Double Identities and Identity Struggles in Kongolese Catholicism of the 1700s: Vita Kimpa, Antonian Movement, and a Kongolese Interpretation of Christianity

Abstract

Among many Central, West, and East African countries, Kongo/Angola was the earliest to have modern European missionaries. Portuguese catholic missionaries arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo in the 1400s during European exploration, conquest, colonialism, and missions. These early encounters brought about the double identity that Africans would generally wrestle with in the contemporary period. Starting from the former Nganga Marinda priestess, Kimpa Vita, who later converted to Christianity and wanted to integrate some of her African cultural and religious practices but was persecuted, rejected, and burned at the stake, questions of identity, contextualization, and African consciousness have always been raised in African Christianity. Although Kimpa Vita was killed because of her beliefs, her movement continued to resurface in modern times in African consciousness, feminism, religiosity, resistance to colonialism, and black consciousness. This paper uses the theory of the double consciousness of W.E.B. Du Bois to examine the story of Kimpa Vita in her rejection of western colonial religion for a more Kongolese contextual Christianity.

Keywords

• double consciousness
• double identity
• nganga marinda
• colonialism
• missionary