“Tshepo Masango ChÉry’s <i>Kingdom Come</i> is a fascinating exploration of Christianity as a subversive, anti-imperial force in the twentieth century. With South Africa as generative source, Masango ChÉry follows a circuitry of individuals and ideas connecting Africa to the Caribbean and North America, including Ethiopianism, the Garvey movement, and the African Orthodox Church. As such, <i>Kingdom Come</i> is a signal contribution across multiple registers that include African diasporic, South African, Black liberation, and religious studies.” - Michael A. Gomez, Silver Professor of History, New York University “Tshepo Masango ChÉry’s <i>Kingdom Come</i> centers Africa and Africans in an expansive nineteenth- and twentieth-century black internationalist religious movement that laid the groundwork for Bishop Desmond Tutu and Reverend Allan Boesak’s liberationist ‘theologies of refusal’ in the global anti-apartheid struggle. <i>Kingdom Come</i> is a refreshing rejoinder to insular South African histories disconnected from the rest of the African continent, instead centering South Africa in the multidirectional flows of Christian-identified black peoples, foundational religious institutions, and liberationist ideologies to and from southern, and eastern Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean.” - Robert Trent Vinson, author of (The Americans Are Coming!: Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa) “In <i>Kingdom Come</i>, Tshepo Masango ChÉry ambitiously investigates examples of Black Christian churches in several different regions of the world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to explore the connections as well as tensions between them as vehicles for challenging European dominance during that era. In doing so, she draws on extensive previous study of those cases by other scholars while adding some of her own original research and offering a valuable comparative analysis of the complex ways that each of the churches contributed to the development of transnational Black identity while also being a 'home-grown response to the global problem of white supremacy.'”<br />   - Stephen Volz (International Journal of African Historical Studies) "The book <i>Kingdom Come</i> provides an in-depth look at how religion became a powerful tool in the fight against racial and colonial oppression in South Africa and beyond. This book not only illustrates the interaction between religion and political freedom but also explores how religious movements inspired economic awareness among Black communities in South Africa and the African diaspora." - Anita Kusumawati (African Identities)

In Kingdom Come, Tshepo Masango ChÉry charts a new genealogy of early twentieth-century Black Christian activists who challenged racism in South Africa before the solidification of apartheid by using faith as a strategy against global racism. Masango ChÉry traces this Black freedom struggle and the ways that South African church leaders defied colonial domination by creating, in solidarity with Black Christians worldwide, Black-controlled religious institutions that were geared toward their liberation. She demonstrates how Black Christians positioned the church as a site of political resistance and centered specifically African visions of freedom in their organizing. Drawing on archival research spanning South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Masango ChÉry tells a global story of the twentieth century that illuminates the formations of racial identity, state control, and religious belief. Masango ChÉry’s recentering of South Africa in the history of worldwide Black liberation changes understandings of spiritual and intellectual routes of dissemination throughout the diaspora.
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Charts a new genealogy of early twentieth-century Black Christian activists who challenged racism in South Africa before the solidification of apartheid by using faith as a strategy against global racism. Masango Chéry’s recentering of South Africa in the history of worldwide Black liberation changes understandings of spiritual and intellectual routes of dissemination throughout the diaspora.
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Abbreviations  ix
Tlhompo/Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction: Thy Kingdom Come on Earth  1
1. “My Blood Is a Million Stories”: The Making of Coloured Identity  13
2. Faith of Our Fathers: The Ethiopian Movement and African Identities  29
3. In the Name of the Father: The Manye Sisters and Church Formation  54
4. Ministries of Migration: George McGuire, Robert Josias Morgan, and the Transformation of Black Churches in the West Indies and the United States  83
5. Garvey’s God: Racial Uplift and the Creation of the African Orthodox Church  105
6. “We See on the Horizon the Sun of African Orthodoxy”: Church Growth in Southern Africa  122
7. Seeds of Freedom: Growing Orthodoxy and Freedom in East Africa  151
Epilogue: Thy Will Be Done  179
Notes  187
Bibliography  219
Index  239
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781478019930
Publisert
2023-10-27
Utgiver
Duke University Press
Vekt
408 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
264

Biografisk notat

Tshepo Masango ChÉry is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston.