Issues

The Struggle for True Faith: Religious Revolution in Black Africa

Igor Sledzevski

Religiia i obshchestvo na Vostoke, Issue IV (2020), p. 127-161.

 
DOI: 10.31696/2542–1530–2020–4–127–161

The main issue of the article is the role of the world’s largest religions – Christianity and Islam in the cultural self-determination of the peoples of Tropical Africa in the XX – early XXI c. The author poses the problem of revolutionary changes and new opportunities of cultural self-determination of Tropical Africa, which open to modern generations of Africans in the context of changes in the confessional space of the region and the global rise of movements for religious revival. It includes the phenomenon of world religious revival, his connection with globalization processes, formation of the multi-polar, poly-cultural world. The subject of the research is the role of Christianity and Islam in the self-determination of the Black Africa people at the present stage of the world religious revival, the rise of religious nationalism, the denial of westernization of non-Western societies as a universal and purely secular model of social modernization. The purpose of the study is to discuss the issue of new opportunities for religious self-determination in Black Africa, which pave to its population the way of changes in the confessional space of the region and the global rise of movements for religious revival (Islamic fundamentalism, “southern Christianity”) that appear as anti-secular, anti-Western movements. The main factors and processes of filling the cultural self-determination of the peoples of Tropical Africa with religious content are considered: the trends of de-secularization of the world community; the evolution of the principles and values of African syncretic religions in the direction of universal dogmas of world religions; the processes of religious mobilization of social groups and segments of the African population; the strengthening of the role of the religious component in the cultural identity of Africans. It is concluded that in the civilizational development of the region there is a religious and cultural turn.

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Keywords: Islam and Christianity, modern post-secular world, changes in the confessional structure of the population of Tropical Africa, cultural and religious self-determination of the peoples of Tropical Africa, African religious syncretism and its evolution, religious revolution religious mobilization, Afro-Christian and Islamic-African identity

Volume: 127-161

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