Book contents
- Performing Power in Nigeria
- African Identities: Past and Present
- Performing Power in Nigeria
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Power Identity: Politics, Performance, and Nigerian Pentecostalism
- 1 Demons and Deliverance: Discourses on Pentecostal Power
- 2 “What Islamic Devils?!”: Power Struggles, Race, and Christian Transnationalism
- 3 “Touch Not Mine Anointed”: #MeToo, #ChurchToo, and the Power of “See Finish”
- 4 “Everything Christianity/the Bible Represents Is Being Attacked on the Internet!”: The Internet and Technologies of Religious Engagement
- 5 “God Too Laughs and We Can Laugh Too”: The Ambivalent Power of Comedy Performances in the Church
- 6 “The Spirit Names the Child”: Pentecostal Futurity in the Name of Jesus
- Conclusion: Power Must Change Hands: COVID-19, Power, and the Imperative of Knowledge
- Select Bibliography
- Index
2 - “What Islamic Devils?!”: Power Struggles, Race, and Christian Transnationalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2021
- Performing Power in Nigeria
- African Identities: Past and Present
- Performing Power in Nigeria
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Power Identity: Politics, Performance, and Nigerian Pentecostalism
- 1 Demons and Deliverance: Discourses on Pentecostal Power
- 2 “What Islamic Devils?!”: Power Struggles, Race, and Christian Transnationalism
- 3 “Touch Not Mine Anointed”: #MeToo, #ChurchToo, and the Power of “See Finish”
- 4 “Everything Christianity/the Bible Represents Is Being Attacked on the Internet!”: The Internet and Technologies of Religious Engagement
- 5 “God Too Laughs and We Can Laugh Too”: The Ambivalent Power of Comedy Performances in the Church
- 6 “The Spirit Names the Child”: Pentecostal Futurity in the Name of Jesus
- Conclusion: Power Must Change Hands: COVID-19, Power, and the Imperative of Knowledge
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Pentecostalism understands that spiritual and social power without political power is limited in its ability to coerce, and so it contests for power through spiritual warfare and active partisan politics. However, when a “Christian” president lost his re-election bid in 2015, it also pushed some Pentecostals to look beyond their country to the USA and the symbolism of a powerful president associating with Christianity. This chapter thus considers how the Pentecostal power identity takes its desires across the borders of nation-space. Titled, “What Islamic devils?!”: Power Struggles, Race, and Christian Transnationalism, this study provides the historical context to Nigerians’ support for US president Donald Trump by exploring the dynamics of political theology as it crosses the bounds of nationhood. Through an analysis of the nitty-gritty of the politics of the spirituality of Nigerian Pentecostals, the desire to defeat Islam (the other religion that contends power), the local politics of faith as it intermingles with ethnicity identity, this chapter shows how all these various dynamics sustains the power identity that manifests in the adoration of Trump.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Performing Power in NigeriaIdentity, Politics, and Pentecostalism, pp. 66 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021