African Christian Studies Series (14 vols.)

by Sara J. Fretheim; Elias K. Bongmba; Laurenti Magesa; Fabulous Moyo

and

15 more

Publishers:

Pickwick Publications; Wipf and Stock

, 2011–2018

Overview

This series will make available significant works in the field of African Christian studies. African Christian studies is defined here as any scholarship which relates to themes and issues on the history, nature, identity, character and relevance of African Christianity and the place of African Christian mission within the wider African history, and world Christianity. It also refers to topics which address the continuing search for abundant life for Africans through multiple appeals to African religions and African Christianity in a challenging social context. The series will cater to scholarly and educational texts in the areas of religious studies, theology, mission studies, biblical studies, philosophy, social justice, and other diverse issues current in African Christianity. We define these studies broadly and specifically as primarily focused on new voices, fresh perspectives, new methodologies, new approaches, historical and cultural analyses which are emerging because of the significant place of African Christianity and African religio-cultural traditions in world Christianity.

The books in this series are expected to make significant contributions in historicizing trends in African Christian studies, while shifting the contemporary discourse in these areas from narrow theological concerns to a broader interdisciplinary and multi-methodical engagement with African religio-cultural history and traditions. The series intends to continually fill a gap in African scholarship, especially in the areas of social analysis in African Christian studies, African philosophies, new biblical and narrative hermeneutical approaches to African theologies, the challenges facing African women in today’s Africa and within African Christianity. Themes in African Traditional Religions, African ecology, African ecclesiology, intercultural, interethnic, and interreligious dialogue, creative inculturation, African theology of development, reconciliation, and leadership in the church, globalization, and poverty reduction will also be covered in this series. It will also accommodate issues emanating from ethnic and religious identities, as well as those around ethnic minorities and other marginal voices in Africa that are currently mobilizing for inclusion and representation.

Key Features

• Explores areas of social analysis in African Christian studies
• Focuses on new biblical and narrative hermeneutical approaches to African theologies
• Examines significant contributions in historicizing trends in African Christian studies

Akan Christology: An Analysis of the Christologies of John Samuel Pobee and Kwame Bediako in Conversation with the Theology of Karl Barth

• Author: Charles Sarpong Aye-Addo
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2013
• Pages: 238

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As Christianity expands and grows in Africa, there is deep new interest in African theology in general, and the way in which some African theologians are interpreting the significance of Christ within African culture, in particular. This volume explores the Christology of two of the foremost African thinkers against the background of the West African Akan culture. The result is a rare and fascinating look at some of the key cultural symbols of African culture, the struggle to reinterpret the "white, blond, blue-eyed Christ" presented by pioneering missionaries to Africa, and the pitfalls and promises that attend the exercise. The selected theologians, John Samuel Pobee and Kwame Bediako, are put into a critical conversation with Karl Barth in order to initiate a dialogue between Western theology and African theology that brings to the fore some of the pertinent issues about the particularity and universality of Christ. The volume, while seeking to make Christ relevant for Africa, moves away from romanticizing African culture and insists on being faithful to the biblical witness to Christ. The result is an attempt to present an engaging piece of work that makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on Christology and indigenous theology.

The phenomenal growth of Christianity as a non-Western religion has made theological studies on the interface between faith and culture even more imperative. In this study Charles Aye-Addo has served the African church and theological academy well by building excellently on the theological christological traditions of stalwarts like Kwame Bediako. This book is a welcome and timely contribution to the important literature on Christology from African perspectives.

—J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Professor of African Christianity, Trinity Theological Seminary

Charles Sarpong Aye-Addo (PhD, Drew University) is the Founder and Executive Chancellor of Yeshua Institute of Technology, Ghana. He is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Montclair State University, and the Senior Pastor of International Central Gospel Church, Worcester, Massachusetts. He and his wife, Gertrude, have three children—Akusika, Nyansafo, and Nhyira—all of whom are pursuing degrees in their respective fields of study.

Christian Spirituality in Africa: Biblical, Historical, and Cultural Perspectives from Kenya

• Author: Sung Kyu Park
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2013
• Pages: 230

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Christian Spirituality in Africa holistically approaches the convergence of East/West, and Christian/Traditional African religions. Its theological, historical, and anthropological perspectives contribute to a balanced understanding of Christian spirituality/transformation in an African context.

