70 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
- See Ramon Sarró, ‘Kongo en Lisboa: un ensayo sobre la reu-
bicación y extraversión religiosa’, Introducción a los Estudios
Africanos, ed. by Yolanda Aixelá et al., (Barcelona: CEIBA, 2009),
115–129. Despite this temporal framing, the Lower Congo region
bears a long history of prophetic movements with a political im-
pact, which are recurrently remembered by the followers of these
contemporary movements. For instance, one transversal historical
reference is Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, a late 17th century prophetess
who promoted an Afro-centered re-reading of Christianity known
as Antonianism. See John Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony:
Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684–1706
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). - See e.g. Martial Sinda, Le Messianisme Congolais et ses Incidences
Politiques. Kimbanguisme, Matsouanisme, Autres Mouvements
(Paris: Payot, 1972). - As one of the reviewers of this text rightly pointed out, these tra-
ditions of leadership in the Bakongo culture bear an interesting par-
adox, namely when we consider the ‘acephalousness’ of the Bakongo
segmentary system, where the idea of the collective is primary. Within
this framework, Christian theology was not so much responsible for
the introduction of hierarchy and individuality, but instead worked
along this paradox, combining logics of leadership and egalitarian
communitarianism. - Ruy Blanes, ‘Extraordinary Times: Charismatic Repertoires in
Contemporary African Prophetism’, in Ecstasies and Institutions:
The Anthropology of Religious Charisma, ed. by Charles Lindholm
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 147–168. - Denis Tull, ‘Troubled State-Building in the DR Congo: The
Challenge from the Margins’, The Journal of Modern African Studies
48, 4 (2010), 643–661. - See Bertram Turner and Thomas Kirsch (eds.), Permutations of
Order: Religion and Law as Contested Sovereignties (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2008). - On hierarchy and totalization, see Knut Rio and Olaf Smedal
(eds.), Hierarchy. Persistence and Transformation in Social Formations
(Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2009).