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- Title
POWER IN THE HOUSE: Performing succession in the Nazareth Baptist Church (South Africa).
- Authors
Echtler, Magnus
- Abstract
In the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC), a large South African indigenous church, leadership is based on hereditary charisma. Ever since the death of the Church’s founder, Isaiah Shembe, in 1935, his male descendants have claimed his extraordinary spiritual quality. However, conflicts over these claims have led to a major church split and several minor fissions. In this article, I employ the extended case method to analyse the contested succession of Vimbeni Shembe, the founder’s grandson, in light of earlier successions in the history of the NBC. In terms of Victor Turner’s model of social drama, multiple actors have attempted to redress the crisis – the death of the charismatic leader – through legal and politico-ritual processes leading to contradictory outcomes. Focusing on church assemblies, I argue that the performance of a chief who framed succession in terms of the house politics of polygamous homesteads convinced a majority of Church members to acknowledge one candidate as their new leader rather than his rival, who had won the case in court. Ritualized performance produced charismatic authority and established the new leader in social practice. In Max Weber’s terms, the routinization of charisma relied on traditional rather than legal authority, and African realignments ensured continuity of charismatic rupture and rapture in the NBC.
- Subjects
BAPTIST church buildings; BAPTISTS; SHEMBE, Isaiah; INHERITANCE &; succession; SELF-reliant living
- Publication
Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, 2020, Issue 66, p49
- ISSN
0078-7809
- Publication type
Article