In this important study, you will find not only a useful and balanced discussion of theology of spirituality in biblical and historical perspectives—which alone would make the book worth reading—but also a careful and insightful investigation into the peculiar and salient features of spirituality among some African Christian communities. This is must-reading for everyone who seeks to minister in the East African context and beyond.

—Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Fuller Theological Seminary

Sung Kyu Park (BA, University of California Los Angeles; MDiv, Talbot School of Theology; ThM, Fuller Seminary; PhD, University of Pretoria). He has been a missionary in Kenya for more than 10 years. He is director/founder of Africa Gospel Outreach ministries (AGO). He also teaches theology at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST).

From Historical to Critical Post-Colonial Theology: The Contribution of John S. Mbiti and Jesse N. K. Mugambi

• Author: Robert S. Heaney
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2015
• Pages: 278

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What is post-colonial theology? How does it relate to theology that emerged in historically colonial situations? These are two questions that get to the heart of Robert S. Heaney’s work as he considers the extent to which theologians predating the emergence of post-colonial theology might be considered as precursory to this theological movement. Heaney argues that the work of innovative theologians John S. Mbiti and Jesse N. K. Mugambi, important in their own right, must now also be considered in relation to the continued emergence of post-colonial theology. When this is done, fresh perspectives on both the nature of post-colonial theology and contextual theology emerge. Through a sympathetic and critical reading of Mbiti and Mugambi, Heaney offers a series of constructive moves that counter the ongoing temptation toward acontextualism that continues to haunt theology both in the North and in the South.

This work breaks new ground in the field of African theology and will be a significant contribution to contemporary research.

—Christopher Rowland, Dean Ireland’s Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture, Queen’s College, Oxford

Robert S. Heaney is Assistant Professor of Christian Mission and Director of the Center for Anglican Communion Studies at Virginia Theological Seminary.

Inside the Whirlwind: The Book of Job through African Eyes

• Author: Jason A. Carter
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 324

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How would ordinary African Christians interpret the figure and book of Job—the quintessential biblical book on suffering—from contexts of extreme poverty, tropical disease, and rampant suffering? How do African Christians culturally understand issues of theodicy and the nature of evil? What role does the devil play in African Pentecostalism? How does the biblical lament empower faith and foster hope for people living with HIV/AIDS? In what way does a theology of (eschatological) hope inform the spirituality and prayers of ordinary African believers in the midst of suffering? Inside the Whirlwind offers insight on these fascinating questions. Based upon the perspectives of Fang Christians in Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea (Central Africa), the thematic and theological reflections on evil, suffering, and hope emerging from sermons and Bible studies on the book of Job offer a remarkable window to view the main theological issues shaping grassroots African Christianity in the twenty-first century.

Inside the Whirlwind is a wonderful exploration of what a genuine encounter with African Christianity really looks like. This is contextual theology at its best.

—Timothy Tennent, President, Professor of World Christianity, Asbury Theological Seminary

Jason A. Carter is a missionary-professor at Instituto Biblico "Casa de la Palabra" (IBCP) of Equatorial Guinea.

Kwame Bediako and African Christian Scholarship: Emerging Religious Discourse in Twentieth-Century Ghana

• Author: Sara J. Fretheim
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 252

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In a departure from current theologically-focused scholarship on Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako, this book places him within the wider historical continuum of twentieth-century Ghana and reads him as a leading Christian scholar within the African study of African religions. The book traces a variety of influences and figures within this emerging African discourse in Ghana, including aspects of missions and colonial history and the voices of poets, politicians, prophets, and priests.

Locating Bediako within this complex twentieth-century matrix, this intellectual history draws upon his published and key unpublished works, including his first masters and doctoral dissertations on Négritude literature, an abiding influence on his later Christian thought and an essential foundation for interpreting this scholar. This book also “reads” the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture as “text” by Bediako, revealing essential components of his intellectual and spiritual itinerary revealed in the Institute’s community and curriculum.

