The Dynamics and Contradictions of Evangelisation in Africa
The Dynamics and Contradictions of Evangelisation in Africa

Author: Peter Acho Awoh

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9956578215

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This book critically discusses missionary Christianity and colonization in Africa as twin enterprises with a common ambition. While the colonialist set out to invest capital and reap profit, the missionary desire was to tend and turn African souls from damnation. It was this desire that drove the missionaries into the interior, propelled by the belief that no land was too remote to escape their attention and vigilance. It equally kept missionary zeal buoyant. The clarification of the concept of salvation within the Roman Catholic Church during the Vatican II Council set in motion the current lethargy that has in some places crippled the mission itself. In retrospect, one can begin to wonder why Africans became Christians. What reasons motivated the early adherents to cling to this foreign religion? Were there some internal deficiencies in African traditional religions, which the Africans hoped to remedy by joining the new religion? Or was it just part of the wholesale flirting with whatever was foreign and perceived to be modern? What baits were used by the missionaries to entice Africans? Christianity posed a danger to many of the time-honoured answers to African problems. These were the 'values' Africans converting to Christianity were expected to abandon. Why have Christians continually returned to their abandoned roots in time of crisis? This moving, well argued, richly documented and empirically substantiated study concludes by cautioning against the stubborn drive at radical conversion to Christianity with scant regard to the imperatives of enculturation.

The Residue of the Western Missionary in the Southern Cameroons
The Residue of the Western Missionary in the Southern Cameroons

Author: Peter Awoh

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2012-10-10

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 9956728683

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This book is the fascinating study of Christian enclaves in the Southern Cameroons of the colonial era. The Christian enclaves came into being with absolute spontaneity as a modus vivendi. Oblivious of the danger in store both colonial governments and traditional authorities provided the conditions in which these Christian villages took root and flourished. However what had taken root in the territory as a self-protection mechanism, soon unleashed its lethal, enticing tentacles luring both the wives of royals and commoners into their bosom. This disruptive influence of Christian villages threatened the survival of ethnic groups, arousing the rancour of traditional authorities and civil administrators. In many ways the Christian enclaves inhibited the potential of colonial governments to administer the territory. These states within a state propagated by the missionary in the most insidious and perfidious of all manners sowed within their own bosom the seed of self-destruction. The whole issue of runaway wives of royals and commoners alike who took refuge in the Christian villages troubled both the colonial and traditional authorities. By offering a safe haven to these runaway wives and welcoming women who were outside the traditional male authority in a tribal setup, the missionaries began sowing within the Christian communities the seeds of their own self destruction. Records of wives of Fons and commoners escaping into these enclaves, eloping with a man and returning pregnant remained the regular subject of several colonial intelligence reports. Highhanded methods by missionaries in these villages brought both the missionaries and their work into disrepute. In less than a quarter of a century these enclaves had lost the war of attrition waged by colonial and traditional authorities. Worn out by endless strife and dissension within and without and forced by contingency, what had been conceived to be ideal Christian communities with snowballing effects, saw its premature demise.

Laughing Store
Laughing Store

Author: Linus Asong

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9956579505

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Laughing Store is just what we need in times of troubles and uncertainties such as these. A book of humour from an acclaimed master of laughter, it lifts our hearts and raises our spirits. Jokes that touch about every domain of existence from sex to religion, from births to deaths, from politics to the beer parlour, from the courtroom to the hospital. And most important of all, conceived in the supremely original Cameroonian flavour of jokes.

Embroiled
Embroiled

Author: Caroline Jeannerat

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 3825897966

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Apartheid posed profound challenges to the conceptions of humanity and development that dominated the world stage after World War II. Embroiled analyzes the manner in which international religious organizations dealt with the formulation and implementation of apartheid. The book studies this through an examination of the Swiss Mission in South Africa (SMSA), an institution that acted in South Africa, Switzerland, and the international ecumenical community. As a socially embedded institution, the SMSA mirrored divisions present within Swiss and South African societies on the issue of apartheid. *** Embroiled brings out the complex, even turbulent, nature of a missionary society: at once political intermediary, spiritual guide and non-government organisation. Caught between different communities and discrete continents, missionaries discussed and debated their role in South Africa and attempted, however fitfully, to respond to the changes that swept through the country, particularly as opposing nationalisms fought to seize hold of it. ~ From the Preface (Series: Schweizerische Afrikastudien - Etudes africaines suisses - Vol. 9)

How the Church Under Pius XII Addressed Decolonization
How the Church Under Pius XII Addressed Decolonization

Author: Marialuisa Lucia Sergio

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-06

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1000849066

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By paying attention to Algerian Independence, this book reconstructs the action of the Catholic Church regarding the issues of the spread of Islam in colonies, to Arab nationalism, Marxist propaganda in non-European countries, and the effects of the Algerian crisis upon the French political system. The complex relations between the Holy See and France, as well as those between the Vatican and the Episcopates and clergy of the overseas territories, are vital aspects of decolonisation, a topic which, to date, has been overlooked by historiography because of the impossibility of accessing documents relating to the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) held in the Vatican archives. The opening in March 2020 of the archives of Pius XII, the Pope who had succeeded in imposing the strategic role of the Holy See upon the international scene, has made a vast amount of unpublished documentary material available to scholars. This book is useful for all students and scholars interested in the Cold War, the history of contemporary Europe, the history of the Church, postcolonial studies, and religious phenomenon in post-World War II Europe.

Petitioning for our Rights, Fighting for our Nation. The History of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women, 1949-1960
Petitioning for our Rights, Fighting for our Nation. The History of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women, 1949-1960

Author: Meredith Terretta

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9956728055

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Thousands of Cameroonian women played an essential role in the radically anti-colonial nationalist movement led by the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC): they were the women of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women (UDEFEC). Drawing on women nationalists' petitions to the United Nations, one of the largest collections of political documents written by African women during the decolonization era, as well as archival research and oral interviews, this work shows how UDEFEC transcended ethnic, class, education and social divides, and popularized nationalism in both urban and rural areas through the Trust Territories of the Cameroons under French and British administration. Foregrounding issues such as economic autonomy and biological and agricultural fertility, UDEFEC politics wove anti-imperial democracy and notions of universal human rights into locally rooted political cultures and histories. UDEFEC's history sheds light on the essential components of women's successful political mobilization in Africa, and contributes to the discussion of women's involvement in nationalist movements in formerly colonized territories.