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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches > Other Protestant & Nonconformist Churches > General
In recent decades, Christianity has acquired millions of new
adherents in Africa, the region with the world's fastest-expanding
population. What role has this development of evangelical
Christianity played in Africa's democratic history? To what extent
do its churches affect its politics? By taking a historical view
and focusing specifically on the events of the past few years,
Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa seeks to explore
these questions, offering individual case studies of six countries:
Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, and Mozambique.
Unlike most analyses of democracy which come from a secular Western
tradition, these contributors, mainly younger scholars based in
Africa, bring first-hand knowledge to their chapters and employ
both field and archival research to develop their data and
analyses. The result is a groundbreaking work that will be
indispensable to everyone concerned with the future of this
volatile region.
Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa is one of four
volumes in the series Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in the
Global South, which seeks to answer the question: What happens when
a revivalist religion based on scriptural orthodoxy participates in
the volatile politics of the Third World? At a time when the
global-political impact of another revivalist and scriptural
religion -- Islam -- fuels vexed debate among analysts the world
over, these volumes offer an unusual comparative perspective on a
critical issue: the often combustible interaction of resurgent
religion and the developing world's unstable politics.
Finding Father is a collection of stories about Mennonite fathers
by their daughters. Written by well-known and first-time writers,
these stories illuminate the often close and sometimes troubling
relationships that exist between one of humanity's most precious
bonds. From battles over relationships and sexuality, to debates
over chores and church, these stories also hold the shared
intimacies of driving side by side with dad, laughing, and headed
down the road.
When over 900 followers of the People's Temple religious movement
committed suicide in 1978, they left a legacy of suspicion and
fear. Most accounts of this mass suicide describe the members as
brainwashed dupes and overlook the Christian and socialist ideals
that originally inspired People's Temple members. ""Hearing the
Voices of Jonestown"" restores the individual voices that have been
erased, so that we can better understand what was created - and
destroyed - at Jonestown, and why. Piecing together information
from interviews with former group members, archival research, and
diaries and letters of those who died there, Mary McCormick Maaga
describes the women leaders as educated political activists who
were passionately committed to achieving social justice through
communal life. She provides evidence that shows many of these women
voiced their discontent with the actions of the People's Temple in
the months right before the mass suicide. The book puts human faces
on the events at Jonestown, confronting theoretical religious
questions as Maaga attempts to reconcile how worthy utopian ideals
come to meet such tragic and misguided ends.
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