This approach challenges narrowly-focused theological scholarship on Bediako, while highlighting critical methodological divisions between African, Western, confessional, and non-confessional approaches to the study of religion in Africa. In doing so, it highlights the rich complexity of this emerging African discourse and identifies Bediako as a pioneering African Christian intellectual within this wider field.

As this book abundantly illustrates, the era of decolonization that followed World War II saw European empires dismantled, and a host of new nations, including Ghana, emerging. This opened a chapter of Christian history that has still to be explored and documented. Dr. Fretheim makes a valuable contribution to that end, focusing on a theme crucial to the process of decolonization: the religious scene in Africa, past and present, and how Africans—Christian and otherwise—approached it. It is an absorbing study, with much upon which to reflect. The life and work of one such seminal figure, Kwame Bediako, appears in Dr. Fretheim’s account as a lens through which many of the cultural, intellectual, religious, and theological currents pass on to her screen. There is much worth pondering in this story, and we are in debt to Dr. Fretheim for making it available.

—Andrew F. Walls,University of Edinburgh, Liverpool Hope University and Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture

Sara J. Fretheim is a post-doctoral researcher based in Vancouver, Canada. She is a contributing author to the Routledge Companion to Christianity in Africa (2016), and is the first Canadian scholar to complete a Master of Theology (African Christianity) from the Akrofi-Christaller Institute, Ghana.

Lonergan, Social Transformation, and Sustainable Human Development

• Author: Joseph Ogbonnaya
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2013
• Pages: 202

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Secular contemporary development discourse deals with the problems of societal development and transformation by prioritizing the human good in terms of vital and social values with the aim of providing the basic necessities of life through social institutions that work. While such an approach is profitable by promoting economic growth, it does not take note of other dynamics of social progress and development. Also, it fails to notice the consequences of development strategies on human flourishing, well-being, and happiness.

Ogbonnayu argues for an integral approach to development by engaging in a fruitful dialogue between Bernard Lonergan’s philosophical anthropology with contemporary development discourse, as represented in select theories of development, and in select principles of Catholic social teaching. It makes a case for social progress and transformation as emanating from human understanding. Also, it highlights the parts of Lonergan’s theory that contribute to an understanding, specifically of his treatment of bias, and of the shorter and longer cycles of societal decline. In view of the reality of moral impotence and limitations, it considers the reversal of societal decline as possible through the supernatural solution of God’s grace.

This book brings contemporary development discourse and Catholic social teachings into conversation with Lonergan’s philosophical anthropology. . . . I highly commend this book, which presents a focused and well-researched application of Lonergan’s work to a contemporary context of relevance.

—Thomas E. Reynolds, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto

Joseph Ogbonnaya is Assistant Professor of Theology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of Deepening the Christian Faith (2011) and coeditor of The Church as Salt and Light (2011).

Shona Women in Zimbabwe—A Purchased People? Marriage, Bridewealth, Domestic Violence, and the Christian Traditions on Women

• Author: John Chitakure
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 164

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The position and treatment of women in every religion, culture, and society have been subjects of concern for a long time. In every society, women fight for their emancipation from exploitive and oppressive patriarchal structures. The most contentious issues include domestic violence, gender discrimination and inequality in the areas of employment, leadership, and marriage. Domestic violence tops the list and is the worst enemy of any progressive and democratic society. It dehumanizes, disfigures, and demeans its victims and survivors. Shona Women in Zimbabwe—a Purchased People explores the causes of domestic violence—the cultural practice of bridewealth, in particular—and assesses the extent to which it contributes to the proliferation of domestic violence among the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It then explores the Christian traditions, particularly, the Roman Catholic Church, in search of resources that can be used to emancipate Shona women from patriarchal subjugation. Finally, the book offers a pastoral response that is informed by the experiences of the Shona women, their cultural resources, and the Roman Catholic religious tradition.

The range of issues raised and the depth with which they are discussed are important far beyond Zimbabwe, because the phenomenon of violence against women is one of the truly global phenomena of our time. . . . But in the final analysis what gives this text its heft and resonance is the author’s personal experience. He begins with the words ’My father was a heavyweight boxing champion, who always made sure his opponent was knocked down in the first round.’ As the first chapter progresses we realize that the ’opponent’ who always loses is John Chitakure’s mother. . . . Thank you VaChitakure for this incredibly important book, which you have woven from the fabric of your experience and knowledge.

