Appropriating Historical Jesus Research in Africa

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 199-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter F. Craffert
Keyword(s):  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Cultural Setting ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
The World ◽  
African Traditional Religions

AbstractThis study starts with a brief overview of the variety of images of Jesus found in African Christianity. African Christianity (like Christianity all over the world) has many ingenious and creative ways of going about the figure of Jesus, of which the quest for what Jesus can do for Africans and the inculturation of Jesus in African images represent the main trends. Although historical Jesus research receives almost no attention in African scholarship, it is argued that a historical understanding of Jesus within his own cultural setting can pick up many clues from the study of religious specialists in African traditional religions (ATRs). From such an approach, Jesus as historical figure can not only be described as similar to typical religious practitioners in many ATRs, but it offers a new avenue for inter-religious dialogue in Africa.

African Traditional Religions in Christian Mission and Christian Scholarship: Re-Opening a Debate That Never Started

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
The South ◽  
African Theology ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
African Black ◽  
African Traditional Religions

AbstractIn this essay I wish to argue that denial, outright dismissal, distortion and dismissive containment have been and continue to be aptly descriptive of the manner in which Christian mission and Christian scholarship have related to and dealt with African Traditional Religions (ATRs). This, I want to further suggest, has been as true of the South African situation as it has been true of the rest of the continent. Although most prevalent during the earliest periods of contact between Christianity and ATRs, the attitude which I am characterising as outright dismissal is by no means totally extinct today. This article seeks to re-open the question of the place ofATRs in the world of religions with particular reference to their relation to Christianity. This will be done by reference to three important 'voices': Okot p'Bitek, African theology and South African Black Theology.

scholarly journals RELIGION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: THE CRADLE OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AS IT WERE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikem, Godspower Ujene
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Women Empowerment ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
African Traditional Religions

<p>From the abinitio, the position of women in religion had been historically dynamic as many had reported archeological discoveries of the effigies of great religious leaders as women and goddesses. But in-between histories, there was the rhetoric of the relegation of women to the pew as pertaining to religion. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and African traditional religions have often been adjudged to be hostile to female folk with lots of literature analyzing the ceiling placed on women’s socio-economic and political lives and its attendant implications. Contemporarily, the case is different as diverse religions the world over have relaxed most strict patriarchal practices to house women albeit empower them, but amidst this ample gain, there is the dearth of scholarly works to accommodate such phoenix rise vis-à-vis religion and women thus, the essence of this work. It underscores the contemporary global religions and their modus operandi in empowering women in juxtaposition with history. With the analysis of secondary data and context, the study submits among other things that many Pentecostal churches are currently led by women, the orthodox have more priestesses and female bishops, Islam has become more gender egalitarian, allowing women with certain degree of freedom (like women driving and voting in Saudi Arabia), Hinduism is friendlier to women and female traditional cum religious leaders keep emerging unlike before. Women feel/are more religiously empowered today than in recent histories owing to the advent of advocacy democracy. With the application of neoliberal theory, the study suggests a further deregulation of religion as a panacea for total women emancipation vis-à-vis their economic and political lives.</p>

scholarly journals Religious Artefacts, Practices and Symbols in the Johane Masowe Chishanu yeNyenyedzi Church in Zimbabwe: Interpreting the Visual Narratives

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Musoni ◽  
Francis Machingura ◽  
Attwell Mamvuto
Keyword(s):  
Religious Movement ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
Traditional Taxonomy ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
Religious Elements ◽  
African Traditional Religions ◽  
Clay Pots

This study was carried out at a time when most African Indigenous Churches (AICs) in southern Africa were busy rebranding their spirituality and theology. This rebranding was as a result of serious competition in an environment where a new church was emerging every day. Thus, we argue that, due to this religious contestation, the Johane Masowe Chishanu yeNyenyedzi (JMCN) Church has inculcated/borrowed certain religious artefacts, symbols and practices which had never been part of African Christianity in Africa. As a result, this religious movement has inculcated certain African/Islamic religious objects of faith in a bid to demonstrate inclusivism and religious tolerance. In this paper, we discuss the JMCN Church’s religious artefacts, symbols and practices such as clay pots (mbiya), big clay pots (makate), the wooden staff, decorated religious flags, congregating on Fridays and the use of crescent and star as its religious symbols. Artefacts, symbols and practices are borrowed from both African Traditional Religions (ATRs) and Islam. However, what remains critical in this study, is whether the JMCN Church, after its inculcation of such African traditional religious and Islamic religious elements of faith retains the tag, “a Christian church,” in the rightful sense of the traditional taxonomy of the term, “Christian church,” even though the movement itself claims to be a Christian church in Zimbabwe.

scholarly journals TOWARDS A CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO AFRICA TRADITIONAL RELIGION

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-131
Author(s):  
Nadi Maria de Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Local Religion ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The People ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Theological Challenge ◽  
African Traditional Religions

Inter-Religious dialogue is a demand for the mission. Based on the theological investigation of scholars who explore and write on the subject, the article analyses the theological challenge of Inter-Religious dialogue especially in approaching African Traditional Religions. The discussion concerns the Christian theology of religious pluralism with the local religion in Africa looking at the theological progress, not just from the abstract world of books, but also, from connecting with the life of the people, appreciating and connecting points of convergences with the local culture and religions. Still, a long way to go on the reflection and there needs to open wider our vision concerning the action of the Spirit that has been always present in Africa.  

