Paul Gifford
Biographic Data
| ID | 3611531 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Gifford |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Gifford |
| SIGNATURE | GIFFORD P |
| AFFILIATIONS | SOAS University of London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 97 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan
Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan." Journal of Contemporary Religion, 37(1), pp. 188–189
A Dysfunctional Worldview
The Plight of Western Religion: The Eclipse of the Other-Worldly
‘Religion’ can be used to mean all kinds of things, but a substantive definition––based on the premise of superhuman powers––can clarify much. It allows us to attempt to differentiate religion from culture, ethnicity, morality and politics.This definition of religion necessarily implies a perception of reality. Until recent centuries in the West, and in most cultures still, the ordinary, natural and immediate way of understanding and experiencing…
Alpine Dreaming: The Helvetia Records Story, 1920-1924
Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines. By David T. Buckley
Religion and democracy are not necessarily at loggerheads. Powerful religious actors may coexist with and even consolidate democracy. David T. Buckley proposes a theoretical model of “benevolent secularism” as an advance in categorizing church-state relations in countries lucky enough to manifest “twin tolerations” (pp. 16, xi). The three essentials of the theory are differentiation of church and state institutions, cooperation, and principled di…
Christianity, Islam, and Liberal Democracy: Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa
"Christianity, Islam, and Liberal Democracy: Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa." Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines, 52(3), pp. 389–390
Conclusion
This chapter recapitulates the argument. In the last few centuries a new world has come into being, one in which causality has come to be understood no longer in terms of spiritual forces. To the extent that religion continues to reinforce this enchanted religious imagination, it does not further participation in this modern world. This chapter is sceptical of “multiple modernities”, or the claim that an enchanted religious imagination can be com…
Christianity, Development and Modernity In Africa
There is an important if largely unremarked diversity within African Christianity; on the one hand, an enchanted Christianity that views the world as pervaded by spiritual forces, and on the other a disenchanted Christianity that discounts such forces. An enchanted Christian sees his glorious destiny threatened by witches, marine spirits, spirit spouses, and ancestral curses. Churches catering for this worldview lay bare the workings of this spir…
Religion in Contemporary Senegal
Senegal is usually classified as 90% Muslim and 5% Christian. But Senegal’s dominant religious imagination is far different from anything suggested by classical labels like ‘Muslim’ or even ‘Sufi Brotherhoods’. The pervasive religious imagination sees spiritual forces at play everywhere and understands causality primarily in spiritual terms. These spiritual forces can be manipulated by individuals gifted with such powers (marabouts), positively f…
Religion and politics in contemporary Senegal
Senegal has a clientelist political system, which is personalized, opaque, and characterized by wide impunity for the political elite. The most salient social force in the country is the Sufi brotherhoods, especially the most important religious families within them, which have been an integral part of the clientelist system since the time of Diouf (1981–2000). Although the essence of a brotherhood is the disciples’ submission to the will of the …
Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults in, out of, and Gone from the Church
The Charlie Hebdo affair in Senegal
The Charlie Hebdo affair caused major repercussions in Senegal, not least because President Macky Sall took part in the “march in support of republican values” in Paris on Sunday 11 January 2015. Sall came in for fierce criticism for sympathising with the enemies of Islam. This article analyses the different attitudes expressed in the public demonstrations over the ensuing weeks, as well as in the accompanying media debate. Reactions were not unc…
Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism
Laying down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses
God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide
The Protestant Ethic and African Pentecostalism: A Case Study
In 2008 South Africa’s Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) produced a report on Pentecostalism, Under the Radar: Pentecostalism in South Africa and its Potential Social and Economic Role, which makes great claims for the public effects of Pentecostalism, proposing that Pentecostalism will do for South Africa what Max Weber argued Calvinism did for eighteenth-century Europe. The report is influenced by “the claims of sociologists of religi…
Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia
Christianity Co-Opted
Since independence, Kenya has been a classic neopatrimonial state, approaching the level of Abacha's Nigeria or Mobutu's Zaire. A neopatrimonial state makes little effort to function through legally defined structures for publicly acknowledged aims, through institutions of bureaucracy. Subordinate officials do not have defined powers and functions of their own, but are retainers whose position depends on a leader to whom they owe allegiance. The …
Capitalism and Christianity, American style
William E. Connolly, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2008, xvi +174 pp., US$21.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-8223-4272-4 Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopk
African Christianity and the Eclipse of the Afterlife
When asked to address the issue of the afterlife in African Christianity, my immediate reaction was to doubt whether there is much stress on the afterlife in contemporary African Christianity. This brought the response: ‘Well, deal with that; a Christianity from which the afterlife has been displaced.’ What follows is an attempt to do just that
