Global Pentecostalism: Encounter with Other Religious Traditions 9780755625192, 9781845118778

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Preface

Today, Pentecostalism is probably the fastest growing religious tradition in the world. Described as a religion ‘made to travel’, it has from the outset been a strong mission movement. Recently, research on this important branch of Christianity has increased considerably, but its remarkably fast growth is still not very well known. A much neglected field, where more research is clearly needed, is its constant worldwide encounters with other religions as well as other Christian denominations, which is the theme of this book. Pentecostal missionaries and pastors preach a universal message. However, this message is always contextualized or inculturated in various localities. Paradoxically, the increasing globalization of Pentecostalism also entails a growing diversification of this huge religious movement – in a way that is similar to what is happening to Islamism, perhaps its main religious ‘competitor’ today. Apparently, Pentecostalism is not strong on religious dialogue or theologies of continuity. There is, rather, a tendency to demonize other religions. In practice, however, missionaries always have to grapple with issues of religious encounters, which result in various new forms of beliefs and practices. As a rule, Pentecostals are also critical of other Christians, particularly Catholics. Yet, certain contexts may favour more accommodating attitudes as well as substantial ecumenical co-operation. Most of the contributions to this book were originally presented in a session called ‘Inter- and Intra-Religious Aspects of the Global Growth of Pentecostalism’, at the conference ‘Religion on the Borders: New Challenges to the Study of Religion’, held in April 2007 at Södertörn University in southern Stockholm. However, this session was planned with a book idea in mind, and the participants were invited to present papers as well as to revise these later on for publication. After the conference, a few more scholars, who did not attend the conference, were also invited to write chapters for the book. The contributions deal with a variety of Pentecostal or neo-Pentecostal denominations or movements in several continents. The authors are all specialists on Pentecostalism, and several of them hail from countries on which they write. David Westerlund Stockholm

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Contributors

Hans Geir Aasmundsen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department for the Study of Religions in the School of Gender, Culture and History at Södertörn University in southern Stockholm. He is currently working on a thesis with the tentative title ‘Pentecostals, Catholics and Society in Argentina’. Aasmundsen has published articles on, among other things, the recent history of Pentecostalism and society in Argentina as well as on Pentecostalism and fundamentalism in that country. Jan-Åke Alvarsson is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University. He is also Director of the Institute for Pentecostal Studies at the same university. Alvarsson is a specialist on Amerindian cultures and religions in South America, particularly Bolivia, as well as on Pentecostalism. His recent publications include the collected volumes Religions in Transition: Mobility, Merging and Globalization in the Emergence of Contemporary Religious Adhesions (2003), co-editor Rita Laura Segato, and The Missionary Process (2005). Allan Anderson is Professor of Global Pentecostal Studies and Director of the Graduate Institute for Theology and Religion in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Birmingham in Britain. Anderson’s current research is on the history of early Pentecostalism. He is the author of many articles and several books, the most recent being African Reformation: African Initiated Churches in the 20th Century (2001), Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (2004) and Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism (2007). Elizabeth E. Brusco is Professor of Anthropology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. She has conducted fieldwork in Colombia on gender, family and religious conversion, as well as on religious persecution of Colombian Protestants during La Violencia. Her current research interests include Christian missionary work in Samoa and Hawaii, as well as the role of immigrant communities in the USA. Examples of Brusco’s publications are the monograph The Reformation of Machismo: Gender and Evangelical Conversion in Colombia (1995) and a co-edited collection entitled The Message in the Missionary: Local Interpretations of Religious Ideology and Missionary Personality (1994). viii

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Magnus Echtler, an anthropologist, is Lecturer in African religions at the University of Bayreuth. Among other things, he is interested in ritual practices and popular culture in African religions. His Ph.D. thesis focused on changing rituals and their relations with state power and traditional authority in the context of the Swahili New Year in Zanzibar. Virginia Garrard-Burnett is Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Garrard-Burnett has carried out research in several Latin American countries including Guatemala, Mexico and Brazil. She is the author of two monographs, two edited volumes and more than 20 articles on religion in Latin America. Kristina Helgesson Kjellin is currently teaching Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University. In her (published) Ph.D. thesis, ‘ “Walking in the Spirit”: the Complexity of Belonging in Two Pentecostal Churches in Durban, South Africa’ (2006), she explored, in a phenomenological perspective, various aspects of belonging among members of two congregations. She is particularly interested in Pentecostalism, gender studies, globalization and the religious situation in South Africa. Sung-Gun Kim is Professor of Sociology at Seowon University in CheongJu, South Korea. In 2007, he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of California, Los Angeles. His special interests include globalization and religion, spirituality, Korean Christian Zionism as well as biotechnology and religion. He has recently published several articles on Korean Pentecostalism. Torsten Löfstedt is Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions at Kalmar University College, Sweden. He has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include Russian church history, New Testament theology, theology of religions, the secularization thesis and narrative genres of folk religion. Löfstedt has published many articles in various fields and is now engaged in a research project on Pentecostalism in eastern Europe. Daniel P. Míguez is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the State of Buenos Aires and a Researcher for the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research in Argentina. Among other things, he is interested in religion, education, politics and delinquency among urban popular sectors. He has published six books and about 40 articles on these topics. Cephas N. Omenyo is Associate Professor at the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana, Legon. During the 2007–8 academic year, he

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served as the John A. Mackay Professor of World Christianity, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey. His research interests include African Christian history, Pentecostalism as well as Christianity and African culture. Omenyo has several publications including Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches of Ghana (2nd edition, 2006). Tabona Shoko is Chairperson of the Department of Religious Studies, Classics and Philosophy at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. During the academic year 2007–2008 he is guest scholar at Södertörn University in southern Stockholm. His research interests are indigenous healing, new religious movements and Pentecostalism, especially in Zimbabwe. Shoko’s publications include the recently published monograph Karanga Indigenous Religion in Zimbabwe: Health and Well-Being (2007). David Thurfjell is Lecturer and Research Fellow in the Study of Religions at Södertörn University in southern Stockholm. He has carried out research mainly within the fields of Iranian and Islamic Studies. Currently he is working on a research project on Roma Pentecostalism. His publications include the recently published monograph Living Shi’ism: Instances of Ritualisation among Islamist Men in Contemporary Iran (2006). Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah is Lecturer in the Study of Religions at the University of Bayreuth. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies in the same university. Ukah is interested in African Pentecostalism, religion and globalization, religious advertising, religion and media as well as religious popular culture in Africa. He has published many articles and edited volumes. His new book A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power appeared in 2008. David Westerlund is Professor at the Department for Study of Religions in the School of Gender, Culture and History at Södertörn University in southern Stockholm. He is also Researcher at the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, in Sweden. His research interests include African Indigenous Religions, Islamism, Sufism, religion and health, historiography and interreligious relations. Westerlund has recently published, among other things, the edited volume Sufism in Europe and North America (2004) and the monograph African Indigenous Religions and Disease Causation: From Spiritual Beings to Living Humans (2006).

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Introduction ■

David Westerlund

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he Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, which started in 1906, has often been seen as the beginning of (modern) Pentecostalism.1 Several scholars have also depicted the global growth of this movement as a US-dominated phenomenon. The book Exporting the American Gospel (1996), by Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose, is an example of that perspective.2 Another perspective, which does not presuppose one original centre (in the USA), from which Pentecostalism spread like waves to all parts of the world, is that there were several places in various countries where Pentecostal revivals occurred. Allan Anderson’s book An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (2004) provides an excellent overview of how and where this movement developed, and was contextualized, in various parts of the world.3 Like Anderson’s seminal and path-breaking volume, this book, whose chapters are based largely on primary material and long fieldwork experience, shows the importance of regional and local, as well as historical and cultural, contextuality, in this case with a focus on religious encounters. Pentecostalism, now being huge and diverse, is not easily defined. As remarked by Allan Anderson (2004: 14), however, it is ‘a movement concerned primarily with the experience of the working of the Holy Spirit and the practice of spiritual gifts’.4 While classical Pentecostalism started around 1900, what is sometimes called ‘neo-Pentecostalism’ developed more than half a century later.5 Examples of the latter are the well-known faith movements, representing what some critics call a ‘prosperity gospel’, and para-churches like the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship. Whereas classical Pentecostalism had followers basically in the form of poor workers and farmers with little or no education, in neo-Pentecostal contexts, the involvement of middleclass people tends to be greater. A more mixed social composition is also 1

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a characteristic of the broadly inter-denominational Charismatic movement that Cephas Omenyo (2002) neatly calls ‘Pentecost outside Pentecostalism’, which has ‘pentecostalized’ large segments of older churches.6

Encountering Other Religious Traditions This volume deals with Pentecostals, including neo-Pentecostals, and encounters with other religions and, secondarily, with other Christian traditions. The encounters concern ‘world religions’ like Islam and Hinduism, as well as indigenous religions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and Christian churches such as Catholic and Orthodox. The term ‘encounter’ may connote confrontation or difficult struggle. Rhetorically, there has indeed been much rejection and demonization of other religions among Pentecostals, who have also tended to look with suspicion at ecumenical endeavours among ‘liberals’ in older, and sometimes established, churches. However, the Pentecostal ‘metaculture’ has always been contextualized or indigenized in various local areas, as will be exemplified in this book. Among, for instance, Anglican, Catholic and Lutheran theologians, ‘theologies of religion’ and ‘contextual theologies’ have been developed to guide the (trans)plantation of the Christian message in new environments. Pentecostals have, in general, been less interested in formal theology, but inculturation has taken place in the field rather than at the writing desk. As a result, the Pentecostal movement, which was diverse already at the outset, has become increasingly varied. On a religio-theological continuum from exclusivism to universalism, Pentecostals would normally be placed on the exclusivist side of the spectrum.7 In addition to passages about the good power of the Holy Spirit, the New Testament of the Bible also includes many texts about evil spiritual beings, led by Satan, God’s adversary. However, by believing strongly in the destructive power of evil spiritual forces, and taking them seriously rather than seeing the belief in them as a form of ‘superstition’, Pentecostals may find important connecting links to other religions. A non-Christian body of beliefs in (predominantly) evil spiritual beings or human beings with extraordinary power, such as ‘witches’, can thus be translated into a Christian idiom and be treated through prayer and, for instance, rituals of exorcism. This may be compared to the common capacity within Sufism to transform non-Islamic spiritual forces into an Islamic conceptual world of jinns (spirits) and Shaitan or Iblis (the devil), which apparently has contributed greatly to the ‘missionary’ success of Sufi orders in various cultural and religious contexts. Anderson concludes that Pentecostals, as well as Charismatics, have different characteristics in various parts of the world ‘largely because their belief in “freedom in the Spirit”

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often allows them more flexibility in developing their own culturally relevant forms of expression’. Similarly, Ivan M. Satyavrata (2006: 222) argues that ‘the genius of Pentecostalism is clearly the remarkable capacity of Pentecostal movements to incarnate themselves in various indigenous cultures, producing rich cultural and theological diversity’.8 This book contains many examples of this Pentecostal ‘genius’. Concerning intra-religious relations, Pentecostal positions can be charted on a corresponding continuum, ranging from A, the highest possible degree of positive relationships, to B, the absence of any such relationships. No doubt, given the great diversity and changes over time, it is difficult to say something in general about Pentecostalism in this respect. According to Robert A. Berg’s conclusion, however, classical Pentecostals have usually tended to be somewhat closer to A than neo-Pentecostals. In comparison with both of those groups, Charismatics (in the older churches) – who do not figure prominently in this book – are closer to B (Robert A. Berg 2006b: 330). Although most Pentecostals have shunned ‘liberal’ and ecumenically oriented organizations like the World Council of Churches, there are examples of Pentecostal churches that have joined this organization.9 More importantly, there have been several international dialogues between Pentecostals and Catholics, among whom the Charismatic movement is particularly strong. According to Allan Anderson (2004: 253), ‘it appears as if Majority World Christians have far fewer “hang-ups” when it comes to ecumenism than their western counterparts have’.10 This book provides several examples of the complexity and variations with regard to intra-religious encounters. Particularly among scholars in the social sciences, such as anthropologists and sociologists, Pentecostalism has often been studied in the light of globalization theory. In a social perspective, globalization refers to a ‘condensation’ of life: people of different cultures and religions are brought into closer contact with each other.11 Many interpret globalization as a process towards cultural uniformity or homogenization. Others have put more stress on the capacity of religious bodies and other cultural forces to resist uniformity.12 For instance, the anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1996: 102) argues that, although there is now a ‘world culture’, this does not mean a replication of uniformity but ‘an organization of diversity, an increasing interconnectedness of varied local cultures, as well as a development of cultures without a clear anchorage in any one territory’. In the world of religions, we may discern two competing, globalizing alternatives of particular magnitude and vitality: Christianity, particularly in the form of Pentecostalism(s), and Islam, especially in its Islamist version(s). As argued by the anthropologist Simon Coleman (2000: 3), Pentecostals,

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as well as – it may be added – Islamists, are well adapted to ‘modern’ or ‘post-modern’ cultural conditions.13 Yet, while being religious ‘globalizers’ or ‘modernizers’, Pentecostals have not lost touch with their local contexts.14 In view of this observation, as well as of the theme of this book, it appears that the easily accessible concept of ‘glocalization’, which combines globalization and localization, is fruitful.15 This dialogical and processual orientation, beyond dichotomies, gives prominence to a mutually constructive relation between the universal and the particular.16 This book contains several examples of the great significance of local ‘agency’ and how Pentecostalism has been remoulded or recreated in various contexts. Among Christians, Pentecostals are often in the forefront of encounters with religious others. More than twothirds of the increasingly diverse Pentecostalism have spread rapidly to the Majority World17 (Allan Anderson 2004: 281).18 Pentecostalism has always had a strong emphasis on mission and evangelism, ensuing from its strong pneumatology. Particularly during the early decades of the twentieth century, the urgency of mission endeavours was underpinned by the strong, premillennialist belief in the imminence of Christ’s return. Empowered by the spirit, making ‘signs and wonders’ such as healing possible, not only missionaries and pastors but, in principle, all Pentecostals have engaged in the struggle for church growth. As a rule, no rigid dividing line between ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’, or between men and women, developed in their congregations, and the appointment of indigenous pastors and evangelists was encouraged. As a result, Pentecostal churches have been indigenized more rapidly than the older mission churches. Furthermore, contextualization has been facilitated by the largely spontaneous ‘liturgy’, allowing great involvement by ordinary members. Proclaiming a pragmatic gospel, Pentecostals have addressed practical everyday problems like illness, poverty and witchcraft (Michael Bergunder 2003: 1242; Allan Anderson 2004: 206–24; Edith Blumhofer 2004: 1462, 1466).19 From Pentecostal congregations in all continents, missionaries are sent out. No doubt, the USA, with its strong economic resources, is of particular significance, but missionaries from several other countries, such as Brazil, India, Nigeria and South Korea, increasingly play a huge role in the rapid growth of Pentecostalism. It has been estimated that during the 1990s, the expansive mission movement of the Majority World grew at 17 times the rate of Western missions (Michael Jaffarian 2004: 131–2). Because there are multiple origins, sites and centres of the global Pentecostalist movement, there are reasons to challenge the one-sided Western model of an undulatory expansion ‘from the West to the rest’. As argued by David D. Daniels (2006: 276–7), this challenge of the centre-to-periphery schema is one of the great merits of

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Allan Anderson’s work (2004), whose approach tends to bracket the question of whether there is one origin of Pentecostalism, be it Topeka (Kansas, the USA), Pune (India), Los Angeles or any other.20

The Global Growth of Pentecostalism For the development of a Pentecostal type of Christianity, and the inculturation of this religion, in Africa, thousands of AICs (African Independent, Indigenous or – more recently – Initiated Churches) have played an important role since the early twentieth century, particularly during the early decades of that century. Due to the great significance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, terms such as ‘spiritual’ and ‘prophet-healing’ have also been used to designate the Pentecostal-type AICs; several scholars, justifiably, see them as a part of the Pentecostal movement in a wide sense. It is true that, charged of being ‘syncretistic’, they have frequently been criticized by Western Pentecostal and other missionaries for not being ‘truly’ Christian. However, as remarked by the historian Terence Ranger (1987: 31), features like Spirit baptism, fostering prophecy, spiritual healing and exorcism, which have often been interpreted as continuations of African beliefs and practices, may be seen as ‘the most Christian aspect’ of Pentecostal AICs. This understanding has normally been shared by leaders of such AICs themselves. There is evidence for both interpretations – although derogatory terms like ‘syncretistic’ should be avoided: By reviving certain aspects of early Christianity, which had largely been left behind by leaders of older, partly ‘demythologized’ churches, led mainly by Western missionaries, Africans within AICs could connect to – now demonized – spiritual features of indigenous African religions. This is a characteristic of classical and neo-Pentecostal churches in Africa too. In AICs, African Christianity was basically formed ‘from below’ (by Africans themselves) rather than ‘from above’ (by foreign missionaries). The strong significance of lay people and indigenous leaders has certainly been an important characteristic of classical Pentecostalism too, although the role of foreign missionaries must be acknowledged as well. As early as 1906, Pentecostal missionaries arrived in Liberia, a favourite country for African Americans,21 and the same year, other missionaries came to South Africa, which was another favoured place for early Pentecostals. At the beginning, many Pentecostal services there were racially integrated, as was the case in the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles.22 By the 1920s, Pentecostalism was established by Africans and missionaries throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, but it was the evangelizing efforts of African preachers that accounted for its great success. Some decades later, mainly from the 1960s to the 1970s,

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the growth of African Pentecostalism, now including neo-Pentecostalism, became more massive. In many African countries it has become the dominant expression of Christianity (Robert M. Anderson 1987: 234; 2004: 121). As concluded by Allan Anderson, African Pentecostalism is essentially African in origin and fulfils African aspirations, with roots in a marginalized and underprivileged society. ‘An African style of worship and liturgy and a holistic Christianity that offers tangible help in this world as well as in the next together form a uniquely African contextualization of Christianity’ (Allan Anderson 2004: 122). In comparison with other continents, particularly Africa and Latin America, the percentage of Pentecostals in Asia may seem quite insignificant. However, considering that almost 60 per cent of the world’s population live in Asia, the total numbers, especially in the most populous countries – China and India – are high. In several Asian countries, such as South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia, Pentecostalism has also been expanding rapidly. Pentecostals are found throughout South East Asia, but with the main exception of Indonesia; very few are found in predominantly Muslim regions, such as West and Central Asia. According to some observers,23 the total number of Pentecostals is approaching 150 millions in each of the three above-mentioned continents, and only Latin America has more Pentecostals than Asia.24 The Pentecostal phenomenon existed in Asia before the arrival of Western Pentecostals and the Charismatic movement, and Asian Pentecostalism has been moulded by the particular contexts of various peoples and cultures there (Allan Anderson 2004: 123). The growth of Pentecostalism in China is particularly difficult to document. Apparently, most of it has occurred in independent house churches. For a long time, Chinese Pentecostals and other Christians have developed virtually in isolation from the rest of Christianity. There are many similarities between the independent house churches and AICs in Africa. Some Chinese Pentecostals practise, for instance, all-night prayer and healing meetings, dance in the Spirit and observe the Sabbath.25 Most Indian Pentecostals are found in South India. A classical contextual form of Indian Christianity was formed in the Mukti (‘salvation’) mission in Pune, led by the internationally well-known woman Pandita Saraswati Ramabai. In addition to evangelizing, she and her followers established, in a typically Pentecostal way, several charitable institutions, such as a hospital and a school. Today there may be more than 30 million Pentecostals and Charismatics in India.26 In 2000, about one-third of the population of South Korea were Protestant Christians, most of them probably Pentecostals and Charismatics. A particularly well-known Korean pastor is David Yonggi Cho, whose Yoido Full Gospel Central Church

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in Seoul has received much international attention. This church is influenced by the faith movement, and its strong mission endeavours concentrates primarily on the USA, though Japan and Germany are important targets too (Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose 1996: 116–21; Allan Anderson 2004: 136–9). The Pentecostal revival in Indonesia, which followed after the overthrow of President Sukarno’s Communist regime in 1965, is especially remarkable in that Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslimdominated country,27 where Pentecostals now make up about 5 per cent of its population of approximately 200 millions (Allan Anderson 2004: 130). Although Europe is the religiously ‘exceptional’ continent (Grace Davie 2002), where the level of secularization is much higher than in the Majority World, as well as in North America, it is hardly surprising that Pentecostalism is much weaker there than in other continents. European Pentecostalism began very soon after the Azusa Street revival. However, Pentecostalism in Europe differed from that revival in several aspects and has maintained its independence and developed its own roots. For instance, the British Keswick movement of the late nineteenth century, with its emphasis on sanctification (‘fullness of the spirit’), and the Pietist traditions within established churches were important sources of inspiration. Of particular significance in the spread of classical Pentecostalism in Western Europe was a Norwegian, the former Methodist Thomas Ball Barrett, who conducted meetings all over Europe. In Sweden, Lewi Pethrus’ Filadelfia Church in Stockholm was the largest Pentecostal congregation in the world until the 1960s. Finland is another north European country with a relatively strong Pentecostal movement. Britain has the largest population of Pentecostals in Western Europe, followed by Italy, while Portugal appears to be the only country in Europe where more than 2 per cent of the population are Pentecostals. Interestingly, Portuguese Pentecostalism has its roots in Brazil (Allan Anderson 2004: 83–98). An important feature of present-day Pentecostalism in Europe, for example in the Netherlands, is the ‘mission in return’ and the establishment of diaspora churches by immigrants from the Majority World where members may also be Europeans. One example of such a church, led by a Nigerian pastor, is the Kingsway International Christian Centre in northeast London, which has more than 10,000 members and multiple services every Sunday. Another remarkable example is the Embassy of God Church in Kiev, Ukraine, which started among Ukranian drug addicts and alcoholics and now, a dozen years after its start, has more than 20,000 members, a great majority of who are white Europeans (Christopher Steed 2006: 409–10). The Evangelical Pentecostal Union in that country is now probably the largest Pentecostal denomination in Europe. In addition to Ukraine, Russia and Romania are the nations

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in eastern Europe with the maximum number of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians. Although there is a long history of Pentecostal mission work in eastern Europe, there was a particular important upsurge after the fall of the iron curtain almost two decades ago. Neo-Pentecostal denominations, such as the Swedish Word of Life (Simon Coleman 2000: 95), have flooded into former communist countries, sometimes with aggressive evangelistic techniques. This has led to considerable opposition from Orthodox churches as well as from governments (Allan Anderson 2004: 98–102). Latin American Pentecostalism, which is an extremely diverse mass popular movement, originated at a time when Pentecostalism in North America was still emerging; both are distinctly different from each other. As argued by Allan Anderson (2004: 63), ‘the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of Christianity’. In Chile, an early revival among Methodists, inspired by Pentecostal revivals in several parts of the world, eventually developed into the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal, which has maintained Methodist doctrines and practices, including infant baptism and an episcopalian structure. Now there are more than 30 Chilean Pentecostal denominations deriving from this church. Some of these were the first Pentecostal denominations to join the World Council of Churches. The vast majority of Chilean Pentecostals are working-class people, and most of them supported the leftist President Salvador Allende before he was overthrown in 1973.28 As in many other Latin American countries, many Amerindians in Chile have embraced Pentecostalism. In Argentina, where there are few Amerindians, Pentecostalism has been strongly influenced by European immigrants and missionaries, though there is also a North American impact. Of particular significance in Latin American Pentecostal history is the astounding growth of Pentecostal denominations in Brazil, the continent’s most populous country. According to Allan Anderson (2004: 69), ‘there are probably more Pentecostals in church on Sundays throughout Brazil than Catholics, and more Pentecostal pastors (all Brazilians) than Catholic priests, who are often foreigners’. Apparently, the strong presence of Afro-American religions such as Umbanda and Candomblé, as well as of spiritualism, has contributed to forming a fertile ground for the spread of the spirit-oriented Pentecostalism. Since the 1970s, several new Pentecostal denominations have added to the diversity of this movement in Brazil.29 Remarkable Pentecostal expansion has occurred in Central America too, particularly in Guatemala, where half of the more than 2 million Pentecostals and Charismatics are Amerindian Maya, although El Salvador was the main centre for the spread of Pentecostalism in this region. Many Pentecostal churches, such as the Pentecostal Church of God in Puerto Rico, have sent missionaries all over Latin America, as well as to countries like the USA, Spain

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and Portugal. Since the 1970s, neo-Pentecostal churches, with a greater appeal to the middle class, are the most rapidly growing ones. In Central America, North American influence has been stronger than further south. The rapid Pentecostal growth has also been experienced throughout the Caribbean, for instance in Jamaica and Cuba. As in other parts of Latin America, and elsewhere, the history of Pentecostalism here reveals the importance of local preachers and missionaries, both men and women. For a long time now, Pentecostalism in Latin America has challenged the status quo often represented by a more conservative Catholicism (Allan Anderson 2004: 76–82; 2007: 193–6). Sometimes the new communities have ‘filled the gaps created by socio-economic and religious disintegration and offered full participation and supportive structures for marginalized and displaced people’ (Allan Anderson 2004: 81–2).

