Ancient African Christianity

Ancient African Christianity
Author: David E. Wilhite
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2017-07-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1135121419

Christianity spread across North Africa early, and it remained there as a powerful force much longer than anticipated. While this African form of Christianity largely shared the Latin language and Roman culture of the wider empire, it also represented a unique tradition that was shaped by its context. Ancient African Christianity attempts to tell the story of Christianity in Africa from its inception to its eventual disappearance. Well-known writers such as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine are studied in light of their African identity, and this tradition is explored in all its various expressions. This book is ideal for all students of African Christianity and also a key introduction for anyone wanting to know more about the history, religion, and philosophy of these early influential Christians whose impact has extended far beyond the African landscape.

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind

How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind
Author: Thomas C. Oden
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2010-07-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830837051

Thomas C. Oden surveys the decisive role of African Christians and theologians in shaping the doctrines and practices of the church of the first five centuries, and makes an impassioned plea for the rediscovery of that heritage. Christians throughout the world will benefit from this reclaiming of an important heritage.

Early North African Christianity

Early North African Christianity
Author: David L. Eastman
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2021-08-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1493431323

An internationally recognized scholar highlights the important role the North African church played in the development of Christian thought. This accessible introduction brings Africa back to the center of the study of Christian history by focusing on key figures and events that influenced the history and trajectory of Christianity as a whole. Written and designed for the classroom, the book zeroes in on five turning points to show how North African believers significantly shaped Christian theology, identity, and practice in ways that directly impact the church today.

A History of Christianity in Africa

A History of Christianity in Africa
Author: Elizabeth Isichei
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 432
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN: 0802808433

Isichei's thorough study surveys the full breadth of Christianity in Africa, from the early story of Egyptian Christianity to the churches of the Middle Years (1500-1800) to the prolific success of missions throughout the 1900s. This important book fills a conspicuous void of scholarly works on Africa's Christian history. Includes 26 maps.

Early Christianity in North Africa

Early Christianity in North Africa
Author: Francois Decret
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2011-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0227903080

Martyrs, exegetes, catechumens, and councils enlarge this study of North African Christianity, a region often reduced to its dominant patristic personalities. Smither provides English readers a quality translation of an important book that captures the unique spirit of an invaluable chapter of church history. Along with the churches located in large Greek cities of the East, the church of Carthage was particularly significant in the early centuries of Christian history. Initially, the Carthaginian churchbecame known for its martyrs. Later, the North African church became further established and unified through the regular councils of its bishops. Finally, the church gained a reputation for its outstanding leaders - Tertullian of Carthage (c. 140-220), Cyprian of Carthage (195-258), and Augustine of Hippo (354-430) - African leaders who continued to be celebrated and remembered today.

The Rebirth of African Orthodoxy

The Rebirth of African Orthodoxy
Author: Thomas C. Oden
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501819100

African orthodoxy today reveals the same powerful faith that was confessed by Athanasius and Augustine seventeen centuries ago. Classic African Christian teaching in the patristic period (100–750 AD) preceded modern colonialism by over a thousand years. Many young African women and men are now reexamining these lost roots. They are hungry for accurate information about their Christian ancestors. Thomas C. Oden asks readers to recapture the resonance of a consensual orthodoxy, the harmony of voices celebrating the apostolic testimony to God’s saving work in Jesus Christ, witnessed to in scripture and understood best by African interpreters of the faith. In ten seminars, Oden invites discerning readers to reclaim and reaffirm Christian faith as it emerges from thoughtful conversations between contemporary and ancient African interpreters of orthodox faith. “This new book by Tom Oden is remarkable and historic. His words challenge the worldwide church to return to the true fountain of living water, Jesus Christ. He specifically encourages us Africans to continue to seek the treasures left to us by our early church fathers and mothers in order to reshape the Christian mind now as they did in the first millennium.” –The Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis, Archbishop of the Episcopal/Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa “A thought-provoking book with factual evidences emphasizing the continuity of global orthodoxy that emanated in Africa and has been nurtured by Africans from the time of Mark the evangelist to the present. People yearning to discover the intellectual and classical African Christian roots will find the book very helpful.” –Thomas A. Oduro, President, Good News Theological College & Seminary, Accra, Ghana “While Tom Oden writes about Africans for Africans, The Rebirth of African Orthodoxy: Return to Foundations is also addressed to all Christians everywhere who ask, ‘What is God doing in the world today?’ The author proposes that the clue to what God is doing in the present is to be found in what God has done in the past, for ‘the Holy Spirit has a history.’ Tom directs us to look to Africa, where the ancient African Christian orthodoxy is being reborn in the African church today, making it a witness to the whole church everywhere.” –Timothy W. Whitaker, retired bishop, Florida Conference of The United Methodist Church

Anthology of African Christianity

Anthology of African Christianity
Author: Isabel Apawo Phiri
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1240
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN: 9781506474922

By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christianity has taken shape and established roots in all areas of African reality. It has come to stay. Therefore, we welcome Christianity afresh in Africa, where it has arrived to continue the ancient and vibrant Christianity in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. It is appropriate that the Anthology of African Christianity presents, in valuable detail, this new reality that describes its African landscape in totality.

Early Libyan Christianity

Early Libyan Christianity
Author: Thomas C. Oden
Publisher: IVP Academic
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2011-09-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830839438

Buried for more than a millennium beneath sand and the erosions of time are the remnants of a vital, formative Christian presence in Libya. From about A.D. 68 till the Muslim conquest of A.D. 643, Libya housed a vibrant, creative Christian community that contributed to the shape of the faith even as we know it today. By the mid-190s A.D., Leptis Magna could claim favorite sons as the Roman pontiff, Victor the African, and as the Roman emperor, Septimius Severus. A rich and energetic community produced a wide variety of key players from early martyrs to great thinkers to archheretics. Tertullian, the great theologian, and Sabellius, the heretic, are relatively well known. Less well known are the martyrs Wasilla and Theodore and the great poet-philosopher-bishop Synesius of Cyrene. Uncovering this North African tradition and offering it to a wide reading audience is the task that Tom Oden sets for himself in this fascinating tour de force. The book, originating as lectures delivered at the Islamic Da'wa University in Tripoli in 2008 and later expanded as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures in 2009 at Dallas Theological Seminary, has been expanded and refined to provide additional insights and references, surveying the texts, architecture and landmarks of this important period of Christian history. It also serves as a valuable companion to Oden's earlier offerings in How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind and The African Memory of Mark.