Religion and African Civil Wars

ISBN-13: 9781403968906 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 288 str.

Niels Kastfelt

Opis

This collection analyzes the part played by religion - Christianity, Islam, and tradition beliefs - in Africa's recent civil wars and insurgent conflicts. The contributors focus on four key areas of the continent: the southern Sudan; Rwanda/Burundi/Congo; Zimbabwe/South Africa; and Sierra Leone/Liberia/Guinea. Among the topics discussed are the role of religious institutions in these conflicts, how religion is used to legitimize violence and war, the role of religion in debating and making sense of war and conflict, and the application of religion as a cultural resource in warfare. The religious consequences of civil wars, in particular how war changes religious beliefs and practice, how war and violence generate their own new religious movements and ideas, and the part religion plays in healing the wounds of civil strife are also examined.

Spis treści

The Role of Religion in African Civil Wars; N.Kastfelt Preface The Contributors Religion and African Civil Wars: Themes and Interpretations; N.Kastfelt Spiritual Fragments of an Unfinished War; S.E.Hutchinson Finding Meaning Amid the Chaos: Narratives of Significance in the Sudanese Church; A.C.Wheeler Churches and Social Upheaval in Rwanda and Burundi: Explaining Failures to Oppose Ethnic Violence; T.Longman The Villagisation of Khinshasa and the Christian Healing Churches as People's Means to Domesticate Rampant Violence; R.Devisch Green Book Millenarians? The Sierra Leone War within the Perspective of an Anthropology of Religion; P.Richards Masked Violence: Ritual Action and the Perception of Violence in an Upper Guinea Ethnic Conflict; C.Kordt Hojbjerg 'Survival, Revival and Resistance': Continuity and Change in Zimbabwe's Post-War Religion and Politics; D.Maxwell Index

O autorze

NIELS KASTFELT is a Lecturer in the Institute for Church History and Centre for African Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.