Religious Entanglements

Central African Pentecostalism, the Creation of Cultural Knowledge, and the Making of the Luba Katanga
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-299-33750-6
Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Africa and the Diaspora: History, Politics, Culture

Under the leadership of William F. P. Burton and James Salter, the Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM) grew from a simple faith movement founded in 1915 into one of the most successful classical Pentecostal missions in Africa, today boasting more than one million members in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Drawing on artifacts, images, documents, and interviews, David Maxwell examines the roles of missionaries and their African collaborators—the Luba-speaking peoples of southeast Katanga—in producing knowledge about Africa.
 
Through the careful reconstruction of knowledge pathways, Maxwell brings into focus the role of Africans in shaping texts, collections, and images as well as in challenging and adapting Western-imported presuppositions and prejudices. Ultimately, Maxwell illustrates the mutually constitutive nature of discourses of identity in colonial Africa and reveals not only how the Luba shaped missionary research but also how these coproducers of knowledge constructed and critiqued custom and convened new ethnic communities.

Making a significant intervention in the study of both the history of African Christianity and the cultural transformations effected by missionary encounters across the globe, Religious Entanglements excavates the subculture of African Pentecostalism, revealing its potentiality for radical sociocultural change.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Politik, Religionsfreiheit
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein Missionswissenschaft, Missionsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations

- Introduction
- 1 Primitivism and Pragmatism in the Making of the Congo Evangelistic Mission
- 2 Luba Transformations Prior to 1910
- 3 Continuity and Change in the Luba Christian Movement
- 4 Missions and the State: The Challenge of Pentecostalism
- 5 “Acquainting Oneself with the Enemy”: Making Knowledge about Africa
- 6 Pathways to Knowledge
- 7 The Creation of Lubaland: Missionary Science and Christian Literacy in the Making of the Luba Katanga
- 8 Finding God among the Luba: Missionary Conversions and Epiphanies
- Postscript: Postcolonial Developments
- Conclusion: Pentecostalism, Knowledge Creation, and Religious Change
- Notes
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

David Maxwell is the Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge and a professorial fellow at Emmanuel College in Cambridge.