Schism And Renewal In Africa

Apartheid Raciald̈iscrimination Discrimination Racer̈elations Politics SouthÄfrica.

"A disciplinary map for understanding African Catholicism today by engaging some of the most pressing and pertinent issues, topics, and conversations in diverse fields of studies in African Catholicism"--

In 1982, David B. Barrett released his 1,000-page World Christian Encyclopedia, which presented a comprehensive quantitative assessment of World Christianity for the first time. This book is the first historical project to analyze Barrett’s archival materials, which shed light not only on the production of the Encyclopedia, but more importantly, on the development of World Christianity as a discipline and the importance of both African Christianity and quantitative perspectives in its history. This book captures innovations at the intersection of World Christianity, mission studies, and the sociology of religion – the kind of interdisciplinary research that makes World Christianity studies unique.

Christianity's centre of gravity has shifted in the modern world from the Northern continents to the South, with Africa playing a dominant role in the resurgence of the faith. This work examines this global transformation of the faith from an African perspective and surveys the new role of African Christianity. Beginning with the intellectual legacy of the 19th-century "Black Spokesman", Edward Wilmot Blyden, who questioned the suitability of Western Christianity to Africa, and its resurgence in the 20th century in the Afrikania Movement of the late Ghanaian ex-Roman Catholic priest, Kwabena Damuah, the author examines the deep mother-tongue roots of large portions of African Christianity and shows how the faith has remained a vital and influential force in the continent even after the waning of Western dominance. He then goes on to discuss the prospects of this modern African experience of the faith, in the future shape of Christian theological discourse, in the understanding of the nature of Christian history and in Christianity's continuing social and cultural impact in the world, as well as in a reassessment of the place of the African continent itself in world history.

Offering an essential historical overview of the chief developments in Christian mission, this should become a standard textbook.