Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:15:41.201Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Anglocostalism’ in Nigeria: Neo-Pentecostalism and Obstacles to Anglican Unity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2012

Jesse Zink
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the last several decades, the religious landscape in Nigeria has been transformed by the rise of neo-Pentecostal or ‘new generation’ churches. These churches teach a gospel of prosperity, advance an oppositional view of the world, focus on a supernatural arena of spiritual forces, accord a unique weight to the Bible, and practice a charismatic worship style. One result of the presence of these churches has been to change the face of Anglicanism in Nigeria. Concerned about the possibility of diminished influence and prestige, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) has responded to neo-Pentecostal churches by adopting more of its rivals’ beliefs and practices. This paper argues that this changing environment explains, in part, Nigerian opposition to efforts at global Anglican unity and argues that it is impossible to address the future of the Anglican Communion without first understanding the on-the-ground religious context in Nigeria.

Keywords

Anglican Communioncharismaticneo-PentecostalismNigeriaPentecostalismprosperity gospel
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , November 2012 , pp. 231 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2012

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.)

Footnotes

1.

Jesse Zink is a doctoral student in theology and assistant chaplain at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

References

2. The research for this paper was conducted in June 2011 in four Anglican dioceses in eastern and northern Nigeria. Quotations are verbatim and taken from notes made during approximately 35 interviews over the course of the month.Google Scholar

3. Ayegboyin, Deji and Asonzeh Ukah, F.K., ‘Taxonomy of Churches in Nigeria: A Historical Perspective’, Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies, 34.1-2 (2002), pp. 68–86 (72–73, 84–85). See also Damaris Seleina Parsitau, ‘From the Periphery to the Centre: The Pentecostalisation of Mainline Christianity in Kenya’, Missionalia, 35.3 (2007), pp. 83–111 (88). For what it is worth, Nigerian Anglicans seem to know they are referring to this broad movement of churches when they use the phrase ‘new generation’.Google Scholar

4. Although often called the ‘Anglican Church of Nigeria’, the official name of the Nigerian Anglican province is ‘Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)’.Google Scholar

5. Ayegboyin and Ukah, ‘Taxonomy of Churches in Nigeria’, pp. 80–82. Kalu's book-length study African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) refers to the period from 1900 to the 1960s as that of ‘early charismatic movements’.Google Scholar

6. Kailing, Joel B., ‘A New Solution to the African Christian Problem’, Missiology: An International Review, 22.4 (1994), pp. 489–506 (494).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Kalu, Ogbu U., ‘Pentecostalism and Mission in Africa, 1970–2000’, Mission Studies, 24 (2007), pp. 9–45 (12).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Ojo, Matthews A., The End-Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2006), p. 233.Google Scholar

9. Ojo, End-Time Army, p. 177.Google Scholar

10. Kalu, ‘Pentecostalism and Mission in Africa’, p. 10.Google Scholar

11. Onoja, Adoyi, ‘The Pentecostal Churches: The Politics of Spiritual Deregulation since the 1980s’, in Julius O. Adekunle (ed.), Religion in Politics: Secularism and National Integration in Modern Nigeria (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), pp. 263–273 (263).Google Scholar

12. Ukah, Asonzeh F.K., ‘Contesting God: Nigerian Pentecostals and their Relations with Islam and Muslims’, in David Westerlund (ed.), Global Pentecostalism Encounters with Other Religious Traditions (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 93–114 (99).Google Scholar

13. Isiramen, Celestina O., ‘Pentecostalism and the Nigerian Socio/Economic Debacle: A Therapy or a Delusion?’, in Celestina O. Isiramen, Friday J. Imaekhai, and Benson O. Igboin (eds.), Religion and the Nigerian Nation: Some Topical Issues. (Ibadan, Nigeria: En-Joy Press, 2010), p. 303.Google Scholar

14. Ojo, Matthews A., ‘The Charismatic/Pentecostal Experience in Nigeria’, Journal of African Christian Thought 2.1 (1999), pp. 3–16 (26).Google Scholar

15. Gifford, Paul, ‘Prosperity: A New and Foreign Element in African Christianity’, Religion, 20 (1990), pp. 373–388 (374).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Gifford, ‘Prosperity: A New and Foreign Element’, p. 383.Google Scholar

17. Isiramen, ‘Pentecostalism and the Nigerian Socio/Economic Debacle’, p. 320.Google Scholar

18. Ukah, ‘Contesting God’, p. 98.Google Scholar

19. Kalu, ‘Pentecostalism and Mission in Africa’, p. 30.Google Scholar

20. Parsitau, ‘From the Periphery to the Centre’, p. 100.Google Scholar

21. Kailing, ‘A New Solution’, p. 501.Google Scholar

22. Gifford, Paul, ‘Reinhard Bonnke's Mission to Africa, and his 1991 Nairobi Crusade’, in New Dimensions in African Christianity (Ibadan: Sefer, 1993), pp. 186–215 (194).Google Scholar

