Author Archives: spencerb@uoregon.edu

Team 7, Question 1

Posted on by under global christianity

Typically Christianity in Africa is thought of as being a recent phenomenon, perhaps only dating back to the colonization of Africa by European nations in the 19th century. In actuality, Christianity has been in Africa even since the earliest years. In pre-colonial Africa, influences of racial tensions affected the newly developing Christian communities, especially those from the slave trade. Still under Portuguese rule, the church’s main role became baptizing slaves before they were shipped off to the new world; a practice seen by the slave traders as an act of Christian mercy, but to the African people just another part of the terrible process. During the colonial era, from the late 1800s to 1900s, European powers divided up nearly ever inch of the continent amongst themselves, creating tremendous influences over all native peoples. Along with the colonizers came Christian missionaries, determined to “spread the light of the Gospel and the benefits of Christian culture and civilization to peoples who sit in the darkness and in the shadow of death” (Pope Pius XI). These missionaries set up churches and schools as a way to “win converts for Christ”, and often worked closely with the government, who sometimes gave the missionaries near-monopoly control over things like education. Missionaries traveled and preached with a drive to eagerly spread their theological opinions, but African Christianity would not have flourished if it weren’t for Africans themselves taking up preaching and spreading the gospel. One such African with tremendous influence was William Wade Harris, a native from Liberia who traveled, baptized and preached the Gospel, and ended up converting over a hundred thousand Africans to Christianity. He was a part of the founding of AIC, (African Initiated Churches), who left the missionary Christian church after concluding it was not biblical, instead launching their own independent congregations and denominations. They disagreed with the missionaries’ beliefs that ancestors were irrelevant, miracles rarely happened, and dreams or visions did not matter. After interpreting the bible for themselves, Africans found that saints and ancestors herein fact important, dreams and visions were a significant way for God to communicate with people, and polygamy was acceptable in some cases,. Therefore, by the 1960’s, over six thousand AICs had been established across Africa. In post-colonization times, these shifted even more toward a self-theorizing church, with much less orderliness than the European model, and much more “free-wheeling” focus on the Spirit. Their freedom from European rule therefore also allowed for a new spiritual independence as well.

Jacobsen states how African Christians have recently begun to separate themselves from western ideals, a move that has allowed them to make connections between cultural traditions and Christianity. Racial tensions stemming from colonization have produced massive genocides or apartheids in countries such as Rwanda and South Africa, proving that Christianity does not prevent social violence. Ancient cultural hierarchies and customs caused anger and resentment toward fellow Christians, but one positive influence of traditional African theology that differs from the rest of the world is ubuntu. Ubuntu refers to the interconnectedness of all people, connecting to their faith by believing that Christianity is about the community, not the individual. “When ubuntu is universalized to include all of humanity, then it has enormous potential to positively shape Christian life and thought” (Jacobsen, 63). This belief, along with others, have given African Christians a unique spiritual “depth” that other western cultures do not have. Theological expressions of ubuntu are reflected in unique beliefs about reconciliation and human values, communion with the ancestors; a second realm resembling heaven but still with abilities to communicate, and the God of everyone and all creation; using a possessive pronouns when talking about God is incomprehensible. “The God that African Christians know and love is a God who vastly exceeds anything any human being could ever fully comprehend or understand and who loves all of creation equally”(Jacobsen, 72).

Considering these unique parts that shape African Christianity, western cultures may be able to learn thing or two from them. The observed strictness of traditional Western Christianity we are accustomed to has led to many diversions and contradicting views within the church, as seen historically in schisms, reformations, new denominations, and others. All the denominations now present in modern Christianity all are because of the goal to have a set of principles and beliefs everyone holds similar. In African traditions, it seems as though their ancient traditions never had to be denied, and this caused the formation of an extremely devout Christian body who claims much more than western people that religion is an important part of their life. This call to cast aside any traditions and adhere to a common belief is what may be causing many people in western cultures to want to dissimulate their traditions, have no desire to be religious, or become atheist and deny God altogether. By believing in a common God, and that all human life is connected and not based on individual beliefs is an important glue that holds all African people together. Jacobsen says Africans sometimes use the acronym WEIRD to describe the Western lifestyle norm; Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. These people, most westerners, view themselves as independent and self-sufficient. To most Africans, this way of thinking is incomprehensible. “Worship is the joyful, exuberant, full-bodied celebration of God and God’s presence within the community of believers on earth”(Jacobsen, 62).

Group 7 Question 2

Posted on by under great awakening

As in Europe, Pietistic currents were brought to North America. Presbyterians became divided over those who believed in the strict adherence to the teachings of Westminster, and those whose emphasis was on the experience of redeeming grace; the old side and the new side. The controversy would lead to schism, which would become known as the Great Awakening.

