The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa offers a multi-disciplinary analysis of the Christian tradition across the African continent and throughout a long historical span. The volume offers historical and thematic essays tracing the introduction of Christianity in Africa, as well as its growth, developments, and effects, including the lived experience of African Christians. Individual chapters address the themes of Christianity and gender, the development of African-initiated churches, the growth of Pentecostalism, and the influence of Christianity on issues of sexuality, music, and public health. This comprehensive volume will serve as a valuable overview and reference work for students and researchers worldwide.

Thomas C. Oden surveys the decisive role of African Christians and theologians in shaping the doctrines and practices of the church of the first five centuries, and makes an impassioned plea for the rediscovery of that heritage. Christians throughout the world will benefit from this reclaiming of an important heritage.

A Semiotic Approach to the Theology of Inculturation argues that though it is a difficult and delicate task, inculturation is still a requisite demand of a World Church and that without it the Church is unrecognisable and unsustainable. The book also suggests that the past failures of inculturation experiments in Africa can be overcome only by critically applying the science of semiotics, which can serve as an antidote to the nature of human knowing and reductionism that characterised earlier attempts to make Christianity African to the African. Drawing from the semiotic works of C.S. Peirce, Clifford Geertz, and Bernard Lonergan, Cyril Orji shows why semiotics is best suited to an African theology of inculturation and offers ten pinpointed precepts, identified as 'Habits', which underline the attentiveness, reasonableness, and responsibility required in a semiotic approach to a theology of inculturation. The 'Habits' are also akin to the imperatives inherent in the notion of catholicity - that catholicity is not identified with uniformity but with reconciled diversity, and also that catholicity demands different forms in different places, times, and cultural settings.

We often regard the author of the Gospel of Mark as an obscure figure about whom we know little. Many would be surprised to learn how much fuller a picture of Mark exists within widespread African tradition, tradition that holds that Mark himself was from North Africa, that he founded the church in Alexandria, that he was an eyewitness to the Last Supper and Pentecost, that he was related not only to Barnabas but to Peter as well and accompanied him on many of his travels. In this provocative reassessment of early church tradition, Thomas C. Oden begins with the palette of New Testament evidence and adds to it the range of colors from traditional African sources, including synaxaries (compilations of short biographies of saints to be read on feast days), archaeological sites, non-Western historical documents and ancient churches. The result is a fresh and illuminating portrait of Mark, one that is deeply rooted in African memory and seldom viewed appreciatively in the West.

In this volume, the author presents much of his field research into the use of African traditional religious charms, in the Zambezi Evangelical churches of South-Central Malawi. He details the kinds of charms used, by whom, exactly how, the underlying motives, and the particular purposes. He shows how charm-dependency creates a problem for discipleship within the churches. An anthology of real-life stories of charm-usage is presented which makes for interesting reading. The basic tenets of a Chewa worldview are also articulated to demonstrate how charm-dependency and other witchcraft related activities are stimulated and perpetuated by deep-seated worldview assumptions. The voices of local pastors, student-pastors, and African authors are ‘heard’ throughout, providing a contextual feel. This book is an excellent practical resource for teaching and learning, for those involved in discipleship, theology, ATR, missions and cultural perspectives.

The emergence of an indigenous African theology, especially since the 1960s is well-documented. A wealth of literature has been published in the context of African theology, especially over the last two or three decades. This indexed bibliography contains a number of publications in and for the African context specifically relevant to the fields of systematic theology and ethics.

Theology has a rich tradition across the African continent, and has taken myriad directions since Christianity first arrived on its shores. This handbook charts both historical developments and contemporary issues in the formation and application of theologies across the member countries of the African Union. Written by a panel of expert international contributors, chapters firstly cover the various methodologies needed to carry out such a survey. Various theological movements and themes are then discussed, as well as biblical and doctrinal issues pertinent to African theology. Subjects addressed include: • Orality and theology • Indigenous religions and theology • Patristics • Pentecostalism • Liberation theology • Black theology • Social justice • Sexuality and theology • Environmental theology • Christology • Eschatology • The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament The Routledge Handbook of African Theology is an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the theological landscape of Africa. As such, it will be a hugely useful volume to any scholar interested in African religious dynamics, as well as academics of Theology or Biblical Studies in an African context.

This volume reflects on a credible and a new language of Christian mission in Africa. The author’s thoughts and approaches not only provide a missiological insight which contribute to the repertoire of expanding fresh ideas in the missiological studies but also serves the purpose of highlighting the active participation of Africans in the missionary mandate of Jesus Christ. In other words, the scope of missiology needs a contextualized interpretation. Thus, he proposes a proactive language for missiology in Africa thereby underlining Africans as normal and full members of the human family. In the light of the Vatican II mission theology, the new language should be based on the fact that Africans will grow and do better in admiration and not in sympathy. Interestingly, the arguments in this volume opens the space for the on-going discussions in the mission of the church in the era of secularization and post-modernity. Consequently, a new language for missiology in Africa will come from the retrieval and modernization of our African cultural matrix pursued from the point of view of the daily struggles of the Africans themselves for survival which also addresses Africans in the spirit of cooperation.