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.

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.

This book draws upon case studies of the Congolese Christian diaspora in the UK and US and an ethnography of religious urbanization in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to explore the making of religious spaces and moral landscapes in an era of globalization. Religion is a key aspect of the community, social and political life of Congolese migrants – many of whom have to address the predicaments of displacement, relocation and the status of being 'a minority within a minority', as Francophone black African migrants in English-speaking countries. The book demonstrates the role of religion in the production of moral worlds and the ways in which for Congolese Christians this process both results from and facilitates a process of 'regrounding' in the midst of ambivalent urban environments. Through a multi-sited ethnography the book also examines the impact of transnational religious practices on development and city-making in the homeland, in a context of increasing informalization and infrastructural deficit. Drawing on extensive ethnographic data, David Garbin captures the nuances of a complex and changing social, political and religious landscape for Congolese migrants relying on the construction of moral worlds and revealing the role of a range of connections but also disconnections between diaspora and homeland across multiple scales. An essential resource for scholars and researchers interested in the intersections of religion, migration and urbanization in both Global North and Global South contexts.

An exploration of the rapid development of African Christianity, offering an analysis and interpretation of its movements and issues.

The contributions of this volume discuss the broad field of transformation processes in Muslim societies from different perspectives with various disciplinary approaches. Apart from methodological questions the authors investigate religious and social developments in Africa and the Near and Middle East while focusing e.g. on the production of meaning, negotiation of religious values and spaces, gendered agency, and debates of identity.

Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa. "Sacred words” are taken to mean holy texts as in divination, the Quran and the Bible. Toyin Falola evaluates how religious leaders engage with sacred words, both orals and texts, engendering practices that reveal the expression of religious beliefs, the impact of those beliefs, and the knowledge contained in them. Attention is given to the key ideas in the words chosen by religious leaders, and how they form a continuous knowledge system, impacting the politics of managing society and people.

"What is development? Who defines that one community/ country is "developed", while another community/ country is "under-developed"? What is the relationship between religion and development? Does religion contribute to development or underdevelopment in Africa? These and related questions elicit quite charged reactions in African studies, development studies, political science and related fields. Africa's own history, including the memory of marginalisation, slavery and exploitation by global powers ensures that virtually every discussion on development is characterised by a lot of emotions and conflicting views. In this volume scholars from various African countries and many different religions and denominations contribute to this debate."--