The Nazaretha, Zionists, and Other Rebels in Segregated South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren V. Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Divine Healing ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations

Zionist churches proliferated in South Africa’s segregation era amid a global revival of the doctrine of divine healing. Among the nearly eight hundred new denominations that emerged were some of the largest Zionist churches, including Ignatius Lekganyane’s Zion Christian Church (ZCC) and Isaiah Shembe’s Nazaretha Church. All of these new denominations took root in the absence of government recognition and during a period when church-state relations were in flux. Many Zionists found ways to work around and in spite of segregation-era laws, but these efforts occasionally ended in disaster—as at Bulhoek in 1921. For scholars, Zionist churches have long posed problems of categorization. Scholars once imagined Zionists as embodying a distinctively African expression of faith, but important new scholarship has challenged this understanding. The time is ripe, however, to reassess what made Zionists different. This entry looks to Zionists’ doctrine and methods of evangelism to understand them as segregation-era rebels.

Church-state relations in South Africa, Zambia and Malawi in light of the fall of the Berlin Wall (October 1989)

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Gundani
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Pastoral Letter ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
Post War ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Catholic Bishops

The fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 bears a striking resonance with the biblical fracturing of the curtain in the Jerusalem temple. It presaged the death of the post-war dispensation of Church-state relations characterised by a Church that was, in the main, subservient, acquiescent and complicit to the apartheid regime in South Africa, as well as the oppressive one-party state regimes north of the Limpopo. As the Berlin Wall collapsed, the dispensation characterised by either neutrality or docility and co-option of the Church to the Apartheid and Independent states gave way to the birth of a ‘prophetic’ Church, which would not only gain a new lease on life, but would become a robust interlocutor of the post-Cold War state. The latter is exemplified by historical signposts such as the Rustenburg Declaration (1990), the Pastoral letter of the Zambia Catholic Bishops Conference (1990) and the Pastoral letter by the Catholic Bishops of Malawi (1992), among others. This paper is an analytical desktop study, which will be based on the published literature.

The Study of the Origins of the Eucharist: Retrospect and Revaluation

1965 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
C. W. Dugmore
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Address ◽  
Living Organism ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

Lest it should seem to some that this is a strange subject for a Presidential Address to an Ecclesiastical History Society, may I say at the outset that I propose to deal with it as an historical and not a theological problem, and, secondly, that in my view the history of the Christian Church must necessarily include the history of how Christians have worshipped God in every age. The Church is a living organism and not merely a human organisation with a hierarchy; general, provincial, and diocesan councils; canons and creeds; patrimony and patronage; social and economic responsibilities. All these aspects of her life, from the study of Church-State relations to the editing of episcopal registers and monastic constitutions are the proper concern of the Church historian, but so too is her inner life—spirituality, asceticism, and worship.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eren Tasar
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
Soviet Central Asia ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This introduction describes the main arguments and historiographical interventions undertaken in the present work. The majority of previous scholarship on Islam in Soviet Central Asia has treated the Communist anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s as representative of the entire Soviet period. By contrast, this book argues that Stalin’s normalization of church-state relations in 1943–1944 allowed a permanent space for Islam to exist in Soviet society. This space rapidly became the site of an accommodation between Islam and Communism for many Central Asians. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of the sources employed throughout the book.

The Politics of Cross Demolition

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-75
Author(s):  
Fuk-tsang Ying
Keyword(s):  
Political Perspective ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
Zhejiang Provincial ◽  
State Relations

From March to December 2014, various Wenzhou churches were affected by the unprecedented destruction wrought during the initial execution of the cross-demolition campaign. Subsequently, this campaign extended from Wenzhou to cities like Ningbo, Taizhou, Lishui, and Hangzhou before returning to Wenzhou in July 2015. This article centers on Wenzhou, where authorities removed at least four hundred crosses from churches. It investigates whether the reasons offered for demolishing illegal buildings justify cross demolition, examines the role of the religious factor in the overall campaign, and determines whether the Zhejiang provincial leader attempted to tackle religion-related problems under the guise of demolishing illegal buildings. This article places the cross-demolition campaign in the context of church-state relations and analyzes it from a religio-political perspective.

Joseph II and the Jews: the Origins of the Toleration Patent of 1782

1968 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Paul P. Bernard
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
Radical Ideas

That Austria's monolithic refusal to tolerate religious minorities within its borders in an age of increasingly general religious permissiveness would not for long outlive Empress Maria Theresa must have been apparent to all but the most obtuse contemporary observers. Throughout the period of his coregency (1765–1780), Joseph II had made it plain on more than one occasion that while, unlike Frederick the Great, he did not believe that all his subjects might attain their salvation in whatever way seemed best to them, he was, nevertheless, aware that many of them would persist in assuring their damnation in spite of the best efforts of Church and crown to save them. And he was unwilling to let the obduracy of a minority of his subjects cause the state to lose their wealth, their services, and their loyalty. Dominated by such radical ideas on the place of religious minorities in a state, Joseph, State Chancellor Prince Wenzel Kaunitz, and Franz Joseph Heinke, once Kaunitz's man but now independently charged with drawing up policy guidelines for a subsequent reorganization of Church-state relations, were as early as 1769 discussing not the advisability of tolerating non-Catholic religions but ways and means of implementing such toleration.

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