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 22
... Christianity, my ethnographic descriptions are written in the past tense. This represents an attempt to account for the particularities of a socio-religious setting that I experienced as extremely dynamic. Thirdly, all quotations from ...
... religious practices. My contact with the Spirit Apostolic Church (SAC) also resulted from the survey of 1993. After ... socio-cultural background, secondly the history of Christianity in southern Zambia, and thirdly the main characteristics ...
... religions of the book' in Chapter 8, develops the concept of 'literacy enablement'. This concept relates to those activities, qualities and devices which, in a particular socio-religious field, are seen as necessary for attempting to ...
... religious practices of spiritually endowed church leaders, however, would itself bring the secretary closer to God ... socio-religious identities, they involved a complex bureaucratic-charismatic configuration that for the most part ...
... religious authority. 2. E. Keller similarly remarks that 'sober types of ... socio-cultural definitions. However, as neo-institutionalist perspectives ... religious practitioners to immateriality. 8. See, for example, Behrend (1999: 148 ...
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 |