The Contributions to This Book Even though Pentecostalism started as an inter-racial movement in South Africa, as well as in other parts of Africa and elsewhere, it eventually split along racial lines. Kristina Helgesson Kjellin’s contribution to this book, which deals with two quite different congregations of the Assemblies of God,30 shows the lingering effects of racialism and segregation in two post-apartheid Pentecostal congregations.31 While the Olive Tree congregation is ‘white’, the Red Hill is ‘coloured’. Like Pentecostals particularly in North America and Europe,32 the Olive Tree members strongly support Israel and the Jewish people. These members have close contacts with both Israel and the USA. During the apartheid era, when the white minority regime depicted South Africa as another chosen nation, this country and Israel were close allies. Members of the ‘coloured’ Red Hill do not share the vehement interest of the ‘white’ Olive Tree congregation in Israel and of the Jewish people. Nor do they share the Olive Tree Pentecostals’ intense criticism of Islam, which the latter see as a threat to the world and especially to Israel. In the Olive Tree congregation, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is interpreted as a ‘spiritual warfare’.33 As in the case of Israel and Jews, the attitudes of Olive Tree members to Islam and Muslims is similar to the position held by many US Pentecostal and other ‘born again’ Christians, particularly after 9/11 2001, when pastors such as Jerry Vines, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell branded Islam as inherently evil and violent. Unlike most white South African Christians, many ‘coloured’ Christians co-operated with Muslims in the struggle against apartheid, which is one of the reasons why their aversion towards Islam tends to be less pronounced.34

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Whereas Helgesson Kjellin’s chapter exemplifies inclusivist Pentecostal tendencies towards Jews, with references to a common Judeo-Christian heritage, and exclusivist attitudes to Muslims, Tabona Shoko’s contribution focuses on the complex interrelationship between Pentecostalism and African Indigenous Religions. His study concerns the Hear the Word Ministries Pentecostal Church in the neighbouring Zimbabwe, highlighting the central theme of healing. This is a neo-Pentecostal denomination, formed in 1982 and part of the faith movement. Pre-Christian beliefs and practices are strongly condemned as ‘paganism’, but the members tend to live a dual life. Belief in, for instance, spirits of ancestors and witchcraft has not disappeared, and exorcism of traditional spirits – branded as evil – is common. Healing is a typical feature of African Indigenous Religions, and through its strong emphasis on spiritual healing, the Hear the Word Ministries Pentecostal Church attracts great numbers of people who believe in the power of spiritual beings and live in difficult conditions, which for many years have been deteriorating.35 The chapter by Cephas Omenyo concerns intra-religious aspects of the growth of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in Ghana, West Africa, where the first Pentecostal churches had Ghanaian roots. Before the 1970s, there was an exodus of Christians from older or mainline churches to AICs. As of that decade, Christians who were attracted by the Charismatic revival have instead transferred primarily to neo-Pentecostal denominations, although most Charismatics decided not to leave their churches but rather tried to revitalize these from within. This has caused schisms, however, and several Charismatic pastors have been excommunicated. Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals have a tendency to avoid ecumenical co-operation with more liberal churches, for example in the national umbrella organization Christian Council of Ghana, which has counterparts in many African countries. A sharp line is drawn between ‘born again Christianity’ and ‘dead’ churches. Neo-Pentecostal churches, where the members are mainly young and fairly well educated, encourage people to ‘come out of Babylon’, that is to leave their churches, and they attract members not only from older churches but also from AICs and classical Pentecostal churches. Yet there is an interesting paradox: Despite the exclusivism and official condemnations of other Christians for being ‘unChristian’, a form of grassroots ecumenism is promoted. Thus, Charismatic and ‘born again Christians’ co-operate and meet across denominational borders. By believing in witchcraft seriously, offering exorcism and healing, these Christians also provide bridges to the heritage of Ghanaian Indigenous Religions, as in the previous case of Zimbabwean Pentecostalism. Chapter 4, by Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah and Magnus Echtler, focuses on the growing problem of witchcraft and how it is handled in a specific Pentecostal

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context in Nigeria, the most populous African country, where ‘born again Christianity’ is very strong. Their contribution may be seen as an example of what the anthropologist Peter Geschiere (1997) calls ‘the modernity of witchcraft’. The practices of the Pentecostal pastor Helen Ukpabio from the Liberty Gospel Church may be regarded as a modern example of a long series of anti-witchcraft movements in Nigeria and elsewhere, which have existed in a great number of religious contexts, including Christianity and Islam, and have often attracted people with different religious affiliations.36 Ukpabio produces books and, in particular, video films, with the message that only Pentecostal Christianity provides an effective solution to the witchcraft problems. In her productions, witches, most of whom are women, transcend ethnic boundaries, and her message is particularly popular among young women. Female pastors like Ukpabio, who have been witches themselves, confidently claim that they know best what witchcraft is all about, and Ukpabio reveals this in her films. Being ‘born again’, and receiving the power of the Holy Spirit, empower people against witches and other forces of darkness. Besides, it may relieve the empowered Pentecostals of traditional social obligations in the villages they have left behind. Through her activities, Ukpabio reproduces the cultural reality of witchcraft, but also offers solutions to solving this problem. Nigeria is one of the countries where the Christian and Muslim struggle for religious expansion is most intense, and Christian–Muslim relations have been fraught with conflict, particularly after the introduction of sharia law in several constituent states in the Muslim-dominated northern part of the country.37 Muslims, on the other hand, have been angered by, for instance, the ‘crusades’ of the German-based evangelist Reinhard Bonnke from the mission organization Christ for all Nations, which has focused particularly on the conversion of Africans ‘from Cape to Cairo’.38 In his chapter on Nigerian Pentecostal relations to Islam and Muslims, Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah highlights the Redeemed Christian Church of God, which has an Aladura (i.e. AIC) background,39 but has gradually transformed into becoming a neoPentecostal ‘prosperity church’. Members of this church have demonized Islam, as well as Nigerian Indigenous Religions, although currently, in the hot and violent Nigerian situation, the polemical language is somewhat restrained. Ukah writes about a ‘theology of moderation’, affected by the tense multireligious situation. Like other Pentecostals, however, the members have a strong zeal to convert Muslims. The strategies of evangelism vary, but Muslims are often enticed by material benefits. People who give money are said to be rewarded by God despite being Muslims, which in a way makes conversion unnecessary. Ukah compares this inclusivist thinking to the religious inclusiveness of Yoruba traditions.40

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In his contribution to this book, Allan Anderson presents and discusses early Pentecostal missionary attitudes to other religions in India and China, where the Western missionary work started in 1906 and 1907, respectively. As elsewhere, missionaries there were influenced by racial and cultural stereotypes. There was little or no serious dialogue with representatives of other religions. Their religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, were seen as ‘idolatry’ and ‘heathenism’. Satan could be regarded as the source behind all sacrifices to ‘idols’ or ‘demons’. To a certain extent, Islam was an exception, and the morality of Muslims could be admired. Although not seen as idolatrous, Islam was nevertheless an enemy, an ‘Anti-Christ’ religion. In general, there was a strong polemical language, and ‘idols’ or charms of converts were sometimes burnt in public. However, particularly Pentecostal converts and local preachers could relate the New Testament world of spirits to their past religious heritage. The evil spiritual forces confronted were seen as real, and the Holy Spirit offered effective empowerment to combat such forces. According to Anderson, this may have been one of the main reasons for the rapid growth of Pentecostalism in India and China, as well as elsewhere. Sung-Gun Kim’s chapter on neo-Pentecostalism and shamanism in Korea provides another example of the ability of Pentecostalism to connect to nonChristian religions. Kim stresses the importance of experience and compares some New Testament passages about communication with spirits and healing to shamanistic traditions. It may be added that Old Testament prophecy has also been discussed in a shamanistic perspective. Neo-Pentecostalism and shamanism share a focus on exorcism through spiritual struggle, spiritual healing and this-worldly blessings. Another similarity is the significance of music for reaching an altered state of consciousness or trance. Due to the shamanistic heritage, Koreans are used to a universal presence of spirits as well as to locating disease and other kinds of misfortune in the spiritual world. Kim sees the healing ministry through exorcism and spiritual warfare as the main reason for the extraordinary growth of Pentecostalism in Korea, where the percentage of Pentecostals is higher than in any other Asian country. Faith is expected to produce results, but these can only happen through sacrifices such as tithe offering. This sacrificial logic or practice is yet another structural similarity between neo-Pentecostalism and shamanism. While recognizing the significance of neo-liberal globalization as well as of the middle-class and urban characteristics of Korean neo-Pentecostalism, Kim stresses in particular the more overlooked connections between the new and the old religious orientations.41 In his chapter, Torsten Löfstedt explores the intra-religious relations of a Pentecostal church in Russia, a country with huge areas of land in both Asia and Europe. Leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church tend to see other

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Christian denominations as ‘sects’ and disapprove of ‘proselytism’. As was the case before the revolution in 1917, the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church has developed close relations to the Kremlin, laying claim to the ‘spiritual guardianship’ of the Russian nation, and oppose the ‘westernization’ of other churches (Greg Simons 2005).42 Pentecostals in the Russian Church of Evangelical Christians, who during the long era of Communist rule lived in isolation from Pentecostals elsewhere, are now vulnerable to charges of being a foreign ‘sect’. Recent changes in this church, which avoids a confrontational approach, reflect the importance of its religious and political context. The new name from 2004, when the term ‘Pentecostal’ was dropped, stresses that it is a Russian church (rather than a ‘Western sect’). Its Russian historical roots and Trinitarian theology are stressed, and ‘Western’ ordination of women is not accepted. Likewise, the church’s episcopal structure fits religiously mainstream Russian expectations well, and the considerable emphasis on ecumenism shows that it is not a ‘sect’. Some new groups preaching a ‘prosperity gospel’ have joined the Russian Church of Evangelical Christians, but they have not been allowed to dominate it. Löfstedt’s contribution clearly shows the peculiarity of Russian Pentecostalism as well as the importance of historical and cultural contextualization. The Roma, originating in Asia and living mainly in Europe, are a downtrodden people without a homeland of their own; they are divided into several sub-groups but are united by language and marginalization. In recent decades, they have experienced profound religious changes. A Pentecostal revival started in the 1950s among the Roma in France and has become a form of pan-Roma movement, affecting the Roma population virtually everywhere. In France and Spain, about one quarter of them now belong to Pentecostal churches. The Roma do not have an organized pre-Christian religion of their own, though there are certain typical religious and cultural features. David Thurfjell argues in his chapter that the Roma are now in a transnational process of ethno-genesis and that the acceptance of Pentecostalism is a part of their attempts to form a common ethnic identity. Thurfjell points out the possibility of Pentecostalism to connect to several characteristics of Roma culture. Among other things, music, improvisation and oral mastery are important in both contexts. The normally non-hierarchic, and often congregationalist, structure of Pentecostalism provides much freedom from non-Roma domination. Preaching the equality of all peoples, and emphasizing the significance of thrift and morality, Pentecostalism may assist in terms of upward socioeconomic mobility and thus a way out of marginalization. David Westerlund’s chapter focuses on a Swedish Pentecostal pastor’s religio-theological attitudes to Islam. This pastor, Stanley Sjöberg, whose

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church (Centrumkyrkan) is located in the Stockholm area, is a prolific writer who participates frequently in radio and television programmes too. Since the mid-1950s, Sweden has changed from a religiously homogeneous country, with the (Lutheran) Swedish Church as an established church, to a markedly multi-religious nation with about 300,000 or more people with a Muslim background. In 2000, there was a divorce of church and state, but the Swedish Church continues to play a quite important role in the public sphere and as a symbol of ‘Swedishness’. By contrast, many Swedes conceive of Islam as an ‘un-Swedish’ religion, and there is a common ‘othering’ of Muslims. Sjöberg’s view on Islam as well as on other religions, with the notable exception of Judaism, is exclusivist. He argues that the differences between the Quran and the Bible are ‘dramatic’ and that ‘the Quranic view’ of God is in direct conflict with ‘the biblical view’. Muslim oppression of women and the cruelty of certain Islamic laws are common arguments against Islam that Sjöberg shares with secular critics. However, he also expresses some criticism against the practice of many Christians, and he is opposed to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, he encourages Christians to have dialogue and make friends with Muslims, although the goal is clearly to convert them. In many parts of Latin America, and elsewhere, Pentecostal ‘armies of God’ exorcize demons in a ‘spiritual warfare’. Examples of this are provided in Virginia Garrard-Burnett’s chapter on Guatemala. In the Almolonga town, where 90 per cent of the population are Maya Indians, a Catholic reformist movement had helped to prepare the ground for Pentecostalism and modernization, and in the 1970s, mass conversions to this type of Protestantism took place there. Intercessors who exorcize spiritual enemies use the names of spirits and confront them in the name of God. Local pastors play a key role in the reconfiguration and accommodation of indigenous Maya beliefs. Pentecostalism involved not only religious but also social change. For instance, the use of alcohol is strongly discouraged, while productive, entrepreneurial behaviour is encouraged. Despite its rhetoric, spiritual warfare valorizes local identity, and economic prosperity has lessened religious tensions. Local pride in place and community somehow transcends religious differences. A uniquely Mayan Pentecostal identity has been created, which is not tied to oppression and marginalization but to success or even privilege. In a chapter on Pentecostalism in Colombia, Elisabeth Brusco focuses on women. Colombian, and other Latin American as well as African and Asian, women have been in the forefront in joining Pentecostal and other evangelical movements. This may improve their conditions and provide opportunities for new leadership roles. Pentecostal healing concerns both individuals and families, suffering from poverty, violence – including domestic violence – and

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other problems. The transformed identities of both sexes represent something radically new. When men become more ‘ascetic’ – avoiding drinking, smoking, gambling and visiting prostitutes, which are common ‘vices’ among Colombian men influenced by machismo – women benefit from such changes too. New religious identities are formed partly in opposition to Catholic practice, and ‘meaningless’ Catholic rituals are rejected. Pentecostals and other Evangelicals oppose the Catholic hierarchical structure too, and – with reference to the ‘priesthood of all believers’ – women can, for instance, lead prayer and Bible sessions in their homes. As in other Latin American countries, Colombian Pentecostals tend to be politically liberal, while the Catholic hierarchy is more conservative and has a history of close relations with the Colombian state.43 Hans Geir Aasmundsen discusses in his contribution the relationships between Pentecostals and Catholics in a wide political and societal context in Argentina. Though Pentecostalism has a long history there, its real ‘take off’ was in the 1980s. That was also a period of profound political changes, in particular after the reintroduction of democracy in 1983. The position of the Catholic Church – as in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, historically closely tied to the state – has become weakened, although it retains a special status and certain privileges. In order to counteract the process of secularization and the rapid growth of Pentecostalism, this church is trying to strengthen its involvement in the established public sphere. There the Pentecostals, in contrast, are almost completely absent. Some new umbrella organizations have strengthened their position in the Argentinean society, but to a large extent, they need to voice their opinions in semi-official and more private contexts, using, for instance, their own newspapers and internet sites. In the established public sphere, dominated by the main media, both secular and Catholic actors seem to regard Pentecostals as a threat. Pentecostal converts are found primarily in poor areas, in which the main media tend to show little interest. There is some evidence that Pentecostals, who now participate more than earlier in societal affairs, are becoming increasingly interested in politics. Hence, possibly there is a Pentecostal ideology in the making. Despite the competition for followers, Catholics and Pentecostals also have ecumenical meetings and may see a common goal in fighting against, for instance, secularization. In a chapter on Argentinian Pentecostalism and the Afro-American Umbanda religion competing among poor people in urban areas, where both have successfully recruited adherents, Daniel Míguez centres his attention on the significance of some socio-economic and moral issues. Far from being dualistic, Umbanda has unbounded spiritual beings, and lesser spirits may be

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associated with, for example thieves and prostitutes. In Umbanda Bandido, which exemplifies a tendency to deviate from conventional morals, canonization of young bandits may occur. Míguez argues that certain circumstances, such as the worsening economic situation of the 1990s, may cause a predatory situational moral among urban poor. Alternative moral values may be seen as another basis of dignity. However, they do not favour stable social ties. Hence, there is a cost in terms of social and psychological instability. Pentecostals rather provide a religious version of the social and work ethics of Peronismo. Thus, they both pray and work hard. With a tendency towards dualism, they do not tolerate moral transgressions, like delinquency, but offer multiple means to endure hardships. Pentecostalism can alienate people from some previous friends and limit the possibility of questioning the social order. However, the possibility of direct contact with God increases the self-esteem of poor people, and Pentecostalism helps them regain a feeling of control on their lives. Jan-Åke Alvarsson discusses different phases of religious change among the ‘Weenhayek Indians in Bolivia, people with hunting-gathering and shamanistic traditions who have developed a religious orientation of their own. In the 1940s, Swedish Pentecostal missionary work started in Villa Montes. Not many converted, but a kind of parallelism developed. ‘The new life’ was associated with Pentecostalism, the Spanish language and the national and public domain, whereas ‘the old life’ belonged to the home sphere. In the 1970s, massive conversions occurred, and Pentecostalism became the predominant religious tradition in Villa Montes. Pentecostalism was indigenized and became an important part of ‘Weenhayek ethnic identity. The early religio-theological position, which branded Amerindian religions as diabolic, was reformed, and the dichotomy between the different religions was blurred. Indigenous pastors now preached in ‘Weenhayek and, for instance, local music was used. The new fusion also blurred the public and domestic spheres. More recently, in a third phase, indigenization has developed even further, although this is less clearly manifested in Villa Montes than in Las Lomitas, among the neighbouring Wícha Indians on the Argentinian side of the border, where shamanic elements have become parts of Pentecostal healing. Officially, shamanism may still be frowned upon, but unofficially, Pentecostals can admit that shamans do heal. Instead of being dichotomized as good versus evil, both religious traditions may be seen as useful, if different, approaches to the divine. According to Alvarsson, it is possible that in the minds of ‘Weenhayek and Wícha, the two traditions have always been fairly close and that the early dichotomy reflected the position of foreign missionaries rather than indigenous Amerindians.

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Conclusions and Final Remarks In many works on Pentecostalism, there has been a focus on Pentecostals in the USA and their missionary influence elsewhere. The contributions to this book highlight instead those parts of the world where the great majority of Pentecostals are found and show how Pentecostalism has largely been shaped by encounters with various religious and cultural contexts. The indigenization of this type of Christianity has been facilitated by its cultural adaptability and ability to become ‘localized’ or ‘incarnated’. Stressing the decisive importance of the gifts of the spirit, and offering spiritual empowerment, Pentecostalism has had wide appeal in areas where people are attentive to a world of spiritual beings. As a modernizing force with a strong ability to incorporate ‘traditional’ elements, Pentecostalism may serve as a bridge between ‘old’ and ‘new’. As a ‘travelling religion’, it constantly transcends national and cultural boundaries. Pentecostalism proclaims a message of universal relevance, but it does not have a uniform set of doctrines, cultural homogeneity or organizational unity. Hence, despite its worldwide expansion, Pentecostalism does not represent a supracultural, homogenizing religious process on the global scene. There is, rather, a marked pluralism. As shown by many examples in this book, theologies of religion, be they formal or – as is typical of Pentecostalism – non-formal, are not produced in a religio-cultural vacuum. By grounding the studies mainly in persons and events, rather than in abstractions, people are allowed to account for themselves. Besides recognizing the common official rejection or demonization of non-Pentecostal others, the studies in this book exemplify the inculturating power of Pentecostals ‘on the ground’. The paradox of rejection and incorporation is most clearly seen in those several contributions that concern Pentecostal encounters with indigenous religions in the Majority World. There it is shown how Pentecostals relate to, for instance, shamanic features in Asia and Latin America as well as to spiritual beings and witches in Africa. Pentecostalism has been least successful in predominantly Muslim parts of the world, and some of the contributions exemplify the exclusivist attitudes to Islam. Whereas this religion may seem as an arch-enemy of Pentecostalism, and as the main competitor in the struggle for expansion, its views on – the non-missionizing – Judaism and Jews, on the contrary, are inclusivist. It is often stressed that Jews and Christians share a ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition. As exemplified in the chapters by Helgesson Kjellin and Allan Anderson, however, attitudes to the other ‘Abrahamic religions’ may also vary a great deal between Pentecostals in different cultural and historical contexts.

