Pub Date : 2021-01-21DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a5
John Mhandu, Vivian B. Ojong
The Coronavirus (Covid-19) disease resulted in an epic shift from offline liturgical practice to online platforms where South African Pentecostal churches are worshiping, using online tools such as Zoom. This article explores how offline liturgical practices, traditional power dynamics, and the performative and communication characteristics of Pentecostalism are decoded into the digital space, and the impact it has on congregants and church leadership. The self-image of South African Pentecostalism is unpacked in the context of Covid-19. Grounded in the interpretivist research paradigm, the article draws on telephonic interviews conducted with 20 purposively selected Pentecostal lay leaders and pastors in the eThekwini district, KwaZulu-Natal. The article uses the Giddens theory of structuration to understand the social structural challenges emanating from an online liturgical practice. The prohibition of gatherings to promote social distancing culminated in the use of online platforms as an alternative to physical gatherings. Key findings suggest that this historic shift created a plethora of challenges for Pentecostal churches in Durban, resulting in some being unable to reopen. Moving to online platforms meant that South African Pentecostal churches in Durban had to adapt to new modalities of practice in transmitting sacred information. By depriving Pentecostal churches the opportunity to perform rituals of solidarity and other offline liturgical practices, Covid-19 disrupted important social systems and its performative and communication traits. Despite the challenges and changes caused by this novel pandemic, this study also found that Covid-19 provided an opportunity to assess the doctrines of Pentecostal leaders. In other words, online worship is coupled with benefits that must not be overlooked.
{"title":"Covid-19 and the South African Pentecostal Landscape: Historic Shift from Offline Liturgical Practice to Online Platforms","authors":"John Mhandu, Vivian B. Ojong","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a5","url":null,"abstract":"The Coronavirus (Covid-19) disease resulted in an epic shift from offline liturgical practice to online platforms where South African Pentecostal churches are worshiping, using online tools such as Zoom. This article explores how offline liturgical practices, traditional power dynamics, and the performative and communication characteristics of Pentecostalism are decoded into the digital space, and the impact it has on congregants and church leadership. The self-image of South African Pentecostalism is unpacked in the context of Covid-19. Grounded in the interpretivist research paradigm, the article draws on telephonic interviews conducted with 20 purposively selected Pentecostal lay leaders and pastors in the eThekwini district, KwaZulu-Natal. The article uses the Giddens theory of structuration to understand the social structural challenges emanating from an online liturgical practice. The prohibition of gatherings to promote social distancing culminated in the use of online platforms as an alternative to physical gatherings. Key findings suggest that this historic shift created a plethora of challenges for Pentecostal churches in Durban, resulting in some being unable to reopen. Moving to online platforms meant that South African Pentecostal churches in Durban had to adapt to new modalities of practice in transmitting sacred information. By depriving Pentecostal churches the opportunity to perform rituals of solidarity and other offline liturgical practices, Covid-19 disrupted important social systems and its performative and communication traits. Despite the challenges and changes caused by this novel pandemic, this study also found that Covid-19 provided an opportunity to assess the doctrines of Pentecostal leaders. In other words, online worship is coupled with benefits that must not be overlooked.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49518172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-21DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a3
Mark S. Aidoo
African Christianity takes the challenges from their enemies and the evil forces seriously. There is hardly a call to love the enemy. Moreover, it is about destroying physical or spiritual beings that oppose one's wellbeing. In the African Pentecostal/Charismatic ministries, one finds pastors and prophets who are cursing their colleagues openly. This essay reflects on the cursing prayers of Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, the founder and Presiding Bishop of Lighthouse Chapel International, and Pastor Kelvin Elson Godson, founder of Zoe Outreach Embassy, Ogbodjo, Accra to explore their religious, ethical, and cultural justifications in contemporary neo-Charismatic ministries in Ghana in light of the African religious and cultural values. It uses the African cultural hermeneutics and paradigmatic approach in biblical ethics to show why the Akan of Ghana do not allow leaders of society to curse others. It shows that it is not only the motive and intention of the one at prayer but also the cultural and religious values that make cursing prayers legitimate or illegitimate.
