Abstract
In this chapter, Adeboye interrogates the supposed growth and acceptability of the Pentecostal movement in Africa. While the chapter explores various indices and strategies of growth, it argues that perennial turbulent splintering—a major shortcoming of African Pentecostalism—has often been misinterpreted as numerical growth. Adeboye notes that while the question of legitimacy was a big issue during the colonial period, it has mostly been resolved in the postcolonial context, both within formal secular state structures and within Christian ecumenical bodies. She concludes by probing Pentecostal engagement within larger Christian spaces and noting the reluctance of some Pentecostals to engage in interfaith dialogue and global ecumenism.
Introduction
The explosion of Christianity in Africa since the 1970s has been the subject of several publications and conferences in recent times. Observers within and outside the continent have come to a common conclusion that the center of world Christianity has gradually shifted from the Western to the non-Western world, namely, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Within this Christian epicenter, the Pentecostal expression has been particularly visible, vibrant, and impactful. It has generated considerable debate about its roots (whether indigenous or foreign), on the diversity of its manifestations, on its features, and its public significance. The spread and variety of African Pentecostalism continues to amaze experts—sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, historians, and even government officials—who have had to regulate its practices in numerous African nations.
This chapter examines the nature of the growth and contemporary acceptability of the Pentecostal movement in Africa. It explores the various factors that facilitated this growth. It examines the challenges associated with the growth and their implications for the future of African Christianity and the fate of the continent. The chapter is divided into four parts. The first examines African Pentecostal origins and later diversification; the second focuses on growth-related issues and tries to identify the factors responsible. The third discusses the issues of the movement’s legitimation and acceptability in sub-Saharan Africa, especially its relationship with the state and Pentecostal ecumenical bodies. The chapter concludes by raising questions on the downsides of the movement.
African Pentecostal Origins and Later Diversification
Scholars of African Pentecostalism have challenged the previous scholarship that claims the birth and spread of Pentecostalism worldwide could only be traced to the Azusa revival in Los Angeles, USA, during the opening decade of the twentieth century. This rebuttal has uncovered indigenous agency in non-Western societies and underscored the fact that different people had the Pentecostal experience at different times, mostly without recourse to Azusa. This is not to say there were no Western influences in African Pentecostalism, but that each region should be studied separately to uncover peculiar patterns rather than embracing broad generalizations.
According to Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, the precursors of the Pentecostal movement in Africa were “indigenous prophet figures” whose uncommon spirituality had earned them immediate expulsion from their respective mission churches.Footnote 1 These men included William Wade Harris of the Gold Coast, Garrick Sokari Braide of the Niger Delta, Simon Kimbangu of the Congo, and other such itinerant prophets, who preached the Christian message with unusual authority, challenged witchcraft, sorcery, and the powers of traditional religion, and healed sicknesses. These prophets did not found a church but were hounded by colonial authorities in their respective countries because their rising fame and large followership threatened the state. For instance, Simon Kimbangu, whose public ministry in the Congo lasted just for one year, 1921, was sentenced to death. But at the intervention of two Baptist missionaries, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and exile. He died in 1951 after spending 30 years in prison.Footnote 2
Ogbu Kalu identified the Pentecostal movement as the “third response” of Africans to mission Christianity as proof that Africans were not passive receivers of the Christian message but that they engaged creatively with it to produce their own versions, herein presented as responses. The first response was Ethiopianism, a nineteenth-century reaction by the African nationalist elites against white domination in the mission churches. In the words of Kalu, Ethiopianism
challenged white representation of African values, cultures, and the practice of the Christian faith. It challenged white monopoly of the cultic and decision-making powers within the church, and the monopoly of the interpretation of the canon and the cultural symbols of worship. Ethiopianism countered the denigration of indigenous cultures with a nationalist antistructure, and a quest for the Africanisation of the gospel.Footnote 3
Many of the Christian nationalist elites broke away from the mission churches to found African Churches. Their concern was to create a way in which they could be both African and Christian without white tutelage. The second response took the form of a pneumatic challenge to mission Christianity. Following the outbreak of influenza and meningitis epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa in the second decade of the twentieth century, several “spiritual” churches sprang up to seek divine intervention.Footnote 4 These included the Zionist in southern and central Africa, abahoro in eastern Africa, and the aladura in western Africa. These, and the many that came after them, became known collectively as African Independent Churches (AIC) in the literature. AICs drew heavily from African traditional religion to reorder their worldview and introduced new symbols and sources. Pentecostalism, as a third response, shared certain features with the AICs and both drew from issues raised in primal religion:
the vibrant spirituality in both groups produced creative liturgy, polity ethics, and evangelistic concern for soul care and material well-being of members. Both groups are innovative and have developed doctrinal emphases that differ from the inherited traditions of the missionaries who responded with jaundiced perceptions of the world of power in indigenous African communities.Footnote 5
However, a Pentecostal emphasis on the centrality of the Holy Spirit and their insistence on personal and social rebirth set them apart from AICs.
