Download or read book Nchimi Chikanga written by Boston Soko and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2002 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chikanga was one of Malawi's most powerful and successful healers who brought concepts and methods from indigenous tradition to his own Christian culture. During the fifties and sixties people having heard he had the power of divination to free them from the bondage of witchcraft and other evil practices, would make pilgrimages to him from the whole of eastern and southern Africa. His methods were, and are, popular and common, though always controversially opposed by the institutional Christian church. This book documents eye-witness accounts of pilgrims, and Chikanga's sessions and techniques, and includes interviews with his acquaintances. It describes his activities in the political context, which forced him to go into exile for seventeen years, and his final period in Malawi.
Download or read book Dual Religiosity in Northern Malawi written by Mlenga, Joyce and published by Mzuni Press. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a century much of Africa south of the Sahara embraced the Christian religion. Malawi, where 80% of the population identify as Christian is no exception, nor are the Ngonde at its northern border with Tanzania. While it is difficult to find someone who does not claim to be a Christian, African traditional religion is by no means dead and often practiced by many. While the two religions are not “mixed”, but they are both realities in many a Christians life, though realities of a different kind. The author explores the intricate and often varied relationship between the two and considers factors which increase or decrease dual religiosity.
Download or read book Dancing Prophets written by Steven M. Friedson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the Tumbuka people of Malawi, traditional medical practices are saturated with music. Steven M. Friedson explores a health care system populated by dancing prophets, singing patients, and drummed spirits.
Download or read book Dual Religiosity in Northern Malawi written by Joyce Mlenga and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a century much of Africa south of the Sahara embraced the Christian religion. Malawi, where 80% of the population identify as Christian is no exception, nor are the Ngonde at its northern border with Tanzania. While it is difficult to find someone who does not claim to be a Christian, African traditional religion is by no means dead and often practiced by many. While the two religions are not mixed, but they are both realities in many a Christians life, though realities of a different kind. The author explores the intricate and often varied relationship between the two and considers factors which increase or decrease dual religiosity.
Download or read book Conversion to Christianity written by Robert W. Hefner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most striking developments in the history of modern civilizations has been the conversion of tribal peoples to more expansively organized "world" religions. There is little scholarly consensus as to why these religions have endured and why conversion to them has been so widespread. These essays explore the phenomenon of Christian conversion from this world-building perspective. Combining rich case studies with original theoretical insights, this work challenges sociologists, anthropologists and historians of religion to reassess the varieties of religious experience and the convergent processes involved in religious change. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. One of the most striking developments in the history of modern civilizations has been the conversion of tribal peoples to more expansively organized "world" religions. There is little scholarly consensus as to why these religions have endured and why conv
Download or read book Crossroads of Culture written by Lindland, Eric and published by Mzuni Press. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining history, ethnography, and culture theory, this book explores how residents in northwestern Malawi have responded over time to the early missionary assertion that local religious and healing practices were incompatible with Christianity and western medicine. It details how local agents, in the past and today, have constructed new cultural forms that weave facets of ancestral spiritualism and divination with Christianity and biomedicine. Alongside a rich historical review of the late-19th century encounter between Tumbuka-speakers and the Scottish Presbyterians of the Livingstonia Mission, the book explores the contemporary therapeutic dance complex known as Vimbuza and considers two case studies, each the story of a man confronting illness and struggling to understand the roots and meaning of his affliction. In the process, the book considers the enduring missiological and anthropological topics of conversion and syncretism, and questions the assertion by some scholars that Western missionaries in Africa have been successful agents of religious hegemony.
Download or read book The Law of Possession written by William Sturman Sax and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rituals combining healing with spirit possession and court-like proceedings are found around the world and throughout history. Modern, secular states have systematically attempted to eliminate them. The Law of Possession is the first volume to compare and analyze the internal logic of such practices, as well as their relation to the modern, secular state.
