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The three sons of Simon Kimbangu are represented (left to right) molding Adam out of clay (Kisolokele), holding a chalice with the blood of Christ (Dialungana), and preparing to breathe life into the first man's body (Diangienda). This painting is the work of Muze, whose choir, the GTKI Brazzaville choir, presented it posthumously to Dialungana in 1994.
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O sincretismo entre a religião kongo e
o cristianismo refuncionalizou visão
do mundo bakongo, originou um
messianismo africano, que lutou
contra a opressão colonial. Tal como
o Movimento Antoniano de Kimpa
Vita e atualmente os kimbanguistas
European colonisation of Africa was manifest in the political, economic, cultural and religious domination and exploitation of Africans by Europeans. This domination and exploitation were operationalised by force and coercion through the use of military power but also through epistemicide, in which education was used to impart colonial thinking while exterminating indigenous systems of knowledge and ways of knowing. Through a discourse and document analysis, this chapter assesses how the Bible was used in order to support the colonisation of Africa. Further, it also assesses the responses that emerged from Africans in their attempt to resist and undo colonisation, beginning with the emergence of African Initiated Churches. Generations of African readers of the Bible have, in one way or another, with success and sometimes failure, read the Bible to unlearn and undo colonisation. This chapter avers that a renewed focus on decolonisation in Biblical studies must focus on the text of the Bible, colonial interpretations, indigenous interpretations and usage of the Bible, as well as promoting the development of age-appropriate decolonial readings of the Bible for the creation of an African critical decolonised mass of Christians for the overall development of Africa.
This article examines the spatial development of Pentecostalism in Africa based on statistical data, information from the official websites of major Pentecostal churches and organizations, social survey results, and secondary sources. An attempt is made to explore the historical and genetic aspects of its development, to describe its essential features, and to identify factors contributing to its growing popularity. It is demonstrated that the African continent has historically held exceptional importance for global Pentecostalism, and its influence on this religious movement has been increasing in recent times. Pentecostalism’s spatial development has been centered around primary areas of Christianization, particularly in Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya, which kept its’ importance in terms of the size of their Pentecostal communities. Using these countries as examples, the article examines the largest African independent Pentecostal churches, classic Pentecostal churches, and neo-Pentecostal churches that have regional and sometimes global significance. It is determined that Pentecostal churches have shown high adaptability to local conditions, addressing the needs of their congregations in the context of ongoing social turbulence. They offer not only attractive religious practices but also fulfill state functions in education, healthcare, and other areas. The network nature of Pentecostal organizations has also played a significant role, leading to their subsequent consolidation into umbrella structures and blocs that have acquired important socio-political significance in several countries on the continent. The article highlights the high mobilization potential of this religious movement, driven by both its size and the penetration of “renewalist” ideas into mass culture, politics, and other spheres of public life. Attention is drawn to the slowing expansion of Pentecostalism in Africa, which may be the first sign of an impending crisis in the renewalist movement in this region. This crisis may require Pentecostal leaders to deepen their theological foundation, achieve “maturity”, and learn from the institutional organization experiences of mainstream Christian denominations.
Kimbanguism, an African Independent Church, has implanted itself in the West since 1975, initially as an association of Congolese students. They found themselves compelled to create their own gathering space to worship according to their traditional forms of belief—worship services, baptisms, religious feasts—, moral guidelines, and identity reference codes. But in almost 50 years of a slow and still incomplete settling down of the Kimbanguist church in Western societies, its modes of integration remain specific to the migratory context. This chapter will thus focus on community modes of expression, specific modes of Kimbanguist integration, problems of adjustment, interracial marriages, and the discrepancy between two systems of value, entailing a generation gap between traditional Kimbanguism and the modes of religious affiliation and beliefs of second- and third-generation Kimbanguists, born or educated in the West.KeywordsKimbanguismAfrican Independent churchKongoKimbanguist diasporaMigrations
In this chapter, we focus on education, which is commonly regarded as the sine qua non of social change and economic development in Africa (e.g. Fichtner 2012; Stambach 2006), and which has opened up new opportunities for moral as well as political and market engagement by Christian and Muslim actors at all educational levels against the backdrop of liberalization and privatization since the 1990s (Dilger and Schulz 2013: 370). By means of a comparative ethnographic study of the missions of a range of Christian and Muslim educational institutions in urban Tanzania and Nigeria, we argue that in the context of compromised state education and inadequate infrastructure, religiously motivated initiatives provide youths with the tools and material spaces to negotiate the socio-moral unpredictability of urban living and to convert themselves into moral citizens according to the values of the religiously motivated organizations that run these institutions, as well as civic virtues.
