Faith Borders, Healing Territories & Interconnective Frontier? Wellness & Its Ecumenical Construct in African Shrines, Christian Prayerhouses & Hospitals

Authors

  • Michael Matthew

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34019/2236-6296.2019.v22.29619

Abstract

The religious geography of most health-seekers in modern Africa easily transverses the faith worlds of other religious traditions, thus building inevitably a lively-network of ecumenical spaces that surprisingly create an interpenetrating dialogue between African traditional shrines, Christian prayerhouses and western hospitals. The open-border policy of healing sites in Nigeria and Ghana in particular provides ecumenical directions and enriches interfaith conversations among different religious traditions. Consequently, the present study underscores the subversion of the dogmatic rhetoric of the different faith traditions in the quest of health and wholeness at healing sites. This ecumenical triangulation of the faith-borders projects a new religious landscape where the hostile rhetoric of faith traditions are clearly suspended, and a new appreciation of other faiths in definition of health and wellness is popularly entrenched. The existential blurring of dogmatic and traditional faith-borders raises new questions—and interesting perspectives in the modern study of religions, health and inter-faith/ecumenism in Africa.

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Published

2020-02-11

How to Cite

MATTHEW, M. Faith Borders, Healing Territories & Interconnective Frontier? Wellness & Its Ecumenical Construct in African Shrines, Christian Prayerhouses & Hospitals. Numen, [S. l.], v. 22, n. 1, p. 240–260, 2020. DOI: 10.34019/2236-6296.2019.v22.29619. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/numen/article/view/29619. Acesso em: 22 nov. 2024.

Issue

Section

Religiões Africanas e Afrodiaspóricas