Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T06:29:07.216Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Past Pentecostalism: Notes on Rupture, Realignment, and Everyday Life in Pentecostal and African Independent Churches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2011

Matthew Engelke
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Pentecostal studies has been one of the most vibrant areas of research in Africa for over twenty years, but is it time we started to look past Pentecostalism? Using some of the most important work in this tradition as a point of departure, this article offers both a critique of and supplement to the Pentecostal literature. It focuses in particular on how we should understand the relationship between Pentecostalism and African Independency by pushing the debates on how to frame their oft-shared desire to ‘break with the past’. Every rupture is also a realignment and how each is conceptualized and understood is a matter not only of discourse but decisions and dilemmas faced in everyday life.

L’étude du pentecôtisme est l'un des domaines de recherche les plus dynamiques en Afrique depuis plus de vingt ans, mais n'est-il pas temps de commencer à regarder au-delà du pentecôtisme? À partir de travaux comptant parmi les plus importants dans ce domaine, cet article propose à la fois une critique de la littérature pentecôtiste et un complément à celle-ci. Il s'intéresse notamment à la manière dont nous devrions comprendre la relation entre pentecôtisme et indépendance africaine en encourageant le débat sur la manière de concevoir leur désir souvent partagé de « rompre avec le passé ». Chaque rupture est également un réalignement et la façon de conceptualiser et de comprendre chacune d'elles est une question non seulement de discours, mais également de décisions et de dilemmes rencontrés dans la vie quotidienne.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Africa , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , May 2010 , pp. 177 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ashforth, A. (2000) Madumo: a man bewitched. Chicago IL:University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bastian, M. (1993) ‘“Bloodhounds who have no friends”: witchcraft and locality in the Nigerian popular press’ in J., Comaroff and Comaroff, J. L. (eds), Modernity and Its Malcontents: ritual and power in postcolonial Africa.Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cabrita, J. (2008) ‘A Theological Biography of Isaiah Shembe, 1870–1935’. PhD thesis, Faculty of Theology, Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Cole, J. and Middleton, K. (2001) ‘Rethinking ancestors and colonial power in Madagascar’, Africa 71 (1): 1–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Witte, M. (2008) ‘Spirit Media: charismatics, traditionalists, and mediation practices in Ghana’. PhD thesis, Social Anthropology, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Engelke, M. (2004)‘Discontinuity and the discourse of conversion’, Journal of Religion in Africa 34 (1/2):82–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amsterdam, (2007) A Problem of Presence: beyond scripture in an African church. Berkeley CA:University of California Press.Google Scholar
Englund, H.(2003) ‘Christian independency and global membership: Pentecostal extraversions in Malawi’, Journal of Religion in Africa 31 (2):83–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Englund, H. and Leach, J.(2000) ‘Ethnography and the meta-narratives of modernity’ Current Anthropology 41 (1):225–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernandez, J.(1978) ‘African religious movements’, Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 195–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, L.(1990) ‘“Like a veil to cover them”: women and the Pentecostal movement in La Paz’, American Ethnologist 17 (4):708–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunner, E.(1988) ‘Power house, prison house: an oral genre and its use in Isaiah Shembe's Nazaretha Baptist Church’, Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (3):204–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, L.(2002) The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God: writings from Ibandla lamaNazaretha, a South African church. Leiden:Brill.Google Scholar
Harris, O.(2006) ‘The eternal return of conversion: popular Christianity in Bolivia’ in F., Cannell(ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity. Durham NC:Duke University PressGoogle Scholar
Hastings, A. (1976) African Christianity: an essay in interpretation. London:Geoffrey Chapman.Google Scholar
Hoehler-Fatton, C. (1996) Women of Fire and Spirit: history, faith, and gender in Roho religion in western Kenya. Oxford:Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, B.(2007) ‘The Teso insurgency remembered: churches, burials and propriety’, Africa 77 (4):500–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keane, W.(2007) Christian Moderns: freedom and fetish in the mission encounter.Berkeley CA:University of California Press.Google Scholar
