DTS update: Chapel speaker Frank Glover intros students to Kimpa Vita, lionizing her without noting syncretist controversies (🧵 incoming).
Off the bat, he says of her: "Before Luther or before Calvin, there was a revolution." Both men died 100+ years before she was born.
It's hard to find trustworthy sources on this online, but from the Met Museum we see that Kimpa Vita, aka Dona Beatriz, was trained as a medium for spirits. Glover notes in his speech she claimed direct revelation from God. metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_4…
You can also see in this screenshot that Kimpa Vita believed, based on her direct revelation, that Jesus was born and baptized in the Kongo.
Glover says she had a vision from "God" while seemingly dead, but that's not even half the story. Her vision was from St Anthony, who she considered the "second God." jstor.org/stable/1581595
(The quote is substantiated from the above book review of "The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706" by John K. Thornton. The article is paywalled by Jstor but the text appears in the Google preview)
According to Thornton, Kimpa Vita did not just have one heavenly vision from one near-death experience. "[S]he died every Friday and spent each weekend in Heaven conferring with the Heavenly Father about the affairs of Kongo." executedtoday.com/2009/07/02/170…
A portion of the quote that Glover emphasized from Kimpa Vita is true, that the Kongo people (who believe in Jesus) are children of God and that white people are not superior in God's eyes. But we need not over-correct and celebrate pagan syncretism to make that point.
Source:
More receipts: books.google.com/books?id=zwHFD…
I'm not seeing anything to substantiate the "black angels" claim. In fact, one missionary wrote that she told him "in heaven, there is no color." She gave the title of "angels" to local men who were emissaries for her movement. nypl.org/blog/2021/10/0…
This same missionary also contradicts the claim, made by Glover, that Vita Kimpa's infant son was executed with her. headstuff.org/culture/histor…
He could at least note that it's disputed! era-magazine.com/2021/02/16/kon…
Found the full "second God" quote in Thornton's book. Geeze Louise. google.com/books/edition/…
$23 to fact-check the coming YouTube edit
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.