Download or read book Victory Over Fear Charms Witchcraft and Worldview in South Central Malawi written by Robert Beaton and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2023-05-25 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the author presents much of his field research into the use of African traditional religious charms, in the Zambezi Evangelical churches of South-Central Malawi. He details the kinds of charms used, by whom, exactly how, the underlying motives, and the particular purposes. He shows how charm-dependency creates a problem for discipleship within the churches. An anthology of real-life stories of charm-usage is presented which makes for interesting reading. The basic tenets of a Chewa worldview are also articulated to demonstrate how charm-dependency and other witchcraft related activities are stimulated and perpetuated by deep-seated worldview assumptions. The voices of local pastors, student-pastors, and African authors are ‘heard’ throughout, providing a contextual feel. This book is an excellent practical resource for teaching and learning, for those involved in discipleship, theology, ATR, missions and cultural perspectives.
Download or read book Troubled Minds written by Arne S. Steinforth and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every society has its own definition of a normal and an abnormal human condition. For persons living with mental disorders, these concepts have a tremendous impact. This study investigates how the abnormal mind is culturally defined in Malaŵi, South-Eastern Africa. Based on anthropological techniques such as interviews, participant observation, and archive research, it explores the different social dimensions of mental disorder - e.g. its reflection in traditional dance rituals, in behavioural rules during pregnancy, or in the healing ministry of independent churches. It demonstrates how local explanations of mental disorder - be it witchcraft, an angry ancestor, or the will of God - determine the social acceptance of an affected person's condition. Recent processes of cultural change, however, strengthen the pluralism of Malaŵian religious landscape, opening the local debate to an ever wider range of interpretations.
Download or read book Lunjika SDA Mission in Northern Malawi 1932 1995 written by Banda, Macleard and published by Mzuni Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The missionary work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church started in Southern Malawi in 1902, and histories of churches are usually told from that starting point. This book uses a different approach, it tells the story of Lunjika Mission (earlier called Mombera Mission) which begins in 1932, showing how the SDA Church met a new culture, that of the strongly patrilineal Ngoni and their neighbours to the North, and how it dealt with other churches that had started missionary work in that broad area up to two generations before.
Download or read book Witchcraft Witches and Violence in Ghana written by Mensah Adinkrah and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft violence is a feature of many contemporary African societies. In Ghana, belief in witchcraft and the malignant activities of putative witches is prevalent. Purported witches are blamed for all manner of adversities including inexplicable illnesses and untimely deaths. As in other historical periods and other societies, in contemporary Ghana, alleged witches are typically female, elderly, poor, and marginalized. Childhood socialization in homes and schools, exposure to mass media, and other institutional mechanisms ensure that witchcraft beliefs are transmitted across generations and entrenched over time. This book provides a detailed account of Ghanaian witchcraft beliefs and practices and their role in fueling violent attacks on alleged witches by aggrieved individuals and vigilante groups.
Download or read book The Zionist Churches in Malawi written by Ulf Strohbehn and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2016-05-11 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an African Christian movement full of vitality and creativity. The reader will meet believers who drink milk so that they may dream about angels, reports about funerals where the mourners dance with the coffin on their shoulders and church members who are ritually not allowed to fertilize their fields or wear neck ties. The authors unique insight into Malawis Christian community addresses important issues in society. Why have Spirit Churches, including Pentecostalism, been so successful in Malawi? Why do some religious groups still refuse medical help, up to the point that children die of cholera? How did the independent churches deal with the colonial trauma? In this masterful portrait, Strohbehn takes the reader from industrial mine compounds to rural colonies, where churches have set up their own spiritual and political rule. He carefully dissects the fine lines between traditional notions and Christianitys influence. We find a spiritual portrait of the Ngoni people, a fascinating cultural analysis of dancing and an encounter with a unique style of preaching.
Download or read book Daily Morsels written by Chimwemwe Mitengo and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2024-02-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daily Morsels: A Devotional Reading through the Gospel According to John, aims at nourishing the spiritual life of the readers. It has 144 ‘meals.’ They are meant to be taken as two meals of the day. This means that a reader will devotionally go through the Gospel of John in 72 days. There are a lot of practical aspects of the Christian life that are addressed. One advantage of the book is that it is simple to read. Also, it follows the basic hermeneutical principles necessary to understand the Gospels.
