Christianity and healing in Africa: The Anglican Church’s Holy Cross Community in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The Anglican Church is one of the missionary churches that came to Africa during the nineteenth century. This church is of British origin in terms of its doctrine and its introduction to the African soil and its coming coincided with the colonization of Africa. When the struggle for independence came into effect, the African Christians sought to Africanize, indigenize and inculturate Christianity into their context. This led to the emergence of spiritual movements that later developed into African initiated churches with an emphasis on spiritual healing. This chapter will discuss how the Anglican spiritual movement developed into the Holy Cross Church with a focus on healing under the leadership of Livingstone Nerwande. This chapter will include a discussion of the origins of the Anglican Church, and of the growth and development of religious communities in the church. In particular it discusses the Holy Cross Community, the founder’s historical background, the origins of the movement, causes, theology, healing operations. The chapter also deals with Nerwande’s movement in charity work as the Holy Cross Community and its current status in the religious and ecclesiastical arena. A critical analysis of its theology and healing operations shall also be undertaken to establish its authenticity and to come up with a relevant conclusion.The structures of religious communities as they appear today developed from ascetic practices which later developed into monasticism. Religious life offers avocation that is well known and respected in the church from its beginnings in Egypt to the present moment with the establishment of large numbers of priests, sisters and brothers in urban areas. Jesus’ call, “Come and follow me” (Mark 1: 17) seems to have exerted an indelible influence by Christ’s adherents’ pursuit of divine cause. However it is outside the purview of this paper to track the large history of religious communities. Suffice it to focus on the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe.