African spirituality in the Johane Masowe Chishanu religious movement in Zimbabwe: A Christian church-sect dichotomy

Phillip Musoni

doi:10.4102/hts.v77i4.6317

Abstract

This study explored the impact of African indigenous spirituality on African indigenous churches (AICs), particularly in the Zimbabwean context, a special focus was on the Johane Masowe Chishanu (JMC) religious movement spirituality. The spirituality of the JMC religious movement is examined by cross-examining its denigration of the centrality of the Bible, the historical Jesus and the temple gathering as the movement appropriates and re-socialises traditional African shrines for religious gatherings. Thus, the following questions are raised in this study: is the appropriation and resocialisation of African traditional shrines, the denigration of the Bible and the disregarding of the historical Jesus for salvation by the JMC a conscious or unconscious move? If it is a conscious move, the follow-up question is: what motivates the JMC religious movement to regard such religious shrines, whilst disregarding the Bible and Jesus for its spirituality and, because of this, does the JMC religious movement retain the label ‘a Christian church’ or has become a sect?Contribution: While majority of African scholars were celebrating the proliferation of Christianity in the continent as evidenced by an unremitting mushrooming of African Indigenous Churches, some Zimbabwean scholars were categorizing Johane Masowe Chishanu church a sect. Therefore, this article examine the veracity and provenances of the Johane Masowe Chishanu church-sect dichotomy in Zimbabwe.

Highlights

African indigenous churches (AICs) have received scholarly attention in recent years because of their unremitting mushrooming, in Africa
The problem of classifying the Johane Masowe Chishanu (JMC) religious movement as a sect was highlighted in this article
The JMC propagated a theology of continuous incarnation and concluded that Jesus who became Christo was sent by God to the white communities, whilst the same Spirit (Christo) incarnated in Shonhiwa and was renamed Johane, in Mudyiwa who was named Emanuweri, and in Sandros who was named Nyenyedzi, respectively, to mediate between black Africans and God

Summary

Introduction

African indigenous churches (AICs) have received scholarly attention in recent years because of their unremitting mushrooming, in Africa. Some of these AICs have set up branches in Europe and America (Adogame 2013). Whilst it is easy to categorise these religious movements as sects, the author argues in this new research study that such a conclusion needs to be revised. The reason for this submission is that it seems that there is no universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes ‘a church’ in different disciplines, including theology. These were discussed because scholars who dismissed JMC as a sect measured the movement against these elements

Methodology

Conclusion