—Sheelagh Stewart, Founder and first CEO, the Musasa Project (the first organization against violence against women in independent Africa), Zimbabwe, 1988-91

John Chitakure is adjunct Professor of World Religions and The Religious Quest at The University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of The Pursuit of the Sacred (2016).

The Bible, the Bullet, and the Ballot: Zimbabwe: The Impact of Christian Protest in Sociopolitical Transformation, ca. 1900-ca. 2000

• Author: Fabulous Moyo
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2015
• Pages: 222

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This book provides a balanced account of the role of Christians, Christian organizations, and churches in sociopolitical transformation over the bedrock of colonial and nationalist poliatics in the past century in Zimbabwe. The work explores the broader social and political impact of prominent African Christian clergy who were sociopolitical activists such as Ndabaningi Sithole, Abel Muzorewa, and Canaan Banana. It also highlights the role of missionaries who contributed to the African struggle for independence such as Ralph Edward Dodge, Donal Lamont, and Garfield Todd. The work further explores the contributions of African nationalist parties and prominent politicians with Christian roots, such as Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, in the struggle for independence, and their contribution in the postcolonial era in light of their Christian heritage and the collective pre-independence nationalist ideals on nation-building and national unity.

This scholarly yet accessible book is both timely and undeniably thought-provoking. It irrevocably draws the reader not only to the history of Christian sociopolitical involvement in Africa but also sheds light on the seeds of the continent’s current state of affairs.

—Dr. Ben Shikwati, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya

Dr. Fabulous Moyo, a Zimbabwean, is teaching and research fellow at George Whitefield College, South Africa, and also serves as Extraordinary Senior Lecturer at North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa, in the Faculty of Theology.

The Church and Development in Africa: Aid and Development from the Perspective of Catholic Social Ethics, 2nd ed.

• Author: Stan Chu Ilo
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2014
• Pages: 348

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In this book, Stan Chu Ilo offers an integral theology of development and a critical social analysis of different development theories and practices in the world, especially in Africa. Ilo offers a comprehensive biblical, anthropological, and theological foundation of the principles and praxis of Catholic social ethics from the Second Vatican Council to Pope Francis. Drawing from the social encyclical Charity in Truth, Ilo shows how Catholic social teaching responds to some of the challenging questions and concerns of our times in relation to human rights, ecology, globalization, international cooperation, development and aid, human and cultural development, business ethics, social justice, and the challenges of poverty eradication. He creatively applies these principles to the social context of Africa, and lays a groundwork for sustainable Christian humanitarian and social justice initiatives in Africa.

Ilo focuses particularly on the importance of African traditional culture, especially the Ubuntu sense of community, at the heart of the ability of Africans to control their own development. He emphasizes the need for the church to recognize the deep roots of traditional religious cultures of Africa and to find ways that the gospel can enrich, not replace, those traditions.

—James R. Stormes, SJ, Theological Studies

Stan Chu Ilo is a research fellow at the Center for World Catholicism and Inter-Cultural Theology, and Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies and World Christianity at DePaul University, Chicago, USA. He is also the founder of a registered Canadian Charity, Canadian Samaritans for Africa which is actively involved in social justice initiatives and poverty eradication programs and projects in four African countries. He is the editor of African Christian Studies Series for Pickwick Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

The Church as Salt and Light: Path to an African Ecclesiology of Abundant Life

• Editors: Stan Chu Ilo, Joseph Ogbonnaya, and Alex Ojacor
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2011
• Pages: 192

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This book is an attempt at a critical, constructive, and creative theological praxis of social transformation in Africa. The authors apply a multi-disciplinary approach to examining how Christianity in Africa is engaging the problems of Africa’s challenging social context.

This is a prophetic work that applies the symbols of "salt" and "light" as ecclesiological images for reenvisioning the path towards procuring abundant life for God’s people in the African continent through the agency of African Christianity.