African Pentecostalism has several distinguishing features. First, it embodies Africans’ quest for power and identity through religion by appropriating aspects of their traditional worldview. According to Kalu Ogbu, African Pentecostalism embraces the “spiritual ecology” of Africa as mapped out in its traditional worldview.Footnote 6 It endorses local beliefs in witchcraft and other forms of spiritual manipulation but maintains that the power of God is above them all. Pentecostals acknowledge the existence of spiritual forces in heaven, on earth, and underneath the earth, but maintains that they all bow to the name of Jesus Christ. Like the African traditional worldview, Pentecostalism also argues that things that are not seen determine what is seen; and Pentecostals are always quick to invoke biblical passages that talk about spiritual warfare between the forces of light and darkness.
This emphasis on spiritual warfare hinges on fervent prayer, which is marked by speaking in tongues (glossolalia). Furthermore, Pentecostal beliefs underscore the idea of biblical inerrancy and their spirituality is marked by spontaneity and emotionalism. According to Opoku Onyinah, Pentecostal spirituality emphasizes “the experiential, the relational […] with freedom to interpret and appropriate the multiple meanings of Biblical texts.”Footnote 7 Closely associated with this is Pentecostal theology, which is based on the concept of salvation from sin, resulting in transformation and empowerment for the individual. Healing and deliverance also occupy significant positions in this theology.
African Pentecostalism has produced very creative liturgies, faith communities, strong ethics, and an evangelistic concern for “lost souls,” namely, unreached peoples. It is equally concerned with the material well-being of its members and is thus able to maintain a balance between the this-worldly practical concerns of its followers and the otherworldly spiritual imperatives of its salvation theology. This clearly distinguishes it from AICs whose prayers and prophecies are mostly directed toward members’ daily concerns.
One cannot deny links between African Pentecostals and their Western counterparts. Some local congregations have invited foreign pastors to mentor and guide them. For example, Assemblies of God (AG) missionaries were invited from the United States of America to eastern Nigeria in 1939 by local Pentecostals who had formed the Church of Jesus Christ in 1934 under the leadership of Augustus Wogu .Footnote 8 Similarly, the Welsh Apostolic Church was invited to Ghana by Peter Anim and to Nigeria by Joseph Ayo Babalola, both of whom (together with D.O. Odubanjo ) were recognized leaders of their local Pentecostal churches.Footnote 9 These churches had been affiliated with the Faith Tabernacle congregation in Philadelphia in the USA. This external connection and subsequent rapport between African and global Pentecostalism did not necessarily increase their homogeneity but it did provide a platform for Africans to domesticate and adapt foreign ideas and practices to their own culture.
By the end of the twentieth century, African Pentecostalism had greatly diversified from what it had been in the 1930s. This diversification was mostly reflective of a transformation within the movement, including: the influx of foreign Pentecostals; the mass mobilization of students into the movement; and the rise of churches and ministries that claimed a mandate to address problems of poverty and lack, which had been exacerbated by ailing national economies since the 1970s.
This brings us to the task of classifying the various Pentecostal ministries in Africa. There are two broad categories, each with its own subdivisions, classical Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals. Classical Pentecostals can be subdivided into indigenous and foreign. Examples of indigenous churches are the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) in Ghana and Nigeria, the Church of Pentecost (COP) in Ghana, and the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) and Deeper Life Bible Church (DLBC) in Nigeria. Examples of foreign Pentecostals include AG, The Apostolic Church (TAC), and the Foursquare Gospel Church , with branches across sub-Saharan Africa. Classical Pentecostal churches emphasize the Christian experience of new birth and personal holiness exhibited in a moderate lifestyle with strict social ethics. Indigenous classical Pentecostal churches, according to J.K. Asamoah-Gyadu:
stress not just the new birth, but also personal holiness, bible study, evangelism, and baptism in the Holy Spirit. Believers are expected to dress modestly and do away with semblances of flamboyance, materialism and extravagance and in short worldliness in life.Footnote 10
These churches promote conservatism in the dressing and physical appearance of women: no excessive jewelry, no make-up, and no exposure of hair during services. It is only recently that some of these rules have been relaxed in order to attract more youth into the churches. The COP in Ghana and some model parishes of the RCCG in Nigeria now allow women without head coverings to worship in the churches. The old rule of women not sitting together with men during services has also been reviewed by a few of the churches. However, most classical Pentecostal churches have yet to come to terms with the issue of the ordination of women. Very few, such as the RCCG, have been ordaining women as pastors, giving them spiritual oversight and administrative duties. One can thus conclude that the gender practices of classical Pentecostal churches are largely conservative and are only just opening up to piecemeal reforms.
