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The Holy Spirit provides access to relationship with and reflection on the Triune God. In West Africa, Christians approach the Triune God in a way that challenges the Jewish-Christian memory. Deeply rooted in their ancestral memory, where living is relationality, they embrace the Trinitarian faith, the economy of the relational God-Christ-Spirit, by expanding and reinventing their indigenous experience of God, deities, spirits, and ancestors. Christian faith-practice is marked by the spectacular dominance of the Holy Spirit, whose charisms reflect the operations of deities. African Initiated Churches (AICs), Protestant and Catholic charismatic movements, experience God-Spirit's liberating an...
AIDS. Famine. Ethnic strife. Refugees. Poverty. Debt. Environmental degradation. These form the wounded face of Africa today, the reality confronting the church of Africa. To heal Africa, Spiritan Father Elochukwu Uzukwu argues that the church in Africa must become a credible and effective agent of change by making full use of African resources--natural and sociohistorical--including traditional patterns of social organization. In order to renew itself, the church must remember that it does not exist for itself but for the people--to bear witness in Africa to the risen Lord. Focusing on the Catholic Church in Africa today, A Listening Church proposes a fresh approach to ecclesiology. Following closely on the African Synod of Bishops, Uzukwu proposes the initiation of serious theological discussion on the structure of the Church in Africa that came out of that historic occasion. Simply speaking, the African churches must listen to their people, and the Church in Rome must listen to the churches in Africa.
By the time the Capuchins arrived in the seventeenth century, Kongo had been Catholic for nearly two hundred years. The European mission could not be conversion, then, but reinforcement; the Capuchins sought to establish the sacraments and a line to Rome in a lay-led church already suffused with an enduring, creative, and complex theological culture. In Memorializing the Unsung, Elochukwu Uzukwu uses the framework of this “ancient” Kongo Catholicism to explore European dependence on enslaved Kongo Catholics and the unconscionable Capuchin and Spiritan participation in the slave trade at large—a practice denounced by the lone voices of Capuchin Epifanio de Moirans and Spiritan Alexandre...
Worship sets an assembly in motion movement towards God in response to God's movement towards humans thus creating a resilient and caring community. Worship as Body Language brings the African community's experience of the body and its gestures together with the Christian liturgy, since worship and social action are closely related. The body language" or gestures of praise, adoration, contemplation, ritual dance, and care of the neighbor are meaningful to the ethnic group; African Christians tune into these body motions to express the one Christian faith. In Worship as Body Language, Father Uzukwu details how patterns of African ritual assemblies and sacred narratives have merged with Jewish...
Hunger is a menace in different parts of the globe. It has more unnatural than natural causes. Though efforts have been made towards alleviating its causes and consequences, more actions still need to be taken for its genuine alleviation and eventual eradication in the world. For Joseph Grassi, painful hunger is a daily occurrence that must be countered by ongoing effective programs that enter into the lives of every Christian. Such position not only recognises the frequency and excruciating nature of hunger but also suggests that Christians and other religious groups have a very important role to play in order to eradicate hunger and its devastating effects. This book explores the nuances of hunger, its causes, dimensions and approaches, as well as its connection to the Eucharist. It argues that hunger can be eradicated and that the Eucharist stands out as a veritable model.
Unlike the global North, “the ferment of Christianity” in the global South, among the majority of world people, has been astronomical. Despite the shift in the center of gravity of Christianity to the global South, intra-ecclesial tensions globally remain those of the relationship of culture to religion. The questions posed revolve around to what extent Western Christianity should be adapted to local cultures. Should we talk of Christianity in non-Western contexts or of majority world Christianity? Is it appropriate to describe the shift as the emergence of global Christianity or world Christianity? Should Christianity in the global South mimic Christianity in the global North, or can it...
This book argues that a primary purpose of theological discourses is to construct piety or spirituality. If this is the case, theologians need to constantly inquire into the kind of piety or spirituality which their work may construct. Drawing from some important moments in the development of Christian theology, such as the development of the Christian doctrine of God in the early church, the role of material things in the Christianity of medieval Europe, some elements of contemporary postliberal theology, and the theology of inculturation in Africa, the book argues that theological discourses that appear to be orthodox and innocuous may actually construct forms of piety that may diminish hu...
Though the global center of Christianity has been shifting south and east over the past few decades, very few theological resources have dealt with the seismic changes afoot. The Majority World Theology series seeks to remedy that lack by gathering well-regarded Christian thinkers from around the world to discuss the significance of Christian teaching in their respective contexts. The contributors to this volume reflect deeply on the role of the Holy Spirit in both the church and the world in dialogue with their respective contexts and cultures. Taking African, Asian, and Latin American cultural contexts into account gives rise to fresh questions and insights regarding the Spirit's work as witnessed in the world and demonstrates how the theological heritage of the West is not adequate alone to address the theological necessities of communities worldwide.
The death of John Paul II and the election of Benedict XVI constituted two important elements in the broad theological and cultural landscape of Catholicism. This change of pontificate has also nourished the journalistic and political dispute about Vatican II, its history and its legacy, and not only the historiographical and theological debate. But the research on Vatican II is already proceeding forward and beyond the state of knowledge about the Council reached at the end of the 90s. For 21st century Catholics and theologians interested in understanding contemporary Catholicism in the light of Vatican II the intellectual undertaking is far from accomplished yet. The book offers comprehens...