# Engaging Africa

In an important sense, most African theology can be called ‘public theology’. In line with Africa’s pre-Christian tradition, religion related to all aspects of life. In this respect, it resembles North Atlantic expressions of Christianity before the influence of modernity led to an increased separation between the sacred and the secular, and religion and the public life. Studies of the Bible are intended to speak into everyday and public life. African Christian thought is in most cases not about individual piety or abstract academic problems, but about the life of the community. Modernity in Africa has, however, also produced a development of politics, economics, science and other areas of life as relatively independent spheres, but the church and theology speak into these realities in various ways. This subject area focuses on the way theology and the church speak into the many challenges that Africa faces, which are not merely the issues of the life of the church, but shared with the wider society.