Funerals in Africa

Funerals in Africa
Author: Michael Jindra
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857452061

Across Africa, funerals and events remembering the dead have become larger and even more numerous over the years. Whereas in the West death is normally a private and family affair, in Africa funerals are often the central life cycle event, unparalleled in cost and importance, for which families harness vast amounts of resources to host lavish events for multitudes of people with ramifications well beyond the event. Though officials may try to regulate them, the popularity of these events often makes such efforts fruitless, and the elites themselves spend tremendously on funerals. This volume brings together scholars who have conducted research on funerary events across sub-Saharan Africa. The contributions offer an in-depth understanding of the broad changes and underlying causes in African societies over the years, such as changes in religious beliefs, social structure, urbanization, and technological changes and health.

African Religions

African Religions
Author: Jacob K. Olupona
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199790582

This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.

The Zionist Churches in Malawi

The Zionist Churches in Malawi
Author: Strohbehn, Ulf
Publisher: Mzuni Press
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2016-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9996045161

This book presents an African Christian movement full of vitality and creativity. The reader will meet believers who drink milk so that they may dream about angels, reports about funerals where the mourners dance with the coffin on their shoulders and church members who are ritually not allowed to fertilize their fields or wear neck ties. The author's unique insight into Malawi's Christian community addresses important issues in society. Why have 'Spirit Churches,' including Pentecostalism, been so successful in Malawi? Why do some religious groups still refuse medical help, up to the point that children die of cholera? How did the independent churches deal with the colonial trauma? In this masterful portrait, Strohbehn takes the reader from industrial mine compounds to rural colonies, where churches have set up their own spiritual and political rule. He carefully dissects the fine lines between traditional notions and Christianity's influence. We find a spiritual portrait of the Ngoni people, a fascinating cultural analysis of dancing and an encounter with a unique style of preaching.

African Instituted Churches

African Instituted Churches
Author: Rufus Okikiolaolu Olubiyi Ositelu
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2002
Genre: Christianity
ISBN: 9783825860875

One of the striking features of the changed demography of world Christianity has been the emergence and growth of the African Instituted Churches (AICs). This book is therefore provided for those who desire to study the African initiatives in Christianity. The book is intended to serve as a valuable material to teachers and students of African Instituted Churches. The customs, culture and traditions of the African or any other peoples of the world are to serve as beautiful compliments to the Christian faith and belief, and not diametrically opposed to it.

Funeral Rites Reformation for Any African Ethnic Community Based on the Proposed New Funeral Practices for the Agikuyu

Funeral Rites Reformation for Any African Ethnic Community Based on the Proposed New Funeral Practices for the Agikuyu
Author: Johnson Nganga Mbugua
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2016-06-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498290906

This book has been written on the premise that the mode of coping with death of virtually all African ethnic communities has taken proportions and turns that are neither cultural, scriptural, nor necessary. Current rites are complicated, time-consuming, expensive, and are leaving most families and their neighbors impoverished. They have been extremely commercialized and a large number of Africans do not have resources to bury their dead the "modern" way. Were the Agikuyu (read: Africans) to curb numerous funeral demands which they deem necessary and "customary," when in actual fact they are not, funerals for them would become cheaper, faster, and simpler; would be decent enough for the dead; would take care of those left behind; and would be environmentally friendly. How Africans in the Diaspora, away from their ancestral homeland, should cope with death is also addressed. Also addressed is the issue of cremation. It is shown that at the resurrection, God will accord us new spiritual bodies which will have no bearing with the material substance of our earthly (mortal) bodies.

Death Rituals among the Karanga of Zimbabwe

Death Rituals among the Karanga of Zimbabwe
Author: John Chitakure
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666730750

One of the inescapable truths that humanity has to grapple with is the reality of death. The manner in which we die, or the cause of our death, may differ, but death remains inevitable. We may be afraid of it or not; we may try to evade it, or not, but death still comes. Although most religions promise the possibility of another life in the hereafter, there is no scientifically verifiable evidence about the reality of that life. Despite that lack of evidence, every culture performs death rituals meticulously to prepare the spirits of its deceased for whatever form of life that may be available. Death Rituals among the Karanga of Zimbabwe: Praxis, Significance, and Changes explores the causes of sickness and death, and the praxis of pre-burial, burial, and post-burial rituals of the Karanga of Zimbabwe in an attempt to unearth their original form and significance, to identify the changes that have taken place. It also provides a brief manual for the performance of some selected Karanga death rituals.

Reading Ritual

Reading Ritual
Author: Wesley J. Bergen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2005-05-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567524434

This book draws on a variety of disciplines to undertake a unique analysis of Leviticus 1-7. Rather than studying the rituals prescribed in Leviticus as arcane historical/theological texts of little interest to the modern reader, or as examples of primitive rituals that have no parallel in Western society, this book provides many points of contact between animal sacrifice rituals and various parts of post-modern society. Modern rituals such as Monday Night Football, eating fast food, sending sons and daughters off to war, and even the rituals of modern academia are contrasted with the text of Leviticus. In addition, responses to Leviticus among modern African Christians and in the early church are used to draw out further understandings of how the language and practice of sacrifice still shapes the lives of people. This study takes a consciously Christian perspective on Leviticus. Leviticus is assumed to be an ongoing part of the Christian Bible. The usual Christian response to Leviticus is to ignore it or to claim that all sacrifice has now been superseded by the sacrifice of Jesus. This study refutes those simplistic assertions, and attempts to reassert the place of Leviticus as a source for Christian self-understanding. This is volume 417 of JSOTS and volume 9 of Playing the Texts.

Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism

Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism
Author: Atalia Omer
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2024-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0268208492

Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism examines the tenacious, lingering impact of European colonial ideology on religion and politics around the world. Even though the formal structures of colonialism have crumbled, with a few notable exceptions, European colonial ideology continues to operate across the globe, resulting in limited, nationalistic conceptualizations of religion and politics. Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism shows convincingly that not only has colonialism had a devastating impact on the colonized, but its reach has turned inward to erode the colonizer’s own social and political systems. By examining the colonial violence constitutive of liberal political ideology, the continued oppression of Muslims in Europe in the name of security, and the way neoliberal economics bends religious hermeneutics to its will, the authors of Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism call attention to the threats that face our world today. They also point to potential sites of hope—for example, the work of a priest in the Balkans who seeks to build solidarity across religious differences; groups in Africa who are constructing decolonial religious imaginaries; and the Islamo-futurism of Dune, which haltingly imagines a form of modernity beyond the West. Contributors: Atalia Omer, Joshua Lupo, Santiago Slabodsky, Nadia Fadil, S. Sayyid, Luca Mavelli, Edmund Frettingham, Cecelia Lynch, Slavica Jakelić, and Gil Anidjar