Anglican Missionaries and a Chewa Dini Conversion and Rejection in Central Malawi

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Periodical article

Title:	Anglican Missionaries and a Chewa Dini Conversion and Rejection in Central Malawi
Author:	Stuart, Richard
Year:	1979
Periodical:	Journal of Religion in Africa
Volume:	10
Issue:	1
Pages:	46-69
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Malawi
Subjects:	religious conversion Christianity Chewa Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/1581025
Abstract:	By concentrating upon the intellectual content of 'traditional' religious systems, anthropologists and historians are able to present the transformation from ethnic to world religions as a development, demonstrating continuity as well as change, and to demonstrate both that the reactions of members of small scale societies to the challenge of the world religions depended upon internal as well as external variables, and extended upon a continuum from complete acceptance to total rejection. The major attempt to place this dialectic within a historical framework has been the postulation by Robin Horton of an intellectualism theory of African conversion. This article tests his hypothesis against the experience of one people whose society provided them with the resources both to reject and to accept Christianity. The society is the Chewa of central Malawi, the missionaries the members of the high church Anglican 'Universities' Mission to Central Africa' (UMCA). Map, notes, sum.