A Missing Link: African Christian Resonances in the Rise of Indian Muslim and Hindu Missions

This essay explores how West Africa became a landscape of religious exchange, creativity and synthesis connecting Africa and South Asia. It follows the lead of Afe Adogame and Jim Spickard, who argue that ‘Africa is not merely a passive recipient of global pressures. It is also a site of religious c...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Shankar, Shobana (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Edinburgh Univ. Press 2022
Dans: Studies in world christianity
Année: 2022, Volume: 28, Numéro: 2, Pages: 169-187
RelBib Classification:BJ Islam
BK Hindouisme
BS Religions traditionnelles africaines
CC Christianisme et religions non-chrétiennes; relations interreligieuses
KBN Afrique subsaharienne
RJ Mission
Sujets non-standardisés:B Ahmadisme
B Islam
B Africa—India relations
B Hinduism
B Missions
B Christianity
B Indigenous African religions
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Résumé:This essay explores how West Africa became a landscape of religious exchange, creativity and synthesis connecting Africa and South Asia. It follows the lead of Afe Adogame and Jim Spickard, who argue that ‘Africa is not merely a passive recipient of global pressures. It is also a site of religious creativity that has had considerable effect on the outside world. The growth and global influence of the three religious heritages of sub-Saharan Africa – indigenous religions, Christianity and Islam – needs to be understood against the backdrop of mutual influence and exchange at various historical epochs’ (Adogame and Spickhard 2010: 2—3)., To explore such transformations, I draw on the cases of the Ahmadiyya Muslim missionary movement in Ghana and Nigeria and Hinduism in Ghana. The Ahmadiyya began as a mission to correct Christianity's influence on West Africans, but was transformed by African influence on South Asians into a pluralistic knowledge-seeking movement. In a similar vein, Africans reshaped Hinduism away from cultural isolationism and worldly attachments of the Indian-diaspora Africa towards a spiritual ethic of racial integration and devotionalism that Africans and Indians now share. I conclude by reflecting on how African modes of religious interrelationality – influenced by the historical trajectories of Christianity on the African continent – have been crucial in the polycentrism that world Christianity scholars have revealed.
ISSN:1750-0230
Contient:Enthalten in: Studies in world christianity
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3366/swc.2022.0388