7 - The History of Religions in Acholi

Summary

The separation of politics and religion in Europe developed in connection with the formation of the State and the Church as separate institutions. Since the colonial period, State and Church have been established as separate institutions in Uganda, but the dominant discourse, especially in the rural areas, remained bound up with religion. In religious discourses, especially in those conducted by spirits, the Acholi in northern Uganda - and not only they - gave expression to their more or less catastrophic experiences. The Holy Spirit Movement, too, is understandable only in the context of the history of the various religious discourses conducted in northern Uganda.

Since the discussion of pluralism (e.g. Fabian, 1985), it is no longer customary in monographs to have the ‘ethnographed’ speak with only a single voice. Instead, modern and postmodern ethnographies try to do justice to the variety of differing, often competing, discourses in a culture or cultural field. This chapter aims to provide a glimpse of the religious variety in northern Uganda. It will attempt to present the internal logic of alternative cults in synchronic and diachronic perspective. Only the depiction of the various cults and their transformations in opposition to each other can make the Holy Spirit Movement comprehensible in its differences from, but also in its similarities to, other cults.

At the beginning of the chapter, two events are described: a visit to an qjwaka, a pagan spirit medium; and a visit to a nebi, a Christian medium. Both mediums formed the centres of rival cults of affliction. Afterwards, the history of these cults is reconstructed in a diachronic perspective. Such a reconstruction seems to me to be absolutely necessary for the understanding of the Holy Spirit Movement, since the discourses and practices of the various successive cults, which were based on a logic of inversion, throw light on the discourse and practice of the Holy Spirit Movement.