Missionaries, Church Movements, and the Shifting Religious Significance of the State in Zambia

Abstract

In Zambia, where church membership was estimated to embrace 75 percent of the country's ten million people, Christianity has been as central to the country's political evolution as it has been to its religious evolution. European mission churches, which provided bridges for co lonial expansion into the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s, also served frequently as training grounds and institutional launching pads for the African nationalist leaders that led the way toward indepen dence. Moreover, since Zambia gained its independence in 1964, Ken neth Kaunda, who was president until 1991, and Frederick Chiluba, who unseated Kaunda, have gone to greater lengths than most regimes in post-colonial Africa to insure political loyalty on the part of churches. Nevertheless, responses to the colonial and post-colonial state have been far from uniform among Zambian churches. While the historic, Protestant mission churches have been fairly reliable allies of the state, the Catholics (during the latter twentieth century)1 and a rapidly ex panding third wing of African Christianity referred to as African Initi ated Churches (AIC's), have proven to be a much more difficult political challenge. AIC's, typically characterized by creative blends of Christian supernaturalism and African traditionalism, have been products of two historical moments of missionary ferment and African political intentionality in Zambia (and across sub-Saharan Africa). An initial period of missionary ferment, lasting into the mid-1990s, was dominated largely by European mission churches, although, in Zambia, American-based Watchtower churches were an important factor as