Under the Canopy

Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa
Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-1-57003-752-8
Verlag: University of South Carolina Press

Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 316 g

Reihe: Studies in Comparative Religion

This is a thought-provoking study of how ritual unites an African community against social and economic hardships.A case study in the transcendent powers of ritual and faith, ""Under the Canopy"" illustrates how the healing rites performed at St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church, located in Guguletu, an African township in Cape Town, offered a means by which these poor black South Africans liberated themselves from oppressive systems. Thomas argues that the healing rites, and the folk medicine they involved, reoriented the community's focus away from conditions under apartheid and enlisted active community support that aided in expelling the aggressive and toxic apartheid system. Thomas's ethnographic study underscores the remarkable ability of economically disadvantaged people in South Africa to use their few material resources to create powerful and transformative rituals that helped them endure and overcome inhuman circumstances.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thomas

Über Autor(innen)

Linda E. Thomas is a professor of theology and anthropology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and the editor of Living Stones in the Household of God: The Legacy and Future of Black Theology.