Spirit and Matter: The Materiality of Mozambican Prophet Healing

A Historiographical Overview of Mission and Politics in Twentieth-Century Angola and Mozambique

“…Pedro Pinto (2005) presented a study in 2012 on the Jehovah Witnesses in Mozambique that, as in Angola, overlapped with other African religious movements and faced much repression from the colonial authorities. Lastly, several authors explored the medical aspect of African independent churches, most notably James Pfeifer and Tracy Luedke who focused on their healing practices (Pfeiffer 2002(Pfeiffer , 2005Luedke 2007;Gatti 2012).…”

“…In a study on the church in the rural parts of northern Mozambique, he showed that conversion was often temporary and reversible, as well as not infused with the meaning church leaders would like it to be. As mentioned earlier, a few authors have also looked at other Pentecostal churches, usually Afro-Pentecostal (Zion), and focused particularly on their healing practices (Pfeiffer 2002(Pfeiffer , 2005Luedke 2007;Gatti 2012). What is still missing is a consideration of a broader spectrum of Pentecostal churches from countries other than Brazil (for example, Nigeria, Ghana, or South Africa) and from earlier historical periods.…”

Stuck in the Clinic: Vernacular Healing and Medical Anthropology in Contemporary sub‐Saharan Africa

“…Vernacular therapeutic practices had once been a topic of great interest to anthropologists and historians writing on medicine and healing in Africa (Ashforth ; Devisch ; Evans‐Pritchard ; Feierman and Janzen ; Janzen , ; Klaits ; Langwick ; Livingston , ; Luedke ; Luedke and West ; Marsland ; Masquelier , ; Stoller and Olkes ; Turner ; West ; Whyte ). These works were central to important debates concerning questions of rationality (Evans‐Pritchard ), foundational to the development of major schools of anthropological theory such as symbolic anthropology (Turner ), and crucial to anthropological understandings of how socio–cultural orders are reproduced and transformed (Comaroff ).…”