Abstract
Concurring with the mounting pace of neoliberal reform, the rise of African charismatic Pentecostal churches since the 1980s points to the close link between political-economic shifts and religious renewal, and in particular between charismatic Pentecostalism and the neoliberal “market in futures.” Chapter 4’s Ghanaian case study reflects on the intersections between charismatic Pentecostalism, global neoliberalism, and African liberation and progress—Mensa Otabil’s African Pentecostal liberation theology. Placing Otabil’s message of African transformation in the context of neoliberal Ghana, De Witte examines how it comes to be materialized in building projects in the city of Accra, and in a strong audiovisual presence in the urban media landscape. The chapter concludes with a critical reflection on the relations between charismatic Pentecostalism, neoliberalism, and African urban space.
Parts of this chapter were published earlier as part of my article “Buy the Future, Now! Charismatic Chronotypes in Neoliberal Ghana,” Etnofoor 24, 1 (2012): 80–104. I thank Etnofoor for permission to reuse the material. The research on which this chapter is based was generously funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
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- 1.
James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006).
- 2.
Brad Weiss, ed., Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a Neoliberal Age (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 8–9; Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,” Public Culture 12, 2 (2000): 291–343.
- 3.
Jean Comaroff, “The Politics of Conviction: Faith on the Neo-liberal Frontier,” Social Analysis 53, 1 (2009): 17–38; Birgit Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Neo-liberal Capitalism: Faith, Prosperity and Vision in African Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches,” Journal for the Study of Religion 20, 2 (2007): 5–28; Stephan Lanz and Martijn Oosterbaan, “Entrepreneurial Religion in the Age of Neoliberal Urbanism,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40, 3 (2016): 487–506, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12365.
- 4.
Kingsley Larbi, “African Pentecostalism in the Context of Global Pentecostal Ecumenical Fraternity: Challenges and Opportunities,” Pneuma 24, 2 (2002): 155.
- 5.
Jesse Shipley, “‘The Best Tradition Goes On’: Audience Consumption and the Transformation of Popular Theatre in Neoliberal Ghana,” in Producing African Futures, ed. Weiss, 111–113; Paul Nugent, Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana (London: Pinter Publishing, 1995), 109–116.
- 6.
Kwame Boafo-Arthur, ed., Ghana: One Decade of the Liberal State (Dakar: CODESRIA Books, 2007).
- 7.
G. Kwaku Tsikata, “Challenges of Economic Growth in a Liberal Economy,” in Ghana: One Decade, ed. Boafo-Arthur, 49–85.
- 8.
By 2010 over half of Ghana’s population lived in urban areas. The urbanization rate is projected to increase to 72% by 2035. Source: African Economic Outlook (AEO) 2016.
- 9.
Kwame Ninsin, “Markets and Liberal Democracy,” in Ghana: One Decade, ed. Boafo-Arthur, 99. According to the 2010 Population & Housing Census, 56% of Ghana’s urban population was under 25 years of age (Accra: Ghana Statistical Service, 2010).
- 10.
Comaroff, “The Politics of Conviction”; David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); David Maxwell, “The Durawall of Faith: Pentecostal Spirituality in Neo-liberal Zimbabwe,” Journal of Religion in Africa 35, 1 (2005): 4–32; Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Neo-liberal Capitalism.”
- 11.
Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Neo-liberal Capitalism,” 21.
- 12.
Marleen de Witte, “Business of the Spirit: Ghanaian Broadcast Media and the Commercial Exploitation of Pentecostalism,” Journal of African Media Studies 3, 2 (2011): 189–205.
- 13.
Paul Gifford and Trad Nogueira-Godsey, “The Protestant Ethic and African Pentecostalism: A Case Study,” Journal for the Study of Religion 24, 1 (2011): 16.
- 14.
Paul Gifford, “Unity and Diversity within African Pentecostalism: Comparison of the Christianities of Daniel Olukoya and David Oyedepo,” in Pentecostalism in Africa: Presence and Impact of Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies, ed. Martin Lindhardt (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 115–135.
- 15.
Gifford, “Unity and Diversity.”
- 16.
Michael Perry Kweku Okyerefo, “The Gospel of Public Image in Ghana,” in Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, ed. Harri Englund (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011), 212; Päivi Hasu, “Prosperity Gospels and Enchanted Worldviews: Two Responses to Socio-economic Transformation in Tanzanian Pentecostal Christianity,” in Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa, ed. Dena Freeman (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 67–76.
- 17.
Marleen de Witte, “Altar Media’s Living Word. Televised Charismatic Christianity in Ghana,” Journal of Religion in Africa 33, 2 (2003): 172–202.
