Inside the Whirlwind

How would ordinary African Christians interpret the figure and book of Job--the quintessential biblical book on suffering--from contexts of extreme poverty, tropical disease, and rampant suffering? How do African Christians culturally understand issues of theodicy and the nature of evil? What role does the devil play in African Pentecostalism? How does the biblical lament empower faith and foster hope for people living with HIV/AIDS? In what way does a theology of (eschatological) hope inform the spirituality and prayers of ordinary African believers in the midst of suffering? Inside the Whirlwind offers insight on these fascinating questions. Based upon the perspectives of Fang Christians in Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea (Central Africa), the thematic and theological reflections on evil, suffering, and hope emerging from sermons and Bible studies on the book of Job offer a remarkable window to view the main theological issues shaping grassroots African Christianity in the twenty-first century. ""Inside the Whirlwind is a wonderful exploration of what a genuine encounter with African Christianity really looks like. This is contextual theology at its best."" --Timothy Tennent, President, Professor of World Christianity, Asbury Theological Seminary & ""Jason Carter's Inside the Whirlwind: The Book of Job through African Eyes is a major intervention in contemporary scholarship on the reading, reception, and uses of the Christian Scriptures in an African context. Through skillfully focusing on the reading practices of Christian communities in the Central African nation of Equatorial Guinea, Carter shows how the Book of Job is creatively mobilized by these readers to address a range of pressing local concerns, including the HIV-AIDS pandemic. He persuasively shows how readers find new grammars of affliction and suffering in the biblical text, using its narratives to offer redemptive interpretations of misfortune. Carter's book will be enthusiastically received by readers within Biblical Studies, Theology, and African Studies."" --Joel Cabrita, Lecturer in World Christianities, University of Cambridge ""In this volume Rev. Dr. Jason Carter provides insights into African religiosity in Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa, focusing particularly on historic missionary Christianity and new Pentecostal and Charismatic expressions. The Book of Job in the Bible is often used as rationalization of the contradiction Africans experience between extreme affluence and extreme destitution. This volume adds penetrating theological insights to the accumulating scholarship on African Christianity in this Third Millennium."" --Jesse N.K. Mugambi, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Nairobi ""Too much writing on African theology is at home in the university lecture hall but remote from the lives of ordinary Christians in their villages and townships. Jason Carter's study of popular interpretations of the book of Job among the Fang of Equatorial Guinea is a decided exception. Based on careful participant observation and a deep knowledge of Fang cosmology, Carter's book raises profound and unsettling questions for all rose-tinted interpretations of modern African Christianity. He calls on theology in Africa--and by implication in the North as well--to consider afresh whether it is in danger of losing its central focus on the sovereignty of God."" --Brian Stanley, Professor of World Christianity, Director for the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh ""For many of us living in the affluent West, the book of Job focuses on exceptional suffering, in the context of a mystical cosmic battle, in a world far from our experience. We read it theoretically or when we encounter unexpected loss or suffering, but few of us would look at the book through the eyes of normative living in the context of ongoing spiritual warfare. But for our brothers and sisters in many African contexts, Job's hards