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Proverbs in Africa are capsules of the wisdom of the people. Luviri Press is happy to present another collection of such proverbs this time focussing on the Tumbuka people who live in Northern Malawi and Eastern Zambia. The people of Central Africa are a mixed people with mixed cultures due to a mixed history. Citumbuka, the language as it is known today, is a result of a complex process of interactions of the different languages of ethnic groups knitted together by historical events. A study of the Tumbuka proverbs and expressions reveal this cultural interaction.
Every society has its own definition of a normal and an abnormal human condition. For persons living with mental disorders, these concepts have a tremendous impact. This study investigates how the abnormal mind is culturally defined in Malaŵi, South-Eastern Africa. Based on anthropological techniques such as interviews, participant observation, and archive research, it explores the different social dimensions of mental disorder - e.g. its reflection in traditional dance rituals, in behavioural rules during pregnancy, or in the healing ministry of independent churches. It demonstrates how local explanations of mental disorder - be it witchcraft, an angry ancestor, or the will of God - determine the social acceptance of an affected person's condition. Recent processes of cultural change, however, strengthen the pluralism of Malaŵian religious landscape, opening the local debate to an ever wider range of interpretations.
This book presents an African Christian movement full of vitality and creativity. The reader will meet believers who drink milk so that they may dream about angels, reports about funerals where the mourners dance with the coffin on their shoulders and church members who are ritually not allowed to fertilize their fields or wear neck ties. The author's unique insight into Malawi's Christian community addresses important issues in society. Why have 'Spirit Churches,' including Pentecostalism, been so successful in Malawi? Why do some religious groups still refuse medical help, up to the point that children die of cholera? How did the independent churches deal with the colonial trauma? In this masterful portrait, Strohbehn takes the reader from industrial mine compounds to rural colonies, where churches have set up their own spiritual and political rule. He carefully dissects the fine lines between traditional notions and Christianity's influence. We find a spiritual portrait of the Ngoni people, a fascinating cultural analysis of dancing and an encounter with a unique style of preaching.
The second annual conference of the Theological Society of Malawi was held at the historic Ekwendeni Campus of the University of Livingstonia from 14 to 16 September 2021. It took up the urgent theme of the decolonization of the theological curriculum. Though Malawi has been an independent country for 58 years, coloniality still stalks the land. This book calls theologians to take a lead in decolonization, while navigating the educational task in an online age. With more than twenty institutions teaching theology at tertiary level in Malawi, and now united in the Theological Society of Malawi, there is huge potential to learn from each other in developing the theological curriculum in the country. While the primary audience is unashamedly a Malawian one, this book might also prove relevant in other contexts where there is a reckoning with past and present experience of colonialism. The book is a call to action and is published in the hope that it will have lasting impact on the teaching and learning of theology in Malawi and beyond.
In this book Ian Dicks informs the reader about the ways in which the Yawo of Malawi view the world. The Yawo are predominantly Muslim, yet many maintain strong links with their traditional religion. They are a largely oral society, teaching and reinforcing their beliefs and practices using oral literature, which includes myths, proverbs, proverbial stories, songs of advice and prayers at various stages of the life cycle, particularly during initiation events. Ian Dicks describes in detail the Yawo's material world, customs, beliefs and rituals, and juxtaposes these with Yawo oral literature. He then examines them under six worldview categories, the result being a rich description of the way in which the Yawo see the world. This book is not an armchair study but has the feel of being written by an eyewitness, by someone who has had first-hand experience of the subject and who seeks to describe this in a manner which is sensitive to the Yawo and their culture.
The volume constitutes Klaus Fiedler's crowning contribution to scholarship. Essays in the first half of the book focus on Malawian Christianity and how contrasting Powers, Gospel and Secular, engage each other, creating social, political and cultural conflict in the process. In the second half, Fiedler examines general missiological themes. These essays provide a broader missiological background, offering a theoretical framework necessary for appreciating the essays in the first half. He concludes with a chapter that reviews selected seminal books on themes under study. Throughout the volume Fiedler applies the "restorationist revival theory" he constructed in The Story of Faith Missions, an earlier 1994 work putting emphasis on non classical missions and churches, not systematically covered in earlier scholarship. This volume, the first of its kind on Malawian Christianity, will long remain an indispensable text for those interested in Missiology and Malawian Christianity.
"I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in issues of church unity, justice, liberation, biblical transformation, dignity, hope, joy, resilience, peace, prayer and reconciliation. The best Malawian scholars have drawn from their academic expertise and personal experience to give the reader a thick picture of the journey of unity among the Synods of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This publication is a must-have for all who have the unity of the CCAP at heart." Prof Isabel Apawo Phiri, Former Deputy General Secretary, World Council of Churches and Vice Chancellor, University of Blantyre Synod
No sooner had northern Malawians started to become Christians in the late 19th century, than they began to compose hymns. Rather than attempting rational discourse or literary production, their first instinct was to sing and dance their faith. In this book Augustine Musopole offers us the first comprehensive analysis of the theology found in the hymns - a ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of African Christianity.
Joseph Chaphadzika Chakanza was born in 1943 at Mchacha Village, T.A. Malemia in Nsanje District where he grew up and discovered his vocation as a Catholic priest, being ordained in 1969. After studies for a Master's degree at the University of Aberdeen, he returned to Malawi and was appointed Lecturer in Religious Studies at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, in 1977. During the 1980s he took study leave to complete his DPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Thereafter he remained at Chancellor College until his retirement in 2007, serving for many years as the inspirational Head of the Department of Religious Studies. After retirement he embarked on a further period of teaching at the Catholic University of Malawi. His stature in the Catholic Church was recognised when he was made a Monsignor in June 2019. He died in his home diocese of Chikwawa in April 2020.