Abstract
The author argues that the flowering of religion in former Zaïre is basically a product of the collapse of the legitimacy of the post-colonial political system, of the persistence of the economic crisis and the dissolution of the national social fabric. At the same time, the author attempts to show that all religious movements and their inherent practices tend to become, in the absence of unifying national symbols, common denominators capable of capturing the national imagination at the moment of its appearance.