The second category of Pentecostals in Africa, the neo-Pentecostals, comprises: transdenominational charismatic fellowships; renewal movements in historic mission denominations; and charismatic churches. The transdenominational charismatic fellowships, as the name implies, are not churches but a wide network of groups where people meet for regular fellowship in a charismatic ambience. Examples include: the Student Christian Movement, which is found on the campuses of many tertiary educational institutions on the continent; the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship (FGBMF), comprising professionals from various fields; Women Aglow; Intercessors for Africa; and various transdenominational prayer camps. Apart from operating in small chapters, or clusters, scattered over large areas, each fellowship regularly organizes annual or biennial convocations at which all components of the network come together to worship and fraternize.
Renewal movements also abound in historic mission churches, such as Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Anglican congregations. E.K. Larbi, in his Ghanaian case studies, identifies three manifestations of charismata in the mainline churches. First is the congregation-centered type, where special groups within the congregation are exposed to a deeper spirituality than others. Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) is a case in point. This group is integrated into formal church structures with recognized leaders overseeing prayer groups in parishes and dioceses. According to Larbi, some members of the CCR even operate healing centers outside the church, similar to Pentecostal prayer camps.Footnote 11 The second form is person-centered, but equally church-based, in which only a few individuals possess the charismatic experience and they minister to others within the church as the need arises. The third manifestation of charismata is the independent type, where individual members of mainline congregations have a personal encounter with a spiritual gift, which they freely exhibit at home, outside the church. Such charismata often included glossolalia, the ability to pray for divine healing, prophesy, and visions. A notable African example is the Catholic exorcist and faith healer, Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Zambia, who had a flourishing healing and deliverance ministry in Lusaka before he was called to the Vatican in 1983.
Neo-Pentecostal charismatic churches have become very prominent in Africa since the 1980s. Examples include: the Church of God Missions International, founded by the late Benson Idahosa of Nigeria but now headed by his wife, Margaret Idahosa; Winners’ Chapel, founded by David Oyedepo; Christ Embassy International, led by Chris Oyakhilome; and Daystar Christian Centre, founded by Sam Adeyemi; Family of God Church, led by Andrew Wutawunashe; Jabula New Life Covenant Church, led by Tudor Bismark, both from Harare, Zimbabwe; Abundant Life Faith Centre in Kampala, Uganda, led by Handel Leslie; and the Redeemed Gospel Church in Huruma, Kenya, founded by Arthur Kitonga. Ghanaian examples include the International Central Gospel Church, founded by Mensah Otabil, and Lighthouse Chapel International, led by Dag Heward-Mills. South African examples include the multiracial Rhema Bible Church in Johannesburg, founded by Ray McCauley, and the Grace Bible Church led by Mosa Sono.
Over the years these examples have grown into megachurches with thousands of worshippers and branches in various locations. Other salient characteristics of the neo-charismatic churches (founded within the last 30 to 40 years) include a strong emphasis on the faith gospel, or message of abundant life, which focuses not only on the bliss of the hereafter but also propagates the prosperity doctrine. The congregations are predominantly youthful, with a lay-oriented leadership, and they recognize and encourage individual charismatic gifting. The pastors come from various professional backgrounds and the worship is quite urbane. Dress rules are very relaxed, especially for women, unlike in the classical Pentecostal churches. They utilize modern media technology to propagate the gospel and enhance the services, which in most cases are conducted in their national lingua franca—English or French. Charismatic churches have vast transnational networks that are not only linked to the setting up of branches in outside nations, but are also tied to their numerous trips to other African and Western nations for ministration. Reciprocally, local Pentecostal pastors receive visits from like-minded colleagues from other nations. This gives the charismatic churches an international perspective. Additional foreign influences come from the consumption of foreign Christian literature, audio and video recordings of sermons of foreign pastors, and through the global media.
