“Religion” and Christian Conversionin African History: A New Model

Abstract

This article reviews recent scholarship on African religion and argues that, while much has been accomplished, historians have inherited a problematic view of the processes that they have investigated. They have unknowingly adopted evangelical ideas, in the form of written words and concepts that they wrongly assume have maintained consistent meanings down through the decades. Because missionaries’ translations have been taken in this way as accurate guides for understanding what gave rise to them, much of Africa’s intellectual history appears religious. The article focuses on the example of tui‐qua, a term used by Khoikhoi and translated as “God,” and suggests a model for understanding evangelism and conversion that does not rely on the supposed ubiquity of religion. It is argued that missionaries used Christian notions to accommodate the falsity of analogous practices, which although often unrelated in their original setting, together became a single entity (religion) as a result.

Public Morality and the Petrine Ministry: A Protestant Perspective on a Renewed Moral Papacy

“…My argument here is similar, but with a twist of perspective, to that put forward by Paul Landau, when he argues that historians of religion have too readily subsumed indigenous practices into religious categories that make sense to European researchers generally and missionary Christianity in particular (Landau 1999). 16 Scholars of the colonial and postcolonial, often having thoroughly mastered the master's categories and concepts, cannot perhaps be expected to make distinctions that are not made in the master narrative.…”

Killing God

“…Comaroff (1985) and Comaroff and Comaroff (1991). More recently, see Comaroff and Comaroff (1997), Landau (1999), Pels (1999), and MacGaffey (2000).…”

Objects of Catholic Conversion in Colonial Buganda: A Study of the Miraculous Medal

“…Kenyan theologian John Mbiti described the parallels between the rituals and symbols of African (including Ugandan) Traditional Religions and Christianity, ultimately arguing that African Christianity was an extension of earlier spiritual systems (Mbiti 1969).8 This, Mbiti explained, was why Ugandans took so quickly to imported Christianity. In contrast, critiques of Mbiti -perhaps best encapsulated in the work of his contemporary Okot p' Bitek (1970), but also more recent scholars such as Paul Landau (1999) -all argue that the act of drawing out such links inevitably adopts a generalised Eurocentric framework of meaning and understanding about what religion is and means.9 This was an assumption also made by early colonial missionaries and anthropologists who sought to study Ugandan terms, practices, and beliefs within a Christian framework. Rather than trying to fit this medal neatly into one side of the debate or the other, I suggest, following Waliggo, that its main significance lies in what it might tell us about the repurposing and transformation of Euro-Catholic devotions by local worshippers.10 Finally, although this article focuses on the miraculous medal, it also draws on a small number of other Catholic objects to demonstrate the rich methodological and analytical potential for further object-based research on Christianity in Uganda.…”