Bemba-Speaking Women of Zambia in a Century of Religious Change (1892-1992)

Bemba-Speaking Women of Zambia traces the often painful religious changes that have occurred among the Bemba-speaking women of Zambia since the last decade of the 19th century. It argues that the religious tenets of the traditional domestic cult had already been undermined by the centralising tendencies of the merchant princes before the arrival of the missionaries who based their church structures on the concept of the Bemba hierarchy. The body of the book describes with great authority the creative redress of the women as channelled through independent Christian movements and through the mission churches themselves. These chapters are especially important as it is shown in the last part of the book that these genuine reactions of the women could well offer material for genuine inculturation.