“What must I do to be saved?” That question, raised in the book of Acts by the Philippian jailer, is a question for the ages. Yet what, even, does it mean to be saved? Is salvation for this life or the next? Is it purely spiritual or does it have physical and material implications? Can salvation be lost? Do we determine who will be saved or does God? What role does Christ play in salvation? Such are the seemingly unending questions soteriology strives to answer. In this eighth volume from the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology, African theologians articulate their understanding of salvation – and its widespread implications for life and practice – in conversation with Scripture and the rich diversity of an African cultural context. Salvation is examined from historical, philosophical, and theological lenses, and scholars address topics as wide-ranging as conversion, ethnicity, fertility, poverty, prosperity, the Trinity, exclusivism, African Pentecostalism, rural community, eschatology, wholeness, and atonement. It is a powerful exploration of the holistic nature of salvation as articulated in Scripture and understood by the African church.

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Baylor University, 2007 under title: The material in salvific discourse: a study of two Christian perspectives.

During the Civil War, traditional history tells us, Afro-Christianity proved a strong force for slaves' perseverance and hope of deliverance. In Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation, however, Daniel Fountain raises the possibility that Afro-Christianity played a less significant role within the antebellum slave community than most scholars currently assert. Bolstering his argument with a quantitative survey of religious behavior and WPA slave narratives, Fountain presents a new timeline for the African American conversion experience. Both the survey and the narratives reveal that fewer than 40 percent of individuals who gave a datable conversion experience had become Christians prior to acquiring freedom. Fountain pairs the survey results with an in-depth examination of the obstacles within the slaves' religious landscape that made conversion more difficult if not altogether unlikely, including infrequent access to religious instruction, the inconsistent Christian message offered to slaves, and the slaves' evolving religious identity. Furthermore, he provides other possible explanations for beliefs that on the surface resembled Christianity but in fact adhered to traditional African religions. Fountain maintains that only after emancipation and the fulfillment of the predicted Christian deliverance did African Americans more consistently turn to Christianity. Freedom, Fountain contends, brought most former slaves into the Christian faith. Provocative and enlightening, Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation redefines the role of Christianity within the slave community.

Reexamines the first twenty years of the East African revival movement in Uganda, 1935-1955, arguing that through the movement African Christians articulated and developed a unique spiritual lifestyle.

In the words of John Paul II, «A faith which does not become culture is a faith that has not been received, not thoroughly thought (through), nor fully lived out». It is for this reason that inculturation hermeneutics has become a useful reflective tool for many African students of Theology. In this work, the author argues that the concept of salvation in evangelical Christian thought as postulated in the works of the French Reformer John Calvin and that of African Traditional Religions do not connote the same idea nor lead to the same goals. In spite of the basic differences, he states that symbols, metaphors and some practices from the traditional religions of Africa can be employed as hermeneutical tools for the explanation of concepts of the Christian faith. The author therefore concludes that the Anlo-Ewe traditional religious practice of nugbidodo-ritual reconciliation best explains Christian salvation as man's reconciliation with God and constitutes a basis for the healing, deliverance, and a socio-economic advancement of the individual and the entire community.