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In order to trace pathways of secularisation and secularity in Africa this paper highlights a particular movement that carried great ideological weight at the time of most countries' independence in the 1950s and 60s, namely African socialism. The development toward state secularism was structurally very similar throughout the continent independently of whether political leaders opted for the 'West' or the 'East' in the cold war. However, in opposition to Soviet ideology, African Socialism was famously antiatheist. With the wish to fend off Marxist atheism as a supposedly necessary aspect of socialism, ideologues in African socialism were among the few politicians in Africa even to address the place of religion in a secular state at all. The roots of African socialism can be traced to US-American Pan-Africanism as well as the interconnected colonial opposition movement grounded in Marxist anti-imperialism. Another argument focusses on the education of some prominent state leaders, such as Nyerere, Nkrumah, Touré and Senghor, to explain the importance of Christian mission schools and Islamic madrasahs as points of access to social, intellectual, and institutional participation in global anti-colonial movements. In the framework of one-party politics, state leaders called on (Pan-)African traditions, but 'de-mystified' them (Touré) in order to enhance African Socialism 'as belief' (Nyerere). In conclusion it is argued that state secularism in Africa at the time of independence, as demonstrated most visibly in African Socialism, is more about suppressing and/or balancing the traditional powers of religious leaders than about a fundamental critique of a religious way of life. In turn, the implicit association of socialism and Marxism with atheism needs further scrutiny in a global perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raising timely and urgent questions about the forms, scope and boundaries of religious authority and practice, this article offers novel ways for the study of secularities and secularisms in contemporary African societies. In recent scholarly debates on secularity, Africa has been marginal. Part of the reason, it was suggested was that African ways of being in, and knowing, the world lay outside the religious-secular divide. We contest such positions. Secularism was clearly part of modernists colonial ideologies that called for the eradication of African beliefs described as backward and irrational. We find that the colonial encounter had a powerful historical impact, essentializing and othering African societies as marked by holistic indigenous cultures rather than differentiated religions. We suggest that the complex interplay of different African and European cultures has simultaneously shaped the social construction and historical development of multiple secularities. We propose that the concept of multiple secularities provides creative avenues to rethink religion, political authority and belonging. We consider secularities as contested arrangements of religious and other spheres whose dynamics include processes of de-differentiation and de-secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Marian Faith Healing Ministry (MFHM) is a group which practices religious healing with holy water under the leadership of Felicien Nkwera. In this paper (based on an empirical study), I argue that through the analysis of the process of appropriation under the perspective of religious aesthetics a highly differentiated view on individual variations and thus on the dynamics of the healing process and the efficacy of religious healing becomes possible. Nkwera is a suspended Catholic priest who performs exorcism and who claims to have been chosen by the Virgin Mary for this task. He provides strict normative guidelines for everybody who wants to be healed at the MFHM. Though most of his followers reproduced these norms rhetorically, the stories about their own healing experiences showed that they placed their own interpretative emphases in different places and sometimes came to opposing conclusions on matters of worldview and practice. Individual practices and interpretations among the members of the MFHM are dependent on factors such as the bodily experience of healing and praying or the dynamics within family networks. The aesthetics of religion approach thereby provides the framework for analysing media of transmission as well as individual processes of perception, embodiment, healing performance and efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the multiple interfaces of religion and museal spaces from the perspective of the aesthetics of religion as part of the European history of religion. It is said that aesthetics of religion brings new analytical angles and neglected aspects of religious traditions into center. Within cultural and media studies, the emerging field aesthetics of religion has taken up somatic, performative, spatial, and iconic turns within cultural and media studies.

In using the critical term museality in aesthetics of religion, it is our aim in this article to reveal the socio-cultural embeddedness of museums in Western societies and beyond. To do this we draw on two distinct cultural and sociological models of society, dispositive theory and Luhmann's communicational systems theory. Dispositive theory allows us to include non-discursive practices and materialisations in the aesthetic analysis of religious identification strategies mediated through museums and exhibitions. The boundaries, environment and self-referentiality of the system museum are discussed with a view to the shifting place and visibility of religious and secular messages in museum contexts. The focus on museality leads beyond museums to discover object wanderings, religious re-interpretations and museum displays in a number of other socio-cultural fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]