Belief, ritual and the securing of life
Subtitle: reflexive essays on a Bantu religion
By: by Malcolm Ruel.
Series: Studies of religion in Africa,; 18; Studies on religion in Africa ;; 18.
Publisher: E.J. Brill
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Leiden, The Netherlands; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
Subjects: Kuria (African people) -- Religion.; Kenya -- Religion.; Tanzania -- Religion.
Description: This is a book about understanding an African religion that explores the coherence of the religion and the place of ritual in it, but which also looks at the way studying the religion of a very different society from our own throws up questions and helps to particularize the assumptions we make about religion and ideas we have on personhood.

The essays collected in the volume focus upon the Kuria people of East Africa but range well beyond them.

Some of the topics explored are: the ordering of society through ritual; 'belief' as a category central to Christianity but misleading in its application to other religions; life-processes rather than the supernatural as the focus for religious understanding; the nature of sacrifice; ideas of the person; cosmology and ritual; conversion; the values of Western individualism as represented in art forms.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [257]-263) and index.