Azevedo: Religion in Africa - Essay Example

Lecturer Paper Synopsis The paper addresses the three major religions in Africa that is Islamic, Christianity and Traditionalism. These religions use different strategies to lobby the followers and other practices that do form the habits in their field of believe. A major challenge which was faced by the leaders of Christianity and Islam were made fragile by the rebirth of fundamentalist Islam. This was also witnessed during the embassy bombings in Africa and World Trade Centre as well as Pentagon in the United States of America.

Even though there were some problems encountered on their quest to convert more followers Christianity continue to dominate on their coverage.Questions:Christianity came into the African continent through European missionaries especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. These Missionaries mainly came to contrast African traditional beliefs to their own. They realized that traditionalism was the only way of worship where there were no sacred books, and no religious founder. Moreover children were not subjected to formal and consistent catechetical drilling and training about religious beliefs and dogmas.

Islamic religion was founded in Mecca during seventh sanctuary. It spread first throughout North Africa, West and Central Africa assisted primarily by ‘jihad’ (holy war). The trans-Sahara trade in East African later accelerated the move by creating an African-Arab Islamic culture and language called Swahili. And presently marshals more followers in the continent. Both Christianity and Islam, children are exposed to religion in their daily lives through memorization or daily chanting during school days.

The following were major short comings of Christianity in Africa during the pre-colonial period; despite wide spread of Christianity in African Continent the traditional beliefs of supernatural powers still existed on their practices (Shelley, 1995). This really frustrated and discouraged the western missionaries on their quest to obtain more converts. Secondly an influx of mission churches, schools, and healthcare centers brought by the European occupation around and protected by the colonial state, became a fierce rival to Islam.

These forces are still evidently witnessed by continual rivalry between religions. St. Augustine was a bishop of Hippo Regius and a Latin philosopher. Who established a new ancient faith which became influential in the development of Western Christianity Origen on the other hand was a scholar and theologian of early Christian interest in Alexandria. He was a prolific writer who came with hypothesis of pre-existence of soul, ideas perceived to be beyond Christianity (Shelley, 1995). Quintus Septimius, the founder of Western theology was the most famous for being oldest extant Latin writer by using the term trinity.

An extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature was produced by Quintus as the first author.Reference Shelley, Bruce L. (1995). Church History in Plain Language, 2nd ed. Dallas: Word Publishing.