Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise ‘the Spirit’ and ‘the Letter’ as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between ‘charisma’ and ‘institution’ by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.

Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise ‘the Spirit’ and ‘the Letter’ as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between ‘charisma’ and ‘institution’ by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Language

Introduction

• Charisma – Institution
• Charisma/Spirit/Orality – Institution/Letter/Literacy
• African Literate Religion
• ‘Spirit’ and ‘Letter’ in African Christianity
• Examining Literacy Practices
• The Fieldwork
• Outline of the Book

PART I: HISTORIES AND ETHNOGRAPHIES

Chapter 1. Colonial Literacies

• Mission, School and Printing Press
• Steps towards Secularization
• Counterforce in Writing
• What is a School?
• Resistance and Non-religious Literacies
• Colonial Bureaucracy
• Evangelists as Administrators

Chapter 2. Passages, Configurations, Traces

• At the Edge of the Road
• On the Road
• Early Evangelisations
• Christianity in the 1990s
• Religious Intersections

Chapter 3. Schooled Literacy, Schooled Religion

PART II: LITERATE RELIGION

• Enrolment in School
• After the Ringing of the Bell
• Recitations of Syllabi
• Experiences with Mission Schools
• Contemporary Religious Education

Chapter 4. Literate Cultures in a Material World

• The Bible as an Everyday Object
• Literacy in Times of Paper Shortage
• Getting Hold of Christian Publications
• Publications as Property

Chapter 5. Indices to the Scriptural

• Bible Talks
• Programmatic Visibility
• References to the Book

Chapter 6. The Fringes of Christianity

• Blurrings and Criteria
• Turning Letters Upside Down

Chapter 7. Thoughts about ‘Religions of the Book’

• Book People
• Scriptural Inerrancy and Authority
• Canonization and the Bridging of Realms

PART III: WAYS OF READING

Chapter 8. Texts, Readers, Spirit

• Bibles, Versions, Origins
• Pamphlets and Eclecticism
• Selections and Combinations
• Private Readings, Implicit Influences
• Bible Studies

Chapter 9. Evanescence and the Necessity of Intermediation

• The Impossibility of Storing the Holy Spirit
• Objects, Bodies and Spiritual Evanescence

Chapter 10. Setting Texts in Motion

• Deciphering and Preaching
• Sediments of the Spirit

Chapter 11. Missions in Writing

• Literacy Networking
• The Jehovah’s Witnesses: Questions and Answers
• The New Apostolic Church: Mediation via Circulars
• Supplements as ‘Obligatory Passage Points’
• Enablement through Denominational Publications

Chapter 12. Enablements to Literacy

• Rumination and Scholarship
• Scripture and Enablement
• Enabling Supplements

PART IV: BUREAUCRACY IN THE PENTECOSTAL-CHARISMATIC MODE

Chapter 13. Offices and the Dispersion of Charisma

• Bureaucracy as Social Practice
• Organizational Formalization as a Founding Myth
• Dispersing Charisma, Allocating Offices
• Charisma, Hierarchies, Variations
• Ignorance and Mutual Recognition

Chapter 14. Positions of Writers, Positions in Writings

• Certifications of Authority
• God’s Secretaries
• Identifications and Registries
• Fixing Polyvalent Rites of Passage
• Portrayals of the Momentary

Chapter 15. Outlines for the Future, Documents of the Immediate

• Agendas as Revelations
• Reports of the Unpredictable
• Agendas, Reports, and the Holy Spirit
• Re-spiritualizing Bureaucracy

Chapter 16. Bureaucracy In-Between

• Flows and Facades
• African Christianity and the State
• Formalizing Social Relations
• Imagining the State
• Legacies and Isomorphism
• Presentations and Concealments
• Bureaucracy as Pentecostal-charismatic Empowerment

Chapter 17. Epilogue

Bibliography
Index