La Mise en œuvre: Itinéraires génétiques La Mise en œuvre: Itinéraires génétiques. By A lmuth G résillon . Paris, CNRS Editions, 2008. Pb €30.00
‘Étudier les brouillons et manuscrits d’écrivains, traquer et interpréter les traces écrites, reconstruire la lente et progressive élaboration d'un texte: tel est l'objet de la critique génétique'. Almuth Gresillon is a gifted Reseach Director at the world's foremost Institute of genetic criticism (‘L'Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes’ of the CNRS in Paris) and also co-Director of the flagship review of this pioneering sub-discipline of …
The Primal Pentecostal Imagination: Variants, origins and importance
This paper addresses the religious world-view that is characteristic of a great many of the Pentecostal Churches currently flourishing in Africa. In the opinionof the author, this world-view, which sees spiritual forces active in everyday events, is the greatest single reason for their success. This world-view comes in different but related forms, and three different forms currently found in Kenya are outlined here. These forms have obvious links…
Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism by Miranda K. Hassett
The Bible in Africa: A novel usage in Africa's new churches
To the extent there is an African academic approach, it is comparative (showing that the African world has similarities with the biblical). There are some "post-colonial" and similar readings, but this academic study is in the main done by Western-trained academics and directed at Western readers. There has been relatively little study of the way the Bible is actually used in churches, especially at the very grassroots. In mainline churches, the …
The Nature and Effects of Mission Today A Case Study from Kenya
This article takes mission in a broad sense; the involvement of overseas Christianity in and its influence on local Christianity. Moreover this article is not a contribution to any particular contemporary missiological debate; it is an empirical study of significant novel realities in Kenyan Christianity, and arose from a year's field research in that country, October 2005 to September 2006. Given its pre-eminent position on the continent, Nairob…
Some Recent Developments in African Christianity
Journal Article SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY Get access PAUL GIFFORD PAUL GIFFORD Paul Gifford is Leverhulme Research Fellow in the Department of the Study of Religions, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 93, Issue 373, October 1994, Pages 513–534, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098757 Publi…
"Africa Shall Be Saved". An Appraisal of Reinhard Bonnke's Pan-African Crusade
shall be saved is the war-cry of Reinhard Bonnke's Christ for All Nations (CfAN) crusade. Another war-cry is from the Cape to Cairo. These slogans indicate the intention of the CfAN team to take their revival right across the continent. Bonnke predicts that their big tent will be erected in Cairo by the end of the century, by which time, he claims, Africa will be the most Christian continent on earth
Chiluba's Christian nation: Christianity as a factor in Zambian politics 1991–1996
This article examines the role of Christianity in the change of regime in Zambia in 1991, and after its new President, Frederick Chiluba, declared Zambia a ‘Christian Nation’ at Christmas 1991. Chiluba, a born‐again Christian, had the support of many of Zambia's churches in his campaign to oust the long‐serving incumbent. President Kenneth Kaunda, himself prone to use Christianity for political support. Particularly significant in Chiluba's campa…
Ghana's Charismatic Churches
GHANA'S CHARISMATIC CHURCHES BY PAUL GIFFORD (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) Among the most striking characteristics of African Christianity in the last decade has been the proliferation of new autonomous Pentecostal churches. The word 'charismatic' is used of these, to distinguish them from the churches of established Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God. These churches have ' proliferated -in Ghana as much as an…
Christian fundamentalism and development
This article discusses the characteristics of the fundamentalist form of Christianity which emerged in early 20th century America and re‐emerged as a significant trend in the late 1970s. Gifford describes the spread of this form of Christianity to Africa in the 1980s and its implications in the present crisis in Africa. The central argument is that these features, all or some of which are found in particular fundamentalist theology, encourage a p…
Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Prosperity: A new and foreign element in African Christianity
African Christianity is currently characterized by an evangelical revival which is in large measure funded and directed from California and the southern United States. Through these connections, North American Christianity is having considerable influence on a large segment of African Christianity. This article outlines one US development called ‘The Gospel of Prosperity’, and examines its spread to Africa. The author argues that this Gospel of P…
In Defence of African Creativity
REVIEW ARTICLE IN DEFENCE OF AFRICAN CREATIVITY BY DAVID MAXWELL (Keele University) GIFFORD, Paul, African Christianity. Its Public Role, London, Hurst & Co., 1998, viii, 368 pp., 1 85065 335 6. African states have undergone considerable political change over the last decade and a half. Prior to the mid 1980s the power structures of the prevailing autocratic or one-party regimes seemed unitary and hege- monic. Such regimes had sought to engross i…
Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy
Book Review| February 01 2006 Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy Paul Gifford Paul Gifford Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (2006) 9 (3): 139–141. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2006.9.3.139 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon …
