Week 10 – “How Local Divine Powers Were Suppressed” Mbuwayesango

I’m not sure I agree with this article. The author insists that the missionaries did harm to the people by choosing a local name for God and infusing it with Christian understanding. She goes so far as to accuse them of taking “the Shona captive by colonizing the Shona Supreme Being” (262) and thus making them “feel inadequate for being Shona” (266). First of all, is it really possible to colonize an idol? And secondly, having a true understanding of who you are in Christ is liberating. The inadequacy comes from elsewhere, whether from the way the missionaries portrayed God or from something else.

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