African Independent Churches

La figure complexe du révérend pasteur Ntumi, personnage souvent réduit au rang d’« illuminé » ou de « marionnette du pouvoir », ne se laisse pas facilement appréhender. Cet article, sans prétendre à une analyse exhaustive du prophète et de son mouvement, en offre une lecture circonstanciée à l’aune des prophétismes congolais, de la géographie spirituelle du Pool et des séquences historiques récentes qui ont rythmé le « prophétisme guerrier » de Ntumi. L’étude révèle aussi plusieurs aspects méconnus du mouvement Nsilulu (sa dimension rituelle, ses dispositifs thérapeutiques et divinatoires, ses représentations symboliques, etc.) et discute ses rapports ambigus avec le mouvement prophétique protestant Nsikumusu, à la ligne de partage entre prophétismes violent et non violent.

The expansion of transnational African Pentecostal denominations tends to overshadow the dynamics specific to African Prophetism. In an ultra-competitive religious market dominated by revival churches, some emerging movements propose alternatives. For example, the Louzolo-Amour Association, arising out of the Kongo area’s prophetic lineage, stands out in its ability to respond to its followers’ need for solutions – whether therapeutic or meaningful, and in its theological inventiveness and ritual aesthetics. In the varied landscape of African Christian denominations, the Louzolo-Amour Association’s appeal rests on its offer to followers that they can live a religious adventure while incorporating a spiritual universe.

Klaus Koschorke, «"'Dialectics of the Three Selves": The ideal of a "self-governing" native church -from a missionary concept to an emancipatory slogan of Asian and African Christians in the 19th and early 20th centuries», in "InternationaIising Higher Education: From South Africa to England via New Zealand: Essays in honour of Professor Gerald Pillay", eds. Hoffie (J W) Hofmeyr and John Stenhouse (Centurion, South Africa: Mediakor, 2018): 127-142.

Religions of the world view disability differently. Judaism, Islam and other Semitic religions regard it as a curse from God due to sins of either the parents or the individual. African Traditional Religion regards disability as a curse from the ancestors or the whole blame is cast on the mother of the disabled. In Hinduism, disability is believed to be linked to " karma " , sins that have been committed in past lives. It is a punishment for misdeeds in the past lives of the People with Disability, or the wrongdoings of their parents. Buddhists believe that disability is a result of having done something negative in a former life. Most religions of the world construe disability as a result of sin. Christianity today has mixed feelings towards disability. Some denominations consider it to be a result of sin while others take it as a biological issue and has nothing to do with sin. Christianity is diverse hence it has diverse views on disability. It is against this background that this paper would like to reflect on the role of Pentecostal churches in curbing the marginalisation of people with disability. The paper would assess the initiatives of Pentecostal churches in addressing the issues of disability. Documentary analysis supported by interviews and personal observations shall be used to gather data for this paper.

In this paper, I will examine the use of language to colonize the other from a slightly different angle.  Most postcolonial debates focus on the imposition of the colonizer’s language on the colonized, its impact on the colonized and the strategies of resistance, but I will examine the use of the language of the colonized to subjugate them.  I will be examining ‘the colonization of local language[s]’ such that they no longer serve the interest of their original cultures, but indeed, become weapons that victimize the original speakers.  This examination will look at the translations and definitions of words in the Setswana Bible and dictionaries, which were first carried out by London Missionary Society, (henceforth, LMS) agents between 1829 and 1925.  The first Setswana Bible and dictionary were subsequently revised by many other LMS agents and church missionaries of other societies.  This paper will limit itself to the LMS work, for it was the most influential among Batswana who reside in the present day Botswana.  Although this paper will be specific to Botswana, I believe that such an investigation will be of interest to many other former colonized subjects who read colonial biblical translations and interpretations.

The paper examines how colonial ideology informed biblical translation, using the case of Setswana Bible translation of 1840. The Ancestors, who represented positive power in the Setswana cultures, were rendered demons.  The paper investigates the motivation, implications and impact of such a translation.