23. Ojo, ‘The Charismatic/Pentecostal Experience in Nigeria’, p. 29.Google Scholar

24. Kailing, ‘A New Solution’, p. 491.Google Scholar

25. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, J., ‘Neo-Pentecostalism and the Changing Face of Christianity in Africa’, in Karen L. Bloomquist (ed.), Lutherans Respond to Pentecostalism (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2008), pp. 9–27 (12).Google Scholar

26. Isiramen, ‘Pentecostalism and the Nigerian Socio/Economic Debacle’, p. 309.Google Scholar

27. Ojo, End-Time Army, p. 236.Google Scholar

28. Gifford, ‘Prosperity: A New and Foreign Element’, p. 378.Google Scholar

29. Omenyo, Cephas Narh, Pentecost outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana (Zoetermeer, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 2002), p. 222.Google Scholar

30. Paul Gifford, ‘Expecting Miracles: The Prosperity Gospel in Africa’, Christian Century, 10 July 2007, p. 20.Google Scholar

31. Nkwoka, A.O., ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Anglican Communion in Nigeria’, in David O. Ogungbile and Akintunde E. Akinade (eds.), Creativity and Change in Nigerian Christianity (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 2010), pp. 79–94 (83). Nkwoka has done the most work on relations between Anglicans and the new generation churches and this section is indebted to his work.Google Scholar

32. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 84. As university students, many of these people were far from ‘untutored’, though they may have lacked formal theological education.Google Scholar

33. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 84.Google Scholar

34. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 86.Google Scholar

35. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

36. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 90.Google Scholar

37. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 91.Google Scholar

38. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 90.Google Scholar

39. Nkwoka, ‘Interrogating the Form and the Spirit’, p. 89.Google Scholar

40. Onoja, ‘The Pentecostal Churches’, p. 268.Google Scholar

41. Ojo, ‘The Charismatic/Pentecostal Experience in Nigeria’, p. 26.Google Scholar

42. Kalu, Ogbu U., ‘Historical Perspectives: The Third Response: Pentecostalism and the Reconstruction of Christian Experience in Africa, 1970–1995’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 2.1 (1999), pp. 3–16 (4).Google Scholar

43. Omenyo, Pentecost outside Pentecostalism, p. 297.Google Scholar

44. Kailing, ‘A New Solution’, p. 503.Google Scholar

45. Kailing, ‘A New Solution’, p. 503.Google Scholar

46. Kailing, ‘A New Solution’, p. 504. Across Africa in this period, many mainline denominations began to show the influence of the new religious movements. See, for instance, Mlahagwa, Josiah R., ‘Contending for the Faith: Spiritual Renewal and the Fellowship Church in Tanzania’. in Thomas Spear and Isaria N. Kimambo (eds.), East African Expressions of Christianity (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1999), pp. 296–306 (305).Google Scholar

47. Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Neo-Pentecostalism and the Changing Face of Christianity in Africa’, p. 13.Google Scholar

48. Kailing, ‘A New Solution’, p. 503.Google Scholar

49. Bitrus, Ibrahim, ‘The Influence of Neo-Pentecostalism in Nigeria’, in Karen L. Bloomquist (ed.), Lutherans Respond to Pentecostalism (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2008), pp. 81–88 (85).Google Scholar

50. Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Neo-Pentecostalism and the Changing Face of Christianity in Africa’, p. 21.Google Scholar

51. Bitrus, ‘The Influence of Neo-Pentecostalism in Nigeria’, p. 84.Google Scholar

52. In an indication of the multiple legacies of the post-civil war revival, some Anglicans are working to counteract the influence of the prosperity gospel. During my visit, one diocese hosted an ‘expository’ preaching conference led by the Langham Foundation in Nigeria, an Anglican evangelical organization. The conference leaders instructed the participants in the importance of paying attention to the meaning of the text in context and showed how common prosperity gospel interpretations of some particular passages are incorrect. One leader told me, ‘It is not that we are against prosperity. But I don't think the reason Jesus Christ came to earth was to bring prosperity. He came to save mankind from sin.’ In spite of efforts like these, it seems clear that the prosperity gospel has taken root among Anglicans in Nigeria.Google Scholar

53. Offiong, Essien A., ‘Youths and Pentecostalism’, in David O. Ogungbile and Akintunde E. Akinade (eds.), Creativity and Change in Nigerian Christianity (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 2010), pp. 131–142 (135).Google Scholar

54. Omenyo, Pentecost outside Pentecostalism, p. 233.Google Scholar

55. Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Neo-Pentecostalism and the Changing Face of Christianity in Africa’, p. 22.Google Scholar

56. Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Neo-Pentecostalism and the Changing Face of Christianity in Africa’, p. 20.Google Scholar

57. Chapman, Mark, ‘Introduction’, in Martyn Percy, Mark Chapman, Ian Markham and Barney Hawkins (eds.), Christ and Culture: Communion after Lambeth (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2010), p. 24.Google Scholar

58. Ayegboyin, Deji Isaac, ‘A Rethinking of Prosperity Teaching in the New Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria’, Black Theology, 4.1 (2006), pp. 70–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar