Philip Jenkins is a professor who has written extensively on Chritianity in the "Global South."
Here is a brief interview with him on how Africans tend to view the bible, published on Christianity Today:
God's Word in an Old Light | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
You say that some theological issues touch global South Christians with more immediacy than they do Western Christians.
For many Africans, many of the literary genres and themes in the Old Testament are their themes. One of the familiar problems for African Christianity is not so much getting them to take the Old Testament seriously; it's getting them to subordinate it to the New. Then there is the whole issue of sacrifice, atonement, and blood. If you come from a society in which those are normal, familiar concepts, then it does make it easy to appreciate the language and the thought.
There are also particular genres which don't make much sense in the West anymore. Wisdom literature [says] your life is a mist, you don't know if you're going to be here tomorrow, so live accordingly. If you live in a society where the average age of death is in the mid-30s, then comments about your life being a mist have a real power.
If the above interview was of interest to you, go here for an extensive excerpt from his newest book:
"Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
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