal movement cannot be understood properly without realising the close connection between its hermeneutics and its view of theological training.

scholarly journals Skrifbeskouing en Skrifhantering: Marcus Borg en die Hervormde Kerk – ʼn Vergelykende studie

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Van Eck
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

Marcus Borg, one of the most prominent New Testament scholars in the past four decades, is considered by many in the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa as a liberal scholar. His understanding of the origin of the Bible, the way he interprets the Bible, and what he sees as the status and function of the Bible, should therefore be dismissed. A comparison of Borg’s point of view on these topics with that of the points of view of the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa, however, indicates that Borg’s understanding of these matters differs not even marginally from that of the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa. In a certain sense, Borg could therefore be described as a theologian who fits the mould of what is understood in the Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa as a responsible approach to and interpretation of the Bible.

The Mutability of the Canon: Socialist Realism and Chingiz Aitmatov's I dol'she veka dlitsia den'

Slavic Review ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Clark
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
The Way

Chingiz Aitmatov's recent novel I dol'she veka dlitsia den’ provides an excellent case study of the way the socialist realist canon can generate new paradigms out of itself. At a time when it is widely assumed in the West that all reputable Soviet authors have gone “beyond” socialist realism, the appearance of this novel is particularly instructive.Aitmatov's book has had greater impact in the Soviet Union than any other novel published there in recent years. It covers subjects that are both highly topical and sensitive politically. Yet it does so by using the conventions of socialist realism to a greater extent than has been seen in the major Soviet writing of the past fifteen years. Indeed, Aitmatov has somehow contrived to weave into the fabric of his text patterns reminiscent of every period in the development of socialist realism.

scholarly journals Editorial: Time Travel

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-248
Author(s):  
PAUL RAE
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
The West ◽  
American Power ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Way

One of the most forbidding and yet rewarding challenges in a substantive internationalization of arts scholarship is accounting for the experience and passage of time. The extent to which developments in theatre and performance over the past 150 years have been tied up with the larger social, economic and technological transformations reflexively understood as ‘modernity’ is a key reason an international journal readership is able to find interest and value in scholarship on performances they may not have seen, that are practised in places they have never been. At the same time, any such research – it is tempting to say ‘from outside the West’, but in fact the requirement holds everywhere – must register how the work under discussion complicates an otherwise oversimplified narrative of developmental modernity. This narrative treats a homogenized industrial and postindustrial ‘West’ as having led the way and established a model for how other parts of the world would modernize subsequently. The assumption is quickened in discussions of art because arguably one characteristic of those transformations as they happened in numerous centres of Euro-American power was the role that artists played in giving them aesthetic form and expressing their meanings. This is prominent in the emergence of modernism and the avant-garde, and it is logical that in recent times scholars of modernism have been particularly energetic in questioning the developmental narrative and demonstrating not only how such phenomena were constitutively reliant on processes elsewhere, but also how artistic developments everywhere both informed each other (often inequably) and manifested local and highly contingent characteristics.

scholarly journals Museums in Britain and the First World War

1970 ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Gaynor Kavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World ◽  
The Way

As an historian, genealogy has always worried me. I hold the Bible and the legal profession equally responsible for what is, after all an obsession. Those who engage in genealogy usually have something to prove. They search for an unbroken lineage to someone worth being related to and, better still, important. Deviations along the way, such as illegitimacy, can be tolerated as long as they are sufficiently far in the past to be safe to mention. My problem with all this is that genealogy leaves out so much and asks so few questions. Real lives are about so much more than a series of 'begats' and 'begottens '. They are about choices made and not made, political change, feelings and circumstances.  

The Moral Crisis of the West: The Judaeo-Christian Response

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
David Novak
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Crisis ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
The Way

To speak of Jewish-Christian relations at the present time requires one to immediately recognise how different these relations are in this more secular period of the history of Western Civilisation than they were in earlier, more religious periods of that history. Jewish-Christian relations today are certainly different in character from the way they were during much of the past two millennia, when ‘Western Civilisation’ was very much a ‘Christian’ civilisation. Throughout this very long, earlier period of history, Jews related to Christians as the masters of the world in which we were continually struggling to survive and maintain our communal life.

