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Originally Posted by photon
So much this.
I think socioeconomic disparities are a factor, you mention homosexuality as a capital crime from NA Christians but that kind of thing is going on in Uganda, a very much Christian nation (they dropped the death penalty though so it's just life in prison now, yay!).
Homosexuality is illegal in many other African countries that would be considered Christian too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_ri...y_or_territory |
Yeah, I agree. But how much of the socioeconomic disparity also tied to the slow embrace throughout Africa for modernity? There are reports of explosions of conservative Christianity all over the subcontinent, and this is arguably occurring as a result of the cultural overlap that already exists between modern, third-world, tribalised Africa and critically flaccid expressions of "authentic" Christianity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
As you say Christianity has reinvented itself over and over to stay relevant in a changing society, aren't Muslims living in more "modern" societies (for lack of a better term) doing that on a small scale too? Whereas in Afghanistan Islam doesn't have to change because it still fits the surrounding society.
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Again, I tend to agree, but the process of change seems practically glacial by way of comparison to what happened in the Renaissance. I tend to think that some of this is also affected by fiercely natural "insider/outsider" community formation that provides another layer of insulation for the entire Islamic world. Where the Protestant Reformation was a grass-roots internal movement that changed the culture from within, Islamic traditionalists are also reacting against what they perceive to be an imperial threat: The western roots of modernity are reducing the process to a rather depressing, seemingly insurmountable standstill.