2014
Africa Thesis Award 2014 – Deadline 11 July
Dear Sir / Madam,
Are you a student, interested in Sub-Saharan Africa and is your Masters thesis on a related topic? If so, the African Studies Centre in Leiden is offering you the chance to win € 1.000 through its Africa Thesis Award plus publication of the winning thesis in the ASC’s African Studies Collection. This annual award aims to encourage student research and writing on Sub-Saharan Africa and to promote the study of African cultures and societies. Any final-year student who has completed his/her Masters thesis with distinction (80% or higher or a Dutch rating of at least an 8) at a university in Africa or the Netherlands may apply. Please feel free to share this message with anyone who might be interested! Read the flyer.
The deadline is 11 July 2014!
Kind regards,
Marjolein de Leeuw
Student Assistant
African Studies Centre
www.ascleiden.nl
Tel: +31 (0) 715273372
2014
Trans-Islam Research Project: Call for field research proposals
The Trans-Islam Research Project is a two-year research project that analyses the religious flows and the changes occurring in the Niger–Nigeria religious space. In the framework of this project, the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA-Nigeria) is offering 4 (four) grants to 4 junior researchers—MA or PhD students—aimed at supporting field research.
The proposals must fit within the research guidelines of the project and must present an innovative perspective. The selected junior researchers will have seven months to conduct fieldwork and collect new data. They will be invited to present the results of their research at a pooling seminar in Niamey (Republic of Niger) in February 2015. Following this, they will have four months to write a scientific article, which will be published on IFRA website.
All applications must be sent by e-mail before 15 June 2014 to:
Dr. Elodie Apard-Malah (IFRA): e.apard@ifra-nigeria.org
The fieldwork subsidized by the grant is expected to take place from July 2014 to February 2015. The scientific article will be expected by the end of June 2015
2014
A new book by J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu
J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu 2013, Contemporary Pentecostal Christianity: Interpretations from an African Context. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 232 pp, ISBN-13: 978-1620328989 (pbk), $23,40 (= Regnum Studies in Global Christianity)
Pentecostalism is the fastest growing stream of Christianity in the world. The real evidence for the significance of Pentecostalism lies in the actual churches they have built and the numbers they attract. In Africa, Pentecostalism has virtually become the representative face of Christianity with even historic mission denominations ‘pentecostalising’ their otherwise formal liturgical structures to survive. This work interprets key theological and missiological themes in African Pentecostalism by using material from the live experiences of the movement itself. An important source of primary material for instance is the popular books written by the leadership of contemporary Pentecostal churches and their media programs. An example of this is that on account of its motivational hermeneutics the Eagle, rather than the Dove, has become the preferred symbol of the Holy Spirit in this nascent dynamic movement. The interpretation of themes from contemporary African Pentecostalism in this book reveals much about how as a contemporary movement, it is reshaping African Christian spirituality in the 21st century.
2014
The Spiritual Highway: Religious World Making in Megacity Lagos, Exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, 9 April to 21 June 2014
The Spiritual Highway: Religious World Making in Megacity Lagos, an exhibition at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, 9 April to 21 June 2014, is a photography project by Akintunde Akinleye and Marloes Janson.
The 120-kilometre long Lagos-Ibadan Expressway that connects Nigeria’s economic hub Lagos with the city of Ibadan – the third largest metropolitan area in the country – is considered the most important and busiest road in Nigeria. It was opened to traffic in 1979 at the peak of the oil boom, a period often described as ‘paradise on wheels’. As from the 1990s deterioration set in. Resulting from the fact that it has become one of the most accident-prone highways in Nigeria, a popular label for the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is ‘Highway of Death’. While it has failed as the artery linking the north and the south of Nigeria, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway has succeeded as a stage for the performance of public religiosity to the extent that it can be described as a ‘Spiritual Highway’. It owes this name to the fact that since the late 1980s numerous Christian and Muslim movements have cropped up along the highway.
This exhibition is a result of the work that Akintunde and Marloes produced as part of a project to explore and record these centres of religion that have become known as ‘prayer cities’ in the summer of 2013 along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. They concentrated on two of these. The Christian Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries or MFM Prayer City and the Muslim Nasrul-Lahi-Fatih Society of Nigeria, which translates as ‘There is no help except from Allah’ and is abbreviated to NASFAT. These prayer cities are huge in scale with congregations of tens of thousands, competing with each other for new converts by offering a range of facilities and services ranging from faith healing, to education and health care. Challenging conventional assumptions of Christianity and Islam as bounded and distinct traditions, this project focuses instead on the convergence between the two religious traditions, thereby crossing boundaries and blurring sharp distinctions. The convergence of Pentecostal Christianity and revivalist Islam in the ways religion articulates with urbanity makes the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway a true crossroads.
2014
Esther Acolatse’s new book
Esther E. Acolatse 2014, For Freedom or Bondage?: A Critique of African Pastoral Practices.
Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eeerdmans, 233 pp., ISBN ISBN: 978-0-8028-6989-0 (pbk), $39
In Ghana today, many people who suffer from a variety of human ills wander from one pastor to another in search of a spiritual cure. Because of the way cultural beliefs about the spiritual world have interwoven with their Christian faith, many Ghanaian Christians live in bondage to their fears of evil spiritual powers, seeing Jesus as a superior power to use against these malevolent spiritual forces. In For Freedom or Bondage? Esther Acolatse argues that Christian pastoral practices in many African churches include too much influence from African traditional religions. She examines Ghana Independent Charismatic churches as a case study, offering theological and psychological analysis of current pastoral care practices through the lenses of Barth and Jung. Facilitating a three-strand conversation between African traditional religion, Barthian theology, and Jungian analytical psychology, Acolatse interrogates problematic cultural narratives and offers a more nuanced approach to pastoral care.
REVIEW by Emmanuel Y. Lartey, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
“In this thoughtful, carefully researched, and much-needed book Esther Acolatse enters into critical engagement with African Christian pastoral practices, especially ‘deliverance’ ministries. . . . Her robust theoretical and practical approach, illustrated with actual contextual cases, avoids the dangers of over-spiritualization, under-psychologizing, and cultural irrelevance, which have marred effective care of souls in contemporary African cultures. For Freedom or Bondage? scratches exactly where African Christians currently itch. It should be required reading for all who have pastoral and educational responsibilities for persons influenced by African cultures.”
