Includes bibliographical references (pages 590-602) and index.
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.
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.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.