In the Churches Blog

Reporting on religion in Zimbabwe. That’s if you can call this “reporting”

June 20, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
We were about to reprint Clayton Masekesa’s juicy article “Christians during the day, hookers by night” that appeared last month in The Standard when I routinely googled one of his source’s names. The search revealed to me that a story about Mutare sex workers hit the media already in 2010. In fact, ...

Nolbert Kunonga procedes with his version of Anglicanism..or whatever it is

June 8, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
Last month, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of the Anglican Church of the Province of Zimbabwe criticized the Prime Minister, complained about the visit of the controversial Nigerian prophet TB Joshua and expressed his criticism about the draft of the new constitution. Is there any Good News left in this world, Nolbert? According to ...

How mature are Zimbabwean churches to carry the Good News overseas?

June 6, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
Writing from the United States, Ken Mufuka in his essay “Roman Catholic struggle for identity!” invoked Zimbabwean Christians recently to sympathise with the trials and tribulations of the US Catholic Church. Mufuka argues that the gender discourse in America became so polarizing that the country’s Catholics risk either losing their faith ...

What the Pope’s document on Africa means for Zimbabwe

January 4, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
Between  Nov. 18-20,  the head of the Roman Catholic Church Benedict XVI was on a visit to Benin, the pope’s second outing to Africa. The official motive was to present the conclusions from a 2009 Synod of Bishops for Africa, which Benedict did in the form of a 138-page document titled Africae Munus, ...

Scarcity of research on rastafari movement in Zimbabwe

September 14, 2011 by Giovanni del Autore
Rastafari movement is an Africa-centred religion that developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, following the coronation of Haile Selassie I as King of Ethiopia in 1930. Rastafarians believe Haile Selassie is God, and that he will return to Africa members of the black community who are living in exile as the ...

The NY Times article on Kunonga deciphered

June 23, 2011 by Giovanni del Autore
At the end of May, RelZim.org replublished the NYT article on the situation in the Anglican Church in this country. Several days later a blogger tmatt posted his reading of the article on Getreligion.org with lots of thought-provoking ideas. Eventually, he concludes that “the Times team didn’t really seem very interested ...

The colonisation of the mind? African traditional religion in Zimbabwe vs ‘exotic religions’.

May 27, 2011 by Giovanni del Autore
Bulawayo 24 has recently run a story on the scramble for lost souls among the Churches. There we learn about some curious ideas of a social commentator Prof. Claude Mararike. He thinks that Africans have their own culture which does not need any conversion and teaching. “People, particularly Africans, should ...