Randee Ijatuyi-Morphé

Africa's Social and Religious Quest (eBook, PDF)

A Comprehensive Survey and Analysis of the African Situation

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

This well-crafted book probes the key dimensions of Africa's existential predicament. It constitutes an intellectual response to a gnawing "African situation"-the starting point for grasping Africa's social and religious quest. Beyond split explanations of external versus internal factors (e.g., colonization/slavery vs. leadership/cultural values), this study accounts more comprehensively for emergent issues shaping this situation. The situation reflects a gamut of problems in traditional African religion and material culture, which hitherto defines African communality, polities, and destinies vis-à-vis the cosmos and nature. Thus, African religion and communities, each with its own attendant values, do not operate by critical engagement with larger issues of society and civilization, especially those shaped by the advent of (post-) modernity. Rather, they operate via adaptation. The communal drive for natural and social harmony inevitably produces a preservationist view of culture ("leaving things as they are"). This study takes an integrative approach to religion, society, and civilization; eschews dichotomies; and broadly defines and re-signifies life and wholeness as a true end of Africans' quest today.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 646
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Januar 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780761885092
• Artikelnr.: 74848400

Autorenporträt

Randee Ijatuyi-Morphé received his PhD from Trinity International University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar, author, and theologian and has served for eighteen years on the faculty of ECWA Theological Seminary in Jos, where he was chair of the PhD Committee. Ijatuyi-Morphé is also director of Hokma House, an educational and research organization in Nigeria serving academia, ecclesia, and oikoumene of Africa.

Inhaltsangabe

Religion, Anthropology, and the Bible in Africa (RABA)
List of Figures
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
DIVISION ONE:
PROLEGOMENA AND OTHER MATTERS ARISING!
PART ONE: IN PURSUIT OF LIFE AND WHOLENESS
1. On Identifying and Signifying a Quest
DIVISION TWO:
CULTURE AND RELIGION IN AFRICAN SOCIETY
PART TWO: PROTECTION AND POWER
2. Personal and Communal Stake
3. The Ancestoral Source
4. Social Ferment and Human Machinations
5. Mythology, Magic and Ritual
6. Excursus: Witchcraft Discourse and Interpretation
PART THREE: SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE
7. Popular (or, Folk) Religion
8. Customs and Ceremonies
9. Prayer and Providence
10. African Pentecostalism and the Miraculous
11. Religion and Social Control
DIVISION THREE:
POLITICAL/ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
PART FOUR: COMMUNAL KINSHIP AND THE INDIVIDUAL
12. Communality and the Person
13. Cultural and Moral Traditions
14. Patrimonialism and Procreationism
15. Nature and Environmental Forces
16. Human Dignity/Equality and the Person
PART FIVE: HUMAN OPPRESSION AND ECONOMIC ADVANCEMENT
17. Colonization and Slavery
18. Women, Culture and Liberation
19. Poverty, Wealth and Development
20. Money, Market and Prosperity
21. Social and Cultural (Or, the Genesis) Mandate
DIVISION FOUR:
RELIGION, SOCIAL HISTORY AND ETHICS
PART SIX: MORALITY, ETHICS AND THE GOOD LIFE
22. African Weltanschauung (Worldview) and Morality
23. The Good Life in (African) Religious Tradition
24. African Cultural Values and Submergence of Virtue
25. Religion, Culture and African Social Ethics
26. Social History, Progress and Moral Modern Society
DIVISION FIVE:
GOD, HUMANKIND AND THE WORLD
PART SEVEN: ISSUES DETERMINING THE QUEST
27. God and the World
28. Humankind and History
29. Salvation and Selfhood
DIVISION SIX:
THE QUEST AND THE SITUATION REVISITED
PART EIGHT: UNDERSTANDING AFRICA'S QUEST
30. The End of a Quest: Critical Reflections
Select Bibliography
Index
About the Author