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Attending to Translocal Identities: How Congolese Anglicans Talk about their Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2010

Emma Wild-Wood
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Abstract

In the perennial discussions about Anglican identity some voices predominate more than others. L’Eglise Anglicane du Congo is a small province with a modest voice in the Anglican Communion. This article looks at Congolese Anglican identity as articulated by its members and examines the way in which the formation of that identity emerges from local concerns as well as wider networks. It uses interviews with members to focus on the majority appreciation of ‘order’, as expressed in governance and ritual, and recent shifts in the discourses surrounding ‘order’ to engage with changes in the country. The article borrows the terms ‘translocal’ and ‘transnational’ from the social sciences to explore the overlapping relational identities that emerge and the multi-directional dynamics of Congolese Anglicans. It suggests that this approach may have wider implications for understanding Anglicanism.

Keywords

AnglicanCongolesegovernanceidentityorderritualtranslocaltransnational
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 11 April 2011 , pp. 80 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2010

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Footnotes

1.

Emma Wild-Wood is Director of the Henry Martyn Centre, Westminster College, Cambridge, UK.

References

2. Interview with Isingoma Kahwa, Edinburgh, 7 June 2000: ‘Les anglicans … ont la fiérté d’appartenir d’une église qui est internationale. Ils savent que leur église se trouve partout dans le monde. … deuxièmement, ils sont fiéres de leur système episcopal … le rite liturgique … leur église ne connait pas beaucoup de conflit ou bien de dissidence.’.

3. See for example, Wingate, Andrew, Ward, Kevin, Pemberton, Carrie and Sitshebo, Wilson (eds.), Anglicanism: A Global Communion (London: Mowbray, 1998)Google Scholar; Ward, Kevin, A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kaye, Bruce, An Introduction to World Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

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10. ‘Transnational’ and to a lesser extent ‘translocal’ entities have been explored in studies of migration and in the development of transnational or diaspora Pentecostal churches; see, for example, Maxwell, David, African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement (Oxford: James Currey, 2006)Google Scholar and Adogame, Afe, Gerloff, Roswith and Hock, K. (eds.), Christianity in Africa and the African Diaspora: The Appropriation of a Scattered Heritage (London: Continuum, 2008)Google Scholar.

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26. Interview with Lucy Ridsdale, Cambridge, 15 January 1999.

27. Most widely used in Swahili but available in Alur, Kakwa, Lingala, Lugbara, Runyoro and French.

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32. Interview with Kusika Kenyi, Aru, 11 August 2000: ‘…ninapenda kutembea kwa Anglicane kwa sababu ndani ya Kitabu chetu cha Sala, mbele ya kusikia Neno la Mungu kwanza munasikia maombi, na kutubu zambi. Hapa ndiyo ninapenda ye kwa sababu tunaomba kwa makanisa yote, ao duniani, ao kwa gouvernements yote ao kwa mambo mengine ndogo ndogo ndani ya dunia’.

33. Interview with Musubaho Ndaghaliwa, Kainama, 5 October 2000: ‘…kwetu unasomea hapa juma ya Utatu, ni hili watasoma kwa Bwakadi, watasoma kwa Boga – ile ni utaratibu’.

34. Interview with Damali Sabiti, Mukono, 20 October 2000.

35. The Prayer Book functioned as the ritual of a denomination which considered proper spiritual behaviour to be the performance of the correct rite in worship according to Christian custom.

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40. Amos Kasibante’s examination of ethnicity, Anglicanism and migration suggests a similar translocality taking place in the making of, what he terms as ‘religious ethnicity’. See ‘The Ugandan Diaspora in Britain and Their Quest for Cultural Expression within the Church of England’, Journal of Anglican Studies 7.1 (2009), pp. 79–86.Google Scholar

41. Titre, , ‘Authority in the Anglican Church of Congo’, pp. 127–39.Google Scholar

42. Interview with Isingoma Kakwa, Edinburgh, 7 June 2000.

43. The first women were ordained in Congo in 2003.

44. Interview with Alio Samweli, Arua, 3 September 2000.

45. For an explanation of these terms see Sachs, William, The Transformation of Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp. 8–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 125–26; and Sykes, Stephen and Booty, John (eds.), The Study of Anglicanism (London: SPCK, 1988)Google Scholar, especially, Pobee, John, ‘Newer Dioceses of the Anglican Communion’, pp. 393–405Google Scholar (399–400).

46. Ojo, Mathews A., ‘Transnational Religious Networks and Indigenous Pentecostal Missionary Enterprises in the West African Costal Region’, in Adogame et al. (eds.), Christianity in Africa and the African Diaspora, pp. 168–179Google Scholar, makes clear the transnational networks at play in the Pentecostal movement in Africa.

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