Christianity in Igboland: Opportunities, Problems and Emerging Expressions

Resumen

Igbo cultural environment can be seen as the setting in which the Igbo have lived out their political, economic and cultural everyday lives within the framework of religion and morality. Upon this cultural environment, Christianity was established from 1857 onward leaving the Igbo with diverse experiences. On one side of the experience was a completely new sense of transformation, but on the other hand, Christianity left the Igbo society topsy-turvy, manifesting in cultural crisis that hacked seriously on the Igbo worldview. Using some historical and sociological methods of inquiry, it was mirrored that this state of affairs could either lead to persons exposed to them being cultural hybrids, not at home with the traditional settings or the new social order engendered by Christian missionary activities, and therefore divided personalities, or else, it could lead to a new synthesis of adaptation of the old and the new, to the greater enrichment of life. This was the case with Igbo Christians; hence they evolved somewhat evolutionary expressions in Igbo Christian spirituality, demanding a new interpretation of Christianity in the context of their experiences and cultural environment that would be related and relevant to Igbo worldview and institutions as well as their symbolic interpretation of reality.