Sin and Sovereignty in the Lives of Urban Baptists in Zimbabwe

What is the relation between divine and human action in the world? To understand how a certain group of Christians reckon human capacity and divine authority, I explore articulations of two theological concepts - sin and sovereignty - as they played out in the concerns of a congregation of Baptists...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethnos 2021-05, Vol.86 (3), p.408-425
Main Author: Williams Green, Leanne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Africa
agency
Anthropologists
Baptists
Calvinism
Christian theology
Christians
Ethnography
God
Humans
Sovereignty
Theologians
Theology
Urban areas
Wrongdoing
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Summary:What is the relation between divine and human action in the world? To understand how a certain group of Christians reckon human capacity and divine authority, I explore articulations of two theological concepts - sin and sovereignty - as they played out in the concerns of a congregation of Baptists in Zimbabwe's capital city. This paper is situated within emerging conversations between anthropologists and theologians, and from my ethnographic case I argue that contemporary readings of Calvin and of Augustinian notions of original sin offer the anthropologist alternatives to the analytic category of 'agency'. Beliefs about the limits of human capacity and about God's control among urban Zimbabwean Baptists shape their engagement with the political realm, and their case contributes to ethnographic explorations of theological and political conceptions of sovereignty.
ISSN:0014-1844
1469-588X
DOI:10.1080/00141844.2019.1640263