Radical Change in Zambia's Christian Ecumenism

Abstract

This account of religious change in Zambia discloses shifts in the ideas and practices of Christian unity since independence. It shows that state-backed appeals, at times repressive, under the slogan 'one nation, one church' gave way to a series of alternatives in institutional ecumenism, leading towards a challenge to the very nature of ecumenism, grassroots as well as institutional. The new stress is on individual choice and personal services, and yet membership in congregations persists - a complex, even contradictory, situation here conceptualised as 'multiple devotions'. The disclosure in this article calls into question conventional views of the importance of schism in churches and brings certain current tendencies - 'multiple devotions', 'charismatic transmission', 'mushrooming churches' - into focus in relation to wider, even global, religious movements, including the impact of neo-Pentecostalism and the striking new efflorescence of evangelical bodies self-labelled as '...