How does a society’s worldview and/or religious beliefs affect development?
Photo credit: marco magrini - flickr
by Ounho, Cho, PhD
This article describes and compares view of spiritual warfare from Indo-European/Hindu, Tribal, Cosmic Dualism, and Biblical points of view. Each acknowledge a cosmic spiritual battle between good and evil.
Critical Contextualization avoids both uncritical rejection and uncritical acceptance. It insists that old beliefs and customs first be examined to resolve their meanings and functions in the society and then their acceptability in the light of biblical norms.
Read Moreby Lawrence Alabi
A WCIU student and pastor writes on the careful balance required to avoid saddling cultural values to the Gospel, yet communicating in a culturally relevant manner.
Read Moreby 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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