Wealth, Health, and Hope in African Christian Religion offers a portrait of how contending narratives of modernity in both church and society play out in Africa today through the agency of African Christian religion. It explores the identity and features of African Christian religion and the cultural forces driving the momentum of Christian expansion in Africa, as well as how these factors are shaping a new African social imagination, especially in providing answers to the most challenging questions about poverty, wealth, health, human, and cosmic flourishing. It offers the academy a good road map for interpreting African Christian religious beliefs and practices today and into the future.

"A technical insight to Africa's development." -- United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Geneva "This book is good news and a compelling work of our times. It creates hope, challenges despair, re-establishes authentic human development and original African values." --Prof. Obiora Ike, Catholic Institute for Development, Justice and Peace, Nigeria "A very precious contribution to Christian conversation on the future of Africa by a young African researcher." --Prof. Benezet Bujo, Chair, Centre for Moral Theology and Social Ethics, University of Freibourg, Switzerland "This book is a stirring manifesto for social reconstruction and interior transformation in Africa." --Prof. James H. Olthuis, Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto "This is a bold attempt at contextual theology." --Dr. Joseph Faniran, Catholic Institute for West Africa "Stan Chu Ilo is one of Africa's bright stars and provides a Christian socio-ethical compass for navigating life in Africa for generations to come." --Prof. Uche Uguwueze, Professor of African Studies, California State University, Long Beach "A fascinating discourse on the trials and hope of the African continent." --Milwaukee Community Journal, USA

Africa's heartrending picture begs the question: Is Africa cursed? In this book, the author conveys a winning message - that there can be hope for Africa. He unwraps Africa's place in the Bible, wards off superstition and advocates Christians' active engagement in transforming Africa.

How do urbanization and development intersect with religious dynamics to shape contemporary African cityscapes? To answer this timely question, contributors from across Europe, North America and Africa are brought together to explore mega-cities including Lagos, Cape Town, Dar es Salaam and Kinshasa as powerful venues for the creation and implementation of religious models of urbanization and development. This book interrogates how religious socio-spatial models and strategies engage with challenges of infrastructural development, urban social cohesion, inequalities and inclusion. Chapters explore how faith-based practices of urban and infrastructural development link moral subjectivities with individual and wider aspirations for modernization, change, deliverance and prosperity. The volume brings together ethnographically rich and theoretically grounded case studies of religious urbanization across the African continent. It advances discussions of the ambivalent role of urban religion in development and documents the complex, multifaceted socio-cultural and political dynamics associated with religious urbanization in Africa.

"A disciplinary map for understanding African Catholicism today by engaging some of the most pressing and pertinent issues, topics, and conversations in diverse fields of studies in African Catholicism"--

»What Does Theology Do, Actually? Observing Theology and the Transcultural« is to be the first in a series of 5 books, each presented under the same question – »What Does Theology Do, Actually?«, with vols. 2–5 focusing on one of the theological subdisciplines. This first volume proceeds from the observation of a need for a highly inflected »trans-cultural«, and not simply »inter-cultural«, set of perspectives in theological work and training. The revolution brought about across the humanities disciplines through globalization and the recognition of »multiple modernities« has introduced a diversity of overlapping cultural content and multiple cultural and religious belongings not only into academic work in the humanities and social sciences, but into the Christian churches as well.

This book epitomizes the understanding that to excel, you have to believe in yourself and your ability to achieve, and that part of this process is enabled by mentorship. Looking at the history of women in science or academia, it is apparent that women have struggled long and hard to be recognised as legitimate scientists or academics and that women of colour are confronted with double jeopardy of both race and gender, not only in South Africa but at a global level. Gender equity in science or academia and racial diversity are moral and necessary imperatives. In academia, women are strongly represented in the early phases of their academic careers, yet there is an attrition in the number of women who are associate professors and full professors. This “leaky pipeline” not only wastes women's education and potential, preventing much-needed diversity in academia but, more profoundly, restricts women's goals and rights.

Practical theology has outgrown its traditional pastoral paradigm. The articles in this handbook recognize that religion, spirituality, lived religion on this side and beyond institutional communities refer to realms of cultures, ritual practices, and symbolic orders whose boundaries are not clearly defined and whose contents are shifting. The Handbook of Practical Theology offers insightful transcultural conceptions of religion and religious affairs collected from various cultures and religions. The first section presents ‘concepts of religion’. Chapters include considerations of the conceptualizing of religion in the fields of 'anthropology', 'community', 'family', 'institution', 'law', 'media', and 'politics' among others. The second section is dedicated to case studies of ‘religious practices’ from the perspective of their actors. The third section presents the main theoretical discourses that map the globally significant diversity and multiplicity of religion. Altogether, fifty-eight authors from different parts of the world encourage a rethinking of religious practice in an expanded, transcultural, globalized, and postcolonial world.

With the death of John McCracken in 2017, Malawi lost a pre-eminent historian. This book celebrates McCracken’s contribution to the study of Malawi’s history and seeks to build on his legacy. Part of his genius was that he identified themes that hold the key to understanding the history of Malawi in its broader perspective. The authors contributing to this volume address these themes, assessing the progress of historiography and setting an agenda for the further advance of historical studies. The book is a valuable resource for students, researchers and all who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Malawi’s past and present.

It has become increasingly clear that an adequate understanding of the contemporary processes of social, cultural, and religious change is contingent on an appreciation of the growing impact of social media. Utilising results of an unprecedented global study, this volume explores the ways in which young adults in seven different countries engage with digital and social media in religiously significant ways. Presenting and analysing the findings of the global research project Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG), an international panel of contributors shed new light on the impact of social media and its associated technologies on young people’s religiosities, worldviews, and values. Case studies from China, Finland, Ghana, Israel, Peru, Poland, and Turkey are used to demonstrate how these developments are progressing, not just in the West, but across the world. This book is unique in that it presents a truly macroscopic perspective on trends in religion amongst young adults. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in religious studies, digital media, communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, theology and youth studies.