{"title":"'If this is of God': Choosing to Curse in Ghanaian Charismatic Christianity","authors":"Mark S. Aidoo","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a3","url":null,"abstract":"African Christianity takes the challenges from their enemies and the evil forces seriously. There is hardly a call to love the enemy. Moreover, it is about destroying physical or spiritual beings that oppose one's wellbeing. In the African Pentecostal/Charismatic ministries, one finds pastors and prophets who are cursing their colleagues openly. This essay reflects on the cursing prayers of Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, the founder and Presiding Bishop of Lighthouse Chapel International, and Pastor Kelvin Elson Godson, founder of Zoe Outreach Embassy, Ogbodjo, Accra to explore their religious, ethical, and cultural justifications in contemporary neo-Charismatic ministries in Ghana in light of the African religious and cultural values. It uses the African cultural hermeneutics and paradigmatic approach in biblical ethics to show why the Akan of Ghana do not allow leaders of society to curse others. It shows that it is not only the motive and intention of the one at prayer but also the cultural and religious values that make cursing prayers legitimate or illegitimate.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42140434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-21DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a1
M. Nel
Pentecostals' central theme in proclamation and practice since the beginning of their movement is holistic healing and wellbeing, resulting from what they term the "Full Gospel". At first, it did not include a prosperous lifestyle. However, a new emphasis on prosperity since the 1980s characterized a part of the African independent church movement with affinities to Pentecostal worship practices, designated as the Neo-Pentecostal movement. The research question for this article is why the narrative language of prosperity within the Pentecostal context changed in Africa and how the damages that it caused can be reversed, and the answer is found in hermeneutical challenges and solutions.
{"title":"Changing the Narrative Language of Prosperity in Africa: A Pentecostal Hermenéutica! Challenge","authors":"M. Nel","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a1","url":null,"abstract":"Pentecostals' central theme in proclamation and practice since the beginning of their movement is holistic healing and wellbeing, resulting from what they term the \"Full Gospel\". At first, it did not include a prosperous lifestyle. However, a new emphasis on prosperity since the 1980s characterized a part of the African independent church movement with affinities to Pentecostal worship practices, designated as the Neo-Pentecostal movement. The research question for this article is why the narrative language of prosperity within the Pentecostal context changed in Africa and how the damages that it caused can be reversed, and the answer is found in hermeneutical challenges and solutions.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41945934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-21DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a4
N. Sande
The claim of 'being led by the Holy Spirit' has caused African Pentecostals to develop weak fluid theologies. The problem is exacerbated by the deepening of economic inequalities, unstable politics, and poverty. Qualitatively, this article used the response of African Pentecostals to Covid-19 in Zimbabwe as a case study to explore how African Pentecostal theologies lack systematic interpretations. The article concludes that the failure of African Pentecostals to speak coherently about Covid-19 shows the deep-rooted fluid nature of Pentecostalism as believers respond to the 'moves of the Spirit', resulting in shifting and changing theologies.
{"title":"Fluid Theologies: Shifts and Changes of African Pentecostalism","authors":"N. Sande","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a4","url":null,"abstract":"The claim of 'being led by the Holy Spirit' has caused African Pentecostals to develop weak fluid theologies. The problem is exacerbated by the deepening of economic inequalities, unstable politics, and poverty. Qualitatively, this article used the response of African Pentecostals to Covid-19 in Zimbabwe as a case study to explore how African Pentecostal theologies lack systematic interpretations. The article concludes that the failure of African Pentecostals to speak coherently about Covid-19 shows the deep-rooted fluid nature of Pentecostalism as believers respond to the 'moves of the Spirit', resulting in shifting and changing theologies.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48597857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-21DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a6
Thibaut Dubarry
With reference to two Pentecostal churches in the Kayamandi suburb of Stellenbosch, South Africa, we consider the ways in which capitalism and the Pentecostal spirit interrelate in a contemporary South Africa. We start off by acknowledging that many forms of Pentecostalism now tend to follow the paradigm set by neo-Pentecostalism, and that the same might be true of our two church communities, Revival Fire Ministries, and the Apostolic Faith Mission, even if the latter is more typically regarded as part of the classical Pentecostal movement in South Africa. Then we discuss Pentecostalism and its relationship to the secular domain. We show how Pentecostalism, in contrast to traditional forms of Christianity, is par excellence involved in the immanent/horizontal affairs of believers' lives. Indeed, the market itself appears to be sacralized, implying a transfer of holiness into the secular domain. We conclude with the idea that we have observed a fourth wave of Pentecostalism, anticipating that the golden age of Gesara/Nesara may be considered as a secular faith, forming a Hegelian synthesis of the two so-called secular religions of the 20th century, capitalism and communism. We have analyzed it as an apocatastasis, meaning restoration to the original or primordial condition1.
{"title":"Pentecostal Churches and Capitalism in a South African Township: Towards a Communism of the Market?","authors":"Thibaut Dubarry","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2021/v34n2a6","url":null,"abstract":"With reference to two Pentecostal churches in the Kayamandi suburb of Stellenbosch, South Africa, we consider the ways in which capitalism and the Pentecostal spirit interrelate in a contemporary South Africa. We start off by acknowledging that many forms of Pentecostalism now tend to follow the paradigm set by neo-Pentecostalism, and that the same might be true of our two church communities, Revival Fire Ministries, and the Apostolic Faith Mission, even if the latter is more typically regarded as part of the classical Pentecostal movement in South Africa. Then we discuss Pentecostalism and its relationship to the secular domain. We show how Pentecostalism, in contrast to traditional forms of Christianity, is par excellence involved in the immanent/horizontal affairs of believers' lives. Indeed, the market itself appears to be sacralized, implying a transfer of holiness into the secular domain. We conclude with the idea that we have observed a fourth wave of Pentecostalism, anticipating that the golden age of Gesara/Nesara may be considered as a secular faith, forming a Hegelian synthesis of the two so-called secular religions of the 20th century, capitalism and communism. We have analyzed it as an apocatastasis, meaning restoration to the original or primordial condition1.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49050414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-05DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a3
A. Moyo, G. Tarugarira
Some religious movements have instilled a creative and innovative spirit among their adherents. This spirit is coupled with hard work and the inculcation of skills towards making a better life for themselves and their families. Referring to the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa – Forward in Faith (ZAOGA FIF), this essay explores how this church organization has instilled hard work, frugality, and penultimate economic empowerment among its followers through Talents/Matarenda. The essay has employed theEmpowerment Framework of Longwe and Clarke (1994) as an analytical tool to unpack the church’s approach towards the empowerment of women. It has established positive changes in people’s quality of life amidst conflicts and compromises between the maintenance of religious ethical standards and the primacy of the economic motives in the adherents’ quest for material wealth.
{"title":"Money Dwells in the Spiritual Pocket! The Gospel of Prosperity and the Empowerment of Women through Talents/'Matarenda among ZAOGA FIF Adherents in Gweru, Zimbabwe","authors":"A. Moyo, G. Tarugarira","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a3","url":null,"abstract":"Some religious movements have instilled a creative and innovative spirit among their adherents. This spirit is coupled with hard work and the inculcation of skills towards making a better life for themselves and their families. Referring to the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa – Forward in Faith (ZAOGA FIF), this essay explores how this church organization has instilled hard work, frugality, and penultimate economic empowerment among its followers through Talents/Matarenda. The essay has employed theEmpowerment Framework of Longwe and Clarke (1994) as an analytical tool to unpack the church’s approach towards the empowerment of women. It has established positive changes in people’s quality of life amidst conflicts and compromises between the maintenance of religious ethical standards and the primacy of the economic motives in the adherents’ quest for material wealth.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":"33 1","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44685596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-04DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a2
Elsabé Kloppers
Hymns are commonly sung in the public space of worship. They often also function in other public as well as private spheres. Religious singing in publicspaces forms bridges between personal faith, the church, and public Christianity, while at the same time also forming bridges to a pluralist,secular, and post-secular society. I depart from the premise that the singing of hymns in the public sphere constitutes a form of religion lived in public.When the singing is reflected upon and discussed in public, also in social media, it can be seen as a form of public theology. Aspects of the receptionhistories and narratives of hymns, functioning in the wider public sphere in various countries and in various contexts and times, are discussed with regardto the possible functions that the singing could fulfil in these contexts. It is shown that hymnody forms a part of the beliefs, self-concepts, values,symbols, identities, ideologies, instruments of power, sets of myths, and the collective cultural memory of people
