Bachelor of Arts in Theology

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    Healing in Ovimbundu Culture Case Study in Hanha Area
    (Tangaza University College, 2004) Tchiyevo, Benjamin
    There are two things which motivated rue to write on this theme. One, I observed my people for so long. They are both Christian and they also practice African Traditional religion. Although I have seen it in general in my community, the examples I will give will be more of my family. I will talk of my grandparents most of the time because that is something I really experienced. Arid the other motivation came as encouragement for me to really come up with this theme for my long essay. This encouragement came first during my classes of Mission Theology with Fr Domingues and then during discussions we had in the classes of Mission Between Globalization with Professor Frans Wijsen. In both subjects I was being instructed on the paradigm shift in mission. Where the emphasis was put on the help of new missionaries to recognize that Christ is already present in the non-Christian cultures. The missionary's task defined with helping the non-Christians to discover the active presence of Christ in their lives. Looking at my people, a question came into my mind. How can my people be able to belong to one particular socio-religious group and to feel at home and participate in another, Christianity which seems totally against these socio-religious practices? Thinking deeply about this question, the answer could probably be it is not possible. For someone to practice a certain religion one must be convinced that that doctrine or worldview is absolutely true. How was it possible then that my people were able to profess both of them? I will try to show that my people although believing in Christ as the savior; the fact is that, the way he was presented may be, He (Christ) did not touch deeply their lives. In other words Christianity did not become a way of life for my people, specially, when it comes to sickness. People would prefer to call upon their ancestor or go
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    Healing Of Women Who Have Had An Abortion: A Pastoral Issue Today In an African And Christian Approach
    (Tangaza University College., 2002-02) Massawe, Andrew Dionis
    It is during my pastoral year in western part of Uganda, when I met a young woman who had a story to narrate to me. It is her sad story that took my attention to even think of developing it in this paper. The following is her story .. My name is Cleopatra [not her real name], I am sixteen years old. I am a drop out from Kyebambe Secondary School I dropped out of school immediately after the second term of Senior One. The following is what caused my ordeal. It was when I went home for my vacation and visited my boy friend at his parent's home. He told me that he loved me so much and has been waiting for me to come home and visit him. I did not have a perfect relationship with him though. He suggested to me that we have sex since it would make us friendlier. It was not right to have sex with him but I did. After a while I started experiencing some difficulties, and when I went to the clinic, the doctor told me that I was pregnant. When I returned to the boy, he suggested that I should go for an abortion since we all had to finish school In fact, he was the only one who knew about it. Finally, I had an abortion the following week. The minute left the clinic, I hated myself and wished that someone had stopped me. Afterwards I felt like an empty soul. All my life was torn apart for what I was told to do. Everyday I think about it. It is very hard to express my feeling and my thought. She ended her story with tears flowing in her eyes. Coming back to Tangaza College, I had an opportunity to attend a course in pastoral psychology being offered and taught by Rev. Prof Raphael Wanjohi. While discussing the topic on the victims of abortion, it gave me an opportunity to put together the story of this young woman. Her words made me feel a strong desire to develop this work. There is something in our heads that we know and is quite different from what we know in our hearts. One may intellectually know that abortion is wrong, but the emotional fears and terrors may outweigh that knowledge and prevent the heart from understanding and acting on that truth. This was the same with my friend Cleopatra. My approach to the whole issue is about what could be done for the woman in the story above. She is disturbed and in agony because of the pain and loss. Having followed her story quite closely, we became more convinced that, there are many women who might be in the same situation hence development of this work. We are here considering an African as well as Christian perspective on the whole issue of healing of the women who have had an abortion. For, as long as this ministry is ignored, we run into the risk of developing a society of traumatized mothers or women who at the end will turn into other abuses searching for answers that may not be found.
