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This chapter describes the role of Christian churches, leaders and ideas in the democratization of Africa, with a focus on Ghana. The author argues first that African Christianity needs to be understood on African terms. European and American assumptions about religion and politics are framed by the history of the “Christendom” cultural ideal and the current secular outlook of the North Atlantic world and thus are less relevant for African politics. There is a new public theology arising that contests the tendency in traditional Africa to vest political power with sacred authority. Recounting the election of a democratic challenger to succeed Ghana’s authoritarian president, Jerry Rawlings, Bediako sees evidence that this new Christian public theology is changing the political culture in a genuinely democratic direction.

This essay provides the global context for the local studies that follow: the emergence of Christianity as a world religion, its rising prominence in the global south and east and its waning influence and adherence in the North Atlantic region. Sanneh highlights the cultural repositioning of African Christianity and Asian Christianity away from their old intellectual and political cradle in Europe. These new forms of “world Christianity” are expressed in more languages, cultural traditions and models of faith and practice than ever before, and they are engaged in a growing cultural conflict with European Christianity and its expressions in North America. This interdisciplinary study shows that expounding the story of world Christianity requires new combinations of scholarly skills and experience.

Johnson was drawn to Voyage historique d'Abissinie, this chapter proposes, by its African Christianity. That is, translating it was a way of thinking about what it meant to be a Christian and how differently Christianity could be imagined. That Johnson’s interest in the text was that of a religious explorer becomes clear when examining his reading, his religious beliefs, and his editing of Voyage historique d'Abissinie.

Christianity’s influence among Atlantic Africans began as early as the fifteenth century, and endured as a largely indigenous movement over the following three hundred years. Discovering how they came to be Christians, how many black Christians there were in Africa during this period, how contact with African culture changed Christianity, and whether Africans brought their version of Christianity with them to the Americas when they went there as forced migrants are the objects of this chapter. Led by African Christians such as Jacobus Capitein and Philip Quaque in the 18th century, Christianity’s history in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa actually extends to the fourth century CE and over the millennia has inspired the conversion of millions of adherents. Intriguing new evidence supports the idea that many Africans in the Diaspora were not only well acquainted with Christianity in places like Portuguese Kongo and Angola, but also knew about the black Christians of Ethiopia and Egypt and therefore thought of Christianity as an indigenous faith initially independent of and not wholly dominated by white slave owners, making them more likely to embrace it once in America.

This chapter notes that increased pluralism, movement, and transnationalism have meant inevitable change for dissenting Protestantism. A result of experiential transculturality has been the rise of religious practice marked by hybridity, and scholarship intended to explain it. This chapter unpacks the meanings of terms such as ‘inculturation’ as ‘adaptation’, ‘innovation’, and ‘reflexivity’, and explores the ways in which these emerge in the intercultural settings of Protestant Christian mission in the Majority World. A result of this analysis is to point to the ways in which secularity and transnationalism actually ‘manufacture’ dissent from dominant orthodoxies, sparking religious revitalizations and new identities. The chapter quotes E. W. Blyden’s prescient observation that Africa would be the ‘spiritual conservatory of the world’. The term ‘dissent’ needs to be revalued to include growth, reinterpretation, resilience, redefinition, and revitalization. This keeps it true to the semper reformanda principle of Reformational Dissent.

This chapter articulates how African Pentecostalism emerged as a form of dissent, and formed many different kinds of independent churches, new denominations, and movements of renewal within older churches. In particular it traces those characteristics of dissent that are found in the independent Charismatic churches since the 1970s, and how these have impacted African Christianity as a whole, including Catholic and Protestant churches. It gives examples in turn from West Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa, and critiques the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ that is often a central part of these churches’ appeal. It concludes with a summary of how these churches characterize new forms of dissent.

