1 - Introduction

Summary

This book is an historical ethnography of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, and of the Kanungu fire itself. As such, it begins with an exploration of the social context from which this particular African-Initiated Church (AIC) emerged in the mid-1980s, and with an attempt to define the cultural archive which informed that process of genesis. The book's central argument is that the MRTC grew out of, and was located within, a specific – historically and geographically located – set of logics and practices related to attempts to gain redress for misfortune. Moreover, that this helps us to understand why the group later grew rapidly – during the early-mid 1990s – given that this was a period during which South-western Uganda was experiencing what was perhaps the worst social misfortune in the region's entire history: the emergent AIDS epidemic. Thus, it was as people attempted to come to terms with this new disease, and to deal with its worst effects, that they increasingly turned to the MRTC for support (and the reasons why they turned to this particular AIC, rather than to the mainstream church, or to some other sort of organization altogether, will also be elaborated upon). From here, then, the book explores what these historical dimensions tell us about life inside the MRTC, about its modes of social organization and ritual practice, about its politics and theology, and so on.