Pub Date : 2022-11-08DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340243
O. K. Oyelade, A. O. Omobowale
Warfare prayer is a common ritual practice among Yoruba Pentecostal adherents in southwestern Nigeria. It entails visualization of a supposed enemy or battle and the utilization of warfare prayers, songs, and Bible verses to supposedly neutralize opposing forces. In fact, scholars have established that the continued growth of Pentecostalism and the proliferation of Pentecostal churches in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Nigeria, includes its feature of warfare prayer deployment. This study examines the Pentecostal conceptions of warfare prayer among the Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria. The study is basically qualitative, with data collected from branches of four purposively selected indigenous Pentecostal churches. Findings have revealed that warfare prayer is associated with the Yoruba belief system that attributes the so-called ‘spiritual diabolical’ and their human agents with incapacitating capabilities, resulting in devastating effects on victims. Yoruba Pentecostals believe that such diabolical forces can only be vanquished by warfare prayers.
{"title":"Pentecostal Conceptions of Warfare Prayer among the Yoruba in Southwestern Nigeria","authors":"O. K. Oyelade, A. O. Omobowale","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340243","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Warfare prayer is a common ritual practice among Yoruba Pentecostal adherents in southwestern Nigeria. It entails visualization of a supposed enemy or battle and the utilization of warfare prayers, songs, and Bible verses to supposedly neutralize opposing forces. In fact, scholars have established that the continued growth of Pentecostalism and the proliferation of Pentecostal churches in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Nigeria, includes its feature of warfare prayer deployment. This study examines the Pentecostal conceptions of warfare prayer among the Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria. The study is basically qualitative, with data collected from branches of four purposively selected indigenous Pentecostal churches. Findings have revealed that warfare prayer is associated with the Yoruba belief system that attributes the so-called ‘spiritual diabolical’ and their human agents with incapacitating capabilities, resulting in devastating effects on victims. Yoruba Pentecostals believe that such diabolical forces can only be vanquished by warfare prayers.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45199927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-27DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340248
T. Landry
For more than 40 years the relationships that exist between divination and knowledge have become central to anthropology’s understanding of African religious practice. This paper deemphasizes the commonly mobilized ‘divination as knowledge’ trope in favor of highlighting its role in achieving well-being. Indeed, I argue that by focusing on divination as a way of knowing ethnographers have inadvertently ignored what happens after said knowledge is acquired. It is these moments that I find to be at the heart of divination’s enduring value. Through an analysis of divination rituals, initiations, and material objects, alternative ways to examining divination in the West African rain forest are considered and explored. Looking to Fá divination, one of the major oracular systems employed by Fon speakers in the Republic of Bénin, I turn my attention to the ways in which divination helps individuals fulfill their destinies and achieve goodness in the world. In this way I argue that West African systems of divination are only secondarily about knowledge and first and foremost about achieving a sense of balance (coolness) and well-being.
{"title":"Fá Divination, Well-being, and Coolness in Bénin, West Africa","authors":"T. Landry","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340248","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 For more than 40 years the relationships that exist between divination and knowledge have become central to anthropology’s understanding of African religious practice. This paper deemphasizes the commonly mobilized ‘divination as knowledge’ trope in favor of highlighting its role in achieving well-being. Indeed, I argue that by focusing on divination as a way of knowing ethnographers have inadvertently ignored what happens after said knowledge is acquired. It is these moments that I find to be at the heart of divination’s enduring value. Through an analysis of divination rituals, initiations, and material objects, alternative ways to examining divination in the West African rain forest are considered and explored. Looking to Fá divination, one of the major oracular systems employed by Fon speakers in the Republic of Bénin, I turn my attention to the ways in which divination helps individuals fulfill their destinies and achieve goodness in the world. In this way I argue that West African systems of divination are only secondarily about knowledge and first and foremost about achieving a sense of balance (coolness) and well-being.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44986515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-18DOI: 10.1163/15700666-bja10088
S. Dube
The theologico-political problem, traditionally concerned with the question of the seat of authority or sovereignty in the West (rendered through the metaphor of Jerusalem vs Athens or Revelation vs Reason), has been brought to the fore of late in a number of nation-states in Africa. To the end of rethinking the theologico-political problem or decolonising it, this article draws on Achille Mbembe’s notion of improvisation as an important avenue through which the decolonisation of the theologico-political problem can be situated meaningfully in the African context. Its core argument is that such a decolonisation of the theologico-political problem is not only useful for centering African experiences in political theology broadly, but also for further problematizing the decontextualized ways in which notions such as the theologico-political problem elide a history of “others” in their continued access primarily or even solely through Western experiences of state formation.
