Abstract

Ikenanzizi is a town of about 50,000 people2 made up of two villages, Alike and Amuzi (each of which is an autonomous community), in Etiti Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria. Brought under British rule in 1905,3 the town was visited by Catholic missionaries in 1913.4 Owing to the efforts of these missionaries, Catholicism spread quickly and widely in the town. Before 1945, when this study begins, the only challenge to the Catholic mission in Ikenanzizi came from the Church Missionary Society (CMS), beginning in 1936.5 But the Anglican missionaries were able to win only a very small number of converts in the town and were, thus, no serious threat to the Catholic Church. By 1945, Catholicism had become the dominant of Ikenanzizi. The chiefs and headmen of the town, its literate men and women, the children in the town (save the few who were Anglicans) were all Catholics in 1945. At that time, as of today, the Catholic Church was so important in Ikenanzizi that non-Catholics, traditionalists, as well as Anglicans, contributed in kind (labour) and cash to the development of the church. Catholicism was almost the state religion of Ikenanzizi and two events in its history provide a rare case study in the emergence of the charismatic movement within Roman Catholicism.

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