Domesticating a Religious Import : The Jesuits and the Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1879-1980.

Intro -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- A Failed Mission, Contesting Colonial Rule, and Ecclesiastical Developments -- ''The Struggle Approximated to the Heroic'': African Catholic Women Becoming Nuns in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1922-1965 -- ''The Most Important Work on the Mission'': The Seminary of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, 1919-1979 -- A ''Do-Nothing'' Organization? The Catholic Association, 1934-1974 -- Until Death Do Us Part? African Marriage Practices and the Catholic Church, 1890-1979 -- ''Thou Shalt Not Take My Name in Vain'': The Mwari Controversy, 1911-1961 -- Bread and Wine, Beer and Meat: The Kurova Guva Controversy -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index.

Catholic theologians have developed the relatively new term inculturationG to discuss the old problem of adapting the church universal to specific local cultures. Europeans needed a thousand years to inculturate Christianity from its Judaic roots. AfricansG efforts to make the church their own followed a similar process but took less than a century. Until now, there has been no booklength examination of the Catholic ChurchGs pastoral mission in Zimbabwe or of African ChristiansG efforts to inculturate the Church. Ranging over the century after Jesuit missionaries first settled in what is now Zimbabwe, this enlightening book reveals two simultaneous and intersecting processes: the Africanization of the Catholic Church by African Christians and the discourse of inculturation promulgated by the Church. With great attention to detail, it places the history of African Christianity within the broader context of the history of religion in Africa. This illuminating work will contribute to current debates about the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe and throughout Africa.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.