African Women Culture

6. Examples of Catechetical and Homiletic Inculturation

Catechetical and homiletic inculturation may not take place on the same scale as the Gbaya project, nor with the same degree of comprehensiveness, however, like the Gbaya example, they usually reflect the wider background process of inculturation of which we are speaking. One of the most successful religious education programmes in Africa has been the so-called Gaba Syllabus for Secondary Schools. In fact, the syllabus for the final two years of the course was drawn up at a series of international and ecumenical

3. The Church’s Cultural Patrimony

Christianity is a historical religion and inculturation is part of the Church’s history. A by-product of this historical process is a certain accumulation of cultural elements, beginning with the cultures of the Bible and going through the long list of successive inculturations. I call this accumulation the Church’s "Cultural Patrimony". The word  "culture" is widely abused nowadays, but the pre-Vatican opinion that the Church’s cultural patrimony constitutes a culture in the normal sense of the word is - by and large - no longer held. According to anthropological definition,

1. The Question

The title of this paper is expressed in the form of a question:  "Inculturation of African Traditional Religious Values in Christianity - How Far?" Just over ten years ago I was asked to give a paper in Nairobi at the Goethe Institute and the title was  "How African can African Christianity Be?"  Its sub-title was: "What are the irreducible elements of Christianity, without which African Christianity cannot be