{"title":"Decolonising the Theologico-Political Problem","authors":"S. Dube","doi":"10.1163/15700666-bja10088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-bja10088","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The theologico-political problem, traditionally concerned with the question of the seat of authority or sovereignty in the West (rendered through the metaphor of Jerusalem vs Athens or Revelation vs Reason), has been brought to the fore of late in a number of nation-states in Africa. To the end of rethinking the theologico-political problem or decolonising it, this article draws on Achille Mbembe’s notion of improvisation as an important avenue through which the decolonisation of the theologico-political problem can be situated meaningfully in the African context. Its core argument is that such a decolonisation of the theologico-political problem is not only useful for centering African experiences in political theology broadly, but also for further problematizing the decontextualized ways in which notions such as the theologico-political problem elide a history of “others” in their continued access primarily or even solely through Western experiences of state formation.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42775441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-10DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340246
Romanus Aboh, Eyo O. Mensah, Idom T. Inyabri, Lucy Ushuple
Contributing to extant debates on the juncture of naming and gender(ing), this study interrogates naming practices among Bette-Christians of northern Cross River, Southeastern Nigeria, and how they enhance understanding of the relation between naming and the enunciation of religious identity as well as how gender is enacted. With analytical insights from socio-onomastic theory, which explores the relationship between names, culture, and society, we interrogate naming practices as essential cultural currency for identification, categorization, and connectedness. Data were obtained from 40 participants through semistructured interviews and participant observations. We focus on the intersection of naming and spiritual sentiments to argue that the contemporary reality of naming among Bette-Christians illuminates a practice that negates traditional Bette cosmology and cosmogony. We illustrate how the emergence of Christianity has altered the naming patterns and practices of the people, and how these names embody multidimensional connotations that range from religious identity to stereotyped gender ideologies.
{"title":"Christianity and the Gendering of Personal Names among the Bette in Southeastern Nigeria","authors":"Romanus Aboh, Eyo O. Mensah, Idom T. Inyabri, Lucy Ushuple","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340246","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Contributing to extant debates on the juncture of naming and gender(ing), this study interrogates naming practices among Bette-Christians of northern Cross River, Southeastern Nigeria, and how they enhance understanding of the relation between naming and the enunciation of religious identity as well as how gender is enacted. With analytical insights from socio-onomastic theory, which explores the relationship between names, culture, and society, we interrogate naming practices as essential cultural currency for identification, categorization, and connectedness. Data were obtained from 40 participants through semistructured interviews and participant observations. We focus on the intersection of naming and spiritual sentiments to argue that the contemporary reality of naming among Bette-Christians illuminates a practice that negates traditional Bette cosmology and cosmogony. We illustrate how the emergence of Christianity has altered the naming patterns and practices of the people, and how these names embody multidimensional connotations that range from religious identity to stereotyped gender ideologies.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44783089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340242
Päivi Hasu
This article examines the transformation of Pastor Josephat Gwajima of the Glory of Christ Tanzania Church in Dar es Salaam into a Pentecostal Big Man characterized by neopatrimonialism and clientelism. It argues that Pastor Gwajima’s status rests first, on religious mediation and individual as well as collective deliverance, and second, on the long-term creation of a Christian electorate. The paper focuses on Gwajima’s political activism during election campaigns that culminated in the 2020 elections when he became a member of parliament. The article concludes that Gwajima has built his religiopolitical profile on popular discourses of suspicion, witchcraft, and conspiracies, and that his Pentecostal politics expand the field of political power beyond political institutions to include demonic entities. Gwajima spiritually mediates people’s failed efforts to participate in the world of development while acknowledging the national and global inequalities, power asymmetries, and associated moral problems resulting from material and power accumulation.
