Christianity, Islam, and ‘The Religion of Pouring’: Non-linear Conversion in a Gambia/Casamance Borderland

Abstract

The twentieth-century religious history of the Kalorn (Karon Jolas) in the Alahein River Valley of the Gambia/Casamance border cannot be reduced to a single narrative. Today extended families include Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of the traditional Awasena 'religion of pouring'. A body of funeral songs highlights the views of those who resisted pressure toward conversion to Islam through the 1930s, '40s and '50s. The introduction of a Roman Catholic mission in the early 1960s created new social and economic possibilities that consolidated an identity that stood as an alternative to the Muslim-Mandinka model. This analysis emphasizes the equal importance of both macropolitical and economic factors and the more proximal effects of reference groups in understanding religious conversion. Finally, this discussion of the origins of religious pluralism within a community grants insight into how conflicts along religious lines have been defused.

Reconversion and Retrieval: Nonlinear Change in African Catholic Practice

“…Switching from a paradigmatically Protestant preoccupation with beliefs to a more Catholic concern with practices brings complex patterns of entrance and exit into view-such as in Kollman's description of converts' pragmatic motivations, often having to do with labor conditions, for joining only to later flee Catholic mission stations. In his article on "Non-linear Conversion in a Gambia Borderland", Steven Thomson develops the critique of linear conversion models in slightly different ways, involving three traditions and transits between them (Thomson 2012). Yet here, also, it is telling that the religions under discussion are Islam and specifically Catholic Christianity, an indication again of the elective affinity between these two forms of religion and the materialist and socially/historically embedded orientation that demands a more dialectical model of religious change.…”

Identity: The ongoing integration of our heritage and our allegiance

“…It may be useful to reverse the framing by, first, discussing the formation of identity and then seeing its particular application to those who have converted to faith in Jesus Christ from another religious background. Thomson (2012: 246) notes that ‘[r]eligious conversion is first an issue of identity and social orientation, secondarily a restructuring of systems of belief’. This shift in identity or allegiance is mediated by multiple social networks.…”

‘How, for God's sake, can I be a good Muslim?’: Gambian youth in search of a moral lifestyle

“…The first trend pays attention to conversion from traditional religion to Islam (e.g. Mark, 1985; Searing, 2003; Dramé, 2009; Miran-Guyon, 2012; Thomson, 2012; for reconversion to traditional religion see Baum, 1990), whereas the second trend focuses on conversion from one branch of Islam to another (e.g. Umar, 1993; Rosander, 1997; LeBlanc, 2000; Augis, 2009; Leichtman, 2009).…”