Hope For Africa And What The Christian Can Do

Profound reflection on lament and hope arising out of Africa's immense suffering There is no more urgent theological task than to provide an account of hope in Africa, given its endless cycles of violence, war, poverty, and displacement. So claims Emmanuel Katongole, a recognized, innovative theological voice from Africa. In the midst of suffering, Katongole says, hope takes the form of "arguing" and "wrestling" with God. Suchlamentis not merely a cry of pain it is a way of mourning, protesting, and appealing to God. As he unpacks the rich theological and social dimensions of the practice of lament in Africa, Katongole tells the stories of courageous Christian activists working for change in East Africa and invites readers to enter into lament along with them."

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.

David Tonghou Ngong offers a comprehensive view of African Christian thought that includes North Africa in antiquity as well as Sub-Saharan Africa from the period of colonial missionary activity to the present. Challenging conventional colonial divisions of Africa, A New History of African Christian Thought demonstrates that important continuities exist across the continent. Chapters written by specialists in African Christian thought reflect the issues—both ancient and modern—in which Christian Africa has impacted the shape of Christian belief from the beginning of the movement up to the present day.

HIV/AIDS: Political Will and Hope, demonstrates that the scourge of the AIDS, flourishes within the weaknesses of the Nigerian state and in the deficiencies of socio-cultural, economic and political constructs. The abovementioned structures have nurtured a culture and politics of neglect, inequalities and marginalisation of disempowered and subordinated children, men and more especially women. These disease-prone circumstances expose human behavioural weaknesses and the limitations in the government structures as well as poor implementation of policies especially within the health care sector. The result is the inefficiencies, insufficiencies and inadequacies in the HIV/AIDS preventive as well as care and support programmes. It therefore makes clear that for the Nigerian state to prove itself in the present scourge of AIDS, it would have to exert all its political will in order to construct a proper caring responsibility as a basic attitude for her citizenry in general and for her overwhelming HIV/AIDS patients in particular. This is a challenge to a health-care reform and an adequate caring responsibility for people living with AIDS. To do this effectively, this book recommends a few steps.

It affords us real pleasure to present this editorial on behalf of the Majority World Christian Leaders Conversation (MWCLC). The MWCLC started slowly, but surely since 2016, following a groundbreaking conversation among eleven mission practitioners from the Majority World who met in the United Kingdom somewhere between London and Oxford. At the meeting, several themes emerged under the banner of missionary questions and impulses of the Majority World, from the perspective of the reign of God. These themes and more find reflection in the book. However, before proceeding to the content of the anthology, a note on the concept “Majority World” seems necessary. The time where terms like “Third World” gained strong currency, is long since gone. The term “Majority World” is a new kid on the block and requires some clarification. The use of the term is a strategy of avoiding concepts like “Developing” or “Third World” or even “Global South” which are pejorative in a real sense. To speak of the Majority World is geographically accurate in that Africa, Asia and Latin America are included.