Church as a Communion: An African Christian Perspective

The aims of this book are to present lucidly the Vatican II's self-understanding of the Church from a global perspective and to demonstrate how the local Churches in Africa can find their realization in the communion of the universal Church. The method is inductive. It explains the conciliar concepts of the Church as sacrament, communion and mission in connection with the cultural fundament of word, life and force in African Religion. It is an attempt to incarnate the Gospel message in the diversity of languages and cultures of the people of Africa and to throw lime on the perspectives of the conciliar ecclesiology of communion from this plane. The result shows that some African cultural elements can form stepping-stones for Christian understanding of communion, if they are nurtured from the perspective of indigenous theology. The conclusion therefore impels the local Churches in Africa to search their autochthonous sketch of endemic theologies from the plurality of cultures in which they found themselves.