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Similarly, there is much diversity in terms of intra-religious relations. For instance, while the development of Pentecostalism in Russia has been profoundly affected by its defensive relationship to the predominant, and politically supported Russian Orthodox Church, the stronger and more offensive Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal movement in the more markedly multireligious Ghana has been able to exert much influence on other Christian churches in a process of ‘pentecostalization’. In Latin America, Catholic leaders are concerned about the rapid expansion of Pentecostalism, and Catholic – Pentecostal relations are often tense, although important examples of ecumenical co-operation can also be found. The contributions to this book show the importance of focusing on religious encounters of the rapidly expanding Pentecostalism. They also exemplify the significance of ‘grounding globalization’. In upcoming studies of Pentecostalism, much could be gained from a greater scholarly interest in postcolonial theoretical approaches, which have hitherto not figured prominently in this field of research. There is also an important potential for comparing the spread and contextualizing capacity of Pentecostalism to the expansion of Sufism, particularly outside the Arab world. This remarkable expansion, mainly in Africa and Asia, is largely due to a similar capacity of inculturating or localizing a universal message, in this case of Islam. Considering that more than two-thirds of all Pentecostals now live outside the west – in Africa, Asia and Latin America – the main focus of Pentecostal studies should be on these non-Western parts of the world. It is of great significance that, increasingly, scholars from these continents, with a thorough knowledge of ‘local’ cultures and languages, take part in research on Pentecostalism. And as far as the minority areas of Pentecostalism are concerned, that is Europe – the religiously exceptional continent – and North America, research on Pentecostalism should increasingly focus on the ‘mission in return’ of Pentecostals from countries such as Brazil, Nigeria and South Korea, who in interaction and co-operation with westerners now develop new intriguing forms of contextualized Christianity.

Notes 1. For a discussion about historical roots of Pentecostalism, see for example, Allan Anderson (2004: 19–38) and Edith Blumhofer (2004: 1458–9). 2. This book also exemplifies the tendency among some scholars and others to confuse Pentecostalism with, the later appearing, fundamentalist movement. A valuable discussion about inappropriate and pejorative terms such as ‘fundamentalism’, ‘sect’ and ‘syncretism’, sometimes used in studies on Pentecostalism, is found in David Martin

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3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

19

(2006: 26–30). Unlike fundamentalism, Pentecostalism is not primarily concerned with doctrines but with the gifts of the Holy Spirit; for a long time, fundamentalists were in the forefront of rejecting and ridiculing Pentecostals (Allan Anderson 2004: 62). Another recent book, which is an excellent example of the historical development and indigenized forms of Pentecostalism in a certain context, is David Maxwell’s African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement (2006). See also, for example, Robert M. Anderson (1987: 229) and Ivan M. Satyavrata (2006: 219). The latter concludes that there is ‘broad agreement on what constitutes the single most distinguishing feature of Pentecostalism: the central place ascribed to the transforming experience of God the Holy Spirit’. That was also the time of the development of the Charismatic movement within old churches such as Anglican, Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutheran, which are sometimes referred to as ‘mainline’. See note 4. Sometimes the term ‘Charismatic Christianity’ is used inclusively to include this movement as well as classical and neo-Pentecostalism. See, for example, Simon Coleman’s book The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity (2000), which focuses on Livets Ord (the word of life), a Swedish Church that belongs to the faith movement. Coleman also uses the concept ‘conservative Christianity’. As discussed in chapter 10, the term exclusivism may denote the idea that only one religion, or religious denomination, is true and that beliefs and practices in other religions therefore are false to the extent that they are in conflict with this religion. The concept universalism, at the other end of the spectrum, may stand for the view that all religions are true and equal ways to reach the ultimate goal, which among Pentecostals can be called heaven. In his classical book Fire from Heaven, Harvey Cox (1996: 251) writes about ‘the remarkable capacity of Pentecostalism to absorb both pre-Christian indigenous traditions and previous layers of Christian practice’, which helps us to understand ‘its profound appeal’. See also Simon Coleman (2006: 10). Examples can be found in, for instance Allan Anderson (2004: 253, passim) and Robert A. Berg (2006b: 331–2). Anderson uses the term ‘Majority World’ instead of the Euro-centric and derogatory concept ‘Third World’. A female Pentecostal pastor from Zambia once said that God did not create ‘Third’ but only ‘First’ World people (David Maxwell 2006: 225). A well-known definition of globalization has been provided by Roland Robertson (1992: 8): ‘Globalization as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and to the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole’. See further, for example, Simon Coleman (2000: 55–65), David Westerlund (2001: 28–32) and Birgit Schaebler (2004: 5), who discusses the role of postmodernist thinking. An important new book in this field is the sociologist Peter Beyer’s Religions in Global Society (2006). See also Peter Beyer’s earlier, pioneering volume Religion and Globalization (1994). See further, for example, David Martin (2005: 71–2). As expressed by the historian Ruth Marshall-Fratani (1998: 291): ‘While Pentecostalism is resolutely “modern” and “transcultural”, it does not find its success through a wholesale rejection of the past, but through an engagement with it; refashioning

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15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

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history and domesticating it at the same time’. See also Simon Coleman (2000: 36), Sibusiso Masondo (2007: 707) and Allan Anderson (2004: 286). For an interesting discussion about terms such as ‘glocal’ and ‘glocalism’ in a Muslim context, see Patrice C. Brodeur (2004). Brodeur suggests the term ‘glocalism’ as an analytical tool to overcome the gaps between dichotomous representations of reality (global/local, modernity/postmodernity, self/other). An interesting example of the ‘glocal’ is the name of the university of the Swedish neo-Pentecostal denomination Livets Ord (word of life), that is Livets Ord University, which combines Swedish and English words. A pioneer in this more dialogical orientation is Roland Robertson. See, for example, Roland Robertson (1992). Implied in Robertson’s model of globalization is a simultaneous homogenization and heterogenization. On theoretical discussions about the global and the local, see further Peter Beyer (2006: 23–9). This rapid growth has contributed most substantially to the rethinking of secularization theories, based mainly on European material. See, for example, Peter Berger (1999) and David Martin (2005). Apparently, scholars influenced by postcolonial theorizing have been more involved in studies of, among other things, Islam – Edward Said (1978) being a pioneer – than of Pentecostalism (and other forms of Christianity). Considering the vast expansion of Pentecostalism in the Majority World, however, the application of postcolonial thinking to the study of this form of religion could yield important results. See also, for example, Murray Dempster et al. (1999). Cf. Simon Coleman (2000: 31–40). A similar perspective can be found in, for instance, Roswith Gerloff (2003: 1238). In the USA, as well as for example Jamaica, African Americans played a key role in the construction of the Pentecostal movement See, for instance, David D. Daniels (2006: 275–6). For more details on early Pentecostal missionary work, see, for example, Anderson (2007: 157–85). David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian and Todd M. Johnson (2001: 13–5). It should be emphasized that the statistics about numbers of Pentecostals is uncertain and contested. Latin America: 141 million, Asia: 135 million and Africa: 126 million (2001). See further Allan Anderson (2004: 132–6; 2007: 108–48). For some more details on Indian Pentecostalism, see Allan Anderson (2004: 124–8; 2007: 75–108). Between 80 and 90 per cent of the population are Muslims. In Latin America, there has been a tendency to associate Protestantism with progress and political radicalism (David Martin 2005: 71). See further Allan Anderson (2004: 63–74; 2007: 199–206). For two classical studies of Pentecostalism in Latin America, see David Martin (1990) and David Stoll (1990). The Assemblies of God is one of the biggest classical Pentecostal churches. For some more information, see, for example, Gary B. McGee (2004). In neighbouring Botswana, the situation has been very different: Pentecostal, as well as other evangelical, churches have participated in several ecumenical bodies there (James Amanze 1998).

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32. See further Walter Russell Mead (2006: 39–41). 33. Besides, Muslims can be seen as a main competitor in the struggle for religious expansion, and predominantly Muslim regions, such as North Africa, are notoriously difficult Christian mission fields. Concerning some early attempts, see Allan Anderson (2007: 149–57). See also Leonard N. Bartlotti (2006). 34. For a recent study of Christian–Muslim relations in South Africa, in a wider perspective, see Muhammed Haron (2006). 35. Shoko’s study may be compared to Maxwell’s recent study of another expansive Pentecostal denomination, the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA). 36. See, for example, David Westerlund (2006: 200–1). 37. The first state to decide about this was Zamfara; this happened in 1999, the same year when the ‘born again’ Christian Olusegun Obasanjo won the presidential elections in Nigeria. See, for example, Umar H. D. Danfulani (2005). 38. For a study of Bonnke’s missionary work in Africa, see Gary Lease (1995). 39. In Nigeria, AICs are commonly known as Aladura, a Yoruba word for prayer. 40. Inclusiveness tends to be a typical feature of African Indigenous Religions in general and of, for example, Yoruba religion in particular. For an interesting study of Yoruba inclusiveness, see Jacob K. Olupona (1991). 41. See also, for example, Harvey Cox (1996: 91, 228), who writes about ‘Christian shamanism’ and argues that Pentecostal spirituality lies latent within many forms of religious expression. 42. In the discourse of some religious and imperialist Russian nationalists, Moscow is the Third Rome, chosen by God to be a leading religious light and a centre of a world empire. 43. The Catholic Church in Colombia was an established church until the divorce between church and state in 1991.

References Amanze, James (1998). African Christianity in Botswana. Gweru: Mambo Press. Anderson, Allan (2004). An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2007). Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. London: SCM Press. Anderson, Robert M. (1987). ‘Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity’, in Mircea Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion XI. New York: Collier Macmillan, pp. 229–35. Barrett, David B., George T. Kurian and Todd M. Johnson (2001). Encyclopedia of World Christianity, 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Bartlotti, Leonard N. (2006). ‘Islam, relationship to’, in Stanley M. Burgess (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. London: Routledge, pp. 264–9. Berg, Robert A. (2006a). ‘Judaism, relationship to’, in Stanley M. Burgess (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. London: Routledge, pp. 271–4. (2006b). ‘Non-Pentecostal Christians, relationship to’, in Stanley M. Burgess (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 329–33.

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Berger, Peter (1999). The Desecularization of the World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Bergunder, Michael (2003). ‘Mission in der Pfingstbewegung’, in Hans Pieter Benz et al. (eds), Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart XI. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 1241–2. Beyer, Peter (1994). Religion and Globalization. London: Sage. (2006). Religions in Global Society. London and New York: Routledge. Blumhofer, Edith (2004). ‘Pentecostalism’, in Hans J. Hillerbrand (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Protestantism III. New York: Routledge, pp. 1458–66. Brodeur, Patrice C. (2004). ‘From postmodernism to “glocalism”: towards a theoretical understanding of contemporary Arab Muslim constructions of religious others’, in Birgit Schaebler and Leif Stenberg (eds), Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, pp. 188–205. Brouwer, Steve, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (eds) (1996). Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism. New York and London: Routledge. Coleman, Simon (2000). The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2006). ‘Studying “global” Pentecostalism: tensions, representations and opportunities’, PentecoStudies VI/1, pp. 1–17. Cox, Harvey (1996). Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Danfulani, Umar H. D. (2005). The Sharia Issue and Christian–Muslim Relations in Contemporary Nigeria, Studies on Inter-Religious Relations 15. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Daniels, David D. (2006). ‘Grasping the global reality: a review of Allan Anderson’s An Introduction to Pentecostalism’, Pneuma XXVIII/2, pp. 275–7. Davie, Grace (2002). Europe: The Exceptional Case; Parameters of Faith in the Modern World. Darton: Longman & Todd. Dempster, Murray et al. (1999). The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel. Irvine, CA: Regnum Books. Gerloff, Roswith (2003). ‘Asien, Afrika, Lateinamerika’, in Hans Pieter Benz et al. (eds), Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart XI. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 1237–42. Geschiere, Peter (1997). The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. Hannerz, Ulf (1996). Transnational Connections. London and New York: Routledge. Haron, Muhammed (2006). The Dynamics of Christian–Muslim Relations in South Africa (ca. 1960–2000): From Exclusivism to Pluralism, Studies on Inter-Religious Relations 31. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Jaffarian, Michael (2004). ‘Are there more non-Western missionaries than Western missionaries?’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research XXVIII/3, pp. 131–2. Lease, Gary (1995). ‘Reinhard Bonnke: German missionary in a strange land–an introduction to contemporary evangelization in Africa’, Journal for the Study of Religion VIII/2, pp. 59–73. Marshall-Fratani, Ruth (1998). ‘Mediating the global and the local in Nigerian Pentecostalism’, Journal of Religion in Africa XXVIII/3, pp. 278–315. Martin, David (1990). Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell. (2005). On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. London, Ashgate.

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(2006). ‘Undermining the old paradigms: rescripting Pentecostal accounts’, Penteco Studies V/1, pp. 18–38. Masondo, Sibusiso (2007). ‘Pentecostalism’, in Robert Wuthnow (ed.), Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion II. Washington D.C.: CQ Press, pp. 701–9. Maxwell, David (2006). African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism and the Rise of a Zimbabwean Transnational Religious Movement. Oxford: James Currey, Harare: Weaver Press and Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. McGee, Gary B. (2004). ‘Assemblies of God’, in Hans J. Hillerbrand (ed.), Encyclopedia of Protestantism I. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 120–4. Mead, Walter Russell (2006). ‘God’s country?’, Foreign Affairs LXXXV/5, pp. 24–43. Olupona, Jacob K. (1991). Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals, Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion 28. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Omenyo, Cephas (2002). Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches of Ghana. Zoetemeer: Boekencentrum. Ranger, Terence (1987). ‘Religion, development and African Christian identity’, in Kirsten Holst Petersen (ed.), Religion, Development and African Identity, Seminar Proceedings No. 17, Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, pp. 29–58. Robertson, Roland (1992). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Said, Edward (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. Satyavrata, Ivan M. (2006). ‘Globalization of Pentecostalism’, in Stanley M. Burgess (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 218–23. Schaebler, Birgit (2004). ‘Civilizing others: global modernity and the local boundaries (French/German, Ottoman, and Arab) of savagery’, in Birgit Schaebler and Leif Stenberg (eds), Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, pp. 3–29. Simons, Greg (2005). The Russian Orthodox Church and Its Role in Cultural Production, Studies on Inter-Religious Relations 17. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Steed, Christopher (2006). ‘Review article’, Swedish Missiological Themes VIC/3, pp. 407–10. Stoll, David (1990). Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Westerlund, David (2001). Conflict or Peaceful Co-Existence? Contemporary Christian– Muslim Relations, Studies on Inter-Religious Relations 1. Uppsala: Swedish Science Press. (2006). African Indigenous Religions and Disease Causation: From Spiritual Beings to Living Humans, Studies of Religion in Africa 28. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

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1 Boundaries of South African Pentecostalism The Case of the Assemblies of God ■

Kristina Helgesson Kjellin

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n this chapter, I take you to South Africa, to the city of Durban, and to two Pentecostal congregations there. Both these congregations belong to the denomination Assemblies of God (AOG), one of the first Pentecostal denominations established in South Africa after the well-known events at Azusa Street in Los Angeles (Peter Watt 1992: 19–20). In South Africa, AOG is divided into four sections: white (‘the Group’), coloured (‘the Association’), black (‘the Movement’) and independent (‘the Autonomous section’). This division lives on despite the new democratic order. The two congregations that this chapter focuses on are Red Hill, which predominantly has coloured and Indian members, and Olive Tree, which has white members. Building on the fieldwork that I have carried out in these congregations between 2000 and 2005, I will highlight the ambiguity of boundaries that is evident today within South African Pentecostalism. Different boundaries are maintained and even strengthened in various ways, in relation to both society and the other sections of this particular denomination. At the same time, attempts are being made to cross previous boundaries, and in other cases, the erasure of boundaries is paradoxically raising new ones.1 More specifically, the themes I bring up are the division of the AOG along racial lines and the difficulty in crossing and breaking these boundaries; and the way social involvement and efforts to erase divisions in society, in some cases, paradoxically work so that divisions instead are maintained, and sometimes even strengthened. International networks and connections that the two congregations have and act within are also presented. I will argue that power 27

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structures need to be considered, both nationally and internationally, when boundary-making and boundary-breaking are analysed.

Racial Division The AOG in South Africa dates back to 1908 with the arrival of missionaries from Europe and North America. The missionaries who formed the South African AOG initially did not intend to establish a new denomination. However, due to administrative reasons and the sometimes problematic contacts with authorities, the cooperation among the missionaries increased (Peter Watt 1992: 19–20) and eventually resulted in the formation of the ‘South African District of the Assemblies of God of the United States of America’ in 1925, which took the form of an ‘umbrella organization’ (Allan Anderson 1999: 102; Peter Watt 1992: 127).2 In 1932, AOG in South Africa was recognized as a separate national denomination with its own constitution (Peter Watt 1992: 128). Initially, there were black congregations controlled by white missionaries. The first white congregations were established in 1935 (Allan Anderson 1999: 102). In 1938, it was decided that the structure of AOG would allow the existence of various autonomous church sections with different leaders. This structure provided for the establishment of black leaders, thus making it a ‘unique feature’ within South African Pentecostalism at the time (Allan A. Anderson & Gerald J. Pillay 1997: 236). Between 1936 and 1944, the general executive of AOG changed from being a board with only white members to being multiracial, hence consisting of members with coloured, Indian, black and white descent (Peter Watt 1992: 40). This was unique among white-founded Pentecostal denominations in South Africa, and AOG has generally had a more open attitude towards integration than other Pentecostal churches (Allan Anderson 1999: 102).3 However, this has not precluded racial tensions and the division of the denomination into the above-mentioned sections – ‘the Group’, ‘the Association’, ‘the Movement’4 and the ‘Autonomous’ section.5 The division of the denomination into sections was the result of the work of different leaders and missionaries, and some AOG leaders contest that the division was made along racial lines. Be that as it may, this division came to ‘reflect the [racial] divisions in the South African society’ (Allan Anderson 1999: 102–3).6 According to Allan Anderson (1999: 106), ‘white South African Pentecostals do not always acknowledge their own non-racial beginnings – for these, and the origins of Pentecostalism in Azusa Street, are indeed “dangerous memories” for them’. Among the members of Red Hill and Olive Tree, there is not much awareness of Azusa Street – at least it is not something that is referred

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to when South African Pentecostalism is discussed. This is particularly so in Olive Tree, where the focus of the members is on their commitment to Israel, as we will see later in the chapter. Information from my informants indicates that people do not seem to want change, but prefer the status quo, that is, separate congregations for whites, blacks and coloureds. I have never heard the pastors in Red Hill and Olive Tree bring up the non-racial beginnings of the Pentecostal movement in their sermons. Likewise, I have never heard members refer to this when pondering over the racial division of the AOG. The reasons for this can be lack of knowledge as well as of interest. The history of Pentecostalism, both globally and locally in South Africa, does not seem to be viewed as relevant to the present-day local context. Among the pastors I have interviewed, there is, on the one hand, a sense of pride over the fact that the AOG has been less racist, at least structurally, than the Apostolic Faith Mission or the Full Gospel Church, which are two other Pentecostal denominations in South Africa. On the other hand, there is a great deal of self-criticism of and self-reflection over the way the AOG is constituted and the lack of integration among its different sections. While some AOG pastors and members long for unity among the different sections, there is at the same time awareness of the great differences that exist, for instance, when it comes to styles of leadership, ways of worship and language. Colin La Foy, vice chairman of AOG and pastor in Red Hill, who in 2000 envisioned his mission as working for unity between ‘the Movement’, ‘the Group’ and ‘the Association’, expressed in 2005 his duty as a leader to support the coloured and black churches, to give them dignity and to ‘heal the trauma from the past’. We both attended the AOG National Conference in September 2003, where he, from the platform, ridiculed the division within the denomination and spoke in favour of unity between the different sections.7 Two years later, however, he had changed his mind about the issue of unity. La Foy stated that it had become clear to him that nobody was interested in unity, and he could not see any signs of change within the denomination. He stated that he had wasted years in trying to pursue the idea of unity, and one could sense in him a feeling of hopelessness when it came to the question of unity between black, white, coloured and Indian members of the AOG. He was of the opinion that the white churches are the only ones that have the capacity to become multiracial, because they attract the upward mobile black people. Thus, the division of the AOG along the old apartheid racial lines lingers on. Instead, individual congregations and the different sections have their own agendas and develop separate networks with other churches and denominations. Hence, boundaries within the denomination do not imply boundaries

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towards other denominations. Instead, ecumenical cooperation is based on various interests, as we will see in the following sections.

Social Involvement Within the AOG in South Africa, social involvement has always been an important aspect of its ministry. However, it exists without any developed theological framework. In recent years, according to Peter Watt (1992: 112), ‘the social implications of the Gospel have become more prominent in the preaching, planning and spending of local assemblies’. According to the members of Olive Tree, the AOG social work has generally been directed towards members of small means, rather than towards people outside the congregation. Regarding the AOG, however, it is important to remember the diversity among congregations: some have been active in different ways in society for many years through various social programmes, while others have had less social involvement. Apparently, the differences depend primarily on the pastor. The strong position of the pastor means that he can largely decide where the congregation should invest time, energy and money. The social involvements of Olive Tree and Red Hill show both similarities and differences. As will become clear, there are connections between local and transnational involvements. Local, national and global power structures are closely intertwined. Thus, these three levels should not be strictly differentiated but rather be seen as part of the same processes of ‘flow’ and ‘closure’ (Birgit Meyer & Peter Geschiere 1999: 2). In the following text, I will provide two examples of social involvement. It is Thursday morning and we are on the way in the car to the Olive Tree church hall in downtown Durban. I am sitting next to one of the women who helps at a sewing school, and Mary, her former maid, is sitting on the back seat. Mary is a woman in her early 60s, who has just started at the sewing school. She says that she enjoys it very much. As we arrive, the other teachers and pupils are coming too. It is not always easy for pupils to arrive on time as they travel in minitaxi-buses from the townships surrounding Durban, and the traffic is very heavy. A woman has brought her little son. The women range in age from the late 20s to the early 60s. As the morning hours pass, the women work on their various sewing projects, and the teachers walk around and help them. The fabrics are colourful and ‘African’ in style. The women from the townships call the teachers ‘ma’am’, and pupils and teachers share a loving and jocular atmosphere. Seth, a Zulu pastor, arrives and all the women, both teachers and pupils, express that they are glad to see him. There is a break for refreshments: the pupils

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are served lemonade, while the teachers drink tea or coffee. Seth preaches and prays with the women. After the break, the women continue to sew for a while, before it is time to pack up and go home. We all stand in a big circle, holding hands, and pray together before we say goodbye. The sewing school was started by Dalena Sidaway, a member of Olive Tree, and another woman who in 1992 had a vision that she was going to do something for ‘the underprivileged’. A third woman, who worked as a teacher in another sewing school, heard about it and joined the founders. They went into the townships and distributed clothes that they had sewn. After two years, the woman who had the vision decided that it was better to teach the women in the townships how to sew, and they asked women living there if they would be interested in learning. The different occasions and contacts that led to the opening of the sewing school are explained at the congregation’s website as answers to prayer. Dalena emphasizes that ‘the Lord brought it all together’. Women from the townships attend a four-year course conducted in the church hall once a week, and they are taught by four women from the congregation. Under the heading ‘emulating the past’, the Olive Tree website describes that ‘the main aim is to motivate, encourage and assist these ladies to find employment or to start their own income-generating businesses’. The classes provide additional opportunities to evangelize. During every class, there is a break for refreshments when, as described above, a visiting Zulu pastor reads from the Bible and prays with the women. Dalena says: We’ve had a lot of ladies coming there with other religions. . . And we’ve had ladies coming there that had problems with aggression. And as the year went and the ministry went forth, by the end of the year the ladies are saved. [. . . ] Last week, or the week before, we prayed [. . . ]. And we dedicated the morning in prayer. And we just asked the ladies, those that are in need, because there are incredible needs. Both finances, AIDS, different illnesses . . . There were about eight ladies that came for prayer. The black ladies, they don’t readily come forward with their needs. There’s a bridge to gap between white and black, still. And it’s wonderful how, at the sewing school, they started to trust us and they started to open up. And we prayed and last week we had testimonies of what the Lord has actually done. (This quotation, as well as the next, is taken from my interview with Dalena Sidaway on 13 May 2003.)

