scholarly journals African christianity: a living and vibrant repository of christian faith – Part I

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 415
Author(s):  
Johny Thachuparamban
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
African Christianity

scholarly journals Africanization of Christianity: Henry Venn’s indigenization of Christianity

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-85
Author(s):  
Ekpenyong Obo Ekpenyong ◽  
Ibiang Obono Okoi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Church Organization ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Native Literature ◽  
The Church

The history of Christianity has always been a two-way process of transformation in any given culture. Christianity and paganism are reciprocal; Christianity is necessary for revelation to be fulfilled, but the actual quality of this fulfillment depends upon the quality of the religious man transformed by revelation. Christianity, as a result of this, needs a natural religion, the same way it needs all human realities as the sole mission is to save what has first been created. The link between Gospel and culture is that Gospel whenever its introduced and established in a new culture, is “transposed” in a particular way a sweet melody into a new key. Moreover, the Gospel, when transposed from its biblical world to other cultural worlds, undergoes change itself as well as causing these other worlds to change. Crowther created an astonishing impact and contribution after his consecration in 1864; as he strived to indigenize or Africanize Christianity to make it possible for the Christian faith to be accepted by Africans without having to give up or disown their cultural values. This work seeks to find what part Henry Venn, the dynamic and accomplished secretary of the Church Missionary Society, played to see how Christian faith can go well together or combine with African beliefs and practices to produce Christianity which may become a religion for Africans. This work has shown that Henry Venn's ideas on native Church organization include: the native Church needs the ablest native pastors for its fuller development and that it should be under a native bishop and that a native Church is organized as a national institution. This work adopted a qualitative method that used historical and content analysis. This work concluded that for the Africanization of Christianity to be actualized, African Church must have its liturgy or incorporate what was good of the native religions to develop an authentically African Christianity. And that reducing the various African vernaculars into writing and developing native literature was a first step in the reforming movement toward Africanization of Christianity; just as Venn urged Crowther to undertake the translation of the Bible into Yoruba and to preach in Yoruba even while still at Freetown.

scholarly journals Afua Kuma’s Prayers and Praises as Evidence of a Vibrant Primal Substructure in African Christianity

2021 ◽  
pp. 229-241
Author(s):  
Joseph Gyebi
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Feature Analysis ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Deep Forest ◽  
Western Religion

Following from the assertion that there exists a symbiosis between Christianity and the Primal Substructure in Africa, this paper sets out to examine Afua Kuma’s Jesus of the Deep Forest using Harold Turner’s six feature analysis of primal religions. It focuses on how Afua Kuma’s poetry builds upon the six features of the primal worldview with her new insights from the Christian faith. The author argues that this is evidence of the vibrant primal substructure in African Christianity. This article thus contributes to the growing body of scholarship on African Christianity and its primal underpinnings and Christianity as a non-Western religion Keywords: Primal Worldview, African Christianity, Apae, Afua Kuma

Indigenization, Translation, and Transformation in African Christianity

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Akintunde E. Akinade
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Conversion Narrative ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Conscious Effort ◽  
Dynamic Forces

Africa has provided an auspicious context for religious reformation, renewal, and revival. Its landscape has been radically shaped by the dynamic forces of Christianity. African Christianity evokes a protean image that has been moulded by the interrelated processes of mission, conversion narrative, prophecy, and waves of spiritual independence. In contemporary times, Africa continues to serve as a living laboratory for creative religious movements and models. This paper analyses the importance of translation and indigenization in African Christianity and how the processes have influenced the dissenting tradition in this religious experience. Translation provided the impetus for genuine and creative appropriation of the Christian faith in Africa. The engine of faith was enabled by the conscious effort to rediscover Christian doctrines and formulas in familiar syntax, symbols, and concepts.

scholarly journals Christian Faith and Akan Culture in Ghana: A Review of Major Works of Sidney George Williamson

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Cultural Worldview ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The People ◽  
Akan Culture ◽  
Hearts And Minds

Christian growth must not only be considered in terms of the growth of numbers. The growth in the church must also be considered in the level of depth and the quality of Christian conversion within a cultural milieu. The depth of the faith has a lot to do with how the Gospel speaks directly to the minds and hearts of its hearers. Moreover, the Gospel can speak to the hearts and minds of its hearers when the indigenous world views that condition the inner lives of the people are given serious consideration. The study is a review of the major works of Sidney George Williamson on the Christian faith and Akan culture in Ghana. As an early student of the tension between the Christian faith and Akan culture and the challenges of Christian identity, Williamson draws attention to the fact that Christianity can adequately meet Akan Christian needs when it pays attention to the cultural worldview of the people it seeks to serve. The study as a qualitative one uses both primary and secondary sources. Interviews and observations were conducted in some Akan communities on the integration of Christian faith and Akan cultural worldview. The study points to the fact that the construction of theology among Akan Christians must be done from the inside to the outside and not from outside to the inside, the approach that Western missionaries adopted. The spiritual needs of Akan Christians will be adequately met when they hear the Gospel in their own cultural understandings rather than theology done in the West offered to the Akan in European worldview. The study further calls attention to the preparedness of the churches in the Akan cultural environment for paradigm shifts in the Christian faith and Akan Cultural engagements in post-missionary African Christianity. Keywords: Akan Culture, Christian Faith, Local Theologies, Sidney George Williamson

scholarly journals Encountering Jesus in African Christianity: A Ghanaian evangelical/pentecostal thought on faith, experience, and hope in Christ