Download or read book Perspectives of Labour Migration from Mzimba District Malawi to South Africa written by Banda, Harvey Chidoba and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Labour migration from Malawi to South Africa is a ‘century-old phenomenon’. It dates as far back as the 1880s following the establishment of diamond and gold mines. In the period up to the 1980s, this migration took either formal or informal nature whereas in the post-1990 period it became exclusively informal, popularly known as selufu in Malawi. This book is an attempt to shed light on both forms of migration over time. By using the case of Mzimba, one of the major labour migration districts in Malawi, Perspectives of Labour Migration shows that migration, especially in the post-1990 period, remains a preoccupation of the different categories of both men and women in selected areas in the country. A cross-section of Malawians continue to regard emigration to South Africa as a means to an end: a way of fulfilling their heart-felt and life-time goals at household and societal levels. Because of their distinguished and unparalleled determination, these labour migrants continue to ‘flock’ to South Africa in the midst of such challenges as xenophobia, crime, arrests and deportations. The book advances the argument that Malawian labour migrants are purposive and rational human beings who are ready to overcome these challenges, at times using the most improbable means, for example, through the use of mankhwala gha mwabi (luck medicine).
Download or read book Tonga Religious Life in the Twentieth Century written by Elizabeth Colson and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2007-10-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The religious life of the Tonga-speaking peoples of southern Zambia is examined over the last century, in the sense of how they have thought about the nature of their world, the meaning of their own lives, and the sources of good and evil in which their cosmology and society have been transformed. The twelve chapters cover Time, Space and Language; Basic Themes, Tonga Religious Vocabulary and its Referents; the Vocabulary of Shrines and Substance; Homestead and Bush; Ritual Communities and Actors; Rituals of the Life Course; Death and its Rituals; Evil and Witchcraft; and Christianity and Tonga Experience. The author has drawn on dairies by research assistants, and field notes and research of fellow anthropologists, but above all from her own interaction with Tonga people since 1946. The older people gave first hand memories of Ndebele and Lozi raids, David Linvingstone encamped near their villages in 1856 and 1862, the arrival of colonial administrators, traders, missionaries and European and Indian settlers, and in some cases, the end of colonial rule. Their experience and that of their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren provides the basis for understanding Tonga religious experience. Elizabeth Colson is an American anthropologist who is widely published on the Tonga. Her research interests have particularly concentrated on the Gwembe Valley.
Download or read book Mission in Malawi Essays in Honour of Klaus Fiedler written by S. Nkhoma and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first four essays in Mission in Malawi reassess the meaning, nature and place of mission in a postmodern world. Subsequent essays examine various issues that missionaries and the Church in Malawi have and continue to struggle with. These range from the problem of administering church discipline, the challenge of Bible translation, the question of how to deal with corruption in the corridors of power to the challenges of dealing with initiation rites, HIV/AIDS, patriarchy, gender inequality, the exercise of the Church's prophetic role, lack of contextualized theology, and the difficult task of creating an inclusive church and society. The last three essays are an attempt to describe a contextual theology appropriate for the African church, construct a theology for Malawi and project a future for mission in Malawi in the context of a changing world. These essays offer a rare window into the life and struggles of the Malawian Church even as it faces the postmodern future. The essays are not only informative but also challenging and thought-provoking. Scholars, students and other readers who share an interest in mission and the life of the Church in Malawi will find this collection of essays indispensable in the many years to come.
Download or read book Vimbuza The Healing Dance of Northern Malawi written by Boston Soko and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to show that the possession cult of Vimbuza presents itself as an oral genre which is part and parcel of African Oral Literature. The ethnolinguistic study which we undertake will permit us to catch a glimpse of its whole complexity. The analysis has a bearing on four principal aspects. Historical developments: a certain number of facts concerning the birth of possession among the Tumbuka; possession: the study attempts to show how the cult articulates itself with its beliefs and the use of divination; the social role: analysis of social functions; the style: an analysis of the linguistic procedures which are characteristic of Vimbuza songs. The presence of rhetorical figures would confirm that we are talking about an oral literary genre.
