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During the twentieth-century, Christendom shifted its centre of gravity to the Southern Hemisphere, Africa becoming the most significant area of church growth. This volume explores Christianity’s advance across the continent, and its capturing of the African imagination.
From the medieval Catholic Kingdom of Kongo to a transnational Pentecostal movement in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the chapters explore how African agents – priests and prophets, martyrs and missionaries, evangelists and catechists – have seized Christianity and made it theirs. Emphasizing popular religion, the book shows how the Christian ideas and texts, practices and symbols, which have been adapted by Africans, help them accept existential passions and empower them through faith to deal with material concerns for health and wealth, and to overcome evil.
From the medieval Catholic Kingdom of Kongo to a transnational Pentecostal movement in post-colonial Zimbabwe, the chapters explore how African agents – priests and prophets, martyrs and missionaries, evangelists and catechists – have seized Christianity and made it theirs. Emphasizing popular religion, the book shows how the Christian ideas and texts, practices and symbols, which have been adapted by Africans, help them accept existential passions and empower them through faith to deal with material concerns for health and wealth, and to overcome evil.
Price: $189.00
Pages: 424
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Studies of Religion in Africa
Publication Date:
14 November 2001
ISBN: 9789004116689
Format: Other
"Facing competition within the religious market-places of the world has ... always been the lot of both the missionaries and the churches they have helped to establish, with or without the spur of capitalist economics. That this was the case owes much to the African imagination; that it is now widely accepted is likewise the achievement of Adrian Hastings and the wider scholarship represented in this excellent volume." - Andrew Porter, King's College
D. Maxwell, Ph.D. in History, St Antony’s College, Oxford University is Senior Lecturer in International History at Keele University. Is the author of Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe. A Social History of the Hwesa People c.1870s-1990s (Edinburgh University Press/International African Library; Connecticut, Praeger 1999) and he is the Senior Editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa (Brill).
I. Lawrie, BA in Jurisprudence, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford is Administrative Officer at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds, England. She is Editorial Assistant and Reviews Editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa and Assistant Editor of The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000).
I. Lawrie, BA in Jurisprudence, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford is Administrative Officer at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds, England. She is Editorial Assistant and Reviews Editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa and Assistant Editor of The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000).