Reclaiming Traditions of Igbo Education and the Legacy of the Holy Ghost Missionaries

Reclaiming Traditions of Igbo Education and the Legacy of the Holy Ghost Missionaries
Author: Okonkwo Remigius Nwabichie
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

WHAT IMPACT HAS CHURCH MISSIONARY EDUCATION (CME) HAD IN AFRICA, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES? Reclaiming Traditions of Igbo Education and the Legacy of the Holy Ghost Missionaries finds answers to that question. This book critically assesses the benefits and burdens of the Church Missionary Education (CME) of the Holy Ghost Missionaries among nd’Igbo in southeastern Nigeria. It interrogates the propriety of its philosophy and reviews the adequacy of the methods used to promote it. While critics lament the damage done by European explorers, merchants, colonialists, and missionaries to the educational traditions of Africa, apologists who defend them suggest that they did their best under prevailing circumstances. They ask, “Instead of revisit the past, why not get on with the business of modern times?” But the impact of the European presence in Africa is not a thing of the past. It is part of “Africa’s current and existential socioeconomic, political, religious, and educational struggles today. 1 This book describes the limitations of the neo-colonizing educational philosophy of the missionaries and calls for an alternative. A philosophy of wholeness is proposed as an alternative that would transition Africans to a liberating and liberatory Christian Religious Education (CRE) of the gospels. Such, it is argued, would better serve their needs and aspirations, and better heal the wounds of their colonial past. About the Author OKONKWO REMIGIUS NWABICHIE is a priest of Orlu diocese. He holds degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Administration, and Religious Education. He is the author of Religion for Morality in Education, Self-Reliant African Churches, and a forthcoming volume, Methods for Promoting Christian Religious Education in Africa. A lively discussant in Igbo/African affairs, and curriculum development, he can be reached at: [email protected] or [email protected].

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1994-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385474547

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Caribbean Religious History

Caribbean Religious History
Author: Ennis B. Edmonds
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2010-06-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814722350

The colonial history of the Caribbean created a context in which many religions, from indigenous to African-based to Christian, intermingled with one another, creating a rich diversity of religious life. Caribbean Religious History offers the first comprehensive religious history of the region. Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez begin their exploration with the religious traditions of the Amerindians who flourished prior to contact with European colonizers, then detail the transplantation of Catholic and Protestant Christianity and their centuries of struggles to become integral to the Caribbean’s religious ethos, and trace the twentieth century penetration of American Evangelical Christianity, particularly in its Pentecostal and Holiness iterations. Caribbean Religious History also illuminates the influence of Africans and their descendants on the shaping of such religious traditions as Vodou, Santeria, Revival Zion, Spiritual Baptists, and Rastafari, and the success of Indian indentured laborers and their descendants in reconstituting Hindu and Islamic practices in their new environment. Paying careful attention to the region’s social and political history, Edmonds and Gonzalez present a one-volume panoramic introduction to this religiously vibrant part of the world.

African Pentecostalism

African Pentecostalism
Author: Ogbu Kalu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2008-03-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195340000

In this book, Ogbu Kalu provides an overview of Pentecostalism in Africa. He shows the amazing diversity of the faith, which flourishes in many different forms in diverse local contexts, and demonstrates that African Pentecostalism is distinctly African in character, not imported from the West.

Africans

Africans
Author: John Iliffe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2017-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107198321

An updated and comprehensive single-volume history covering all periods from human origins to contemporary African situations.

Religion and the Making of Nigeria

Religion and the Making of Nigeria
Author: Olufemi Vaughan
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2016-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822373874

In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.

The Literary History of the Igbo Novel

The Literary History of the Igbo Novel
Author: Ernest N. Emenyonu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2020-02-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000040704

This book looks at the trends in the development of the Igbo novel from its antecedents in oral performance, through the emergence of the first published novel, Omenuko, in 1933 by Pita Nwana, to the contemporary Igbo novel. Defining "Igbo literature" as literature in Igbo language, and "Igbo novel" as a novel written in Igbo language, the author argues that oral and written literature in African indigenous languages hold an important foundational position in the history of African literature. Focusing on the contributions of Igbo writers to the development of African literature in African languages, the book examines the evolution, themes, and distinctive features of the Igbo novel, the historical circumstances of the rise of the African novel in the pre-colonial, era and their impact on the contemporary Igbo novel. This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature, literary history, and Igbo studies.

Omenuko

Omenuko
Author: Nwana, Pita
Publisher: African Heritage Press
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2014-10-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1940729173

Omenụkọ (real name: Igwegbe Odum) whose home in Okigwe, Eastern Nigeria, was a popular spot for field trips by students in schools and colleges, as well as a favourite attraction for tourists in the decades before and after the Nigerian Independence in 1960. Generations of Igbo children began their reading in Igbo with Omenụkọ, and those who did not have the opportunity to go to school still read Omenụkọ in their homes or at adult education centers. Omenụkọ was a legendary figure and his 'sayings' became part of the Igbo speech repertoire that young adults were expected to acquire. Omenụkọ, a classic in Igbo Literature, written by Pita Nwana and published in 1933 by Longman, Green & Co, Ltd, London, is in this translation made accessible to a global audience. Emenyonu utilizes his mastery of both languages (Igbo and English) to faithfully present to his audience a complete rendition of Omenụkọ as originally written. The timeless significance of this novel as a progenitor of the Igbo language novel is again underscored.