The study of Christianity in the non-Western world reveals a demographic shift in the center of Christianity from the Northern Hemisphere to the South. But the contradictory aspect of the massive African conversion to Christian faith is the grinding poverty level in Africa. This condition raises important theological and ecclesiological questions that demand urgent answers. Therefore, the research objectives of this book are to examine African Catholicism's involvement in human promotion and to seek a new way of theologizing Christianity that moves sub-Saharan African peoples to action against the massive injustices that keep them poor. Drawing on Africae Munus, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of the Second African Synod (2011), and Bernard Lonergan's notion of culture, African Catholicism and Hermeneutics of Culture argues that to truly be "the spiritual 'lung' of humanity," African Catholicism must appropriate the Christian message to transform African attitudes and personhood and so foster a self-reliant commitment to integral African development.

Unlike the global North, “the ferment of Christianity” in the global South, among the majority of world people, has been astronomical. Despite the shift in the center of gravity of Christianity to the global South, intra-ecclesial tensions globally remain those of the relationship of culture to religion. The questions posed revolve around to what extent Western Christianity should be adapted to local cultures. Should we talk of Christianity in non-Western contexts or of majority world Christianity? Is it appropriate to describe the shift as the emergence of global Christianity or world Christianity? Should Christianity in the global South mimic Christianity in the global North, or can it be different in the light of the diversity of these cultures? Can Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and North Americans – the entire global community – speak of God in the same way? This book is devoted to examining varieties of the intercultural process in world Christianity. It understands culture broadly as a common meaning upon which communities’ social order is organized. Culture in this sense is the whole life of people. It is the integrator of the filial bond holding people together and the various institutional structures – economic, technological, political and legal – that guarantee peace and survival in societies, states, and nations, both locally and internationally. As this book shows, the centrality of culture for world Christianity equally showcases the important position the scale of values occupies in world Christianity.

This book can be summarized in one sentence: that culture plays a determinant role in the way people perceive, interpret, and, therefore, respond to reality around them--ideas, events, people, and literature, including sacred literature. Thus, when people encounter new reality they perceive and conceptualize it in accordance with their worldview, which is shaped by their culture that is modeled to suit various geographical locations. In order to understand why people around the world behave and act as they do--they choose certain words in what they say and do certain things rather than others--it is important to understand and appreciate this fact. Failure to do so would make it very difficult to engage in any dealings with them, secular or religious, like doing business or evangelization. This is what happened to the Pokot people whose worldview is predominantly communitarian, and yet they were introduced to hermeneutics that are predominantly individualistic, which is at loggerheads with their communal aspirations. The manifestation of this reality is the interpretation of the Good Shepherd parable in the Gospel of John, which the Pokot have understood and contextualized in line with their worldview, against the intentions, goals, and disposition of their evangelizers.

In his quest to identify practices that strengthen the faith of African Christians, Magesa examines the nature of being church today in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

"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"--

Drawn from the Conference on World Christianity, this provocatively titled book, invoking images of “culture collision,” “particularity,” and the “global South”, prompts for profoundly new understandings of apparently polar themes: inculturation, universality, and world Christianity. Since the emergence of world Christianity is not an epiphenomenon, but central to the question of how the gospel is good news for today’s world, readers concerned about the theological issues related to the possibilities for a genuinely new evangelization will find this volume. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of African ecclesiastical history, world Christianity, and inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue. Cyril Orji is Associate Professor of theology at the University of Dayton, Ohio, USA. He specializes in systematic and fundamental theology with particular emphasis on the theology and philosophy of Bernard Lonergan, whom he brings into conversation with the works of the American pragmatist and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce. Dr Orji also collaborates in inter-religious dialogue and the intersection of religion and culture – inculturation, post-colonial critical theory, and Black and African theologies – and engages in communal practices of communicative theology in the development of local/contextual theologies. He has published numerous articles in various peer-reviewed journals, and is the author of A Semiotic Approach to the Theology of Inculturation (2015), An Introduction to Religious and Theological Studies (2015), The Catholic University and the Search for Truth (2013), and Ethnic and Religious Conflicts in Africa: An Analysis of Bias and Conversion Based on the Work of Bernard Lonergan (2008).