Religion in Contemporary Senegal
Senegal is usually classified as 90% Muslim and 5% Christian. But Senegal’s dominant religious imagination is far different from anything suggested by classical labels like ‘Muslim’ or even ‘Sufi Brotherhoods’. The pervasive religious imagination sees spiritual forces at play everywhere and understands causality primarily in spiritual terms. These spiritual forces can be manipulated by individuals gifted with such powers (marabouts), positively f…
Religion and politics in contemporary Senegal
Senegal has a clientelist political system, which is personalized, opaque, and characterized by wide impunity for the political elite. The most salient social force in the country is the Sufi brotherhoods, especially the most important religious families within them, which have been an integral part of the clientelist system since the time of Diouf (1981–2000). Although the essence of a brotherhood is the disciples’ submission to the will of the …
The Bible in Africa: A novel usage in Africa's new churches
To the extent there is an African academic approach, it is comparative (showing that the African world has similarities with the biblical). There are some "post-colonial" and similar readings, but this academic study is in the main done by Western-trained academics and directed at Western readers. There has been relatively little study of the way the Bible is actually used in churches, especially at the very grassroots. In mainline churches, the …
The Nature and Effects of Mission Today A Case Study from Kenya
This article takes mission in a broad sense; the involvement of overseas Christianity in and its influence on local Christianity. Moreover this article is not a contribution to any particular contemporary missiological debate; it is an empirical study of significant novel realities in Kenyan Christianity, and arose from a year's field research in that country, October 2005 to September 2006. Given its pre-eminent position on the continent, Nairob…
Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan
Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan." Journal of Contemporary Religion, 37(1), pp. 188–189
The Charlie Hebdo affair in Senegal
The Charlie Hebdo affair caused major repercussions in Senegal, not least because President Macky Sall took part in the “march in support of republican values” in Paris on Sunday 11 January 2015. Sall came in for fierce criticism for sympathising with the enemies of Islam. This article analyses the different attitudes expressed in the public demonstrations over the ensuing weeks, as well as in the accompanying media debate. Reactions were not unc…
Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America
André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. London: Hurst, 2001, 288 pp., £39.50, ISBN 1 85065 439 8 (hard covers), £16.50, ISBN 1 85065 438 7 (paperback). - Volume 73 Issue 1
Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion
The aim of this book is to teach you to understand and speak Welsh as it is spoken today. In order to achieve this, the language introduced is centred on a wide range of realistic, everyday situations. The course covers the four basic skills - listening and speaking, reading and writing, with recorded material to accompany your work and provide you with the essential opportunity to listen to native speakers and speak it yourself. Key structures a…
"Africa Shall Be Saved". An Appraisal of Reinhard Bonnke's Pan-African Crusade
shall be saved is the war-cry of Reinhard Bonnke's Christ for All Nations (CfAN) crusade. Another war-cry is from the Cape to Cairo. These slogans indicate the intention of the CfAN team to take their revival right across the continent. Bonnke predicts that their big tent will be erected in Cairo by the end of the century, by which time, he claims, Africa will be the most Christian continent on earth
Prosperity: A new and foreign element in African Christianity
African Christianity is currently characterized by an evangelical revival which is in large measure funded and directed from California and the southern United States. Through these connections, North American Christianity is having considerable influence on a large segment of African Christianity. This article outlines one US development called ‘The Gospel of Prosperity’, and examines its spread to Africa. The author argues that this Gospel of P…
Christian fundamentalism and development
This article discusses the characteristics of the fundamentalist form of Christianity which emerged in early 20th century America and re‐emerged as a significant trend in the late 1970s. Gifford describes the spread of this form of Christianity to Africa in the 1980s and its implications in the present crisis in Africa. The central argument is that these features, all or some of which are found in particular fundamentalist theology, encourage a p…
Liberia' Never-Die Christians
In Monrovia, the capital of the West African state of Liberia, Richard K. Sleboe, a Kru tribesman from Sinoe County and previously a Jehovah's Witness, founded in June 1970 the Kingdom Assembly Church of Africa. This came to be popularly known as the 'Never-Die Church' from its most distinguishing belief, namely that a true believer will never physically die but will live on this earth forever
Christian Resistance to Apartheid: Ecumenism in South Africa 1960-1987
Some Recent Developments in African Christianity
Journal Article SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY Get access PAUL GIFFORD PAUL GIFFORD Paul Gifford is Leverhulme Research Fellow in the Department of the Study of Religions, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 93, Issue 373, October 1994, Pages 513–534, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098757 Publi…
Ghana's Charismatic Churches
GHANA'S CHARISMATIC CHURCHES BY PAUL GIFFORD (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) Among the most striking characteristics of African Christianity in the last decade has been the proliferation of new autonomous Pentecostal churches. The word 'charismatic' is used of these, to distinguish them from the churches of established Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God. These churches have ' proliferated -in Ghana as much as an…
The Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa
This volume focuses on the role Christian churches have played in Africa's democratisation movements since the late 1980s. In some cases churchmen have presided over national conferences; in many, Christians comprise arguably the most significant segment of civil society. In some countries pastoral letters have challenged dictators; in others, churches have provided an essential support for the status quo. The book comprises both theoretical anal…
Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia
This study examines the role of Christianity in Liberia under the corrupt rule of Samuel K. Doe (1980–90). Paul Gifford illustrates the relationship between mainline, evangelical, new Pentecostal and independent churches, and notes the strengths and weaknesses of each. He shows that, in general, Liberian Christianity - far from being a force for justice and human advancement - diverted attention from the causes of Liberia's ills, left change to G…
Christianity and Politics in Doe's Liberia
The Church in Africa 1450-1950
The Christian Churches & the Democratisation of Africa
This volume focuses on the role Christian churches have played in Africa's democratisation movements since the late 1980s. In some cases churchmen have presided over national conferences; in many, Christians comprise arguably the most significant segment of civil society. In some countries pastoral letters have challenged dictators; in others, churches have provided an essential support for the status quo. The book comprises both theoretical anal…
Reinventing Christianity: African Theology Today
In Reinventing Christianity, the first comprehensive survey of Christian theology in Africa to appear in English, John Parratt provides a critical yet sympathetic examination of the new ways of doing theology that have recently emerged from within the African church. Following an introduction that charts the growth and development of African theology, Parratt examines the differing theological assumptions and methodologies throughout the continen…
African Christianity: Its Public Role
Up-to-date analysis of Christian churches’ increasingly important role in African politics and society
Chiluba's Christian nation: Christianity as a factor in Zambian politics 1991–1996
This article examines the role of Christianity in the change of regime in Zambia in 1991, and after its new President, Frederick Chiluba, declared Zambia a ‘Christian Nation’ at Christmas 1991. Chiluba, a born‐again Christian, had the support of many of Zambia's churches in his campaign to oust the long‐serving incumbent. President Kenneth Kaunda, himself prone to use Christianity for political support. Particularly significant in Chiluba's campa…
The Origins of the New Churches' Movement in Southern Ethiopia, 1927-1944
The Origins of the New Churches' Movement in Southern Ethiopia, 1927–1944 The Origins of the New Churches' Movement in Southern Ethiopia, 1927–1944, by Brian L. Fargher, E. J. Brill, 1996. xiv+329pp. £68.00 hardback. ISBN 90-04-10661-8. PAUL GIFFORD PAUL GIFFORD School of Oriental and African StudiesLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 97, Issue 386, January 1998, Pages 138–139, h…
Theological Anthropology: A Dialectic Study of the African and Liberation Traditions
Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of Religion and Politics in Ghana
This book examines how Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first post-colonial political leader legitimized his rule. It argues that Nkrumah found in religion a way to weld ethnicnically diverse groups with primordial attachments together. Through his employment he was able to spearhead the building of a nation he named Ghana. Social, anthropological, as well as political theories from Max Weber, Clifford Geertz, Kofi Busia, Ali Mazrui, David Apter, and other…
Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion
The aim of this book is to teach you to understand and speak Welsh as it is spoken today. In order to achieve this, the language introduced is centred on a wide range of realistic, everyday situations. The course covers the four basic skills - listening and speaking, reading and writing, with recorded material to accompany your work and provide you with the essential opportunity to listen to native speakers and speak it yourself. Key structures a…
Satan Steps out from the Shadows Religion and Politics in Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Satan Steps Out from the Shadows Religion and Politics in Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Civil Society and Democracy in Africa: Critical Perspectives
The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War
Liberia has been one of Africa's most violent trouble spots. In 1990, when thousands of teenage fighters, including young men wearing women's clothing and bizarre objects of decoration, laid siege to the capital, the world took notice. Since then Liberia has been through devastating civil upheaval. What began as a civil conflict, has spread to other West African nations. Eschewing popular stereotypes and simple explanations, Stephen Ellis traces …
In Defence of African Creativity
REVIEW ARTICLE IN DEFENCE OF AFRICAN CREATIVITY BY DAVID MAXWELL (Keele University) GIFFORD, Paul, African Christianity. Its Public Role, London, Hurst & Co., 1998, viii, 368 pp., 1 85065 335 6. African states have undergone considerable political change over the last decade and a half. Prior to the mid 1980s the power structures of the prevailing autocratic or one-party regimes seemed unitary and hege- monic. Such regimes had sought to engross i…
Spiritual Development, Its Thought and Public Praxis
Philosophy (44 works) · Political science (43 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (43 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Law (35 works) · Religious studies (29 works) · Christian Theology and Mission (27 works) · Christianity (25 works) · Politics (24 works) · History (22 works)