Translatability and the Indigenisation of Christianity in Africa A Critical Review of Lamin Sanneh's Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture

Christianity is not a Western Religion: An Apologetic Response

This paper responds to the charge that Christianity is a Western religion — too white, too foreign, and a religious expression of colonialism — and therefore not an authentic faith for Africans. While acknowledging the aggressive, superior and imperialistic attitudes that have accompanied much of historic Western Christianity, it argues that Christianity is not and never was a Western religion, nor was it imposed on Africans by Westerners. Nine lines of argument are advanced: Africans freely chose to believe the gospel; the gospel was received and transmitted by indigenous Africans; Christianity is distinct from colonialism; the faith did not originate in the West but was shaped in Africa by the early church fathers; the biblical account links Africa with early Christianity; the colour of the messenger does not colour the message; Christianity is universal and cannot be encapsulated in race or colour; the charge of foreignness rests on neo-colonial presuppositions; and Africa's own religious heritage was never the blank slate the missionaries assumed. The paper closes with implications for contextualisation, incarnational missiology and a presuppositional apologetics in African Christianity.

African Traditional Religions and the Promotion of the Community Ideal in Africa The Religious Dimension of Community in Traditional and Contemporary Africa

Nine Reflections on African Religion and Philosophy Review Essays on Nine Readings in African Traditional Religion, with Implications for Today

This paper gathers nine review essays on readings in African traditional religion that were first written as a connected series in 2010. Each essay states the thesis of the work reviewed,reflects on it critically from an evangelical African standpoint, and draws an application for the church. The readings span the foundational claim of John S. Mbiti that religion permeates the whole of African life; Jacob K. Olupona’s agenda for the academic study of the religion; Emefie Ikenga-Metuh’s argument that African names and concepts of God are indigenous; a newspaper account of a cabinet minister’s initiation at a Kaya shrine; Mbiti’s study of women in African religion; O. Samuel Nichols on the ancestors in African Christian theology; Laurent Magesa on the moral traditions of abundant life; Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia’s proposal for studying the religion on its own terms; and Lois Fuller’s handbook for missionaries. Read together, the essays argue that African traditional religion cannot be wished away, that Africans knew God before the missionary arrived, that the ancestors remain the point of sharpest disagreement, and that the gospel is best communicated by those who first understand what they are addressing. The paper closes by drawing out the implications of these reflections for the church and for theological education today.