It should be noted here that the classification of Pentecostal churches offered above is not without exceptions. From time to time churches classified in one category exhibit features generally identified with other groups. A case in point is the RCCG in Nigeria. Although it is regarded as an indigenous classical Pentecostal church, it also manifests features generally associated with charismatic churches in the neo-Pentecostal bloc through its model parishes: dressing rules for women are relaxed; an individual’s charismatic gifts are encouraged; and modern media technology is fully exploited to project the church. All these are located within the overall mission statement of the RCCG, which is “To make heaven and take as many people as possible with us.”Footnote 12
The rise of various classical Pentecostal churches cannot be located within the same temporal milieu. While churches such as the CAC, RCCG, and COP emerged during the colonial period, others such as the DLBC and the Mountain of Fire Ministries emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Different socioeconomic circumstances aided their rise and later popularity. The charismatic churches, on the other hand, witnessed a phenomenal growth from the 1970s with the rise of churches such as Benson Idahosa’s Church of God International in Nigeria.
The Growth of the Pentecostal Movement in Africa
The growth of the Pentecostal movement in Africa has been a subject of considerable debate. The central question is whether the movement is really growing numerically or merely splintering in a “noisy and boisterous style.”Footnote 13 Pentecostalism has a high tendency to splinter due to its internal democratization of access to spiritual power. Anybody with considerable spiritual resources may break away from existing structures to found another church, or ministry, for such causes as the detection of faults in the existing leadership, an autocratic exercise of power, or a weakening of charisma. In the absence of reliable statistics on church membership, such splinterings are sometimes presented as evidence of growth in the Pentecostal movement. The fact that members move freely from one ministry or church to another, that they attend special programs in search of an answer to personal issues, does not help matters. So, instead of looking for statistical evidence that overlaps and is often inflated, other, non-quantitative parameters have been adopted as signs of growth in the Pentecostal movement. These included: the vitality of its practice(s); its high visibility in public space; and the intensity of its opposition to traditional religion and other forms of Christianity.Footnote 14 Moreover, the Pentecostalization of the mainline churches also makes it difficult to measure growth quantitatively.
The factors responsible for the growth of Pentecostalism in Africa can be classified into five broad categories: contextual, cultural, instrumentalist, strategic, and spiritual. Contextual factors have to do with the general environment that facilitated the thriving of Pentecostalism. Kalu Ogbu explained the pre-1970 growth of Pentecostalism against the “backdrop of influenza on the West Coast of Africa between 1919 and 1925 and the psychosocial pressures of colonialism.”Footnote 15 Furthermore, the 1970s in Southern Africa witnessed “a quest for belonging” among blacks, which drove them into the Pentecostal movement. On the other hand, “black political insurgence drove whites into a quest for security in the warm embrace of the Holy Spirit.”Footnote 16 In sub-Saharan Africa there was a crisis in the political economy of several states during the 1980s and 1990s. Scholars have identified legitimacy crises, environmental degradation, civil war, and drought as some of the attendant complications. Describing the Nigerian situation, Asonzeh F.K. Ukah wrote:
In the midst of legitimacy crises, social decay, state failure, massive corruption, academic graduate unemployment, environmental degradation, unprecedented abuse of human rights, and crippling poverty of many amidst the scandalous wealth of a few, new churches and ministries proliferated… These leaders are not only religious leaders; they are also economic visionaries who creatively respond to the demands of their immediate environment.Footnote 17
It was in the midst of these challenges that individuals turned to the Pentecostal churches for solace and comfort. Structural adjustment programs implemented by several states had made life difficult for their citizens. Paul Gifford has argued that the rise of neo-Pentecostal charismatic churches could be linked to the collapse of African economies in the 1980s, which he equally used to account for the subsequent dependence of these churches on the USA. He believes that this Americanization, rather than any African quality, is responsible for the growth of these churches.Footnote 18 This argument by Gifford has, however, been countered by a cultural argument, which many scholars believe has played a significant role in the growth of Pentecostalism. There is no denying that the collapse of local economies and the ensuing hardship drove men to seek God more than ever before. But what sustained their interest in the Pentecostal churches was the resonance of traditional African concerns with the supernatural within this Christian context.
Writing on the Ghanaian situation, E.K. Larbi has given an impetus to the cultural argument. He notes that the single significant factor that has given rise to Pentecostal activities in the nation is that Pentecostalism found a fertile ground in the all-pervasive primal religious traditions “especially in its cosmology and in its concept of salvation.”Footnote 19 Similarly, Onyinah indicated that, in Ghana, Pentecostalism spoke to the cultural issues in the African mind. It denounces the world of darkness, of witchcraft, sorcery, and demons, as wicked and diabolic; at the same time it endorses it as real while assuring believers that the power of God is greater than them all. Therefore, to gain victory over all evil forces, one had to denounce them, accept Jesus Christ, and receive the power of God through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is the power that can destroy all the works of the devil.Footnote 20 Kalu Ogbu also applied the cultural argument generally in Africa when he observed:
Pentecostalism in Africa derived its colouring from the texture of the African soil and from the interior of its idiom, nurture and growth: its fruits serve more adequately the challenges and problems of the African ecosystem than the earlier missionary fruits did.Footnote 21
Pentecostalism in Africa thus grew because of its cultural fit within and the ready answers it had for the questions raised within the indigenous worldview. He contends that this indigenous worldview still dominates contemporary African life and continues to shape the character of African Pentecostalism.
