Word: christian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Before the missionary era, the only Christianized black nation was Ethiopia, whose austere art style remained largely unchanged since the Middle Ages. When the first missionaries arrived in other parts of Africa in the 15th century, they sought to stamp out tribal religions and with them idols, ceremonial masks and ancestral images. The artistic tug-of-war intensified during the 19th century as the number of Christian missions mushroomed...
Serious theological problems can arise when Africanization uses symbols and myths from the pre-Christian faiths. Fearing syncretism in a continent where communion with the spirits and ancestors remains a powerful belief, most Protestants are exceedingly cautious about all the visual arts. Zaire's indigenous Kimbanguist Church strictly forbids decoration except on preachers' and singers' robes. But many Anglicans, once hesitant, are enthusiasts for the new church art. Methodist theologian Dkalimbo Kajoba encourages art so long as it is for "decoration," not "adoration...
...illustrated and represented as supernatural manifestations. This is the basis of our art. We are still interlinked with nature." More radically, Cameroon's Father Mveng wants to fling the church doors wide open to fetishes and magic charms. In Africa's interreligious melange, Muslims are creating images for Christian churches that are not allowed in mosques. Animists are decorating Christian churches. Father Carroll's school produced, as well as Christian art, pillars for temples serving ancestral faiths...
...cultural distinctiveness. Cecil Skotnes, one of the handful of creative white religious artists in South Africa, insists, "Urgency is the basis of all great art. This urgency is no longer apparent in European or U.S. art." That judgment may be too sweeping. Yet there is no question that African Christian art, serene and savage, florid and austere, stands virtually alone in the vigor and authenticity with which its practitioners seek to express the inexpressible...
Supreme Court Justices seldom allow themselves to get caught in the rough-and- tumble of local politics. So eyebrows rose when a letter written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was used by archconservative Arizona Republicans to formulate a resolution proclaiming that the U.S. is a "Christian nation...