The Church of Women

The Church of Women

Author: Dorothy L. Hodgson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2005-05-11

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780253111210

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In Africa, why have so many more women converted to Christianity than men? What explains the appeal of Christianity to women? What does religious conversion mean for the negotiation of gender and ethnic identity? What role does religious conversion play as a tool for empowering women? In The Church of Women, Dorothy L. Hodgson looks at how gender has shaped the encounter between missionary priests and Maasai men and women in Tanzania. Building on her extensive experience with Maasai and the Spiritan missionaries, Hodgson explores how gendered change among Maasai has shaped women's notions of religious faith, religious practice, and spiritual power. Hodgson explores the appeal of Catholicism among women in East Africa, the enmeshing of Catholic practice with Maasai spirituality, and the meaning of conversion to new Christians. This rich, engaging, and original book challenges notions about religious encounter and the role of ethnic identity, female authority, and power among Maasai.


Spiritan Life and Mission Since Vatican II

Spiritan Life and Mission Since Vatican II

Author: William Cleary

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1532634692

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The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) called for the renewal of all religious institutes in the Catholic Church. The Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans) responded initially under the leadership of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Different interpretations of Vatican II caused divisions culminating in Lefebvre’s departure from the congregation. From this difficult starting-point the Spiritans sought to redefine themselves in creative fidelity to their founding intention, the spirit of Vatican II, and the “signs of the times.” Spiritan Life and Mission since Vatican II recounts this journey of renewal in three parts: the Spiritan world before Vatican II and the election of Archbishop Lefebvre as superior general in 1962; the “ad experimentum” period culminating with a new rule of life in 1986; and the implementation of this new rule as interpreted through inter-congregational discourse, particularly the general chapters of 1992, 1998, and 2004. The development of thinking on the church’s mission and the congregation’s rediscovery of the founding charisms of Claude Poullart des Places and Francis Libermann provide the parameters for this positive interpretation of the Spiritan journey of renewal. Its evolution in the third millennium into a multicultural, international missionary community of some three-thousand members from over sixty countries in service of the Missio Dei bears testimony to this.


The Essential Handbook of Denominations and Ministries

The Essential Handbook of Denominations and Ministries

Author: George Thomas Kurian

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2017-03-14

Total Pages: 1406

ISBN-13: 149340640X

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Though the church universal is an ancient institution, the contemporary ministry landscape is always changing. That's why a new resource with useful information about Christian organizations is needed. The Essential Handbook of Denominations and Ministries is an easy-to-use guide to more than 200 of the largest denominations and 300 ministries in the United States. The entries for organizations include a brief history and summary, a contemporary profile, and discussion on doctrinal emphases, creeds, membership, and interdenominational and ecumenical alliances. Pastors, ministry leaders, community leaders, and students will find this resource a helpful guide as they seek to understand Christian denominations and ministries.


Hidden and Forgotten

Hidden and Forgotten

Author: Iheanyi M. Enwerem

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2019-03-27

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1525537628

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Catholics of African descent have been in the Catholic Church in Canada since Canada's pre-independent days, and yet there has been and still is a poverty of pastoral outreach to them. In a richly researched yet enjoyably readable study, Father Enwerem posits that the recent arrival of African missionaries is a good sign for the rejuvenation of Catholicism in Canada, but he suggests that the Church’s continuing silence on the presence and contributions of Africans in the historiography of Catholicism in Canada betrays a subtle racism. Compelling and utterly convincing, Hidden and Forgotten addresses the urgent need to correct this incomplete, and therefore false, history of Catholicism in Canada.


Faith in Empire

Faith in Empire

Author: Elizabeth A. Foster

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-03-20

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0804786224

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Faith in Empire is an innovative exploration of French colonial rule in West Africa, conducted through the prism of religion and religious policy. Elizabeth Foster examines the relationships among French Catholic missionaries, colonial administrators, and Muslim, animist, and Christian Africans in colonial Senegal between 1880 and 1940. In doing so she illuminates the nature of the relationship between the French Third Republic and its colonies, reveals competing French visions of how to approach Africans, and demonstrates how disparate groups of French and African actors, many of whom were unconnected with the colonial state, shaped French colonial rule. Among other topics, the book provides historical perspective on current French controversies over the place of Islam in the Fifth Republic by exploring how Third Republic officials wrestled with whether to apply the legal separation of church and state to West African Muslims.


Making Identity on the Swahili Coast

Making Identity on the Swahili Coast

Author: Steven Fabian

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1108492045

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A re-examination of the historical development of urban identity and community along the Swahili Coast.


Constructing Mission History

Constructing Mission History

Author: Stanley H. Skreslet

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1506481906

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Three master narratives currently dominate the analysis of modern mission history.?One puts foreign missionaries at the heart of the story.?A second emphasizes the colonial aspect of modern missions.?Here, missionaries are not heroes but villains, who are implicated in hegemonic schemes of imperial domination.?Thirdly, mission history is subordinated to one of its outcomes, the advent of World Christianity.?In this master narrative, the concept of contextualization looms large, bolstered by Sanneh's notion of translatability and emphasis on the agency of non-Westerners, who participate in and subtly shape the complex social processes of evangelization.?While all three of these master narratives are insightful, none of them adequately balances concern for missionary initiative and indigenous agency.?? Borrowing from speech-act theory, Skreslet offers a new analytical approach to the modern roots of World Christianity that differentiates between what a speaker might intend to communicate and the effects of what has been said or actions taken both in the moment and over time.?Corresponding to the concepts of illocution and perlocution as these technical terms are used in speech-act theory, the book is structured in two main sections.?Initially, the focus is on expressed missionary motives. Part two engages a representative set of modern-era mission performances involving many more actors than just the foreign evangelizers whose stated or implied intentions are emphasized in part one.


A History of the Church in Africa

A History of the Church in Africa

Author: Bengt Sundkler

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-05-04

Total Pages: 1268

ISBN-13: 9780521583428

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Bengt Sundkler's long-awaited book on African Christian churches will become the standard reference for the subject.


A History of Christian Conversion

A History of Christian Conversion

Author: David W. Kling

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 853

ISBN-13: 0195320921

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Conversion has played a central role in the history of Christianity. In this first in-depth and wide-ranging narrative history, David Kling examines the dynamic of turning to the Christian faith by individuals, families, and people groups. Global in reach, the narrative progresses from early Christian beginnings in the Roman world to Christianity's expansion into Europe, the Americas, China, India, and Africa. Conversion is often associated with a particular strand of modern Christianity (evangelical) and a particular type of experience (sudden, overwhelming). However, when examined over two millennia, it emerges as a phenomenon far more complex than any one-dimensional profile would suggest. No single, unitary paradigm defines conversion and no easily explicable process accounts for why people convert to Christianity. Rather, a multiplicity of factors-historical, personal, social, geographical, theological, psychological, and cultural-shape the converting process. A History of Christian Conversion not only narrates the conversions of select individuals and peoples, it also engages current theories and models to explain conversion, and examines recurring themes in the conversion process: divine presence, gender and the body, agency and motivation, testimony and memory, group- and self-identity, "authentic" and "nominal" conversion, and modes of communication. Accessible to scholars, students, and those with a general interest in conversion, Kling's book is the most satisfying and comprehensive account of conversion in Christian history to date; this major work will become a standard must-read in conversion studies.