Overview

A study of the role of Africans in the growth and process of Christianity in South Africa in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. In particular it provides an insight into the role of writing and literacy in the church founded by the South African prophet, Isaiah Shembe, in 1910. The work provides a contextualizing introduction which includes discussion of the church's history and its position in contemporary South Africa, and weaves in discussion of the topics of literacy and modernity. The text then moves to three documents, presented in their language of composition, Zulu, and in an English translation. The three books , each from Shembe's Nazareth Baptist Church, provide the reader with an insight into the growth and organization of one of southern Africa's most influential African churches, and into the use and interpretation of the Bible by the church's founder, Isaiah Shembe, and by church members. Central to the writings is the complex presence of Shembe, present both through his own words in the first book and, in the second book, through the memory of Meshack Hadebe, a member of the church in the 1920s and 1930s. The extracts in the third book provide a glimpse of the church's hymnal and the unique religious poetry of the hymns, authored by Shembe.

Full Product Details

9789004125421

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Elizabeth Gunner, Ph.D. (1984) in African Languages and Literatures, School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, is Professor of English Studies, School of Language, Culture and Communication at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her most recent publications are a literary afterword to Zulu Woman. The Life Story of Christina Sibiya by Rebecca Reyher and Wrestling with the Present, Remembering the Past: Zulu Radio Drama in Contemporary South Africa (Journal of Southern African Studies, 2000).

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available