Lumpa movement
Lumpa Movement was a Christian renewal movement in what is now Zambia in the 1950s , which gave itself the name Lumpa Church .
The Lumpa movement is closely linked to the charismatic personality of Alice Lenshina . Lumpa means better than everyone else in Bemba . This movement spoke out sharply against traditional religions , turned radically against sorcery, polygamy and alcohol. Christian baptism was at the center of their cult. Her hymns are still among the most popular in Zambia today and have been adopted by established churches.
From 1958 the Lumpa movement got into increasing conflicts with the state authorities, because it refused to pay taxes, refused to register as a church and even set up its own courts. Shortly after independence was achieved, this led to an escalation that resulted in over 700 deaths, other sources write over 1,500 deaths in the Lumpa movement and a large wave of refugees in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Alice Lenshina was placed under arrest and released after ten years in 1975. Less than two years later, she was arrested again for renewing the Lumpa movement.
After that, the Lumpa movement officially dissolved, but found an accepted form of organization in the Catholic lay movement Marienlegion , where the hymns were also adopted. In addition, the Lumpa movement is by no means considered to be extinct, but apparently lives very much reduced underground.
The Lumpa movement should by no means be restricted to purely religious motives. It was a mass movement with up to 100,000 followers, thus over a tenth of the population of this region at that time, i.e. the dominant spiritual force and organization in northern Zambia. It almost wiped out Catholicism and the Scottish Church in this region by converting its believers. Zambia's independence is also deeply rooted in the Lumpa movement. The dominant independence politicians such as Kenneth Kaunda and Simon Kapwepwe came from Chinsali , that is, from the same district, and when Alice Lenshina asked her supporters to leave their United National Independence Party , almost all party members in this region were suddenly absent.
The Lumpa movement may have died out, but together with the charities in the Copperbelt it is one of the two roots of Zambian politics during the colonial period. Both roots are decidedly national and cross-tribal, both have shaped the national consciousness in Zambia in such a way that tribal thinking, even in Barotseland, has no chance of becoming politically virulent to this day.