This paper will present some interpretations of Batswana women readers of Matt. 15:21-28. In keeping with the theme of this volume, the aim of presenting their readings is to take seriously the subjectivity and agency of their own interpretations. I shall first give the historical background of these readers and then briefly touch on the methods used to acquire these readings and their framework. Thirdly, I shall present the findings of a questionnaire and the tape-recorded sermons. In conclusion, I shall employ a post-colonial feminist perspective to ask what are the useful models of reading to be drawn from their interpretations.

This paper highlights the proposed “Talitha cum” African women’s biblical hermeneutics of reading through sketching the practices of four African women scholars: Mercy A. Oduyoye (Ghana); Madipoane Masenya (South Africa), Musa W. Dube (Botswana) and Teresa Okure (Nigeria). As used in this paper, Talitha Cum hermeneutics refers to the art of living in the resurrection space: the art of continually rising against the powers of death—the powers of patriarchy, the powers of colonial oppression and exploitation, the powers that produce and perpetuate poverty, disease and all forms of exclusion and dehumanization. Walking in the legacy of Kimpa Vita, African women’s talitha cum hermeneutics are ways of living and insisting on staying alive; even where one confronts oppressive powers that crushes, one dares to rise.  The discussion of  the above four women reading strategies is preceded by an elaboration on the source of naming, that is, Talitha cum, derived from the story of the bleeding and dying daughter of Mark 5.

Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) is an African Initiated Church that was established in Dublin sixteen years ago by Yorùbá Christians migrating from Nigeria. In this article I will explore the role of the talking drum in CAC Dublin with reference to two features of music in migration – cultural cohesiveness and adaptability. Firstly, I will examine how the drum points back to the homeland, reinforces ethnic identity, builds community and plays a therapeutic role. Secondly, I will look at the migration of the drum itself - from outside to inside the church - and the negotiation of drum messages as it is adapted to the church’s ideology. Thirdly, I will consider how the second generation feel about the talking drum and explore some of the issues that might affect its future use within this community. In many ways the drum plays a retrospective and cohesive role for the first generation, yet at the same time it remains subject to continued negotiation and adaptation. The second generation cannot understand the messages ‘spoken’ by the drum and do not dance to it in the way their parents do, but it remains important to them as a symbol of their cultural roots.

The paper is a PhD research proposal seeking to investigate and unpack the lived-christological ideas and expressions of Celestial Church of Christ Nigeria, an African Indigenous church in Nigeria using an ethnographic inquiry  (specifically ecclesial ethnographic analysis) and historical/archival analysis of the church's documents. The study is aimed at showing how Christ is understood and and appropriated in a lived and real African Indigenous Ecclesial context and the import of such understanding to the soteriology, theology and mission of the church in Africa. additionally, the study hopes to contribute to the existing body of scholarships in Contextual christology, afro-christology, and African theological enterprise as a whole.

Christianity in Africa came through five main trajectories. The first main trajectory was the initial evangelization of North Africa in the first seven centuries of Christ Era. The second main trajectory from Europe was through the West African coast (1420-1780). The third trajectory of missionary activity was through the East Coast of Africa (1560-1700). The fourth trajectory was through the Southern Coast of Africa (1652-1840) and the final trajectory of missionary work was during colonialism (1880-1914). This paper is a survey of transformations of Christianity in this final trajectory to date. Thus, Christianity was introduced to Kenya by European and later American missionaries in 19th and 20th centuries. Christianity was indigenized after the 1960s after most of the African states gained independence for their colonial masters. Since indigenization, Christianity has gone through various transformations. These transformations are a result of the various factors that have influenced growth of Christianity in Kenya. The main drivers of transformation of Christianity in Kenya besides conversions could be better understood by analyzing colonial and post-colonial theological framework that has influenced or been influenced by cultural, social, economic, and political agenda. This paper attempts to assess Christianity in Kenya in the following areas: (1) Growth of Christianity and its Impact during the Colonial Era, (2) Growth of Christianity and its Impact in the Post-Colonial Era, (3) Christianity’s influence on social, political and cultural dimensions, and (4) Missiological implications of Christianity’s growth in Kenya.

