Princeton University Press Divine Season: Christian Nationalist Activism in Zambia

How Zambian Pentecostal activists worked to transform their country into a self-styled Christian nation In 2015, Zambia began an ambitious program to actualize the countrys constitutional declaration that it was a Christian nation. For Pentecostal Christian nationalist activists, this was a divine season, an opportunity to change their country by submitting it to Gods control. In this book, Naomi Haynes examines these efforts at national transformation, offering a careful ethnographic exploration of Christian nationalist theology, ritual, and policy initiatives. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Lusaka, Zambias capital, Haynes describes how activists promoted Zambias Christian identity, whether by writing books and newspaper articles, posting on social media, building new monuments, praying for the nation, or lobbying for constitutional changes. By tracing Zambian Christian nationalisms internal contradictions and tensions, Haynes charts its ultimate failure, which she ascribes in part to institutional opposition from the civil service and Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations. She also points to what she terms its fatal theological flaw, going beyond the usual secular analysis in anthropology to engage with theological critiques of Christian nationalism. The example of Zambia offers the most fully realized expression of Christian nationalism outside the West, demonstrating what this movement can look like when given free political rein. With this book, Haynes provides an instructive account of an increasingly influential global movement. Autorid: Naomi Haynes