Dalena ascribes her motivation to continue with the sewing school every Thursday year after year to the desire to serve and evangelize. She says that this involvement has given her an opportunity to appreciate all the privileges she enjoys as a white person living in South Africa, and that it has added a deeper dimension to her faith: It’s a wonderful sense of achievement and bridging the gap, with the problems we have in South Africa. . . . I mean they [the ladies from the townships] are coming

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there [to the sewing school] and sometimes some of the ladies are going through such tough times back at home. Their children have gone off, they’ve hardly got food on their table. But they’ll walk in there, singing and glorifying the Lord! And that teaches us, white ladies, that we’ve got so much. You know, it’s incredible how things have changed. They [the black people] always served us, now things have changed and now we can return that and we can actually serve them.

The members of Olive Tree are encouraged to support the purchase of sewing machines for the women taking the course; once a year, the women hold a fashion show in the Olive Tree church hall for everyone to see what they have achieved. On one such occasion, all the women participated in a morning service, where they sang and thanked the members of the congregation for their support. For some of the women, taking the course at the sewing school has resulted in employment, and one woman now runs her own business. The Red Hill congregation has a social programme that is directed towards people living in the church’s local community. The secretary, Rose Nelson, describes the ways in which the congregation provides for families who are struggling financially, or otherwise. On a monthly basis, they give tea, coffee and vegetables to people in need. Red Hill also supports a nearby home for the elderly with tea, coffee and sugar. Both drug abuse and poverty are rampant in the area, and Rose emphasizes how important it is that the members are engaged there amidst all the heartache and suffering. At the end of each month, a two-rand offering from each member is contributed to improve the conditions; support goes to members as well as non-members. The women from various Christian churches in the area also cooperate to a great extent8 . They have provided blankets to AIDS orphans in the rural areas, among other things. The congregation initiated an AIDS programme a few years ago. In 2003, Mark Creamer, a man in his 30s and member of the Red Hill congregation, was appointed as the project manager for the AIDS programme that operated out of Sekusile, a school for underprivileged adults funded by PMU InterLife in Sweden.9 The congregation received financial support from this Swedish organization to start the programme, as well as from a similar organization in Canada to establish a national AIDS desk with the intention of turning every local congregation of the AOG in the country into a resource and caring centre for people afflicted with HIV/AIDS. The congregation also raised some money itself by selling a CD recorded by the worship team. These efforts helped them to pay the employees’ salaries. The plan was to have a team of ten people who would work as counsellors and train teachers from schools in the area about HIV/AIDS. They used a specific programme called ‘Crossroads’, a programme that the University of KwaZulu-Natal was testing to

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determine if it resulted in people changing their sexual behaviour. The programme aimed at reaching a secular audience; there was no specific Christian perspective aimed at evangelizing, although Jesus was used as a role model. The counselling was to take place at a clinic, since the experience is that the stigma of having HIV/AIDS hinders people from attending church. Mark Creamer, the project manager, worked in close cooperation with the Anglican Church in the area, and the response was very positive. The purpose of the programme was to empower people to make ‘positive sexual choices’, to influence behaviour in the long term. The programme had mixed audience. Black people participated because the communities in the area were becoming increasingly integrated. Creamer had spoken to Indian people, but he could not reach many white persons, mainly because they did not move or enter in areas inhabited by coloured people. He emphasized that the AOG has a responsibility to be involved with the HIV/AIDS issue and this was an opportunity for the church to break the silence and the stigma that surrounds this illness. Since then, Creamer and his family have emigrated to Australia, and a woman who was employed to go out into schools has left. The funds from abroad dried up, and in 2005, the congregation was struggling to rejuvenate the programme. Gloria Samuels, the wife of the pastor, says that they have tried to train new people, but so far, they have not succeeded. In 2005, they had volunteers working for the programme, and once a year a special AIDS service is held as part of the AIDS awareness programme. The youth are also involved in various ways. However, it is not easy to motivate people afflicted with HIV/AIDS to come to Red Hill, or other churches, because of the stigma. And even if an increasing number of churches are trying to do something about HIV/AIDS in one way or the other, there are also several churches that have chosen not to get involved. Gloria Samuels is of the opinion that it is much more difficult to declare one’s HIV status in the church environment than in other areas of society, and that pastors generally are not interested in dealing with this issue. In 2005, it was uncertain what would happen to the project – whether it would continue on a smaller scale or cease to exist altogether. The projects of the sewing school, directed towards black women living in townships, and the AIDS support work, for people afflicted with HIV/AIDS, both illuminate power structures that still prevail in the South African society and those at the global level: racial, political and economic structures that the congregations and their members act within. The sewing school exhibits continuity with the past, as the relationship between the teachers and the pupils very much resembles the racial order of the apartheid system. This

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continuity also goes back to the early period of mission work, when teaching the ‘natives’ in order to ‘civilize’ and ‘Christianize’ them was a common theme among missionaries who came to South Africa (e.g. Karin Sarja 2002: 81–82). The power structure has a built-in gender dimension, as sewing historically has been a female occupation. In addition, the relationship between whites and blacks has been constructed within a hierarchical order, where black people have worked as domestic servants or manual labourers for the white population. Within this structure, there is a gender hierarchy of ‘madams’ and ‘maids’ that still largely exists among women (Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2006: 120–121). However, this racial gendered hierarchy in present-day South Africa is now changing to a certain degree; it is becoming increasingly common for well-off black and coloured people to employ domestic servants. Although this chapter points at the racial division that continues to exist within the AOG, steps have been taken by individuals across previous boundaries, steps that challenge the existing order, as shown by the following episode. At a ladies’ meeting in Olive Tree in 2005, Joan Maclue, a woman in her early 60s and member of Red Hill, was invited to speak about her experiences as an abused wife and how she managed to survive her tragic experiences. A woman from Olive Tree had similar experiences and related these to those gathered at the meeting. Joan admitted that, for many years, she had the impression that white people were all happy and without problems; she could not imagine that white people could have problems similar to those of coloureds. Because of the apartheid system, she never associated with whites; therefore, it took her many years to realize that white people also could suffer and have domestic problems. The atmosphere at the meeting was charged up as she told about her experiences, and the women gathered were all very moved by the two women’s stories. They were united through their common experiences of being women, irrespective of the colour of the skin.

International Connections Red Hill and Olive Tree have differing experiences of transnational relationships with churches and organizations. Being composed of coloured and white people, respectively, their positions in society, as well as the individual interests of the pastors, have dictated the kinds of alliances that have been developed in the two congregations. These alliances and networks are experienced to be both enabling and hindering, the latter particularly so in the Red Hill congregation.

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The great differences in all aspects of life for black, white and coloured citizens that characterized the apartheid era are still largely evident in South African Pentecostalism. Black South African Pentecostals have not had the same exposure to international contacts as white Pentecostals, for instance through conferences (Nico Horn 1991: 15). This situation lasted until the isolation of black Pentecostals stopped in the 1990s. Today, some of them may travel to attend conferences all over the world. Strong churches and ‘revival centres’ in North America are increasingly being challenged by new centres and networks that have emerged in Asia and South America (Allan Anderson 2005: 84).10 Another change that has taken place since the beginning of the 1990s is the large number of white South Africans who are emigrating to Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Canada and the United States. This has resulted in the development of new churches in these countries, churches that are led by South African pastors and attract mainly white South Africans (Allan Anderson 2005: 86). Finance is one of the several important factors in developing transnational networks. Local power structures and the priorities set by the pastors also need to be considered. Most of Red Hill’s international contacts have been with the Pentecostal movement in Sweden. In the late 1980s, contacts between the representatives of this movement and Colin La Foy, vice chairman of AOG and pastor at Red Hill, resulted in cooperation. When, in 2005, the funds for the AIDS programme had largely dried up, La Foy expressed his frustration over their dependency on outside funding: I tell my people from the public platform: We now have the vote. We can sit in a restaurant. We can buy a house in any area. We can send our children to any school. But as long as we remain economical cripples, we will be slaves until Jesus comes. We remain beggars; we remain manipulated by others who have the money. So my people are damned to be manipulated. How can I break out of this? (This quotation, as well as the following quotations from him, is taken from my interview with Colin La Foy on 6 June 2005.)

His desire was to see ‘a true partnership’ develop between South Africa and countries such as Sweden and Canada. He pointed to the great variations in resources between the different sections in the AOG. There is no central, national fund within the AOG for support of pastors. Thus, each congregation must provide salaries for its pastors. In 2005, the average salary for a white pastor was about 17,000 rand a month, for a coloured minister it was about 5000 rand, while a black minister received circa 2000 rand. To live on 2000 rand per month is virtually impossible. Therefore, many black pastors have other employments too, for instance as directors of taxi companies. According to Colin La Foy, covering pastors’ salaries, pensions and health insurance is

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so overwhelming for the black congregations that there is no leeway for them to initiate independent social involvement. Thus, they are pinioned by their dependency on funding from overseas. Colin La Foy also expressed frustration over the lack of interest from white pastors for the AIDS programme. The fact that a large number of white pastors within the AOG chose to go to Australia and develop relationships with churches and pastors there at a time when the World Pentecostal Conference was being held in Johannesburg in 2004 was another point of disappointment for him. He commented that whites within the AOG were pursuing contacts outside of Africa, and were moving away from the continent’s problems, rather than actively trying to get involved: ‘Those that are empowered continue to be empowered, and those who were previously impoverished become more impoverished’, he said in my interview with him. At the AOG National Conference in 2003, the percentage of white participants was very low, indicating a sign of estrangement. Red Hill had about ten participants at the conference, including the pastor Dawie Samuels, whereas only one person – albeit a pastor – represented Olive Tree for one day. Mutually exclusive networks within AOG are thus developing, and for Colin La Foy this is a sign of a lack of unity. He says: We had an AIDS conference. We wanted to turn every local church into an AIDS centre, into a caring centre, into a training centre. None of the whites came. They have the economic empowerment, whether you like it or don’t, and one of them said to me: ‘If you call a seminar on drugs, for the white community, you will get a 90% attendance. If you call a seminar on HIV/AIDS, the white community is not interested in it, it is a black problem’. But it’s not a black problem! It’s a human tragedy! And colour doesn’t affect the proportion of the tragedy we’re struggling at! [. . . ] So while the black church is occupied with questions of salary, and the white church does not think HIV/AIDS is a problem, how can I turn the whole national church around? To begin to understand the importance of concentrating on working with HIV/AIDS. It’s not a black problem, proportionally the whole nation is affected, no one escapes it.

Previously, he had great hopes that unity within the AOG would come with the demise of apartheid. Instead, his experience in 2005 was that the different AOG sections, their leaders and members, had greatly differing priorities in their interests and objectives. The situation for the white congregations is quite different. Among others, Olive Tree is not dependent on overseas funding. This congregation has many wealthy members, and through financial offerings from the members, it can afford to initiate and carry out various programmes. The main involvement of the Olive Tree congregation concerns their support of Israel and the Jewish people. ‘Messianic theology’, the term most often

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used in Olive Tree, or ‘biblical Zionism’, as it is also called, is what the congregation is committed to. According to this theological thinking, the nation of Israel and the Jewish people are God’s vehicle and have a special calling to bring forth God’s messages and actions in the world. All Christians have a duty to support them. According to Malcolm Hedding, the founder of the Olive Tree congregation, Messianic theology is based on the Abrahamic covenant and on the promises given by God through that covenant. He means that Jews moving to Israel is a fulfilment of biblical prophecies. Messianic theology thus means that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is no ordinary conflict, but a spiritual battle. Similarly, the war in Iraq and events such as terrorist attacks are interpreted from the perspective of a ‘spiritual warfare’. Hence, invisible powers are believed to be just as active as physical, military powers. Malcolm Hedding, who in the late 1980s had a vision that he was going to start a congregation in Durban that would be a pro-Israeli voice, moved to Jerusalem in 2000 where he now works as the director of the ‘International Christian Embassy Jerusalem’ (ICEJ).11 In his role as director, he is part of an advisory board for the Israeli prime minister. He also travels across the world and preaches in different churches and denominations about the special plan for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel that is central to Messianic theology. Many members of Olive Tree talk about Islam as a threat to the world, particularly to Israel. They feel frustrated over what they consider to be a lack of understanding of Israel in the world. According to the pastor in Olive Tree, Noel Sanderson, being pro-Jewish, or claiming that there is biblical support for Israel, is not popular today in South Africa, to some extent because of ‘the rising presence and force of Islam’. He often visits other congregations, both in South Africa and abroad, where he expounds Messianic theology and the importance of Christian support for the Jewish people. He says that there is a great interest among church leaders to learn more about Israel: Things are happening, there is a real interest and a hunger to understand. And I think that emerges from that church leaders across colours read the newspapers, they watch the television, and they want to understand what is happening in the Middle East, they’re looking for explanations that they can live with. They want to understand, both from an intellectual point of view, and from a biblical point of view. In South Africa this hunger for learning and understanding, particularly among Indian and black church leaders, is also because they are experiencing the increasingly aggressive advances of Islam into Africa. This has happened over the last few years. There are mosques coming up everywhere. And these church leaders don’t understand what is happening, not only in the Middle East, but in their own communities. They are encountering Islam. These things create questions. They

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realize that there is a connection. People are thinking of issues, even if they live in the rural areas, their religious landscape is changing. Today there is an Islamic colonization taking place in Africa, and some are starting to work that out. We get very interesting discussions and questions. (This quotation is taken from my interview with Noel Sanderson on 15 June 2005.)

The Olive Tree congregation, furthermore, runs a research centre called ‘Christian Action for Israel’, where news and information about Israel are filed. With this research centre as the base, the pastor and associates go to other congregations and into schools where they talk about their view on Israel and the Jewish people. A prayer meeting, ‘Prayer for Israel’, is conducted every Wednesday. At these meetings, the status reports about Israel are recounted and prayed over. The situation of the Jewish population in the world is discussed among the members, and books about Israel are circulated. Another way in which the congregation is involved with the Jewish cause is by extending all possible support to the local Jewish community in Durban. Moreover, some of the women in the congregation occasionally send parcels to victims of terror in Jerusalem. In 2004, these women became part of Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), a fund-raising organization that supports Israel. Many of the members travel to Israel quite often and attend meetings there. It is also common among Olive Tree members to belong to international networks, where e-mail lists and campaigns are important vehicles to spread their views on Israel. There is, thus, a strong bond between this congregation – particularly some members – and Israel. The longing for Israel, in particular Jerusalem, is often expressed through words, songs and dances in the services. In such ways, Durban and South Africa are linked to events taking place in Israel and in other parts of the world. The Olive Tree congregation is thus actively involved in an international network of churches and organizations that support the Jewish people and Israel. Malcolm Hedding agrees that access to economic resources is important for the establishment of a network: In South Africa, it’s interesting, my kind of church with a type of Messianic flavour, you probably find it more in the white community, only because the white community is more in touch internationally. [. . . ] You will find a great reservoir of love in the black people for Israel, because of their understanding of the Bible. But because they’re not that connected, and they very often don’t have the funding like the white communities had, so we could bring in all these international speakers, they can’t do that, which is not so easy for them. (This quotation, as well as the following quotations from him, is taken from my interview with Malcolm Hedding on 3 September 2004.)

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He describes the network of churches sharing the view on ‘the role of Israel for world redemption’ that has been built during the last two decades: Now it’s happening, it has become quite a phenomenon all over the world, even in Sweden and all over. You’ve got Ulf Ekman from Uppsala, he’s in Jerusalem. I know him. And in America it’s in the churches everywhere, it’s quite amazing! Today it’s the ‘in thing’. [. . . ] It’s good to see. But like in the 80s a sort of a church like that was unusual.

There are, furthermore, many connections with the United States. The majority of the churches and organizations in Israel that share this view on the role of Israel are American, as Charles Lourens, a pastor in Olive Tree, says: They are predominantly American based or American funded, certainly there are connections with America because of the dollar. Bridges for Peace and the International Christian Embassy are American funded, Christian Friends of Israel the same story, and there are American pastors working in Israel. (This quotation is taken from my interview with Charles Lourens on 2 June 2005.)

Joan Maclue, a member of Red Hill, says that Israel is never spoken of in Red Hill in the same tenor as in Olive Tree. She emphasizes that in Red Hill and in other parts of the AOG ‘there’s a love for the whole world and not just for Israel’. She believes that the focus on Israel is more common within white churches – ‘a privileged white interest’ – and that black and coloured churches are more focused on their own communities because they have to. The problems are so big and so dire that there is enough to do at home: ‘I suppose we all have got our own views and leanings’, she said. The examples of Red Hill and Olive Tree show the importance of looking at local relationships and power structures when trying to understand transnational relationships (Harri Englund 2001: 254). In a movement like Pentecostalism, where individual leaders are given great freedom to act, the study of particular individuals can provide insight into international networks and developments. Furthermore, the Pentecostal transnational networks ‘are not always enabling and empowering’, but may also result in new hierarchies or ‘reinforce existing discrepancies in access to wealth and authority’ (ibid.: 238).

Conclusions Members of Red Hill and Olive Tree have widely different backgrounds and outlooks on the world. The examples that I have brought up in this chapter point towards the different life-worlds that members of these two congregations lead, their order of preferences and the difference in the interpretation

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of their faith. The apartheid era, which divided the South African society along racial, political and economic lines, resulted in widely disparate experiences and positions in society for different groups. These differences, which still largely subsist, are of vital importance for understanding the contrasts existing between the members of Red Hill and those of Olive Tree, the type of involvement they choose to engage in, as well as the motivation for their commitment. The divisions of the AOG along racial lines remain, despite the efforts in society to break with the old heritage of apartheid. There are individuals who are trying to break these boundaries within the denomination, but instead of getting rid of them, congregations and sections of the AOG develop their own networks with various churches and with other denominations. Through the example of the sewing school, I wanted to point at how efforts to break down previous boundaries between black and white largely reproduce the previous racial and gendered order, rather than challenging it. With the examples of the AIDS support programmes in Red Hill, and the involvement for Israel and the Jewish people in Olive Tree, I sought to direct attention to the ecumenical networks that the two congregations are part of, as well as to the larger power structures, both local and international, that the congregations act within.

Notes 1. For a fuller account of these two congregations, see Kristina Helgesson (2006), where I explore various aspects of the experience of belonging among the members. 2. This kind of loose organization made it possible for churches to cooperate, but still maintain the autonomy of the local congregation. Just like in some of the Pentecostal churches in the United States, it was seen as important not to be ruled by an overarching organization. At this stage, the South African AOG was constitutionally part of the American AOG (Peter Watt 1992: 127). 3. The AOG left the Fellowship of Pentecostal Churches, to which Apostolic Faith Misson (AFM) and Full Gospel Church (FGC) belonged, because of ‘its dissatisfaction with the conservative stance of the other Pentecostal churches’ (Allan Anderson 2000: 104). 4. Before 1990, the AOG ‘Movement’ was called ‘the Back to God Crusade’ (Anderson 1999: 102–103). 5. The so-called Autonomous section does not fall under any of the other sections of the AOG. Still, congregations within this section have some connections with the other sections, albeit loose. This section was formed because of differing opinions regarding leadership within the existing sections. 6. For much of its history, the general executive of AOG has consisted of a majority of black members with a white chairman, John Bond, the author of For the Record (n.d.). In 1995, for the first time, a black person, Isaac Hleta from Swaziland, was chosen as

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chairman of the AOG general executive. The vice-chairman chosen was Colin La Foy (Allan Anderson 1999: 103), the pastor leading the Red Hill congregation. Later on during the conference, as I was standing in the line for food, I heard people saying that they had no desire for unity between the different sections. Rather, they wanted the present order to persist. There are approximately 20 church buildings in the area, all affiliated to different denominations. PMU InterLife (PingstMissionens Utvecklingssamarbete) is a development agency, connected to Swedish Pentecostalism, working in 65 different countries (http://www. pmu.se/info/, 10 April, 2007). The abbreviation PMU means the development aid of the Pentecostal mission. In his article, Allan Anderson (2005: 71) draws on developments among Charismatic and neo-Pentecostal churches, such as Rhema Ministries in Johannesburg and Durban Christian Centre, ‘mega churches’ that have been greatly influenced by the so-called prosperity gospel. The international networks that members in these churches establish are different from those of more traditional Pentecostal denominations, such as the AOG. In both Red Hill and Olive Tree, a clear stance is taken by the pastors against the prosperity gospel, although there are no clear demarcations between the different churches and denominations. There are, for instance, former members of Red Hill who now belong to the Durban Christian Centre, as well as members in the Olive Tree who previously have belonged to neo-Pentecostal churches. Furthermore, the strong focus on Israel in Olive Tree has resulted in contacts and networks that include neo-Pentecostal churches, such as the Word of Life congregation in Uppsala, Sweden. As stated on its website, the ICEJ was founded in 1980 by Christians from around the world as an act of solidarity with the Jewish people’s 3000-year-old claim and connection to Jerusalem. Today, the Christian Embassy represents millions of believers from over 125 countries who share love and concern for Israel and the Jewish people. Thus, the ICEJ is considered the world’s largest Christian Zionist organization, with active representation in nearly 80 nations (http://www.icej.org/articles/about/ us, 10 April, 2007). The ‘solidarity with the Jewish people’ is expressed in various ways, for instance through different support programmes, volunteer programmes, the celebrations of Jewish feasts and the organization of tours. Like Malcolm Hedding, other ICEJ leaders travel extensively, preaching and teaching about Messianic theology.