Gonzalez describes the leaders of the Great Awakening to be orthodox Calvinists, devoted to devotion, doctrine, and spiritual strictness. This may have been why the need for a passionate religious experience, thought to be important for Christian life, was difficult to grasp right away. Johnathan Edwards was a pastor in the colonies, and preached on the need for an experience of conviction of sin and of divine forgiveness. Gonzalez talks about the tremendous religious and emotional zeal that was brought forth during sermons, not just from Edwards but other pastors of the new side as well. “People wept in repentance for their sins, some shouted for joy at having been pardoned, and a few were so overwhelmed that they fainted” (Gonzalez, 289). He goes on to say how Edwards’s sermons were “not emotive harangues, but careful expositions of profound theological matters.” Also, “Edwards believed emotion was important. But such emotion, including the high experience of conversion, should not eclipse the need for right doctrine and rational worship” (Gonzalez, 289). Although the movement was led by Presbyterians and Congregationalists, however, Baptists and Methodists would profit the most from it. One example of this is how many Presbyterians or Congregationalists, led by the Awakening’s emphasis on personal experience, would reject infant baptism and convert to become Baptists. Further, “it was the Baptists and Methodists who, imbued by with the spirit of the Great Awakening, took up the task of preaching to Western settlers and organizing their religious life” (Gonzalez, 290). Therefore, the main effects of the Great Awakening were that many Baptists and Methodists moved to the Western frontier, and most importantly, the hope for an “awakening” became a typical part of North American Christianity.

In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edward describes people as wicked, sinful, awful people, who god is angry with, and who are basically dangling over the pits of hell, being held by the hand of God. He says that we have done nothing to deserve the love or forgiveness of God, and we are simply sin filled beings, without anything to take hold of. God is letting us have our free will, to do as we please, and is angry at the decisions we are making. At least, this is the case for people who have not yet had an awakening. Edwards says, concerning God and hell; “There is a dreadful pit of glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up” (Edwards, 201). Similar elicit passages were spoken by other pastors as well, evoking an emotional spark in people. Edward is saying that although we are filled with sin and deserve hell, if we have an “awakening”; a tremendous personal experience, we can become true Christian, spiritual people, committed to devotion, and escape the depths of hell. Edward’s goal in describing God and humans this way is to show how we are helpless, awful beings in need of a savior. By using intense rhetoric and elicit stories or phrases, Edwards and other preachers of this time were trying to evoke from people an intense spiritual connection with God. This was believed to be the one true path to salvation, and the only way someone would truly feel absolutely called to dutifully give up their life to devoted religious living. The pastors want people see themselves as sinful beings, investigate who they really are, and have strong emotions to change their way of life and become God’s servant. All of theses examples of a call for internal, spiritual momentous change, is the reason for calling this time the Great Awakening. 

Team 7, Question 1

Posted on by under reformation

In the early 1500s, the Roman Catholic Church would undergo one of the greatest changes in its history. A single man would proclaim his beliefs, challenging and condemning the corrupt practices of church. This man was Martin Luther, arguably the greatest theologian of his day. Although he ignited the fire that would spread throughout Europe, Luther was not single handed in his quest for truth in Christian practices and doctrines. The most important concept to grasp from the reformation is that it did not take place because Luther willed it to, “but rather because the time was ripe for it, and because the Reformer and many others with him were ready to fulfill their historical responsibility.” (Gonzalez, p.21)

Born in 1483, in Eisleben, Germany, Martin Luther experienced a childhood that would later prove to shape his life, attitudes, and decisions. His parents were extremely strict, believed in hard work, and raised Luther with harsh punishments. Luther’s father had his life planned out for him; he was to become successful, a lawyer, through rigorous schooling, work, and discipline. Luther’s parents held the family to the strong beliefs of being devout Christians, and Luther was an alter boy and a member of the church choir growing up. With the recurring themes of salvation and damnation reflecting themselves in both family and church, Luther’s attitude became one of servitude, passion and sincerity.

Luther would survive a near death experience during a severe thunderstorm. Overwhelmed, he felt surrounded by the fear of death and hell, which prodded him to join the Augustinian monastery. Here, Luther was one of the most diligent, hard working monks. He would put his body through the severest of punishments, as recommended by his teachers. He was convinced that God was a severe judge, and to be saved from His wrath he must use all the means of grace offered by the church.

Becoming priest and teacher himself, Luther would discover his true feelings about the church. He would be overwhelmed by terror when celebrating his first mass, thinking he was holding and offering nothing less than the actual body of Christ. These feelings of extremity would evolve, consuming his thoughts on his own sin, to the point that he had tortured himself enough to conclude that what he felt for God was not love but hatred. In his teachings of Romans, Luther would come to the conclusion that the justice of God did not mean the punishment of sinners. In fact, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:17) The “righteousness” of the righteous was actually not their own but God’s. In addition to this, Luther’s pilgrimage to Rome proved to greaten his questioning of the Church. He saw the signs of a corrupt, powerful, political institution who used religion to wring money from their people and enhance their own wealth and pleasures.

With all these experiences and thoughts, the boiling point was when Pope Leo issued the sale of indulgences to bring in funds for Saint Peter’s Basilica and other lavish construction. To “buy their way” to salvation and through purgatory, the poorest people would spend their last dime on these indulgences, believing it was the only option. Luther responded with his 95 theses, attacking the sale of indulgences and their theological basis. The theses were spread by the recent invention of the printing press, gathering the fellowship of many along the way. This would spark a war between the church and Luther’s followers, one which would be influenced by political aspirations of the church and surrounding powers.

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