The instrumentalist argument underscores the manner in which Pentecostalism was deployed by its adherents for their own purposes. For instance, Pentecostalism was used by the young, educated, and upwardly mobile to contest the constraints of ancient traditions, such as overburdened kinship networks. Writing about the Zimbabwe AG Africa , David Maxwell illustrates how members are taught to reject tradition and to focus on the nuclear family. This frees them from the “exactions of kin and community thus enabling personal accumulation.”Footnote 22 Doctrines are formulated to enable Pentecostals to make the most of rapid social change, such as social mobility, and a code of conduct prescribed that prevents individuals from falling into poverty and destitution. These are used to confront and renegotiate issues of political exclusion and frustrated economic aspiration. It has aptly been dubbed the religious face of modernity. The prosperity gospel gave people a template for coming to terms with and benefiting from modernity’s’ dominant values and institutions.Footnote 23 In a similar study on Pentecostalism in Kenya, Damaris S. Parsitau and Philomena N. Mwaura argue that one of the reasons Pentecostalism became popular in urban Kenya was because of its capacity for social transformation and change. Pentecostalism empowered marginalized classes and facilitated upward social mobility for several individuals through the instrumentality of the prosperity gospel preached by Kenyan televangelists such as Bishop Mark Kariuki , Bishop J.B. Masinde , Margaret Wanjiru, and Wilfred Lai.Footnote 24 The urban poor are attracted to this message because Pentecostalism claims to have an answer for poverty. When this is juxtaposed with the failure of the state as an agent of modernization, it thus makes sense that numerous people turned to Pentecostalism not only for solutions to individual problems, but also for spiritual prescriptions for national economic and social woes.Footnote 25
The strategic argument examines the successful strategies employed by Pentecostal outfits to expand their territory and how these have contributed to the growth of their brand of Christianity. First is their use of modern media technology for evangelism and their response to popular culture. The deployment of modern electronic media, for instance, promoted a direct encounter with their audience and potential converts, more than could have been achieved in a face-to-face physical setting. This has facilitated greater mass outreach. For the young and young at heart, it also had immense promotional attraction, especially when music was involved. Pentecostal ministries/churches now maintain user-friendly and highly interactive websites where visitors can recall past sermons, listen to worship music, and pay their tithes and offerings online. Feedback and prayer requests are also collected from online fora, such as dedicated email addresses, Facebook, and Twitter. More research still needs to be done on the implications of these virtual interactions for physical church participation and membership.Footnote 26 Meanwhile, mass electronic media have facilitated world evangelism and helped Pentecostals to forge and maintain transnational relationships. Their use of print media for the production of tracts, posters, Christian literature, and billboards, has gone hand in hand with the deployment of electronic media.
A strategy of mobilizing young people to drive the neo-Pentecostal movement evolved from the 1970s, which was serendipitous. Several authors have commented on the sheer energy and spiritual radicalization of students in both secondary schools and universities across sub-Saharan Africa as mainstream Pentecostals or as Catholic Charismatics.Footnote 27 In Nigeria, university students from Ibadan and Ile-Ife pioneered this charismatism in the southwestern parts of the country. In the southeast, it was secondary school students who spread it through the revived Scripture Union . Nigerian students who went for French language study evangelized their colleagues in Ivory Coast, Republic of Benin, and Guinea.Footnote 28 A remarkable feature was the urgency with which the young people evangelized their colleagues. Commenting on this, Ogbu Kalu wrote:
With a strong evangelism zeal, the Kenyan students evangelized other eastern African countries and forayed into Muslim communities in the coastal seaboard of the Indian Ocean, while the Ugandans took the message to Kenya and Tanzania. In a similar vein, the Nigerian students evangelized the Muslims in northern Nigeria and forayed into other West African countries…. Later the Fellowship of Christian Union Students (FOCUS) brought together the students from the eastern and western parts of the continent.Footnote 29
The students who started out in campus fellowships, after graduation formed the nucleus of various Pentecostal ministries, which they pioneered. Some of these later metamorphosed into churches, with the former youths rising into their episcopacy.
