68 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
- James Grenfell, ‘Simão Toco: An Angolan Prophet’, Journal of
Religion in Africa, 28:2, (1998), 210–226. - See Vernand Eller, Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy over the Powers
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1987); Jacques Ellul,
Anarchy and Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing,
1991); Harold Barclay, ‘Anarchist Confrontations with Religion’,
in New Perspectives on Anarchism, ed. by Nathan Jun and Shane
Wahl (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010), 169–88; and Alexandre
Christoyannopoulos, ‘Christian Anarchism: A Revolutionary Reading
of the Bible’, in New Perspectives on Anarchism, ed. by Nathan Jun
and Shane Wahl (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010), 149–68. - The Coro de Kibokolo (named as such in honour of the Baptist
mission in which Toko grew up), sang religious hymns, mostly from
the Baptist hymnal, but was also composed of members from other
churches, such as the Salvation Army, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc., and
also sung new hymns composed by Toko. The choir begun as a group
of twelve youngsters led by Toko, but soon became a movement of
hundreds of singers, notorious in the religious circles of the city for
their organization and musical performances. However, the vast ma-
jority was not only Angolan and Bakongo but also originating from
the same region in Angola: the Maquela do Zombo prefecture, in
Uíge. For this reason they were known as zombos. - See Grenfell ‘Simão Toco’; and Ruy Blanes, A Prophetic Trajectory.
Ideologies of Time and Space in an Angolan Religious Movement
(Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2014). - Ibid.
- See e.g. Paul-François Tremlett, ‘On the Formation and Function of
the Category “Religion” in Anarchist Writing’, Culture and Religion
5:3 (2004), 367–381; and Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, ‘Christian
Anarchism’. - One could in fact affirm that most Bakongo observed – and ob-
serve today – a different political map, that of the ancient Kingdom
of Kongo, which was one of the largest state structures in Africa for
many centuries, and saw its demise confirmed in the early twentieth
century, with the effective occupation of the territory on behalf of
the Portuguese, Belgian and French empires. From this perspective,
the memory of the Kingdom of Kongo is still very present and agent