Crossroads of culture : Christianity, ancestral spiritualism, and the search for wellness in northern Malawi / Eric Lindland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lindland, Eric, author.

Series:

Mzuni books ; Number 24.

Mzuni books ; Number 24

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christianity and other religions--African.

Christianity and other religions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (iii, 614 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Place of Publication:

Luwinga, Mzuzu : Mzuni Press, [2020]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

part one. History and theory. Missiology and anthropology in the study of Christian missions in Africa

Historical theologies of bodily resurrection and the emergence of a dualist paradigm in modern Western culture

History, religion, and medicine in northern Nyasaland

The establishment, growth, and segmentation of the Livingstonia Mission

Missionary and Tumbuka models of personhood and being : conjunctions and disjunctions between Western dualist and African monist schemas

Vimbuza : the history of a spirit possession complex

part two. Ethnography and analysis. The ethnographic setting and research methods

God and the ancestors : the emergence of a syncretic Vimbuza form

Embodying spirits : a case study in transitional syncretism

Contested models of baptism : body, mind, and ritual symbolism

Contested models of baptism : cleansing, salvation, and ritual efficacy

At the crossroads : a case study in narrating life and facing death.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 590-602) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9789996060427

999606042X

OCLC:

1155069067