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    Healing and Anointing Among The Ewe of Southern Togo: A Pastoral Challenge
    (Tangaza University College., 2002-02) Fabien, Sognon
    Within any human society, the question of healing is a crucial one. Health is a major concern for all. The longing for healing has been a universal human desire. In Africa particularly, where people are very often exposed to all sorts of diseases, the search for cures is an important part of the struggle for survival. Sickness is thus seen as a threat to health. Naturally, people have developed different methods in fighting sickness. Western scientific medicine has made undoubted progress, which enables people to enjoy a longer average life expectation than in earlier times. kvidence of efforts to maintain health and to overcome diseases in order to prevent untimely death can be found in all cultures everywhere. The Ewe people of southern Togo have also developed different ways of fighting sickness. Among them, sickness is seen as an attack that disturbs the harmony between human beings, the cosmos and Clod. A person declares himself or hersLii. sick in relation to the representation that he or she has of health and this is largely a cultural matter. As Ugueux points out, there is a construction and a cultural representation of sickness as a social phenomenon.' The Sacrament of healing which also has its own structure according to the Catholic Church, does not follow the same process as found in the traditional setting. For Christians, this Sacrament is provided to strengthen the sick and bring them healing and forgiveness. Are Christians satisfied with the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick when they still have to bear in mind what the healing process involves for them in the traditional sense? flow can both processes be reconciled so that people do not feel lost when they have to go through the process of healing according to their Christian faith?
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    The Medicine-Man and the Healing Ministry Of Jesus - Sandawe Case Study
    (Tangaza University College, 2001-02) Marcus Lebba, William
    As long as life runs along smoothly, we can avoid facing the depths of existence. The basic questions of life can go unasked. When things are comfortable and easy, we can live as though life were shallow. However, in moments when the contradictions and crises of life stand forth, these apparently comfortable and easy things become strangely irrelevant. The encounter with sickness, tragedy and human limitation disrupts surface appearances. We are forced to look deeper than previously. What was complacently accepted about life must now be re-examined. This is where the necessity of participating in man's struggle to find meaning comes in. I would like to acknowledge a challenge that my confreres in Tanzania posed at dinner while discussing the subject of the traditional African medicine man and his activity in comparison with the Western scientific doctors. Rev. Fr. Cessare, our Regional Superior of Tanzania put this question forward; "when people from the Western countries get sick, they go to a doctor. He/she is diagnosed, a sickness is identified, let us say malaria for example, and one is given medicine for it and eventually he/she is cured. Now, when I want to be cured of a similar problem by the traditional medicine man, does the diagnosis identify a disease and cure my sickness without involving me in their provocative, pompous and ceremonious invocations of their ancestral spirits and gods- (in a word, their faith) in the process?' It does not seem strange to find pastors, not only my confreres, lamenting that many of their members seek the help of diviners and traditional medicine men. In the process, make offerings to their gods and their ancestors when they are seriously ill or feel their lives to be seriously threatened by mystical powers. Experience has shown in Christianity that there are those who solely believe in God, through his son Jesus, the saviour of the world. On account of their religious conviction, they totally reject not only the traditional medicine with its resultant divination but also scientifically prepared drugs and hospital treatment. Such people are convinced that they no longer require any tangible help or medication in sickness. Some even believe that they can never be sick. All they have to do is to have faith in God and prayer. To do otherwise is a sign of lack of faith.' This is an extreme case. On the contrary there are those who are so much taken up by the modem science and technology that they believe that God only heals through drugs and hospitals. Therefore they conclude, the only way through which the healing ministry of the Church can be experienced in the world is through scientific medicine. This, too, is another extreme. Andrew Igenoza in his article Medicine and Healing in African Christianity, has this to offer; "It is not to be doubted for a moment that God has used compassionate and very selfless doctors and nurses, be they missionaries or otherwise, to bring life and hope to countless Africans, through their modem scientific medicine knowledge. But the question is does God work only through this medium? To answer in the affirmative, especially in relation to an African milieu, is to completely overlook the spiritual dimension of sickness and healing so readily recognised by Africans.”2 It is timely at this juncture, to visit facts that history presents. Reading Fr. Shorter's Jesus and the Witchdoctor, I was indeed impressed when he says that "modern scientific medicine is scarcely two hundred years old... until systematic medical science was born, all medical practice was 'alternative medicine'"3 This is to say of the Western situation. Africa and the Sandawe community in particular, before the coming of the foreigners, had its own way of contending and coping with the problem of sickness in their midst. But the medicine concept in traditional eyes was and still is today in the context of sacrifice, prayer and magic. The Sandawe community and most of the African communities if not all, have such a tremendous psychological back up that no wise man will dare to ignore it. That the Traditional African never lived an isolated individualistic life but in a supposed harmonious relationship with the socio-religious order. This was made up of himself/herself; the community around; the departed ancestors; the divinities; the spirit world and of cause The Creator -Warunge/Mumba.4 Everyone who dies in the Sandawe community is believed to pass into more spiritual way of being. He/she is said to have followed the ancestors kOkeig
