Bishop Michael Eneja

The joy over the growth of Christianity in Africa is also a challenge to all concerned to help Christianity take roots, ennoble and become one with the cultural life of the numerous tribes of Africa. This missionary expectation is not yet fully realized in many local churches in Africa. From these perspectives, Adolphus Chikezie Anuka inaugurates a new brand of concrete, target-oriented emphasis on dialogical inculturation. In this book, the Mmanwu cultural institution of the Igbo people of south eastern Nigeria stands in central focus, opening itself to the influences of Christian values as well as speaking to the religious assumptions of Christianity. The theoretical results of this research work and its practical pastoral suggestions are both enlightening and appealing.

In recent years, the Catholic Church has suffered a deluge of accusations, bad press, and tragedies. Now is the time for the priesthood to recapture the faithfulness which led them to their calling, and to inspire their laity as never before. A timely, urgent handbook for Catholics of every nation, Th e Catholic Priesthood offers a wake-up call not only to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, but to all Christians everywhere. Rev. Fr. Anthony O. Ezeoke's firm grasp of Catholic teaching, the Church's history, and the priesthood vocation off er an enlightening criticism of how the Church needs to return to the fundamental teachings of its beginning. Through short, easy-to-digest chapters, Rev. Father Ezeoke reviews the role of priests in the Old and New Testaments, Jesus as the High Priest, and the apostles' calling to continue Jesus's ministry. He addresses specific questions related to some of the issues currently plaguing the Church today and offers hope and inspiration for change. Above all, he issues an encouraging plea for every member of the Catholic Church to reawaken the Gospel within their hearts. The Catholic Priesthood is the first step toward reviving hope within the Catholic Church and her flock.

A phenomenon seldom recognized in the media of Western Europe and North America is the extraordinary growth of the Catholic Church of South America and sub-Saharan Africa during the last five decades, and nowhere more than in Nigeria. A key figure in that country and in that growth, up to his death in 1995, was Cardinal Ekandem, the first Anglophone West-African bishop - the first of many - and an outstanding churchman of the 20th Century. Fr. Michael Edem’s scholarly biography of the Cardinal is a fascinating account of a journey from life in a traditional African village to the consistory of cardinals of the Catholic Church in Rome. It will be of enormous interest to a wider public for the author’s personal knowledge of the cardinal and of the Efik/Ibibio culture in which they both grew up.

The quotations in this book cut across continents, the living and dead, cultures, races and religions. This shows that humility is tangibly universal...I recommend this book to all and sundry especially, young people and students. - Fr. Chukwudi O. Callistus Onwere. Humility is a subject often neglected and this book reminds us of its importance. Fr. Peter teaches us how to replace the pitfalls of pride with humility, gratitude and grace. This book inspires and challenges us to be true children of God. - Mrs Mary Beth Smith. William Shakespeare wrote of humility in dozens upon dozens of lines in his plays. In classical times, Sophocles wrote of Oedipus journey from arrogance to humility. In modern times, T.S. Eliot commented that, humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve. - Mrs Patricia Heintzelman.

"... refreshing and provocative... a significant addition to existing literature on African politics." -- Stephen Ellis "It opens up a whole new field of investigation, and brings into focus the pertinence of an interdisciplinary approach to African politics." -- René Lemarchand In this innovative work, Michael G. Schatzberg reads metaphors found in the popular press as indicators of the way Africans come to understand their political universe. Examining daily newspapers, popular literature, and political and church documents from across middle Africa, Schatzberg finds that widespread and deeply ingrained views of government and its relationship to its citizenry may be understood as a projection of the metaphor of an idealized extended family onto the formal political sphere. Schatzberg's careful observations and sensitive interpretations uncover the moral and social factors that shape the African political universe while showing how some African understandings of politics and political power may hamper or promote the development of Western-style democracy. Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa looks closely at elements of African moral and political thought and offers a nuanced assessment of whether democracy might flourish were it to be established on middle African terms.

In this groundbreaking collection, leading historians, Africanists, and other scholars document the life and work of twelve Igbo intellectuals who, educated within European traditions, came to terms with the dominance of European thought while making significant contributions to African intellectual traditions.