De Beer, Stephan F.2024-07-112024-07-112023-08-07De Beer, Stephan. 2023. ‘Housing’ as Christian Social Practice in African Cities: Centering the Urban Majority Theologically. Religions 14: 1009. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14081009.2077-1444 (online)10.3390/rel14081009http://hdl.handle.net/2263/96936Decent, affordable housing and secure housing tenure remain elusive for Africa’s urban majority. The urban majority is expected to live in self-help housing, reflected in the fact that 62% of African urban dwellers live in urban informal settlements. The inability to access safe, decent, and secure housing, and the reality that Africa’s urban majority is perpetually precarious, have a severe impact on Africa’s urban households and the well-being of individuals, families, and neighborhoods. This article articulates housing as a critical and urgent Christian social practice in African cities—an extension of the church’s pastoral and missional concern. It considers housing both as a product and a process: people need housing to live secure lives; yet, the process of housing is as critical as the outcome. It then proposes housing, as a Christian social practice, being engaged in (i) supporting precarious households; (ii) preventing homelessness; (iii) creating housing; (iv) supporting rightsbased land and housing movements; and (v) centering housing pastorally–liturgically. The article grounds itself in Jean-Marc Ela’s insistence on God’s presence ‘in the hut of a mother whose granary is empty’ and in Letty Russell’s ‘household of freedom’.en© 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.African urbanisationHousingPrecarious householdsPreventing homelessnessRights-based landHousing movementsSDG-11: Sustainable cities and communitiesArticle