African Catholicism and Hermeneutics of Culture

The study of Christianity in the non-Western world reveals a demographic shift in the center of Christianity from the Northern Hemisphere to the South. But the contradictory aspect of the massive African conversion to Christian faith is the grinding poverty level in Africa. This condition raises important theological and ecclesiological questions that demand urgent answers. Therefore, the research objectives of this book are to examine African Catholicism's involvement in human promotion and to seek a new way of theologizing Christianity that moves sub-Saharan African peoples to action against the massive injustices that keep them poor. Drawing on Africae Munus, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of the Second African Synod (2011), and Bernard Lonergan's notion of culture, African Catholicism and Hermeneutics of Culture argues that to truly be ""the spiritual 'lung' of humanity,"" African Catholicism must appropriate the Christian message to transform African attitudes and personhood and so foster a self-reliant commitment to integral African development.

Joseph Ogbonnaya is Assistant Professor of Theology at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI. He is the author of Lonergan, Social Transformation and Sustainable Human Development (2013) and a co-editor of The Church as Salt and Light (2011).