Conversion as a Social Process E-Book

Ulrich Luig

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 620

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Conversion as a Social Process presents a detailed and multi-facetted account of the genesis of an African mission church in Southern Zambia. Its main theme is the transformation of European missionary Christianity into an important medium for Africans to negotiate creatively the challenges of the modern world. The first part of this case study scrutinizes the contextual conditions, and the consequences, of the translation process of the European missionary message into the forms of African culture and modes of thought. The second part analyses the developments of post-colonial and post-missionary African Christianity in a rural setting. It argues that Christian ethics and world view offer new means of self-identification in a complex world. Drawing on local oral sources, archival material and ethnographic literature the book represents a new genre of intercultural Church history.

Leseprobe

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

Approaching African Christianity

The dialogues of fieldwork

Conversion in theoretical perspective

Writing African church history: analytical issues

The structure of the study

PART I

THE SELF AND THE OTHER BACKGROUNDS AND EARLY ENCOUNTERS

Maps

1 THE WORLD OF THE ZAMBEZI VALLEY

Introductory remarks

Economy and social organisation

The world of the living and the domain of the spirits

The nature of the spirits

The spirits and the family

The spirits and the neighbourhood

The troubled individual and afflicting spirits

Ethics and the problem of evil

The fallibility of man and the universal order

The problem of evil

The coming of the white men and the creation of a metaphor

Dealing with regional powers

The effects of long-distance trade

British rule and the impact of labour migration

2. MISSIONARY VISIONS

Introductory remarks

Methodist backgrounds

The Simple Gospel of Methodism

Methodism and the re-making of man

The evangelisation of the world

The unity of mankind and the process of civilisation

Biblical motifs

The "manifest destiny" of British colonialism

The policies of the Primitive Methodist mission

3. COMMUNICATING THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE

Introductory remarks

Missionaries and colonial administrators

The missionary message

The missionary praxis

Missionary evangelism

The ministry of healing

The school as church, the church as school

The gospel of work

The building of the Methodist Church

4. THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONVERSION

Introductory remarks

Age and gender

Rebellious youth

Ambivalent women

Experienced men

The growth of the Christian community

The new Christian family

Strained family relations

The formation of a Christian group identity

Political implications

5. THE QUEST FOR UNDERSTANDING

Introductory remarks

Conceptual contexts

The widening horizon

From communal ritual to individual understanding

The creation of a Christian morality

The re-arrangement of Tonga cosmology

The changing concept of God/

Leza

Jesus Christ and the

mizimu

The neglected spirit

The divided cosmos and the personification of the evil

Part II

CONVERSION AND SOCIAL CHANGE: THE GROWTH OF AN AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY

6. THE CHANGING WORLD

Introductory remarks

Resettlement and Independence

The resettlement

From colonial rule to independent Zambia

Living in a new environment

The reordering of family relations

The changing village community

A new village economy

Social change and the domain of the spirits

The cult of the ancestors

The cult of the basangu

Living in fear: witchcraft and medicines

Struggling with alien forces

7. FROM THE MISSIONARY CHURCH TO INDIGENOUS CHRISTIANITY

Introductory remark

The end of the missionary era

The unpopular missionary

The creation of the United Church of Zambia

The reordering of Church life

The collapse of the missionary Church

The development of UCZ church life

The free market of Christianity

8. THE SEARCH FOR RELIGIOUS IDENTITY

Introductory remarks

Living "just in between"

Contemporary rural Christianity

Rural UCZ congregations and membership identity

Coping with Christian pluralism

The communication of Christian thought

The quest for salvation:Christian morality and eschatology

The attraction of the Christian way of life

The things to come

9. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

APPENDICES

Appendix A: Abbreviations

Appendix B: Tonga-English-Glossary

Appendix C: Chronology

Appendix D: List of ministers and missionaries

A.

Methodist missionaries and ministers

B.

UCZ Ministers

Appendix E: List of mission teachers and evangelists at Kanchindu and Masuku

Appendix F: Lists of informants

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

Approaching African Christianity

Christianity is a marked feature of contemporary Zambia. Large church buildings in the country's towns and cities - most of them modern, others obviously relics of colonial times - affirm this fact just as do the smaller and much simpler meeting halls that mushroom along the Zambian highways and bush roads. Statistical figures, however reliable or not, corroborate such sketchy visual impressions. According to Barrett (1982:765) 64.9% of the total Zambian population belonged to one of the Christian churches in 1969 (census date), and the number of Christians in Zambia grows by more than 4% per annum. Characteristic for Zambian, or even African, Christianity is not only the increase in membership but also the vast variety of the Christian denominations. In the emergent township of Sinazeze in the southern part of the Zambezi Valley, for example, the number of local Christian churches rose by more than 100% within five years from 13 in 1988 to 28 in 1993 (personal communication Ute Luig). This perplexing number included most of the former mission churches, like the United Church of Zambia, Roman Catholic Church, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehova's Witnesses etc., but also an increasing number of so-called African churches, like the Maranke Church (see Jules-Rosette 1975) and several Mutumwa churches (see Dillon-Malone 1983). Membership of the churches seems to be fluid and depending on changing fashions. While some people attend services of several churches to find out which one suits them best, others adhere to one particular denomination that they regard as their Church. However, in most denominations people from all social strata and of diverse educational backgrounds are present, although women and adolescent girls and boys are the most ardent participants. Thus, Christianity is not confined to urban and semi-urban areas, but is also well rooted in the rural hinterland of these centres of modernity. Even in the most distant villages of the Gwembe Valley young people gather in the evenings for choir and prayer sessions, and their singing and drumming, their exhilarating prayers continue long after midnight.

