Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church

Joel Cabrita is University Lecturer in World Christianities at the University of Cambridge.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Scholars, subjects and sources: ecumenicism and literary collaborations in the Nazaretha church; 3. Charting a changing literary landscape: Isaiah Shembe and the early Zion Movement in South Africa; 4. Transcription services: young literates and the transformation of generational relations; 5. The imitation of Christ: healing performances and Biblical spectacles; 6. Reading from the same page: Bible-writing and the creation of orthodoxy; 7. Tales of war: women's testimonies and the crafting of heroic reputations; 8. God loves this chief of ours: oratory and casting political obedience as religious obligation; 9. Pursuing recognition: rhetoric and reality in Church-state relations; 10. Conclusion.

'Of the very many African-initiated churches that populated the continent's spiritual landscape from the beginning of the twentieth century, perhaps none is as prominent as the Church of the Nazaretha … Academics have been particularly fascinated by the church in part because of its intentional fostering of Zulu tradition within the framework of evangelical Christianity. As a result it has come to be seen as a deeply conservative institution, one that acted as a bulwark against the presumably corrosive nature of modernity. In this remarkable study, however, Joel Cabrita pushes back against this characterization, arguing that far from simply embracing tradition, the Nazaretha reworked almost every aspect of their lives by espousing a living Bible; one in which a wide variety of written and oral sources combined with charismatic authority to produce a popular if volatile community of faith.' Robert J. Houle, The American Historical Review