Conversion as a Social Process: A History of Missionary Christianity among the Valley Tonga, Zambia, (Paperback)

Conversion as a Social Process presents a detailed and multi-facetted account of the genesis of an African mission church in Southern Zambia. Its main theme is the transformation of European missionary Christianity into an important medium for Africans to negotiate creatively the challenges of the modern world. The first part of this case study scrutinizes the contextual conditions, and the consequences, of the translation process of the European missionary message into the forms of African culture and modes of thought. The second part analyses the developments of post-colonial and post-missionary African Christianity in a rural setting. It argues that Christian ethics and world view offer new means of self-identification in a complex world. Drawing on local oral sources, archival material and ethnographic literature the book represents a new genre of intercultural Church history.