The science and faith debate is dominated by Western voices. In order to enrich this debate, the authors study the discourses of different groups of Christian academics and master's students in francophone Africa. This article describes the process of reconstructing and analyzing the discourse of a group of master's students from Abidjan (Ivory Coast) with the help of group model building and focus groups. Three characteristic features that emerge from this discourse include the foundational position of faith, the central role (...) of truth, and the ambiguous connotations of the term “science” in this context. The reconstructed discourse is then brought into conversation with the North Atlantic debate, with a special focus on the concept of scientism. (shrink)

In the post-colonial era, the incarnation has become an important model for cross-cultural missionary presence. Though this model improves on Eurocentric and colonial models, it is deficient because it is unrealistic, potentially paternalistic, inappropriate in the light of globalization and post-modern understandings of culture, and because it doesn’t sufficiently respect the particularity of the incarnation of Christ. This article proposes an alternative model of the role of the cross-cultural missionary as a guest and argues that it is more appropriate on (...) precisely these counts. (shrink)