Ritual healing and political acquiescence: the case of the Zionist Churches in southern Africa

Schoffeleers, Matthew

doi:10.2307/1160267

Cited by 43 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Although Zionism could only mediate societal contradictions, but not transcend them, it did not turn Tshidi into docile servants of Apartheid, but instead enabled them to express symbolic resistance against the system. Schoffeleers (1991), building on similar data, argued that this understanding of resistance extended the notion beyond recognition. He presented the Zionist churches, and for that matter healing churches in general, as instilling political quiescence in their members-a position which evoked much disagreement (Gunner 2002, p. 6 and subsequent pages).…”

Section: Religion and The Public Spherementioning

confidence: 91%

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

Meyer

2004

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

399

159

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■ Abstract Taking as a point of departure Fernandez's survey (1978), this review seeks to show how research on African Independent Churches (AICs) has been reconfigured by new approaches to the anthropology of Christianity in Africa, in general, and the recent salient popularity of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in particular. If the adjectives "African" and "Independent" were once employed as markers of authentic, indigenous interpretations of Christianity, these terms proved to be increasingly problematic to capture the rise, spread, and phenomenal appeal of PCCs in Africa. Identifying three discursive frames-Christianity and "traditional religion," Africa and "the wider world," religion and politics-which organize(d) research on AICs and PCCs in the course of the past 25 years, this chapter critically reviews discussions about "Africanization," globalization and modernity, and the role of religion in the public sphere in postcolonial African societies.

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Section: Religion and The Public Spherementioning

confidence: 91%

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

Meyer

2004

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

399

159

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“…Within Africanist anthropology, faith healing has already been discussed as a third distinct system of healing (Schoffeleers 1991) that combines elements from both traditional and biomedical systems (Peltzer 1999). For example, African-independent churches in southern Africa feature three distinct forms of faith healing: public healing during church services, healing by immersion in water (also public), and private healing through consultation with a prophet (Peltzer 1999; Cox 1994).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Analyses of the rapid growth of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity across southern Africa emphasize the marketing of faith healing as an invaluable product in this context (Dilger 2007; Becker and Geissler 2007; Gifford 2004). Faith healers are different from traditional healers in their reliance on the world religions of Christianity and Islam to provide both legitimacy for their own practice and the symbolic tools to give meaning to health and illness (Schoffeleers 1991). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Third Therapeutic System

Manglos

Trinitapoli

2011

J Health Soc Behav

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Faith healing in sub-Saharan Africa has primarily been studied qualitatively among Pentecostal-Charismatic groups, and considered as its own phenomenon with little attention to its relationship to other modes of healing. Using data from Malawi, a religiously diverse African country with high HIV prevalence, we find that faith healing is pervasive across multiple religious traditions. For individuals, attending a faith healing congregation is associated with lower levels of generalized worry about AIDS, and this association is driven by those who switched churches before AIDS became widespread in rural areas. Use of condoms and traditional medicine are, on the other hand, positively associated with worry about AIDS. We argue that faith healing can be understood as a third therapeutic system that coexists with the well-documented biomedical and traditional systems. The success of faith healing approaches lies in their unique ability to combine individual-pragmatic and communal-ritualized aspects of healing to inform interpretations of the AIDS epidemic and its consequences.

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“…Thus the signs of physical disorder are simultaneously the signifiers of an aberrant world" (1985:9). Matthew Schoffeleers (1991) disagreed with Comaroff, arguing that political acquiescence, rather than resistance, is a characteristic of churches in South Africa. In his view, Zionist churches are acquiescent because healing, the central component of their practice, individualizes and depoliticizes the cause of illness.…”

Section: Healing and Politics The Politics Of Healing Healing Politmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ritual Healing and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Navajo Society

Csordas¹

2002

Body/Meaning/Healing

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My point of departure is the intersection of three heavily traveled conceptual highways that wind across American anthropology. The first is ritual healing, which has preoccupied anthropology as religion, performance, therapy, and, broadly speaking, as cultural process (Csordas and Kleinman 1996;Dow 1986;Kleinman 1980;Levi-Strauss 1966). The second is identity politics-that is, the deployment of representation and mobilization of community within plural societies in the name of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, or religion-which in recent years, has captured the attention of scholars in both cultural anthropology and interdisciplinary cultural studies (Calhoun 1994;Friedman 1992;Giddens 1990; Lash and Friedman 1992). The third is Navajo society, which remains one of the most heavily documented, most frequently plundered for ethnographic examples, and most irritated by the persistent probing of anthropologists of all stripes (Farella 1984;Kluckhohn and Leighton 1946;Lamphere 1977;Witherspoon 1977). In this article, I elaborate the relation between ritual healing and identity politics in contemporary Navajo society by presenting a conceptual framework that can potentially be applied across a wider range of societies.What is the purpose of questioning the relation between ritual healing and identity politics? Doing so allows me to address in specific fashion the perennial issue of the relation between religion and politics, both of which are forms of power but with ostensibly different motives and modes of operation (Fogelson and Adams 1977). It allows me to address the parallel issues of the individual in relation to the collective and of microsocial in relation to macrosocial 20 american ethnologist

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Ritual healing and political acquiescence: the case of the Zionist Churches in southern Africa

Cited by 43 publications

References 27 publications

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

The Third Therapeutic System

Ritual Healing and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Navajo Society

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