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Title:'And it is really thanks to you that we are saved ...': an African discourse on conversion and the creation of a modern myth
Author:Drønen, Tomas SundnesISNI
Year:2007
Periodical:Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context
Volume:36
Issue:2
Pages:156-183
Language:English
Geographic term:Cameroon
Subjects:religious conversion
missions
Christianity
Dii
External link:https://doi.org/10.1163/157254307X176589
Abstract:This article examines the question of why, in the mid-20th century, young members of the Dii people in Adamawa, northern Cameroon, converted to Christianity, presented to them by Norwegian missionaries. For the Dii, curiosity connected to the new message, importance attached to the mission schools, the attitude of the missionaries, and improved social status were reasons behind conversion. In addition, the Dii self-narration presents liberation from social oppression - from the dominant Muslim Fulbe and the French colonial administration - as a reason for their conversion to Christianity. In order to legitimize the social and religious changes that followed acceptance of Christianity, the Norwegian missionaries were turned into mythic heroes of liberation and used by the new Dii elite to strengthen ethnic boundaries through a Dii 'construction' of the recent historical past. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]
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