Jesus Christ, Homosexuality and Masculinity in African Christianity: Reading Luke 10:1-12

Exchange ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masiiwa Ragies Gunda
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Masculinity And Femininity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject

Abstract Since 1995, homosexuality has been part and parcel of public discourses in Zimbabwe. The Bible is a dominant resource, so that the Sodom narrative (Gen. 19) has become synonymous with homosexual condemnation. Interestingly, Jesus has been absent in the debate; justified by the claim that Jesus had not spoken on the subject. However, contrary to this claim, a socio-literary analysis of Luke 10: 1-12 demonstrates that Jesus may have fundamentally differed with this popular interpretation of Genesis 19. A textual analysis of Luke 10: 1-12 shows Jesus undermining dominant masculinities by de-masculinizing his followers in ways that belittle the gulf between masculinity and femininity. This article argues that to use the categories of masculinity and femininity to condemn same-sex relationships is no longer sustainable. Rather, this text can be a basis for the construction of ‘redemptive masculinities’ in Christian communities, which may provide a new platform for understanding and accepting homosexuality.

Terms of Scriptural Interpretation: A Study in Hebrew Semantics

1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gertner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Divine Wisdom ◽  
The Subject

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.

scholarly journals Interrogating Issues of Sexuality in Africa: An African Christian Response

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Adam Kiplangat Arap Chepkwony
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
President Obama ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
African People ◽  
The U.S

The issues of sexuality have been very contentious in Africa more so after the legalization of same-sex marriages by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2015 under the President Obama reign. Africans have resented the way sexuality is understood and practiced in the west and has termed it un-African. Some scholars and indeed African leaders have argued that the attitude towards sexuality is a modern practice which is being introduced and even forced to Africa by modernity and influenced greatly by the western worldview.  In a modern setting, different sexual orientation has been accepted as a lifestyle and has been institutionalized. Although African does not refute the fact that there were and indeed still are people with different sexual orientation, they do not find it right to institutionalize it since according to African culture, this is an abnormality that needs to be corrected, sympathized with and tolerated. To that end, African peoples assisted those with a different sexual orientation to live normal lives as much as possible. At the same time, the community was kind and tolerant and never banished or mistreated them based on their sexual orientation. This paper will attempt to show the attitude taken by the African people, the process of assisting those with different sexual orientation and how they were incorporated into the society. The paper will draw valuable lessons to be learned by modernity and which will correspond to African Christianity in accordance with the teaching of Jesus Christ

scholarly journals KONSEP IBADAH YANG BENAR DALAM ALKITAB

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
Lucyana Henny
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Library Research ◽  
The People ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Subject

Worship according to the concept of Christianity is God's commandment that must be done by every person who has been redeemed and saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. The purpose of the study is to answer: What is the meaning of worship of believers? What are the elements of worship according to the Bible? How is worship lived in church life? Research using qualitative methods using literature review (library research). The results of the study are: (1) worship truly is a service to God by offering all souls and spirits with various actions and attitudes of respect and adoration, submission, and obedience with a thankful welcome. (2) Worship without doubt is the inner confession of a person who accepts that God is sovereign in power and good. With a series of personal offerings and the offerings of the people, approaching the altar of God by bringing sacrifice. (3) worship lived in church life is Jesus as the subject of worship through hymns, prayers, confessions of sins begging for forgiveness, giving thanks. Church life gives the best offerings to God, body, soul and spirit, which must be accompanied by service to others.AbstrakBeribadah menurut konsep kekristenan adalah perintah Tuhan yang wajib dilakukan oleh setap orang yang sudah di tebus dan diselamatkan oleh Tuhan Yesus Kristus.  Tujuan penelitian adalah menjawab: Apakah makna ibadah persekutuan orang percaya? Apakah unsur-unsur ibadah menurut Alkitab?  Bagaimanakah ibadah dihayati dalam kehidupan bergereja? Penelitian menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan kajian literature (library research). Hasil penelitian adalah: (1) ibadah yang benar adalah  pelayanan kepada Allah dengan mempersembahkan seluruh tubuh jiwa dan roh  dengan aneka tindakan dan sikap penuh hormat dan puja, ketundukan, serta ketaatan dengan penuh ucapan syukur. (2)  unsur-unsur ibadah adalah ungkapan batin seseorang yang mengakui bahwa Allah berdaulat penuh kuasa dan baik. Dengan rangkaian persembahan pribadi maupun persembahan umat, menghampiri mezbah Allah dengan membawa kurban.  (3) ibadah dihayati dalam kehidupan bergereja adalah Yesus sebagai pokok penyembahan melalui nyanyian pujian, doa, pengakuan dosa mohon pengampunan, mengucap syukur. Kehidupan bergereja itu  memberikan persembahan terbaik kepada Tuhan yaitu tubuh, jiwa dan roh, yang harus dibarengi dengan pelayanan kepada sesama. 

Adam as vicegerent of God

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nestler
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Attributes Of God

Ibn ʿArabī is considered to be one of the best-known and most influential mystics within the Islamic tradition with an extremely extensive and complex oeuvre, which to this day has been the subject of numerous studies in both East and West. The present contribution is also dedicated to one of these writings, namely the work Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, and examines in the chapter on Adam his role as a vicegerent of God (ḫalīfat Allāh), who in Ibn ʿArabī’s mystical doctrine of being is ascribed the status of a »perfect human« (al-insān al-kāmil). Starting from Q 2:30-34, where Adam is presented as ḫalīfat Allāh, the author presents a precise textual analysis of this first chapter in Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam based on three levels of relationship which Adam has to the world, to the angels and to God, showing how the perfection of Adam can be recognized and measured. In Ibn ʿArabī, Adam is by no means only considered to be the first man and forefather of mankind, as one could claim for the Koran and the Bible; first and foremost, he embodies the prototype of man or the essence of human being itself, which basically has the ability to manifest the attributes of God in such a way that it can attain the status of perfection and vicegerency. This fundamental potential testifies to a special human dignity, which is already expressed in the Koran using the figure of Adam and which is also the subject of this study.

