Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The book offers a portrait of how contending narratives of modernity in both church and society play out in Africa today through the agency of African Christian religion. It is a powerful testament to the resilience of the Christian faith in Africa. It is thus a good text for understanding the story of African Christian religion in the shaping of new cultural identities and sociological forms in Africa. This volume explores the identity and features of African Christian religion and the cultural forces driving the momentum of Christian expansion in Africa. The contributors engage some of the most pressing questions, which are emerging from African models, and patterns of Christian beliefs and practices and how they relate to Africa's social context, African traditional religions, and the Christian faith. The volume also explores how these factors are shaping a new African social imagination, especially in providing answers to the most challenging questions about poverty, wealth, health, human, and cosmic flourishing in Africa. The contributors answer the following pertinent questions: What models of faith and praxis are being developed through the everyday practices of faith which offer models for social transformation in Africa and beyond? What role does money and charity play in the relationship between African Christian churches and their Western counterparts? Do African churches need Western missionaries and Western financial aid for church projects and mission in Africa? The writers in this volume address these questions from theoretical, sociological, historical, biblical, theological, and pastoral perspectives and in doing this have produced a volume with intersecting voices and have offered the academy a good road map for reading African Christian religion today and into the future.
Synopsis
Wealth, Health, and Hope in African Christian Religion offers a portrait of how contending narratives of modernity in both church and society play out in Africa today through the agency of African Christian religion. It explores the identity and features of African Christian religion and the cultural forces driving the momentum of Christian expansion in Africa, as well as how these factors are shaping a new African social imagination, especially in providing answers to the most challenging questions about poverty, wealth, health, human, and cosmic flourishing. It offers the academy a good road map for interpreting African Christian religious beliefs and practices today and into the future.
Synopsis
This volume fills the gap in current scholarship on African Christian religions, Pentecostalism, and the so-called prosperity gospel within the broader search for abundant life through the Christian faith and churches in Africa.