"The inculturation of the Christian message is examined through examples of art from Africa, the Philippines, and the Mexican-American community"--

"The inculturation of the Christian message is examined through examples of art from Africa, the Philippines, and the Mexican-American community"--

Drawing together international and Indian sources, and new research on the ground in South India, this book presents a unique examination of the inculturation of Christian Worship in India. Paul M. Collins examines the imperatives underlying the processes of inculturation - the dynamic relationship between the Christian message and cultures - and then explores the outcomes of those processes in terms of architecture, liturgy and ritual, and the critique offered of these outcomes, especially by Dalit theologians. This book highlights how the Indian context has informed global discussions, and how the decisions of the World Council of Churches, Vatican II and Lambeth Conferences have impacted upon the Indian context.

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practiced Christianity and actively participated in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, Cecile Fromont examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture and traces its development across four centuries marked by war, the Atlantic slave trade, and, finally, the rise of nineteenth-century European colonialism. By offering an extensive analysis of the religious, political, and artistic innovations through which the Kongo embraced Christianity, Fromont approaches the country's conversion as a dynamic process that unfolded across centuries. The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.

Indigenous Symbols and Practices in the Catholic Church presents views, concepts and perspectives on the relationships among Indigenous Peoples and the Catholic Church, as well as stories, images and art as metaphors for survival in a contemporary world. Few studies present such interdisciplinary interpretations from contributors in multiple disciplines regarding appropriation, spiritual and religious tradition, educational issues in the teaching of art and art history, the effects of government sanctions on traditional practice, or the artistic interpretation of symbols from Indigenous perspectives. Through photographs and visual materials, interviews and data analysis, personal narratives and stories, these chapters explore the experiences of Indigenous Peoples whose lives have been impacted by multiple forces – Christian missionaries, governmental policies, immigration and colonization, education, assimilation and acculturation. Contributors investigate current contexts and complex areas of conflict regarding missionization, appropriation and colonizing practices through asking questions such as, 'What does the use of images mean for resistance, transformation and cultural destruction?' And, 'What new interpretations and perspectives are necessary for Indigenous traditions to survive and flourish in the future?'

This is a revised and updated edition of the comprehensive study of the role of art in the process of inculturation in Africa, first issued in 2000. The study is a substantial contribution toward a theology of inculcation in Africa, and enriches the debate on indigenous African and Christian artistic traditions. It represents the first systematic theology constructed in and from Malawi that establishes a theology of symbolic expression in Africa.

World Cinema, Theology, and the Human builds an engaging intertextual dialogue between nine acclaimed films of world cinema and a range of theological perspectives that touch on the theme of human experience. This book engages with the power of film to trigger hermeneutical impulses and theological conversation stemming from resonant humanity unfolding onscreen. However, it is film as art, not theology as normative text, which lays down a bridge to the possibility of critical dialogue. In this approach, film is emancipated from a theological agenda, and as an art form, given space to speak on its own terms in dialogue with theology.