Africa has provided an auspicious context for religious reformation, renewal, and revival. Its landscape has been radically shaped by the dynamic forces of Christianity. African Christianity evokes a protean image that has been moulded by the interrelated processes of mission, conversion narrative, prophecy, and waves of spiritual independence. In contemporary times, Africa continues to serve as a living laboratory for creative religious movements and models. This paper analyses the importance of translation and indigenization in African Christianity and how the processes have influenced the dissenting tradition in this religious experience. Translation provided the impetus for genuine and creative appropriation of the Christian faith in Africa. The engine of faith was enabled by the conscious effort to rediscover Christian doctrines and formulas in familiar syntax, symbols, and concepts.

This chapter surveys the conversion of Moses Berry and how his theological convictions remain prominent for members of the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black. Berry sought out a Christianity that included engaged multiple races and ethnicities and was open to all. Yet he also sought an otherworldly Christianity, one that looked to God’s transcendence as well as understanding that God could be present within one’s own immediate suffering. Initially, Berry joined Holy Order of MANS, a restorationist New Religious Movement, built on the supposed reincarnation of biblical personalities, that was beginning to seek a more traditional Eastern Christian expression. Here, Berry utilized the anti-traditional approach to reset his bearings. He brought together a concern for African American slave identity and an awareness of early Christianity, concluding that the Orthodox Churches were the continuation of that same ancient Christian church so shaped by its African experience.

This introduction provides an outline of the book by discussing topics such as Black power and the Black church. Black freedom struggles in the borderland and the Black Power Movement in Cairo, Illinois. A large emphasis is placed on the exploration of the changing relationship of the Black church and African American Christianity to Cairo Black freedom struggles. The story of Karen Rice, a Black Power activist, is also provided in order to show how stories of this kind during the Black Power Movement raised important questions about Black Power’s de-Christianization and bolstered recent calls from scholars in the emergent subfield of “Black Power Studies” to probe more deeply the relationship between the Black church, African American Christianity, and the Black Power Movement.

This chapter describes Douglass’s first years as a free man living in Massachusetts. It explains why Douglass had a difficult time remaining a member of any Christian church in the North. It also recounts Douglass’s initial exposure to the abolitionist movement and his early career as a paid abolitionist lecturer—culminating in the publication of his first autobiography in 1845, which succinctly captured his prophetic faith.

This chapter traces the medical materials from the U.S. agencies to their arrival in Antananarivo in the Malagasy Lutheran health department or SALFA. Operated mainly by church elites, SALFA is a nationally-run and nationalist aid entity, emerging from the malgachisation of church institutions in Madagascar that paralleled the broader wave of African nationalisms sweeping the continent in the 1970s. Drawing upon ethnographic research in SALFA headquarters in Antananarivo, the chapter describes how SALFA administrators nurture and seek forms of spiritual and material benefit from a range of religious and professional networks in which SALFA itself is situated, such as the fifohazana, their paid employment, ties to foreign NGOs and public/private medical aid partnerships. The chapter views Malagasy acceptance of heterogeneous medical discards from the U.S. NGOs as an act of value generation itself, an actively chosen move by SALFA administrators to create ties irrespective of each castoff’s individual value. Appreciating how SALFA workers restructure the value of medical waste in Antananarivo opens up a space of Malagasy critique of the discard trade, found in a refusal to place primary value in the heterogeneous materials themselves.

This chapter covers Douglass’ early childhood years in Baltimore. It focuses especially on Douglass’s conversion to Christianity and his secretive effort to learn to read and write. The chapter explains how both of these “awakenings” laid the foundation of Douglass’s prophetic faith.

By late August 1270, the Tunis Crusade was in the hands of Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily. A long‐running battle for Syria had been transposed, not only into a different region, but seemingly into a different register. Like Charles, al‐Mustansir of Tunis tended to negotiate rather than fight across religious frontiers. But that dynamic was about to change. Charles and al‐Mustansir were facing each other at the head of large and fractious armies. The temptation to use the military force at their disposal would be strong, and not only because it could help them gain a better bargaining position. On both sides, there was mounting pressure to activate the conflict. To keep their divided armies together, Charles and al‐Mustansir might just have to use them. The negotiators were now in charge, but to get the settlement they wanted, they were going to have to fight for it first.