From Spirits to the Bible: Ayelesili, or the Impossible Church (Congo-Brazzaville)

Abstract

Religious effervescence in the Congo River basin, which from the first stirrings of religious innovation has been marked by Kimbanguism, is today made up mostly of small movements in search of an identity, seeking at one and the same time to separate themselves from “tradition”, and from Christian churches, and to find some point of originality enabling them to claim to be religions superior to all others. The main stages of the conversion of a “minor prophet” from Congo-Brazzaville, retraced in the origin myth of Ayelesili, and the later developments of his movement, permit us to grasp the relationship, the likeness and the difference, between this kind of movement, traditional cults, and other Churches.