Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis Revisited

THE PEOPLE'S ZION: SOUTHERN AFRICA, THE UNITED STATES, AND A TRANSATLANTIC FAITH-HEALING MOVEMENTBy Joel Cabrita. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018 Pp. 368. Hardcover, $37.71. The People's Zion is a groundbreaking study of a transatlantic faith-healing movement for workers of the nineteenth-century geological era of the rapid industrialization of the world. As Stephen Neill put it, “The whole world was open to Western commerce and exploitation because of the military superiority enjoyed by Europeans ... This superiority complex, was reflected by the vigor, wealth and power of conviction and readiness of missionaries to make sacrifices for turning Christianity into the major world religion that it has become today” (see Neill 1990, Chapter 10, “The Heyday of Colonialism, 1858-1914,” 272-4). According to the historian Lynne White, the author of the famous article called “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” the industrialization of medieval Europe in a western Christian civilization marked the beginning of our ecological crisis in medieval Europe (White 1967, 1203-7). While White shows us how world Christianity became complicit in the ecological destruction of planetary, Joel Cabrita traces the development of a nineteenth-century legacy of faith for healing instead. Given global warming as a key factor in the growing human-caused problem of climate change, it is good to see a book that draws attention to a legacy of faith focused on social justice for the poor and healing for the sick. This article is thus a critical appraisal of The People's Zion, which explains the attraction to World Christianity today (passim). According to Cabrita, Alexander John Dowie (1847-1907) is a good example of an evangelist and faith healer whose legacy of faith spread from Scotland to Australia, North America, and Southern Africa (passim). The imperial culture in which Dowie followed Christ notwithstanding, it matters that Revd. Dowie was more concerned about planting the seeds of the gospel among industrial workers faced with occupational diseases, poor living conditions, general poverty, and a plethora of other health problems to the adversities in life on Earth. Cabrita's account of a transatlantic legacy of a faith healer acting as the catalyst for change during “the heyday of colonialism” (1858-1914) is explained further by the prolific author and historian Jock McCulloch (1948-1994).1 Born in Australia to a Scottish immigrant family, McCulloch was appalled by the human cost of industrialization and lack of empathy for workers who suffered and died from contracting chronic lung diseases from inhaling contaminants while handling blue asbestos, gold, coal, and toxins released as part of the process of manufacturing goods. Like Cabrita, McCulloch opens our eyes to the deepening of our ecological crisis in Australia, the US, and Southern Africa. McCulloch was frustrated that most European missionaries supported colonial regimes by spreading colonial legacies of faith, which mixed God-talk with developing racist hierarchical societies for black workers in Africa (McCulloch 2000). As shown by Cabrita, however, the people of Zion were more concerned about the wellbeing of global village victims of oppression; hence, the talk about John Dowie as an evangelist and faith healer whose legacy Cabrita says is booming in Southern Africa but also found in North America, Australia, and other parts the world today (See Cabrita's book cover). As stated above, our ecological crisis has been growing in the same changing world where Christianity is the fastest-growing world religion of the global south (Jenkins 2011). My own research on the history of Christianity in Zimbabwe began with months of looking at archival data on the public role of Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other European missionaries who were tasked with helping colonial authorities subjugate the conquered races by building schools for replacing indigenous languages, religions, and cultures with a white master-black servant British colonial society (McCulloch 2000).2 McCulloch did an excellent work of using the same archival data to explain the historical roots of our ecological crisis in a way that furthers our understanding of Cabrita's extensive research on Dowie's applied theology of liberation in World Christianity. He used his research and publications on the hardships faced by workers in Australia and southern Africa to engage North America and Europe with questions about the deepening of our ecological crisis through the exploitation of fellow human beings to profit the rich (McCulloch 2000, see Chapter Five: “Explaining Black Peril,” 67-84). McCulloch's book Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians & and the State in South Africa, the human suffering caused by deadly work-related cancers of mesothelioma and silicosis is worth reading to further understand the importance of Cabrita's book on Dowie's cosmopolitan legacy of the for a World Christianity for healing through prayer. The debate about known diseases for which there is western medicine available aside, we all know about overcrowded urban dwellings reminding us of the industrialization associated of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas today. From looking at images of townships, slums, and encampments to which the unemployed poor and homeless are turning in larger numbers in all the big cities of the global village today, I appreciate the reminder of faith healing as the first step towards opening