References Anderson, Allan (1999). ‘Dangerous memories for South African Pentecostals’, in Allan Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger (eds), Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. (2000). Zion and Pentecost. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press. (2005). ‘New African Initiated Pentecostalism and Charismatics in South Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa XXXV/1, pp. 66–92. Anderson, Allan A. and Gerald, Pillay J. (1997). ‘The segregated spirit: the Pentecostals’, in Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (eds), Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Bond, John (n.d.). For the Record. Cape Town: Nu Paradigm. Englund, Harri (2001). ‘The quest for missionaries: Transnationalism and township Pentecostalism in Malawi’, in Andre Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. London: Hurst & Company. Helgesson, Kristina (2006). ‘“Walking in the spirit”: The complexity of belonging in two Pentecostal churches in Durban, South Africa’, dissertations and documents in Cultural Anthropology no. 7, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University, Uppsala. Horn, Nico (1991). ‘Crossing racial borders in Southern Africa: a lesson from history’, retrieved from Cyberjournal for Pentecostal Charismatic Research http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj3/nico.html, accessed 16 August, 2006. Meyer, Birgit and Peter Geschiere (1999). Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure. Oxford: Blackwell. Nyamnjoh, Francis B. (2006). Insiders & Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar: Codesria Books; London and New York: Zed Books. Sarja, Karin (2002). “Ännu en syster till Afrika”: Trettiosex kvinnliga missionärer i Natal och Zululand 1876–1902, Studia Missionalia Svecana LXXXVIII. Stockholm: Gotab. Watt, Peter (1992). From Africa´s Soil: The Story of the Assemblies of God in Southern Africa. Cape Town: Struik Christian Books Ltd.

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2 Healing in Hear the Word Ministries Pentecostal Church Zimbabwe ■

Tabona Shoko

T

he theme of healing is increasingly gaining new importance and urgency in academic studies. In Zimbabwe, scholars in medicine, social science and religious studies have explored religion and healing in traditional Shona religion and independent church movements from a variety of disciplines.1 However, Pentecostal Church healing in Zimbabwe has not captured much attention. Paul Gifford (1988) explored the political and economic role played by Pentecostal churches in the governments in Southern Africa. Gifford attributes the phenomenon of Pentecostalism to social and psychological alienation of certain aspects of modernity. David Maxwell’s case study of ZAOGA, Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (2000), sets out to demonstrate how Pentecostalism exerts a quest for satisfaction for social malcontents in neo-liberal Zimbabwe. While Maxwell studied the nature of Pentecostal spirituality and examined the relationship between Pentecostalism and politics in ZAOGA, he has not paid particular attention to Pentecostal healing. This chapter seeks to explore the phenomenon of healing in a Pentecostal Church in Zimbabwe. The work is based on a case study of a particular church, called Hear the Word Ministries, in Harare with a focus on its theology of healing and how that reflects traditional beliefs and practices. Based on empirical data, the study adopts a religio-phenomenological method with its concept of epoché, which cautions one against reading biases into the phenomena. A historical approach is used in order to explore the official documents of the Pentecostal Church and the Zimbabwe government 43

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institution. In addition to written material, the study is based on interviews and participant observation. The chapter will first discuss important literature on healing, followed by a discussion of traditional medical worldviews, placing emphasis on aetiologies and healing. The last section will then discuss the history and healing ministry of Hear the Word Ministries before turning to analysis and conclusion.

Important Literature In Zimbabwe, several anthropological and sociological studies have been undertaken on Shona medical practices. Works by several scholars have demonstrated, using different approaches, that illness conceptions and healthcare systems are not isolated but integrated into a network of beliefs and values that comprise Shona society. As a result, we have at our disposal a reasonable number of high-quality studies that cover the more important aspects of the Shona medico-religious beliefs and practices. However, it is outside the purview of this paper to discuss such studies in greater detail. Hear the Word Ministries in Zimbabwe, formerly called Rhema Bible Church,2 relates closely to international movements such as the American Jimmy Swaggart Ministry, Christ for all Nations, Christian Right and Full Gospel Businessmen’ Fellowship International. In Zimbabwe, Paul Gifford has made a significant contribution to Pentecostal Church historiography. Some of the doctrines that he tackles are ‘dispensationalism’, ‘obedience to authority’ and ‘health and prosperity’ gospels under the umbrella of Faith Gospel. Some American Pentecostal ministers provide theological sources of inspiration to adherents of Hear the Word Ministries. Lester Sumrall (1993), a world-renowned pastor and evangelist, has published a book that forms the study guide for student pastors of Hear the Word Ministries. Kenneth Hagin, who was the pastor of Rhema Bible Church in Tulsa Oklahoma, highlights the wisdom of the early church, on how they carried on Jesus’ healing activities in the Acts of the Apostles (1982: 48). Paul Gifford (1988) depicts Hear the Word Ministries as a ‘health gospel’ that attracts Shona Christians who seek physical healing here on earth. The church’s motivation is the fundamental belief that nothing is impossible with God. People seek healing and believe they can be healed because that is what Jesus died for (Isaiah 53: 4–5). All what a Christian requires is a belief in order to claim his or her health (Paul Gifford 1988: 77). Gifford also cites the Americans Kenneth Hagin and Fred Price, prominent preachers in Hear the Word Ministries, who believe that all sickness comes from Satan, and

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therefore no Christian should be sick. Faith raises life expectancy (Paul Gifford 1988: 23). Allan Anderson, a former Pentecostal minister and authority on global Pentecostalism, offers important insights on African Pentecostalism and ‘Spirit churches’. He observes Pentecostal churches in sub-Saharan Africa, the fastest growing forms of Christianity on the continent, as ‘churches that emphasise the work of the Spirit in the church, particularly with ecstatic phenomena like prophecy and speaking in tongues, healing and exorcism’ (Allan Anderson 2004: 103). Classical Pentecostals have been operating in Africa since 1907, following the first missionaries from Azusa Street in Liberia and Angola. More than half of Zimbabwe’s population now belong to African Pentecostal churches. In Anderson’s studies, such churches do not emerge as a homogeneous entity. They depict a remarkable variety and creativity (Allan Anderson 2004: 104). Anderson further notes that ‘Spirit’ churches have much in common with classical Pentecostals: ‘They practise gifts of the Spirit, especially healing and prophecy and they speak in tongues’ (Allan Anderson 2004: 105). Because of these qualities, most previous studies misunderstood them and branded them ‘syncretistic’, ‘post-Christian’ and ‘Messianic’. More pejoratively, ‘Spirit churches’ have been viewed as accommodating a ‘pre-Christian’ past, and as being linked with traditional practices such as divination and ancestor rituals. However, recent studies have shown this as a ‘fallacious’ view. Moreover, Allan Anderson has noted that many large Pentecostal and Charismatic churches appeal primarily to ‘younger, educated urban people’ (2004: 159). Some of them have been sharply criticised for propagating a ‘prosperity gospel’ that seems to reproduce North American capitalism in disguise. It is from this background that we shall discuss the healing praxis and theology of Hear the Word Ministries.

Traditional Disease Aetiologies and Healing Health is one of the primary concerns of the Shona religion. Their traditional religious belief system identifies numerous and varied causes of illness such as spirits, witchcraft and sorcery, as well as socio-moral and natural causes. There are different types of spirits, but those usually associated with diseases are ancestors (vadzimu, sing. mudzimu), avenging spirits (ngozi, sing. ngozi) and alien spirits (mashavi, sing. shavi). As a rule, vadzimu cause abnormal and serious illness. Such illness is believed to defy non-religious treatment. However, this type of affliction is not meant to kill the victim but to alert the descendents to search for the spiritual

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cause from diviners. The ancestors guard and protect the living members of the family; however, they can be angry if neglected or forgotten. This is usually the case when some rituals are not performed for the spirits, like kurova guva (bringing home ritual). The purpose of the ritual, held approximately within one year after burial, is to bring back the spirit of the deceased so that it becomes a legitimate ancestor spirit that protects the family.3 Ngozi is one of the most dreaded spirits in the Shona society. It is the source of the worst kinds of disease and can even cause death. Ngozi is a spirit of a person who was either murdered or indebted or of a mother who was not paid mombe youmai (motherhood cow) as dowry when her daughter got married. The spirit returns seeking justice against the living member by causing illness or death to the family of the wrongdoer. Repayment of ngozi is done by offering it a cow and a virgin girl. Mashavi constitute another category of spirits that cause illness. These are spirits of people who died suddenly far away from home and for whom no death rituals were performed. So, in their search for recognition and a home to reside, they possess individuals. Shavi spirit possession is heralded by illness. The Shona make a distinction between a good alien spirit and a bad one. While the good spirit gives its host new skills such as hunting, healing, dancing, singing and other traditional specialties, the bad one brings on evil spirits, causing the host to indulge in witchcraft, prostitution and stealing (Tabona Shoko 2007: 62). Although some illnesses are attributed to spirits, the Shona see most illnesses as caused by witchcraft (uroyi, sing. uroyi). This is non-spiritual but is linked with spiritual entities such as zvitupwani (witch crones), who have no physical identification but are used in this practice. Witches are seen as malicious human beings, especially older women who are motivated by hatred and jealousy. Witchcraft is a nocturnal craft with a nightmarish quality. Most common illnesses, such as wind fever (mamhepo), are a result of being beaten by witch familiars. Also, many serious diseases such as Down syndrome, small pox and epilepsy are seen to result from witchcraft. If society experiences a sharp rise in cases of illness, the Shona tend to explain this as a rise in witchcraft practices. Sorcery also features as a dominant source of afflictions. It is a counterpart of witchcraft practised by men. For both witchcraft and sorcery, the Shona use a common term, uroyi. Sorcery involves ritual manipulation of natural forces for evil purposes. It is often practised by unscrupulous healers, n’angas, who abuse their powers for financial gain. Illnesses caused by sorcery are, for instance, chitsinga, a form of physical disorder; chikwinho, which tugs and paralyses hands or legs; and chivhuno, which results in loss of power.4

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Deviance from the socio-moral code of behaviour is a potential cause of illness. Here, the Shona differentiate between violation of rules of respect and sex-related causes. Both the dead and the living must be accorded due respect, and certain religious, social and cultural taboos and norms must be upheld. Failure to observe such values and prohibitions in society provokes the spiritual forces that mete out punishments such as physical illness, drought and epidemic, which affect the entire community and environment. Diseases that originate from the earth (pasi), but which disappear after a short while and require simple or no medication at all, are regarded as having natural causes. Such illnesses are, among others, coughs, colds, slight fever and headaches. But when such illnesses resist treatment and persist, the Shona search for an alternative causal explanation: ‘why to this particular person and why at this time and place’ (Michael F.C. Bourdillon 1976: 173). Hence, the disease aetiologies in Shona society range from spiritual forces, to witchcraft and sorcery, social and moral factors and natural causation (Michael Gelfand 1985). Causal agents may appear as distinct categories but greatly overlap in the total belief system. Illnesses do not occur by chance but have a definite cause, which is diagnosed and cured by a n’anga. The Shona heal illness through a variety of methods that include rituals and treatments administered by a n’anga. Since they believe that spirits are primarily responsible for their health and welfare, they are constantly engaged in ritual contact with the spirit world to get rid of diseases and other ills of life. They cultivate health and well-being in birth, initiation, marriage, death and communal rituals. Besides, treatments are also applied to deal with ailments. These vary according to the level of illness. Serious illness is treated in various ways, which include herbal treatment, extraction of disease-causing objects and exorcism (Tabona Shoko 2007: 100).

Church Origins Hear the Word Ministries was first established in 1982 by American-born pastors Tom and his wife Bonnie Deuschle. Tom was one of Kenneth Hagin’s disciples. Hagin helped sponsor the formation of this church. Before he came to Zimbabwe, Deuschle had a vision to found the church in five countries in Central Africa: Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Botswana. Hagin provided all the logistical support materially, doctrinally and ideologically that helped set up the new structure. In April 1982, the church conducted its first service at the pastor’s residence in Harare, which was attended by less than ten people. Among the first converts to attend the service were Mr and Mrs Crynauw. The two have played a leading role in administration and evangelism programmes.

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However, as the church grew, they moved from the pastors’ residence to Mt Pleasant Hall and then to Margolis Hall in Milton Park. They occupied this place until 2004, when they shifted to their newly built church called Celebration Centre in Borrowdale, Harare. This magnificent building has now become the centre for the million adherents of Hear the Word Ministries. As someone said: ‘To many the Celebration Centre at number 162 Swan Drive in Borrowdale is a place only found in dreamland, far removed from their daily struggles’.5 Hear the Word Ministries have also established a congregation in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town of Harare, where pastor Samuel Chimusoro is the head.

Approach to Healing Hear the Word Ministries considers itself as being called by God to reach all the four corners of Zimbabwe, converting its people. The church’s mission is that the people must be ‘born again’ so as to receive ‘grace’ and ‘salvation’ brought by the cross of Jesus Christ. Healing occupies a central position. As Paul Gifford (1998: 80) said: ‘The Rhema Bible Church brought with itself a message of good health as a right to every true Christian life’. In their doctrine of faith, Hear the Word Ministries believes that Jesus continues to heal people even today. But in order to enjoy good health, believers must separate themselves from false deities (Renny Tsikai 2006: 71). Hear the Word Ministries believes in the trinity: one God, the Father of Jesus, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God and Christ are interested in the human welfare, liberation and release from the hold of the devil. This church also takes the Holy Bible as the inerrant word of God. The Son of God is the mediator between the living and the dead. Jesus healed the sick when he walked on earth as recorded in the Bible. The Holy Spirit can heal sickness, but not with the aid of ‘dead saints’ and ancestors. All Christians who believe in the triune God are born again, and through the power of the Holy Spirit can cast out ‘demons’ as recorded in the New Testament. The church believes that Jesus Christ died for our sins. His death on the cross healed every illness. So there is no need for a human being to suffer again. God wants every one to be well. Jesus was very aggressive against sickness. Evil spirits or demons are the cause of diseases that torment the human body. The church believes that the devil brought about sickness through Adam and Eve, while Jesus brought health through his death on the cross. So if one has faith in Jesus Christ, sickness has no place in one’s life. Every Christian has a right to claim his or her health through Jesus. Sickness is a curse and evil spirits must be cast out. Salvation is a free gift of God. Hear the Word Ministries

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recalls how Satan brought sores upon Job (Job 2: 7). The point here is that if God allows sickness, then it might be for the glory of God (Renny Tsikai 2005: 101). The church believes in a victorious Messiah and a theology of glory. Hear the Word Ministries believes there was no disease at creation. Satan is the author of sickness. Sin came at the fall of Adam, then sickness and death (Rom 12: 5). Sickness is a result of God’s punishment for disobedience to his will. In the church’s opinion, the coming of Jesus wiped away all false notions that God inflicts sickness upon people for his glory. All Jesus did was to express God’s compassion for humans caught up in sin and sickness by healing them (Renny Tsikai 2005: 103). Sin does not bar anyone from being healed, but it is the ‘faith’ of the person that determines one’s healing. Bio-medical healing may give some relief, but ‘Christ the Healer’ heals completely. Rather than working with the life force of the patient, Christ brings additional life in the person. This life combats the disease and wards off evil when the person is healed. If the life force is strong, it responds to drugs, but if it is weak, the drugs can facilitate death. Nature or humans cannot create life, but thus comes faith in Jesus Christ to heal the sick (Renny Tsikai 2005: 102). Hear the Word Ministries makes a scathing attack on traditional beliefs. The church rejects the traditional cult of the Supreme Being and all rites connected to ancestor veneration (kupira midzimu), divination (kushopera), visits to n’anga (sing. n’anga, traditional diviner), the bringing home ceremony (kurova guva) and rain rituals (mukwerera). All ancestral rites are breach of the first commandment. Jesus is the only mediator between God and the living. The pastors or anyone filled with the Holy Spirit can exercise the gift of healing through prayer. But notably when faced with chronic sickness, some members go from one type of medication to the other. Oskar Wemter expresses it as ‘looking for a rare commodity from one supermarket to another’.6 The church argues that the Bible does not mention anything about relics. It believes that people who visit these are involved in ‘idolatry’. Jesus is still alive. He does not need dead people and their possessions to heal people in his place. Anything that connects with dead people is ‘paganism’. Only Jesus can heal the sick. So believers do not touch relics of the ‘dead healers’ but of ‘living healers’. Those Christians who do not get physical healing on earth should not lose heart because if there is ‘sickness’, that is for the glory of God. As a result, Rev. Ernest Angley, an inspirational international Christian pastor, uses a white handkerchief and white pieces of cloth to heal people in the way Paul did in Acts of the Apostles.

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Internal Perspectives Pastor Tom Deuschle of Hear the Word Ministries believes strongly in divine healing. He claims that Pentecostals are members of a movement that represents a renaissance of Apostolic Christianity. It stands as a ‘Third Force’ in tandem with Catholicism and classical Protestantism. Deuschle is convinced that in the Sunday services and revivals of the Hear the Word Ministries, people are healed. This was testified by the three miracles that he witnessed when he was eight years old. First, Jesus healed his own mother of a very painful breast cancer. Second, his father was healed through prayer after a stroke. Third, a woman had her tongue restored after it had been removed due to cancer.7 Pastor Godfrey Tsumba of Hear the Word Ministries is a ‘born again’ Christian who was converted from the Catholic Church after his son was healed after many years of illness. He had tried several medical specialists, but they could not alleviate the problem. Tsumba was convinced that only Christ can heal: ‘Christ is the healer’.8 He castigates people who visit traditional healers as not saved. In his point of view, ancestor veneration is paganism. It is only the atoning death of Christ that not only secures people from physical healing but provides the resurrection, perfection and glorification of our bodies. Tsumba supports the ministry of healing by appealing to biblical references such as Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ (2 Cor 12: 7–10). The question is: was Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ a physical ailment or a spiritual infirmity? In Tsumba’s understanding, it was not sickness but the persecution that he endured. So infirmity does not mean sickness. He maintains this should apply to all Christians who need both physical and spiritual healing.9 Agnetta Mabasa, who joined Hear the Word Ministries as a student, opted for this new church because she realised that people were being healed by faith. She claimed her sister was healed of breast cancer at one of the Pentecostal revivals she had attended in 1990. Although she comes from a Shona peasant family, she does not believe in traditional rituals, even though she is expected to attend by her family. She claims to have abandoned ‘things of this world’. All rites are a breach of the divine commandments. Her basis of argument was the healing of Aneas that made Lydia and Sharon turn to God (Acts 9: 32–35).10 Mr Oswell Moyo of Chitungwiza said that Hear the Word Ministries attracted many Shona people because of their gospel of ‘health and prosperity’. People who throng the church hope to emulate the leadership and acquire property in upmarket leafy suburbs like Borrowdale. They also dream of

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becoming rich overnight. However, Moyo indicated that some of the believers are still attached to their dead relatives. They find it hard to let go and thus lead a dual life. Yet communication with dead spirits is prohibited by Hear the Word Ministries. Belief in such spirits is not compatible with scripture, which prohibits direct communication with the spirit world (Deut 18: 11). Although Hear the Word Ministries had no links with tradition, some people abdicate and turn to spirits of ancestors when faced with complicated diseases. Many people believe they fall prey to witchcraft that causes complex afflictions and death.11 A person named Mr Peter Magadzire admitted that he suffered from cancer and his health had broken down such that he was compelled to give up work. Medical doctors in a hospital had failed to cure him. As a result he lost his job. Then, in May 1986 he attended a Christ for All Nations Revival in Harare. At this revival, a dramatic change occurred during a prayer session: ‘When I was being prayed for, I felt a tug go through my body just like electric shock. I was instantly healed’.12 After recuperation, he resumed his work. Most people interviewed strongly believed in the ministry of healing in Hear the Word Ministries. Believers are quick to point out that people who fail to receive healing do not act on their faith: ‘Faith without works is dead’.13 Many argued that many healing activities in Pentecostal churches are based on the healing activities of Jesus recounted in the New Testament. In Hear the Word Ministries, the healing wonders that Jesus performed were realistic even today. In contrast, mainline churches have little relevance in the area of physical healing (Renny Tsikai 2006: 89). At one of the Pentecostal Church healing crusades led by Rev. Ernest Angley at Mbare National Sports stadium in 2000, sponsored by Hear the World Ministries, the sermon adopted the theme of ‘Healing and Salvation’. The sermon was based on Hebrews (11: 23–27) about Moses who had ‘endured by seeing Him who is invisible’. The crusade adopted the maxim ‘Faith sees God’, and it sees Calvary where disease and sin were cancelled. After the sermon, Rev. Angley healed, using a handkerchief, many people with different kinds of diseases such as loss of sense of smell, deafness, HIV/AIDS, high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma. All those who were prayed over and had hands laid upon them danced and shouted that they had been healed. Hear the Word Ministries have at their disposal testimonials made by people healed during services, hospital visits and reports by healed people, and letters and correspondence by those in need of help. There are also letters of appreciation of the miraculous working powers of the healing ministry.

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Old and New Both members of Hear the Word Ministries and Shona traditionalists share a common world-view to a large extent. In each case, spirits are a causal explanation for illness and disease. As mentioned earlier in relation to traditional beliefs, the positive role of vadzimu (ancestors) is recognised and acknowledged, whereas in the Pentecostal Church, the cult of the Supreme Being and ancestor veneration are labelled ‘idolatry’. They are associated with the devil and archenemy of God. Members of Hear the Word Ministries and Shona traditionalists share corresponding perceptions with regard to witchcraft and sorcery as a prevalent causal explanation for illness and disease. The practitioners of this craft are motivated by jealousy, hatred and maliciousness. While in the Shona tradition one can only be bewitched with the consent of one’s disgruntled ancestors who compromise with witches, the situation appears different in the Pentecostal system. Witchcraft for them is the devil himself. In this case, the success of witchcraft is attributed to lack of ‘faith’ in God. Thus ‘faith’ becomes significant in the Pentecostal conviction. Lack of it renders life meaningless and subjects one to attack by evil forces. ‘Faith’, therefore, is ‘salvific’ (Tabona Shoko 2007: 136). Contravening the ‘laws’ results in disease. The difference lies in the fact that the Shona traditional ‘law’ is sanctioned by tradition, while for the Pentecostals, the ‘law’ is ‘divine’. What is significant is that in both cases the operation of ‘divine retribution’ is in force. Abrogation of the socio-moral norms or divine interdictions creates disaster in the form of illness and misfortune. The opposite is true for positive behaviour. As such, the polarity between good and evil is further enhanced. Both religious systems are equipped with the ability to discern the causes of illness and disease through spirit possession. While the n’anga operates under the influence of mudzimu or shavi spirits, the Holy Spirit guides the Pentecostal Church healer. Instead of making use of herbal treatment, the Pentecostal healer resorts to healing through prayer, laying on of hands, confession, baptism and expression of faith. In spite of variations in terms of the operating spirit, both systems are united by a common concept of ‘power’ that manifests itself in ecstatic behaviour, especially in diagnosis and healing contexts. Such a parallel understanding is striking (Tabona Shoko 2007: 138). It is primarily their evaluation of the role of ancestors that marks the point of departure of the members of Hear the Word Ministries from the traditionalists. While traditional society acknowledges the rites of ancestors, in the Pentecostal Church this is flatly denied and ancestors are relegated to

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the realm of evil spirits. The Holy Spirit assumes a central role, and this gives new meaning to the concept of the spiritual order.

