The argument of images: from Zion to the wilderness in African churches

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Book chapter

Title:	The argument of images: from Zion to the wilderness in African churches
Author:	Werbner, Richard P.
Book title:	Theoretical explorations in African religion
Year:	1985
Pages:	253-286
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zimbabwe
Subjects:	African Independent Churches African religions cults
Abstract:	Taking a body of religious movements, three poly-ethnic churches and an indigenous High God cult in Southern Africa, as the basic unit of study, the author shows how the religious movements can be understood as innovations in space. The analysis starts with a view of the wider social field in which there is massive extraction of labour from one sector to another. It is this change that the participants come to experience as disorder or dislocation and that they confront through religious innovation. To understand religous movements as innovations in space, a comparative account of four interrelated dimensions, according to their variation from church to church, is given: (1) image, (2) consciousness, (3) project, (4) organization. - Notes, ref., scheme.