Christianity, like many of Africa’s indigenous and other religions, is a religion of sacrifice. At the heart of the Christian gospel is the message of God who sacrifices his only begotten son for the forgiveness of human sin. Therefore, at conversion, African Christians who have found salvation in the cross of Christ, seek ways by which they can understand the meaning of Christ’s sacrificial and vicarious death on a cross.
What does this mean for Christian living and the believer’s relationship with their traditional past which is often full of concepts such as nature, ancestral and demonic spirits, who must be constantly appeased through sacrifice? Our ATW colleague – Sam Bussy, a PhD student at the Protestant Theological University – has provided a bibliographic encyclopaedia article in which he explores this theme from the perspective of English sources written on the subject. Among others, the article explores anthologies, primary online resources, missionary accounts, anthropological studies as well as its assessment from an African Traditional Religion perspective. The article explores the debate from its formative beginnings in African Theology in other to identify its present ramifications on topics such as martyrdom, suffering and self-sacrificial giving. The BEAT article is freely available here: https://african.theologyworldwide.com/encyclopaedia-african-christian-thought/sacrifice
