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 ‘Ministries International’, in an imported style. The analysis suggests that in many of the ‘Ministries International’ there is a turn from church membership with fellowship in a solidary congregation to an individualistic patron–client relationship between pastor and believer. Each Ministry presupposes an asymmetrical relationship: one person ministers to another. Instead of a group of people coming together, a Ministry International offers services to whomever is interested, often on a casual basis; and, although without any drive for older forms of church unity or usual aspirations for past forms of grassroots ecumenism, the Ministries International are widely perceived to be a force for interdenominational tolerance.