However, this spreading of Christianity is only a recent development. Until the 1950s, the Zambezi Valley was one of the remotest parts of the country, enclosed by a steep, rugged escarpment that formed a natural barrier between the valley floor and the adjacent plateaux. The Valley population, known as the Valley or Gwembe Tonga, comprised some 86,000 people by the mid-fifties, of whom 55,000 lived on the north bank of the Zambezi River (now Zambia) and 31,000 on the south bank (now Zimbabwe). During most of the colonial period the villages in the Valley remained in relative isolation. Although Primitive Methodist Missionaries, since their arrival in 1901, continuously laboured to convert the Valley population to Christianity, the people clung tenaciously to their established ways of life, customs, and religious traditions. Up to the middle of this century the success of the Methodist Missionary was minute in terms of church membership. The small group of Christian converts was more or less confined to those people who found employment with the mission as teachers or evangelists. In the late fifties, however, when the planned formation of the Kariba Lake necessitated the resettlement of large portions of the population, the Valley was drawn closer to mainstream Zambia. The building of roads, the expansion of government services, and the consecutive integration into the national market economy, together with the upheavals caused by the resettlement and the end of the colonial era, were the major factors that pressed for social and cultural adjustment to the new circumstances. At the same time, Christianity began to gain momentum in the Valley on a larger scale.

This growth of Christian influences is far from being exceptional in Africa as a whole. Contrary to the rather dismissive attitude towards Christian missions in Western public opinion and even among Western missiologists (Bosch 1991:1-4), the actual consequences of the missionary enterprise are striking. Despite a long history of failure of the missionary endeavours, Christianity has developed into a significant religious and cultural force in African societies (cf. Fasholé-Luke et al. 1978; Hastings 1979). Needless to say that a naive Christian triumphalism that indulges in the appreciation of numerical growth is not only theologically and politically outdated but also counterproductive to achieving a deeper understanding of the motives, circumstances and conditions of conversion to Christianity in Africa. Although a number of studies on Christianisation in Africa appeared recently, the relationship between the state, social change and rapid expansion of Christian ideas and practices is still to be studied in greater detail . Because the question, how and why Christianity could gain such an importance and what Christianity really means to the people concerned is far from being satisfactorily answered - a question that became increasingly urgent to me the longer I lived and worked with both Christians and non-Christians in the Zambezi Valley.

I arrived in the Valley in 1987 for a three year term as the leader of a rural development project, sponsored by the Protestant Gossner Mission of (then) West-Germany, and as a part-time pastor of the United Church of Zambia (UCZ). Though being a newcomer, I soon realised that the local people had quite clear ideas about my position: they saw me as a missionary and welcomed me as such. Small wonder that I felt somewhat bewildered because my perspective on Africa was shaped by the Western discourse on colonialism and imperialism since the late sixties, and especially by its criticism of the collaboration between European missionary societies and colonial rulers. Contrary to discussions in Europe, most of the people in the Valley appeared rather unconcerned about these issues, some of them even indulging in nostalgic feelings about times past. However, by calling me a missionary they placed myself and my sending society into a tradition that I and all of my colleagues believed to be a matter of the past, a closed chapter of a rather embarrassing period in European church history.

Yet, after some time I came to realise that especially the old people in the Valley were well aware of that history, remembering its ups and downs. A great number of them were educated at mission schools, and their hopes and aspirations, but also their disappointments, were once formed by their experiences in the colonial era both in the church and in society. For them, the "history of mission" presents itself as lived experience, as a dynamic process of struggles for resources and power, of intellectual challenges, fulfilments, and frustrations. In this process Christianity has become historicized itself, because its evolvement was embedded in the power relations of European hegemony on the one hand and in the contestations within Tonga societies on the other. Thus, the history of missionary Christianity constituted an important element in our day-to-day communication of which the people in the Valley were usually much more aware than myself.

The young generation, naturally, looked at things differently. For them, such missionary traditions bear only minor importance. They encounter Christianity neither as a homogeneous set of rules, beliefs, and practices nor as having a monopoly in the field of religion. Many young (but also older) people participate in either received, newly adopted, or invented spirit cults as well as in the activities of the Christian churches. Comparable to the situation in Western Europe (cf. Berger 1979), African Christians have to choose among a wide range of religious beliefs, related moralities and corresponding life styles. However, the young people in particular feel attracted by Christianity as a world religion that allows them to transcend their local boundaries on the one hand and the predominant religious pluralism on the other. For them, Christianity has become an important medium for negotiating the challenges evolving from the confrontations between the received lifeways in the Valley and the attractions and hazards of life in modern Zambia.

It was this intriguing particular brand of African Christianity, this easy way of transcending and shifting spiritual domains that stimulated me to engage in research work about the religious traditions of the people in the Zambezi Valley. But there were also nagging questions about my apprehension of Protestant Christianity and its claims for truth that I increasingly came to realise as only one particular Christian tradition among others. Thus the challenge of the present made me turn to the past to comprehend the contemporary configurations, complexities and constraints of African Christianity. One underlying assumption of my case study was that neither Christianity nor conversion can be taken as timeless and homogeneous concepts, but, rather, that they are products of specific socio-cultural and historical circumstances and therefore undergo historical transformations and cultural appropriations.

In this book I attempt to reconstruct the various aspects of the process of communicating, appropriating, and transforming the gospel among the Valley Tonga over the last one hundred years. I am particularly interested in the analysis of the missionary enterprise as a cross-cultural encounter, and in the translatability of the gospel as a relevant force among people of different cultural and social backgrounds. The main focus of this study is the dynamics of the changes by which European missionary Christianity was transformed into something unprecedented: a new type of African Christianity implanted in vernacular culture and religious traditions.

The dialogues of fieldwork

During my stay in Zambia I found myself in a rather hybrid situation. As the leader of a well-equipped development project and, at the same time, as a part-time pastor of the United Church of Zambia I was constantly shifting between several spheres and social roles. As a development worker I occupied a position of hierarchy and authority, controlling resources, man power and money, akin to the tradition of the former missionaries, but also that of a "big man" (Sahlins 1963). As a part-time pastor of the UCZ I became a brother in Christ sharing the same commitments and responsibilities as other church leaders, although relations of hierarchy still remained. Hence, I moved constantly between the role of a stranger and of an insider, of a "big man" (or a "father", as some people called me) and a brother in Christ, sharing their humble living conditions at times, while normally being rather removed in the relatively comfortable surroundings of the Gossner Mission camp. Although a "view from afar" (Levi-Strauss 1985) was rather typical for most parts of my three and a half year contract, I nevertheless was able to develop ties of friendship with some of my workmates, and endured the hardships of travelling and life in the bush with them. That ambiguity of my position became even more complex when I returned to the Valley as a researcher half a year after the end of my contract.

