Religious Education in Malawi and Ghana contributes to the literature on opportunities and complexities of inclusive approaches to Religious Education (RE). It analyses how RE in Malawi and Ghana engages with religious pluralisation and provides a compelling case for the need to re-evaluate current approaches in the conceptualisation, curriculum design and delivery of RE in schools in Malawi and Ghana. The book explains how a pervasive tradition of selection involving exclusion and inclusion of religion in RE leads to misrepresentation, and in turn to misclusion of non-normative religions, where religion is included but marginalized and misrepresented. The book contributes to wider discourse of RE on opportunities as well as complexities of post-confessional approaches, including the need for RE to avoid perpetuating the continued legitimisation of selected religions, and in the process the delegitimization of the religious ‘other’ as a consequence of misrepresentation and misclusion. Inspired by Braten’s methodology for comparative studies in RE, the book draws on two qualitative studies from Malawi and Ghana to highlight the pervasive problems of religious misclusion in RE. This book will be of great interest for academics, scholars and post graduate students in the fields of RE, African education, educational policy, international education and comparative education..

If Malawi calls itself a God-fearing nation, then Mzuzu should be a God-fearing city. This survey of religious geography describes major aspects of the religious reality in Mzuzu. Quantitative methods were used in order to create a full picture of the distribution of religious centres as in 2013.

In Malawi, where Islam arrived before Christianity, a substantial minority of the population are Muslims and, in some areas, they form the majority. Many people in one major ethnic group, the Yao, have an especially close association with the religion. In cities and many areas of the country the distinctive presence of Islam can be seen in the form of mosques, ways of dressing, customs and festivals. Muslims have provided Malawi with a State President and Vice-President, Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors, as well as leading figures in commerce, the professions and the security services. This book aims to contribute to knowledge and understanding in three main ways and falls into three 19 sections. First and foremost, it offers a concise introduction to the foundations on which the religion of Islam is based. It then goes on to describe the expansion and development of the Islamic Community and account for some of the sources of the rich diversity that is found among Muslims. Some of this diversity comes from the very different cultures in which Islam has found a place, and some of it comes also from different interpretations of the foundations of the religion itself. The book concludes with an outline of how Islam has come to Africa, and to Malawi in particular, and how it has found expression in the lives of Muslims there.

This is the first attempt to comprehend the whole of Malawi's church history in a single volume. The focus of this book is about documenting the religious experience which was at the centre of founding the new nation of Malawi as we have come to know it. The book strikes a balance in covering issues pertaining to both mission activities and African agency. In many instances interesting pieces of evidence have been marshalled to corroborate or emphasize some of the conclusions reached.

The culmination of years of fieldwork in southern Malawi, River of Blood reconstructs the beginnings of the Mbona martyr cult, follows its history to the present day, and reveals the fascinating intersections of an indigenous belief system with European Christianity. In the cult of Mbona, the central African mythology of the snake that is beheaded to make the rains come has been combined with a more spiritual interpretation: the snake has been transformed into a human martyr and redeemer. According to the cult, the rainmaker Mbona was tracked down by his enemies; they cut off his head, and his blood formed the River of Blood. Mbona returned as a storm wind and asked that a shrine be dedicated in his name. J. Matthew Schoffeleers recounts how the Portuguese presence in Zambezia in the period 1590-1622 led to more than three decades of internecine warfare and caused the people of southern Malawi tremendous suffering. In response to this political oppression and social upheaval, Schoffeleers shows, the people looked to Mbona, their "black Jesus," for redemption. Beyond reconstructing the cult's genesis, Schoffeleers traces its recent history, particularly in political context. He provides texts of seven cult myths from different historical periods in both Chimang'anja and English. His analysis presents the Mbona myth as a continuous social construction and deconstruction. Emphasizing the impact of political and spiritual oppression on the cult, he distinguishes between the differing versions of the myth preserved by the aristocracy and by the commonalty and demonstrates how these disparate views unite to preserve historical information. In so doing, he shows that cults serve as valuable repositories for historical information.

The first full-length study of one of the territorial rain cults; and an endeavour to preserve knowledge about a rapidly changing complex system of traditional beliefs, rituals, and practices, under the influence of Christianity, Islam, and western education. Within this cult, a person who is possessed by the spirit of the ancestors is commonly known as Bimbi: the seer, a charismatic and moral leader, to whom the community ascribes a prophetic role. As a religious system, the Bimbi cult has an intricate system of agricultural rituals such as rainmaking ceremonies, a distinctive unwritten theology, elaborate liturgical observances and an organised, inherited priesthood. Studying the Bimbi cult from a multi-disciplinary perspective, the author illustrated how traditional beliefs and practices still have a grip on people in the countryside, who live in an agricultural subsistence economy, and at the mercy of ecological forces. He contends that these forces will continue to shape their understanding of God, themselves and the world around them for many years to come, unless these people change from an agricultural to an industrial society.