Download or read book The Word of Wisdom and the Creation of Animals in Africa written by Shelagh Ranger and published by James Clarke Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stimulating and provocative work provides a comprehensive introduction to African theology by focussing on the role of animals in African teaching. The work surveys African approaches to religion, beginning with sub-Saharan Africa, encompassing Judaic, Christian and Islamic beliefs, and concluding with African theology today. It highlights the influence of African theology on all the major religions, including the preservation of Jewish texts and the establishment of Christian traditions such as hermeticism and monasticism. The author demonstrates, through numerous examples, the centrality of the natural world to African faiths. This, she argues, is an aspect sorely lacking in dominant religious traditions, which have tended to treat the natural world as less valuable than humanity and thus more expendable, leading to our current disastrous state in which the existence of animals is put at serious risk. She concludes that for the good of the world, mainstream theology must be Africanised before it is too late.