Seven Varieties of Ambiguity: Some Patterns of Igbo* Response To Christian Missions

Abstract

SEVEN VARIETIES OF AMBIGUITY: SOME PATTERNS OF IGBO* RESPONSE TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 1 BY ELIZABETH ISICHEI (University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania) Anyone who writes in brief compass on a theme of this kind is immediately confronted by a number of difficulties and pitfalls. The most obvious is the danger of abstraction. Can one meaningfully reduce the almost infinite variety of responses in a society as various as Igboland, to a phenomenon as complex as the missionary impact, to any shortland which bears a meaningful relationship to reality? To adapt the words of a recent sensitive essay on the same theme in