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Accepted Paper:
'We pray that good will be given to us'
– Imagining the future with and through the Catholic Church in Kafa, Ethiopia
Alexander Chenchenko
(Goethe University Frankfurt)
Through it's missionary activities that support the social infrastructure of rural Kafa, people actively engage in imagining futures with and through the Catholic Church. This paper thus points out, how these imaginations revolve around issues of development, accessibility and belonging.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I will describe the Catholic Church in the rural Kafa Region of Ethiopia through its missionary work, which is providing services in the fields of schooling, healthcare, agriculture and other domains of social infrastructure. As will be presented, catholic, as well as people from other confessional groups, exercise notions of the future with and through the Catholic Church because of their much-appreciated development activities. Referring to the everyday life in rural Kafa, these notions of the future also stand in line with the accessibility of social infrastructural services such as kindergartens, schools and healthcare facilities. Because of historical ties between the Catholic Church and the Kafa Region of Ethiopia and the conception of the Catholic Church as the first Christian Church of Kafa (Kaffi-Kitenno), I conclude that belonging is an important part in the overall notions of the future that are negotiated with and through the Catholic Church. For example, this can be observed in the conversion of entire villages to the Catholic faith. In line with the field of the Anthropology of Christianity, this paper will then provide a hitherto neglected focus on how social transformation can be described in Catholic traditions (Bialecki, Haynes, Robbins 2008: 1152). The basis of the paper represents three months of field research in the Kafa Region of Ethiopia in 2021, with an explicit focus on role of the Catholic Church on the everyday lives of people and how people actively engage and use the Catholic Church.