Abstract
Against models of conversion that presume a trajectory or a progression from one religion to another, this article proposes a less linear, more complex, and ultimately more empirical understanding of religious change in Africa. It does so by foregrounding the particularities of Roman Catholicism—its privileging of materiality and practice, and of community and tradition. In the course of so doing, this article explores the overlaps between modernist thinking, Protestant ideals, and teleological trajectories; the factors behind reconversion and religious oscillation in sub-Saharan African contexts; inculturation and other continuity paradigms in Catholicism; the significance of the Renaissance for early modern Catholic missions; and the ministry of a contemporary Italian Catholic missionary serving in northern Mozambique. This article proposes that Catholic history and Catholic assumptions offer valuable resources for thinking beyond and thinking against linear models of religious conversion.
Highlights
This is a story of crucifixes and converts, of the transmission and reception of religious images, ideas, and institutions in an African missionary encounter that transformed everything and everyone involved
African contexts; inculturation and other continuity paradigms in Catholicism; the significance of the Renaissance for early modern Catholic missions; and the ministry of a contemporary Italian Catholic missionary serving in northern Mozambique
It is empirically dubious to bifurcate Catholicism and Protestantism into two essentially different spheres—one marked by materiality and continuity, the other marked by ideation and rupture
Summary
This is a story of crucifixes and converts, of the transmission and reception of religious images, ideas, and institutions in an African missionary encounter that transformed everything and everyone involved. While I emphasized the Makhuwa disposition toward mobility and malleability, Pentecostal pastors themselves pin blame on the local Catholic priests and catechists, on the manner in which they permit people to be Christian while still propitiating their ancestors and performing traditional ceremonies. Catholicism in this way has come to resonate, in a way Pentecostalism does not, with the Makhuwa predilection for mobility and plurality, for flexibility and accommodation. I argue that the particularities of Roman Catholicism—its privileging of materiality and practice, of community and tradition, and of continuities across epochs and cultures—open analytic space for a less linear, more complex, and more empirical understanding of religious conversion in sub-Saharan Africa
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