In the last two decades, there have been an increasing frequency of scholarly comments on the reverse missionary initiative of the global south in the global north. In Britain, Africans are more associated with this concept with the increasing plurality of their African Pioneered Churches (APCs). Their discernible failure in infiltrating the British white community however countersigns the view that mission has not yet significantly reversed in Britain. Hence, this qualitative research is dually aimed at recognising the factors that had limited these African pioneers and their churches in the British context (of Liverpool) by interviewing five of them chosen by homogenous sampling and thus identifying creative possibilities that can give rise to a remapped Christian landscape whose growth cuts across the entire British fabric and not limited to a minority. 
The study exposed some deficits in the mission strategies employed by African reverse missionaries in Britain (including but not limited to a conflicting idealisation of ‘church’ and ‘church leader’, ‘church pioneer ignorance’, racial prejudice, unpleasant antecedence, acculturation and contextualisation) while acknowledging their increasing impact on their host society and proposing an intentional synergy with British Christianity that embraces the distinctives of both parties in an expression fit for Britain’s increasing multiculturality.


This article argues that Zionist Christianity emerged in South Africa out of the peasant revolt that occurred in the Boer Republics during and after the South African War. Using the experiences of early Zionist leaders Daniel Nkonyane and Engenas Lekganyane, the article demonstrates the continuity of their theology with the ideology of the ‘Rebellion From Below’ first described by Jeremy Krikler. The early Zionists, like their predecessors, were primarily interested in recreating a world based on communal politics and land ownership – a world without rents, landlords, or white supervision.

Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) is a Pentecostal and African Initiated Church that emerged from the Yoruba Aládǔrà movement of early twentieth century Nigeria. In this article I unpack the concept of ‘dancing away sorrow’, one of the distinctive rituals that members of CAC Dublin have brought with them from Nigeria. I explore members’ beliefs about wellbeing and its links with spirituality and community, and examine how music and dance help to facilitate connections with God and fellow worshippers. While the practice offers positive benefits to first generation migrants, it highlights the dissonance perceived by the second generation between Yoruba and Irish culture.

In the study of early and late twentieth century South African independent churches, a rigid differentiation is usually made between African and European charismatic movements and independent churches. This paper rejects such a simplistic view and argues, instead, that there are important historical links between recent White and older Black charismatic movements and independent churches. More importantly, the parallels between them have to do with processes of formation which are based on the use of common core symbols of transition from the Old Testament and on similar spiritual experiences which are seen to confirm Biblical texts and to be confirmed by them. Charismatic movements have arisen among Blacks and Whites, rich and poor and have tended to achieve personal and group transformations through prophecy, vision, music, and worship.

Witch hunts and witchcraft accusations were common in South
Africa in the early 1990s, and several hundred alleged witches were killed. Western Christianity, influenced by modernity, tends to deny that witchcraft exists, and so fails to prepare Christians to cope with this problem. Many African independent churches, however, have a pre-modern worldview that takes people's fear of witchcraft seriously. In some cases  they have managed to change the traditional African perception that witches are incorrigible, and believe that witches can repent and be rehabilitated as members of society. This offers hope that public attitudes to witches can be changed.

Bernard Coyault L'étude des pentecôtismes africains transnationaux tend parfois à occulter la dynamique propre aux églises prophétiques d'institution africaine et leur stratégie spécifique d'implantation et de déploiement dans les pays du Nord. Ces courants prophétiques occupent une place importante dans le paysage religieux de l'aire culturelle Kongo (entre les deux Congo et le nord de l'Angola), et en particulier, celui du Congo-Brazzaville. L'Église évangélique du Congo (EEC), héritière de la mission coloniale, deuxième composante religieuse du pays, a été traversée en 1947 par un courant prophétique appelé Nsikumusu -ou « Réveil de 1947 » 1 , initié par le pasteur-prophète Daniel Ndoundou (1911-1986) et ses collaborateurs . À la mort du prophète, le mouvement s'est perpétué par un phénomène de fragmentation, avec l'émergence et la multiplication de figures prophétiques locales et anonymes qui, jusqu'à aujourd'hui, reproduisent et enrichissent la matrice prophétique initiale (dispositifs thérapeutiques et visionnaires).