6. Christianity in the modern world

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Woodhead
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
New Combinations ◽  
The West ◽  
Fast Growing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
New Directions ◽  
New Churches ◽  
Flow Through

During the modern period, Christianity has changed in rapid and unprecedented ways. Church, Biblical, and Mystical Christianity can still be discerned, but they flow together in new combinations, taking shape not in new churches and denominations, but in movements that flow through them and mould their agendas—most importantly Christian liberalism, evangelicalism and fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, and Charismatic revival. ‘Christianity in the modern world’ describes these movements and concludes that the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen the ties between Christianity and the west loosening and secularism and ‘non-religion’ growing. The most vital and fast-growing forms of Christianity have flourished outside the west, taking the religion’s agenda in many new directions.

scholarly journals The Representation(s) of Morocco in Elias Canetti’s The Voices of Marrakesh

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 205-210
Author(s):  
Adil El Filali
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

Elias Canetti’s (2009) the Voices of Marrakesh depicts a set of cultural features about Marrakesh city, Morocco. In such travel writing text, different are the issues of representation about the country which are discursively figured in negative perspectives. Relatedly, the gaze of the Westerner theoretically and practically helps target the extent to which the Moroccan landscape and identity are constructed. At this point, debates about the nature of concepts like the ‘civilized’, the ‘primitive’, and the ‘savage’ are very common and form the intellectual background for the travel writer. The dichotomy between center and periphery is highly examined in the present article since there are images or processes of decentralizing Morocco. Following post-colonial analytical approach, the current article problematizes the way the West represents Morocco and its cultural geography. Importantly, the article focuses on Moroccan geography which is given little if not no importance pretending that it is a deserted space where the uncivilized natives dwell. It serves nothing but fear and mystery. This paper serves as a basis for the readership to understand the way Morocco is portrayed by Canetti. By representing Morocco in different images, Canetti ideologically generates a socio-cultural discourse about Arabs and about Morocco in particular. By doing so, he confirms the fact that there is no innocent text including travel narrative.

scholarly journals “Back to Sender”: Re-Visiting the Belief in Witchcraft in Post-Colonial Zimbabwean Pentecostalism

Religions ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Kudzai Biri ◽  
Molly Manyonganise
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
Creativity And Innovation

This paper is a critical analysis of the witchcraft beliefs in Pentecostalism in post-colonial Zimbabwe. While Pentecostals claim “a complete break from the past”, there have emerged new dimensions that show that the belief in witches and witchcraft is deeply entrenched among Pentecostals. It also brings to the fore the underlying aspects of the creativity and innovation that are informed by African spiritual or metaphysical realities. Research since 1980 (when Zimbabwe got her independence from the British) indeed confirmed the existence of witchcraft beliefs and practices, although it was heavily suppressed in the churches. This paper re-visits the belief in witchcraft activities in Pentecostalism through examining new avenues of expression in both older and newer Pentecostal churches. The newer Pentecostal churches, in particular, those founded after 2010, have demonstrated unique innovation in theology. Thus, the belief in witchcraft and witches warrants a fresh examination in light of these new developments. We, therefore argue that the emergence of diverse newer Pentecostal churches in the midst of strong older Pentecostal churches has opened new ways of negotiating the Bible and Shona culture.

Early Muslim Medicine and the Indian Context: A Reinterpretation

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Shefer-Mossensohn ◽  
M. Shefer-Mossensohn ◽  
K. Abou Hershkovitz
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Western Science ◽  
The West ◽  
Past Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
The Way

Abstract The past few decades have witnessed a remarkable shift in the way scholars study the field of sciences in Muslim societies. Up to the 1980s, research focused on Muslim scientists’ role as transmitters of science to the West, and as contributors to Western science. The Muslim world was commonly viewed as a link between ancient Greece and Latin Christendom, its scholars serving as translators of Greek treatises, and as preservers of Greek knowledge. Recently, the theme of Indian-Muslim cultural-scientific relations has attracted growing attention. Following this trend, we maintain that the eighth and ninth centuries reveal an interaction between Indian and Muslim medicine and physicians. Building on the past work of scholars such as Michael W. Dols and more recently Kevin van Bladel, we reinterpret medieval Arabic sources to reveal that the interest in Asian science was not a brief and untypical phenomenon that lacked long-lasting implications. By rereading Arabic chronicles and biographical dictionaries, we will portray how a rather brief contact between ʿAbbāsid Iraq and India proved to yield enduring influences. We will focus on two aspects of Muslim medical practice for demonstrating the Indian connection: the presence of Indian physicians in Baghdād in and around the ʿAbbāsid court, and the emergence of early Muslim hospitals.

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