Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African ChristianityBerghahn Books, 01.05.2008 - 288 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. |
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... Watchtower movement during the early decades of the twentieth century nourished their fear that schooling might upset the colonial hierarchy. There was actually something in this: upon returning to Northern Rhodesia from the mines in ...
... Watchtower was potentially seditious and dangerous to public welfare.7 Attempts were thus made to suppress or at least to channel the religious movements. In the period up to the 1960s, Watchtower publications were continually being ...
... Watchtower millennium, because quieter but kindred gods were cemented into its very foundation, because the propagation of belief helped to maintain it erect' (1985: 21–22). She powerfully demonstrates how baptism and glossolalia in ...
... Watchtower 'activists'] sent me and I am Jehovah's (Lesa's) witness. This is my certificate.12 The expression 'to teach Chitawala' – that is, 'to teach Watchtower' – as well as the fact that the words 'to teach' and 'to preach' in these ...
... Watchtower movement often refused their children access to mission schools, and even much later the mission societies' schools were objects of contention. Violent conflicts with the Lumpa Church of the prophetess Alice Lenshina started ...
Inhalt
1 | |
31 | |
33 | |
CH 2Passages configurations traces | 53 |
CH 3Schooled literacy schooled religion | 71 |
Part IILiterate Religion | 83 |
CH 4Literate cultures in a material world | 85 |
CH 5Indices to the scriptural | 95 |
CH 10Setting Texts in Motion | 145 |
CH 11Missions in writing | 155 |
CH 12Enablements to literacy | 169 |
Part IVBureaucracy in the PentecostalCharismatic mode | 181 |
CH 13Offices and the Dispersion of Charisma | 183 |
CH 14Positions of writers positions in writings | 201 |
CH 15Outlines for the future documents of the immediate | 213 |
CH 16Bureaucracy inbetween | 227 |
CH 6The fringes of Christianity | 105 |
CH 7Thoughts about Religions of the book | 117 |
Part IIIWays of Reading | 123 |
CH 8Texts readers spirit | 125 |
CH 9Evanescence and the necessity of intermediation | 137 |
CH 17Epilogue | 243 |
Bibliography | 247 |
Index | 267 |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity Thomas G. Kirsch Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2008 |
Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity Thomas G. Kirsch Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2011 |