A third strategy is the gender practice of Pentecostals. Their pragmatism in harnessing the full potential of female spirituality has also facilitated the churches’ rapid growth. The majority of Pentecostal church members are women, and what continues to attract them is not only the prospect of solving their numerous problems, but also the opportunity to strengthen and express their spirituality because many of the people ministering to them are also women. Many Pentecostal pastors have enlisted their wives to minister alongside them, while several church/department units are headed by women. Successful and impactful female ministrations thus attract more women into those Pentecostal congregations.
Finally, there is a spiritual argument to explain the rapid growth of Pentecostalism, especially in the 1980s and 1990s in Africa. Many observers considered the demonstration of Pentecostal charismata within this period as unprecedented, and therefore interpreted it as representing a special move by God. African Pentecostalism has generated immense spiritual capital in the form of healings, massive conversions, other signs, wonders, and spiritual virtues unmatched by mainline Christianity. This providential argument is illustrated by Ogbu Kalu with the “unprecedented growth” of Bethel and Transcea churches in Liberia, the proliferation of young aliliki preachers in Malawi, and with the evangelism zeal and impact of secondary and university students in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.Footnote 30 The same period also witnessed the growth of such groups as Gideon Bible International, FGBMF International, and Women Aglow. These groups provided avenues for born again professionals to reach out to their colleagues and others in society, and altogether constituted a mighty move by God in Africa.
Pentecostal Legitimation in Africa
The issue of the legitimation of the Pentecostal movement in Africa concerns its public recognition and acceptability as a valid representation of Christianity. From an insider’s perspective, Pentecostal leaders and pastors might not have seen anything wrong with their practice. However, at various points in the history of the Pentecostal movement in Africa, external entities, such as the state and Christian ecumenical bodies, have had to engage more critically and sternly with particular expressions of Pentecostalism. During the colonial period in Africa, examples abounded of state hostility to early manifestations of Pentecostalism. In Nigeria, pioneers of the Pentecostal movement were heavily persecuted, as experienced by Garrick Sokari Braide and Joseph Ayo Babalola.
Garrick Sokari Braide had a healing ministry in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria between 1912 and 1918. This ministry not only attracted a lot of followers in the region, it also drew opposition from white missionaries (from the Anglican Church to which Braide had previously belonged), and the persecution of the colonial administration.Footnote 31 In 1916, he was tried and imprisoned by the colonial state on charges of sedition. It was claimed that he had prophesied that power would pass from “whites” to “blacks” before the end of World War I. After six months, he was released. He was later rearrested, released again, and died in 1918.Footnote 32 After his death, his followers named the movement the Christ Army Church to carry on its activities, but it lacked its former vigor without the presence of its leader and the movement gradually petered out.
Similarly, Joseph Ayo Babalola, a steamroller driver in the colonial Public Works Department started a Pentecostal revival in Northeast Yorubaland in 1928/1929. By 1930 the movement was drawing large crowds from the region, mostly for healing.Footnote 33 Because of the size of the crowds, open fields were used for the meetings, while nearby streams and rivers were consecrated for use as holy water for healing purposes. The sacralized stream at Ilesha, for instance, became known as Omi Ayo (River of Joy) because of its healing properties.Footnote 34 Again, this movement attracted not only the opposition of existing mainline churches, whose membership had drifted en masse to join the new Pentecostal movement, but was also vehemently opposed by local colonial officials. First, they viewed the mass movement of people with suspicion because of its inherent potential for social upheaval. Second, health officials saw the use of untreated and possibly polluted streams as “holy water,” as unsanitary and likely to cause an epidemic.Footnote 35 In the words of Ukachi, colonial officials “prevailed upon traditional rulers to deny the revivalists land for building churches. In some cases, approvals for registration were denied and sanctions placed on the revivalists for witch-testing, holding night meetings, interfering and criticizing of cults, and the use of ‘holy water’.”Footnote 36 In early 1932, Joseph Babalola was arrested by colonial authorities in Otua (in Afenmai, in the present-day Delta State of Nigeria) and sentenced to six months imprisonment in Benin.
From these two examples, it is clear that the principal issue at the heart of the “persecution” of the two Pentecostal leaders was the legitimacy of their movement. Colonial authorities were quite at home with the historic mainline churches and they found the mass mobilization of the early Pentecostal movements simply unacceptable. That those movements were led by local people did nothing to allay the fears of the colonial state. The groups were kept under close watch and their leaders hounded from time to time.
