Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana
Ebook
It has been maintained that the secular nature of modern human rights makes them incompatible with the religious orientation of African and non-Western societies. However, in view of the resilience of religion in the global and local public sphere, it is important to explore how religion can contribute to the promotion and enjoyment of human rights.
Based on fieldwork conducted in Ghana, Abamfo Ofori Atiemo here establishes a convergence between human rights and local religious and cultural values in African societies. He argues that human rights represent universal 'dream values'. This allows for a cultural embedding of human rights in Ghana and other non-Western societies. He argues that 'dream values' are usually presented in religious language and proclaimed, for example, by prophets and seers or expressed in certain forms of taboo, proverbs or legal norms. He employs the concept of inculturation, adaptation of the way Church teachings are presented to non-Christian cultures, as a hermeneutical tool for developing a model to understand the encounter between universal human rights and local cultures.
Offering a new model for explaining the relation between religion and human rights, Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana offers a novel perspective on the links between global trends and local cultures underpinned by strong currents of religious ideas.
Explores the various ways in which religion in Ghana can contribute, or is already contributing, to the embedding of human rights in local cultures.
Based on original research in Ghana
Stimulates debate around the links between global trends and local cultures underpinned by religion
Offers a new model for explaining the relation between religion and human rights
1. Embedding Human Rights in Local Cultures: An African Imperative
2. Religion and Human Rights: Linking Tradition and Modernity
3. Inculturating Human Rights: The Localization of a Global Culture
4. Does Ghana have a Common Culture? Exploring Historical Processes of National Identity Construction
5. Locating Religion in Ghana: Exploring the Contours of Spiritual Capital
6. Human Rights in Traditional Ghana: Exploring Indigenous Ideas of Human Dignity and Rights
7. Human Rights in Contemporary Ghana: Fruitions and Possibilities
8. Translating Human Rights in Ghana: Rooting a Secular Idea in a Religious Worldview
9. Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana
Bibliography
Index
This is a profound, original and timely work, relating human rights to African cultures, traditions and religions as they evolve. Its conceptual and theoretical richness give it a significance far beyond Ghana.
This is a wonderfully researched work that takes the history and religious culture of the societies examined into account.
- Title: Religion and the Inculturation of Human Rights in Ghana
- Author: Abamfo Ofori Atiemo
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781441134561, 9781472589934, 1472589939, 1441134565
- Resource ID: LLS:9781441134561
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T09:22:55Z
Abamfo Ofori Atiemo is Senior Lecturer and Head of Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana, Legon.