The people's Zion : southern Africa, the United States, and a transatlantic faith-healing movement / Joel Cabrita.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cabrita, Joel, 1980- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Zionist churches (Africa)--Africa, Southern.

Zionist churches (Africa).

Zionist churches (Africa)--South Africa--Johannesburg.

Zionist churches (Africa)--Illinois--Zion--History--20th century.

Spiritual healing--Africa, Southern.

Spiritual healing.

Spiritual healing--Illinois--Zion.

Church history.

History.

Africa, Southern--Race relations.

Africa, Southern.

Southern Africa.

Race relations.

Africa, Southern--Church history--20th century.

Zion (Ill.)--Church history--20th century.

Zion (Ill.).

Illinois--Zion.

South Africa--Johannesburg.

Genre:

Church history.

History.

Physical Description:

356 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Until now, the remarkable transatlantic story of Southern Africa's largest popular religious phenomenon has never been told. The People's Zion is the history of the Zionist movement: a vast federation of thousands of African churches which identifies itself with the original faith-healing 'Zionist' church founded in the American Midwest (unrelated to Jewish Zionism). The story starts when Zionists in Chicago - largely socially-marginalized northern European immigrants and African-Americans - founded a utopian community in 1900 called 'Zion City'. Rejecting the idea that medical professionals were uniquely equipped to deal with ill-health, residents embraced faith healing instead of bio-medicine. Zion City also became well-known as one of the first multi-racial religious communities in the USA. Circulated to South Africa via missionaries and the church's literature, the Zionist movement thrived amongst white and black workers drawn to the city of Johannesburg by the discovery of gold. In Johannesburg as in Chicago, these early devotees of faith healing hoped for a color-blind society.-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Temperance, divine healing and urban reform in nineteenth-century Australia

Christian cosmopolitanism and Zion City in the American midwest

Unity and division in early twentieth-century Johannesburg and in transatlantic Zion

Zion's egalitarian promises in the Transvaal and Orange River colonies, South Africa

Sectarian creativity and populist prophets in interwar Johannesburg

Cosmopolitanism, ethnicity and migrant labor networks in southern African Zion

Youthful reformers and the politics of bible schools in the kingdom of Swaziland.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674737785

0674737784

OCLC:

1002826260