eyes to the concept of salvation. This is a lived hope showing the interdependence of all human beings and living creatures on Earth. From doing fieldwork on the green margins within cities like Harare in north-eastern Zimbabwe, inhabited by Shona-speaking workers, the unemployed poor, sick, and homeless, I encountered many reminders of The People's Zion. In the same locales, I also saw signs of ecosystems destroyed by the building of factories in the middle of a beautiful meadow tarnished by piles of industrial waste from manufacturing companies nearby. The choice of such sites of struggle is perfect for critically reflecting on the problems of living and the meaning of God the creator for people struggling to exist before listening to sermons and songs of faith. Otherwise, the two main attractions to the wilderness church are waiting in silence to hear God's personal words of wisdom for the individual and the faith healing ceremony. The open-air surroundings and ritual behavior of removing shoes to feel the holy ground upon which one prays (Exodus 3:5 and Joshua 5:15) do the rest when it comes to further understanding the healing the Earth. As it happens in the Shona language, Mwari is the name of the creator God, an ecological deity who draws the attention of the believer to a more cosmological way of thinking about faith healing. Although Cabrita's book is, like other books on the history of Christian thought, more focused on the spiritual needs of believers, her book cover is a great reminder of the open air as the ideal semantic context for faith healing in the above-mentioned scriptures, for example. “The People of Zion” dramatizing their hopes for salvation by wandering in a wilderness with sacred places to go for faith healing ceremonies away from the harsh city surroundings of slums built for workers makes a lot of sense under the circumstances (Werbner in van Binsbergen 1985)”. Thus grows the renewal of the search for ways of waking each other up to the urgent need to consciously eliminate our oppression as well as renew our quest for living in a world in which all creatures are recognized as interdependent. In fact, we must all start looking for green margins of the cityscape, for a breath of fresh air and exposure to nature's surroundings as part of prayer for healing God's beautiful creation (see both book covers, Mukonyora 2007 and Cabrita 2018). In summary, The People's Zion is a thought-provoking book taking us beyond Lynn White's famous article raising awareness about the medieval “Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis” that are the basis of the colonial and postcolonial era of world Christianity (White 1967). Cabrita not only fills a big gap in knowledge about faith healing but also complements McCulloch's extensive research on the ecological destructiveness of European mercantile relations. By examining a transatlantic faith healing movement around which this eco-catastrophe unfolds, she opens our eyes to new scholarship on climate change. As a scholar of religion who is looking for a global lens to focus on world Christianity's role in eco-salvation, it is good to know that Dowie, as a nineteenth-century evangelist advocated faith healing. However awkward it is to learn about Dowie's dismissal of western medicine, Cabrita and McCulloch do an excellent job of sharing the social and economic reasons for it. As the fastest-growing world religion, Christianity, like all the world religions and cultures today, faces climate change emergencies in societies with large numbers of the poor and sick. Given this reality, it is okay to reflect on the role and meaning of holistic healing in world Christianity (White 1967). Finally, aside from the growing levels of biblical literacy witnessed by Cabrita among the people of Zion in Southern Africa, it is worth noting the power of the residual orality that characterizes worshipping God in world Christianity. I learned so much from combining my archival work with participant observation of the outdoor adventures of workers, the unemployed poor, and sick men, women and children. It makes me smile to end this review on a positive note. I enjoyed Cabrita's final discussion of world Christianity in southern and central Africa. Now I know African men, women, and children who find themselves reduced to eking out their living on the green margins of our global village's cityscapes behind factories and the northern suburbs of Harare are a common side effect of industrialization. There are thousands of the people of Zion walking outdoors, sitting under the shade of indigenous trees surrounded by tall grass on dry meadows, near rivers, lakes, and other places which have been transformed into liminal spaces used for reaching out to the transcendent God during healing ceremonies, all of which are reminiscent of Dowie's legacy of faith healing.3 As Cabrita put in the last sentence of the book, which inspired the writing of this article, “The popularity of both Zion and Pentecost speaks to the enduring allure of promise of Christian evangelicalism to equip very ordinary men and women with extraordinary power” (272)

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• The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis

  Open Access•Lynn White•Science•1967

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• Asbestos

  William G Johnson, Jock Mcculloch•Industrial and Labor Relations…•1988

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• Wandering a Gendered Wilderness

  Ezra Chitando•Journal of Religion in Africa•2008

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