This article explores a violent episode in Kenya’s late-colonial history in which a confrontation between police and members of an anti-colonial religious movement called Dini ya Msambwa resulted an estimated fifty deaths. Drawing on archival documents and interviews with survivors, I reconstruct the event—the “Kolloa Affray,” as it became known—before showing how its violence has been preserved and transformed in the historical theology and ritual practice of the Dini ya Roho Mafuta Pole ya Afrika, which claims to be a continuation of the Msambwa movement. For survivors of the violence itself, and for others who suffered communal punishment in its aftermath, it is an historical wrong for which the British government owes compensation. For the Mafuta Pole faithful, however, the death of Dini ya Msambwa’s leader Lukas Pkech at Kolowa becomes a kind of second crucifixion, “cancelling” the violence of the past and ushering in a new era of forgiveness and reconciliation. The simultaneous preservation and negation of this violent past in Mafuta Pole historical consciousness is shown through an analysis of its discursive, ritual, and memorial practices.

The African Independent churches (AICs) in Zambia, as elsewhere in Africa, from their very beginning formed a protest movement against the cultural imperialism undertaken by the missionary representatives of the historic mission churches and also played an important role in the anti-colonial political struggles. In Zambia, the early AICs were closely related to witchcraft eradication movements such as the Mchape, or socially and politically oriented prophet-healing churches such as The Lumpa church of Alice Lenshina. Since the 1970s and in particular in the 1990s the Christianity in Zambia has been significantly marked by the proliferation of the African Independent Churches -both of Pentecostal and prophet-healing type. These churches that started mushrooming particularly in urban settings became part of the strengthening charismatic movement, particularly within Protestantism. A typical feature of AICs is focus on spiritual healing and religious syncretism -the local traditional customs and beliefs in dangerous ghosts, ancestral spirits, or witches are placed within the biblical religious framework where the Holy Spirit (Muzimu Oyela) is considered to be the only source of healing whereas other 'inferior spirits' are labelled as demons. The traditional methods of healing are creatively combined with Christian healing by means of prayers, spiritual blessings, laying on of hands on patients and demon exorcism -it is believed that only a body rid of bad spirits can receive the Holy Spirit, and thus be healed. The paper draws on both secondary literature concerning African Independent Churches and primary data issued from fieldwork in Lusaka (2008Lusaka ( -2009.

This paper is primarily based on fieldwork research, carried out by different researchers over the last ten years.  It will explore the position of women in the church of Botswana, by examining:
a. women from different church backgrounds, that is, Mainline churches, African Independent Churches, and evangelical/pentecostal  churches
b. How and why they became leaders and their experiences in church and society
c. models of gender empowerment that emerge from the studies.
Collected fieldwork  data , therefore, sought to  analyse stories of Batswana women in church leadership in order to identify strategies employed to assume church leadership. The conclusion maps out  several strategies used by women to subvert  gender-based exclusions , such as the use of an oral canon, instead of relying on the written word.

The chapter explores the social. economic and political context that nurtured  African Christianity in modern times.  African social and political contexts have been a rocking boat and an experiment, given that it is widely acknowledged that nationalism describes “imagined communities.”  Since the foundation and boundaries of contemporary African nations were not even initiated by those who found themselves within the particular borders, owning such a collective identity has been a process, an experiment.  The struggle for independence was the first stage of building a shared vision of living together.  But such a vision was rudely challenged for daring to proceed without healing the colonial wounds and sufficiently struggling with ways of living peacefully with ethnic, religious, racial and gender differences.  Those countries that have taken to truth and reconciliation seem to have created a helpful bridge for crossing, although it recognised that it does not necessarily address structural inequalities established by decades and centuries of dispossession of indigenous populations, especially dispossession of their lands. The vision of being independent African countries has also been challenged by the realisation that western countries’ programs, policies and interventions have not always midwifed positive social and political contexts. As much as African countries are, and will always remain, part and parcel of the international community, they will also need to be guarded towards imposed developmental policies, programs, aid and partnerships that are manufactured from western contexts and assumed to be a one size-fits all garment. The active participation of national, regional and continental civil societies, regional and collective economic bodies, unions and associations have already become crucial partners on the road to creating empowering social and political contexts in the African continent.

Dai movimenti profetico-religiosi alle Chiese Indipendenti Africane tra le popolazioni dello Zambesi Premessa Seppur lentamente, stiamo prendendo coscienza, sotto molteplici punti di vista, che se durante tutta l'epoca moderna l'Europa ha continuato ad esportare il proprio modello politico-culturale in tutte le aree del pianeta, ora sta avvenendo in un certo senso esattamente il contrario. E questo forse soprattutto per quanto riguarda l'aspetto religioso. Le missioni cattoliche e protestanti sono state, per tutta l'epoca moderna, l'alter ego degli imperi coloniali. Ora ci troviamo di fronte ad un movimento contrario: è l'Europa a venire invasa dalle più svariate forme religiose. Tanto per concentrarci solo nel nostro paese, L'Italia, il cuore stesso del cattolicesimo mondiale, sta diventando essa stessa un crogiuolo di presenze religiose veicolate dalle ben 189 nazionalità presenti sul nostro suolo. È appena uscito (marzo 2013), per le edizioni Carocci, un libro a cura di Enzo Pace, studioso esperto di queste problematiche, con il titolo "Le religioni nell'Italia che cambia. Mappe e bussole" 1 . La serie degli studi presenti nel libro ci delineano un panorama inedito, regione per regione, quasi provincia per provincia, sulle presenze di comunità e luoghi di culto delle chiese ortodosse orientali, dei Sikh, dell'Islam, del Buddismo, delle varie religioni orientali, ma anche delle chiese pentecostali e carismatiche. Fra queste ultime anche chiese evangeliche ed indipendenti originare dell'Africa. Una sorta di missione alla rovescia. Poco a poco tutte queste realtà diventeranno parte del nostro panorama culturale normale. Si imporrà allora, come parte importante di una integrazione efficace, anche la conoscenza della loro storia e delle loro origini. Lo studio che qui presento si iscrive esattamente in questo obiettivo: conoscere la genesi e l'evoluzione di un fenomeno culturale massiccio come quello delle Chiese Indipendenti, generate in varie parti del mondo, durante l'epoca coloniale, come reazione al modello religioso europeo e ora 'timidamente', ma decisamente affacciantesi sul territorio stesso dell'Europa, come Chiese Indipendenti, non legate cioè a nessuna delle tre formazioni classiche del cristianesimo: ortodossia, cattolicesimo e protestantesimo. L'argomento è ovviamente immenso. Il presente studio si concentra su una determinata area, quella degli altopiani attorno allo Zambesi, nell'Africa centromeridionale o australe, nella quale cerca di cogliere, in maniera quasi genetica, l'emergere dei movimenti profetico-religiosi e il loro primo trasformarsi in Chiese Indipendenti. La focalizzazione dell'obiettivo perde in panoramica, ma guadagna in profondità. Mi riservo un secondo intervento per un tentativo di quadro globale dell'attuale realtà delle Chiese Indipendenti Africane contemporanee.

The quests for recognition of "African" Churches in Brussels prove to be quite diverse depending on the Church's position in the landscape of "migrant" churches. In fact, their more or less centrality or marginality in this environment can position those Churches as either interlocutors for politicians or administrations, thus progressively increasing their political capital, or leave them at the extreme margins of the religious field. This paper will draw on research conducted in the Celestial Church of Christ, which has only one small parish in Brussels frequented mostly by Nigerians, and in the Nouvelle Jérusalem, which is the most important "African" Church in Brussels, attended mostly by Congolese (DRC), some of whom have high levels of formal education. By comparing the two profiles, I will show that their unequal success in obtaining public recognition in the Belgian context can be explained, in particular, (a) by their size, (b) by the importance of the ethno-national population that forms the majority of their faithful (the persons of Congolese origin being much more numerous in Belgium than the persons of Nigerian origin), and (c) by the style of Christianity they profess. Actually, Pentecostalism (as is the case in the Nouvelle Jérusalem) is probably a more classical and efficient theological base to join a religious network and to escape full marginality, than the African prophetic origin of the Celestial Church of Christ.

In Italia, rispetto ad altre aree linguistiche, non si pubblicano molti libri sull'Africa. Su un fenomeno di grande rilievo ed in continua espansione, come quello del cristianesimo indipendente africano, poi, troviamo molto poco, e quel poco in nicchie specializzate. Eppure esso comincia a toccare anche le nostre sponde. Le comunità degli immigrati portano con sé anche la loro cultura e la loro storia, parte della quale destinata ovviamente ad essere cancellata, ma parte confermata. Ciò che tende a rimanere e a rafforzarsi, proprio a motivo del mantenimento del senso della propria identità ed origine, è senz'altro la religione. Ecco perché si sono ormai affacciate e cominciano ad affermarsi sul suolo europeo e quindi italiano, anche quelle forme di cristianesimo autonomo che l'Africa ha saputo sviluppare massicciamente nel XX secolo. Sarebbe miope sottovalutare tale fenomeno se, come afferma il sociologo americano Philip Jenkins in La terza chiesa. Il cristianesimo nel XXI secolo 1 : "Qualsiasi cosa possano credere gli europei e i nordamericani, il cristianesimo gode di ottima salute nel Sud del mondo; non solo sopravvive, ma si espande"; esso "dovrebbe godere di un boom mondiale nel nuovo secolo, ma la grande maggioranza dei credenti non sarà né bianca, né europea, né euroamericana", perché "non può esserci dubbio che il mondo cristiano emergente troverà il suo ancoraggio nei continenti del sud" e che "molto presto i due principali centri della cristianità saranno l'Africa e l'America Latina" 2 . Secondo un dossier che l'Agenzia Fides ha dedicato all'argomento nell'ottobre del 2009, "si valuta che nell'Africa sub sahariana esistano 10.000 movimenti religiosi fondati da africani, che contano in totale alcune decine di milioni di aderenti" 3 .

In the book The invention of tradition historian Eric Hobsbawm claims that the process of the
invention of tradition serves the formation of group cohesion. The different versions of the life
story of the founder bishop of the Corinthian Church of South Africa (AIC), as documented
during many years of conducting qualitative field work in this church, are used in this article
as a case study in this regard. The article unpacks the way in which the invention of tradition
as a process is in this particular AIC currently a work in progress contributing to the formation
of a particular type of group cohesion that stretches over racial, religious and denominational
boundaries especially by means of the unique liturgical rituals that were influenced by the
life story of the founder. The group cohesion that this process fosters is in essence aimed at
healing in all its multifaceted dimensions, which includes healing from physical ailments,
‘healing’ from barrenness, healing from spirit possession to healing as (re-)incorporation of
an individual into the larger group, the healing of a nation as well as healing from a dualistic
spirit-matter worldview.

The Église Évangélique au Maroc (EEAM) was founded in Morocco under French colonialism in the early twentieth century as an expression of the Reformed Protestant tradition.  Attended first by Europeans only, its numbers had inexorably declined from Morocco’s independence in 1956 until the nineties. Since that time, the Church has experienced a deep sociological mutation with a continuing influx of sub-Saharan Africa nationals (students, migrants, businessmen, etc.). As the only officially recognized Protestant church, the EEAM has congregations in many cities all over the country, where regular attendees are 95 % Sub-Saharan Africans, with very diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Members of EEAM churches come from both traditional mainline Protestant churches and more recently established Pentecostal or charismatic churches (PCCs). This cohabitation of heterogeneous religious identities within the same institutional structure often creates tensions and misunderstandings.  Varying theological reference points, patterns of church organization, and religious practices bear witness to this pluralism-in-tension.
The EEAM acts as a resonance chamber for a global, multiform African religious field, with each church member reflecting a particular dimension of this field. At the same time, the EEAM operates within the field as a key-player, presenting an original African religious expression marked by denominational pluralism, interculturality, and personal agency. After considering the influence of the virtual religious field (internet) on the church as well as the links between the EEAM and the informal network of house churches existing on its margins, this article will explore the articulation between a changing religious institution on one hand, and, on the other hand, the individual religious trajectories it generates with their own dynamics, oscillating between adhesion, contestation or subversion.

At a time when North American Mennonites are questioning the legacy of mission, this essay reviews three strands of thinking that are converging to reaffirm a believers church perspective on mission even as the Anabaptist church develops a more global identity. An older generation of North American Mennonite mission scholars and historians, younger voices speaking largely from within a Mennonite World Conference context, and a variety of thinkers from the Global South are all richly expressing the key Anabaptist conviction that ecclesiology and missiology are essentially connected. This suggests that the worldwide family of Anabaptists might be at a turning point in defining its identity and mission. The essay argues that it is time to move past a polarized debate, in which one is either “for” or “against” mission, and to understand Mennonites’ historical involvement in mission as part of a larger story of working toward deepening relationships in the world church.