These early Pentecostal groups did not fold their arms. Sensing the hostility of the state to their activities long before Babalola was incarcerated, the Nigerian Faith Tabernacle sought affiliation with TAC of Great Britain. Three leaders of the British Church—Daniel Powell William , William Jones Williams, and Andrew Turnball—came to Nigeria in September 1931. This visit marked the birth of TAC of Nigeria. In the words of Matthews Ojo, “the affiliation with the British Apostolic Church helped to ease the persecution and hardship encountered by the revivalists, as the missionaries visited many Obas (traditional rulers) and colonial administrators on behalf of [local] revivalists.”Footnote 37 After this first batch of missionaries returned to England, another two arrived Nigeria in June 1932, Idris Vaughan and George Perfect. By this time, Babalola had been incarcerated. Part of the mandate for the new men was “to teach the converts from the revivals, to expound more about the doctrinal beliefs of the Apostolic Church, and to approach Obas and colonial administrators for grant of land to build churches” (emphasis mine).Footnote 38 The prison experience did not dampen Babalola’s spirit. After his release, together with I.J. Vaughan, he held powerful evangelistic crusades in Duke Town and Creek Town in Calabar, no longer molested by the colonial authorities. Affiliation with Western Pentecostal bodies thus legitimated early local Pentecostal groups within the context of a hostile colonial state. Paul Gifford also observed that, in the case of Uganda, Pentecostal churches were “positively discouraged” by the British Protectorate. Among the very few that did take root was the AG, founded in Uganda in 1935 by missionaries of the Canadian AG. Other foreign Pentecostal denominations came in its wake.Footnote 39
After independence several ecumenical bodies sprang up within Christian communities in sub-Saharan African states. The goal of such bodies was not only to foster peace and unity within their constituencies but also to perform quality assurance tasks, which included the validation or legitimation of member churches and ministries. This was particularly the case in countries with older ecumenical Pentecostal bodies, such as Ghana. The Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council was established in 1969 (under the name Ghana Evangelical Fellowship) as an ecumenical body of Pentecostal groups operating in Ghana.Footnote 40 Membership remains voluntary and many Pentecostals endeavor to join it because of the prestige and legitimacy it bestows. However, several groups are turned down on account of their inability to meet the basic admission requirements. The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria is another voluntary ecumenical body that openly excludes a certain number of churches on account of what it considers to be their “unchristian” practices.Footnote 41 From these few cases, it is clear that while the postcolonial state in Africa legitimates Pentecostal bodies by registering them and empowering them to function, a greater legitimation is the one offered by the Pentecostal ecumenical bodies, which may choose to exclude certain groups on several grounds.
Conclusion
The foregoing discussion has identified the origins, variety, and operations of the Pentecostal movement in Africa, the reasons for its impressive growth, and how its legitimacy has been handled. It is necessary to note here that the movement has not been without its shortcomings, which have limited its expansion. First is the issue of splintering, which could be taken as a sign of the movement’s vitality, but it also indicates its lack of internal cohesion. Older groups have little or no control over younger ones on the issue of splintering.
Next is the issue of limited theological training. Some Pentecostal denominations have bible colleges or pastoral institutes, while the smaller ones do not; hence, many pastors lack formal theological training even though they are endowed with Pentecostal charismata. Because of the absence of external control and the fact that the smaller groups are not accountable to any superintending authority, abuse is rife in some of these bodies. These range from financial misappropriation to sexual scandals.
Another weakness of the Pentecostal movement is its impatience with, or even lack of genuine interest in, interfaith dialogue, especially in nations with plural faiths and a significant Muslim population. The impatience of Pentecostal groups with Islam has exacerbated existing religious tensions in many nations.
Finally, the African Pentecostal movement has been shy about making a deep commitment to, and having a greater ecumenical engagement with, global Christianity at the World Council of Churches. This could have been born out of its perception of the secularity of such bodies.
Despite all these shortcomings, African Pentecostalism has continued to expand both within the continent and abroad. It has changed the face of Christianity on the continent and has remained relevant to the daily aspirations of people, whether on the lower rungs or in the upper echelons of society.
Notes
- 1.
J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “‘Born of Water and the Spirit’: Pentecostal? Charismatic Christianity in Africa,” in Ogbu U. Kalu (ed.), African Christianity: An African Story (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007), 340.
- 2.
Graham Duncan and Ogbu U. Kalu, “Bakuzufu: Revival Movement and Indigenous Appropriation in African Christianity,” in Ogbu U. Kalu (ed.), African Christianity: An African Story (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007), 248.
- 3.
Ogbu U. Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 24.
- 4.
