Engaging Religions and Worldviews in Africa , livre ebook

Langham Creative Projects - Yusufu Turaki

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348 pages

English

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In a world of increasing globalization, we live amidst a clash of cultures, religions, and worldviews – each battling for the human heart and mind.
In this in-depth study, Yusufu Turaki offers a theological framework for engaging this clash of perspectives in Africa, where traditional African religions, colonialism, and exposure to Christianity have each had a lasting impact on contemporary African worldviews. Professor Turaki undertakes a systematic analysis of the nature of African Traditional Religion, its complex history with Christianity, and the need for African Christian theology to address its cultural and historical roots effectively. He provides both a conceptual framework and practical guide for engaging African cultures and religions with compassion, understanding, and a firm foundation rooted in scriptural truth. This book is an excellent resource for students of religion and theology, as well as those interested in Africa’s traditional heritage or drawn to the important work of cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue.

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Publié par	Langham Creative Projects
Date de parution	30 avril 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783688418
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0057€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Distinguished Professor Yusufu Turaki is one of Africa’s finest Christian minds! This book is one of his tremendous contributions to African theological, social and ethical reflections. Its interdisciplinary and multidimensional approach and perspective makes it a very critical theological handbook. It is technically and theologically comprehensive in nature, and yet very sensible and accessible to a non-technical or specialized audience. It is a must read!
Rev Sunday Bobai Agang, PhD
Professor of Christian Theology, Ethics and Public Policy,
Provost, ECWA Theological Seminary (JETS), Jos, Nigeria
Director, Overseas Council’s African Research Consultancy Centre, Nigeria
Professor Yusufu Turaki offers the reader much-needed thought leadership at the crossroads of African Traditional Religion and worldview, approaches to biblical theologizing, and the practice of missions. Turaki, educator and church leader for decades, proposes a way forward that rescues African theology from irrelevance on the one hand, and superficiality on the other – a way that ultimately has the power to bring transformation to African challenges today.
This book is timely for those who have felt unease when applying theology that is generated entirely outside of Africa, and equal unease about some African-born theologies that are not faithful to the essentials of Scripture. On a continent where theological approaches are abundant and diverse, Turaki’s book offers guidance from a man who has spent his life dedicated to being profoundly Christian and authentically African.
This book is timely for both African and non-African thinkers. It not only guides the African scholar and pastor, it also models a method of theologizing that can be used by faithful theologians in any culture where a traditional worldview needs to be renewed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I highly recommend this for any serious cross-cultural worker today.
Dr Joshua Bogunjoko, MD
SIM International Director
Professor Yusufu Turaki has been a trusted and steadfast voice for bibliocentricism among multitudes of scholars with an Afrocentric cultural agenda for doing theology, especially in the African context. He pitches his strong voice a notch higher in this book, suggesting a new methodology in the search for genuine Christian understanding that takes into consideration spiritual and social needs of African Traditional Religions. He helpfully relates biblical Christianity to pervasive realities of the African traditional religious and cultural worldview.
The tension between academic theology, that is either focused on African culture or foreign Western worldview, is reconciled by focusing on theology that is biblical and Christian, and understandable and applicable in the African context. This is also a recipe for maturing the African church; deepening the “mile long” to approaching the perfect square or cube.
I heartily commend this work, which is worthy of consideration in the church and seminary.
Rev Aiah Foday-Khabenje, PhD
General Secretary,
Association of Evangelicals in Africa
Very few books are written on theological method. It is thus a welcome sight to see one on this subject from an African perspective. If anyone should write such a book, Professor Yusufu Turaki is the right person with over four decades of experience in the academy. This book is not written by an academic who is aloof but by one who is engaged and comfortable in the academy, church, and society. He is recognized as an authority in all of these fields. A rare fit!
Characteristic of Turaki, his treatment is encyclopedic, addressing the issue from every possible angle demonstrating its significance and complexity. As a seasoned theologian in Africa, Turaki understands and explains African realities in the light of the teachings of Scripture. He advocates a way of studying Christianity in Africa that takes African Traditional Religions and culture and the authority of the Scriptures seriously instead of settling for comparative studies.
