AFRICAN WOMEN, RELIGION, AND HEALTH: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF MERCY AMBA EWUDZIWA ODUYOYE: By Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar (eds). 280pp. New York: Orbis Books, 2006. $35.00 paperback, ISBN 10:1620320924

J Relig Health (2016) 55:350354 DOI 10.1007/s10943-015-0153-z

BOOK REVIEW

AFRICAN WOMEN, RELIGION, AND HEALTH: ESSAYS IN HONOR OF MERCY AMBA EWUDZIWA ODUYOYE

By Isabel Apawo Phiri and Sarojini Nadar (eds). 280pp. New York: Orbis Books, 2006. $35.00 paperback, ISBN 10:1620320924

Published online: 7 November 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

The book takes a broad look at the daily gender-related struggles of African women in their quest to nd answers to their emotional, social, and health challenges as they seek out to commune with God. In other words, the authors wrote about the intersections of health and religion among African women in honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoyes conceptualizations of African women theology. This was done as a way to pay respect for Oduyoyes contributions to the discipline of religion and culture, and theology. Through her timeless work, Mercy has earned a title for herself as a leading African woman theologian among her colleagues at the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (also known as the Circle).

The prevailing paradigms of cultural and religious conditions which impact marginality along gender margins affect womens health in African communities. Through utilizing methodologies created by Mercy Oduyoye, each of the contributors in this book, motivated by her work, have penciled out the different unique ways African women respond to gender- and health-related issues in an attempt to answer Mercys famous call for echoing the call of Jesus to the daughter of Jairus; but this time this invitation is extended to the women of Africa to raiseTalitha cumi (cf. Mark 5:41).

The idea behind the book is to encourage the women of Africa to tread softly but rmly in sharing their unique stories while doing theology. The thrust of her argument is clear, as she has demonstrated in her fruitful works; thereby encouraging fellow African women theologians in the Circle click and indeed the world to listen to and remedy the calm whispers that are coming from African women in the rural communities whose stories are not appropriately represented within the spectrum of religion. Basically, the concern of the contributors in this book is for the healthy relationship between the church and culture within the African communities in the context of health and gender conversations.

The idea of...