Browsing by Author "Isiko, Alexander Paul"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Pentecostal Reinventions of the Passover: Contextual Reflections on the End of Year Night Worship Festivals in Uganda
(Journal for the Study of Religion, 2024-12-13) Isiko, Alexander Paul; Kisekka, Enock
Pentecostal scholarship in and about Africa is a vibrant arena in world Christianity, with an upswing in the proliferation of scholarly works on Pentecostal Churches and its centrality in the political and social fabric of African societies. Pentecostalism has been hailed for revival of Christian conservatism in Sub-Saharan Africa, predominated by the nominal Roman Catholics and Protestant Christianity. While some authors have studied African Pentecostalism with prejudgments based on other Christian traditions, some have hailed the theological innovations in healing and evangelism. The study of the Pentecostal end of year worship festivals unravels one of the innovations that justifies the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism, promulgating theologies and traditions on the one hand, and reinventing Judeo-Christian practices in African perspectives, which in a sense give African Pentecostal Churches a claim to divine originality, on the other. In another way, theologies, traditions, and practices emerging from the observance of the annual Pentecostal worship festivals place African Pentecostal Churches among the towering African Christian traditions, which then borrow rather than debunk such Pentecostal theological innovations. This article therefore discusses the Pentecostal Church reinvention of the ancient Jewish Passover festival to mirror the lives of African Christians in contemporary contexts. The ‘contextual theology’ analysis is employed to reflect on both the Jewish Passover and annual Pentecostal worship festivals, with a view of establishing how Passover (non-)parallels and reinventions have produced African Pentecostal theologies, traditions, and practices defining the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism.
Researching Religion and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa: The Contribution of African Scholars
(Journal of Religion in Africa, 2024-08-08) Isiko, Alexander Paul
Abstract Studying religious phenomena in an era when religion was grossly curtailed as a conveyer of COVID-19 proved to be an unusual challenge. This called for innovative approaches and methodologies that differed from the conventional ones in religious research. An assessment of the thematic concerns, methodological approaches, and challenges faced at a time when the global shutdown and quarantine had significantly affected academic research is timely. However, the normative reference to and comparison with Western scholarship on religion overshadows the contribution of African scholars in global studies on religion, which portrays African scholars as demonstrating conspicuous scholarly silence on issues that affect their continent. This article addresses this problem by highlighting the works and contribution of African scholars to the study of religion and COVID-19 to emphasize their visibility in the global production of knowledge. It further analyses African scholars’ attempt to accentuate African society’s interface with the pandemic.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious leaders in Uganda
(Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025-02) Isiko, Alexander Paul ; Mukisa, Joy Isabirye
The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for all categories and communities of people the world over. Its impact on religious practice, religious congregants, and all mankind has been profound. Precursory studies have underscored the significant contribution of religious leaders in mitigating the pandemic. However, few studies exist on the impact of the pandemic upon clerics in their own right as individuals and frontline agents in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, religious leaders are not distinct from other categories of persons and are, therefore, not exonerated from the effects of the pandemic. It examines their contact with the disease, and how they were affected in carrying out COVID-19 mitigating measures. Using qualitative methods of enquiry, forty religious leaders from Christian denominations and the Islamic faith formed the study population. It was established that religious leaders experienced physical, psychological, and socio-economic hardships emanating from their personal experience of the disease on one hand and as societies’ frontline mitigating agents against the pandemic on the other. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among clerics in Uganda varied according to religious affiliation, gender, and rural-urban divide. In attempts to provide auxiliary support to mitigate the pandemic and attend to their own struggles, clerics suffered a double tragedy of trauma. The pandemic experience also changed clerics’ opinions as they attempted to manage and adapt to the situation.
Ubuntu and unsustainable environmental practices in Uganda: the case of sand mining and rice farming
(Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025-03-01) Ssebunya, Margaret; Kisitu, Gyaviira ; Isiko, Alexander Paul
Self-destruction in pursuit of economic development through reckless exploitation of nature and failure to address environmental contaminants is overly evident within Uganda. Even though the Ugandan context would traditionally subscribe to the Ubuntu ethic of existential bond, interrelatedness, interdependence, and interconnectedness between people and the environment, this remains challenged amid the country's increasing pursuit of economic development. While the sand mining and rice farming investments are key to the national economic development of Uganda, their tendency to employ unsustainable environmental practices compromises the health and sustenance of people in Uganda and leads to environmental deterioration. In this chapter, we explore sand mining and rice farming practices in the Lwera wetland that have altered the physical appearance and hydrology of the land, resulting in massive flooding, which in turn leads to the destruction of people’s property, public road infrastructure, and displacement of people. We argue that these practices in their present state lead to an ongoing ecological scandal that runs parallel to the ethics of interdependence of individuals and the environment. Unavoidably, they have increasingly impaired the interconnectedness between humanity and nature and have also brought about pseudo-development, which is incompatible with human dignity. The ecological scandal faced by the country is a prompt to get back to the core principle of Ubuntu, noting that the wellbeing of Ugandan society is indispensable from its dependence on and interdependence with the natural environment. The key question that we seek to answer is: How can the African ethic of Ubuntu be used to influence the values and behavioral change of the sand mining and rice farming investors in Uganda to positively contribute to the country's economic development without ruining the environment?