Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity

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Berghahn Books, 2008 - 274 Seiten

Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise 'the Spirit' and 'the Letter' as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between 'charisma' and 'institution' by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.

Im Buch

Inhalt

Acknowledgements
7
CharismaSpiritOrality InstitutionLetterLiteracy
8
Spirit and Letter in African Christianity
15
The Fieldwork
21
Colonial Literacies
33
Passages Configurations Traces
53
Schooled Literacy Schooled Religion
71
Literate Cultures in a Material World
85
10
145
Missions in Writing
155
Enablements to Literacy
169
Offices and the Dispersion of Charisma
183
18
185
22
196
Positions of Writers Positions in Writings
201
21
212

Indices to the Scriptural
95
The Fringes of Christianity
105
Thoughts about Religions of the Book
117
Texts Readers Spirit
125
1
130
8
136
Evanescence and the Necessity of Intermediation
137
Outlines for the Future Documents of the Immediate
213
Bureaucracy Inbetween
227
Epilogue
243
22
250
41
259
74
269
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Autoren-Profil (2008)

Thomas G. Kirsch is professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Konstanz. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in 2002 and taught at the Department of Anthropology and Philosophy in Halle (Saale) and at the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, before coming to the University of Konstanz in 2009. Between 1993 and 2001, he conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Zambia. He has published a book on African Christianity in Zambia and articles in some of the major refereed journals for anthropology and sociology in Germany. Other articles were published in the journals American Anthropologist (2004), Visual Anthropology (2006) and American Ethnologist (2007). Since 2003, he has also conducted fieldwork and published on issues of human safety, security and crime prevention in South Africa.

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