The contributors to this volume ask these fundamental questions: What is the face of Jesus in African Christianity? What is the face and identity of the Church in Africa? How can one evaluate the relevance of the Church in Africa to African Christians who enthusiastically embrace and celebrate their Christian faith? In other words, what positive imprint is Christianity leaving on the lives and societies of African Christians? Does the Christian message have the potential of positively affecting African civilization as it once did in Europe? What is the relevance and place of African Christianity as a significant voice in shaping both the future of Africa and that of world Christianity?

This book serves as a poignant reminder that the mission and identity of the church in Africa or the African Church remain open to a rich variety of theological interpretations, imaginations, and applications. The Church as Salt and Light initiates an African theology of the Church that successfully connects ecclesiology with Christology to produce a rich flourish of possibilities for the Church in Africa. No longer will the Church imagined in this book be considered a merely abstract theological construct; it is a Church of the people, by the people, and for the people. Poised between the historic Des pretres noirs s’interrogent and the Second African Synod, The Church as Salt and Light recalls and applies Vatican II’s maxim Ecclesia semper reformanda in ways that are challenging, stimulating, and refreshing. With this book, we can confidently affirm that postcolonial theology has come of age-a new world-Church is possible!

—Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, SJ

Stan Chu Ilo is Assistant Professor of Religion and Education, University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. He is the founder and Director of Canadian Samaritans for Africa, and the publisher of the online journal Theology in Africa. He is the author of The Face of Africa and Aid and Development in Africa and the Role of Churches and Christian Charities in Africa’s Social.

Joseph Ogbonnaya, PhD is a scholar at the Lonergan Research Institute, Regis College, Toronto, and chaplain of the Igbo Catholic Community of Toronto. He also works as a hospital chaplain at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, Toronto.

Alex Ojacor is a professor of Religion at St. Mary’s National Major Seminary Ggaba in Kampala where he is the Associate Dean of Studies. He is the founder and director of the Children’s Educational and Welfare Organization. He is an author, a social commentator, and a speaker.

The Making of an African Christian Ethics: Benezet Bujo and the Roman Catholic Moral Tradition

• Author: Wilson Muoha Maina
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 210

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An exploration of the development of a contextualized Roman Catholic moral theology in an African context is warranted in our day. This book is a study of the work of Benezet Bujo, an African moral theologian. An analysis of Bujo's work shows the various aspects of an African Catholic moral theology. Bujo’s work is viewed here as critically bridging African moral theology and the development of moral theology in the Catholic Church, especially in the West. An African moral theology in this work builds on the elements of the renewal of moral theology after the Second Vatican Council. The renewal elements reflected in Bujo’s work and other African Catholic theologians include, among others, the use of Scripture, the relevance of history, the debate on moral norms, the relevance of social sciences to moral discourse, the theory of natural moral law, and the relation between the theologian and the magisterium. This work, therefore, locates the theology of Bujo in the development of moral theology after the Second Vatican Council. The author establishes a relation between African traditional religions, African history, Christology, natural moral law, moral autonomy debate, the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, and political-liberation theological ethics.

Christian theology intersects with African religion(s) and the legacy of slavery to pose compelling challenges to traditional understandings of moral theology and Catholic pastoral roles. Wilson Maina examines these through Benezet Bujo, the leading African Christian theologian. Western ethics, grounded in natural law, reason, and autonomy are fruitfully contrasted to the discourse ethics of African community life, liberation theology, and the abiding presence of God as embedded in the palaver.

—Barbara R. Walters, Professor of Sociology; Author of The Feast of Corpus Christi

Wilson Muoha Maina is an associate professor of philosophy and religious studies at the University of West Florida. He is the author of Historical and Social Dimensions in African Christian Theology: A Contemporary Approach (2009).

The Post-Conciliar Church in Africa: No Turning Back the Clock

• Author: Laurenti Magesa
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 174

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The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962–65) was distinctly different from other councils in one significant aspect. In all the areas it discussed, this council did not see itself as the end of a process, but rather as a beginning. It opened, not closed, doors—whether doctrinal or disciplinary—for ongoing reflection, for possibilities of ever-improving knowledge and understanding.