Conclusions This chapter has discussed the theology of Hear the Word Ministries as a gospel of ‘health and wealth’. After an introduction, it examined important literature on Pentecostalism as well as theological sources of inspiration. Next, it explored the traditional disease aetiologies as basis for comparison with the church. Then it discussed the church origins, its approach to healing and adherents’ perspectives before making an evaluation. In all its intent and purposes, it has been shown that Hear the Word Ministries has its focus on ‘health and wealth’. In all of the cases, both among Pentecostalists and traditionalists, what emerges as essential among the Shona is the desire to preserve health and welfare in a world that is potentially dangerous and populated by forces of evil. Hear the Word Ministries affirms the belief that they pursue a ‘Health Gospel’. Jan Platvoet’s observation of traditional societies as seeking to attain success in agriculture, hunting, examinations, sport and salvation ‘here and now’ become relevant (1987: 51). We have seen that traditional thought patterns have been carried over and have influenced the outlook of Hear the Word Ministries. The Pentecostal Church healer and the n’anga share basically the same world-view. Their main concern is to identify the cause of illness, which is an intrusion, and to restore the health of the individual. While Christian orthodox beliefs are clearly perceptible among Pentecostal Church believers, qualifying them in their view as fully Christian, these operate in ways aimed at preserving health and welfare. In fact, it seems that it is just this fundamental preoccupation with health and welfare that has proved to be the major attraction of Hear the Word Ministries. It can be concluded that the teachings of Hear the Word Ministries appeal to the Shona because of its promise of a better solution to afflictions affecting people and problems in society such as poverty and unemployment. The church emphasises material prosperity by impressing upon the believers to live a healthy fulfilling life. They teach people using biblical texts that they will enjoy peace and prosperity if they remain faithful to God. They also claim that a true Christian has to ask for these things so that they are granted. By contrast, if the believer does not get them, it is either because they have not asked for them or that sin has prevented them from getting the blessings.

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Notes 1. Most notable are Hebert Aschwanden (1987), Michael Bourdillon (1976), Hubert Bucher (1980), Gordon L. Chavunduka (1978), Olov Dahlin (2002), Martinus L. Daneel (1974), Michael Gelfand (1956) and Tabona Shoko (2007). 2. Since 2007, the church has changed its name to Celebration Ministries. 3. This information was obtained from an interview with J. Shava in Mberengwa on 21 December 2005. 4. This information was obtained from an interview with T. Shiri in Mberengwa on 2 August 2005. 5. Sunday Mirror, 11 June 2006. 6. This information was obtained from an interview with Father Oskar Wemter in Harare on 4 April 2006. 7. This information was obtained from an interview with Rev. T. Deuschle at Celebration Centre on 24 February 2005. 8. This information was obtained from an interview with Godfrey Tsumba in Harare on 10 July 2006. 9. Tsumba, interview, see note 8. 10. This information was obtained from an interview with Agnetta Mabasa in Harare on 10 July 2006. 11. This information was obtained from an interview with Oswell Moyo in Chitungwiza on 4 March 2006. 12. This information was obtained from an interview with Peter Magadzire in Harare on 15 August 2006. 13. Mabasa, interview, see note 10.

References Anderson, Allan (2004). An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aschwanden, Hebert (1987). Symbols of Death: An Analysis of the Consciousness of the Karanga. Gweru: Mambo Press. Bourdillon, Michael F. C. (1976). The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona, with Special Reference to their Religion. Gweru: Mambo Press. Bucher, Hubert (1980). Spirits and Power: An Analysis of Shona Cosmology. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Chavunduka, Gordon L. (1978). Traditional Healers and the Shona Patient. Gweru: Mambo Press. Dahlin, Olov (2002). Zvinorwadza: Being a Patient in the Religious and Medical Plurality of the Mberengwa District Zimbabwe. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Daneel, Martinus L. (1974). Old and New in Southern Shona Independent Churches, Vol II: Church Growth Causative Factors and Recruitment Techniques. The Hague: Mouton. Hagin, Kenneth (1982). Must Christians Suffer? New York: Faith Library Publications. Gelfand, Michael (1956). Medicine and Magic of the MaShona. Cape Town: Juta and Co. Gifford, Paul (1988). The Religious Right in Southern Africa. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.

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Maxwell, David (2000). ‘Catch the cockerel before dawn: Pentecostalism and politics in post colonial Zimbabwe’, Africa LXX/2, pp. 249–77. Platvoet, Jan G. (1987). ‘A concise history of the study of religions’, in J. G. Platvoet (ed.), Unpublished Essays on Akan Traditional Religion: A Reader. Harare: University of Zimbabwe, pp. 54–81. Shoko, Tabona (2007). Karanga Indigenous Religion in Zimbabwe: Health and Well-Being. London: Ashgate. Sumrall, Lester (1993). The Gifts and Ministries of the Holy Spirit Mass Market. Texas: Whitaker House. Tsikai, Renny (2006). ‘Christian healing among the Shona people in Greater Harare: a comparative study of the Catholic Church and Hear the Word Ministries’, unpublished M.Phil. dissertation, Harare, University of Zimbabwe.

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3 Pentecostal-Type Renewal and Disharmony in Ghanaian Christianity ■

Cephas N. Omenyo

I

n general, Africans have shown a high propensity to adapt and accommodate new religions and religious denominations as long as they are perceived as having the resources to meet their pressing needs. Consequently, there is a dynamic process of adherents changing over from one religious system to another. This change is prominent within Ghanaian Christianity as is evident in a significant exodus from the mainline/historic Western missionary-founded churches, initially to the African Independent Churches (AICs), mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, then to Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Within African Christianity, movement of adherents from one denomination to another is often precipitated by the quest to have solutions to specific problems. This movement, which could be interpreted in soteriological categories, is also accompanied by a change in one’s social status. Spiritual renewal is thus understood in this chapter as a change in a person or a movement that has religious implications as well as involves changes in one’s social status and alliances. Discussions of intra-Christian changes will be limited mainly to the AICs, classical Pentecostal churches, represented by the Church of Pentecost, non-denominational Evangelical movements, the renewal movement in the mainline churches and, finally, the neo-Pentecostal churches in the history of Ghanaian Christianity. We shall attempt a historical sketch of renewal within Ghanaian Christianity by looking at the major categories of renewal movements in Ghana. 57

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African Independent Churches The earliest and major modern experience of Christian renewal in Africa was the emergence of the AICs on the Ghanaian religious landscape. This renewal resulted either in a mass exodus of members from the mainline/historic churches to join the AICs or in the maintenance of dual membership within the two church traditions. The significance of the AICs lie in the fact that they emerged from the African context and made noteworthy attempts to harness spiritual resources in Christianity to offer solutions to the existential desires of African Christians. The AICs are known to be the first to attempt to thoroughly contextualize Christianity by making a smooth transition from primal religious expressions of faith in the African context to Christianity (Cephas Omenyo 2002a: 260). According to Andrew Walls (1996: 117), the AICs were able to effect ‘a smooth transition from the old religions of healing to the new. It was the independents who made the logical connection: If the Christian was to trust Christ and not entreat the old powers, should he or she not trust Christ for all the things from which that person once entreated the Powers?’ For instance, the AICs emphasized divine healing and the manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Their worship is spontaneous, vibrant and full of lively African music accompanied by drumming and dancing. In addition, there is a pneumatic emphasis in worship (Christian G. Baëta 1962: 1). As a result of urbanization, the traditional strong network of African family relationships and communal cohesiveness is gradually breaking down. The AICs make efforts at addressing this problem by advocating a return to authentic African humanizing communities by forming new communities that provide fellowship and security to its members (Christian G. Baëta 1962: 130–133). Kwame Bediako (1995: 67) has noted that: The Spiritual churches are also known to be generally more supportive of their members than the historical churches, in connection with traditionally expensive events like marriages and funerals. In other words, being more alive to the importance of these aspects of traditional culture, they apply their sense of Christian fellowship more radically to recreate the traditional African solidarity in Christian terms.

Consequently, a major feature of the AICs is their expression of oneness through members living in close-knit communities. Their communal living defines their ecclesiology. Daniel Antwi has observed that ‘this communitarian character is developed and consummated in the New Testament teaching of the incarnation. The very Word made flesh wills to share in the human and cosmic koinonia [fellowship, communion] just as the salvation through Christ

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Jesus wills all people of faith to be sharers in the divine koinonia’ (Daniel J. Antwi 1996: 10). Thus, adherents of local AICs see themselves as accomplishing ‘the gathering of the people of God, who, knit by the Holy Spirit, corporately express the life of Christ in the world’ (Cephas Omenyo 2000: 236). The above characteristic features of the AICs apparently have made them very attractive to members of the mainline historic churches as well as to adherents of African traditional religions who have become converted to Christianity. Hence, the AICs were popularly referred to as ‘a place to feel at home’. It therefore came as no surprise that there was a phenomenal exodus of members of the mainline historic churches in Ghana to the AICs in the mid-twentieth century, particularly the 1960s. This fact attracted the attention of the official annual synods and conferences of all the mainline churches in Ghana (Cephas Omenyo 2002b: 102–198). One of the earliest analyses of the challenge of the AICs was done by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, which held a consultation in 1963 to address the exodus of its members to the AICs. Part of the report reads: In view of the many people who leave the Presbyterian Church saying that the Holy Spirit is not at work among us, the consultation suggests that the Synod Committee appoints a group to study just what people mean by this and to produce an outline of positive teaching on the work of the Holy Spirit which can be used to improve instruction on this matter throughout the Church . . . . The group might also consider what place (if any) should be made in the life of the Church for New Testament prophecy and tongues . . . . The consultation wishes to see the New Testament ministry of healing through prayer restored within congregations of the Church.1

A similar study was conducted by the Catholic Church in the northern part of Ghana among 44 Catholics and was published in 1975. Part of the report reads as follows: 78% of the respondents maintained that in going to these churches (AICS) they did not consider that they were ‘leaving’ or being unfaithful to the Catholic Church. Rather, they were showing that in certain aspects of their faith experience the Catholic Church had become unfaithful to them . . . It is a sign of their faith in Christ as Saviour in all aspects of their life that when in an area like ‘healing’ they fail to experience it in the Catholic Church, they go to that Church or Christian sect where they can make this experience. If this is true, their presence should represent a great challenge to the Catholic Church.2

The beliefs and practices, as well as the general ethos of the AICs, resulted in mass movement of people to the churches. This movement had African spirituality as its driving force, which satisfied their quest for tangible divine experience in the life of the believer.

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Giving of testimonies feature prominently in the worship of the AICs, and one can learn a great deal about the self-understanding of adherents of AICs in the testimonies. Those who give testimonies proclaim to worshippers how God had ‘opened’ their eyes to discover or lead to their respective churches and their leaders, who are oftentimes referred to as prophets, and how they were healed or had their problems resolved. These experiences are perceived as ‘new life’ for which they are grateful to God. A major element that often creates a climate of fear, and serious disharmony, in African societies is witchcraft accusation. Karin Barber (1981: 724–45) has noted among Yorubas of Nigeria the following, which also applies perfectly to the Ghanaian situation: The Yoruba say that humans are one another’s enemies, and most misfortunes are caused by the nefarious activities of ayé, the “world”, or more specifically the witches and wizards, and evil people employing their services . . . Yoruba cosmology presents a picture of Man, a solitary individual, picking his way between a variety of forces, some benign, some hostile, many ambivalent, seeking to placate them and ally himself with them in an attempt to thwart his rivals and enemies in human society. Among the hostile powers are the eníyám or witches.

Instead of helping to resolve this problem in Africa, some AICs rather exacerbate it by their practice of witchcraft accusation due to a heightened sense of the devil and evil spirits, which are believed to be the causative factors of almost every form of misfortune among them. The devil and demons are oftentimes believed to use human agents who are close family members. Some AICs are infamous for generally accusing women (mothers, grandmothers and aunties) for being the cause of most mishaps that occur in the lives of people. When such accusations take place, the people involved sometimes pick quarrels with those accused of witchcraft or decide to withdraw from their respective families to avoid being subjected to further attacks. There are cases where witchcraft accusations by the AICs have caused major mistrust, cracks and deep wounds in families and communities, thereby humiliating and traumatizing alleged witches. In extreme cases, witchcraft accusations have resulted in lynching, ostracizing and killing of alleged witches.3

Classical Pentecostalism The next major strand in Ghanaian Christianity that emphasizes personal and corporate religious experience and renewal is the Classical Pentecostal Church movement. Its origin is mainly traced to Peter Anim, popularly known as the father of Ghanaian Classical Pentecostalism, who started his Pentecostal movement in 1917. The churches that belong to this strand are mainly the

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Christ Apostolic Church, the Church of Pentecost, the Apostolic Church and the Assemblies of God Church. The Assemblies of God Church was introduced into Ghana by American Assemblies of God missionaries in 1931. Thus, unlike the first three churches, which originally had Ghanaian roots, the Assemblies of God Church had no direct Ghanaian roots. For the purpose of this paper, we shall focus on the Church of Pentecost (COP), which is the biggest and the fastest growing Classical Pentecostal Church in Ghana, in our discussion as representing Classical Pentecostalism in Ghana. For all intents and purposes, the ethos of the Classical Pentecostal churches was quite akin to the AICs. Particularly, their worship style and their emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, healing and communalism are phenomenologically alike. Nevertheless, there are some differences that distinguish the two categories of Pentecostal-type churches. Unlike the AICs, which mainly preached and ministered healing, exorcism/deliverance from evil, protection from evil and having responses to various prayer needs, the Classical Pentecostal movement added other dimensions to what the AICs preached. Particularly, this movement taught ‘new birth’, believer’s baptism by immersion or baptism of adult believers by immersion, Holy Spirit baptism and the parousia (presence, arrival; concerns the second coming of Christ). The COP teaches that repentance and conversion should precede sanctification, which is also followed by water baptism. Like most Pentecostal movements, the COP is strongest on its oral theology rather than doctrine. However, it has documented a strong belief in the individuals’ definitely ‘accepting Jesus Christ as their saviour’. It is believed that through this experience one becomes converted to Christianity. As indicated above, one rite that distinguishes Classical Pentecostalism from the AICs is the practice of believers’ baptism. Quite apart from the fact that water baptism is a sign of obedience, where the initiate symbolically identifies with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection, a COP individual believes that: I’ve been cleansed; my old life died with Christ; I’ve been brought into God’s family. We are not brought into a “denomination” but “into Christ” (Romans 6: 3) . . . Baptism is a ceremony of initiation, or admission into God’s family and signifies what God did at our conversion, what happened when we received Christ at conversion (John 1: 12–13) (Emmanuel K. Larbi 2001: 265).

The belief of the COP is that the sacrament is visible evidence that the initiate has become a member of the body of Christ.4 Since the rite is essentially the formal means of admitting new members in the fold of the community of believers, there is a strong communal consciousness of the local congregation that accompanies it. The entire congregation is invited to be part of it, and

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this assures the new convert of the group’s support in every situation. This is captured in the Church’s local chorus number 21, which is translated into English as follows: I am striving forward, Jesus, I am striving forward. Whatever my people may do to me, I will never retract; I will move on with those who have forsaken the world. I am starting, for me, I am striving on.5

There is a strong consciousness that the baptized has joined a new community of believers. As a result, having gone through baptism, one’s state has changed and one has a new identity. This consciousness characterizes members in the COP to the extent that they feel they are unique among other Christians. Like the AICs, practically, the baptized enjoys a great deal of practical support from the group during times of crises. The COP is noted for its strong emphasis on the doctrine of sanctification. Its pioneer, Peter Anim, explained sanctification as ‘purification of the nature from sin and filthiness of the flesh. This starts at the moment we are saved and should be a daily experience of “washing by the word”’.6 According to the COP, the new state the convert acquires must be above moral weaknesses such as fornication, adultery, stealing, drunkenness, divorce and smoking. Unlike some AICs that permit polygamy, the COP forbids it totally. Sexual offences, for instance, are common and regular subjects for sermons in the church. A member caught indulging in any of these is suspended until there is evidence of genuine repentance. Pastors are immediately dismissed when any of the above offences, which are perceived as ‘misconduct’, are proven against them. Among other things, the Pastors’ Manual of the COP lists the following as part of ‘gross misconduct’: ‘Misappropriation of the Church funds, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, erroneous teaching of Church doctrine, disrespectful behaviour which affects unity and progress within the Church, gross insubordination, non-co-operation with fellow ministers’. The Classical Pentecostal churches, particularly the COP, have a high exclusive tendency to the extent that it does not recognize the AICs, for instance, as Christian churches at all. As a result, they refuse to join the local ecumenical movements where the AICs are accepted, even though the historic/mainline churches accept them. They castigate the historic/mainline members for not being ‘spirit-filled’ Christians due to absence of the gift of speaking in tongues in their worship services. For Pentecostals, speaking in tongues is a major mark of a ‘spirit-filled’ Christian. This belief tends to deepen intra-religious tensions in most parts of Ghana. The COP and other Pentecostal churches do not belong to the Christian Council of Ghana, which is the main Protestant

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ecumenical body in Ghana. Rather, the Pentecostals have established their own council, the Ghana Pentecostal Council, in which the COP plays a major leadership role.7 There is no evidence of ecumenical relations between the COP and Charismatic movements within the mainline churches in Ghana. In fact, the COP dissuades its members from joining non-denominational Evangelical/ Charismatic fellowships in Ghana, such as the Scripture Union (SU) and Ghana Fellowship of Evangelical Students (GHAFES), despite the strong inclination of such fellowships towards Pentecostal ethos and practices (Abamfo O. Atiemo 2007: 58). In trying to decipher the attitude of Pentecostal churches in general, and the COP in particular, to these inter-denominational fellowships, Abamfo O. Atiemo (2007: 58) has the following to say: It seems the Pentecostal churches felt a sense of competition between them and the fellowships, especially as the latter turned more Pentecostal in ethos and grew in influence over Christian young people. The Pentecostals wanted to exploit the new situation of increased respect and wider acceptance of Pentecostal culture, which had begun to emerge, especially among the young and educated, by attracting their youth back and integrating them properly into their churches. This desire led to the strengthening of existing youth and student groups and the formation of new ones, organized along the lines of the fellowships, in congregations and on school campuses.

Non-Denominational Evangelical Christian Fellowships A major epoch in the history of Ghanaian Christianity is a kind of Evangelical/ Charismatic revival in the late 1960s and early 1970s which led to the emergence of non-denominational Evangelical movements in schools, colleges and universities. These movements included: the Ghana Evangelical Society (GES) led by Enoch Agbozo; the National Evangelistic Association (NEA); Youth Ambassadors For Christ Association (YAFCA) founded by Rev. Owusu Afriyie; The Hour of Visitation Choir and Evangelistic Association (HOVCEA) led by Isaac Ababio; SU; and the University of Christian Fellowships, which operated in the country’s tertiary institutions and was coordinated by GHAFES. In addition to the above-listed groups, there were other independent Christian fellowships, particularly in the cities. For instance, those in Accra, the capital, were coordinated by the Coordinating Council for Christian Fellowships (CCCF). The Evangelical movement in Ghana emphasizes the sovereignty of God, a keen sense of the authority of the Bible as the final authority in matters of

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faith and practice and the centrality of the death of Jesus Christ to the Gospel. Furthermore, they put strong emphasis on the need for lives to be changed and the salvific power of the Gospel. This led to rigorous and passionate sense for evangelism and church planting. For instance, in 1979, GHAFES adopted the motto: ‘Knowing Jesus Christ and making Him better known’.8 Furthermore, among other things, the aims and objectives of the movement states: ‘To witness to the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and God, and to lead fellow students to a personal faith in Him . . . to stimulate interest in evangelistic and missionary work, and prayer on its behalf ’.9 For our purpose, it is worthwhile to note that a radical experience of ‘new birth’ underlies the self-consciousness of the movement in Ghana. The doctrine of ‘new birth’ is variously referred to as ‘born again’, ‘giving oneself to Christ’, ‘knowing Christ’ and ‘receiving/accepting Christ’. This doctrine is so fundamental to Ghanaian Evangelicals that they stress that every Christian must necessarily experience it. Furthermore, one must be able to remember the exact date one was ‘born again’. The ‘new birth’ is explained in the following steps: 1. One has to accept the fact that one is a sinner. 2. One has to accept the fact that Jesus Christ died for one’s sins. 3. One has to acknowledge the fact that Jesus Christ is the only one who

can forgive one’s sins. 4. One has to turn from sin to Christ by inviting Jesus Christ into one’s life. 5. One has to live a new life. The commonest biblical passages used as bases for messages on ‘new birth’ are John 3: 1–36 and 1 Peter 1: 23. The ethical dimension of the doctrine of ‘new birth’ is equally emphasized. Ghanaian Evangelicals have a spirituality that stresses holiness ethic. Thus, personal ‘holiness’ or ‘righteousness’, which for them is the logical consequence of ‘new birth’, is emphasized because spirituality and lifestyle are inseparable. Holiness is explained to mean separation from the world. As a result, drinking of alcohol, smoking, pre-marital as well as extra-marital sex and gambling are unacceptable amongst Evangelicals. In fact, these habits are often subjects for sermons or talks given at their meetings. The holiness ethic is extended to cover the choice of marriage partners. Members of the Evangelical movement encourage its members to marry from within their respective fellowships or from sister evangelical fellowships. The whole idea is that after having acquired the status of ‘born again’, one should not marry unbelievers who may not be Christians (this includes baptized members of churches who may not be perceived to be ‘born again’) for fear

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of incompatibility. Furthermore, unbelievers (non-Christians) are considered sources of pollution to be avoided as marriage partners (Samuel B. Adubofuor 1994: 124). This emphasis placed on the choice of marriage partners is often underpinned by the following Bible text: Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idol? (2 Corinthians 6: 14–16a) (New International Version)

One practical outworking of the emphasis that Evangelicals put on holiness ethic is the dichotomization of members of the mainline/historic churches. The Evangelicals tend to draw a sharp line between those who are ‘born again’ and those who are not. Even among ministers/priests, some are known to be ‘born again’ and others not ‘born again’. Those who are not ‘born again’ are not acknowledged as Christians at all. The distinction between these two main categories of Christians stems from the fact that it is believed that when one is ‘born again’, one becomes a ‘new creation’ and old things are passed (1 Cor 5: 17). The person has thus acquired a new status and a new identity that goes with certain holiness ethics. Hence, the Evangelical fellowships assumed the status of a new Christian community organized into fellowships of ‘born again’ Christians who were conscious of the fact that they were superior to other Christians (particularly the mainline church members) who did not belong to them. The superiority complex of members of the fellowships is shown in their attitude towards the doctrines and teachings of their respective mainline churches. They tend to view the traditional creeds of their churches with suspicion, thus creating a tense relationship with the mainline churches (Abamfo. O. Atiemo 2007: 63–64). This tension led some mainline churches to prohibit their members from joining the fellowships (Cephas Omenyo 2002b: 96). The Presbyterian Church of Ghana at one point chose to open dialogues with the major organized non-denominational fellowship, the SU, on 12 August 1977 to iron out some of their differences.10

