Spirits and Letters Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity [Paperback]

Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise the Spirit and the Letter as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between charisma and institution by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Language

Introduction

• Charisma  Institution
• Charisma/Spirit/Orality  Institution/Letter/Literacy
• African Literate Religion
• Spirit and Letter in African Christianity
• Examining Literacy Practices
• The Fieldwork
• Outline of the Book

PART I: HISTORIES AND ETHNOGRAPHIES

Chapter 1. Colonial Literacies

• Mission, School and Printing Press
• Steps towards Secularization
• Counterforce in Writing
• What is a School?
• Resistance and Non-religious Literacies
• Colonial Bureaucracy
• Evangelists as Administrators

Chapter 2. Passages,l£è