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Fulfilling the Christian Mission Through Law: The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden as a Legal Actor in Congo 1881–1908
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Theology, Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CRS Uppsala).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2589-7964
2025 (English)In: Studia Theologica, ISSN 0039-338X, E-ISSN 1502-7791Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

This article concerns the legal activities of The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden (Svenska Missionsförbundet) in Lower Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of Congo) between 1881 and 1908. The temporal delimitation stretches from pre-colonial Bakongo societies of lower Congo through King Leopold II’s infamous colonial Congo Free State. We ask about the Swedish missionaries’ theological-practical and jurisprudential approach to fulfilling the Christian mission through law and state building in Congo. The focus is on a notebook from 1904, entitled “Trials” (Rättegångar), telling of trials held by the missionaries at Kingenge mission station. We show how the Swedish missionaries ministered divine faith and executed earthly justice by adjudicating over its Christian Bakongo parishioners and non-Christian peoples from surrounding villages. We argue that rather than pursuant to a division between state and church jurisdiction (theology of two kingdoms), the missionaries acted as colonial legal intermediaries in a context of legal plurality, pursuing a theological, practical, and jurisprudential approach through multiple kingdoms as they drew on pre-colonial normative-cultural frameworks and authority, theological argumentation, and Free State jurisdiction to fulfil their Christian mission in Congo.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2025.
National Category
Law Religious Studies
Research subject
Jurisprudence
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-554628DOI: 10.1080/0039338x.2025.2470720ISI: 001447314700001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105000267423OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-554628DiVA, id: diva2:1952208
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2020-01697Available from: 2025-04-14 Created: 2025-04-14 Last updated: 2025-04-15Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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