Charismatic Renewal within Mainline Churches Invariably, the Evangelical movement found its way in the mainline churches in Ghana (Cephas Omenyo 2002b: 95–96). Christians in the Evangelical movement, who were largely members of the mainline/historic churches,

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generally resolved not to leave these churches but remain in them and revitalize them along Evangelical/Charismatic lines.11 They therefore introduced some of the doctrinal emphases, spiritualities and practices of their respective movement into the various prayer groups and Evangelical/Charismatic movements in their respective churches (Cephas Omenyo 2002b: 96). A major doctrinal emphasis that was introduced into the mainline churches was the issue of ‘born again’. Like members of the nondenominational Evangelical/Charismatic fellowships, members of the Charismatic renewal groups within the mainline churches draw a clear distinction between those who were ‘born again’ and those who had not experienced ‘new birth’, including ordained ministers of their respective denominations. This dichotomization has often created tension in some mainline churches. For instance, members of the Charismatic movement would prefer only ‘born again’ ministers to officiate at their weddings. During their conventions and other programmes, whenever they wanted to have the Lord’s Supper celebrated they would invariably fall on a minister who is known to them as ‘born again’. Their selective choice of perceived ‘born again’ ministers to officiate during the celebration of such rites emanates from their belief that the efficacy of the rites depends on the holiness of the officiating clergy. The egocentric tendencies of some members of the renewal movement sometimes result in religious elitism and disregard for authorities of the mainline churches, thus making the movement problematic within those churches. As a result, the author has observed that: ‘Some church leaders see the renewal groups as “sects within a church” and thus entertain the fear that they may eventually cause a schism’ (Cephas Omenyo 2002b: 9). This fear is shared by most of the mainline churches in Ghana. The Methodist Church, for example, rejected the idea of recognizing and integrating a Charismatic renewal group within its framework mainly because it feared to entertain an exclusive group within the church, thereby creating ‘an organisation that might turn out to be . . . divisive and even a time bomb for breakaways’.12 A concrete justification of this fear is the case of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), as illustrated below. The apparent fear entertained by the mainline churches that the Pentecostal/Charismatic influences could split these churches is well-founded, considering the fact that the EPC has seen six major schisms within the span of 52 years (1939–91).13 Five of these were caused either largely or at least partly by Charismatic movements within the church. The most recent as well as the most significant schism in the EPC, in terms of the numbers involved and its abiding effect on the mother church, took place in 1989. This definite break occurred when 17 pastors of the church, who were closely identified with its

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Charismatic group, the Bible Study and Prayer Fellowship (BSPF), were excommunicated for ignoring the moderator of the church’s order that no pastor should join the annual convention of this Charismatic group of the church. Prior to the recent break, there had been series of clear expressions of apprehension by the EPC about the perceived potential divisive and schismatic tendency of the group due to certain features, such as clapping of hands, which were seen as not conforming to the practices of the EPC: 1. Instead of clapping of hands, groups should use local percussion

instruments. 2. Pentecostal prayers whereby the whole group prays aloud at the same time and thereby miss the serenity when one communes with God. 3. Baptism by immersion instead of infusion/sprinkling of water, which is the accepted form of baptism of the EPC. 4. Instead of new songs, Bible study and prayer groups should be encouraged to use hymns from the ‘Hadzigbale’ (Hymn Book) since these contain great inspirational feelings.14 The EPC clearly had serious problems with the Charismatic posture of the BSPF. Furthermore, the EPC felt the perceived elitist attitude would not foster unity of the entire church, as expressed in the following official assessment of the BSPF by the EPC: The movement occurred in virtually all main denominations of the Christian faith in Ghana. In some instances in the E.P. Church, both the clergy and the laity were involved. In other instances, supervision was predominantly under lay leadership. Some people in the Church felt that the rather pronounced charismatic trends and elaborate demonology, which was developing with it, was more than necessary for sincere and reverent worship and life. Many Church leaders were uncomfortable with the unorthodox ways of worship. They also wished that members of the new group were more tolerant of those who did not feel and act in the same way as themselves. There was a feeling that many members of the group regarded themselves as more holy than others. Gradually, the differences of opinion and behaviour increased and unwillingness to listen patiently to one another led to mutual deep-seated mistrust. This situation also contributed to the Church’s crisis a little later (G. Ansre 1997: 130).

Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches The neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches are contemporary renewal movements in Ghanaian Christianity. They are independent Pentecostal churches, which are indeed the aftermath of the Evangelical/Pentecostal nondenominational fellowships that started in the 1980s. They appeared on the Ghanaian religious scene during the economic recession in the late 1970s and

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early 1980s and posed great a deal of difficulties to Ghanaians. Their messages have thus been perceived by a lot of young Christians as responding to the socio-economic realities of the country. Their messages are more or less an amalgamation of the doctrinal emphases of the Pentecostal and Evangelical movements, as well as of African traditional religious ideas and spirituality, plus influences from the faith movement of America and Europe. Their messages are simple and attractive. They emphasize the availability of the Holy Spirit to believers to deal with evil and to protect them. They believe Christianity is a complete religious package comprising ‘new birth’, water baptism, baptism in the spirit, with speaking in tongues as evidence, healing and ‘deliverance’, empowerment and ‘prosperity’ (J.K. Asamoah-Gyadu 2005: 132–232). Thus, for them, a ‘born again’ Christian is one who has benefited from the full package and as a result has a legitimate right to success, prosperity, power, elevation, promotion, achievement, progress, abundance, victory and everything that enhances life and promises well-being and harmony. Consistently, the neo-Pentecostal churches begin by demonizing the AICs as un-Christian. They condemn the mainline historic churches as being ‘dead’ churches due to their lack of emphasis on the manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is common to hear a phrase such as ‘a dead Pastor, preaching a dead sermon from a dead pulpit in a dead chapel to a dead congregation’ as a reference to the mainline/historic churches. They criticize the Classical Pentecostal churches for not responding to contemporary concerns of young people and thus not being relevant in contemporary Ghana. A popular slogan of the early neo-Pentecostal churches is ‘come out of Babylon’, which is a call to people to come out of all the existing churches. Their style of worship, use of the media and message have indeed appealed to many young people, particularly those who are products of second cycle and tertiary institutions. As a result, the bulk of their members come from young people who once belonged to one of the older Christian denominations. The posture adopted by the neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches naturally pitched them against the existing churches who viewed them with much suspicion. This has rendered ecumenical relations with the newer churches problematic. Older churches also pick on issues such as ‘prosperity gospel’, cacophonous and noisy prayers and worship, and recorded financial impropriety of some leaders as subjects for criticism of the neo-Pentecostal churches. They sometimes brand them as ‘one-man churches’ due to the attitude of their leaders, who tend to be founders of the churches and are, in some cases, not accountable to their members.

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The emergence of neo-Pentecostal independent churches has caused disharmony in a large number of Ghanaian families. There are cases where young people have left, particularly, the mainline churches, which they used to attend with their parents, for neo-Pentecostal churches. In such cases, they have a superiority complex over their parents who are perceived not to be ‘spiritual’ enough and belong to ‘dead’ churches which do not hold any promise for attaining both present and future salvific goals. This sometimes is disruptive of previously harmonious families.

Grassroot Ecumenism and Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches Despite some disruptive effects of the activities of some Pentecostal/ Charismatic churches and groups, it is also possible to point to an unwitting complementary role they are playing in promoting ecumenism in Ghanaian Christianity. In the first place, there is a high degree of cooperation among the Charismatic renewal groups in the mainline churches in Ghana. Particularly at the grassroots, such groups do not stop non-members of the group or their churches from participating in their programmes. The National Co-ordinator of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Ghana, Mr. Anthony Osei-Assibey, intimated to the present writer that he was ‘born again’ and was ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’ in the Presbyterian Church. The groups operate an open-door policy for all people of different faiths and denominations. Similarly, Charismatic leaders, speakers and ministries, either freelance or related to a mainline church, are freely invited to other mainline Charismatic groups. Indeed, irrespective of their religious or denominational affiliation, Ghanaians at the grassroots in general are motivated to seek help from various Charismatic groups due to need and survival. The significance of the Charismatic groups vis-a-vis search of harmony among Christians lie in the fact that what comes to the fore is not what is taught per se, rather what comes uppermost in their minds is the question, ‘how is what is taught going to help my situation?’ This is a major lesson the Charismatic renewal in the mainline churches in Ghana has to teach the churches on ecumenical relations.

Conclusions Claims of ‘new birth’ and manifestation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit have given rise to new identities and introduced new frontiers in Ghanaian Christianity. Generally, the renewal movements are exclusive, thereby viewing

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those who do not belong to them as being outsiders, thus creating tension, disharmony and schisms which sometimes end in the law courts. In the case of the AICs, although members initially did not have a ‘refined’ understanding of conversion, they were conscious of the new status they acquire when they join their respective churches. They believe the new status and identity entitled them to some privileges such as becoming members of a new community of believers, hence their strong koinonia, which distinguished them from others. The understanding of the doctrine of ‘new birth’ among Ghanaian Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Charismatics is that they are given a new and a legal status as children of God, and – especially to neo-Pentecostals – this new status guarantees prosperity and success in life. Furthermore, the new status that is acquired automatically gives them the right to belong to a new Christian family and a new Christian community. Thus ‘born again’ Christians organize themselves into fellowships or new churches due to the new identity they have acquired. This understanding of a new status is seen in all the various categories of spiritual renewal including those in the mainline churches, which are sometimes perceived as ‘churches within churches’ due to their self-consciousness of the new status and identity they believe to have acquired. The extreme exclusive attitude, particularly of some Pentecostals/Charismatics, which sometimes show in the way they relate to people whom they perceive are not Christians or are not committed Christians (not ‘born again’ or not ‘Holy Spirit filled’), raises a great deal of concern, particularly in mainline churches. This notwithstanding, the popularity of the Pentecostal/Charismatic ethos has impacted almost all churches in Ghana. The Pentecostal/ Charismatic movement is inadvertently promoting a form of ecumenism and Christian unity there. Its members are unofficially bridging the gap between different denominations by borrowing spiritualities, practices and programmes from other churches that they find useful in the Ghanaian context.

Notes 1. See the report Congregational Prayer meetings: What has happened to our prayer services?, issued by the Worship Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in 1963, p. 1. 2. A circular written in 1975, signed by Sue Rakoczy (SR) IHM, Diocesan Chaplain for Prayer Groups, and Anthony Osei-Assibey, Coordinator of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Ghana. 3. See further Gerrie ter Haar (2006).

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

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See again Gerrie ter Haar (2006). Translated by Emmanuel K. Larbi (2001: 266), (emphasis mine). Christian Choruses, p. 9. The Chairman of the COP, Rev. Dr. M. K. Ntumy, is serving his second term as the president of the Ghana Pentecostal Council, and the General Secretary, Rev. Ekow Wood, is a pastor of the COP. GHAFES Report of the General Secretary presented to the General Committee Meeting held at the Commonwealth Hal, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana, 23–25 March 1991, p. 3. The 1981 version of the GHAFES Constitution, Article V. See Minutes of the 48th Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana held at Kibi, on 27 August–2 September 1977, Appendix Q, pp. 68–70. More than 67 per cent of the leaders of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana’s Bible Study and Prayer Group who were interviewed had a background in the nondenominational Evangelical Christian Fellowships. See Cephas Omenyo (2002b: 151). Methodist Church Ghana, Report of the Conference Ad Hoc Committee on Methodist Prayer Fellowship, Law and Polity Committee Report to Conference, 1994, p. 4. See George K. Amoah (2000). EPC Synod Agenda and Report, 1985, p. 20.

References Adubofuor, Samuel B. (1994). ‘Evangelical Parachurch movement in Ghanaian Christianity: C. 1950–Early 1990s’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Amoah, George K. (2000). ‘Schisms in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EP Church) 1939–1991’, M.Phil. thesis, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana. Ansre, G. (ed.) (1997). Evangelical Presbyterian Church: 150 years of Evangelization and Development, 1847–1997. Ho: Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Antwi, Daniel J. (1996). ‘Koinonia in African culture: community, communality and African self-identity’, Trinity Journal of Church and Theology VI/2, pp. 66–80. Asamoah-Gyadu, J.K. (2005). African Charismatics: Current Developments within Independent Indigenous Pentecostalism in Ghana. Leiden: Brill. Atiemo, Abamfo O. (2007). ‘The Evangelical Christian fellowships and the charismatization of Ghanaian Christianity’, Ghana Bulletin of Theology II/1, pp. 43–5. Barber, Karin (1981). ‘How man makes God in West Africa: Yoruba attitudes towards the Orisa’, Africa LI/3, pp. 724–45. Baëta, Christian G. (1962) Prophetism in Ghana: A Study of Some ‘Spiritual’ Churches. London: SCM Press. Bediako, Kwame (1995). Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Haar, Gerrie ter (ed.) (2006). Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa. Trenton, NJ: African World Press Inc. Larbi, Emmanuel K. (2001). Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity. Accra: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies.

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Omenyo, Cephas (2000). ‘Essential aspects of African ecclesiology: the case of the African Independent Churches’, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies XXII/2, pp. 231–48. (2002a). ‘Charismatic churches in Ghana and contextualization’, Exchange XXXI/3, pp. 231–48. (2002b). Pentecost Outside Pentecostalism: A Study of the Development of Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches in Ghana. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum.

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4 Born-Again Witches and Videos in Nigeria ■

Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah and Magnus Echtler

This witchcraft problem is everywhere . . . People are just branded witches and wizards carelessly. The other day, I saw a little child of about seven years on the road. They had chased her out of the house claiming she was a witch . . . So His Excellency [the governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio] . . . please help us tackle this witchcraft problem in our localities. —His Royal Majesty Offong Ati Okpo addressing the governor of Akwa Ibom State.1

Framing Witchcraft in Nigeria As the opening quotation illustrates, the fear of witches seems to be the beginning of cultural wisdom among many people in Nigeria, including the rich and educated, titled men or traditional rulers as well as contemporary politicians. As an Ibibio woman, Helen Ukpabio – a born-again witch and the producer of the movies discussed in this chapter – hails from a society where political and social backwardness and even ‘personal failures are regularly explained in the idiom and logic of witchcraft’ (Daniel O. Offiong 1991: 78). Emefie Ikenga-Metuh (1988) and Bernard Müller (2005) contend that the idiom of witchcraft continues to influence explanations of West African life experiences and constitutes a pillar of local cosmologies. As economic liberalization and political distortions fragment the experiences of many people in Nigeria, witchcraft stories are called upon to provide explanation and meaning in hard times (Andrew Apter 1993). Nigerians believe that evil spirits are as diverse and dreaded as sources of misfortunes such as death, diseases, troubles, curses, loss, accidents and paralysis. The activities of witches are believed to 73

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impinge directly on the victim’s pursuit of good things in life. Because ‘evil’ is perceived as an external and independent object which cannot act unless activated or mobilized and channelled by either a spiritual or a human agent, the witch functions as, what Rosalind I. J. Hackett (2003: 62) terms, the ‘local understandings of human misfortune and spiritual agency’ in Nigeria. Witchcraft, which embodies everything that is ‘anti-person’, eludes definition but not description. Revealing the meaning of witchcraft to the ordinary Nigerian is indeed a Herculean task because both its concept and practices have continuously been reloaded, particularly since the emergence of Nigeria’s new Pentecostalism. The distinction between ‘a witch’ and ‘a sorcerer’, first identified by Edward Evans-Pritchard’s (1937) investigation of the Azande, is practically lacking in popular discourses where evil is generally attributed to the activities of witches and their cohorts. According to Umar H. D. Danfulani (1999: 171), ‘witchcraft is [. . . ] the act of nocturnal and spiritual predators preying on human souls’. Witches are those ‘who destroy life by introducing disease, infertility of women and crops, and unexpected deaths in order to enhance their own reproductive and productive powers’ (Caroline Ifeka 2006: 726). For the Yoruba, witches are omo aráyé, or ‘children of this world’; they are persons with an unusual saturation of evil powers with the singular purpose of thwarting or completely destroying others’ destinies (E. Bolaji Idowu 1994: 187–8). By thwarting a person’s destiny, which is conceived as embodying divine intentions, witches contrive destructive spiritual connections in their victims’ lives through their nefarious activities. Witchcraft, as a metaphysical power, is acquired by specific means. The most common means is inheritance, whereby an adult passes on this power to a child or a close relative. While this craft can be practised by both men and women, in most Nigerian societies, as in other African societies, women are more susceptible to witchcraft accusations than men ( J. Y. D. Peel 2000; cf. Jennifer Badstuebner 2003). The Yoruba use many proverbs to identify women with witchcraft, an unequivocal example being ‘Gbogbo obinrin laje’, which means every woman is a witch. A common saying is that a witch who intends to increase her viciousness gives ‘birth only to female children’ (Y. K. Yusuf 2001: 6). It is believed that, just as the society is a network of relationships, a witch community also constitutes evil persons who sustain their lives through cannibalism. With the strength of collective action, witches frequently meet at unobtrusive sites far from the society, such as in deep forests and caves. They travel to such places as birds of prey like owls, bats and animals like cats or dogs; in recent years, they have started using weird jet planes and witches’ helicopters (Jennifer Badstuebner 2003). Witches are conceived as spiritual cannibals who ‘devour’ their victims or ‘drink’ their blood. Besides

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interfering with the essentials of their victims’ lives, witches are also believed to attack their animals and crops to bring about misfortune and intensify existential problems. Witchcraft is ‘the ultimate mystical means’ to control and exercise destructive power over the closest person (Alma Gottlieb 1989: 262), as demonstrated in the ritual ‘killing’ and ‘eating’ of members of one’s kin. The paradox and ambiguity of witchcraft is that it offers the potential for protection and destruction, fear and attraction, devotion to a coven and disloyalty to one’s kins and human community.

Anti-Witchcraft Movements Since witchcraft is perceived as an evil, anti-social reality that directly threatens the existential well-being of individuals and communities, the society is compelled to take specific actions to control and confront its prevalence and to enforce a particular moral order. Consequently, the community circumscribes the powers of people whom it views as deviants, so that their interests and predilections are not put above that of the community. Traditional pathways to sense-making in situations of witchcraft suspicion include visiting the diviners and healers for witchcraft cleansing rituals. Diviners, who are popular in Africa, are regarded as ‘searchers of divine intention concerning the lives and affairs of men and women and the welfare of communities in which they live’ (Anthonia M. Essien 2005: 19–20). The popularity of diviners, perhaps, hinges largely on the anxiety surrounding the problems that witchcraft causes and the ensuing sense of urgency to search for a solution. The menace of witchcraft empowers individuals to mobilize resources and measures towards addressing what is perceived as unmerited suffering and pain as well as fortifying themselves against the intrusion of negative actions. In several Nigerian communities, anti-witchcraft movements have been part of the social landscape. Some are peaceful – such as community oathtaking rituals to detect, shame, ostracize and cleanse alleged witches (Ogbu U. Kalu 2007: 13) – while others are extremely violent and involve the killing of alleged witches and their collaborators. New forms of indigenous African religions have emerged in some places as a direct response to the perceived problem of the fear of witches. Alleged witches are subjected to intricate ordeals, which the Annang call ukang. They confess their involvement in witchcraft and ask for exoneration. In the Cross River area of Nigeria, a witchhunting cult agency, Obasinjom, was developed several hundred years ago to offer its ‘services to elucidate witchcraft and theft and provide solutions’ (Ute Röschenthaler 2004: 242). Because of its perceived effectiveness, Obasinjom became the best known and the ‘most successful’ cult agency which spread

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even to parts of present-day Cameroon. The cult fused both witch-finding and entertainment into a masquerade ‘performed when [Obasinjom] sensed a problem or at the request of clients in the village centre’. It is believed that members of Obasinjom could smell out witches and expose them. They could also detect a tree in the village where witches gathered for their nocturnal meetings, and could order to cut it down (Ute Röschenthaler 2004: 252). In several locations of Nigeria, huge shrines now flourish where spiritual and mystical protection from witchcraft is sold to those who have the fear of being attacked by witches (Umar H. D. Danfulani 1999; Jane Parish 2000; Per Zachrisson 2007). Besides the traditional techniques of witchcraft divinations, there are modern attempts to tackle the problem. The social disruptions occasioned by the economic crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s in Nigeria saw an upsurge of witch hysteria that resulted in instances of ‘witch purge’ spearheaded by youth groups in different communities.2 The arrowheads of such anti-witch ‘crusades’ are often young men and women who attribute their poverty and lack of development to the activities of witches, whom they consider dubbed ‘enemies of progress . . . responsible for the downfall of every member of that village’. Ubani-Ebere reports how Utu Movement, an anti-witchcraft youth group in Ngwaland of Abia State, Nigeria, operates freely ‘without police and government interventions’ from village to village; the leader, Utu, would ‘begin to name people as witches, and the youth . . . will arrest, torture, kill and banish the alleged witchcraft [sic]. Property of the alleged witchcraft [sic] will be destroyed and demolished by the youth hooligans and vigilante groups’.3 There has also been a great deal of ‘witchcraft diet’ in the mainstream media in Nigeria in recent times. The print and electronic media all report alleged attacks and killings based on witchcraft accusations. On 7 July 2005, a witchcraft crusade was carried out in Aniocha in Delta State where alleged witches were forced to consume an unknown concoction which caused convulsions in them. The event was video-taped and marketed widely in Nigeria as a conclusive visual evidence of the existence of witches in the community. A year earlier, on 4 November 2004, 27 men and women were killed in Ozalla community as a result of witchcraft accusations. A recent edition of a Lagosbased tabloid, Daily Independent, chronicles a rash of witchcraft cleansings in some communities in Delta, Edo, Eboyi and Akwa Ibom states. According to the Daily Independent, on 22 June 2007, about eight people of the Isu community were killed in Eboyi State under the suspicion of ‘practising witchcraft’; some ‘were buried alive while others went through the earthly hell fire. They were all pronounced guilty for the backwardness of the community’.4 The people killed were old men and women ordinarily considered as repository of

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wisdom and knowledge and revered by the youth. But in a rebellious twist, ‘old age seems to have become a curse . . . as those who are supposed to be looking after the aged appear in a hurry to dispatch the senior citizens to the land of their ancestors’.5 The police and state government reaction to this wave of witchcraft killings is evident in the following statement made by the public relations officer of the Eboyi State police force: [The police] command could not move in without any formal complaint from either relatives of those killed or the alleged masterminds of the dastardly act. Yes, we are aware of the killings in respect of [the] witchcraft saga . . . but cannot do anything now. Until somebody comes up to us with [a] complaint of murder of his or her relative or those suspected to be behind such killings come to us, the police cannot move in. [. . . ] We have been hearing all sorts of things that we consider as rumour and cannot act on them. That is the position of the state police command for now.6

The 22 June 2007 mayhem was a re-enactment of a February 2 witch hunt in which youths vandalized 12 houses owned by prominent and wealthy members of the community, alleging that their wealth was appropriated through witchcraft; the wealth should have gone to others who are now rendered poor. The anti-witchcraft crusades raging in many communities in southern Nigeria are similar to several episodes of witch killings in other parts of Africa where such violence correlates with increasing levels of poverty. According to Edward Miguel (2005: 1170), ‘income shocks are a key underlying cause of the murder of elderly women as “witches” in Tanzania: extreme rainfall leads to large income drops and a doubling of witch murders’. Social suffering in Nigeria has heightened witchcraft anxiety, its corresponding media visibility and the attendant violence.

