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Book chapter Book chapter Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Divinity abroad: Dinka missionaries in foreign lands
Author:Johnson, D.H.ISNI
Book title:Vernacular Christianity: essays in the social anthropology of religion presented to Godfrey Lienhardt
Year:1988
Pages:170-182
Language:English
Geographic term:Sudan
Subjects:Christianity
missions
Dinka
Abstract:Many of the first Christian converts in the 19th century among the Dinka of Sudan who had found Christianity in foreign lands became actively involved in propagating their new faith. This article concentrates on two Dinka Christians who were the first to have the opportunity to preach their new faith to some of their own people as well as to others. Caterina Zenab (1848-1921) and her contemporary, Salim Wilson, both claimed to be children of Dinka spearmasters. Both were involved, in their different ways, in translating Christian beliefs into Dinka, though neither was formally incorporated into any religious order or hierarchy. Caterina's career as an evangelist was spent in Cairo, Khartoum and Omdurman; that of Salim for a large part in England, where he became known as 'the Black Evangelist of the North'. Their lives are paralleled in some ways by the career of another Dinka exile, Deng Laka, the first prophet of 'diu' (a divinity) among the Gaawar Nuer. The author compares their personal religious experiences as exiles from their homes and as missionaries of new divinities, in order to gain some insight into the earliest response to Christianity by individual Dinka. Notes, ref.
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