scholarly journals RELIGION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: THE CRADLE OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AS IT WERE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikem, Godspower Ujene
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Women Empowerment ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The World ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
African Traditional Religions

<p>From the abinitio, the position of women in religion had been historically dynamic as many had reported archeological discoveries of the effigies of great religious leaders as women and goddesses. But in-between histories, there was the rhetoric of the relegation of women to the pew as pertaining to religion. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and African traditional religions have often been adjudged to be hostile to female folk with lots of literature analyzing the ceiling placed on women’s socio-economic and political lives and its attendant implications. Contemporarily, the case is different as diverse religions the world over have relaxed most strict patriarchal practices to house women albeit empower them, but amidst this ample gain, there is the dearth of scholarly works to accommodate such phoenix rise vis-à-vis religion and women thus, the essence of this work. It underscores the contemporary global religions and their modus operandi in empowering women in juxtaposition with history. With the analysis of secondary data and context, the study submits among other things that many Pentecostal churches are currently led by women, the orthodox have more priestesses and female bishops, Islam has become more gender egalitarian, allowing women with certain degree of freedom (like women driving and voting in Saudi Arabia), Hinduism is friendlier to women and female traditional cum religious leaders keep emerging unlike before. Women feel/are more religiously empowered today than in recent histories owing to the advent of advocacy democracy. With the application of neoliberal theory, the study suggests a further deregulation of religion as a panacea for total women emancipation vis-à-vis their economic and political lives.</p>

Appropriating Hobbes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
The World ◽  
Michael Oakeshott ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

The aim of this book is not to trace the changing fortunes of the interpretation of one of the most sophisticated and famous political philosophers who ever lived, but to glimpse here and there his place in different contexts, and how his interpreters see their own images reflected in him, or how they define themselves in contrast to him. The main claim is that there is no Hobbes independent of the interpretations that arise from his appropriation in these various contexts and which serve to present him to the world. There is no one perfect context that enables us to get at what Hobbes ‘really meant’, despite the numerous claims to the contrary. He is almost indistinguishable from the context in which he is read. This contention is justified with reference to hermeneutics, and particularly the theories of Gadamer, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, contending that through a process of ‘distanciation’ Hobbes’s writings have been appropriated and commandeered to do service in divergent contexts such as philosophical idealism; debates over the philosophical versus historical understanding of texts; and in ideological disputations, and emblematic characterizations of him by various disciplines such as law, politics, and international relations. The book illustrates the capacity of a text to take on the colouration of its surroundings by exploring and explicating the importance of contexts in reading and understanding how and why particular interpretations of Hobbes have emerged, such as those of Carl Schmitt and Michael Oakeshott, or the international jurists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Rethinking Public Theology in Ethiopia: Politics, Religion, and Ethnicity in a Declining National Harmony

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-171
Author(s):  
Wondimu Legesse Sonessa
Keyword(s):  
Public Theology ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
Ethnic Tensions ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Almost All ◽  
African Traditional Religions

Abstract Ethiopia is a country of multi-ethnic and multi-religious society. Almost all of its citizens claim affiliation with either Christianity, Islam, or African traditional religions. Adherents of these religions have been coexisting in respect and peace. However, there is a growing tension between the citizens since the downfall of the dictatorial military government of Ethiopia, which was displaced by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), in 1991. Politics, religion, and ethnicity are the major causes of the declining national harmony under the current government. My claim is that addressing the declining national harmony caused by the religious, political, and ethnic tensions in Ethiopia requires of the EECMY to rethink its public theology in a way that promotes a national harmony that values peace, equality, justice, democracy, and human flourishing.

The World as God's ‘body’: In Pursuit of Dialogue with Rāmānuja

1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Lipner
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
The World ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Religious Understanding

In this essay I propose to offer some observations in due course on how Christian thought and practice in general (though some reference will be made to the Indian context) might profit from a central theme in the theology of Rāmānuja, a Tamil Vaisnava Brahmin whose traditional date straddles the eleventh and twelfth centuries of the Christian era. The central theme I have in mind is expressed in Rāmānuja's view that the ‘world’ is the ‘body’ of Brahman or God. We shall go on to explain what this means, but let me state first that my overall aim is to further inter-religious understanding, especially between Christian and Hindu points of view. In professing a concern for inter-religious dialogue I know that I reflect a longstanding interest of Professor H. D. Lewis. I shall seek to show that the Christian religion can profit both from the content and the method of Rāmānuja's body-of-God theology. To this end this essay is divided into two sections. Section I is the longer: it contains an analysis of what Rāmānuja did (and did not) mean by his body-of-God theme – doubtless unfamiliar ground for most of the readers of this essay – and serves as a propaedeutic for what follows in section 2. In section 2 I shall attempt to ‘extrapolate’ Rāmānuja's thinking into a Christian context, with dialogue in mind. Section 2 cannot be appreciated for the promise I hope it holds out without the (sometimes involved) detail of the first section.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document