Religion and the Transformation of Society

Religion and the Transformation of Society PDF

Author: Monica Wilson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1971-07-02

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9780521079914

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Professor Wilson examines the changes isolated communities undergo when they come into contact with the outside world.

Christianity and Social Change in Contemporary Africa: Volume One

Christianity and Social Change in Contemporary Africa: Volume One PDF

Author: B. Nyamnjoh

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2020-05-25

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 9956551406

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This volume brings together seven empirically grounded contributions by African social scientists of different disciplinary backgrounds. The authors explore the social impact of religious innovation and competition in present day Africa. They represent a selection from an interdisciplinary initiative that made 23 research grants for theologians and social scientists to study Christianity and social change in contemporary Africa. These contributions focus on a variety of dynamics in contemporary African religion (mostly Christianity), including gender, health and healing, social media, entrepreneurship, and inter-religious borrowing and accommodation. The volume seeks to enhance understanding of religions vital presence and power in contemporary Africa. It reveals problems as well as possibilities, notably some ethical concerns and psychological maladies that arise in some of these new movements, notably neo-Pentecostal and militant fundamentalist groups. Yet the contributions do not fixate on African problems and victimization. Instead, they explore sources of African creativity, resiliency and agency. The book calls on scholars of religion and religiosity in Africa to invest new conceptual and methodological energy in understanding what it means to be actively religious in Africa today.

Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF

Author: Louis Brenner

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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"This volume is indispensable to anyone who wants to understand current trends in Islam in Africa." --MESA Bulletin "A must read for anyone interested in Muslim identity and social change in sub-Saharan Africa." --Religious Studies Review "The Brenner volume... develops a broader range of issues... [on] African Muslim communities than any existing study." --John Hanson These essays constitute a timely exploration of the dynamism of Islam as a force for shaping identity and for social and political change across Africa today.

Islam and Social Change in French West Africa

Islam and Social Change in French West Africa PDF

Author: Sean Hanretta

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-03-23

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0521899710

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Exploring the history and religious community of a group of Muslim Sufi mystics in colonial French West Africa, this study shows the relationship between religious, social and economic change in the region. It highlights the role that intellectuals played in shaping social and cultural change and illuminates the specific religious ideas and political contexts that gave their efforts meaning. In contrast to depictions that emphasize the importance of international networks and anti-modern reaction in twentieth-century Islamic reform, this book claims that, in West Africa, such movements were driven by local forces and constituted only the most recent round in a set of centuries-old debates about the best way for pious people to confront social injustice. It argues that traditional historical methods prevent an appreciation of Muslim intellectual history in Africa by misunderstanding the nature of information gathering during colonial rule and misconstruing the relationship between documents and oral history.

West African Urbanization

West African Urbanization PDF

Author: Kenneth Little

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1965-01-02

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780521092630

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Originally published in 1971, this book considers the part played by voluntary associations in the growth of towns in West Africa, a factor of central importance to the student of African sociology. No previous book had been devoted to this subject and it was therefore a pioneering work. The book is founded on the Frazer Lecture which Professor Little gave at the University of Cambridge in 1963. Professor Little divides voluntary associations into tribal unions and syncretist cults, groups concerned with mutual benefit and with recreation, and associations based upon the common interest in the Christian Religion or in Western cultural or social pursuits. He then shows how these volunteer societies frequently combine Western aims with traditional African customs. The book indicates some of the important trends in a changing West Africa. It examines the general mechanism of social change in developing areas.

Ori-Oke Spirituality and Social Change in Africa

Ori-Oke Spirituality and Social Change in Africa PDF

Author: Yaovi, Soede Nathanael

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG

Published: 2018-09-17

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 9956550035

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The dynamic nature of Christianity has necessitated its movement from the cathedral to the mountain top. This has occasioned a proliferation of Prayer Mountains throughout Africa. In Yorubaland of southwestern Nigeria, Prayer Mountain is known as Ori-Oke. Like many communities in Africa, the Yoruba are confronted with fundamental challenges in life for which people do not rest until they find solutions. Within the praxis of Nigerian Christian lexicon Ori-Oke is synonymous with the enactment of a sacred space on a mountain top characterised by various prayer regimes, rituals, exorcism and religious practices, aimed at eliciting the help of the divine to alleviate the existential challenges of devotees. This book explores the resacralisation of space on the mountains, highlighting how humans and the divine interact in Yorubaland. It brings into conversation 35 empirically rich scholarly essays on the role of Ori-Oke to those seeking divine intervention in their lives. Today, Ori-Oke have become centres of pilgrimage as a result of the lived experiences of devotees, creating unique religious value quite distinct from the aesthetic value of these mountain tops. The spirituality of Ori-Oke is anchored on the absolute belief in God and the infusion of traditional African worldview sensibilities in religious rites and worship. Ori-Oke spirituality employs resources of Christian tradition, introduced by the formal agents of Christianity, synthesised with traditional culture, to develop a life based on the precepts of an African Christianity. The book is an intellectual discourse on Ori-Oke spirituality, reflecting its contemporary relevance in a context of religious innovation and competition.