Christianity in the Luangwa Valley, by Bernhard Udelhoven

Christianity in the Luangwa Valley, by Bernhard Udelhoven

Where faith and culture meet of don’t meet.

What does the Christian faith offer to people in the remote Luangwa Valley of Zambia? How does it link up, of not link up, with their values, life-experience and knowledge of God and the unseen world?

The first Catholic missionaries opened a mission station in the Luangwa Valley in 1904, but they left the valley barely seven months later. They had found greener pastures elsewhere. Within the next 100 years of evangelisation, the valley had witnessed periods of renewed impetus, but the social, cultural and religious coordinates of people in the valley found only few considerations in the pastoral plans of the established Church. For many pastoral workers, the valley was conceived as a difficult place, backwards, and left behind.

Now people of the valley are themselves asking questions to the Church. The answers given to their questions should be significant for the approach to Christian evangelisation far beyond the valley.

This study into the significant social and religious coordinates of people in the valley was commissioned by the Catholic Diocese of Chipata in search for a contextualised pastoral approach.

FENZA Publications, 252 pages, 2015. (First publication in 2007)