Finding a Social Voice: The Church and Marxism in Africa

From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, the influence of Marxist ideas expanded in sub-Saharan Africa. The Catholic Church saw this influence as likely to affect the accomplishment of its mission, and its pastoral efforts accordingly sought to deal with the Marxist thrust. In the late 1980s, Marxist political dominance became less intense. Nevertheless, the Church's encounter with African Marxism constituted an important chapter in both secular and ecclesiastical history. Finding a Social Voice records and analyzes the significant elements of this encounter, focusing on four diverse African countries: Madagascar, Mozambigue, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This book investigates how postcolonial African regimes under varying degrees of Marxist influence have interacted with the Catholic Church, and studies how the Church has grown through its response to that interaction.