Abstract

Some contemporary adherents of African Traditional Religion denounce Christianity as irrelevant and meaningless to Africans. They commend their religion as a viable alternative to Christianity in Africa. Using Paul Ricoeur's philosophy as a source, the dissertation formulates an apologetic methodological model. The first two chapters present the major apologetic problem as a lack of an adequate understanding of the significance of some themes of African Traditional Religion in the task of interpreting Christianity in Africa. ;An exposition and structural description of the major themes of African Traditional Religion, in chapter three, demonstrates that African religious myths and rites constitute a symbolic expression of African experience of the manifestations of sacred reality. Chapters four and five state the methodological components of Ricoeur's theory of interpretation and their application to the phenomenological understanding of the symbols of African Traditional Religion and the central symbols of Christianity. The chapters also demonstrate the phenomenological pre-eminence of Christian symbols over their approximate parallels in African Traditional Religion. ;The conclusion enunciates the methodological principles involved in the process of an adaptation of the Ricoeurian theory of interpretation in the construction of a wholistic and adequate Christian apologetic in Africa. Ricoeur's philosophy only leads to the threshold of such an apologetic by showing that the central Christian symbols fulfill and transcend their approximate parallels in African Traditional Religion. The Christian apologist in Africa must move beyond Ricoeur's method of detached phenomenological analysis and comparison. He must engage himself in a passionate and aggressive personal dialogical encounter with devotees of African Traditional Religion with a conscious effort to convert them to Christianity