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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 Sundnes |
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] |