Africans and Christianity: networked interactions and the shaping of the
interpretive schemes of the cultural environment
The most common way to study World History employs the Civilizations Model.
The purpose of that type of course is to teach students about the fundamental
essence of each of the world's "great" civilizations, imparting knowledge that
will allow students to interpret, through a process of typification, events in
the history of any one of them. Presumably people were incorporated into
civilizations by adopting as their own point of orientation in their lives
this fundamental essence. Civilizational change is generally understood as
something internal to a particular civilization, although the change may be
triggered by some contact with the "outside." But as long as the civilization
continues its great tradition, such changes do not modify the fundamental
essence.
Although the previous paragraph is perhaps too brief to be fair to the
Civilizations Model, it does expose some of its most serious problems. To
make these problems clearer and to explore alternative means of understanding
transformations in the cultural environment, we will consider African
conversion to Christianity and the use of that religion by peoples of African
descent as a basis for their individual and collective spiritual lives.
Attention will be given to the Catholic Reformation and the missionary
impulse.
Reading: Thornton, ch. 9.
- In what ways did the Catholic Reformation affect the social and cultural
environments of the Iberian kingdoms and of the territories of Castilian and
Portuguese America?
- Why did a new Afro-Atlantic form of Christianity develop in the Americas?
- What were the basic concepts and sources of knowledge of African and
European religion that contributed to the formulation of the new Afro-Atlantic
form of Christianity?
- Why was a belief in divine revelation central to the development of an
Afro-Atlantic Christianity?
- How does Thornton define "revelation"?
- What were the major African means to learn about the "other world"?
- In what ways did African views of religious orthodoxy facilitate
conversion to Christianity?
- Why were European Christians so much more insistent on orthodoxy than were
Africans?
- In what ways was Christian "local religion" (the term is from William
Christian; Thornton 1992: 249, n. 51) similar to African religion?
- Why did Africans everywhere in the Atlantic world who converted to
Christianity fail to adopt certain European forms of that religion?
- Why can the process of African conversion to Christianity be described as
"a process of exchanging and evaluating revelations" (255)?
- What light does the conversion to Christianity of the residents of the
kingdom of Kongo in the period after 1491 shed on the relationship of African
religion to Christianity?
- Why did Inquisition tribunals sometimes become interested in the beliefs
and practices of African-American Christians?
- What role did Christianity have in the social life of African slaves
brought to the Americas from different regions?
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J. B. Owens
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Revised: 28 July 1999
URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/spemp/reading.24.html