{"title":"Politics of Spiritual Warfare","authors":"Päivi Hasu","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340242","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the transformation of Pastor Josephat Gwajima of the Glory of Christ Tanzania Church in Dar es Salaam into a Pentecostal Big Man characterized by neopatrimonialism and clientelism. It argues that Pastor Gwajima’s status rests first, on religious mediation and individual as well as collective deliverance, and second, on the long-term creation of a Christian electorate. The paper focuses on Gwajima’s political activism during election campaigns that culminated in the 2020 elections when he became a member of parliament. The article concludes that Gwajima has built his religiopolitical profile on popular discourses of suspicion, witchcraft, and conspiracies, and that his Pentecostal politics expand the field of political power beyond political institutions to include demonic entities. Gwajima spiritually mediates people’s failed efforts to participate in the world of development while acknowledging the national and global inequalities, power asymmetries, and associated moral problems resulting from material and power accumulation.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42083205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340244
Karani Shiyuka
In the wake of the cultural turn, there has been a gradual shift in the theorization of African religions, from the static structural-functionalist oriented models, towards the insertion of agency. This new approach foregrounds the intentional actions of individuals, or collective actors, to create meaning when confronted with external cultural ideas. The African, therefore, is treated as an active agent capable of manipulating and inventing new religious possibilities, rather than being a puppet of a rigid social structure. This paper is cast in this mould. It examines the agentic role played by the Pokot as they navigated the cultural challenges presented to them by western Christianity during the British colonial rule in Kenya. However, because the agentic power to authorize meaning is never uniformly distributed in any society, this article highlights the central role played by Lukas Pkech in mediating the cultural conflict between the indigenous Pokot religion and western Christianity.
{"title":"Inscribing Agency in Religious Change","authors":"Karani Shiyuka","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340244","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the wake of the cultural turn, there has been a gradual shift in the theorization of African religions, from the static structural-functionalist oriented models, towards the insertion of agency. This new approach foregrounds the intentional actions of individuals, or collective actors, to create meaning when confronted with external cultural ideas. The African, therefore, is treated as an active agent capable of manipulating and inventing new religious possibilities, rather than being a puppet of a rigid social structure. This paper is cast in this mould. It examines the agentic role played by the Pokot as they navigated the cultural challenges presented to them by western Christianity during the British colonial rule in Kenya. However, because the agentic power to authorize meaning is never uniformly distributed in any society, this article highlights the central role played by Lukas Pkech in mediating the cultural conflict between the indigenous Pokot religion and western Christianity.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43419054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340245
Diana Lunkwitz
This contribution examines contested ideas of god(s) as held by Protestant missionaries and the German explorer Hugo Zöller in the early colonial period of Cameroon and in neighbouring West African countries in the 1880s. While many present studies on African Traditional Religion(s) tend to perpetuate an understanding of religion around one supreme god, Zöller’s reports included discontinuities and open questions. An intertextual reading approach is used to question historical and translation barriers and analyse the ideas of god(s) in reception history, including through the report of a later mission director and a handbook of religion. It becomes apparent that all the analysed historical material assumed one supreme god or one origin of religion, albeit according to the different interests of each foreign writer’s point of view. A decolonising reading that focuses on the foreigner’s idea of god(s) in the local people’s view then offers interesting insights into the perception and interpretation of the exploitative trade with ‘products’ from Cameroon linked to the coloniser’s own religion. That shift in perspective animadverts on the entire colonising trade system. This contribution thus proposes a decolonial historiography of religion in Africa in order to extend the critical investigation of reception history and perspectives.
