Civil war, famine, genocide, AIDS--Africa has endured some of the most horrific human tragedies of recent times. The rapid rise of a Christian social ethics movement, however, suggests a powerful coping mechanism for African peoples. One of the leaders of this movement is Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest in Uganda. In "A Future for Africa, Katongole wrestles with Africa's concrete and debilitating problems, including poverty, corruption, and tribalism, and then offers humanitarian and faith-filled solutions. The work fills a vacancy in the current debate about lasting solutions to Africa's problems and should be meaningful reading for scholars of ethics and religion alike.
Isichei's thorough study surveys the full breadth of Christianity in Africa, from the early story of Egyptian Christianity to the churches of the Middle Years (1500-1800) to the prolific success of missions throughout the 1900s. This important book fills a conspicuous void of scholarly works on Africa's Christian history. Includes 26 maps.
The late Bengt Sundkler, missionary, bishop, and academic, pioneered the study of independent churches in Africa. In this magisterial work, he reviews the entire history of the development of Christianity in all regions of the continent. In contrast to the conventional focus on the missionary enterprise, Professor Sundkler places the African converts at the centre of the study. African Christians, typically drawn from the margins of society, reinterpreted the Christian message, proselytised, governed local congregations, and organised independent churches. Emphasising African initiatives in the process of Christianisation, he argues that its development was shaped by African kings and courts, the history of labour migration, and local experiences of colonisation. This long-awaited book will become the standard reference on African Christian churches.
A Precious Fountain is a work of liturgical ethnography that probes the rich liturgical life of one worshiping community whose roots and practices are at once Black and Catholic, using music as a primary lens through which to explore the community's liturgy and embodied theology. Our Lady of Lourdes community in San Francisco is part of a larger event in the American church: the emergence of a new paradigm of Catholic worship, one that is "authentically Black and truly Catholic." Mary E. McGann, R.S.C.J., describes how the music worship of Our Lady of Lourdes in San Francisco not only enriches that community but also is an example of how a theology of music is practiced in that parish. She offers this new genre of liturgical literature that brings to light how God's Spirit is working in the churches through the idioms, perceptions, and insights of specific ethno-cultural communities in this time of massive cultural change and globalization. Virgil Michel, O.S.B., a monk of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, was a founder of the Liturgical Movement in the United States in the 1920s and fostered its development until his death in 1938. Michel's writing, editing, teaching, and preaching centered on the relationship between liturgy and the life of the faithful-the Body of Christ. The Pueblo Books imprint of Liturgical Press honors Virgil Michel's life and work with a monograph series named for him. The Virgil Michel Series will offer studies that examine the connections between liturgy and life in particular communities, as well as works exploring the relationship of liturgy to theology, ethics, and social sciences. The Virgil Michel Series will be ecumenical in breadth andinternational in scope, recognizing that liturgy embodies yet transcends cultures and denominations.
This anthology provides a coherent, interdisciplinary theoretical base for students of African American religious studies that will assist in the design of programs and courses for lay theological education and training.
"This is by far the most informative book about contemporary African Christianity around; nobody could have written a study as richly detailed and as informed by real insider knowledge as [Gifford] has done. . . . It will be the most significant study of African Christianity to appear at a time when its importance for Africa is becoming ever more widely recognized." -J. D. Y. Peel
Marthinus L. Daneel profiles an African instituted interfaith earthkeeping mission that illustrates the transformation of the religious landscape now underway in the sub-Saharan world. Part One introduces the African initiated churches, showing how their earthkeeping movement in Zimbabwe gives voice to African religious convictions as the people struggle with drought and moribund political structures.
In Part Two, Daneel reflects theologically on the independent church movement, helping the reader understand the meaning and challenge of these churches.
This book is the single best study of the African Independent Church movement available today.
Through rigorous examination of papyrological documentary sources, archaeology, and traditional literary sources, James Goehring gradually forces a new direction in understanding the evolution of monasticism. He ably transforms these sources into a clear narrative, thereby infusing the history of Egyptian monasticism with renewed energy.
It is often assumed that early Christian asceticism drew its followers completely away from worldly concerns into the realm of pure spirituality. But the life and thought of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria (AD 328-73), shows just how worldly -- and deeply political -- ascetic theology could be. David Brakke examines this important church leader's efforts to reconcile asceticism's compelling intensity with the more conventional needs of the families and everyday believers on whom the Church relied for support and stability. Brakke describes how Athanasius joined with other fourth century bishops to create a strongly unified Christian church in Egypt, bringing both the solitary monks of the desert and the female ascetics in the cities under church authority by organizing them into auxiliaries of the emerging local parishes. By carefully integrating ascetic values and practices into a comprehensive vision of the church as a heavenly commonwealth, Brakke argues, Athanasius unified a community of Christians practicing diverse versions of their faith and helped to establish the lines of administrative and pastoral authority that would be essential to the church's future success. This illuminating study of the turmoil of fourth century Christianity also includes the first English translations of many of Athanasius's ascetic and pastoral writings.
St. Augustine (354-430), a theologian whose views and controversies shaped the course of Christianity in the West, was also a struggling North African pastor who had a flair for teaching and who meditated deeply on the complexities of the human heart. This study examines a little-known side of Augustine; his work as a teacher of candidates for baptism. It reconstructs the experience of the ancient catechumenate. The portrait is relevant to all those involved with the RCIApastors, DREs, catechists, liturgists.
Fitzgerald (patristics, Augustinian Patristic Institute, Rome, and editor of Augustinian Studies for Villanova U.) presents an encyclopedic treatment of the life, thought, and influence of arguably the most influential Western Christian thinker after the apostles, Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430). Includes some 400 articles written by scholars whose academic backgrounds include classics, history, philosophy, political science, and theology, and which cover every aspect of Augustine's life and writings and trace his influence on the church and on the development of Western thought. Indexes, cross-references, and current bibliographies should make this volume a useful research tool.
The City of God is the most influential of Augustine's works which played a decisive role in the formation of the Christian West. It's scope embodies cosmology, psychology, political thought, anti-pagan polemic, Christian apologetic, theory of history, biblical interpretation and apocalyptic themes. This book is the first comprehensive modern guide to City of God in any language.
Just over 40 years ago Mississippi was burning. A series of racially motivated murders and brutal repression of the movement to register black voters had drawn the moral outrage of the nation. But in the historic city of Natchez, in the midst of that dreadful period, an African American Catholic parish and its white priest chose to stand at the center of the African American freedom movement. Based on the oral histories of Holy Family Church in Natchez, Black And Catholic In The Jim Crow South tells the story of black Catholics' 20th-century struggle through the voices of the people who lived through it. It tells of the origins of the Holy Family Church from its founding as a place of worship for black slaves or servants to the central role that the parish played in the civil rights movement, when it leaped the boundaries of its original mission to become a center for struggle and hope. Danny Duncan Collum provides vivid interviews with members of Holy Family parish who lived through this period of ferment, hope, and terror. He documents the courageous stand taken by both his parish and by the Catholic hierarchy against the supporters of segregation, ranging from the state government to the Klu Klux Klan.
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