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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Apocalyptic Interlude: Revealing Death in Kinshasa |
Author: | De Boeck, Filip |
Year: | 2005 |
Periodical: | African Studies Review |
Volume: | 48 |
Issue: | 2 |
Period: | September |
Pages: | 11-32 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Congo (Democratic Republic of) |
Subjects: | death millenarianism urban life Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Religion and Witchcraft Urbanization and Migration |
External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/african_studies_review/v048/48.2boeck.pdf |
Abstract: | Death has become so omnipresent in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, that the labour of loss and mourning has ceased to be meaningful. Invaded by an ever increasing amount of dead that cannot be put to rest, the society of the living has stopped mourning them. Kinshasa is marked by the rise of Christian fundamentalism as propagated by a great number of Pentecostal churches and other 'miracle' churches of spiritual awakening. This new strong wave of flourishing faith is set against the backdrop of a socioeconomic and political context marked by deep crisis, war, and material conditions of hardship, hunger, lack, and poverty. Without any doubt, the harsh living conditions that prevail throughout the country have contributed to the rapid spread of these new church movements. The author looks at the changed place of death in this urban world and analyses the apocalyptic time scale that the churches have introduced and that pervades daily life in Kinshasa. The reintroduction of temporality, and thus of death, in contemporary Kinshasa is of a very specific eschatological nature and takes its point of departure in the Bible, and more particularly in the Book of Revelation. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [ASC Leiden abstract] |