In The People’s Zion, Joel Cabrita tells the transatlantic story of Southern Africa’s largest popular religious movement, Zionism. It began in Zion City, a utopian community established in 1900 just n
Drawn from his “Duffy Lectures" delivered at Boston College, Orobator examines the living interplay between African religion, Christianity, and Islam in Africa, and argues that the religious experi
Anthropologist Devaka Premawardhana arrived in Africa to study the much reported "explosion" of Pentecostalism, the spread of which has indeed been massive. It is the continent's fastest growing form
This volume fills the gap in current scholarship on African Christian religions, Pentecostalism, and the so-called prosperity gospel within the broader search for abundant life through the Christian f
Starting in the mid-1930s, East African revivalists (or, Balokole: "the saved ones") proclaimed a message of salvation, hoping to revive the mission churches of colonial East Africa. Frustrated by wha
Christianity spread across North Africa early, and it remained there as a powerful force much longer than anticipated. While this form of Christianity largely shared the Latin language and Roman cultu
Christianity spread across North Africa early, and it remained there as a powerful force much longer than anticipated. While this form of Christianity largely shared the Latin language and Roman cultu
The Afterlife in Early Christian Carthage explores how the visionary experiences of early Christian martyrs shaped and informed early Christian ancestor cult and the construction of the cemetery as pa
In Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa, Lander examines the rhetorical and physical battles for sacred space between practitioners of traditional Roman religion, Christians, and Jews of late Roman North Africa. By analyzing literary along with archaeological evidence, Lander provides a new understanding of ancient notions of ritual space. This regard for ritual sites above other locations rendered the act or mere suggestion of seizing and destroying them powerful weapons in inter-group religious conflicts. Lander demonstrates that the quantity and harshness of discursive and physical attacks on ritual spaces directly correlates to their symbolic value. This heightened valuation reached such a level that rivals were willing to violate conventional Roman norms of property rights to display spatial control. Moreover, Roman Imperial policy eventually appropriated spatial triumphalism as a strategy for negotiating religious conflicts, giving rise to a new form of
Decolonizing Christianity traces the dramatic transformation of Christianity from its position as the moral foundation of European imperialism to its role as a radical voice of political and social change in the era of decolonization. As Christians renegotiated their place in the emerging Third World, they confronted the consequences of racism and violence that Christianity had reinforced in European colonies. This book tells the story of Christians in Algeria who undertook a mission to 'decolonize the Church' and ensure the future of Christianity in postcolonial Algeria. But it also recovers the personal aspects of decolonization, as many of these Christians were arrested and tortured by the French for their support of Algerian independence. The consequences of these actions were immense, as the theological and social engagement of Christians in Algeria then influenced the groundbreaking reforms developing within global Christianity in the 1960s.
This book is about the dangers of religious intolerance, conflict and violence oriented strategies in our contemporary society. It exposes the evangelical strategies of Christian Churches and Denomina
Classic African Christian teaching in the patristic period (100-750 AD) preceded modern colonialism by over a thousand years. Many young African women and men are now reexamining these lost roots. The
One of the great problems among most theologians and theologies today is to restrict and to think of theology only in terms of mere intellectual enquiry without any fundamentum in rei in the lives of
Bringing together prominent Africanist scholars from a variety of disciplines, this book offers a comprehensive treatment of the social, cultural and political impact of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christ
