Biblical Christianity In African Perspective

We often hear these days that the centre of Christianity is moving toward the Global South and Africa is a key player in that movement. This makes the study of African Christianity and African realities important – even more so when it is being done by Africans themselves in their own context. The Africa Society of Evangelical Theology (ASET) was created to encourage research and sustained theological reflection on key issues facing Africa by and for African Christians and those working within African contexts. The volumes in the ASET series constitute the best papers presented at the annual conferences of ASET and together they seek to fill this important gap in the literature of Christianity. Africa is all too familiar with suffering. Yet there is a dearth of sustained theological reflection on suffering by Africans, or for Africans. Christianity and Suffering: African Perspectives addresses this need and is the fruit of the 5th Annual Conference of the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology. The contributions address age-old issues like why God does not prevent or relieve human suffering; they wrestle with causes of suffering including witchcraft, poverty, curses, and war; and they also explore appropriate Christian responses to suffering, all from within the African context. The Africa Society of Evangelical Theology (ASET) is a professional society, founded in 2009 for the purpose of fostering evangelical theological scholarship and to facilitate collegial relationships among scholars and practitioners of the Christian religion in Africa. Its core values are: (1) Faithfulness to the Bible, (2) Professional ethics, (3) Creative and critical thinking, (4) Christ-like humility, (5) Community of scholars encouraging, respecting, and learning from one another, and (6) Development and inspiration of young scholars. To learn more about ASET, please visit its Facebook page: facebook.com/AfricaSocietyOfEvangelicalTheology

Describes the major issues facing the church in Africa and offers suggestions on how these problems can be overcome.

Faith in African Lived Christianity – Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives offers a comprehensive, empirically rich and interdisciplinary approach to the study of faith in African Christianity. The book brings together anthropology and theology in the study of how faith and religious experiences shape the understanding of social life in Africa. The volume is a collection of chapters by prominent Africanist theologians, anthropologists and social scientists, who take people’s faith as their starting point and analyze it in a contextually sensitive way. It covers discussions of positionality in the study of African Christianity, interdisciplinary methods and approaches and a number of case studies on political, social and ecological aspects of African Christian spirituality.

Everyone who has “eyes to see” acknowledges the growing importance of the African church to the future of global Christianity. But what does it mean for the church to take root in Africa? How should the message of the gospel and the practice of Christianity be contextualized for Africa? African Contextual Realities addresses many of the questions surrounding contextualization from a practical point of view and is the fruit of the 6th Annual Conference of the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology held in Nairobi in 2016. The book explores such questions as: • In what ways should the mission of God be universally recognizable in every cultural context? • In our efforts to contextualize, how do we avoid compromising the very gospel we are to proclaim? • How can the African church wean itself away from dependency on the Western church? • How does Christianity speak into some of the cultural and social issues arising out of contemporary African settings – issues like widow cleansing, Christian-Muslim relations, and peace-building? All those who are interested to learn more about the contextualization of African Christianity will find this volume to be an important resource.