Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: A Social History of the Hwesa People C. 1870s-1990s

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Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, London, 1999 - History - 291 pages
This is the fascinating social history of a remote chiefdom in Zimbabwe. The book focuses on the religion and politics of the area, describing how the Hwesa people adapted the Christianity that the missionaries brought to found their own popular Christianity, pitted against local notions of evil. It also examines the role of the chief, challenging the idea that the they were no more than colonial stooges.Key Features*Original and perceptive writing from a prominent Africanist historian*Fresh body of new data, challenging conventional wisdom

About the author (1999)

David Maxwell is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University and Fellow of Emmanuel College. He is author of Christians and Chiefs in Zimbabwe: A Social History of the Hwesa People c.1870s-1990s (1999) and African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Rise of aZimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement (2006). He was long-time Editor of The Journal of Religion in Africa. He is currently writing a book about missionaries and African agents in the creation of colonial knowledge in colonial Belgian Congo and has edited with Patrick Harries, The Spiritual inthe Secular. Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa (2012).

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