Kwame Bediako

Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion Kwame Bediako

Christianity's centre of gravity has shifted in the modern world from the Northern continents to the South, with Africa playing a dominant role in the resurgence of the faith. This work examines this global transformation of the faith from an African perspective and surveys the new role of African Christianity. Beginning with the intellectual legacy of the 19th-century "Black Spokesman", Edward Wilmot Blyden, who questioned the suitability of Western Christianity to Africa, and its resurgence in the 20th century in the Afrikania Movement of the late Ghanaian ex-Roman Catholic priest, Kwabena Damuah, the author examines the deep mother-tongue roots of large portions of African Christianity and shows how the faith has remained a vital and influential force in the continent even after the waning of Western dominance. He then goes on to discuss the prospects of this modern African experience of the faith, in the future shape of Christian theological discourse, in the understanding of the nature of Christian history and in Christianity's continuing social and cultural impact in the world, as well as in a reassessment of the place of the African continent itself in world history.