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  • The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa ed. by Elias Kifon Bongmba
  • Mark Nygard
The Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa. Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba. New York: Routledge, 2016. 577 pp.

Africa is so big, and the church in Africa so diverse, that any collection of essays attempting to describe African Christianity faces a daunting challenge. Elias Kifon Bongmba, president of the African Association for the Study of Religion, has taken on this challenge in the creation of a book of thirty-three articles by thirty-two writers, offering "critical perspectives on African Christianity on selected topics that address historical developments, thought, teachings, practices, and debates that have shaped the Christian tradition in Africa" (1). Bongma asserts that the roll of contributors is global, chosen for their research (1); indeed, they are identified with institutions of higher learning in eleven countries on four continents. Six of those countries are African, and twenty contributors current serve in Africa. The articles reflect deep, often personal, familiarity with the aspects of Africa they describe, and the language they use reflects the accent of many nations. The reader soon gains a poignant sense that [End Page 235] one is encountering an authentic cross-section of African Christian reflection.

The book begins with an editor's introduction that exhaustively summarizes the articles that follow (best saved for a recap after reading each chapter or for later reference). The book's approach is not chronological, but thematic, with essays grouped into five parts: 1) selected historical perspectives, 2) modern developments and interreligious encounters, 3) African initiatives in Christianity, 4) Christianity, politics, and development, and 5) ecclesial life and lived experience. This reviewer found the definition of these parts broad in content and fuzzy around the edges. For example, a discussion of the use of crosses in Ethiopia is included in the part on historical perspectives, and an article on human rights is located in the in the part on ecclesial life, not politics and development. I suspect that some articles were difficult to categorize, again reflecting the immensity of the task as well as the diversity of authorship.

Even a cursory survey reveals the breadth and richness of the content. Six articles are straightforwardly historical—examining the Christian roots of a particular region, sometimes in a particular era. At least three articles revolve around some aspect of apartheid. Two and part of a third focus on Pentecostalism in particular regions. Chapter 12, "African Christianity in the post-Vatican II era," and chapter 22, "Christendom in crisis: The Catholic Church and post-colonial politics in Central Africa," give special attention to Roman Catholic questions. Two chapters deal with issues surrounding human sexuality. Other chapters consider such diverse topics as ecumenism, women, development, politics, environment, church music, medical missions, human rights as they concern the African church, and others—and all by well-known scholars in their fields.

Pervading many chapters is a critical awareness of the injustice of the colonial era and its persistent effects on the church in Africa. Chapter 9, for instance—"Christianity and translation in the colonial context" by Muse W. Dube—makes a sharp, even bitter, critique of the missionary enterprise of translation. "I, too, am a translated African woman," she laments, as she tells of how she was mistaken for British because of the accent she had learned in school (156). The mistake denied her identity as a Motswana villager, just as [End Page 236] globalization comes "at a great price of denying many their human dignity, cultural integrity, and economic sufficiency" (159). "Bible translations in most Sub-Saharan countries entail the colonization and patriarchalization of sacred concepts and spaces," she charges (167). Their faithfulness is "not to the receptor culture and community, but to the source text: the Bible and translation houses" (168)—fierce words from one wounded by the result.

This valuable book is vulnerable to several critiques. First, most of its contributors come from the English or Dutch-speaking world: seven from Kenya, five from South Africa, four from the United States, three from Zimbabwe, and so forth. Without diminishing their achievement it should be recognized that large swaths of francophone and Portuguese-speaking Africa appear...

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