Rev. Esther E. Acolatse, (Ph. D Princeton Seminary) is Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology and Intercultural Studies at the University of Toronto. She taught at Duke Divinity School for many years, before that.
Her current research explores the intersection of Psychology and Christian thought, with interests in gender and the experience of Christianity, methodological issues in the practice of theology of the Christian life, and the relevance of these themes in the global expression of Christianity. She was born and raised in Accra, Ghana.
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For Freedom or Bondage?: A Critique of African Pastoral Practices
In Ghana today, many people who suffer from a variety of human ills wander from one pastor to another in search of a spiritual cure. Because of the way cultural beliefs about the spiritual world have interwoven with their Christian faith, many Ghanaian Christians live in bondage to their fears of evil spiritual powers, seeing Jesus as a superior power to use against these malevolent spiritual forces.
In For Freedom or Bondage? Esther Acolatse argues that Christian pastoral practices in many African churches include too much influence from African traditional religions. She examines Ghana Independent Charismatic churches as a case study, offering theological and psychological analysis of current pastoral care practices through the lenses of Barth and Jung. Facilitating a three-strand conversation between African traditional religion, Barthian theology, and Jungian analytical psychology, Acolatse interrogates problematic cultural narratives and offers a more nuanced approach to pastoral care.
₵120.00 -
Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit: Biblical Realism in Africa and the West
Among the many factors that separate churches in the West from those of the global South, there may be no greater difference than their respective attitudes toward supernatural “powers and principalities.”
In this follow-up to her book For Freedom or Bondage? African theologian Esther Acolatse bridges the enormous hermeneutical gap not only between the West and global Christianity but also between the West and its own biblical-theological heritage.
₵120.00