Prophecy

The term prophecy is rooted in the 12th-century French term prophecie, which was derived from the Latin proficio (“advance”) and the Greek prophetia (“what is written or spoken by a prophet”). Prophecy refers to the disclosure of concealed knowledge of the most crucial kind: the will and intentions of a transcendent power, for whom a prophet is authorized to speak. A prophet's message involves an image of community that is of divine origin, and it generally brings the prophet into confrontation with cultural elements that contradict this image. Thus, prophecy generally has political and social ramifications. Prophets traditionally emerge from contexts of social crisis, and their messages promise to transform society through a revitalization of relationships with covert sources of power.

Globalization has posed distinct challenges with respect to prophecy. Globalization often refers to what economists view as the integration of national economies that began in the late 20th century, resulting from the international circulation of capital, technology, and people. Modern globalization, however, can be traced to the 15th-century voyages of discovery that laid the foundations for European colonialism, through which the flow of wealth, technology, and human beings brought most of the world into a matrix of political, cultural, and economic relationships. Through this globalizing enterprise, large numbers of people would ultimately be subjected to displacement, genocide, and other forms of domination. Within this particular context of social crisis, prophecy has been a common occurrence.

Among the most fascinating instances of prophecy in recent years are Melanesian cargo cults that emerged at the time of contact with Europeans in the late 19th century. They continue to the present day. These movements have developed around individuals with prophetic insight into the meaning of Western commodities. They invoke preexisting frameworks of social organization and exchange, motifs of recreation and rebirth, and mythological expectations of ancestral return to interpret the significance of Europeans, the imbalanced distribution of wealth, and the lack of reciprocity in the contact situation. Prophets promote collective labor (e.g., building of airstrips, warehouses, or radio towers) and rites of purification and transformation (destruction of livestock or gardens, altered sexual practices, or spirit possession) to secure the arrival of cargo (commodities), which colonials are perceived to have misappropriated from Melanesian ancestors. The issues cargo cults confront as well as the religious meanings they ascribe to contact and a market economy are, in many respects, emblematic of prophecy in a global context. Cargo prophets proclaim a message of redemption from domination that is framed in relation to commodities, human reproduction, the need for reciprocity, and new relationships with sacred power. While prophecy is traditionally associated with situations of crisis, prophecy in a global world is marked by these kinds of conspicuously modern features. A brief overview of three prophets here will serve to highlight these features: Dona Beatrice Kimpa Vita, Antônio Conselhiero, and Louis Riel.

From the time of contact with the Portuguese in 1482 until the late 19th century, the Kingdom of Kongo in west-central Africa was racked by wars involving rival kings and Dutch and Portuguese colonials. Refugees and captives created by these conflicts fueled a lucrative slave trade involving the Dutch, Portuguese, English, and French. Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita emerged as a prophet in this turbulent context. In 1704, a 20-year-old Kimpa Vita experienced visions through which she came to believe herself possessed by St. Anthony and destined to die every Friday, travel to heaven, and return with God's directives each Monday. She began a peaceful crusade for the unification of the Kongo, the expulsion of Europeans and an end to colonial ventures, and the abolition of slavery. Denouncing traditional African and European religious practices, she instituted an indigenous Catholicism in which Mary, Jesus, and the saints were Kongolese. Her Antonian movement attracted thousands of peasants who followed her to São Salvador (present-day M'banza-Kongo) to restore the city as the Kongolese capital, which they believed to be the true site of Bethlehem. The movement was censured by Catholic and civil authorities, and Kimpa Vita was convicted of heresy in 1706. Although she and her child (believed to have been divinely conceived) were burned at the stake under the Kongolese King Pedro IV, the Antonian [Page 1027]movement ultimately provided Pedro with a foundation for uniting the Kingdom of Kongo.

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