Nazarite Church

views updated May 17 2018

Nazarite Church (Zulu, ama-Nazaretha) or Shembe's Church. The largest independent movement among the Zulu, later including other peoples. It is named from the biblical Nazirites, and represents an Old Testament form of religion—sabbatarian, and with two main festivals, Tabernacles (see SUKKOT) and the New Year, focused on their holy city Ekuphakameni, near Durban, and their holy mountain Nhlangakazi, 130 km north. The founder, Isaiah Shembe (1870–1935), a black Baptist church member, was a charismatic prophethealer who composed a great corpus of hymns in Zulu.

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