- 18.
See for example the series “Turning failure into success” (2002), “The portrait of success” (2005), and “Going beyond your limitations” (2005).
- 19.
The year 2003 was prophesied to be “my year of transformation” and in that year Otabil delivered a message series titled “Transformation.”
- 20.
See especially Mensa Otabil, Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia: A Biblical Revelation on God’s Purpose for the Black Race (Accra: Altar International, 1992).
- 21.
Responding to a common criticism that he does not address people’s personal problems (e.g., visa, husband, children, the common subjects in most charismatic churches), he says in “Pulling down strongholds”: “When you talk about the problems of Africa, people will say ‘well, but you are talking about the big problems, I don’t want to hear about Africa’s problems, I want to hear about my own problems.’ What you fail to understand is that your own problems are the reflection of bigger problems.”
- 22.
Mensa Otabil, Buy the Future: Learning to Negotiate for a Future Better than your Present (Lanham: Pneumalife Publishing, 2002), 6.
- 23.
Otabil, Buy the Future, 6.
- 24.
Otabil, Buy the Future, 85–86.
- 25.
Otabil, Buy the Future, 108.
- 26.
Indeed, in 2003 Otabil established his own consultancy company, Otabil and Associates, which develops, organizes, and markets leadership training seminars and workshops, for which Otabil packages much of what he preaches in church into a training format.
- 27.
Message series “Talent, work and profit.”
- 28.
Message series “Pulling down strongholds.”
- 29.
First Ofori-Atta lecture, quoted in Paul Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy (London: Hurst & Company, 2004), 125.
- 30.
Interview March 16, 2005, Christ Temple, Accra.
- 31.
Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity, 125–130.
- 32.
Teaching service, Christ Temple, April 2, 2002.
- 33.
Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity, 122.
- 34.
Teaching service, April 2, 2002, Christ Temple, Accra.
- 35.
January 13, 2001, quoted in Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity, 129.
- 36.
Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity, 176.
- 37.
Message series “Africa must be free.”
- 38.
Interview March 22, 2002, Christ Temple, Accra.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Otabil, Buy the Future, 89–90.
- 41.
Bayo Holsey, Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008).
- 42.
“The people don’t care,” quoted in Gifford, Ghana’s New Christianity, 123.
- 43.
Otabil, Buy the Future, 90.
- 44.
Radio interview and news item (Me for President? Never! Otabil dashes expectations of Christian majority, Ghanaian Chronicle January 22, 2005).
- 45.
Interview March 22, 2002, Christ Temple, Accra.
- 46.
Asonzeh Ukah, “Pentecostalism, Religious Expansion and the City: Lessons from the Nigerian Bible-Belt,” in Between Resistance and Expansion: Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa, ed. Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 415–441; Asonzeh Ukah, “Building God’s City: The Political Economy of Prayer Camps in Nigeria,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40, 3 (2016): 524–540, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12363; see also Marloes Janson and Akintunde Akinleye, “The Spiritual Highway: Religious World Making in Megacity Lagos (Nigeria),” Material Religion 11, 4 (2015): 550–562.
- 47.
Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Neo-liberal Capitalism,” 16.
- 48.
Marleen de Witte, “Accra’s Sounds and Sacred Spaces,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, 2 (2008): 690–709.
- 49.
Ukah, “Building God’s City.”
- 50.
Ukah, “Building God’s City,” 2.
- 51.
Okyerefo, “The Gospel of Public Image.”
- 52.
Lanz and Oosterbaan, “Entrepreneurial Religion.”
- 53.
De Witte, “Business of the Spirit.”
- 54.
Asamoah-Gyadu, Kwabena, “Of Faith and Visual Alertness. The Message of “Mediatized” Religion in an African Pentecostal Context,” Material Religion 1, 3 (2005): 336–357.
- 55.
http://gazettereview.com/2016/02/richest-pastors-in-world/, accessed September 27, 2016.
- 56.
Marleen de Witte, “Fans and Followers: Marketing Charisma, Making Religious Celebrity in Ghana,” Australian Religion Studies Review 24, 3 (2011): 231–253.
- 57.
Pieter Hugo, “Permanent Error,” Etnofoor 24, 1 (2012): 105–116.
- 58.
Hugo, “Permanent Error,” 107.
- 59.
Campbell 1987: 205; see also Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Neo-liberal Capitalism,” 9.
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de Witte, M. (2018). Buy the Future: Charismatic Pentecostalism and African Liberation in a Neoliberal World. 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_4
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