"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"--

Provides 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. A road map for scholars in following the development of African Christian thought, the current state of research in specific areas, and methodological approaches being employed in understanding the Christian movement as it crosses different cultural, religious, and social frontiers in Africa.

The Passion Narratives of Saints Perpetua, Felicity, and Their Fellow Martyrs presents a critical translation of three hagiographical masterpieces of late antiquity and a series of accompanying essays. The translation by Francis J. Hunter includes the two Acta Brevia narratives as companion texts and supplements to the Passio Sanctarum proper. The interdisciplinary essays feature input from scholars in the fields of literature, theology, psychology, and classics, who each illustrate the dynamic and rich nature of the text. Each chapter of the book is written to teach, rather than critique, the text for students or readers who wish to learn about Perpetua and Felicity, early Christianity, or the Roman empire and its relationship with the emergent Christian religion.

One of the important contemporary but unexplored themes for Christianity in Africa today is its ongoing connections to a broader Christian and non-Christian world. This is quite apart from the idea of mission connections or reverse mission from Africa to elsewhere, or any mission-themed global connection. In much existing scholarship, Africa seems to only have recently been drawn into the orbit of global relations, but there is a long-standing relationship with the wider world, people linking from different regions at different times for varied reasons. This volume explores the theme of two thousand years of connections--and how the global sensibility has shaped Christianity on the continent for two thousand years.

Global Catholicism: Between Disruption and Encounter opens the Studies in Global Catholicism series with an examination of a worldwide religious institution that up to now has been more globally extensive than truly globalized. It explores the world historical and theological meaning of de-Europeanization with church data by world region. Readers get an in-depth look at the institutional and theological capacity and limits of the cosmopolitan reality of today’s Catholic Church. Its integrated perspective, grounded in cultural and political history together with an ecclesiology of post-Vatican II Catholicism, offers a new way to approach today’s emerging post-colonial, inter-cultural Global Catholicism as centuries-old trajectories are disrupted and pressing new realities demand original responses.

This handbook provides a comprehensive guide to methods, terms, and concepts used by biblical interpreters. It offers students and non-specialists an accessible resource for understanding the complex vocabulary that accompanies serious biblical studies. Articles, arranged alphabetically, explain terminology associated with reading the Bible as literature, clarify the various methods Bible scholars use to study biblical texts, and illuminate how different interpretive approaches can contribute to our understanding. Article references and topical bibliographies point readers to resources for further study. This handbook, now updated and revised to be even more useful for students, was previously published as Interpreting the Bible: A Handbook of Terms and Methods. It is a suitable complement to any standard hermeneutics textbook.

Winner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize A groundbreaking history of how Africans in the French Empire embraced both African independence and their Catholic faith during the upheaval of decolonization, leading to a fundamental reorientation of the Catholic Church. African Catholic examines how French imperialists and the Africans they ruled imagined the religious future of French sub-Saharan Africa in the years just before and after decolonization. The story encompasses the political transition to independence, Catholic contributions to black intellectual currents, and efforts to alter the church hierarchy to create an authentically “African” church. Elizabeth Foster recreates a Franco-African world forged by conquest, colonization, missions, and conversions—one that still exists today. We meet missionaries in Africa and their superiors in France, African Catholic students abroad destined to become leaders in their home countries, African Catholic intellectuals and young clergymen, along with French and African lay activists. All of these men and women were preoccupied with the future of France’s colonies, the place of Catholicism in a postcolonial Africa, and the struggle over their personal loyalties to the Vatican, France, and the new African states. Having served as the nuncio to France and the Vatican’s liaison to UNESCO in the 1950s, Pope John XXIII understood as few others did the central questions that arose in the postwar Franco-African Catholic world. Was the church truly universal? Was Catholicism a conservative pillar of order or a force to liberate subjugated and exploited peoples? Could the church change with the times? He was thinking of Africa on the eve of Vatican II, declaring in a radio address shortly before the council opened, “Vis-à-vis the underdeveloped countries, the church presents itself as it is and as it wants to be: the church of all.”

Doing theology Under the Palaver Tree, in honor of one of Africa's foremost theologians, Elochukwu E. Uzukwu, is a momentous undertaking, which draws from the diverse African continent, her various peoples and rich natural resources. A down-to-earth God-talk that evokes the reign of God among us, the book is a theological treasure trove. The quality, depth, and range of the conversation partners in this volume represent a high-water mark of the best scholarship in Africa today on ecclesiology and the future of the African church and the world church. The authors, through dialoguing with multidisciplinary dimensions of theological thoughts, offer new language with which to engage foundational issues in theology, liturgical practices, communion and community, leadership and charism, the relationship between the local and universal church, and social engagement and cultural questions as well. In exploring the depth of this tome, with its methodological approaches in interpreting, understanding, and evaluating the changing faces of Christianity, scholars and theologians will be challenged to reflect on some of the most pressing current questions and issues facing the church in Africa and the world, in rebirthing the image of the people of God, and a synodal church under the iconic and symbolic African palaver tree.

The Global Theological Ethics book series focuses on works that feature authors from around the world, draw on resources from the traditions of Catholic theological ethics, and attend to concrete issues facing the world today. It advances the Journal of Moral Theology's mission of fostering scholarship deeply rooted in traditions of inquiry about the moral life, engaged with contemporary issues, and exploring the interface of Catholic moral theology, philosophy, economics, political philosophy, psychology, and more. This series is sponsored in conjunction with the Catholic Theological Ethics and the World Church. The CTEWC recognizes the need to dialogue from and beyond local cultures and to interconnect within a world church. Its global network of scholars, practitioners, and activists fosters cross-cultural, interdisciplinary conversations--via conferences, symposia, and colloquia, both in-person and virtually--about critical issues in theological ethics, shaped by shared visions of hope.