Abstract
Discussions about Pentecostalism often emphasize its pneumatic energy, its potential for crafting new selfhoods for believers, and how it privileges the rhetoric of power to produce miracles over actual practices, class, ethnicity, and race—all inexorably imbricated in how the movement performs “Holy Ghost power.” In Chap. 11, Ukah argues that the theological claim that God does not recognize flesh or human color is contradicted in practice when Pentecostal leaders and spiritual entrepreneurs privilege certain persons because of their skin color, origins, or financial buoyancy. In Africa, where prosperity Pentecostalism is popular and has attracted a large following, wealth and possession marks and separates the saved from the unsaved, the chosen from those marked for perdition in this life and the next. African Pentecostalism appropriates class, ethnicity, and race and imbricates them with new meanings and power.
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Acts of the Apostles 10:34 “Then Peter addressed them, ‘I now really understand’, he said, ‘that God has no favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him’.” This idea is also found in the letters of Paul (e.g., Romans 2:11: “There is no favouritism with God”).
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David Chidester, Empire of Religion: p. 36. On the derogatory names European writers and scholars called African religions, see Bolaji E. Idowu, African Religion: A Definition (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1973, 108–134).
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John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), 1. For a sustained debate surrounding Mbiti’s assertion, see: Jan Platvoet and Henk van Rissum “Is Africa Incurably Religious? Confessing and Contesting an Invention,” Exchange, vol. 32, issue 2 (2003): 123–153; Kehinde Olabimtan, “Is Africa Incurably Religious? II: A Response to Jan Platvoet & Henk van Rinsum,” Exchange, vol. 32, issue 4: (2003): 322–339; Jan Platvoet and Henk van Rissum, “Is Africa Incurably Religious? III: A Reply to a Rhetorical Response,” Exchange, vol. 37, issue 2 (2008): 156–173.
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Enoch Adeboye, How to Turn your Austerity to Prosperity (Lagos: CRM Books, 1989), 2–3.
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In the Bible, the Anawim (literally: those who are bowed down) designate the very poor (marginalized, oppressed, of low status and powerless in every sense of the word) who depended on Yahweh for everything they owned, for their salvation, and who will inherit the earth as a result (see, for example, Ps. 37: 3, 9, 11; Lk: 1: 53; Mtt 5:3).
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Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (London: Portobello Books Ltd., 2008), 3. Also, Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence, revised edition (Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2011).
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Jehu J. Hanciles, Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2008), 207f.
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Ukah, A. (2018). Neither Jew nor Greek? Class, Ethnicity, and Race in the Pentecostal Movement in Africa. In: Afolayan, A., Yacob-Haliso, O., Falola, T. (eds) Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74911-2_11
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