“Instant Miracles are Rare, but It Happened to Me”

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" “Instant Miracles are Rare, but It Happened to Me” "
Katharina Wilkens

Document Type	:	AL
Record Number	:	1079253
Doc. No	:	LA122882
Call No	:	‭10.1163/15685276-12341495‬
Language of Document	:	English
Main Entry	:	Katharina Wilkens
Title & Author	:	“Instant Miracles are Rare, but It Happened to Me” [Article]\ Katharina Wilkens
Publication Statement	:	Leiden: Brill
Title of Periodical	:	Numen
Date	:	2018
Volume/ Issue Number	:	65/2-3
Page No	:	207–231
Abstract	:	The Marian Faith Healing Ministry, under the leadership of the excommunicated Catholic priest Felicien Nkwera, is dedicated to the fight against demons, illness, and corruption. It is a small, but fairly well-known group in Tanzania and enjoys some notoriety due to its propagation of exorcism. At the same time, both the leader and its members fully accept the biomedical paradigm of healing. In this article, I analyze narrative structures reflecting moments of differentiation and de-differentiation between the systems of religious healing and of (bio-)medicine. I draw both on narratives of healing published by Nkwera in his books as well as on narrative interviews conducted with his followers. Religious and biomedical frameworks of explanation were emplotted by some respondents as narratives of miracle healing and conversion, in which biomedicine’s denial of spiritual agency serves as the necessary foil to the efficacy of religious healing. My findings contribute to the study of contemporary forms of alternative medicine by making a case for employing methods of narrative analysis in this field.
Descriptor	:	biomedicine
Descriptor	:	Catholicism
Descriptor	:	Comparative Religion Religious Studies
Descriptor	:	faith-healing
Descriptor	:	General
Descriptor	:	healing narratives
Descriptor	:	History of Religion
Descriptor	:	Marian Faith Healing Ministry
Descriptor	:	Religion Society
Descriptor	:	Religion in Antiquity
Descriptor	:	Religious Studies
Descriptor	:	Social Sciences
Descriptor	:	Tanzania
Location & Call number	:	‭10.1163/15685276-12341495‬