What Is Christianity?

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What Is Christianity?

Many people wonder what christianity is all about. The Bible explains that a human being consists of both a body and soul. The purpose of Christ’s ministry was to save the soul of mankind and raise up the body. In fact, between twenty to eleven percent of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ public ministry were devoted to reports of physical healings and exorcisms. Christians believe that their lives should be shaped by their experience of the miraculous.

Africans read the Bible in a tangible way. In many cases, they encounter God doing miracles while the gospel spreads, proving the power of the word of God. Miracle healings and accounts of Jesus visions lead to conversions and protection, and deliverance from attacks. These experiences have become a central part of African Christianity. While missionaries may have initially faced opposition in Africa, indigenous churches were born in the continent.

Wagner’s work on the Third Wave was also a critique of the dominant paradigms of the Enlightenment and mainstream evangelicalism. Rather than see the spiritual realm as a marginalized part of a Christian community, southern Christianity rejected both its subaltern global position as a mission field and as a leader of missions. Rather, southern Christianity emphasized the spiritual strength of subaltern southerners and their advanced knowledge of the demonic.

In the same vein, charismatic truths, such as the one that the apostles claim to be speaking in “other tongues” and “cloven tongues of fire,” are problematic. These types of truths lack the transformative power of the word “truth” and are based on a performative position, rather than an objective one. In these cases, the only evidence of a supernatural event is a person’s personal convictions.