Keller, E.(2005) The Road to Clarity: Seventh-day Adventism in Madagascar. New York NY:Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiernan, J.(1992a) ‘The herder and the rustler: deciphering the affinity between Zulu diviner and Zulu prophet’ African Studies 51 (2):231–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiernan, J. (1992b) ‘The ritual looking glass: an analysis of the girl's puberty ceremony in the Nazareth Church of Isaiah Shembe’ Journal of the Study of Religion 5 (1):17–30.Google Scholar
Lehmann, D.(2000) ‘Charisma and possession in Africa and Brazil’ Theory, Culture, and Society 18 (5):45–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, B.(2000) ‘The Pentecostal gender paradox: a cautionary tale from the sociology of religion’ in R., Fenn (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Oxford:Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mate, R. (2002) ‘Wombs as God's laboratories: Pentecostal discourses of femininity in Zimbabwe’ Africa 72 (4):549–68.Google Scholar
Maxwell, D.(1998) ‘Delivered from the spirit of poverty? Pentecostalism, prosperity, and modernity in Zimbabwe’ Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3):350–73.Google Scholar
Maxwell, D.(2006a) African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the rise of a Zimbabwean transnational religious movement. Oxford:James Currey.Google Scholar
Maxwell, D.(2006b) ‘Writing the history of African Christianity: reflections of an editor’ Journal of Religion in Africa 36 (3/4):379–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, B.(1998) ‘“Make a complete break with the past”: memory and postcolonial modernity in Ghanaian discourse’ Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (3):316–49.Google Scholar
Meyer, B.(1999) Translating the Devil: religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Trenton NJ:Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, B.(2000) ‘Comment on Englund and Leach's “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity” ‘ Current Anthropology 41 (1):241–2.Google Scholar
Meyer, B.(2004) ‘Christianity in Africa: from African independent to Pentecostalcharismatic churches’ Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 447–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moodley, J. E.(2008) Shembe, Ancestors, and Christ: a Christological inquiry with missiological implications. Eugene OR:Pickwick Publications.Google Scholar
Mukonyora, I.(2000) ‘Marginality and protest in the wilderness: the role of women in shaping Masowe thought pattern’ Southern African Feminist Review 4 (2):1–22.Google Scholar
Mukonyora, I.(2007) Wandering a Gendered Wilderness: suffering and healing in an African initiated church. New York NY:Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Muller, C. A.(1999) Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite women's performance in South Africa. Chicago IL:University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Newell, S.(2007) ‘Pentecostal witchcraft: neoliberal possession and demonic discourse in Ivoirian Pentecostal churches’ Journal of Religion in Africa 37 (4):461–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oosthuizen, G. C. (1968) Post-Christianity in Africa: a theological and anthropological study. London:Hurst.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, J.Gimbel-sherr, K. and Augusto, O. J. (1997) ‘The Holy Spirit in the household: Pentecostalism, gender, and neoliberalism in Mozambique’ American Anthropologist 109 (4):688–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pongweni, J. C.(1983) What's in a Name? A study of Shona nomenclature. Gweru:Mambo Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, J.(2003) ‘On the paradoxes of global Pentecostalism and the perils of continuity thinking’ Religion 33: 221–31.Google Scholar
Robbins, J.(2004a) Becoming Sinners: Christianity and moral torment in a Papua New Guinea society. Berkeley CA:University of California Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, J.(2004b) ‘The globalization of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity’ Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, J.(2007) ‘Continuity thinking and the problem of Christian culture: belief, time, and the anthropology of Christianity’ Current Anthropology 48 (1):5–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sundkler, B.(1976) Zulu Zion and some Swazi Zionists. London:Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, M.(2009) In God's Image: the metaculture of Fijian Christianity.Berkeley CA:University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, R. (1998) ‘Pentecostalism, cultural memory, and the state: contested representations of time in postcolonialMalawi’ in Werbner, R.(ed.), Memory and the Postcolony: African anthropology and the critique of power. London:Zed Books.Google Scholar
van Dijk, R.(2001) ‘Time and transcultural technologies of the self in the Ghanaian Pentecostal diaspora’ in Corten, A. and Marshall-Fratani, R. (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America Bloomington IN:Indiana University Press.Google Scholar