A radical rethink of the nature of magic brings surprising results in a re-analysis of some of the widely perceived weaknesses of the African church. The pervasive effects of magic result in witchcraft being widespread and confines people to following complex codes of conduct throughout their lives. Western institutions and initiatives all too often flounder. A danger highlighted is the almost inadvertent promotion of the prosperity Gospel on the part of those who teach the total defeat or irrelevance of occult powers by Christian believers. There is a great need for deeper understanding of magic, and the missiological implications that follow.

Most scholars know that world Christianity is inherently interdisciplinary, that it can be studied from different methodological perspectives. While world Chris-tianity is often studied through historical and theological lenses, the application of the social sciences-in particular quantitative methods-is a little more fuzzy. This article looks backward and forward to reflect on methodological approaches to studying world Christianity. Looking backward, it highlights the work of missionary statistician David Barrett as it developed for the World Christian Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia provided an intellectual framework for reconstructing Christianity in a world after colonialism. Looking forward, the article offers some thoughts on why it is not always clear how to incorporate quantitative social science into world Christianity studies and looks genea-logically at the history of "Christian" sociology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article concludes with a methodological challenge for world Christianity scholars.

Since the Native Churches Commission of 1925, which came soon after the Bulhoek Massacre of more than two hundred members of the Israelite Church at Ntabelanga in the Eastern Cape, there has been a steady  scholarly interest in African Instituted Churches. Most if not all of the scholarly interest in these churches has come from outside these churches. In this essay I engage in a critical review of the assumptions, methodologies and objectives of the scholarly and theological interest in these churches.

Swaziland faces one of the worst HIV epidemics in the world and is a site for the current global health campaign in sub-Saharan Africa to medically circumcise the majority of the male population. Given that Swaziland is also majority Christian, how does the most popular religion influence acceptance, rejection or understandings of medical male circumcision? This article considers interpretive differences by Christians across the Kingdom’s three ecumenical organisations, showing how a diverse group people singly glossed as ‘Christian’ in most public health acceptability studies critically rejected the procedure in unity, but not uniformly. Participants saw medical male circumcision’s promotion and messaging as offensive and circumspect, and medical male circumcision as confounding gendered expectations and sexualised ideas of the body in Swazi Culture. Pentecostal-charismatic churches were seen as more likely to accept medical male circumcision, while traditionalist African Independent Churches rejected the operation. The procedure was widely understood to be a personal choice, in line with New Testament-inspired commitments to metaphorical circumcision as a way of receiving God’s grace.

Since the 1990s, we have witnessed an increasing frequency of scholarly comments on the rising cross-cultural mission praxis of Christians from the global south in the global north. In Britain, some of the key players are African missionaries, and their presence has led to an increase in the numbers of African Pioneered Churches (APCs) across the country. However, their corporate failure in engaging white British community is highly evident. Hence, this qualitative research which was aimed at recognising the factors that limit the cross-cultural effectiveness of these African pioneers and their churches in Liverpool. I interviewed five African pastors in Liverpool, they were chosen by homogenous sampling. The research also sought to identify creative possibilities that can help them overcome the limitations and rethink their mission praxis so as to enable them to engage other ethnicities in evangelism. The study revealed significant shortcomings in their mission strategies (including an outright refusal to contextualise their ministries and the prevalent racial prejudice they encounter when they try to engage others in mission). On the other hand, it proposed that an intentional synergy with British Christianity that embraces the uniqueness of both expressions of Christianity is needed in the current context of Britain's increasing multiculturality.

Since 1986, Brother Raphael Minga Kwete has been receiving divine messages from the Virgin Mary, Jesus, the saints, as well as Catholic leaders such as Padre Pio and Francis of Assisi in his compound commonly known as "Nzete Ekauka" ("the dessicated tree"). During the 1990s, this compound was the arena of fervent prayer gatherings where Catholic clergy, intellectuals, politicians, and even figures of the local music scene could be seen praying. Nowadays, the compound is nearly empty. The exodus started in the early 2000s, and today only a few dozen people (mainly women) continue to attend daily prayers, donate money, and spread the Virgin’s messages more widely. An informal media ban was issued by the Catholic Church in the early 2000s. The Nzete case-study will situate media presence, production, and aesthetics within a larger field of competition between orthodox Catholicism and more popular forms of engagement with Catholic spirits. In addition, the idea of the Virgin Mary as a spirit who addresses the Congolese through the prophet, draws our attention to the transformations urban religiosity has undergone in the late postcolonial era, and to the enduring role of Catholic clergy in urban Africa.

