The spirit and the scapular: Pentecostal and Catholic interactions in Northern Nyanga district, Zimbabwe in the 1950s and early 1960s

Abstract

This paper seeks to advance local level studies of African Christianity. It focuses on the missionary encounter with the Katerere chiefdom of north east Zimbabwe, during the 1950s — a period not usually associated with pioneer missionary activity. During this decade there was such a rapid conversion to the new churches that they took on the appearance of a religious movement. Africans rapidly adhered to Elim Pentecostalism as it legitimated itself in local terms, re‐sacralising the landscape in Christian fashion, pitting itself against local demons, and making resonances with local concepts of illness. Likewise, the Catholic hierarchy literally followed a movement of popular Catholicism north, as Manyika migrants evicted from the south, following the implementation of the Land Apportionment Act, arrived with their medals, scapulars and village schools, demanding mission facilities. The consequent patterns of Christianisation were not, however, just the result of local appropriation of the missionary package. They also emerged from the encounter between the missionary movements themselves. Catholicism was represented by nationalist Irish Carmelites, and Protestantism by Ulster Pentecostals. Thus the Irish Question was re‐fought in the plains of Katerere, inevitably drawing Africans into the struggle and creating a mosaic of Christian factions. Throughout, the paper builds upon, and interacts with, Terence Ranger's pioneering work on African religion, particularly his notion of popular Christianity.