Article
French
ID: <
10670/1.w4sibb>
Abstract
While he was a political exile in Benin, in the mid-1980s, the former president of the Central African Republic (CAR), François Bozizé, converted to the Celestial Church of Christ, an African prophetic church. Based on fieldwork in CAR and in Benin, this article describes his involvement in transnational celestial networks and his quest for power both within the Church and within the Central African state. During his ten years in power, he developed a rhetoric of warfare inspired by the “spiritual warfare” supposed to free the country from its foreign and Muslim enemies. This exacerbated violence in the clashes between Muslims and Christians.