Divine Words, Female Voices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerusha Tanner Lamptey
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Feminist Theology ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Women Scholars ◽  
Female Voices ◽  
Divine Words ◽  
Vital Resource

Interreligious feminist engagement is a legitimate and vital resource for Muslim women scholars seeking to articulate egalitarian interpretations of Islamic traditions and practices. Acknowledging very real challenges within interreligious feminist engagement, Divine Words, Female Voices: Muslima Explorations in Comparative Feminist Theology uses the method of comparative feminist theology to skillfully navigate these challenges, avoid impositions of absolute similarity, and propose new, constructive insights in Muslima theology. Divine Words, Female Voices reorients the comparative theological conversation around the two “Divine Words,” around the Qur’an and Jesus Christ, rather than Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ, or the Qur’an and the Bible. Building on this analogical foundation, it engages diverse Muslim and Christian feminist, womanist, and mujerista voices on a variety of central theological themes. Divine Words, Female Voices explores intersections, discontinuities, and resultant insights that arise in relation to divine revelation; textual hermeneutics of the hadith and Bible; Prophet Muhammad and Mary as feminist exemplars; theological anthropology and freedom; and ritual prayer, tradition, and change.

The New Testament and Intellectual Humility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Macaskill
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Sacrificial Love ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

This book examines how the New Testament scriptures might form and foster intellectual humility within Christian communities. It is informed by recent interdisciplinary interest in intellectual humility, and concerned to appreciate the distinctive representations of the virtue offered by the New Testament writers on their own terms. It argues that the intellectual virtue is cast as a particular expression of the broader Christian virtue of humility, which proceeds from the believer’s union with Christ, through which personal identity is reconstituted by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Hence, we speak of ‘virtue’ in ways determined by the acting presence of Jesus Christ, overcoming sin and evil in human lives and in the world. The Christian account of the virtue is framed by this conflict, as believers within the Christian community struggle with natural arrogance and selfishness, and come to share in the mind of Christ. The new identity that emerges creates a fresh openness to truth, as the capacity of the sinful mind to distort truth is exposed and challenged. This affects knowledge and perception, but also volition: for these ancient writers, a humble mind makes good decisions that reflect judgments decisively shaped by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. By presenting ‘humility of mind’ as a characteristic of the One who is worshipped—Jesus Christ—the New Testament writers insist that we acknowledge the virtue not just as an admission of human deficiency or limitation, but as a positive affirmation of our rightful place within the divine economy.

scholarly journals LAW, RELIGION, AND SAME-SEX RELATIONS IN AFRICA

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-71
Author(s):  
M. Christian Green
Keyword(s):  
Moral Issue ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
International Conference ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Political Act ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Ghana

Some years back, around 2013, I was asked to write an article on the uses of the Bible in African law. Researching references to the Bible and biblical law across the African continent, I soon learned that, besides support for arguments by a few states in favor of declaring themselves “Christian nations,” the main use was in emerging debates over homosexuality and same-sex relationships—almost exclusively to condemn those relationships. In January 2013, the newly formed African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS) held its first international conference at the University of Ghana Legon. There, African sexuality debates emerged forcefully in consideration of a paper by Sylvia Tamale, then dean of the Makarere University School of Law in Uganda, who argued pointedly, “[P]olitical Christianity and Islam, especially, have constructed a discourse that suggests that sexuality is the key moral issue on the continent today, diverting attention from the real critical moral issues for the majority of Africans . . . . Employing religion, culture and the law to flag sexuality as the biggest moral issue of our times and dislocating the real issue is a political act and must be recognised as such.”

The first century of English protestantism and the growth of national identity

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Zeal

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.

Albert Schweitzer and the Jews

2014 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Author(s):  
James Carleton Paget
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Long Life ◽  
The One

Albert Schweitzer's engagement with Judaism, and with the Jewish community more generally, has never been the subject of substantive discussion. On the one hand this is not surprising—Schweitzer wrote little about Judaism or the Jews during his long life, or at least very little that was devoted principally to those subjects. On the other hand, the lack of a study might be thought odd—Schweitzer's work as a New Testament scholar in particular is taken up to a significant degree with presenting a picture of Jesus, of the earliest Christian communities, and of Paul, and his scholarship emphasizes the need to see these topics against the background of a specific set of Jewish assumptions. It is also noteworthy because Schweitzer married a baptized Jew, whose father's academic career had been disadvantaged because he was a Jew. Moreover, Schweitzer lived at a catastrophic time in the history of the Jews, a time that directly affected his wife's family and others known to him. The extent to which this personal contact with Jews and with Judaism influenced Schweitzer either in his writings on Judaism or in his life will in part be the subject of this article.

scholarly journals History and theory of Scripture translations

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole
Keyword(s):  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Functional Equivalence ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Bible Translations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History And Theory

This article argues for the importance of Bible translations through its historical achievements and theoretical frames of reference. The missionary expansion of Christianity owes its very being to translations. The early Christian communities knew the Bible through the LXX translations while churches today still continue to use various translations. Translations shape Scripture interpretations, especially when a given interpretation depends on a particular translation. A particular interpretation can also influence a given translation. The article shows how translation theories have been developed to clarify and how the transaction source-target is culturally handled. The articles discuss some of these “theoretical frames”, namely the functional equivalence, relevance, literary functional equivalence and intercultural mediation. By means of a historical overview and a reflection on Bible translation theories the article aims to focus on the role of Africa in translation history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document