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Full Description
A Ghanaian scholar of religion argues that poverty is a particularly complex subject in traditional African cultures, where holistic worldviews unite life's material and spiritual dimensions. A South African ethicist examines informal economies in Ghana, Jamaica, Kenya, and South Africa, looking at their ideological roots, social organization, and vulnerability to global capital. African American theologians offer ethnographic accounts of empowering religious rituals performed in churches in the United States, Jamaica, and South Africa. This important collection brings together these and other Pan-African perspectives on religion and poverty in Africa and the African diaspora. Contributors from Africa and North America explore poverty's roots and effects, the ways that experiences and understandings of deprivation are shaped by religion, and the capacity and limitations of religion as a means of alleviating poverty. As part of a collaborative project, the contributors visited Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, as well as Jamaica and the United States. In each location, they met with clergy, scholars, government representatives, and NGO workers, and they examined how religious groups and community organizations address poverty. Their essays complement one another. Some focus on poverty, some on religion, others on their intersection, and still others on social change. A Jamaican scholar of gender studies decries the feminization of poverty, while a Nigerian ethicist and lawyer argues that the protection of human rights must factor into efforts to overcome poverty. A church historian from Togo examines the idea of poverty as a moral virtue and its repercussions in Africa, and a Tanzanian theologian and priest analyzes ujamaa, an African philosophy of community and social change. Taken together, the volume's essays create a discourse of mutual understanding across linguistic, religious, ethnic, and national boundaries.
Contributors. Elizabeth Amoah, Kossi A. Ayedze, Barbara Bailey, Katie G. Cannon, Noel Erskine, Dwight N. Hopkins, Simeon O. Ilesanmi, Laurenti Magesa, Madipoane Masenya, Takatso A. Mofokeng, Esther M. Mombo, Nyambura J. Njoroge, Jacob Olupona, Peter J. Paris, Anthony B. Pinn, Linda E. Thomas, Lewin L. Williams
Contents
Foreword / Jacob Olupona ix
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction / Peter J. Paris 1
Part 1. The Roots and Impact of Poverty
An Ethical Mapping of the Transatlantic Slave Trade / Katie G. Cannon 19
Feminization of Poverty Across Pan-African Societies: the Church's Response-Alleviative or Emancipatory / Barbara Bailey 39
Part 2. Challenges of the Global and Informal Economices
The Informal Economy and the Religion of Global Cities / Takatso A. Mofokeng 69
A Theological Perspective on the Effects of Globalization on Poverty in Pan-African Contexts / Lewin L. Williams 88
Part 3. Religious Strategies for Liberating the Poor
African Traditional Religion and the Concept of Poverty / Elizabeth Amoah 111
Religion and Poverty: Ritual and Empowerment in Africa and the African Diaspora / Linda E. Thomas and Dwight N. Hopkins 128
The Bible and Poverty in African Pentecostal Christianity: The Bosadi (Womanhood) Approach / Madipoane Masenya 152
The Struggle for Full Humanity in Poverty-Stricken Kenya / Nyambura J. Njoroge 166
Part 4. The Ambiguous Relation of Religion and Poverty
Poverty Among African People and the Ambiguous Role of Christian Thought / Kossi A. Ayezde 193
Religion and Materiality: The Case of Poverty Alleviation / Esther M. Mombo 213
Warm Bodies, Cold Currency: A Study of Religion's Response to Poverty / Anthony B. Pinn 228
Part 5. Practical Theories for Combating Poverty
Nyerere on Ujamaa and Christianity as Transforming Forces in Society / Laurenti Magesa 249
Caribbean Issues: The Caribbean and African American Churches' Response / Noel Leo Erskine 272
Africa's Poverty, Human Rights, and a Just Society / Simeon O. Ilesanmi 293
Self-Initiation: A Necessary Principle in the African Struggle to Abolish Poverty / Peter J. Paris
Contributors
Index
