Afro-Christian Religion at the Grassroots in Southern Africa (African Studies) [Hardcover]

G. C. Oosthuizen (Editor), Irving Hexham (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1991 | ISBN-10: 0889462267 | ISBN-13: 978-0889462267

This study seeks to understand one result of the syncretism of Southern African Christianity. It makes a contribution to complex and misunderstood practices of holistic healing among African traditional healers and members of the African and independent churches. It also explores evidence of ancestor veneration, possession by alien spirits, dance-induced trancing, and witch beliefs. The book contains a glossary of African terms (primarily Zulu), a 15-page bibliography, and indexes of names, subjects and biblical references, Both black and white researchers have participated in preparing the book, which should be of interest to missiologists, medical professionals, missionaries, anthropologists and sociologists.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: Edwin Mellen Pr (April 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0889462267
• ISBN-13: 978-0889462267
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,853,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Irving Hexham is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and adjunct professor of World Christianity at Liverpool Hope University. He has published twenty-seven academic books, including The Concise Dictionary of Religion, Understanding Cults and New Religions, and Religion and Economic Thought, plus eighty major academic articles and chapters in books, numerous popular articles, and book reviews. Recently he completed a report for the United Nations' refugee agency on religious conflict in Africa and another for the Canadian Government's Department of Canadian Heritage on Religious Publications in Canada. He is listed in Who's Who in Canada and various scholarly directories. In 2008, he was honored at the historic Humboldt University in Berlin with a Festschrift, Border Crossings: Explorations of an Interdisciplinary Historian (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag).