Bibliograph

Abraham our father, Paul and the ancestors in postcolonial Africa, Israel Kamudzandu

Type

Label

Abraham our father, Paul and the ancestors in postcolonial Africa, Israel Kamudzandu

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Abraham our father

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Israel Kamudzandu

Series statement

Paul in critical contexts

Sub title

Paul and the ancestors in postcolonial Africa

Summary

"Father Abraham had many sons..." So goes the chorus that the Shona people learned from European missionaries as part of the broader experience of colonization that they share with other African peoples. Urged to abandon their ancestors and embrace Christianity, the Shona instead engaged in a complex and ambiguous negotiation of ancestral myths, culture, and power. Israel Kamudzandu explores this legacy, showing how the Shona found in the figure of Abraham himself a potent resource for cultural resistance, and makes intriguing comparisons with the ways the apostle Paul used the same figure in his interaction with the ancestry of Aeneas in imperial myths of the destiny of the Roman people. The result is a groundbreaking study that combines the best tradition-historical insights with postcolonial-critical acumen. Kamudzandu offers at last a model of multi-cultural Christianity forged in the experience of postcolonial Zimbabwe

Target audience

adult

Classification