Ogbu U. Kalu, Power, Poverty and Pluralism in African Christianity, 1960–1996 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006), 135.
- 5.
Kalu, African Pentecostalism, 67.
- 6.
Ogbu U. Kalu, “Preserving a Worldview: Pentecostalism in the African Maps of the Universe,” Pneuma: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, 24:2 (Fall 2002), 110–137.
- 7.
Opoku Onyinah, “African Christianity in the Twenty-First Century,” Word and World, 27:3 (2007), 310.
- 8.
Austen Ukachi, The Best Is Yet To Come: Pentecostal and Charismatic Revivals in Nigeria, 1914–1990s (Lagos: Summit Press, 2013), 64–65.
- 9.
E. Kingsley Larbi, Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity (Accra: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, 2001), 106; Matthews A. Ojo, The End-Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006), 34–35.
- 10.
J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “Born of Water and the Spirit,” 345.
- 11.
Larbi, Pentecostalism, 86–87.
- 12.
RCCG, Sunday School Manual (Lagos: Directorate of Christian Education, 2016), 1.
- 13.
Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 5.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Ogbu U. Kalu, “Preserving a Worldview,” 127–128.
- 16.
Ibid., 128.
- 17.
Asonzeh F.K. Ukah, “Those who Trade with God Never Lose’: The Economics of Pentecostal Activism in Nigeria,” in Toyin Falola (ed.), Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honour of J.D.Y Peel (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), 254–255.
- 18.
Paul Gifford, Christianity and Politics in Doe’s Liberia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 314–315.
- 19.
Emmanuel Kingsley Larbi, “The Nature of Continuity and Discontinuity of Ghanaian Pentecostal Concept of Salvation in African Cosmology,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies (AJPS), 5:1 (2002), 87–106.
- 20.
Onyinah, “African Christianity,” 308.
- 21.
Ogbu U. Kalu, African Pentecostalism, 170, 178.
- 22.
David Maxwell, “Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty? Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Modernity in Zimbabwe,” Journal of Religion in Africa, XXVIII:3 (1998), 354.
- 23.
Ibid., 350.
- 24.
Damaris Seleina Parsitau and Philomena Njeri Mwaura, “God in the City: Pentecostalism as an Urban Phenomenon in Kenya,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 36:2 (October 2010), 95–112.
- 25.
Olufunke Adeboye, “Pentecostal Challenges in Africa and Latin America: A Comparative Focus on Nigeria and Brazil,” Afrika Zamani, 11 & 12 (2003/2004), 136–159.
- 26.
See Parsitau and Mwaura, “God in the City,” for a discussion of how the Deliverance Church of Kenya has been able to navigate this terrain.
- 27.
Ukachi, The Best is yet to Come, 141–158; Cephas N. Omenyo, Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Church in Ghana (Zoetemeer: Boekencentrum, 2006).
- 28.
Kalu, “Preserving a Worldview,” 125.
- 29.
Kalu, African Pentecostalism, 98.
- 30.
Kalu, “Preserving a Worldview,” 125–126; See also R. van Djik, “Young Born Again Preachers in Post-Independence Malawi,” in Paul Gifford (ed.), New Dimensions in African Christianity (Nairobi: AACC, 1992), 66–92.
- 31.
Matthews A. Ojo, The End-Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006), 7, 31.
- 32.
Ukachi, The Best is yet to Come, 40.
- 33.
The largest number reported in the Babalola revival in 1930 was 4000 people. See Moses O. Idowu, The Great Revival of 1930 (Lagos: Divine Artillery Publications, 2007).
- 34.
David O. Olayiwola, “Joseph Ayo Babalola 1904–1959,” in J.A. Omoyajowo (ed.), Makers of the Church of Nigeria (Lagos: CSS Books, 1995), 137–149.
- 35.
Ojo, The End-Time Army, 33.
- 36.
Ukachi, The Best is Yet to Come, 53.
- 37.
Ojo, The End-Time Army, 34.
- 38.
Ibid., 35.
- 39.
Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (London: Hurst & Company, 1998), 154–168.
- 40.
For more details, see the webpage of the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council at www.gpccghana.org.
- 41.
A case in point is the continuous exclusion of the Synagogue Church of All Nations from its membership. This ostracism also affects any church (such as Christ Embassy) that associates with the Synagogue. See Sam Eyoboka and John Ighodaro, “Nigeria: Okotie, Oyakhilome Rift: PFN Disowns T.B. Joshua,” Vanguard, 15 November 2001.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Adeboye, O. (2018). Explaining the Growth and Legitimation of 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_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74911-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74910-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74911-2
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)