The methodological problems implicated in ethnographic fieldwork have been discussed in anthropology since Malinowski introduced participant observation as the scientific approach to a foreign culture. According to Malinowski, ethnographic fieldwork depends on the dialectics between immersion into an unknown cultural situation and a process of distancing at the same time to gain objectivity. Although these principles still belong to the basic requirements of ethnographic work, Clifford (1986:108) in his fundamental critique of ethnography as cultural text has recently deconstructed these shifting dialectics as allegorical. Clifford drew attention to the fact that this "shifting back and forth between learning from and speaking for the other" is crucial for the "simultaneous reconstruction of a culture and a knowing self" (ibd.). While anthropologists, like Claude Levi-Strauss for instance, claimed the authority to analyse and interpret foreign cultures as the indispensable prerequisite for establishing anthropological knowledge, post-modern thinking has vehemently denied this acclaim of anthropological authorship. Clifford again has defined the writing of anthropological texts as the endeavour of a polyphony of voices and of multiple authorship. Others, like Dwyer (1982) and Tedlock (1987) have propagated a truly dialogical approach based on the communication and shared work experience between researcher and informants to reduce the inherent power relationship that is also characteristic for anthropological field work.

Despite my long (outward) acquaintance with Tonga culture, the three months of research work finally proved rather short in view of the aims of my study and of the problems involved in ethnographic fieldwork. Nevertheless, being now dependent on my informants and trying to collect their views and experiences with missionary Christianity I gradually learned to shift "back and forth between learning from and speaking for the other" (Clifford). What was even more, by attempting to understand the history of mission in the Zambezi Valley as the history of the local people I came increasingly to reflect upon my own role in the development project of the Gossner Mission (and discovered some striking similarities between the work of the former missionaries and our development activities). Thus, I found Clifford's assertion confirmed that the study of other cultures implies both "the simultaneous reconstruction of a culture and a knowing self".

Notwithstanding the change of my role behaviour and the loss of outward symbols of power, most people still accepted me in my new position as a researcher. The fact that I was well known in the area and people trusted me due to our long lasting working relationships, facilitated my task enormously. They accepted willingly to assist me in the writing of a book that they immediately conceived as a record of their history. All of them had a keen interest in co-operation, thus becoming "partners" in a shared project. The awareness of most informants that I depended on their knowledge equalled our unequal relation and turned them to true partners. Therefore, the following study is an account of a common project realised by multiple partnerships.

During my second stay I was able to conduct sixty interviews with forty-four persons (see List of Informants, Appendix F, p. 292). Because my study focused on their experience of Christianity as social praxis, I decided to contact informants in three areas, namely at Nkandabbwe, Kanchindu, and Maamba (see map 2, p. 23). These areas were of particular interest due to their different exposures to "modern influences". Although missionary activities originated in Kanchindu and had been prominent there until the time of Independence, Kanchindu was the most rural region, while Nkandabbwe had been exposed to the influence of the Gossner Mission Camp for more than 20 years. Both areas, however, differed significantly from Maamba Township that represents some kind of an urban growth pole due to the impact of an existence coal mine.

According to my main interest in writing an account from the emic point of view (that is the view-points of the local people), I chose a methodical approach based on biographical interviews. The issues raised in these interviews focused on the personal experience of my informants with, and their views about, Christianity at different periods of time. The interviews were usually conducted individually and in English. Only nine interviews were translated by one of my former informants. Each interview lasted one hour in the average, was tape recorded and usually transcribed the same day. This approach proved to be extremely useful for controlling my interview techniques as well as for identifying topics that could be further pursued. Because most informants referred to the same missionary and to the same cultural and social setting cross-checking of important data was easy. In the beginning I started interviewing people I knew. At a later stage my informants assisted me by finding other resource persons. Preferred informants were old Christian converts and mission teachers, church members or adherents of different age and sex, and UCZ church agents. I also interviewed three activists of different Independent Churches.

To objectify the personal references and autobiographic statements I compared them with the findings of the available anthropological and historiographic literature about the Valley Tonga. There exists an impressive body of ethnographic publications, especially by Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder who undertook a long-term study on the Valley Tonga. Although these anthropological studies contained a huge amount of information about Tonga culture and societies, they made only few references to the history of the Christian missions in the Valley and to the impacts of Christianity on the Valley Tonga. This was all the more surprising as the works on the history of Zambia devoted considerable attention to the missionary influences in colonial times.

Four weeks of intense archival research at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where the archival material of the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS) is deposited and is also available on microfiche, brought another mass of data about the history of the Methodist mission in the Zambezi Valley. One interview with Rev. B. Jinkin and some correspondence with the Revds. J. MacCormack, J. Young, and M. Temple, who did missionary work in Zambia from the nineteen forties to the 'eighties, helped to obtain additional information. The outcome of the study of the written accounts of the history of missionary Christianity in the Zambezi Valley was a most astonishing confirmation of many of the oral traditions I had collected from my Tonga informants plus, of course, more detailed information about the beginnings of the Methodist mission and its activities during the colonial period.

Being accountable as an author also means accepting the responsibility for the overall structure of the study. Yet, the simple fact that the collected data need interpretation to become meaningful calls for striking a balance between the applications of theory on the one hand and the representation of the views and practices of the local people on the other. I tried to appreciate the calamities involved in the writing about other people by carefully pondering the actual value of each information according to context and situation. While doing so I also attempted respectfully to do justice to the people, both living and dead, with whom I was concerned. One way of appreciating the crucial problems involved in this matter is to let the actors in my narrative speak for themselves, to make their voices heard. Nonetheless, I am fully aware of the fact that I had to select and present their statements. As with any written text, it will finally be left to the readers to decide whether or not the results appear convincing to them.

