Program Particulars
*Times indicated refer to Web version of audio

(01:40–03:48) Music
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(01:50) Zimbabwe, Once Rhodesia
Cecil Rhodes, a British businessman and imperialist, founded the colony of Rhodesia in the late 19th century. Rhodes used his British South Africa Company as a tool to exploit the mineral resources in Africa (namely diamonds and gold) and carry out his colonial aspirations for Africa. Rhodesia remained a British colony until 1970 when Prime Minister Ian Smith declared Rhodesia a republic. Smith administered an apartheid system similar to the one in South Africa until a series of civil wars resulted in the overthrow of white-minority rule. Robert Mugabe was elected as head of state in 1980 and Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe.

(02:00) Religion in Africa
Approximately 40 percent of Africans are practicing Muslims. Four countries in Africa — Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, and Morocco — rank in the top ten Muslim countries in terms of population. Islam arrived in north Africa (the Maghreb) bordering the Mediterranean Sea just seven years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 639. Islam came to the east African coast in several waves and had taken root by the eighth century. Islam was a modernizing influence, and at the same time it was relatively tolerant of traditional African values. About 25 percent of the world's Muslims are located on the African continent.

As late as 1900, most central and southern Africans still practiced indigenous, ethnic religions closely linked to nature and ancestors. Many converted under the influence of the colonizing British, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimates that today 46 percent of Africans are Christians, totaling 411 million adherents. Most practicing Christians are located in central and southern Africa. Africa now has the largest number of active, practicing Christians in the world. By 2025, Pew Center predicts that the continent will account for the largest population of people who call themselves Christian, whether they are practicing or not, outnumbering adherents in the traditionally Christian areas of Latin America and Europe. Catholicism is growing faster in Africa than in any other continent.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, European powers including Great Britain, Netherlands, and France began colonizing Africa. Missionaries were an integral part of the effort to "civilize" the native peoples of Africa. Despite the success of these efforts, an estimated 100 million Africans continue to practice tribal and indigenous religions. Protestant traditions have spread rapidly in Africa in recent decades in part because they have been attentive to local cultures — meeting Africans where they live.

(03:47) Pope John XXIII and African Catholics
Before becoming Pope John XXIII, Cardinal Roncalli had visited Maghreb in 1950 and saw Christians, Jews, and Muslims as united faiths: "I see them all in the light of Abraham, the great patriarch of believers."

In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the intention of internally renewing the global Roman Catholic church. The Council published 16 documents and produced many visible changes in Catholic life and doctrine, especially for the role of Catholics in Africa and Latin America. Until that time, no bishops, presided in Africa, and in Africa as around the globe Catholic services were only intoned in Latin rather than spoken in native languages.

In a letter to writers and artists in Africa, Pope John XXIII wrote:

Wherever real values of art and thought are capable of enriching the human family, the Church is ready to encourage such work of the spirit. The Church herself, as you well know, is not bound to any culture, not even to the Western culture with which, however, her history is so intimately linked. For its mission proper is of quite a different order: that of the religious salvation of man.

But, the Church, full of youthfulness, ever renewed by the breath of the Spirit, remains disposed to recognise, to accept, and even to animate whatever is to the honour of the human mind and heart in any part of the world other than the Mediterranean basin, notwithstanding that here stood the providential cradle of Christianity.

We, therefore, follow, with the greatest interest, your efforts in searching for the basis of a cultural fellowship of African inspiration, and we express the wish that it may repose on the right criteria of truth and action.

Consider here the age-old wisdom of the Church: her enlightened mission knows how to discern, in ancient and new forms of artistic and literary expression, what needs to be purified in order to tally with man's dignity, his natural rights and duties. The Church's world-wide attention to the human resources of all peoples places her at the service of true world peace. She helps the elite that turn to her guidance, in developing the cultural possibilities of their country and their race, and in doing so, the Church invites them to collaborate harmoniously and in a spirit of deep understanding, with other currents issuing from authentic civilisations. Is it not only at that price that the conquests of the mind progress, and thus, that the spiritual bonds are tied of a truly fraternal human community?

In the SOF program, "Globalization and the Rise of Religion," sociologist Peter Berger discusses the increasing influence of the Protestant church, especially in its Pentecostal forms, in Africa and Latin America.

(03:59–05:21) Music
"Nhemamusasa" from Explorer Series: Zimbabwe | Shona Mbira Music, performed by Hakurotwi Mude, Cosmas Magaya, Ephraim Mutemasango

(04:23) Masowe Apostles
The Masowe Apostles is a religious movement of the Shona people of southern Africa. The movement originated in Zimbabwe and now has an estimated five million followers. The founder of the Masowe Apostles, Johane Masowe was commonly referred to as Baba ("Father") Johane Sixpence before changing his surname.

