Religion and African Civil Wars

This collection analyzes the part played by religion--Christianity, Islam, and traditional beliefs--in Africa's recent civil wars and insurgent conflicts. The contributors focus on four key areas of the continent: the southern Sudan; Rwanda/Burundi/Congo; Zimbabwe/South Africa; and Sierra Leone/Liberia/Guinea. Among the topics discussed are the role of religious institutions in these conflicts, how religion is used to legitimize violence and war, the role of religion in debating and making sense of war and conflict, and the application of religion as a cultural resource in warfare. The inverse--war's impact on religious beliefs and practices--is also explored.

Niels Kastfelt is Lecturer, Institute for Church History and Centre for African Studies, University of Copenhagen.

The Role of Religion in African Civil Wars--Niels Kastfelt * Preface * The Contributors * Religion and African Civil Wars: Themes and Interpretations--Niels Kastfelt * Spiritual Fragments of an Unfinished War--Sharon Elaine Hutchinson * Finding Meaning Amid the Chaos: Narratives of Significance in the Sudanese Church--Andrew C. Wheeler * Churches and Social Upheaval in Rwanda and Burundi: Explaining Failures to Oppose Ethnic Violence--Timothy Longman * The Villagisation of Khinshasa and the Christian Healing Churches as People's Means to Domesticate Rampant Violence--Rene Devisch * Green Book Millenarians? The Sierra Leone War within the Perspective of an Anthropology of Religion--Paul Richards * Masked Violence: Ritual Action and the Perception of Violence in an Upper Guinea Ethnic Conflict--Christian Kordt Hojbjerg * 'Survival, Revival and Resistance': Continuity and Change in Zimbabwe's Post-War Religion and Politics--David Maxwell * Index