Jesus in African Culture

Pioneers of African Christianity propose that the traditional religions of Africa, rather than being adversative to Christianity in Africa, provide sufficient idioms for the Christian faith to thrive in Africa. Kwame Bediako builds on this concept to show that the primal religions of Africa constitute the innate cultural identity of Africans and that the gospel becomes impotent in the African milieu unless it accommodates the pre-Christian experiences of Africans in its presentation. The recent surge in interest in Christianity in modern Africa gives Bediako the needed impetus to demonstrate that Christianity is a translatable, nonWestern faith capable of meeting the religio-cultural needs of African Christians. Amidst concerns that the African brand of Christianity may have compromised Scriptural integrity, Bediako believes that “marketplace” Christianity should inform academic theology and that African Christianity may, indeed, be the needed life-line for global Christianity to survive secularity and post-modernity.