Mutuality, resistance and egalitarianism^67political framing in their own conceptions, also due to a restrict-
ed, biased understanding of its implications.
In this chapter, I attempted to describe one such movement of
a religious configuration that is self-conceived as political, collec-
tivist, egalitarian and liberationist. In many ways, its historical
emergence revealed the confluence of ideals and practices that are
equally shared by anarchistic thought and activity. Namely: the ini-
tial association under the framework of mutualist organization; the
development of a utopian, idealist spirit based on ideas of freedom;
the practice of ‘obedient resistance’ against colonial domination;
and the establishment of a ‘horizontal’, communal leadership. In a
way, Toko’s initial activity in Léopoldville, both in religious and po-
litical terms, shared Bakunin’s will of rebellion against subjugation
against the ‘empire’ (political, epistemological, philosophical). The
developments which occurred after his passing in 1984 implied a
process of revision that ultimately corrupted the initial ideals by
introducing hierarchizing processes. In this respect, if in the first
years of the movement egalitarianism was a practical principle
through which Toko and his followers devised an autonomist proj-
ect, today it seems to have become a somewhat marginal moraliz-
ing statement deployed as a tool of contestation against processes
of ideological and institutional innovation. The contestation that
emerged against such processes of innovation and hierarchization,
stemming from the memory of the egalitarian past, illustrates the
dilemmas of the coupling of religion (Christianity) and anarchism.
Notes
- This text is part of an anthropological study of the Tokoist Church
debating problems of memory, temporality and politics. The eth-
nographic research has been taking place since 2007 in Luanda,
Northern Angola and Lisbon, where I attended religious services,
conducted interviews with church elders and prophets, and visited sa-
cred sites with the church’s members. It has also been complemented
with historical research in colonial archives in Lisbon and Brussels.
I would like to thank Alexandre Christoyannopoulos and Matthew
Adams, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for helping me improve
this text significantly.