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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Ergebnisse 1-5 von 22
... oral cultures when, for instance, they address the 'consequences of literacy per se in African religion' (Janzen 1985). Yet, although the idea ofa 'great divide' between 'orality' and 'literacy' has convincingly been criticized for ...
... oral testimonies of the work of his father (Hexham and Oosthuizen 1996: xi–xiv). In several of these cases the act of composing and/or dealing with religious texts was linked to spiritual entities. In her book Alice Lakwena and the Holy ...
... oral cultures. Street argues: that Goody overstates the significance that can be attributed to literacy in itself; [he] understates the qualities of oral communication; sets up unhelpful and often untestable polarities between, for ...
... oral and literate modes of communication in a way that gives insufficient credit to the reality of 'mixed' and interacting modes. Despite the density and complexity of social detail in Goody's descriptions of literacy practice, there is ...
... oral' and 'literate' religions. The present book thus takes a partially different route by starting from the assumption that there exist other conceptual notions – such as 'the Letter and the Spirit' – which can productively be employed ...
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 |