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. |
Im Buch
Ergebnisse 1-5 von 51
... actually used in this empirical setting then seems to require no further elucidation in this approach. In the final analysis this transposition of diachronic categories into synchronic settings therefore produces a problematic ...
... actually had its precursors under colonialism. Mission,. School. and. Printing. Press. Right from the very start, the introduction of Christianity into southern Africa by European and American missionaries was intimately linked to school ...
... actually developed a 'book-sense' of a different kind. This difference still had to do with what Bruwer had already indicated in 1944: the problem of illumination, the crucial role of public readings and a certain disinclination to ...
... actually started to set up non-denominational primary and secondary schools. In 1935, only 2 per cent of the school population were enrolled in government schools; ten years later, it was 6.5 per cent (Henkel 1989: 131). Up to the mid ...
... actually opened – their own schools and made schooling a 'political battlefield' (Fields 1985: 238; cf. Berman 1974; Ranger 1965a; Summers 2002). Parents belonging to the early Watchtower movement often refused their children access to ...
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 |