A Divine Season: Christian Nationalist Activism in Zambia

How Zambian Pentecostal activists worked to transform their country into a self-styled “Christian nation”In 2015, Zambia began an ambitious program to “actualize” the country’s constitutional declaration that it was a “Christian nation.” For Pentecostal Christian nationalist activists, this was a “divine season,” an opportunity to change their country by submitting it to God’s control.In this book, Naomi Haynes examines these efforts at national transformation, offering a careful ethnographic exploration of Christian nationalist theology, ritual, and policy initiatives.Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, Haynes describes how activists promoted Zambia’s Christian identity, whether by writing books and newspaper articles, posting on social media, building new monuments, praying for the nation, or lobbying for constitutional changes. By tracing Zambian Christian nationalism’s internal contradictions and tensions, Haynes charts its ultimate failure, which she as