Reclaiming Traditions Of Igbo Education And The Legacy Of The Holy Ghost Missionaries

WHAT IMPACT HAS CHURCH MISSIONARY EDUCATION (CME) HAD IN AFRICA, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES? Reclaiming Traditions of Igbo Education and the Legacy of the Holy Ghost Missionaries finds answers to that question. This book critically assesses the benefits and burdens of the Church Missionary Education (CME) of the Holy Ghost Missionaries among nd’Igbo in southeastern Nigeria. It interrogates the propriety of its philosophy and reviews the adequacy of the methods used to promote it. While critics lament the damage done by European explorers, merchants, colonialists, and missionaries to the educational traditions of Africa, apologists who defend them suggest that they did their best under prevailing circumstances. They ask, “Instead of revisit the past, why not get on with the business of modern times?” But the impact of the European presence in Africa is not a thing of the past. It is part of “Africa’s current and existential socioeconomic, political, religious, and educational struggles today. 1 This book describes the limitations of the neo-colonizing educational philosophy of the missionaries and calls for an alternative. A philosophy of wholeness is proposed as an alternative that would transition Africans to a liberating and liberatory Christian Religious Education (CRE) of the gospels. Such, it is argued, would better serve their needs and aspirations, and better heal the wounds of their colonial past. About the Author OKONKWO REMIGIUS NWABICHIE is a priest of Orlu diocese. He holds degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Administration, and Religious Education. He is the author of Religion for Morality in Education, Self-Reliant African Churches, and a forthcoming volume, Methods for Promoting Christian Religious Education in Africa. A lively discussant in Igbo/African affairs, and curriculum development, he can be reached at: [email protected] or [email protected].

In Africa and the New Face of Mission, Ebelebe argues that the mission theory and practice of the Irish Spiritans in Igboland (1905-1970) was forged in the socio-political and faith environment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ireland; an environment that produced a Church that was sacramentized, devotional, conservative, and clerical. It was this Church that the Irish Spiritans took to Igboland, and the Church that has largely endured there until now. The author considers this regrettable and calls for inculturation as the only way forward. He highlights the significant contribution of the Igbo Catholic Church to the growing pool of missionaries from the South and argues that for this Church to be truly Igbo, it must be selective in what it reclaims from its Irish Heritage and must draw from the resources of Igbo traditional culture and religion. In this way, the Church can better equip its growing number of missionaries to other nations. Book jacket.

This book explores the strategies and methods of the Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries in Igboland and Igbo response during the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Using oral traditions, primary sources, and the author's life experience as a Christian convert and missionary, the text examines the missions' programs, missteps, and impact.

Also covers the post-1945 period.

In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.