As religious systems are intertwined with social systems, change and continuity in thought and practice constitute a significant feature of Christianity. Thus, African Christianity embodies a distinct socio-cultural stamp of the continent. Considering the historical phases of Christianity, this socio-cultural stamp distinguishes African Christianity within global Christianity. One of the cultural vehicles of this imprint on Africa Christianity is the African oral tradition. Oral tradition is a necessary social antecedent and cultural heritage of Africans. African oral tradition is visible primarily through proverbs, folktales, songs, dances, customs, traditional medicines, religious practices and ancestral utterances. Through a substantial range of literature research on the subject matter, this article contends that African oral tradition is a relevant socio-cultural element in the constitution of African Christianity and its influence cannot be ignored. It sets out to pinpoint certain incontestable contours and marks of African oral tradition on African Christianity. In other words, it seeks to highlight what could possibly be described as the defining or peculiar hues of Christianity in Africa as impressed upon it by African culture and tradition especially in the oral form. By means of qualitative methodology and a multidisciplinary approach in the assemblage of materials and sources, the article argues that African oral tradition, even if not openly acknowledged, has been both essential and instrumental in the making and shaping of Christianity particularly in the sub-Saharan part of the continent.
Contribution: As an observational research, this article painstakingly pinpoints the remarkable imprints of African oral tradition on the evolution and practice of Christianity in Africa. Situated within the confines of theology and history of religion, its major contribution lies in the drawing of attention to the remaking of Christianity on the continent with some obvious African trademarks.
This essay describes a religious freedom controversy that developed between the world wars in the Belgian colony of the Congo, where Protestant missionaries complained that Catholic priests were abusing Congolese Protestants and that the Belgian government favored the Catholics. The history of this campaign demonstrates how humanitarian discourses of religious freedom—and with them competing configurations of church and state—took shape in colonial contexts. From the beginnings of the European scramble for Africa, Protestant and Catholic missionaries had helped formulate the “civilizing” mission and the humanitarian policies—against slavery, for free trade, and for religious freedom—that served to justify the European and U.S. empires of the time. Protestant missionaries in the Congo challenged the privileges granted to Catholic institutions by appealing to religious freedom guarantees in colonial and international law. In response, Belgian authorities and Catholic missionaries elaborated a church-state arrangement that limited “foreign” missions in the name of Belgian national unity. Both groups, however, rejected Native Congolese religious movements—which refused the authority of the colonial church(es) along with the colonial state—as “political” and so beyond the bounds of legitimate “religion.” Our analysis shows how competing configurations of church and state emerged dialogically in this colonial context and how alternative Congolese movements ultimately challenged Belgian colonial rule.
While remittances have come to play an important part in debates about migration and development, the link between religion, migration and transnational financial flows has yet to be understood in its full complexity. Drawing upon a multi-sited ethnography of a transnational African church, this article addresses this overlooked dimension of migrant transnationalism by analysing how religious donations converted into ‘sacred remittances’ produce a moral economy of religious life shaped by a politics of belongings at various scales. The article discusses the social meaning that diasporic actors attach to religious donations sent to the homeland (the Congo) and how this compares to the practice of sending remittances to family members. The article also argues that transnational circulation of sacralised money operates within a field of meanings and practices associated with moral expectations, entitlements and differentiated regimes of value. Sacred remittances, as ‘global money’, may generate a diversity of transnational linkages between donors and recipients but they remain embedded in landscapes of status and power.