{"title":"Singing and Sounding the Sacred - the Function of Religious Songs and Hymns in the Public Sphere","authors":"Elsabé Kloppers","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a2","url":null,"abstract":"Hymns are commonly sung in the public space of worship. They often also function in other public as well as private spheres. Religious singing in publicspaces forms bridges between personal faith, the church, and public Christianity, while at the same time also forming bridges to a pluralist,secular, and post-secular society. I depart from the premise that the singing of hymns in the public sphere constitutes a form of religion lived in public.When the singing is reflected upon and discussed in public, also in social media, it can be seen as a form of public theology. Aspects of the receptionhistories and narratives of hymns, functioning in the wider public sphere in various countries and in various contexts and times, are discussed with regardto the possible functions that the singing could fulfil in these contexts. It is shown that hymnody forms a part of the beliefs, self-concepts, values,symbols, identities, ideologies, instruments of power, sets of myths, and the collective cultural memory of people","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":"33 1","pages":"1-23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48254556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-04DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a1
J. Mgumia
The private business sector has been expanding rapidly in urban Tanzania since the country started liberalizing its economy in the 1980s. Witchcraftdiscourses linked to the business sector have emerged side by side with the increased liberalization of public spaces and media. Drawing from anethnographic study of 52 adolescents with small businesses in urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and a Foucauldian analysis of popular discourses onwitchcraft and business, I attempt here to make sense of why witchcraft is invoked in a sector that is conventionally viewed as the realm of economicrationality in neoliberal discourses. In this article, I suggest that capital, knowledge, and markets, which continue to be presented as necessaryconditions for business growth, are not sufficient in explaining why certain businesses fail and others succeed. It rather suggests context specific reasonsthat may explain how adolescents with small businesses end up embracing popular discourses that link business success or failure to witchcraft, such asChuma Ulete (reap and bring). It also explains the impact that such an embrace has on the ways in which these young people with small businessesare engaging with entrepreneurship. This entails unpacking how witchcraft ends up being invoked by those who need their businesses to grow as well asexplaining how they take pre-emptive measures to protect their businesses from such apparent witchcraft.
{"title":"Chuma Ulete: Business and Discourses of Witchcraft in Neoliberal Tanzania","authors":"J. Mgumia","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a1","url":null,"abstract":"The private business sector has been expanding rapidly in urban Tanzania since the country started liberalizing its economy in the 1980s. Witchcraftdiscourses linked to the business sector have emerged side by side with the increased liberalization of public spaces and media. Drawing from anethnographic study of 52 adolescents with small businesses in urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and a Foucauldian analysis of popular discourses onwitchcraft and business, I attempt here to make sense of why witchcraft is invoked in a sector that is conventionally viewed as the realm of economicrationality in neoliberal discourses. In this article, I suggest that capital, knowledge, and markets, which continue to be presented as necessaryconditions for business growth, are not sufficient in explaining why certain businesses fail and others succeed. It rather suggests context specific reasonsthat may explain how adolescents with small businesses end up embracing popular discourses that link business success or failure to witchcraft, such asChuma Ulete (reap and bring). It also explains the impact that such an embrace has on the ways in which these young people with small businessesare engaging with entrepreneurship. This entails unpacking how witchcraft ends up being invoked by those who need their businesses to grow as well asexplaining how they take pre-emptive measures to protect their businesses from such apparent witchcraft.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":"33 1","pages":"1-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44223069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-04DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a4
D. Wallace
Against the background of changes in the religion-state relationship in South Africa since 2009, this essay provides the foundational history of a resurgentfundamentalist Christian alliance that seeks to exert influence in politics, state institutions, and civil society. The discussion includes the growth of fundamentalist groups in the United States that established the religious right as a political force on which the alliance’s stringent anti-liberal agenda and strategies are modelled. In conclusion, the unlimited right to religious freedom is questioned in the context of guarantees of protection from discrimination in a constitutional democracy.