Conversion in theoretical perspective

In recent years, the term "conversion" has appeared quite unexpectedly in one particular field of contemporary economy: in the military-industrial complex. After the disintegration of the east-west conflict syndrome, large sections of military orientated industrial production became superfluous and even counterproductive, and have to be "converted" to civilian production. As a result, "policy of conversion" has nowadays become a widely used term in politics and economy, because the change of purpose requires the development of new marketing and distribution policies, the retooling of plants and equipment, and a complete reorganization of production. Although plants and personnel may have remained largely the same, the change of purpose made the whole enterprise a different matter. This, I believe, is a good example for what is genuinely meant by conversion in the Jewish and Christian biblical traditions.

The principal message in the preaching of Jesus was the call for a radical turn in people's lives in view of the coming Kingdom of God (Matth. 4:17). This call did not only continue the tradition of John the Baptist but also that of the prophets of Israel who, beginning with Hosea (12:7; 14:1p.), urged their people to return (hebr.: shub, pana) to their God Jahve (Wolff 1951). In the Pauline (and Lukan) interpretation of that tradition, the call to return (greek: epistrephein; metanoein) to God was then extended to the Gentiles, presuming that even non-Jews had some comprehension of the same God as the creator and sustainer of the world (Acts 14:15ff.; 17:22ff.; Rom 1:19ff.). Yet, the missionary message of the early Christians combined the call to return to God with a new perspective: the participation in the movement of the Kingdom of God that had found its full expression in the person of Christ (Luke 4:17f.). In this sense conversion means immersion into a new being in Christ as the result of the agency of the Holy Spirit, its outward signs being baptism and the integration into the new community of the saints. The missionary proclamation of the gospel involves therefore the reference to both a certain consciousness of being created by God (cf. Smith 1950:31ff.; Pannenberg 1988:167ff.) and a new being in Christ. Hence, conversion to Christianity is characterised by the dialectic between the reinterpretation of the old conceptions of God in view of the new life as a Christian.

Because conversion involves both the workings of the Holy Spirit and human agency, there is always a tension between the universal efficacy of the Spirit and the cultural expressions of Christianity as a historical faith. From its origins, the gospel has transcended ethnic and cultural boundaries, thereby selectively integrating the most powerful religious and cultural constituents of the time (Harnack 1924:324-31). Although, like Christ, the gospel is not of the world, it never exists in its pure divine form in the world. "Unmixed, unchangeable, undivided and indivisible" (Council of Chalcedon, 451) it always coexists with the culture of the people who believe in it. Consequently, the gospel arrives in a new context in the cultural forms and patterns of thought of those who proclaim it for the first time. Yet, to become meaningful and relevant in the new environment it needs translation. Translation requires the co-operation of both the expounders of the gospel and those challenged by it. That co-operation in the translation process, however, may (and often does) take place even outside the full awareness of the actual actors. The gospel carries implications that transcend the understanding of those who proclaim it, and it adds new dimensions of meaning to those to whom it is proclaimed. The actual outcome of the translation of the gospel is therefore neither a mere copy of missionary Christianity nor a simple amendment of the religious traditions of the societies where it is being implanted. It is something new.

The Gambian theologian Lamin Sanneh (1989) has argued that the translation process inherent in Christianity always involved a dual force. In the transmission from one culture into another, the cultural roots of the Christian missionary message are being relativized whereby some significant aspects of these roots are promoted. At the same time, the vernacular culture is adopted as a natural extension of the life of the new religion and is thus qualified to provide the cultural criteria for formulating the Christian theme in the new context. Therefore, the successful transmission of the gospel from one culture to another depends on the degree to which the Word becomes flesh in the new environment and its glory is recognized (John 1,14). That indispensable acceptance of other cultures as natural environments for the inculturation of the gospel makes Christianity, as a world religion, essentially a pluralist dispensation of enormous complexity. Sanneh's "pluralist" model combines historical and cultural relativism with the Christian belief in God's universal purpose by recognizing the fact that knowledge about God can only be expressed and interpreted in the vernacular, i.e. in the language and patterns of thought of a particular culture.

In the missionary situation, the translation of the gospel involves interlocutors of distinct cultural and religious backgrounds and the interplay of different experiences, ideas, interests, and pressures. Conversion, then, is a process which demands a minimum of mutual understanding and comprehension between the expounders and the addressees of the gospel. But, as Comaroff/Comaroff (1991) convincingly argued, this process is quite often characterized by misrecognition, too. Misrecognition, for them, means the interpretation of one culture in the taken-for-granted terms of another (:258). It is a term that problematizes people's diverse modes of thought that can attribute different meanings to the same matter. In this study I argue that misrecognition is a key term for understanding the dynamics of the local appropriation of the gospel in cross cultural encounters.

As a living and, thus, historical faith the Christian community becomes a social fact within the society in which it lives. Conversion involves a redefinition of one's self-definition, values, and commitments as well as a change of religious allegiance. The Christian principle "to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29) has always been a genuine source of conflict because a change of religious allegiance is inevitably linked to a change of social affiliations. In pre-colonial Africa, religion was a matter of public cult rather than of personal convictions. Conversion as a person's decision to leave one's religious position and to attach oneself to another did not exist, because each society had its particular cults and beliefs (though often very similar ones). Religious change was thus inevitably connected with social change (Mbiti 1969:4). This was indeed the fundamental problem for both European missionaries and African Christians. In this book I further argue that the theo-logic and the structural consequences of the inculturation of the gospel regulate the dynamics of both the process of translation and of conversion. Therefore, I do not treat conversion to Christianity as a sudden shift of individuals from one religion to the other but as a complex social process which takes place under specific political and social conditions.