This article situates an approach to ritual efficacy and risk by focusing on bodily rituals of the Swazi Zionist Jerikho church in socio-historical context. The Jerikho church distinguishes itself by the use of purgative-hallucinogenics and a circular march-run, both of which are meant to invoke embodiment of holy spirits. This article analyzes the risk inherent in rituals’ procedures and how risk manifested in two cases in 2010 and 2011 that challenged bodily and social wellbeing and ritual knowledge for both church members and the broader public. I show how harmful ritual mistakes were explained away and enveloped within co-existing systems of religious and socio-medical knowledge by way of the intergenerational social relations through which the rituals were produced. Namely, church elders attributed mistakes to youthful in-competence, which reaffirmed Jerikho organizational and cultural practice and elided with a public moral discourse about risky youth amid HIV/AIDS.

This article builds on my recent engagement with James Cone’s binary view of Africanness and Christianity which focused on his Western locus of enunciation and the criticism he received from his African American colleagues. I believe that analogical questions regarding Christian theology’s attitude towards Africanness in general and African religiosity in particular present themselves to us who live in and try to make sense of South African reality today, including white people like myself. I start by introducing a decolonial perspective as it manifests itself through the recent #MustFall student movements. In this context, I offer three theses regarding the decolonial perspective on African religiosity, each of which constitutes a more or less direct critique of Cone’s ambivalent attitude towards Africanness, and African Traditional Religions in particular. The first thesis concerns the distinction between postcoloniality and decoloniality; the second thesis concerns engaging African religiosity as a requirement for decolonising Christian theology; and the third thesis concerns problematising the relationship between the categories of blackness and Africanness.

This volume is a monograph which was submitted at the University of Zimbabwe as a PhD thesis. It deals with the subject of millenarianism, a movement which the author sees as developing from biblical times. He draws lines of connection between contemporary religious movements with prophetic and apocalyptic movements in the Bible. The author presents vast toms of data on prophecy, apocalypticism and millenarianism for students and biblical scholars alike. Further, ordinary readers of the Bible will find this volume fascinating to read. There is also detailed information on the development of the two contemporary movements, namely Jehovah’s Witnesses and Johane Masowe – one of the most important African Initiated Churches in Zimbabwe.

The Author
David Bishau is Pastor-in-Charge of a United Methodist Church congregation at Old Mutare. He is a holder of a PhD (2007) from the University of Zimbabwe which he received with the present dissertation. He also holds a Diploma in Religious Studies (1989), BA Honours Religious Studies (1991) and MA Religious Studies (1993) all from the University of Zimbabwe. He taught topics like Old & New Testament Studies, Koinē Greek, Religion and Field Research at the Univer-sity of Zimbabwe as well as Africa University, Zimbabwe. The interests of Bishau include research & publication, preaching and spreading the Word, writing poems & short stories, and reading.

This article builds on my recent engagement with James Cone’s binary view of Africanness and Christianity which focused on his Western locus of enunciation and the criticism he received from his African American colleagues. I believe that analogical questions regarding Christian theology’s attitude towards Africanness in general and African religiosity in particular present themselves to us who live in and try to make sense of South African reality today, including white people like myself. I start by introducing a decolonial perspective as it manifests itself through the recent #MustFall student movements. In this context, I offer three theses regarding the decolonial perspective on African religiosity, each of which constitutes a more or less direct critique of Cone’s ambivalent attitude towards Africanness, and African Traditional Religions in particular. The first thesis concerns the distinction between postcoloniality and decoloniality; the second thesis concerns engaging Afric...

This paper encompasses the general social and belief structures within African communities as a preface to African ancestral worship and polygamy. This paper also engages with the syncretism that took place when Christianity was introduced to these communities and the African Folk Christianity that emerged thereof, the African Independent Churches.