‘Flood this Nation with the Bible’: Rev. Godfridah Sumaili, Politics and the People’s Bible in Zambia

Abstract

Ever since the Declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation in 1991, the Bible has become foundational in the public of life, and often cited in public debates. This article employs symbolic power as an analytical tool to examine Sumaili’s state theology of the Bible which politicized and reduced the Bible in the public into a state apparatus for defining, shaping, and determining the meaning and content for governing Zambia. It proposes a Pentecostal public theology of the people’s Bible as a site of struggle against politics of dehumanization, oppression, exploitation, and systematic inequalities.