When attempting to reconstruct the process of conversion through history, it is only the actual praxis and (at best) the corresponding regulating ideas and aspirations of the people that can be examined. Religious faith proper remains inaccessible to scientific scrutiny. Therefore, African church history can hardly accomplish its aims without drawing on the findings of related disciplines, especially those of anthropology, sociology, and African historiography. While ecclesiastical historiography has to comply to the same scientific standards as other disciplines it has no methods or theories of its own. Where it differs from other disciplines is the particular interest in the development of the living faith and its manifestations in the field of church life, ethics, and religious thought in view of making its findings profitable for the Church both in Africa and in Europe.

For the formulation of a theoretical approach to the understanding of the reality of religion and the dynamics of religious change, Max Weber's sociology of religion still constitutes an important strand in the discourse among American social theorists in particular. Weber (1920b:252ff.) argued that interests (both material and ideational ones) and not ideas are the driving forces for human actions also in the field of religion, because even religious activities aim at psychical or material ends within this world albeit they have their point of reference in the hidden other world. According to Weber, both ideational and material interests are regulated by the worldview and the social conditions of the main carrier group of a particular religion at the time of its first emergence. The worldview regulates the dynamics of the interests manifested in actions because it answers the question "from what" and " for what" a person can be redeemed, i.e. what "salvation" actually means for the people concerned. Starting from the correspondence between the interests of human actors and the regulating ideas, Weber further argued that the social position makes for the affinity between certain ideas and certain groups within a given society. For an explanation of the specific features of a religion it is therefore decisive to identify the specific sphere of interest (Interessenlage) of the social group that represented the religion at the time of its formation.

Hefner (1993), drawing on Max Weber, argued that Christianity as a world religion is ideationally and organizationally preadapted to the life in a plural world, because it emerged after the formation of supra-ethnic, state based societies but transcended its social and cultural origins. As Christianity is essentially based on revelation which rejects the world as given, it affirms, at the same time, a transcendent ideal apt to establish new standards of meaning and ways of life. The real force of Christianity, according to Hefner, lies thus in its linkage of strict transcendental imperatives to institutions for the propagation and control of religious knowledge and identity over time and space. Because Christianity was able not only to formalize doctrine but also to regularize clerical roles and to standardize ritual, it stands ready to create an authoritative culture and a cohesive religious structure in any society and culture. But this can only materialize if people are ready to embrace the new faith and to revaluate their local ways of life. This is most likely to happen in times of crisis. However, in order to sustain in its new environment, the new Christian faith must be shared by people who submit themselves under the social control of the Christian organization and to maintain it at the same time.

Among anthropologists, Robin Horton's intellectualistic conversion model (Horton 1971; 1975) has been widely discussed (and criticized) for more than two decades. Horton stressed the cognitive aspects of religion by regarding religion as theory apt to explain, predict and control this-worldly events. Horton argued that once people become integrated into the wider context of the "macrocosm" they start remoulding their world-view by attributing more importance to the high God at the expense of the lesser spirits. The attraction of the world religions Christianity and Islam, according to Horton, lies in their function as catalysts in the ongoing process of change from microcosm to macrocosm. In this process only those beliefs and practices of Christianity and Islam are accepted which hook onto existing components of the traditional cosmology, while other elements are rejected or simply neglected. In this way Horton develops an understanding of conversion to Christianity as an outcome of the need for a gradual modification of existing religious thought systems to meet the intellectual challenges implied in the changes of the natural and social environment. Conversion, for Horton, is mainly a cognitive process that is propelled by the dialectic of continuity and change in the world-view of a people.

The South African anthropologist Monica Wilson, building on her theorem of enlargement of scale (Wilson/Wilson 1945), approached the phenomenon of conversion to Christianity from a similar angle as Horton but placed greater emphasis on the effects of the process of change on individual persons (Wilson 1971). She argued that as people move from small-scale preliterate societies to large-scale literate societies they grow in awareness of themselves and of the groups in which they live. That awareness goes along with more freedom from subordination to established conventions and the social group that safeguards them. But growing freedom of thought and action calls for making choices based on values, not on convention. As the range of moral obligations extends from the small group of kinsmen and neighbours to the wider circles of social interaction, the moral standards must be reformulated as well. Christianity, having escaped the straight-jacket of kinship, transcends the narrow interpretation of moral obligations and offers a universal ethic. The radical change in the interpretation of the problem, which is implied in the question "Who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29), conforms to the process of the extending interactions and thus enables the individual to cope with the moral challenges involved in the enlargement of scale (i.e. the number of people in relation and the intensity of those relations).

The still continuing debate on conversion theories shows that, by placing the conversion issue into the wider context of social and religious change, it seems to be impossible to construct a unified and consistent model of conversion. While all authors are in agreement about the assumption that conversion on a larger scale is most likely to take place in times of rapid social and economic change, they still emphasise different aspects of that process. Weber's sociology of religion focuses on the relationships between interests, religious ideas, and the social position of the main actors involved in that process, and thus facilitates an analysis of the conversion process "from below", i.e. from the views and aspirations of the acting groups of people at their particular time. Hefner's outline of Weber's insights appreciates the transcendental (or, in Weber's terms: "irrational") basis of the Christian faith, which allows viewing the well-known world in a different perspective, and then stresses the need for a sustainable organisational environment for the Christian faith. Horton's model reminds us that the Christian call for conversion does not meet with a vacuum but depends on the creative responses of the local populations that are based on their worldview and patterns of thought. M. Wilson's arguments draw attention to the fact that conversion as a social process begins with a search of individual persons for new values apt to guide and regulate personal choices in times when taken-for-granted ethical standards of a given society are shaken.

