This thesis examines the role of the Christian missions of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church among the Toka-Leya of southern Zambia. It attempts to view the Christian missionaries and the Toka-Leya as a 'total society' and therefore closely relates the behaviour of the two groups in the mission field. It analyses the ideals and objectives of the sponsoring missionary societies in Europe and America; the aims and motives of the missionaries in the mission field; the social relations between the missionaries and the Toka-Leya, and the Toka-Leya reactions to Christianity, both during the initial period of contact and the contemporary times. In order to both define the Toka-Leya as a social reality and to emphasize the basic differences between their culture and that of the missionaries, a description of their social structure with regard to the economic, political, kinship and religious organization, has been presented. Notwithstanding the set-backs to the efforts of the missionaries soon after the colonial occupation, there has been a steadily rising interest in Christianity among the Toka-Leya. This interest appears to be related to pervasive changes that have been affecting the social structure since the colonial occupation. To the Toka-Leya, the apparent inability of the traditional cosmology to cope with the new changes, which are seen as being disruptive to society, has called for a new approach to the predicament. Christianity, by offering a universalistic interpretation of the new disturbances in society, is more appealing to the Toka-Leya, for it helps them to cope with social change, psychologically and intellectually.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:659698 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Mubitana, K. |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17435 |
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