The outcome of this endeavor is a volume that is not simplistic but yet accessible to serious students in this field and filled with nuggets that scholars can further explore. Though this book is written about the method of doing theology in Africa, non-African scholars will benefit from it.
Bulus Galadima, PhD
Dean, Cook School of Intercultural Studies,
Biola University, Pasadena, California, USA
This is a compendium of robust theological engagement with African culture and religion in society, written for discerning professionals and scholars in that field. It is the summation of the author’s lifetime of scholarly work and Christian social engagements globally.
There is plenty of grist for the mill in this work! The book succeeds in moving discourse on religion and culture in traditional Africa into the public domain. In that contested sphere, the Christian stakes in shaping human identity, religious identification, national formation and African’s democratic progress, are indeed high, and the leader and follower today, in any capacity, only ignore them to their peril.
This classic from Turaki is a theological road-map for constructing an African Christian theology for public engagement!
Randee Ijatuyi-Morphe, PhD
Director, Hokma House, Nigeria
Engaging Religions and Worldviews in Africa: A Christian Theological Method by Professor Yusufu Turaki is, to all intents and purposes, a definitive text on the methodology for a sound Christian understanding of African Traditional Religion and its pervasive influence on the mindset of Africans that is both biblically rooted and theologically responsible.
Turaki has become somewhat of an oracle on the subject of Christian theology from an African perspective. He has painstakingly shown in this book a practical approach on how Christianity can reasonably and scholarly address African Traditional Religion and the belief system it has on people with informed realism, biblical faithfulness and integrity. Extricating itself from the stranglehold of primitive beliefs emanating from the foundations of ATR and the cultures it spawned has been the debilitating problem confronting Christianity in Africa.
This is a very useful text both for academic purposes and for practical ministry. I strongly recommend it to you.
Pastor Cosmas Ilechukwu, DMin
General Overseer, Charismatic Renewal Ministries, Inc.
Professor Yusufu Turaki states that the use of proof texting in doctrinal formulation from a Western framework on the one hand, and the use of traditional religion on the other hand, as the starting point of doing theology, have proved inadequate. In this book, the author carefully uses a third method that penetrates and engages African Traditional Religion from a biblical, Christocentric and ecclesiastical perspective.
The genius of the book is found in the extraordinary use of a method that reflects on the inner logic and workings of the traditional religious mind and thought in order to formulate an African theology that is relevant and biblical. In this regard, it is a double-edged sword that cuts deeply into African Traditional Religion and presents a truly biblical African Christianity.
Evidently, it is a book that is a result of many years of rigorous research, teaching and writing. I enthusiastically recommend this profoundly important book as a must-read for all students of theology, Christianity and African Traditional Religion, and worldview. It is thorough, fresh, innovative, exciting, practical and engaging.
Samuel Waje Kunhiyop, PhD
Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics, ECWA Theological Seminary, Kagoro, Nigeria
Executive General Secretary, Evangel Fellowship International
The relationship between Christianity and African Traditional Religion, worldview and culture, is complex and infinitely varied, requiring careful and sensitive study by wise and knowledgeable theologians. This is a task which Professor Turaki is particularly well equipped to undertake, thanks to his years of teaching and interacting with students on this and other related subjects. There was formerly a dearth of good textbooks covering this important area of theology, but Turaki’s work now provides a thorough and detailed study of traditional religion together with the many factors and influences (both ancient and modern) which surround it. The author’s focus is not to understand Christianity from the perspective of African traditional culture and religion, but to understand African traditional culture and religion from the perspective of a Christian and biblical worldview.
Turaki has provided a masterly and comprehensive work which will remain a reference point and guide for students and pastors for many years to come. It will surely go a long way to fulfil the author’s hope that it will help to strengthen the faith and commitment of African Christians, and that African peoples, societies and nation-states will thereby be renewed and transformed.
The Most Rev Dr Benjamin A. Kwashi
Bishop of Jos, Nigeria
General Secretary, Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)
For many years I have been among the grateful beneficiaries of Professor Yusufu Turaki’s theological teaching and writing. I have come to regard him as Africa’s leading evangelical theologian. The welcome production of this volume represents the culmination of several decades of meticulous interaction with the Scriptures, as well as with a multitude of other African theologians. Turaki takes his stand as a thorough-going evangelical, with his feet firmly planted on the inerrancy and authority of the Bible. With that as his foundation, he then s