Faith and Health in Africa

The Centre supports work connected through the topic Faith and Health in Africa.

Professor Emma Wild-Wood has been supporting Drs Yossa Way and Amuda Baba in D.R. Congo to improve the teaching of health in faith schools. This Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project emerged from an investigation during the COVID-19 pandemic that sought to examine ‘Perceptions of COVID-19 in faith communities in DR Congo’ and ‘Conflict, epidemic and faith communities: church-state relations during the fight against Covid-19 in north-eastern DR Congo’. From these investigations the team were able to reflect with church leaders on ‘Engaging faith communities in public health messaging in response to COVID-19’, and the production of a teaching resource on ‘Faith, Healing and Medicine in the time of COVID-19’.

These writings (all open access) were influenced by an earlier study, ‘The Public Role of Churches in Early Responses to COVID-19 in Africa: Snapshots from Nigeria, Congo, Kenya and South Africa’, published in our own Studies in World Christianity. In February 2023, workshops with church leaders, medical professionals and primary school teachers to test our research revealed the importance of schools for basic health knowledge. Primary school teachers instigated a teaching tool that combines Christian teaching with good health practices. It is this work that we hope to expand.

With the support of a Royal Society of Edinburgh grant, Professor Wild-Wood is also working with the Universities of Mzuzu and Livingstonia in Malawi and Kyambogo in Uganda to raise the profile of Theology and Religious Studies in the discourses about faith and health. In 2025 two conferences were held in Mzuzu and Kampala that brought academics, medical professionals and practitioners from all religious traditions to discuss the intersection of faith and healing practices. An edited volume is now underway.

Studies in World Christianity 32.1

Posted on 5 March 2026 by Emma Wild-Wood

Familiar Themes, New Angles

The articles in this issue present new angles on familiar themes within World Christianity. Translation, the regional histories of churches and organisations, material aspects of religious belonging, and diasporic Christianity are all explored here. Particular case-studies in specific geographical locations are examined in each article. Yet each article also acknowledges the ways that Christians in one area relate to those in another part of the world. The intersection of a specific context and the actors’ wider connections are the ingredients for exploring a theme for a fresh perspective.

In each of these articles, attention to a specific place and organisation allows the authors to examine new aspects of wider themes, furthering knowledge and understanding of World Christianity as both local and global, distinct and interconnected. Reading these articles, we observe how and why translation and interpretation of key concepts shaped a Christian movement, how far regional histories of global organisations and women’s groups in mission-initiated churches disseminate and adapt Christian practices and values. We learn in what ways material aspects of religious identity influence behaviour and belonging, and how diasporic churches live their fellowship in marginal and hostile environments.

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Centre for the Study of World Christianity

School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh