Rethinking land and religion

Examining the ‘Power of Naming’ through the concept of culture in the African Initiated Church in Zambia

Abstract

This article is a by-product of a missiological research that examined the power of naming some congregations in the local language, through the concept of culture in the Mutima Walowa wa Makumbi1 Church popularly known as the Mutima Church of Zambia. The article examines how the founder of the Mutima Church acquired land in the name of religion in many parts of the country. Upon the death of the church founder in February 2015, some of the land has been repossessed by either his own relatives or by the Zambian government. To gain ‘ownership’ of the land, the church founder established some congregations across the country which he named under his own Bemba2 cultural worldview. Critically important is the fact that this research was conducted in six congregations; and strongly indicates that due to lack of proper documentation, some acres of church land have been repossessed by the government and by some relatives of the church founder who donated it a couple of years ago. To make the research valid, thirty church members were interviewed. They comprised of eleven males, nine females, six male youths and four female youths. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, focus group approach, participant observation and document review. Consequently, guided by the feminist narrative methods of inquiry, the article adopts a qualitative approach to answer a key research question: How does the missional policy of the Mutima Church affect some members’ understanding of land and religion in the power of naming? The above discourse is viewed through the lenses of Michel Foucault (1978) and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s (2009) respectively.