"What is a European hospital but a pagan shrine?": Missionaries, progress, and the problem of materiality in colonial Uganda
Western missionaries frequently stood at the forefront of altering African systems of healthcare and belief. Medical missionaries often spoke of their work as a means of combatting "superstition" and re-orienting African concepts of disease and illness towards Western notions of causality...
| Published in: | Material religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
[2018]
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| In: |
Material religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Uganda
/ Colonialism
/ Medical care
/ Mission
/ Society of the One Almighty God
/ Superstition
/ Hospital
/ Sacred object
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| RelBib Classification: | AA Study of religion KBN Sub-Saharan Africa KDH Christian sects RJ Mission; missiology |
| Further subjects: | B
Medicine
B medical missions B Missionary B Uganda B African Independent Churches B Museums |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Western missionaries frequently stood at the forefront of altering African systems of healthcare and belief. Medical missionaries often spoke of their work as a means of combatting "superstition" and re-orienting African concepts of disease and illness towards Western notions of causality and treatment. Amidst missionary panegyrics, however, were a range of perceptions of and reactions to missionary medicine from Christian and non-Christian Africans alike. This essay explores these processes of resistance and appropriation through a combined analysis of missionary medicine and missionary involvement with the Uganda Museum. No single group in colonial Uganda offered as trenchant a critique of missionary healthcare and their involvement with the museum as did the leaders of an independent church known as the Malakites. The Malakites contended that it was the missionaries themselves who were hindering true progress away from paganism. For them, all "pagan shrines," whether of African or European origin, were an affront to the sovereign God, who needed no form of human intervention to heal. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1485429 |