WCIUjournal
Copy of WORLDVIEW

Worldview

How does a society’s worldview and/or religious beliefs affect development?

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Posts tagged Africa
Tensions between the Gospel and Culture in Central African Countries

by Kalemba Mwambazambi and Basua Ngandu Kahakatshi

This study addresses the tension between the church and Central African culture. It tackles the question of the necessary new modes of the presence of the church through the resolution of the tension between the gospel and the culture in order to empower the people in Central Africa in different areas. This article demonstrates that the first missionaries in Central Africa countries did not understand the culture of African people and simply rejected what they could not understand because it was considered as heathen. As a result, the first missionaries’ contempt for African worldview and their fundamental values led to proselytism. There is a need to rethink the missional tools used by the church in order to present the Word of God in the language and culture of the people of Central Africa. This can lead to a change of mentality that in turn can lead to holistic development. If these tensions can be resolved, the leadership of the church can work to end corruption and injustice by promoting biblical values through its members who are active agents in all spheres of the African community social structure.  

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EditorAfrica, corruption, poverty, injusticeComment
Understanding African Problems from the Roots to the Fruits

by Chris Ampadu

Africa, the pleasant continent of promise, has been perceived as a dark and cursed continent. But is Africa cursed? Most of the world is acquainted with only the bad news of Africa: wars, sicknesses, pain, poverty, hunger, famine, and deprivation. On the continent, many have given up hope. With the massive assistance and support that Africa has received, coupled with the enormous natural resources at her disposal, why has the continent not emerged from her predicaments? Though external factors such as colonialism, the slave trade, and global trade balances have taken their toll on Africa, the biggest obstacle to the continent’s development and progress is internal.

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EditorAfrica, worldview, development, poverty, transformation, disease, social reform, religion Comment
Cultural Metaphors and Development

by Jim Harries

The contemporary approach to development defines Africa’s needs almost entirely in terms of money and Westernization. What Africa needs, donors assume, is to be more like the West. The means used to attempt to reach this goal are outside money and Western-style education in Western languages (usually English).

This article questions these presuppositions. But if outside donor money is not the answer for development in Africa, where should we look for the answer? This article presents research showing that human thinking is rooted in metaphors that are themselves rooted (or embodied) in actual experiences. This, then, opens doors of understanding ways in which Christian / biblical teaching is central to the initiation and propagation of sustainable, transformative, and indigenously rooted socio-economic development.

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Editordevelopment, culture, language, Africa, transformation, Bible, worldview Comments
A Specialized God

by Dan Poenaru

The dichotomy between physical and spiritual health reflects a gradual degradation of the church from a living, thriving body of believers connected through all spheres of life on earth into a social club gathering offering a very specific, and limited, range of “spiritual services” such as marriages, burials, childhood and adult Christian education, and the like. In the African culture and tradition, this “divine specialization” (Loewen 2000, 95-101) is particularly concerning.

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EditorAfrica, dualism, disease, holism, church, spirituality, worldviewComment