THE SUFFERING BODY - PASSION AND RITUAL ALLEGORY IN CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTERS

This article raises key questions about ritual as Christian allegory a nd bodily practice in history. In colonial and postcolonial ritual, ar ound which moments of the Christian drama of self-sacrifice, cosmic ma rtyrdom, redemption and resurrection have African Christians physicall y embodied their personal and collective identities, their felt indivi duality or their intimate sense of self? How has Christian passion met moral sensibility in colonial and postcolonial encounters? Pursuing t hat in a critique of a familiar modernist paradigm, the account addres ses the changing moral economy within which religious argument, whethe r verbal or mimetic, whether about syncretism or anti-syncretism, is c arried forward. A major concern is fundamental, long-term change and t he importance for the adherents themselves of ritual and church forms perceived as being universal and global.