1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9911090136103321

Autore

Klaits F (Frederick)

Titolo

Death in a church of life : moral passion during Botswana's time of AIDs / / Frederick Klaits

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2010

ISBN

9786612453441

9781282453449

1282453440

9780520945845

0520945840

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (369 pages)

Collana

The anthropology of Christianity

Disciplina

261.8/3219697920096883

Soggetti

AIDS (Disease) - Patients - Pastoral counseling of - Botswana

AIDS (Disease) - Religious aspects - Christianity

Church work with the sick - Botswana

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Pronunciation and Orthography -- Introduction: Moral Passion in Suffering and Faith -- One. Whose Child? -- Two. "Go with Me to Babylon" . The Domestication of Inequality -- Three. "Cleansing the Spirit". The Bodiliness of Sentiment and Faith -- Four. "Spirit, Follow the Voice!". Voice and the Making of Intersubjectivities -- Five. "It Is All Right as Long as We Feel Sorrow". Care for and by the Dying -- Six. "You Must Not Look Back". Civility in the Place of Death -- Conclusion. Putting Love into Words -- Appendix One -- Appendix Two -- Notes -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

This deeply insightful ethnography explores the healing power of caring and intimacy in a small, closely bonded Apostolic congregation during Botswana's HIV/AIDS pandemic. Death in a Church of Life paints a vivid picture of how members of the Baitshepi Church make strenuous efforts to sustain loving relationships amid widespread illness and death. Over the course of long-term fieldwork, Frederick Klaits discovered Baitshepi's distinctly maternal ethos and the "spiritual"



kinship embodied in the church's nurturing fellowship practice. Klaits shows that for Baitshepi members, Christian faith is a form of moral passion that counters practices of divination and witchcraft with redemptive hymn singing, prayer, and the use of therapeutic substances. An online audio annex makes available examples of the church members' preaching and song.