{"title":"Resurgent Fundamentalism, Politics, and the Anti-Liberal Agenda: Challenges for South Africa's Constitutional Democracy","authors":"D. Wallace","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2020/v33n1a4","url":null,"abstract":"Against the background of changes in the religion-state relationship in South Africa since 2009, this essay provides the foundational history of a resurgentfundamentalist Christian alliance that seeks to exert influence in politics, state institutions, and civil society. The discussion includes the growth of fundamentalist groups in the United States that established the religious right as a political force on which the alliance’s stringent anti-liberal agenda and strategies are modelled. In conclusion, the unlimited right to religious freedom is questioned in the context of guarantees of protection from discrimination in a constitutional democracy.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":"33 1","pages":"1-28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44000192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.17159/2413-3027/2020/V33N2A1
Ayyappan Balakrishnan
Bonded labor is the most widespread form of slavery in the world. It is at once the most ancient and most contemporary face of human servitude. In India, ‘labor’ is more a social category than economics, where the division of labor and laborer is defined according to the caste. The caste system is not a scientific division of labor, which is, after all, necessary for the efficient functioning of any economy. It is an arbitrary, birth-determined hierarchy in which different types of laborers are graded one above the other and subject to a descending scale of civil disabilities that have nothing to do with efficiency or productivity. It is not a division based on choice, as individual sentiment, preference, or even actual skill, have no place in it. Caste slavery was an oppressive, discriminative, and exploitive system which existed in Kerala from an early medieval period onwards. In the social structure of Kerala, the bonded or forced labor system was an unavoidable factor of slavery. As the system of bonded labor was associated with feudalism, land-based social relations were formed in the state. The oozhiyam or bonded labor system, therefore strictly connected with the caste oriented slavery in Kerala. Under the system of oozhiyam, the economically under-privileged servants were obliged to render bonded services on all days of the week as required by the government officials and the higher castes. The main force behind this system was the coercive authority of the government and the privileged class. Nobody dared to evade the services demanded by the government. Only on the days of the oozhiyam services, the laborers received a minimum quantity of food to keep their body and soul together. This essay mainly focuses on the ameliorating activities of the Christian missionaries, such as the London Missionary Society (LMS) and Church Missionary Society (CMS), among the oppressed sections of the society of Kerala. In addition to the social legislations of the government, the intervention of Christian missionaries also helped in the permanent abolition of the system of oozhiyam in Kerala.
{"title":"The Role of the London Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society in the Abolition of Oozhiyam (Bonded Labor Service) in Kerala","authors":"Ayyappan Balakrishnan","doi":"10.17159/2413-3027/2020/V33N2A1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17159/2413-3027/2020/V33N2A1","url":null,"abstract":"Bonded labor is the most widespread form of slavery in the world. It is at once the most ancient and most contemporary face of human servitude. In India, ‘labor’ is more a social category than economics, where the division of labor and laborer is defined according to the caste. The caste system is not a scientific division of labor, which is, after all, necessary for the efficient functioning of any economy. It is an arbitrary, birth-determined hierarchy in which different types of laborers are graded one above the other and subject to a descending scale of civil disabilities that have nothing to do with efficiency or productivity. It is not a division based on choice, as individual sentiment, preference, or even actual skill, have no place in it. Caste slavery was an oppressive, discriminative, and exploitive system which existed in Kerala from an early medieval period onwards. In the social structure of Kerala, the bonded or forced labor system was an unavoidable factor of slavery. As the system of bonded labor was associated with feudalism, land-based social relations were formed in the state. The oozhiyam or bonded labor system, therefore strictly connected with the caste oriented slavery in Kerala. Under the system of oozhiyam, the economically under-privileged servants were obliged to render bonded services on all days of the week as required by the government officials and the higher castes. The main force behind this system was the coercive authority of the government and the privileged class. Nobody dared to evade the services demanded by the government. Only on the days of the oozhiyam services, the laborers received a minimum quantity of food to keep their body and soul together. This essay mainly focuses on the ameliorating activities of the Christian missionaries, such as the London Missionary Society (LMS) and Church Missionary Society (CMS), among the oppressed sections of the society of Kerala. In addition to the social legislations of the government, the intervention of Christian missionaries also helped in the permanent abolition of the system of oozhiyam in Kerala.","PeriodicalId":42808,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Religion","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67489935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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