All these approaches to an explanation of conversion as a social process presume a close relationship between social and religious change. However, by contrasting distinct types of religions they also assume a qualitative dichotomy between different types of societies: traditional (formerly "primitive") vs. modern (formerly "civilised") societies; small-scale vs. large-scale societies (Wilson/Wilson 1945; Wilson 1971); closed vs. open societies (Horton 1967), or microcosms vs. macrocosms (Horton 1971; 1975). None of these oppositions have provided satisfactory classifications. While struggling with more sound distinctions, it was increasingly argued that those elements which once seemed to be unique in so-called traditional societies also exist in so-called modern societies and vice versa. Furthermore, Ranger (1993) has recently shown that the dualism between microcosm and macrocosm is largely an outcome of the colonial immobilisation of African societies which restricted regional mobility of pre-colonial societies and thus turned them into putative microcosms as opposed to the colonial systems (including the missionary societies) which operated on a large scale. Hence, the assumed dualism does not originate from intrinsic qualities of the respective societies but results from historical power-relations.

However, Ranger's argument can even be pushed further to explain the dynamics of the conversion process in colonial and post-colonial times. During colonial times, much of the Christian mission in Africa was not only a proclamation of the gospel but equally so an attempt of the European missionaries to remould African cultures and ways of life in conformity to Western civilisation (Mudimbe 1988:44-64; Comaroff/Comaroff 1991). Hence, it reproduced the prevailing power relations of the colonial system even in the missionary situation and thus contributed to the "immobilisation" of the gospel. Because the British missionaries controlled the official interpretation of the Christian dogma, morality and way of life they also endeavoured to set the terms for the translation of the gospel. Yet, as the working of the spirit is not confined to the domain of the church, the local people began to appropriate and to translate the gospel even beyond the control, and often outside the awareness, of their missionary masters. As a result, the African addressees of the missionary message found themselves in what Sanneh (1988:174) labelled as "a curious catch-22 situation": if they embraced mission controlled Christianity they were confirming their subjugation under the "white man's religion"; if they resisted they disregarded the challenge of the gospel. Small wonder that only those Valley Tonga agreed to be baptised who were prepared to integrate into the European mission setting at the expense of their existing religious and, consequently, social affiliations. However, that situation came to an end together with the colonial era when European missionary societies were replaced by African churches and by a free floating of religious ideas, practices, and church organisations. The missionary "immobilisation" of Christianity then gave way to a new freedom for the gospel to take root in vernacular culture, as well as to the establishment of new forms of church life.

By recognising the particular circumstances under which the gospel was proclaimed and gained momentum, a critical examination of the conversion process must do justice to both the social-structural and the ideational factors involved in that process. As such, religion is always "dually constructed" (A. Giddens), as a medium of inspiration and orientation of individual action on the one hand and as an overall social and cultural framework that regulates and constrains the ideas and activities of individuals on the other. The interesting subject to study, then, is the interplay between both spheres in situations where basic ideas and practices are challenged by external forces, such as the missionary attempt to convert the African peoples to Christianity.

This analytical approach avoids viewing the African converts as mere victims of missionary persuasion or of the compulsions of the colonial system, but regards the African people as the creators of their history both religiously and socially (cf. Ranger 1986). And it distinguishes between the propagation of Christian doctrines and ethics in its European interpretation on the one hand and the local appropriation of the Christian message on the other, thereby acknowledging the fact that the African people conceived of, and responded to, the gospel actively and creatively in their genuine ways. Finally, it follows the course of events not only in different contexts but also in different periods of time and thus attempts to establish an understanding of the conversion process advancing from one generation to the next among the same people.

The particular importance which I attribute to the social and cognitive dimensions of the conversion process is, however, contrasted by an unfortunate neglect of religion as expressive belief, or as ritual praxis. A study of ritual praxis and its innovations over time seems to be indispensable for capturing some basic understanding of the various representations of African Christianity. For example, one important difference between mission churches - or for that matter UCZ Christianity - and African Independent Churches lies in their different approaches to ritual. While the elaborate ritual ceremonies in many Independent Churches, supported by vigorous singing, drumming and dancing, mark without doubt one of their main attractions, ritual praxis in the former mission churches is less developed. Here the relationship between singing and preaching seems to be inverse to that of the Independent Churches. In the UCZ, the sermons and prayers are of far greater importance than speaking in tongues, healing sessions or eradication of witchcraft. Yet, this does not mean that ritual is insignificant. UCZ choirs are especially attractive for younger people because of their tradition of elaborating ritual performances. Yet, being not familiar enough with Tonga language as well as with theories of rituals and performance studies, I felt unfit to go deeper into that subject.

Writing African church history: analytical issues

Until recently, the history of the Christian missions in Africa has been studied invariably from a Western perspective, while the emic dimension of the conversion process received only limited attention (Ajayi/Ayandele 1969; Kalu 1988). The bulk of the literature on the history of mission consists either of histories of missionary societies or, in recent years, of biographies of European missionaries. This Eurocentric approach overlooks the contributions Africans did make to the missionary endeavour and neglects their creativity in the shaping of the missionary encounter. In this way the underlying power relations between the European missionaries and the local populations remain, although in a subtle manner, still effective. Furthermore, postcolonial historiography has established a tradition that reduced the focus of attention to the relationships between the Christian missions and colonialism while it ignored their differences, which were substantial at times. By focusing on the subjugation and alienation of the indigenous populations, African Christians have been reduced to mere victims of "Colonial Evangelism" (Beidelmann 1982) and were thus denied their subjectivity. Hence, mission in Africa has been studied mainly as an enterprise of European missionaries, thereby entirely neglecting the historical fact that the very dynamic of the conversion process has brought about a powerful religious movement of the African people themselves.

One of the results of the post-colonial self-criticism in missionary circles and in the World Council of Churches was the insight that the missionary enterprise in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was so much pervaded by the trust in the superiority of European civilisation and culture that the gospel became almost a captive of Western culture. However, the ongoing debates on the contextualisation of the gospel, particularly among Roman Catholic missiologists, have created a greater awareness of the intimate relationship between the Christian faith and culture on the one hand and of the role of local Christians in the interpretation of the gospel within their own cultural contexts on the other (Luzbetak 1988:69-84). Witnessing the gospel by men and women in a particular historical situation is increasingly seen as being influenced by their cultural settings and, at the same time, as a force capable to judge, transform and change cultural norms and practices (Vancouver Assembly of the World Council of Churches, 1983). In other words, the working of the gospel message cannot be understood independently of the particular cultural contexts in which it is witnessed.

