Under the Canopy: Ritual Process and Spiritual Resilience in South Africa (Studies in Comparative Religion) - Hardcover

Thomas, Linda Elaine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1570033110 ISBN 13: 9781570033117

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Pr, 1999

Synopsis

In an intensive study of one church community in South Africa, Thomas (anthropology and theology, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary) argues that some of South Africa's most oppressed people were able to overcome the stress of life under apartheid through their healing rituals. This book focuses on the new religion that the people of St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Guguletu, just outside Cape Town, created to help bring meaning to lives full of poverty and violence. It emphasizes particularly this community's rituals of healing which blend the world views of the native African faiths and the colonial Protestant faiths to form a cosmology that helps them live with everyday challenges. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

About this title

About the Author:

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.

Review:

"Thomas's compassionate and scrupulous attention to place and circumstance is the distinctive factor in this highly self-reflective ethnographic work." -- Journal of Religion

"Readers gain a great deal of insight into religious developments in South Africa and the connection to continuing political realities." -- Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"Under the Canopy is the next major detailed publication to enrich the understanding (and the bibliography) of South African indigenous churches, one that will become a standard work." -- Missionalia

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1570033110
• ISBN 13: 9781570033117
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 174