{"title":"On the Colonial History of the Ideas of God(s) in Africa","authors":"Diana Lunkwitz","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340245","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This contribution examines contested ideas of god(s) as held by Protestant missionaries and the German explorer Hugo Zöller in the early colonial period of Cameroon and in neighbouring West African countries in the 1880s. While many present studies on African Traditional Religion(s) tend to perpetuate an understanding of religion around one supreme god, Zöller’s reports included discontinuities and open questions. An intertextual reading approach is used to question historical and translation barriers and analyse the ideas of god(s) in reception history, including through the report of a later mission director and a handbook of religion. It becomes apparent that all the analysed historical material assumed one supreme god or one origin of religion, albeit according to the different interests of each foreign writer’s point of view. A decolonising reading that focuses on the foreigner’s idea of god(s) in the local people’s view then offers interesting insights into the perception and interpretation of the exploitative trade with ‘products’ from Cameroon linked to the coloniser’s own religion. That shift in perspective animadverts on the entire colonising trade system. This contribution thus proposes a decolonial historiography of religion in Africa in order to extend the critical investigation of reception history and perspectives.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46835042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-16DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340237
José Ramón Rodríguez Lago
After Spain lost its overseas territories, Spanish priests increased their presence in Africa. From an analysis of the bibliography and the press of the time as well as of the different documents issued by the nunciature of Madrid, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and the Secretariat of State of the Vatican, it is possible to draw some significant conclusions about the evolution of Spanish missions in the Protectorate of Morocco and Spanish Guinea in the four decades that separate the so-called Disaster and the propagandistic myth of the Crusade represented by Francoists – and Africanists – during the civil war.
{"title":"From the Ruins of Empire","authors":"José Ramón Rodríguez Lago","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340237","url":null,"abstract":"After Spain lost its overseas territories, Spanish priests increased their presence in Africa. From an analysis of the bibliography and the press of the time as well as of the different documents issued by the nunciature of Madrid, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and the Secretariat of State of the Vatican, it is possible to draw some significant conclusions about the evolution of Spanish missions in the Protectorate of Morocco and Spanish Guinea in the four decades that separate the so-called Disaster and the propagandistic myth of the Crusade represented by Francoists – and Africanists – during the civil war.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138531722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-07DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340238
M. Frost
This paper examines how the call to found their own churches has allowed and enabled women to subvert and challenge prescribed gender roles. It focuses on African Initiated Churches including both African Independent and Pentecostal Charismatic churches. While the importance of women in these churches is widely acknowledged, less attention has been given to the question of how female church founders gain and maintain their leadership positions. Drawing on historical cases as well as on interviews with founders and church leaders conducted in South Africa and Nigeria, this paper shows how the charismatic authority and doctrinal independence women gain through the call not only legitimate their position but enable them to challenge social and doctrinal norms and thus emancipate themselves from traditional gender roles. However, it also discusses whether in some cases women did not fully use their authority in order to keep it.
{"title":"‘I Got the Call – Not Him’","authors":"M. Frost","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340238","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper examines how the call to found their own churches has allowed and enabled women to subvert and challenge prescribed gender roles. It focuses on African Initiated Churches including both African Independent and Pentecostal Charismatic churches. While the importance of women in these churches is widely acknowledged, less attention has been given to the question of how female church founders gain and maintain their leadership positions. Drawing on historical cases as well as on interviews with founders and church leaders conducted in South Africa and Nigeria, this paper shows how the charismatic authority and doctrinal independence women gain through the call not only legitimate their position but enable them to challenge social and doctrinal norms and thus emancipate themselves from traditional gender roles. However, it also discusses whether in some cases women did not fully use their authority in order to keep it.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45564519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-07DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340241
Daniel Ballon-Garst
{"title":"Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa, written by Van Klinken, Adriaan, and Ezra Chitando","authors":"Daniel Ballon-Garst","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340241","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42626977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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