The interesting problem to be studied is, therefore, the history of the local people and the interplay between their culture and religion on the one hand and missionary Christianity on the other. It is a study that analyses the history of mission "from within", in confrontation and negotiation of the missionary teaching "from above", a study of the dialectics of an encounter that originated from unequal power relations. Consequently, the historical analysis of the conversion processes and the growth of Christianity in Africa must, first, look at the history of mission as a process of the communication of the gospel in its actual historical and cultural contexts. Second, it should concentrate not only on the incoming message but even more so on the indigenous religious thought systems and religious practices, and on the way in which the missionary challenges were met by the local people (cf. Mbiti 1986:127-128). The methodological consequence of such an approach is the attempt to explore what Ranger labelled "the 'inward-looking' Christian history" of Africa (Ranger 1975a:3) some twenty years ago. Instead of confronting an "essential African religion" with an "essential Christianity", an "inward-looking" history of particular churches has to examine the mutual interactions between the missionaries and the local populations (:5).

This recognition of the context-boundedness of the gospel message has far reaching consequences for the writing of the history of mission. It follows that at least three contexts must be considered: 1. the one of the people addressed by the Christian mission, 2. the one of the evangelising missionaries, and 3. the overall framework of the particular political and economic environment within which both missionaries and local people interacted.

When looking, first, at the people addressed by the Christian mission, it is important to study their living conditions, their social organisation, their religious praxis, cosmology, and ethics as the framework of their responses to the missionary call for conversion to Christianity. Because people conceive new ideas by drawing an analogy between the unfamiliar and the familiar, they adapt those elements of the unfamiliar first which are most akin to what is familiar to them. This is a decisive precondition for the communication of the gospel between different cultural contexts that many missionaries often underrated. For example, Taylor (1958:252) observed for the Church of Buganda that there was a difference between the gospel preached by the missionaries and the gospel heard by the people. This observation holds true for the Methodist mission in the Zambezi Valley as well. Among the Valley Tonga, too, the religious discourse on conversion to Christianity became soon a matter of the people concerned and, by taking its point of departure from their own religious praxis and worldview, it developed its own dynamics and answers which differed from the official teachings of the British missionaries in many respects. Thus, to understand the developments and the shape of contemporary African Christianity it is necessary to have a closer look at the development of religious ideas and practices at the grassroots level.

Second, the same principle applies for the British missionaries as well. Their views and aims of their missionary work as well as their perceptions of African religions and ways of life were largely shaped by the discourse on religion and society in nineteenth century Britain. Subsequently, the Methodist missionaries preached the gospel, educated the local people, and guided the small local Christian community along those lines and thus influenced greatly the characteristics of the emergent indigenous church. Most of them believed strongly in the possibility that individuals could dissociate themselves from their cultural and religious environment, embrace the Christian faith and European values, and then develop into new Christian characters capable of devising their careers and their social environment. Although the general attitude of missionary circles toward the relationship between Christianity and non-European cultures changed considerably since the late twenties of the twentieth century, it has to be borne in mind that the first generation of local Christians continued to teach and preach more or less in the way by which they themselves were once brought up.

Finally, the overall political and economic conditions under which missionaries and the local people interacted are relevant factors in the history of mission, too. Both missionaries and local people viewed the colonial setting as complementary or even instrumental to the missionary enterprise. At the beginning of the century, most British missionaries regarded colonial rule (at least potentially) as a civilising force working hand in hand with the Christian missions towards the social and religious transformation of African societies. The local population, on the other hand, looked at the European missionaries as a somewhat distinct but still integral part of the dominant European colonial order. Thus, Christianity appeared largely as the religion of the white men who controlled and formed the overall conditions of life in the country, and conversion to that new religion was generally understood as being associated with the world of the Europeans. Small wonder that the dramatic changes of the political and economic setting since the period of decolonisation effected a thorough crisis of the missionary church and the emergence of a new type of African Christianity.

The structure of the study

The narrative in this book is woven from two ends: from the perspective of the Tonga people on the one hand and of the British Methodist missionaries on the other. However, being concerned with the impact of missionary Christianity on the indigenous people rather than with the missionaries, the analysis focuses on the history of Christianity within Tonga societies. The synchronic and diachronic threads in the narrative do not always neatly overlap but some order is maintained by presenting the course of events in two parts.

Part one covers the establishing phase of the Methodist Mission in the Zambezi Valley from the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1940s. This period is characterised by the direct involvement of the British missionaries in the work and by the relative remoteness of the Valley. In the first two chapters I describe the social, political, and ideational backgrounds of the Tonga people (Chapter 1) and of the Primitive Methodist missionaries (Chapter 2cal genesis of their social and religious characteristics, their views about other peoples, and the historical setting in which they met. In the following chapters the interactions of the British missionaries and the local people during this period will be examined. Being propelled by the desire to win the "Dark Continent" for Christ and European civilisation, the Methodist missionaries launched their various missionary activities in order to impress, serve, and convert receptive individuals, and eventually even Tonga society as a whole (Chapter 3). Yet, from the nineteen twenties onward, the decisive protagonists of the transformation of Valley Tonga societies were no longer the British missionaries but the small group of mission trained Tonga teachers. Being the spiritual and cultural mediators between missionary Christianity and Tonga religion and culture, their careers as members of a small Christian educated elite in the Valley are of particular interest (Chapter 4). While the persistent missionary call for conversion drew the Valley Tonga into a "long conversation" (Comaroff/Comaroff 1991) about the validity of their religious ideas and moral obligations in comparison with Christian doctrine, the Tonga mission teachers bore the main burden of the translation of the gospel. Being placed "betwixt and between" (V. Turner) the two distinct religious and social settings, they began to develop a local theology adapted to Tonga worldview and patterns of thought (Chapter 5).

