ATW News

As ATW moves closer to celebrating its first anniversary, we are proud of the emerging status of our website as the primary avenue promoting research in African Theology. For this reason, we would like to spotlight for the attention of our users, the Internet Portal section of ATW’s website.

The Gospel of Matthew not only present the salvation story of Jesus using primarily the Jewish cultural background in which the Christ child was born, this gospel presents the reaction of people in cultures which, in many ways, are similar to the cultural experiences of Christians across Africa.

The Protestant Theological University (PThU) with campuses in the cities of Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands, a core partner of African Theology Worldwide, is offering two Junior Research Fellowship positions for the year 2022. One of the positions is tenable in the spring (January – August 2022) and the second position will be filled in the autumn. The maximum duration for the research stays of each fellow appointed to the Junior Research Fellowship is for a period of 1 month. During this time, the research fellow will participate fully in activities organized by the department to which they are accepted at the university.

The Africa Society of Evangelical Theology, ATW's paertner in Africa, which brings together a diversified group of members who represent Evangelicals scholars and church practitioners in Africa and beyond, recently issued this call for papers for its 2022 Annual Conference on the theme: Salvation in African Christianity.

Every now and again, ATW receives notifications about the availability of fully funded doctoral scholarship positions at prestigious universities. Recently, we received two such positions that ATW would like to share with our users and the public.

On the 12th of August, the worldwide Church lost a leader and scholar who, possibly more than anyone else, transformed the understanding of the changes in world Christianity in the twentieth century. Born in Scotland, his Christian and theological development is inseparably interwoven with the African continent. After graduate studies in the history of the Early Church, Walls started his teaching career in 1957 at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone when the colonial era was coming to an end. From 1962 till 1965, he helped start the Faculty of Religious Studies at the University of Nigeria, in Nsukka, Enugu State, in the newly independent Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In the discourses of both World Christianity and Intercultural Theology, Pentecostalism has emerged as the prime cite which engenders tremendous potential to assists scholars in their striving to understand the various local appropriations of the Pentecostal shades of Christianity across the globe. While Pentecostalism in Africa has received wider analysis beyond the two fields identified earlier, Pentecostal theology continues to generate exciting debates among scholars.

Part of the work we do at African Theology Worldwide is to provide the scholarly community with sample teaching and learning materials on a wide variety of themes related to African Christian Theology. In our recently published “Local Theologies on the World Wide Web: Learning Exercises”, we provide learning exercises which are intended to be used alongside our article “Local Theologies on the World Wide Web: Various Uses of the Internet for the Study of Theology in Africa.” We believe that while there are lots of freely available, peer-reviewed and academic journals online, such materials are still outside the research scope of professors, researchers and students of African Theology.

The Centre for Theology and Christianity Worldwide (CTCW) was recently launched at the Protestant Theological University, Groningen/Amsterdam, Netherlands. It exists as an academic centre that offer courses, seminars, conferences and webinars that interface the broad themes related to global expressions of theology and Christianity worldwide. To do so, CTCW presently work on the following three thematic areas: (i) Migration, Mission and Theology in Contemporary Europe; (ii) Science and Religion in Intercultural Perspective; and (iii) Pentecostal Theology Worldwide. Potential students who would like to pursue PhD’s in these or related themes are encouraged to contact the centre for guidance in the admission procedures at the university.

Whereas Africa is an incredibly diverse continent with a fine embroidery of cultures and ethnicities, the theme of sacrifice is often one on which Africans tend to find common ground. The major faiths and religious traditions across the African continent have offered deep reflections grounded in their holy books and sacred traditions about the role of sacrifice in their belief systems and practices. For this reason, Christianity’s emphasis on the finality and sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for human salvation has been used as a means of engaging the peoples of Africa with the gospel of Jesus Christ.