Frontiers of African Christianity: Essays in honour of Inus Daneel

ISBN: 9781868881932

Frontiers of African Christianity: Essays in honour of Inus Daneel showcases recent reflexive research on African Christianity that draws inspiration from the career of Inus Daneel. It evocatively brings together the indigenous knowledges of church leaders and chiefs with various scholarly constructions of African Initiated Churches (AICs) in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Malawi to extend the limits of research in this field. The anthology includes cutting-edge analyses by leading specialists.

Inus Daneel, the product of a missionary home and fluent in Shona, was fascinated by the interplay among African traditional religions, Shona culture and Christianity. He moved into the Shona communal lands among members of AlCs as a participant-observer in order to gain a better understanding of their spirituality. Over several decades, despite civil war, shattered finances, family traumas and the disapproval of his peers in the Dutch Reformed Church, Daneel pursued his relationship with the Shona Independent Churches. Instead of simply pursuing a career as an academic, Inus Daneel became a folk theologian — studying, interpreting and seeking to articulate the contextualised theologies of the Shona indigenous churches. This book therefore honours not only a ‘Western’ scholar but an ‘activist’ whose involvement with Shona Christians has included founding an ecumenical movement and theological training programme among them in the 1970s and launching a grassroots environmental programme of African religionists and Christians in the 1980s.