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    Healing and Salvation as Paradigms for Evangelisation in the Acts of the Apostles
    (Tangaza University College, 2001-02) Kossi Badjalao Bassoma, Alexis
    A recent sojourn in Togo has led me to observe a mushrooming of local FM radio stations in the capital city Lome, most of them with the declared objective of spreading the Good News. City squares have become the stages for itinerant preachers in Lome, as one can also observe in the Nairobi Uhuru Park and other places in the Kenyan capital. A common characteristic of these preachings either in Lome or in Nairobi, is the stress on the healing miracles of Jesus. Most preachers claim to be 'anointed with the Holy Spirit' to perform similar healing miracles in Jesus' name for the benefit of their congregations. The faithful of these healing miracle-based denominations generally refer to themselves as the 'saved'. In the Catholic Church, churches are often filled to overflowing at the celebration of the so called 'healing mass.' This phenomenon, it seems to me, indicates a great concern people have for their health in our economically precarious societies, where health care and the cost of it are often beyond most people's reach. This has motivated me to research the relationship between faith and health and the salvation brought about by Jesus. These concerns about healing and health-related issues should be a field of Christian evangelisation as expressions of salvation in Jesus Christ. Any culture provides its people with a basis for understanding the meaning of human existence, interpersonal relationships and the relationship with the divine or God. It also provides the basis for understanding the rules for the transmission, promotion and ultimately the protection and conservation of life. Among the Nawdeba of northern Togo,' the cultural representations of the universe, the human being, the social institutions and religious practices appear to have been conceived and organized in order to receive, fulfil and conserve human life. The social and religious practices aim at dispelling dangers which directly or indirectly threaten human life and its fulfilment. Christianity, in order to be credible and relevant as Good News among the Nawdeba, must incarnate itself in the people's struggle for life against the forces of anti-life.' Sickness, "ill living and ill dying"3 are for the Nawdeba the most dreadful anti-life forces, and thus are the targets of the therapeutic systems which aim at restoring health, good-living and gooddying in view of the perseverance in life. Sickness, health and salvation are, therefore, culturally defined and understood.4 My research seeks an understanding of sickness, healing, health and salvation in Luke- Acts, in so far as the restoration of health through the name of Jesus and faith in this name have become an occasion for preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins in that name to a Jewish audience. I will engage in a socio-cultural and theological reinterpretation of Peter's speech on the healing of the lame beggar in Acts 3:12-26. The question of the relevance of this speech as Christian scripture for evangelisation in a non-Jewish Christian context, requires an understanding of these notions of healing/health and salvation in that particular culture. I want to examine its relevance in the cultural context of the Nawdeba of Northern Togo. I am aiming at proposing a basis for a theology of sickness, healing/health and salvation among the Nawdeba. I will be answering, among others, basic questions such as: What was the meaning of this healing miracle for both the apostles and the people of Jerusalem, their co-believers? Was it essential to have a healing miracle in order to announce Jesus as Messiah and saviour in Jerusalem? Must today's preachers of the Good News, in the socio-cultural contexts of the Nawdeba perform healing miracles, as a necessary means for the proclamation of the word of God as Good News? What relationships exist between sickness, healings/health and salvation, in Luke-Acts, on the one hand and among the Nawdeba, on the other hand? Must there necessarily be healings/health in order to attain salvation? My objective is to attain the meaning(s) of the speech, hence, I have chosen the thematic approach. My criteria for structuring the speech for the exegesis will be thematic. The exegesis will be an analysis or commentary of the content of the identified themes. The analysis or commentary seeks to attain the sense of a theme. The structural unit thus, is the semantic theme. A theme conveys among other features, the views and intentions, the motivations, beliefs, values of the speaker, and to some extent of the hearers, inasmuch as there is communication between the two. The work will be divided into three chapters. The first chapter places the speech in Acts with the definition, type and function of this literary genre in Ancient Historiography and in the acts of the Apostles. After this preliminary step, comes the exegesis of the speech. The second chapter is a reflection on the meaning of salvation and its relationship to healing in Luke-Acts and in the cultural setting of the Nawdeba. The third or last chapter lays the foundations for the preaching of the mystery of Jesus in terms of healing and salvation among the Nawdeba.