Laurenti Magesa offers this book as a stimulus for African (Catholic) Christians to continue digging deeper into and benefiting from the spiritual treasures that the Council still contains. For the theologian or historian of Vatican II, some of the information may be quite familiar, but all of it is important if one is to grasp the scope, meaning, and implications of the Council for the Church and people of Africa.

The Council is long over. The Fathers have gone home, mostly to Paradise. The Jubilee came and went. The corks popped. The speeches were made. Now it’s time for evaluation. Magesa’s sober survey of the lasting effects of Vatican II on the Church in Africa gives cause for hope, frustration, profound appreciation, and renewed commitment.

—Peter Knox, the Jesuit School of Theology, Hekima University College, Nairobi

Laurenti Magesa is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Musoma in Tanzania. He teaches theology at Hekima University College Jesuit School of Theology, Tangaza University College, and the Maryknoll Institute of African Studies of St. Mary’s University (MIASMU) in Nairobi, Kenya. He is the author of many articles and books.

Toward an African Theology of Fraternal Solidarity

• Author: Ikenna Ugochukwu Okafor
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2014
• Pages: 236

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In this book, Ikenna Okafor tackles an interesting and timely topic and demonstrates competence and maturity in developing his insight into Igbo humanism—to make liberation theology from an African perspective into a theology of solidarity and fraternity. With a good narrative style, Okafor critiques the Latin American liberation theological project. And inspired by the hermeneutical implications of "UBE NAWANNE," the evangelical positioning of material poverty and pathos for the poor as defining Christian discipleship is persuasively presented. The potent nwanne idiom guides his critical evaluation of the social teachings and praxis of the Catholic Church.

In fact, it is clear that Okafor embarked on a subject matter that is of theological moment and has creative pastoral implications for the Church of Nigeria, the Churches of Africa, and the World Church.

This is one of very few systematic articulations of an African theology of fraternal solidarity. With profound personal passion, Ikenna Okafor produces a work that will remain important for its enrichment of cultural perspectives in Christian theology. It deserves a place in many libraries and study desks as a book whose relevance to the further development of the dialogue between European and non-European theologies is undoubtable.

—Kurt Appel, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria

Ikenna Ugochukwu Okafor is a presently a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Vienna, where he obtained both his master’s and doctorate degrees in Catholic theology and lectured on Intercultural Theology. The present work is a revised version of his doctoral dissertation. He also works as a pastor in the archdiocese of Vienna.

When Evil Strikes: Faith and the Politics of Human Hostility

• Author: Sunday Bobai Agang
• Series: African Christian Studies Series
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock
• Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 298

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Human hostility is not the narrative of a selected few. Since the fall of the grandparents of the human family, Adam and Eve, all humans have continued to participate in the reality of evil. Accordingly, the question is no longer whether evil will strike, but rather, when evil strikes, how should humans, particularly Christians, respond to it? This book offers a relevant and effective theology and ethics for addressing the issue of Christian response to violence in Nigeria and beyond. It situates the whole gamut of the reign of human hostility in its various manifestations: self-interest and greed for power, deception and social injustices, governmental official corruption, terrorism and so on. It encourages humans to take seriously both the fact of God creating humans good and the fall serving as the gateway of evil into the human race. It recognizes the complexity of human problems. Yet it offers possibility for just peacemaking. In spite of the horrific violence across the globe, humans are still able to do tremendous good. Thus the book recognizes the paradox of humanity: humans are capable of doing tremendous good and equally capable of doing tremendous evil.

When Evil Strikes is a thorough, comprehensive, engaging, incisive and practical book that invites all of us to understand who we are and how to work together in fighting the hostility that threatens to destroy us. This book is a huge contribution to a relevant and urgent conversation on the subject of evil and hostility. Bravo!

—Samuel Waje Kunhiyop, ECWA General Secretary and Executive Secretary, Evangel Fellowship International; Author of African Christian Theology

Sunday Bobai Agang is both a Langham and a ScholarLeaders scholar. He lives and works in Nigeria. Agang is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Theology and Public Policy at ECWA Theological Seminary Kagoro (ETSK), Nigeria. He has published several articles on various theological issues. He is author of The Impact of Ethnic, Political, and Religious Violence on Northern Nigeria, and a Theological Reflection on Its Healing(2011).