2006 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Preliminary Attempt ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
In Christ

This article constitutes a preliminary attempt at reflecting upon Ghana’s journey with a particular tradition within the Christian faith. The author discusses the relevance of Jesus in the contemporary Evangelical/Pentecostal Churches by taking a closer look at how the person of Christ and other elements of evangelical spirituality are appropriated within the indigenous cultural matrix of the country.

CULTURE, WORLDVIEW AND RELIGION

2001 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennie J van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Ivory Tower ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Abstract Ideas

Why is a Reformational philosophy needed in Africa? It is necessary, because something is missing in African Christianity. Most Western missionaries taught Africans a “broken” or dualistic worldview. This caused a divorce between traditional culture and their new Christian religion. The Christian faith was perceived as something remote, only concerned with a distant past (the Bible) and a far-away future (heaven). It could not become a reality in their everyday lives. It could not develop into an all-encompassing worldview and lifestyle. Because Reformational philosophy advocates the Biblical, holistic approach of a comprehensive worldview, it is welcomed on our continent. It contains a healing and liberating message to our bleeding and lost continent. What Africans, however, neither want nor can afford, is an ivory tower philosophy, playing intellectual games; a philosophy which does not do or change anything. They want a philosophy which is a “marriage” between abstract ideas and the facts on the ground. They need a Christian philosophy with compassion that may even contribute to the alleviation of their poverty!

Domination and Resistance: Lamin Sanneh, Eboussi Boulaga, and the Reinterpretation of Christianity in Africa

Exchange ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
David Tonghou Ngong
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Global Christianity ◽  
New Form ◽  
World Christianity

Abstract This article engages the work of two prominent but recently deceased scholars of African Christianity—the Gambian Lamin Sanneh and the Cameroonian Fabien Eboussi Boulaga. It argues that their reinterpretation of Christianity is designed to develop an imagination of resistance in the context of western domination in Africa. Sanneh approaches the matter from a historical perspective through which he narrates the emergence of a new form of Christianity, leading to his important distinction between “world Christianity” and “global Christianity.” Boulaga approaches the issue from the perspective of philosophical theology, through which he developed the “Christic model” as central to appropriating the Christian faith in Africa. The paper argues that one can hardly understand why Sanneh distinguishes between global and world Christianity and why Boulaga develops the radical Christic model, if one fails to locate their work within the framework of problematizing dynamics of western domination in Africa.

scholarly journals Conversion Experience of Akan Christian Royals in Ghana

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-190
Author(s):  
Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong ◽  
Michael Kwadwo Ntiamoah
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Conversion Experience ◽  
Traditional Leadership ◽  
Secondary Methods ◽  
The Church

The study is an examination of the conversion challenges confronting Akan Christian Royals in Ghana. The Western missionaries and missionary established churches demand that as part of their conversion requirements, Akan Royals must reject and disassociate themselves from the Black Stool, ancestors and all ancestral related activities. The Royals who claim that their families have become Christian royal families insist that authority symbols like the Black Stools and ancestral ceremonies like the Adae do not take the place of the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ in their belief system. Moreover, participation in Palace services prepares them for traditional leadership and does not take them away from their faith in Christ. The traditional leadership institutions and the Royals that welcomed the Western missionaries, provided them with hospitality, security and resources for the missionary work have come to be considered as unchristian and an anathema to the Christian faith. The position of the church has created tensions within Akan Christian Royal and put the genuineness of their conversion in doubt. The study which is qualitative in nature uses both primary and secondary methods in its information gathering. Its findings provide responses to some contemporary tensions in gospel and culture studies in African Christianity. Keywords: Akan Royals, Christian Conversion, Cultural Identity, Black Stool, Authority Symbols

The Philosopher's Progress: C.S. Lewis' Intellectual Journey from Atheism to Theism

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-143
Author(s):  
Norbert Feinendegen
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Intellectual Journey ◽  
Philosophical Progress ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

Although Lewis describes his intellectual journey to the Christian faith in Surprised by Joy and The Pilgrim's Regress, the actual steps of his progress from Atheism to Theism are still a matter of controversy. Based on Lewis' letters, his diary All My Road Before Me and recently published sources (in particular ‘Early Prose Joy’), this paper gives an outline of the main steps of Lewis' philosophical progress during the 1920s. The first part sketches the five main stages Materialism, Realism, Absolute Idealism, Subjective Idealism, and Theism, and submits a proposal for their dating. The second part describes these stages in greater detail and discusses the reasons that urged Lewis to adopt a new philosophical position at a particular time. It will become apparent that a thorough philosophical understanding of these stages is an indispensable prerequisite for any serious effort to establish a chronology of Lewis' intellectual progress during these years.

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