Description
Book SynopsisIsaiah Shembe's Prophetic Uhlanga: The Worldview of the Nazareth Baptist Church in Colonial South Africa examines the worldview generated and sustained by the Zulu Zionist prophet Isaiah Shembe and his congregation, the Nazareth Baptist Church, during South Africa's colonial era. The book contends that the worldview embraced by Shembe and his congregants was prophetically defined and reified. This argument challenges nationalist and postcolonialist discourses about colonized populations that have viewed empire and its consequences as the prime determinants of colonized individuals' lives. Through a close reading of the church's records, Joel E. Tishken demonstrates that at the heart of the narrative Shembe and church members told of themselves was a sincere and faithful conviction that Shembe was God's anointed prophet and his followers God's new chosen people. Within their understanding of colonial South Africa, British imperialism and white supremacy were part of God's cosmic
Trade Review«Tishken has made a very original and insightful contribution to our understanding of prophetic churches, and particularly their responses to colonialism. He effectively challenges decades of scholarly theorizing from many different perspectives by demonstrating that African responses were significantly more nuanced and complex than simple resistance or collaboration.» (Roger B. Beck, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 18.1, 2014)