In her entry for the Holy People of the World: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia, Mukonyora writes:

Johane Masowe was born at about the same time that World War I broke out in 1914. He grew up under the family name Shonhiwa M'tunyane, or Masedza, in an African village called Gandanzara in Zimbabwe. The story of his sainthood begins after he abandoned school and left his village to travel between his home and the capital city of Harare. He tried various menial jobs, including gardening, carpentry, shoe repair, and probably farm labor, until he stopped work on account of chronic headaches that caused him to sleep long hours and have dreams about death.

Believing in the healing power of God, Johane started to preach the gospel during the 1930s. He led some of his followers from Zimbabwe to Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, and Kenya. This journey has been described as an exodus for African people on a quest for a promised land. He died of a cardiovascular disease while in Tanzania in September 1973 in prayerful hope for the return of Christ and en route to the promised land. The forty-year migration created the setting for his saintlike behavior.

Johane's claim to authority began with experiences of marginality. As hinted above, he suffered from acute pain, nightmares about death, and, in other stories, was victim of colonial oppression and violent abuse. Moreover, his dreams were also filled with the "voice" of God, and he experienced healing through what he believed was the power of the Holy Spirit. As a result, Johane sought his God in places he called masowe (wilderness) to draw attention to the biblical prophetic tradition of voices crying in the wilderness that saints embraced in the wider Christian tradition. Some of this made sense to Shona people. Their own traditional religious heritage used idioms of healers ('n'angas) and spirit mediums to explain their suffering and sometimes withdrawal to the margins of society and anointments announced through dreams. Even Johane Masowe's ascetic behavior was meaningful to Shona people, who had a high regard for virginity and sexual abstinence in preparation for ritual.

Today, Johane Masowe's accepted holiness explains the popular use of the word masowe to designate places for prayer that are located on the fringes of landscapes. Today between South Africa and Nairobi, there are approximately 3 million people using the title "Johane Masowe Apostles" to name their church.

As Elizabeth Isichei writes in A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present, Masowe chose not to follow the traditional path of his ancestors:

"Now I am John the Baptist, I was sent as a messenger to the Africans. I am making a new way amongst black people. … I am a teacher of the whole world. I am saying that people should stop practicing witchcraft, throw away their medicines, pray to God, and love one another."

The first part of his life was devoted to evangelism, and, in his later years, he embraced a hidden life, a "secret Messiah." Shona and Ndebele are dominant in the Church, but it has branches in nine African countries. John died in Tanzania, and there is a congregation in Nairobi, which they see as the heart of Africa, foreshadowed in Isaiah 19:19. They have, perhaps, half a million members. The Apostles worship Jehovah, follow Old Testament dietary rules, and keep the Sabbath. Polygamous marriages are preferred, and John is called the "Word," "Spirit," or "Star of God."

His followers live in separate communities, distinguished by the women's white gowns and turbans, an the men's beards and shaven heads. They earn their living by various forms of craft activity, such as making tin containers, and avoid working for an employer. There is also a body of Sisters, celibate religious women, who are perceived as a collective Ark. There was a large community in Korsten, a slum area of Port Elizabeth, until the South African Government deported them to Southern Rhodesia, in 1962; they are often called the Korsten Basketmakers.

Above all, John offered spiritual power, against the forces of evil and sickness. As an Apostle put it in 1974:

When we were in these synagogues [established churches] we used to read about the works of Jesus Christ … cripples were made to walk and the dead were brought to life … evil spirits were driven out. … That was what was being done in Jerusalem. We Africans, however, who were being instructed by white people, never did anything like that. … We were taught to read the Bible, but we ourselves never did what the people in the Bible used to do.

One could hardly have a better summary of the wellsprings from which the prophetic churches sprang. John's first followers were mainly the young, victims of the Depression years. By the time he died, in 1973, his early supporters had grown old, and the movement had turned into a gerontocracy, leading to a secession of some younger members.

Johane Masowe is also a guiding figure for other African religious movements, for example, the Gospel of God Church in northeastern Africa.

(08:10) Jesus on the Cross
The crucifixion of Jesus is held by Christians to be the most solemn and sacred event. The New Testament of the Bible documents Jesus' execution by the Romans and His willingness to suffer in order to save His people through His resurrection and ascension to heaven. The cross plays a prominent role in Roman Catholic architecture and worship. The largest basilica in the world, St. Peter's in Vatican City, takes the form of the cross. And, near the main altar a giant crucifix is suspended to symbolize Jesus' sacrifice for humankind. In many places, the crucifix can be made of rich materials such as gold or brass with ornate metalwork; other places of more modest means offer a more mundane object such as wood with a graphic depiction of Jesus suffering. The cross also forms the base of a string of prayer beads used to perform the rosary.

(12:05–13:40) Music
"Prayer" from Gurdjieff, Tsabropoulos: Chants, Hymns and Dances, performed by Anja Lechner

This song is Shona music of the Masowe Apostles, who sometimes turn sacred texts into songs. Music is interspersed liberally with preaching and prayer in their services, which can span four to six hours. Listen to Mukonyora's commentary about this music and stream the complete Masowe songs through our SOF music player.

(16:15) Passage from Mukonyora's Essay
In the Shona language, sowe is related to the word sasa and suggests borders and "uninhabited fringes." In an unpublished essay, Mukonyora reflects on her experience returning to Zimbabwe and encountering the Masowe followers crossing the sasa:

Listen to an edited reading of this passage.
Around Christmas in 1995, I left Oxford University in the United Kingdom to take up a position teaching religion at the University of Zimbabwe. I was happy to return to my home country after nearly fifteen years of religious studies and administrative jobs in Bristol, London, Cambridge, Aberdeen, and Oxford. A friend invited me to live in her beautiful suburban house in the capital city, Harare, which lies on a high plateau between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. From this house in Mount Pleasant, I saw much to remind me that Zimbabwe was once a colonial state ruled by the British. The house resembled a giant English cottage, with three bedrooms, a huge living room with a fireplace, a formal dining room, a spacious kitchen, and a beautiful rose garden, a rockery, and a fence with jasmine flowers that spread a lovely scent in the spring. Behind the house was an orchard with papaya, lemon, peach, guava, and avocado trees. My friend also left two dogs under my care. Soon my five-year-old daughter Vivien brought home a kitten and named it Vixie. With Oxford far away and extended family nearby in other parts of the city, we enjoyed the nice warm weather and clearly lit skies.

As I tended the garden, I pondered why I still felt like an outsider in my own country. Not only had I spent a long time overseas, but I was a divorced woman with a child in a society where married women set the standard by which all adult women were judged. My search for the sacred wilderness coincided with a wish to face and enjoy my solitude.

Just outside the gate and across the road was a dried up marshland that remained empty. Its barrenness symbolized for me a condition of marginality. I went for long walks there because the sky turned gold over the grass, which gave me a warm feeling. Behind some of the houses located a little ways up the road from where I lived were marshes filled with wild grass and thorns. I enjoyed the twenty minute walk across this land to my office on campus. The harshness of my surroundings reinforced the feeling of marginality that pervaded my life at the time. On my first walk, I followed a narrow path off Arundel School Road across a small ditch to join a mud path that meandered through tall grass for half a mile. The path ended abruptly on a tarred road lined with jacaranda trees, where I enjoyed the shade and the amazing houses and gardens resembling houses for the rich found in England. This destination of my walk deepened my anxieties about the order of things in postcolonial Zimbabwe.

As I made my way through the tall grass at the beginning of my walks through the marshland, I realized that I was following a path used by groups of Shona speaking people wearing white robes. They walked along this path through the marshes as regular visitors to small clearings in the grass that they considered sacred sites for prayer. This place was home to all sorts of birds, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, and snakes. I was intrigued by the fact that Christians would dress white robes and spend four or five hours praying in these sticky surroundings. During the rainy season between November and January, there was so much mud that I had to wear rubber boots.

I cannot say that I understood the ritual behavior of the people in white at first. In Shona, the places they gathered are called sasa, "wild grasslands," the forested fringes of a landscape that people leave uninhabited. Sasa have such poor soil that is difficult to build houses, grow crops, and do other things that would attract people. Rather like gusu, the word used among the Ndebele in southwestern Zimbabwe to describe Kalahari sands, forests are feared because they are wild, "dark," and dangerous. Sasa evokes feelings of dread. But they are also places of illumination.

(16:24) Moses in the Wilderness
In the Hebrew Bible, Moses led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt and into the wilderness. As is chronicled in the book of Exodus, Moses' journey through the desert was accompanied by a series of spectacular events — an advancing pillar of cloud and fire and the parting of the Red Sea — before reaching Mount Sinai. Here, Moses acts as a mediator between God and the Israelite people. During two spans of forty days concealed on the mount, Moses receives instructions from God, including the handing down of the Ten Commandments, for the ancient Israelites to observe.