Part two scrutinises the rapid social and religious changes which gained momentum only at the close of the colonial and missionary era in the 1950s. Two political events effected considerable social and religious changes of Valley Tonga societies within less than ten years: the resettlement of large portions of the Valley population and the transition from colonial rule to Independence (Chapter 6). One important result of the decolonisation process was the change in the religious regime of Christianity when church life was continued under the umbrella of the United Church of Zambia and other churches began to proliferate in the Valley (Chapter 7). Under the new conditions of social and religious life in the Valley, Christianity then developed into an important means in the search of many young people for new religious identity and morality, and Christian thought and practice began, slowly but progressively, to penetrate Valley Tonga societies (Chapter 8).

The conclusion reviews the findings of the study in view of the dynamics and the consequences of the inculturation of the gospel and in view of the basic assumptions of the conversion theories discussed above. The theological relevance of these findings will be examined as a contribution to the ongoing discourse on the relation between the Christian faith and the respective social and cultural contexts in which it lives and spreads.

PART I

THE SELF AND THE OTHER:

BACKGROUNDS AND EARLY ENCOUNTERS

Map 1

Map 2

1: THE WORLD OF THE ZAMBEZI VALLEY

Introductory remarks

Talking about localities in the Zambezi Valley is a difficult matter, because the landscape of Tonga country reflects a long history of defeats and the struggle for survival in an adverse environment. People from the Valley usually mention the name of the village when asked where they are from. If the visitor proves to be ignorant about the local geography, they may even mention the name of the chieftaincy of their home area. But this is an administrative unit created during colonial times. If the visitor is more conversant with the local conditions, people may refer to the name of the ritual unit they belong to. This is equivalent to the former Tonga chieftaincies with the local rain shrine as its hidden religious centre. In more general terms, people may also refer to the Valley as the "Gwembe Valley". But this was the name of the district only until recently, and "Gwembe" is not a Tonga but a Ndebele word for the river Zambezi. It was introduced as the Valley's name by the former colonial administration as well. Old people are still aware that their ancestors once suffered from serious raids of the neighbouring Ndebele warriors before the advent of British rule, and they find it strange that their homeland carries an Ndebele name instead of a Tonga one. If the discussion about localities extends to history, people may comment that their home village and their proper chieftaincy was formerly situated on the banks of the Zambezi River which is now inundated by the Kariba Lake.

The former Methodist mission in the Zambezi Valley is part of that sunken world, too. Although its history is relatively well documented, the physical representations of the missionary era are completely gone. Most of the places which were once focal points of missionary activities are now buried by the waters of the Kariba Lake: the first outpost at Sicoba, the later central mission station at Kanchindu, the various schools and preaching places that were scattered throughout the area. Even the graves of the pioneering Jesuit missionary, Anton Terörde (†1880), and of the first Primitive Methodist missionary, Walter Hogg (†1905), are covered by the lake. The names of the old sites were shifted together with the villages at the time of resettlement in 1958, but they carry the old meaning only for those people who remember them from the time before the formation of the lake. Thus, what is left is the memories of the old people and the written accounts of the former missionaries and of Western researchers.

However, when attempting to reconstruct the history of a Christian mission in the Zambezi Valley "from below" (i.e. from the points of view of the local people) one has to cope not only with a whole world that is literally sunken but also with the vicissitudes of the interpretations of history. Based on her experience of thirty-five years of long-term fieldwork in the Valley, Elizabeth Colson (1984) observed that life in the Valley did change to no lesser extent than in any other part of the world and that values and ideas of people changed with it. When she undertook her first census in the 1950s she found that few women or children had been more than ten miles from home and that most men and women made a sharp conceptual distinction between the life the Zambezi Valley and the outer world of the European dominated cities and industry. Yet, some thirty years later, town life had set the standards in the rural areas, and people wanted the same food, clothing, and music as people in towns. While young people naturally protested if confronted with values and ways of life which they thought to be a matter of the past, even older people were found revising their memories in line with their changing ideas about the appropriate ordering of society. Such observations remind us that historiography can achieve no more than approximations to historical realities.

Yet, there are a number of accounts about the period from 1900 until World War II, recorded both in writing and in individual memory. The written material consists of the archival materials and of the ethnographic references based on field data collected by Colson and Scudder before the resettlement. When referring to the latter I assume that by then the pace of change of the basic features of Tonga societies was still relatively slow and that their data reflect, to a fair degree, the social and ideational environment of the life in the Valley in the first half of this century. As far as the memories of the local people is concerned it is important to keep in mind that the Methodist mission to the Valley Tonga began at the beginning of this century only and that the children of the first Christian converts are now in their sixties, seventies or eighties. This means that the transmission of oral traditions about the establishing phase of the mission does not exceed two generations and that there are still many living witnesses of the period under review.

Furthermore, religious ideas and practices are more enduring than other values and habits which are part of a given culture. For example, Colson (1984:6) observed that infant betrothal of girls was common practice in the Valley in 1949 but had disappeared almost completely in 1956. Similarly, people would compensate parties working on their fields with beer in 1956 but had to pay cash for the same services by 1982 (ibid.). In contrast to such adaptations to changing living conditions, the "traditional" Tonga cults of the ancestral and nature spirits are still practised, and spirit affliction, magic, and witchcraft in particular remain important representations of Tonga culture. Unlike the more extreme changes in other fields of life in the Valley, shifts in Tonga religion have been less spectacular and more gradual. Such observations justify the assumption that Valley Tonga religion was not much different at the beginning of the century than some thirty or forty years ago when anthropological fieldwork began and many of my informants were already adult men and women. Nevertheless, in order to indicate that life did change over the years, I shall use the past tense when describing Tonga religion and societies in the following chapter even when my informants refer to it in the present.

Economy and social organisation

People have been living in the Valley as sedentary agriculturists presumably for more than a thousand years (Brelsford 1956:61; Matthews