Research into the history of Christian missions in the context of
colonialism has focused primarily on missions as institutions and on the
ways in which people were integrated into the economic, political and
ideological spheres of imperial powers. Reduced to an experience
occurring within a person, faith was deemed unapproachable by scientific
methods. This has, in effect, constituted a silence regarding the
everyday experience of religiosity amongst those drawn to Christianity.
Ethnography of Faith is a detailed study of the ways in which people
engage with and experience the religious in order to recognise and
understand this suppressed voice of religiosity. In her analysis of the
Lutheran church in the Soutpansberg of early twentieth century South
Africa, Caroline Jeannerat listens closely to how people describe their
own faith and that of others in the archive: in accounts of work done,
in texts written for mission publications, in songs composed for church
services, in letters and newspaper articles and in oral memories. A
careful reading of this archive - for breaks, for misunderstandings and
oppositions, for sentiments of agreement, praise, compatibility and
claims of shared experiences - identifies negotiations of meaning which
give indications of conceptualisations of faith that stand in
distinction to those of the missionaries and their expectations.
Caroline Jeannerat holds a PhD in history and anthropology from the
University of Michigan (2007).
