Abstract
If the religious imagination of pre-Christian Africans was ever fixed, such imaginative stagnation was ruptured by the intrusion of Christianity upon the African socio-religious ethnosphere. Sensitive to the effects of a dynamic relationship between indigenous African religions and Western Christian culture, and to developments in a rapidly changing world, scholars are divided on what constitutes the religious imagination of African Christians. Those who champion the continuity of pre-Christian imagination in contemporary African Christianity are challenged by their counterparts who argue that (Western) Christianity brought about a decisive rupture in what constitutes the pre-Christian African religious imagination. Synthesizing these views, this paper argues that the complexity and precarity of Africa’s socio-religious experience renders untenable any supposition that African Christians could be identified by a simplistic and uniform religious imagination. Depending on their unique experiences and ritual sensibilities, individuals and groups within contemporary African Christianity may react disparately or uniformly in their attempt to exploit religion in coping with the challenges of everyday life.
Presenters
Kenneth AmadiStudent, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Indiana, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION, PRECARITY, ANIMISM, ENCHANTMENT, RITUAL DEVELOPMENT, PRE-CHRISTIAN AFRICA
