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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Encounter of Macca Oromo religion with evangelical Christianity: a look at the meaning of conversion |
| Author: | Gebissa, Ezekiel |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Periodical: | The journal of Oromo studies |
| Volume: | 20 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 23-56 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ethiopia |
| Subjects: | Oromo religious conversion Christianity African religions |
| Abstract: | Africanists have been engaged in a discourse seeking to explain why and how world religions expanded at the expense of African indigenous religions. The explanations have relied mostly on two models of conversion: one promoted by Robert Horton and the other by Humphrey Fisher. However, in recent years, several anthropologists have raised critical questions concerning patterns of conversion and the political economy and sociocultural contexts of conversion. This study on conversion examines the dynamic and complex process of conversion of the Macca Oromo of Wallaga, Western Ethiopia, to Protestant Christianity, with a goal of exploring the meaning of conversion of a people who had an indigenous religion with a complex theology and elaborate rituals. The author's explanation of the meaning of conversion among the Macca Oromo builds on a perspective first enunciated by Lambert Bartels, the pioneer scholar of Oromo religion. The author argues, in the case of the Macca Oromo, that conversion denotes the emergence of a variant of Christianity which he characterizes as a blend of what European Protestant missionaries found acceptable in Oromo religion and what Oromos found compatible with their indigenous religion in Protestant Christianity. Bibliogr., notes. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