(19:51) Christian Abbas and Ammas
The Desert Fathers and Mothers (from the Semitic words Abbas and Ammas) were a group of early Christian monastics who lived in Egypt and Syria during the 3rd through the 5th centuries CE. Their ascetic manner of living emphasized quiet contemplation, self denial, and devotion. Founded on the New Testament story of Jesus spending 40 days in the desert, this monastic tradition embraces the extreme spiritual struggle that Jesus experienced externally and internally. Dependence on God through prayer and devotion in such extreme conditions helps one reach a peaceful existence. For all that, the Abbas and Ammas were known for the salty, humorous, and psychologically savvy tone of the wisdom they dispensed in the desert.

Visit the Speaking of Faith site for "Approaching Prayer," in which Roberta Bondi elaborates on this ongoing monastic tradition.

(20:43–21:46) Music
"Nhemamusasa: Instrumental Excerpt II" from Explorer Series: Zimbabwe | Shona Mbira Music, performed by Cosmas Magaya, Alexio Magaya, Simon Magaya

(21:12) John of the Wilderness
In the Christian New Testament, John of the Wilderness is John the Baptist — a prophetic figure of transition. He appeared as a hermit in the desert of Judea, eating locusts and wild honey, preaching and pointing towards a new religious future. At the age of 30 (scholars put this at ca. 27 CE), he began to preach at the shore of the Jordan River. There he called men to repent and baptized them because "the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand." His wilderness ministry began to draw large crowds when one day Jesus asked to be baptized. John, recognizing Him as the Messiah, said, "It is I who need baptism from You."

(28:02–30:34) Music
"Cinquante Six" from The Source, performed by Ali Farka Toure

(30:37–31:39) Music
"Taireva (Version II)" from Explorer Series: Zimbabwe | Shona Mbira Music, performed by Hakurotwi Mude, Cosmas Magaya, Luken Pasipamire, Ephat Mujuru

(32:45) Belief in the Ancestors
For a good description of the African notion of ancestral spirits, read Gordon Chavunduka's "Christianity, African Religion and African Medicine." In this essay, the president of the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers' Association explains the significance of an African's ancestors in daily life:

African religion does not encourage people to venerate their ancestors instead of worshiping; members of African religion talk to their ancestors but worship God. African religion says, God is for everyone everywhere. God takes very little interest in the day-to-day affairs of individuals. God is not concerned with purely personal affairs but with matters of national and international importance. The ancestral spirits, on the other hand, are concerned with the day-to-day affairs of their descendants. They are the intermediaries between the living and God. People pray to God through their ancestors.

Many Africans who became Christians found it difficult to abandon their religion and medicine completely. Christian conversion was, therefore, shallow; it did not always change the African people's understanding of life and their relationship to their ancestral spirits and God.

(36:30) Ritual Authority of Women
Mwari, or the "Great One in the Sky," is a supreme deity with both male and female dimensions. The Shona people do not worship Mwari as a personal god, but he is considered the source of all creation. Mwari is an unknowable being who speaks to humans through the ancestral spirits of the Shona, manifested in possessed mediums of the svikiro and the mhondoro. Mwari takes the voice of a female oracle, Mbonga, who lives in a cave. This oracle serves as an intercessionary between the god, the ancestral spirits, and the people — especially in cases of natural disaster or outside aggression. Mwari is also known as Nyamatenga (He who lives in his own heaven), Muwanikwa (He who was found already in existence), Dzivaguru (The Great Pool), and Chikara (The Beast).

(38:01) Plural Pronoun in Genesis
Krista cites a line from Genesis 1:26–27: "Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

(39:44–40:37) Music
"Out Pours (Kongo) Blue (Prayer)" from Farafina / Flash Of The Spirit, performed by Jon Hassell & Farafina

(41:47) Transnational
To hear a more in-depth explanation of the term "transnational," listen to Salvadoran-American religious scholar Manuel Vásquez in the Speaking of Faith program, "Globalizing the Sacred."

(43:56) Meaning of Diaspora
The term "diaspora" means "a scattering or sowing of seeds" in ancient Greek. Although the term is commonly associated with the Jewish Diaspora and the African Diaspora, Mukonyora says that the word suggests something much larger than displacement, moving, leaving home. Diaspora is a term that applies to many who are lost and searching for meaning.

(45:27–46:26) Music
"Kaboo (Play)" from Farafina / Flash Of The Spirit, performed by Jon Hassell & Farafina