Religion & Society Blog

The perfect storm: media and church

October 29, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
“Are Zimbabwean journalists looking for sensationalism only when they cover activities of religious newsmakers?” I asked myself this question once again during a religious jourmalism conference at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv that I recently attended.  A special guest of the event was CNN’s senior Vatican analyst and the senior correspondent ...

Young, single Christians face temptations that their counterparts in the biblical age didn’t face

October 11, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
Browsing the net for inspiration, I came across an article by John Blake on the CNN blog with a straight-forward title ‘Why young Christians aren’t waiting anymore.’ The post cites an evangelical publication that claims that young, unmarried Christians are having premarital sex almost as much as their non-Christian peers in the ...

What the satanist refugees story teaches us

September 13, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
Earlier this week, RelZim posted two stories that I can’t ignore discussing in public. “Police prepare to deport three satanists” and “Kambuzuma’s “Mother Theresa” invites you to look after children” appeared on our front page on the same day. But they seem to be worlds apart. The former is an account of ...

Don’t cheat yourselves by pretending that your negligence is just

July 13, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
We recently wrote about some traditional healers and pastors encouraging Zimbabwean families to be more attentive to their relatives’ spiritual life. This story made me think of making a personal appeal to all of my fellow Zimbabweans. Really, whether you are a Muslim or a Pentecostal Christian, traditionalist or a Rasta, ...

Mugabe rumours and Nehanda Radio accusations of Jesuits

June 22, 2012 by Giovanni del Autore
Okay. This article that surfaced on Nehanda Radio last week (and of course has no name attached to it) is too overstreched to say the least. Just read the following: It is generally rumored among Zimbabweans that, Comrade President was sexually molested by one of his Jesuit mentors. Which seems consistent ...

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 ...