Conversion And Jesuit Schooling In Zambia

This is a socio-historical study of schooling at Chikuni, a Jesuit mission station in Southern Zambia. It includes an examination of the dynamic processes operative at the mission over a 75 year period. During these years, the Jesuits interacted with successive generations of students and converts and with the representatives of successive political regimes, all of which were secular but each willing to use the mission as a means to its own ends. For many years Chikuni was the major representative of the Catholic church in southern Zambia. The emergence of a Catholic community is of its making. As its educational role expanded it also helped to form many who became leaders in post-independence Zambia. Though the Jesuits had not planned a political revolution, unwittingly they helped to bring one about. While the study identifies some of the difficulties connected with running a denominational school in present day Zambia, it argues for a more pivotal positioning of conversion as a socio-personal religious phenomenon in the curriculum if the mission school is to continue to be an effective agent of transformation.

This book contains a grassroots history of schooling as an instrument of Catholic conversion at a Jesuit mission in southern Zambia over a 75 year period. It provides a threefold division of the history dealing with initial cultural contact of the missionaries with the local Tonga. It then outlines the mission's role during Zambia's pre-independence and its possible links to nationalism. The work finally identifies the challenge of being a denominational school in post-independence Zambia.

This book contains a grassroots history of schooling as an instrument of Catholic conversion at a Jesuit mission in southern Zambia over a 75 year period. It provides a threefold division of the history dealing with initial cultural contact of the missionaries with the local Tonga. It then outlines the mission's role during Zambia's pre-independence and its possible links to nationalism. The work finally identifies the challenge of being a denominational school in post-independence Zambia.

This book offers a detailed history of the development of teacher education in Zambia. Also analysed is the nature of education offered at different times and how the teacher and his/her education reflect this, arguing the need for a fundamentally new philosophy of education and a mode of teacher formation in line with it.

This book fills a gap by providing a much-needed history of Catholic missionary education in Zambia. It traces the contribution of the Catholic Church's contribution to the development of education in Zambia over more than a century, providing more widely, an overview of Zambia's educational history, and insights into the development of the country's political history. It articulates the perspectives of missionaries and officials of education departments, of Zambian students, lecturers and administrators. The study further vividly illustrates how the mission school generated creative tension between modernity and education, and Christian conversion; and analyses the psychological impacts of religious conversion and how these have been played out in Zambia. It argues that in the circumstances, Catholic schools have been instruments of liberation in Zambia, but duly recognises the ambiguities of modernisation, and the need to respect and acknowledge the riches of local tradition.

Religious Conversion: An African Perspective includes a selection of key texts which are not easily accessible elsewhere. Most of the chapters discuss the long-standing thesis of Robin Horton who argues that religious change results from social transformation. The contributors provide different perspectives on what remains an ongoing provocative, though inconclusive debate. The book has chapters on conversion in Africa from such authorities as Robin Horton, Humphrey Fisher, and Richard Gray. It also contains chapters on Zambia by Elizaebeth Colson, Brendan Carmody, Austin Cheyeka, Felix Phiri and W Van Binsbergen. This collection of chapters provides an introduction to the discussion surrounding the query: Did the Christian and Muslim messages bring something fundamentally new to the African religious horizon? What has indigenisation meant? What is the role of traditional religion?

Protestants entering Africa in the nineteenth century sought to learn from earlier Jesuit presence in Ethiopia and southern Africa. The nineteenth century was itself a century of missionary scramble for Africa during which the Jesuits encountered their Protestant counterparts as both sought to evangelize the African native. Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa, edited by Robert Alexander Maryks and Festo Mkenda, S.J., presents critical reflections on the nature of those encounters in southern Africa and in Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Fernando Po. Though largely marked by mutual suspicion and outright competition, the encounters also reveal personal appreciations and support across denominational boundaries and thus manifest salient lessons for ecumenical encounters even in our own time. This volume is the result of the second Boston College International Symposium on Jesuit Studies held at the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya) in 2016. Thanks to generous support of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, it is available in Open Access.

Looking at a wide variety of religions, this work offers an exploration of religious conversion. The phenomena is approached from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, theology and anthropology.