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This chapter looks at the nature of the religious changes involved in successful Christian missions and the resulting expansion of Christianity in Asia and Africa: success that is impossible to understand if the new Christians were only responding out of fear or envy of imperial conquerors. The chapter starts by examining the view developing in the West in the mid-twentieth century that the Christian mission venture was solely misguided imperialism and an attempt to export Western culture. It goes on to analyse the reasons for Southern Christian expansion, and the synthesis of this Christianity into local cultures. The last two sections investigate the newer autonomous (independent) Christian churches in Africa; these are one of the most notable aspects of Southern Christianity and can be expected to play an increasing role in world Christianity.

This chapter attempts to evaluate the degree of groupness associated with the category “Christians.” It moves from an analysis of when and how Christianness mattered at the level of the individual to an analysis of when and how Christianness was a basis for group-formation. It considers, in particular, how Christians responded when they were targeted as a group by outsiders. A review of episodes of persecution in North Africa from the end of the second until the beginning of the fourth century shows that, despite of their leaders' incitement to do so, Christians seldom opposed a communal response to the persecutors, and that a significant number of them chose to suspend, if only temporarily, their Christian membership. Additionally, when Decius gave the order that all inhabitants of the Roman Empire must sacrifice to the gods for restoration of order and security, the majority of Christians complied. They considered the sacrifice a requirement of their membership in the imperial commonwealth, and they did not activate their Christian membership in this context. On the other hand, with the emergence of the strong figure of a “monarchical bishop,” Christians began bonding around their leader.

African evangelical/Pentecostal/charismatic (EPC) Christians—previously dismissed by scholars as apolitical—are becoming increasingly active socially and politically. This chapter presents a case study of an EPC congregation in Harare. It demonstrates how the congregation provides short-term human security by responding to the needs of the poor, while at the same time creating space where people can develop the “self-expression values” necessary for long-term human security. The case study also demonstrates that even under authoritarian states, religious actors can actively choose to balance the immediate demands of short-term human security with the sometimes competing demands of long-term human security. Policymakers can benefit from a greater understanding of how religious actors strike this balance and from a greater appreciation of the variability, flexibility, and religious resources of EPC Christians in such contexts.

This chapter considers the centrality of supernatural traditions of Conjure in the African American spirituality, presenting examples from various historical contexts. Conjure is a magical tradition in which spiritual power is invoked for various purposes, such as healing, protection, and self-defense. From slavery days to the present, many African Americans have readily moved between Christianity, Conjure, and other forms of supernaturalism with little concern for their purported incompatibility. During the slavery period, persons believed to possess special powers were present in black populations throughout the United States, and African American practitioners of Christianity often mingled unusual practices with their traditions. African American testimonials describe how some slaves believed that the power of charms and amulets provided them with protection from abuse and racial subjugation by white slaveholders and affliction such as sickness and destitution. Supernatural practitioners often adopted symbols from Christian traditions for use in their own practices and rituals, such as protective charms and Christian accoutrements.

This chapter investigates Afro-Christian traditions that have fused African and Christian elements to create new religious traditions, including the emergence and evolution of such groups as Revival Zion in Jamaica and Spiritual Baptists in Trinidad. Revival Zion and Spiritual Baptists may be considered as Afro-Christian (or African-Christian) because, while the adherents of these traditions unambiguously identify themselves as Christians, they retain African orientations and aesthetics in the way in which they understand and deploy their faith to deal with the exigencies of life. Unlike Creole African religions such as Vodou and Santería that retain African pantheons of a Supreme God and a host of lesser deities that govern the various natural and social forces, Afro-Christian traditions such as Revival Zion and Spiritual Baptists abandoned these, affirming belief only in the Christian God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This introductory chapter first outlines the theoretical considerations that inform the present study of North African Christians between the end of the second century and the middle of the fifth century. It highlights the so-called linguistic or cultural turn in early Christian studies: the disaffection for social history that historical studies of other periods have known and overcome. It argues that the field is at the stage when most scholars either deliberately do not use texts as evidence of an “extra-textual social reality” or, if they do, they ignore that this is not a straightforward process. It then explores alternative interpretive approaches. The chapter also discusses the notion of the individual's “internal plurality” as well as the limits of the evidence used in the study. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter provides the conclusion to this study of the relationship between African American religion and conjuring practices, discussing the origin and development of supernatural beliefs and practices such as Conjure among enslaved African black communities in the United States as a means of healing and harming. In earlier periods, conjuring provided a conceptual and practical framework by which slaves confronted misfortune and evil in their lives. Later, Conjure coexisted with Christianity among African Americans as an alternative strategy for interacting with the spiritual realm. In the present day, African American conjuring traditions have given way to more diverse forms of supernatural practice. African American supernaturalism resonates in contemporary manifestations of Hoodoo, in the ritual creations of African diasporic religions, and in artistic forms that utilize conjuring themes. African American supernatural traditions are dynamic products of black spirituality, and a study of these traditions can open a window onto the many levels at which black life has been suffused with religious meaning.

This chapter describes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s religious environment. Twenty-one-year-old King characterized his religious environment as a “universe,” a socially constructed world that shaped his identity and outlook on life. The moral and physical center of that universe was the sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where his father presided from the pulpit and the son had been baptized. The sanctuary dictated the boundaries within which African-American Christians, including Martin Luther King, Jr., sorted out the relationship of suffering and hope. Throughout his career, King carried the sanctuary with him as a state of mind and soul; he also repeatedly returned to it like a grateful soldier home from the front.

The semihistorical dramas in 1–2 Samuel and 1 Kings reflect complex and sometimes competing perspectives on the past, woven together into a large textured statement about human character, social change, and political division. They also explore the ambiguity of God’s role in those social processes. The account of Saul’s rejection should be read on multiple levels—political, theological, and symbolic. David’s story is told with a measure of skepticism, and the account of Solomon likewise prompts a fresh appraisal of his reputation for wisdom. Yet the text points to their lasting legacy in the worship tradition and Zion theology associated with the temple and the book of Psalms. Narratives in Kings—stories of Elijah and also the anonymous man of God who confronted Jeroboam at Bethel—focus on prophets and YHWH’s word itself as primary shapers of history. The YHWH-alone movement in ninth-century Israel, associated with Elijah, bears some resemblance to the spread of indigenous African Christianity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.