Abstract
This chapter examines how Whispers interrogates the popular concerns of the Kenyan subject through manifestations of Christian religious practices. The chapter seeks to demonstrate how these practices reflected many Kenyans’ popular concerns, particularly at a time of significant social and political upheaval. The chapter argues that as a religion so deeply integrated in Kenya, Christianity is part of Kenya’s public culture and the Christian discourse not only helps construct a ‘public’, it also offers a discursive space and material suitable for addressing a whole range of issues. The chapter further argues that manifestations of Christianity in the 1980s through the 1990s were more than just about the Church providing space for alternative social and political imaginations as has been suggested by a number of scholars. Instead, the very content of Christian discourse was revised and recast as part of, and (re-)configured as relevant to, the political process.
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49097-7_10
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Benson, Patrick. 1995. Ideological Politics Versus Biblical Hermeneutics: Kenya’s Protestant Churches & The Nyayo State. In Religion & Politics in East Africa: The Period Since Independence, ed. Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle, 177–199. London: James Currey.
Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Corten, Andre, and Marshall-Fratani Ruth, eds. 2001. Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa. London: Hurst and Company.
Ellis, Stephen, and Gerrie Ter Harr. 2004. Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Fabian, Johannes. 1978. Popular Culture in Africa: Findings and Conjectures. In Readings in African Popular Culture, ed. Karin Barber. London: The International African Institute.
Haugerud, Angelique. 1995. The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haynes, Jeffrey. 1996. Religion and Politics in Africa. London and New York: Zed Books.
Kalu, Ogbu. 2000. Power, Poverty and Prayer. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Kanyoro, Musimbi. 1988. The Abaluyia of Kenya; One People, One Language: What Can Be Learned from the Luyia Project. In Proceedings of the Round Table on Assuring the Feasibility of Standardization within Dialect Chains, ed. Ted Bergman. Noordwijkerhout: The Netherlands.
Kariuki, James. 1996. ‘Paramoia’: Anatomy of a Dictatorship in Kenya. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 14(1): 69–86.
Levine, Daniel. 1986. Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.
Lonsdale, John. 2009. Compromised Critics: Religion in Kenya’s Politics. In Religion and Politics in Kenya: Essays in Honor of a Meddlesome Priest, 57–94. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mbiti, John. 1969. African Religions and Philosophy. Nairobi: Heinemann.
Meyer, Birgit. 2003. Ghanaian Popular Cinema and the Imagination of Tradition. Unpublished paper presented at a colloquium on “Modern Mass Media, Memory and Popular Imagination”, University of Natal, Pietmaritzburg.
———. 2004. Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentescostal-Charismatic Churches. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 447–474.
Mutahi, Wahome. 2002. Whispers & Camisassius: 14 Whispers Stories Published Between 1991 and 1997. Nairobi: Seed Magazine, Consolata Missionaries.
Ndzovu, Hassan. 2005. Religion in the Political Culture of Kenya. Alternation Special Edition 2: 267–287.
Ngunyi, Mutahi. 1995. Religious Institutions and Political Liberalization in Kenya. In Civil Society and Democracy in Kenya, ed. Peter Gibbon, 121–178. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.
———. 1996. Resuscitating the Majimbo Project: The Politics of Deconstructing the Unitary State in Kenya. In Challenges to the Nation-State in Africa, ed. Adebayo Olukoshi and Liisa Laakso, 183–212. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute.
Ogude, James. 1996. Ngugi’s Concept of History and Character Portrayal in His Post-colonial Novels. Thesis diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
Peterson, Derek. 2012. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, C. 1935–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ranger, Terrence. 1993. The Local and the Global in Southern African Religious History. In Conversion to Christianity. Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation, ed. Robert Hefner, 65–98. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California.
Schatzberg, Michael. 1988. The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Throup, David, and Charles Hornsby. 1998. Multi-Party Politics in Kenya. Oxford: James Currey; Nairobi: EAEP; Athens: Ohio University Press.
Twaddle, Michael. 1995. The Character of Politico-Religious Conflict in Eastern Africa. In Religion & Politics in East Africa, ed. Hansen Bernt and Michael Twaddle, 1–15. London: James Currey.
Uwakweh, Pauine. 1997. Female Choices: The Militant Option in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra and Alice Walker’s Meridian. In Nwanyibu: Woman Being & African Literature, ed. Akubueze Egejuru and Ketu Katrak, 47–68. Trenton and Asmara: African World Press.
Wilson, Bryan. 1982. Religion in Sociological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ogola, G. (2017). Christianity and the Construction of Popular Agency in Whispers . In: Popular Media in Kenyan History. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49097-7_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49097-7_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49096-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49097-7
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)