Full Description
Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise 'the Spirit' and 'the Letter' as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between 'charisma' and 'institution' by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Language
Introduction
Charisma - Institution
Charisma/Spirit/Orality - Institution/Letter/Literacy
African Literate Religion
'Spirit' and 'Letter' in African Christianity
Examining Literacy Practices
The Fieldwork
Outline of the Book
PART I: HISTORIES AND ETHNOGRAPHIES
Chapter 1. Colonial Literacies
Mission, School and Printing Press
Steps towards Secularization
Counterforce in Writing
What is a School?
Resistance and Non-religious Literacies
Colonial Bureaucracy
Evangelists as Administrators
Chapter 2. Passages, Configurations, Traces
At the Edge of the Road
On the Road
Early Evangelisations
Christianity in the 1990s
Religious Intersections
Chapter 3. Schooled Literacy, Schooled Religion
PART II: LITERATE RELIGION
Enrolment in School
After the Ringing of the Bell
Recitations of Syllabi
Experiences with Mission Schools
Contemporary Religious Education
Chapter 4. Literate Cultures in a Material World
The Bible as an Everyday Object
Literacy in Times of Paper Shortage
Getting Hold of Christian Publications
Publications as Property
Chapter 5. Indices to the Scriptural
Bible Talks
Programmatic Visibility
References to the Book
Chapter 6. The Fringes of Christianity
Blurrings and Criteria
Turning Letters Upside Down
Chapter 7. Thoughts about 'Religions of the Book'
Book People
Scriptural Inerrancy and Authority
Canonization and the Bridging of Realms
PART III: WAYS OF READING
Chapter 8. Texts, Readers, Spirit
Bibles, Versions, Origins
Pamphlets and Eclecticism
Selections and Combinations
Private Readings, Implicit Influences
Bible Studies
Chapter 9. Evanescence and the Necessity of Intermediation
The Impossibility of Storing the Holy Spirit
Objects, Bodies and Spiritual Evanescence
Chapter 10. Setting Texts in Motion
Deciphering and Preaching
Sediments of the Spirit
Chapter 11. Missions in Writing
Literacy Networking
The Jehovah's Witnesses: Questions and Answers
The New Apostolic Church: Mediation via Circulars
Supplements as 'Obligatory Passage Points'
Enablement through Denominational Publications
Chapter 12. Enablements to Literacy
Rumination and Scholarship
Scripture and Enablement
Enabling Supplements
PART IV: BUREAUCRACY IN THE PENTECOSTAL-CHARISMATIC MODE
Chapter 13. Offices and the Dispersion of Charisma
Bureaucracy as Social Practice
Organizational Formalization as a Founding Myth
Dispersing Charisma, Allocating Offices
Charisma, Hierarchies, Variations
Ignorance and Mutual Recognition
Chapter 14. Positions of Writers, Positions in Writings
Certifications of Authority
God's Secretaries
Identifications and Registries
Fixing Polyvalent Rites of Passage
Portrayals of the Momentary
Chapter 15. Outlines for the Future, Documents of the Immediate
Agendas as Revelations
Reports of the Unpredictable
Agendas, Reports, and the Holy Spirit
Re-spiritualizing Bureaucracy
Chapter 16. Bureaucracy In-Between
Flows and Facades
African Christianity and the State
Formalizing Social Relations
Imagining the State
Legacies and Isomorphism
Presentations and Concealments
Bureaucracy as Pentecostal-charismatic Empowerment
Chapter 17. Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
