Dreams and purposes: an analysis of dream narratives in an independent African Church

Abstract

Opening ParagraphSampling provided the rationale of my previous account of ‘Dreams in an Independent African Church’ (1973). I took a set of ninety-five dream reports, and a handful of visions, as individual events which could be summed and categorised in a variety of ways. I had been able to garner these over a period of five months' study, from the services of this ‘Independent African Church’ (IAC). Beyond considering in general terms the part played by dream-telling and its accompaniments in the services of the Church and in its life more generally, in that article I worked out patterns, categorising the individual dreams in relation to their tellers, to the way they might implicate other named people, to whether they depicted IAC activities, to their apparent location, and so on. I sought to explain the patterns in terms of leadership and its interests, and of the idea that dream-telling was a kind of ‘bidding’, ‘to contribute valuably to the life of the group, and through this for status within it’ (op. cit.: 256). This article moves on from that analysis.