The People's Zion : Southern Africa, the United States, and a Transatlantic Faith-Healing Movement / Joel Cabrita.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cabrita, Joel, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spiritual healing--Africa, Southern.

Spiritual healing.

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

Zionist churches (Africa).

Spiritual healing--Illinois--Zion.

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

Zionist churches (Africa)--Africa, Southern.

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

Zion (Ill.).

Africa, Southern--Race relations.

Africa, Southern.

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

Physical Description:

1 online resource (356 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In The People's Zion, Joel Cabrita tells the transatlantic story of Southern Africa's largest popular religious movement, Zionism. It began in Zion City, a utopian community established in 1900 just north of Chicago. The Zionist church, which promoted faith healing, drew tens of thousands of marginalized Americans from across racial and class divides. It also sent missionaries abroad, particularly to Southern Africa, where its uplifting spiritualism and pan-racialism resonated with urban working-class whites and blacks. Circulated throughout Southern Africa by Zion City's missionaries and literature, Zionism thrived among white and black workers drawn to Johannesburg by the discovery of gold. As in Chicago, these early devotees of faith healing hoped for a color-blind society in which they could acquire equal status and purpose amid demoralizing social and economic circumstances. Defying segregation and later apartheid, black and white Zionists formed a uniquely cosmopolitan community that played a key role in remaking the racial politics of modern Southern Africa. Connecting cities, regions, and societies usually considered in isolation, Cabrita shows how Zionists on either side of the Atlantic used the democratic resources of evangelical Christianity to stake out a place of belonging within rapidly-changing societies. In doing so, they laid claim to nothing less than the Kingdom of God. Today, the number of American Zionists is small, but thousands of independent Zionist churches counting millions of members still dot the Southern African landscape.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: The People's Zion

1. Temperance, Divine Healing, and Urban Reform in Nineteenth-Century Australia

2. Christian Cosmopolitanism and Zion City in the American Midwest

3. Unity and Division in Early Twentieth-Century Johannesburg and in Transatlantic Zion

4. Zion's Egalitarian Promises in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, South Africa

5. Sectarian Creativity and Populist Prophets in Interwar Johannesburg

6. Cosmopolitanism, Ethnicity, and Migrant Labor Networks in Southern African Zion

7. Youthful Reformers and the Politics of Bible Schools in the Kingdom of Swaziland

Afterword: Zion and Pentecost

APPENDIX 1. INTERVIEWS

APPENDIX 2. LIST OF PRIMARY SOURCES

ABBREVIATIONS

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

9780674985766

0674985761

9780674985780

0674985788

OCLC:

1041152712