Religious Movements and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Religious Movements and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa
Author:	Ranger, Terence O.
Year:	1986
Periodical:	African Studies Review
Volume:	29
Issue:	2
Period:	June
Pages:	1-69
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:	Christianity African religions Church and State Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Politics and Government
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/523964
Abstract:	Overview of research on the interaction of religious movements and politics in sub-Saharan Africa, focussing on 'traditional' and Christian religious movements in the last hundred years, and with examples mainly from East, Central, and Southern Africa. Case studies have been included of the Watchtower movement in Central Africa and of religious movements in South Africa. Despite differences in methods, models, and interpretations, a growing conjunction of approaches to the political significance of African religious movements was found. Some of its shared propositions are: 1) to place all significant 20th century religious movements into a protonationalist/nationalist sequence is to commit a number of errors; 2) the establishment of colonialism did not represent a decisive break with the past and African religious idioms were neither discredited by the colonial conquest nor rendered peripheral and dysfunctional. App. (rewriting the religious history of modern Zimbabwe), bibliogr., notes, ref.