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.
First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.
This study explores historical understandings of Christian communities, cultures, and institutions within the Indian world from their beginnings to the present time. Frykenberg focuses on trans-cultural interactions within Hindu and Muslim environments, uncovering complexities as Christianity intermingled with indigenous cultures.
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.
From the 1930s the East African Revival influenced Christian expression in East Central Africa and around the globe. This book analyses influences upon the movement and changes wrought by it in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo, highlighting its impact on spirituality, political discourse and culture. A variety of scholarly approaches to a complex and changing phenomenon are juxtaposed with the narration of personal stories of testimony, vital to spirituality and expression of the revival, which give a sense of the dynamism of the movement. Those yet unacquainted with the revival will find a helpful introduction to its history. Those more familiar with the movement will discover new perspectives on its influence.
The churches in Africa probably constitute the most important growth area for Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century. From being a number of rather tightly controlled 'mission fields' zealously guarded by the great missionary societies, Catholic and Protestant, they have emerged across the last decades in bewildering variety to selfhood, a membership of close on a hundred million adherents and an influential role both within their own societies and in the world Church. This book surveys the history of Christianity throughout sub-Saharan Africa during the third quarter of this century. It begins in 1950 at a time when the churches were still for the most part emphatically part of the colonial order and it takes the story on from there across the coming of political independence and the transformations of the 1960s and early 1970s.
"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"--