Born-Again Witches Witchcraft confession within a Christian missionary environment is not new in Nigeria, as Misty Bastian (2002) shows in the reproduction of witchcraft confessions that occurred in 1890 within the Church Missionary Society. However, it has increasingly become a defining spectacle in a new form of Pentecostalism that has emerged not only in Nigeria but also in many other parts of Africa. Witchcraft confessions have always been known to be ‘spectacular’ (Misty Bastian 2002: 86), but recent pentecostally produced confessions are more spectacular because of their encoding and circulation in a variety of media forms such as audio cassettes, magazines, pamphlets and video films. One significant feature of the new Pentecostalism is its unusual emphasis on a very broad conceptualization of witchcraft as the ultimate offence. Christian

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movies about witchcraft warn and alert born-again Christians of its multidimensional perils and provide spiritual instruments such as Christian deliverance and exorcism rituals (Deji Ayegboyin 2005). Taking African worldviews as a serious platform upon which to base their teaching on the activities of Satan, Pentecostal Christians devote an incredibly large amount of energy and time on detailing the activities of a wide range of evil spirits whose primary functions are to ‘steal, kill and destroy’ (John 10: 10). A corollary of the central place given to witchcraft discourse in both Pentecostal rituals and theology is the unusually large numbers of ex-witches produced by the numerous ‘crusades’ or ‘religious warfare’ against witches. Having publicly given up their ‘witchcraft power’, these ex-witches are encouraged, at times coerced,7 to produce a range of testimonies about their exploits in the realm of dark forces as an external index of their inward repentance and makeover. It is this category of born-again Christians that Jennifer Badstuebner (2003: 8, 10) aptly describes as ‘born again witches’; they gain recognition within the Pentecostal community, not because they are now Christians, but because the knowledge and experience of witchcraft are inscribed on their bodies, on their personal history and on their memory. Because of the opprobrium culturally attached to witchcraft in many Nigerian societies, to ‘claim to have once been a witch is an extraordinary act [. . . ] an ambitious and risky claim to power and knowledge’ (Jennifer Badstuebner 2003: 11). Through such public proclamation of experiences straddling the worlds of both Pentecostal power and the dark arcane forces, these born-again witches become a subject of public spectacle and of ambivalent emotions of attraction and dread. The production of born-again witches speaks ‘[of ] the recent history of the Nigerian state’ (Misty Bastian 2001: 72), which is characterized by deepseated social dislocation, economic exploitation and personal insecurity in the midst of unimaginable wealth generated from oil and the enchantment of late capitalist modernity. In ‘a society where modernity’s most basic promises are subverted’ (Misty Bastian 2001: 76), indulging in the most extraordinary mystical exploits becomes commonplace. Ogbu U. Kalu (2007: 13) observes that ‘the scarcity of money and social suffering’ and the ‘dire times [that] need quick solutions’ enlarge the space in which witchcraft and other occult practices flourish. The graphic recollection, embellishment and dissemination of testimonies of this sort become a stock-in-trade for Nigeria’s new religious entrepreneurs who claim their activities ‘depopulate Satan’s kingdom’ (Ogbu U. Kalu 2007: 16) to repopulate heaven with saved souls and at the same time re-enchant the public imagination. Born-again witches, therefore, serve as a physical confirmation of the reality of salvation; they are a tool and symbol of

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self-recovery and empowerment for those who are hitherto disempowered and marginalized by material scarcity. The testimonies they give, shocking as they are, demonstrate the concentration of their power and the perverse character of their previous realm. The more shocking the exploits of the born-again witches, the more powerful the pastor and congregation through whom the witches became born again. The born-again witches produced by Nigeria’s new Pentecostalism exhibit radically different demographic characteristics from the now stereotyped image of the African witch. Although they are still mainly women, they are increasingly younger, properly educated, in many cases highly articulate in their English testimonies and inordinately ambitious urban dwellers. In a South African Pentecostal church, ‘storytelling about the occult is [. . . ] a critical strategy of survival for this group of young women’ which contains ‘the power of the individual’s personal history, sense of agency, and desires [. . . ] to insert [itself ] into the fabric of public life’ (Jennifer Badstuebner 2003: 9). Bornagain witches are never divested of their powers, for such powers – as they might have claimed before their conversion – are transformed and strategically redirected in the new spiritual economy of Pentecostalism. These women still live in tension between the dangerous old power and the socially acceptable new selves to be used for the glory of God and the expansion of the church responsible for the production of more born-again witches. Helen Ukpabio represents a typical case of a born-again witch whose only lasting influence is drawn from the endless narrations of her encounter with Lucifer through witchcraft. As a makeover witch, she is mandated to ‘eradicate witchcraft’ through the liberation and restoration of witches and to save those suffering under the heavy weight of witches’ curse. Her singular qualification for this task is her experience as a witch, not as a Christian. It is in view of this task that her church is called ‘Liberty Gospel Church’ and her movie firm is called ‘Liberty Films’.

The Movies In this paper we are concerned with two Nigerian movies, End of the Wicked (1999) and Married to a Witch (2001). Liberty Film and Music Plaza, a branch of Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, produced these video films and marketed them primarily in the VHS or VCD format. The number of sales for home videos like these figures in the hundreds of thousands, and consumption takes place predominately within private households. In the movie End of the Wicked, directed by Teco Benson, the main victim is a young, successful businessman. His mother, a witch, sells him to her coven.

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Thereafter, all his business ventures fail, and he starts suffering from a number of health problems. He suspects a curse and rejects the help of his wife, whom he perceives as a spiritual threat. Together with his mother he decides to seek help from traditional healers; the first healer is unable to help, and his mother kills the second, who being more powerful identified witchcraft as the cause of his problems. His wife turns to a Pentecostal pastor for help. He suffers bankruptcy and spends some time in jail on a murder charge. The witches slaughter a goat at their coven, and simultaneously the protagonist dies in his bed at home. At his funeral, his wife is charged with witchcraft, but the pastor manages to stall the witchcraft ordeal by promising to present the real perpetrator. In a spiritual battle the pastor evokes the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, overcoming the power of darkness of the mother and exposing her as a witch. The mother publicly confesses she is a witch, is beaten up by a mob and finally explodes when the evil forces leave her body. In the movie Married to a Witch, directed by Fred Amata, an economically successful young man drops out of a Pentecostal church after quarrels with the church leader. Taking advantage of the loss of spiritual protection, his aunt, a witch, offers him to her coven, and the witches start to eat his life force. An attractive young witch from the coven seduces and marries the male protagonist. After marriage she destroys his relations with his parents and siblings. His health deteriorates and he is about to die, when he is finally saved by another of his aunts, who is leading a Pentecostal church and who uses her spiritual power to counter the attacks of the witches. In the final scene of the movie, the young wife, exposed as a witch and covered in faeces, is driven through the streets by a mob of children singing ‘what do you expect when you marry a witch’. The two movies are similar not only in their storylines, but also with regard to the social and cultural background, a world characterized by spiritual struggle and structured by a number of intersecting dichotomies. In both cases the victimized protagonists are young men. They are in their prime, physically healthy, married and fathers. They are the principal providers of their families; are part of the upper middle class; live in the city, in big, detached houses with guarded gates; are tended by maids; and wear fashionable Western-style suits or high-quality Yoruba-style clothing (agbada), together with designer sunglasses, expensive watches and prestigious jewellery. The height of their success in modern Nigerian society measures the depth of their fall. During the course of the movies, they lose everything: their health, their intact family relations, their wealth and their power. Witches are the antagonists in both movies. Their meeting places are visualized as the other of the urban civilization; they are places of darkness from

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where the evil forces strike to shatter the fragile peace of the protagonists’ lives. The witches meet at night in a wild and dark forest; the sinister atmosphere is reinforced by shaky images and by the film’s soundtrack featuring the hooting of owls, the crack of thunder and spooky music. The witches are clad in ragged black or red robes, and their faces and limbs are disfigured by what looks like seeping boils and pustules. The movies show their ability to fly and to change into an animal form. Most of the witches are women, but in The End of the Wicked, a male character called Lord Beelzebub the Great heads the witches’ coven. In both movies, the witches permeate and victimize the urban society. Members of the secularized modern world do not stand a chance against witchcraft, because it takes religious expertise to recognize and act against the witches, who are able to operate in secret because ordinary people lack the religious power to see the spiritual truth behind surface appearance. The main characters receive warning signs in visionary dreams, but they are unable to interpret these signs correctly. The main tension of the movies is build upon this lack of knowledge. The audience enjoys the privileged view that real-life religious experts claim: to discern the active spiritual forces behind the screen of surface appearances (Birgit Meyer 2006a: 441). The audience knows of all the witches’ activities, but the victims, as portrayed in the movies, do not. So how do they deal with their afflictions? Biomedicine offers no solution, because it is ineffective at best, or can even be used as a medium for witchcraft attacks. So the victims of witchcraft turn to religious experts, either from African or from Indian mystical traditions. These healers are not portrayed as mere charlatans, but as people possessing some kind of spiritual power. However, they are unable to deal with witchcraft, either because they lack the power it takes to overcome the witches or because they are in alliance with the witches in the first place. The movies show only one effective measure against witchcraft: Pentecostal Christianity. This measure is personified in the Pentecostal pastor, who is the only character qualified to wage successful spiritual war against the witches. In both movies, Helen Ukpabio acts the role of this pastor. She is able to identify witches, and she uses the power of prayer to counteract their evil forces, which are visualized through special effects. Her prayers reveal the witch, and they lead to the public confession and humiliation of the witch, depicted in the final scenes of both movies. But her powers seem to be limited. She does not take the battle to the witches’ coven, nor does she eradicate witchcraft once and for all. In both movies a single witch is eliminated, but the covens and the dangers of witchcraft continue to exist. The pastor can confront individual witches, but she cannot fight the spiritual battle on behalf of

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the victims. She offers advice and assistance, but in order to save themselves, the victims have to be spiritually empowered; they have to be born again in Jesus Christ. Even then the victims escape only at terrible personal costs and have to be happy to have survived. There is the satisfaction that a witch is destroyed, but the movies do not have happy endings. Considering the actual time spent on depicting the various motives, the movies are up to 95 per cent concerned with the atrocities, the danger and the horrible effects of witchcraft, and only up to 5 per cent concerned with the Christian countermeasures and solutions to these spiritual threats.

Movie Makers and Audiences Helen Ukpabio, who plays the pastor in the movies, is the founder/owner of Liberty Gospel Church and of Liberty Films and Music Plaza, a movie and music production firm. Her church is specialized in the liberation from demonic powers and witchcraft. Helen Ukpabio claims to be a delivered witch turned pastor and to be especially effective in battling the forces of darkness because of her insider’s perspective. Born in 1966, she joined the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, an African Initiated Church founded by Olumba Olumba Obu in the early 1930s, in Calabar. According to her life story, she had become the most powerful and dreaded witch in the Brotherhood Church at the age of 14. As a result of her exploits in the occult world, she was to be sacrificed to Lucifer as his spouse for eternity. This oblation was pre-empted by her conversion to Pentecostalism. Ukpabio claims to have received a divine mandate to ‘eradicate witchcraft in the world but particularly in Africa where the powers of European Christian missionaries were futile in the face of Africa’s stubborn witches and wizards’.8 After the foundation of the Liberty Gospel Church in 1992, Ukpabio published books on her witchcraft experiences and wrote a play on the same subject, which was staged within the church. In 1998 she entered into the movie business with the release of Magic Money (1998). Ukpabio came to national and international fame when she released the award-winning movie, The Price (1999), which to date remains the most successful Pentecostal film in Nigeria, having sold close to 1 million copies in Nigeria alone.9 She has made 18 movies in all, including Power to Bind (1998), Holy Crime (1999)10 and Hell Fire! (2007). Ukpabio is the producer of all her movies. She employs experts to direct her movies, as well as popular actors to play the leading roles, but the story development, as well as the screenplays in many cases, are her own (Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2003, 2005). Witchcraft is an important and recurrent theme running through many of her productions, be they books, plays or movies. Such obsession, according

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to Ukpabio, stems from the belief that ‘the powers of darkness are at war with mankind. The witchcraft world is angry with man’.11 For her, the artistic productions are not fictitious; but deal with reality. In one interview she gave two reasons why her movies depict the reality of witchcraft. First, she refers to her practical experience of dealing with witchcraft problems in her church. And secondly, after watching her movies, more and more people come to consult her in real life: When you say we are doing fictitious stories and even the messages we preach are fictitious you have not watched my films. If you watched my films you will know these are all life applications. I sit down to counsel people from 6 am every Monday, and if I go for crusade I must keep the morning session for counselling. [. . . ] Like when End of the Wicked came out more than 800 people joined the headquarter church. We could not follow up, we could not have enough seats for them. We needed to extend the tent so we now asked what was the problem, during counselling we now saw the problem [. . . ] So it is not fictitious it is [a] real life problem.12

In the movies, actors play the witches, and special effects technology depicts the powers of witchcraft, but the representative gap between fiction and reality is bridged in the person of Ukpabio, who is a pastor in real life as well as in movies. With her claim to insider knowledge of witchcraft and her practical experience as a Pentecostal pastor, she herself legitimizes and authorizes her movies as authentic. Her preaching in real life as well as in the movies blurs the boundary between fiction and reality, and consequently, doubting the ‘reality’ represented in her movies entails doubting the effectiveness of her real-life preaching, as well as doubting the existence of spiritual forces in general, as she suggests in the statement quoted above. The movies are fictions, but they claim to be real enough to pose a threat to the forces of darkness. At the beginning of The End of the Wicked, the following message appears on the screen: ‘This film is coming to you by the special grace of God. There have been several near successful attempts by the powers of darkness to stop it, because of its great expositions’. The forces of darkness try to intervene in the making of movies that expose their secrets, and the artistic representation of magical acts calls for protective measures, because the representational acts can turn real at any moment. The boundary between fiction and reality is a fragile one: play-acting witchcraft rituals might attract the real powers of darkness, and an actor playing a person possessed might really be overwhelmed by a spirit (Birgit Meyer 2006b: 306–7; Bernard Müller 2005: 183–5). From Ukpabio’s point of view, the movies she makes are not fictitious but documentary, and provide the viewers with a privileged insight into the reality of witchcraft, with storylines based in part on divine revelations. These are the

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claims of the movie producer. But of equal importance are the attitudes of the consumers that watch the movies. While little qualitative research on the consumption of the movies has been carried out until today, there is some quantitative data on the audiences. According to one study based on questionnaires, with 400 respondents from five Nigerian cities, the majority of the audience of Christian video films are women, of Christian faith, aged between 26 and 35 years (Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2005: 307–9). Of the respondents, 79 per cent said they watched the movies ‘to seek knowledge, Christian truth and values’ versus 5 per cent who watched them for entertainment. During the course of his research, Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah had the opportunity to work in the public relations department of Liberty Films for three months in 2002, where he answered phone calls of video film consumers. During this period, over 100 callers linked the content of Ukpabio’s movies directly to their real-life experiences of witchcraft. Given this evidence, it seems likely that a sizeable portion of the movies’ audience share Ukpabio’s view regarding the reality of dangerous spiritual forces and regard her movies as revealing the truth about the secret machinations of witchcraft. In cooperation, the producers and consumers of films like The End of the Wicked and Married to a Witch produce cultural reality. They construct the ‘other’ of Pentecostal Christianity in a circular process. The message of the movies is reinforced through real-life experiences, like the confessions or burnings of witches, while the movies’ revelations about witchcraft, in turn, reinforce the interpretation of real-life experiences. Asymmetrical relations of power characterize this cooperation in the construction of cultural reality. As a producer, Ukpabio is in control of the means of production, and she determines the content of the movies, but she does not control what the consumers make out of her films. This difference in practical engagement with the movies can be analysed as the difference between strategies and tactics (Michel de Certeau 1984: xix). The tactics of the consumers and their attitudes towards the movies are essential for the construction of cultural reality, and the evidence presented above suggests that they follow the claims regarding their authenticity. As far as the audience acknowledges the reality of the spiritual forces portrayed in the movies, the films contribute to the production of symbolic capital, to the reproduction of Ukpabio’s status as a Pentecostal fighter against the evils of witchcraft. Symbolic capital is the ability to define who and what is worthy of acknowledgement, and thus to legitimize relations of power. It is based on the acknowledgement of others, on its simultaneous recognition and misrecognition (Pierre Bourdieu 1997: 285). The audience recognizes

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Ukpabio’s status as a Pentecostal pastor, who wages a war against the forces of darkness, both on the screen and in her church, but the consumers misrecognize her partial interests, her position of power and her ability to generate economic capital, which remain hidden behind the screen of the common good of the fight against the forces of evil. Within the religious market of Nigeria, or more specifically within its Pentecostal segment, Ukpabio’s church specializes in services counteracting witchcraft and other demonic forces. Under the heading ‘Eradication of witchcraft’, a billboard advertising the church’s services in 2004 asks: ‘Are you oppressed, in bondage, afflicted, attacked, are you a witch or not too sure? Come for clearance!’13 In this context the movies are a means to advertise the services of the church, and as a good advertisement, they create the needs the church serves quite successfully, at least according to Ukpabio’s claim that 800 new members joined the main parish after the release of The End of the Wicked. Insofar as Ukpabio manages to authorize her movies as authentic, the films contribute to the social and economic reproduction of her church. That witchcraft and other anti-social spiritual powers serve to legitimize and reproduce religious institutions, and the relations of power linked with these institutions, is not a recent development. Witchcraft, according to Peter Geschiere (1997), can be analysed as a public secret. The witches’ activities are talked about, but one does not see them, unless one is a witch oneself. Witchcraft is hidden and revealed; people talk about it without really knowing. It makes a public appearance only in the acts which counter its effects, be they performed by traditional priests or Pentecostal pastors, and in the confessions of witches in the context of anti-witchcraft movements or Pentecostal churches. The social reality of witchcraft is based on activities taking place within religious institutions, which are legitimized, in part, by reference to the secret activities of its ‘other’. Unlike the public actions directed against the witches, their hidden activities can only be talked about. Stories about witches form part of local oral traditions and neighbourhood gossip, and witches themselves tell about their machinations when they confess. These stories reproduce the cultural reality of witchcraft. What changes with the introduction of movies is that the secret activities of the witches are no longer merely talked about, but shown on the television screen. The movies augment, influence and maybe even dominate the stories about witches, and therefore the production of the cultural reality of witchcraft. The socio-cultural function of the stories does not change, but they shift from one medium to another (for a similar argument, see Birgit Meyer 2006a: 434). The consequences of this shift form the focus of the next section.

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Media Rituals: The Construction of the Cultural Reality of (Born-Again) Witches According to Nick Couldry (2003), media rituals, that is a variety of practices relating to modern mass media, establish ‘the basic category difference between anything “in” or “on” or associated with “the media”, and anything which is not’ (Nick Couldry 2003: 47). In addition, these practices in their totality create an ideology or misrecognition of social importance. Whatever the media cover is of importance for the society, whatever is not covered cannot be important. This difference, called ‘myth of the mediated centre’ by Nick Couldry (ibid. 45), seems natural and is hard to evade or to challenge. What is ‘in’ the media is contested in struggles characterized by asymmetrical power relations, due to high economic costs of many of the modern mass media. In Nigeria, witchcraft is certainly ‘in’ the media. There are newspaper reports about anti-witchcraft killings,14 yellow-press stories about the witches’ atrocities (Misty Bastian 2001) and an internet forum discussing the problem of what to do ‘if your mum is practising witchcraft on you’.15 There are books, plays and movies on witchcraft. Video films like the ones discussed here are a visual and mass-produced medium. The production of video films is controlled by the owners of the means of production, and thanks to their reproducibility, the video films can be widely disseminated. Half a million sold copies might not seem overly impressive in a country with over 130 million people, but video clubs and the widespread practice of non-licenced copying enhance the distribution of the videos. The second characteristic of the video films, which further enhances their potential to dominate the cultural construction of witchcraft, is their visuality. The movies do not only tell about witches; they show them in action. In the words of Louisa Inyang, the public relations officer of Liberty Films, the video films are ‘another way of disseminating God’s messages to people, not just preaching. I believe that this thing is better watched than listened to [. . . ] it’s like the witchcraft thing you watched on the telly, if you tell people, it might not really make any real impact but when they see it on telly, they see how it looks like’.16 Both movies provide their audiences with a privileged vision. They both end with the public confession and humiliation of witches, events that form part of the real-life experience of many Nigerians. The whole movies provide the background information for the final scenes; they reveal how the witches are and allow the consumers to witness vicariously the evil deeds of the witches, which remain hidden in real life. This ‘spirit of discernment’, the ability to see the spiritual truth behind everyday surfaces, and a shift from the invisible to the visible as the basis of faith are hallmarks of West African Pentecostalism (Birgit Meyer

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2006a: 433; 2006b: 301–2). The privileged vision is the major attraction of the movies, and the pastor in Married to a Witch explicitly addresses the power of vision: ‘There is nothing hidden under the sun, and our God is the revealer of secrets [. . . ] we all must deliver our lives to Jesus Christ, this is the only way out of blindness’.17 The movies proclaim the reality of witchcraft, and they fill the label ‘witchcraft’ with cultural content; they exemplify what witchcraft is really like. Ukpabio’s concept of witchcraft is a syncretistic one. Witchcraft is almost like an open container into which all kinds of elements from various sources can be put. With the playful hybridity and the creative mixing of heterogeneous influences, the videos can be regarded as typical examples of African popular art (Karin Barber 1997: 1). Ukpabio’s definition of witchcraft includes not only divination and oracles, but also ‘necromancy’, ‘generalized spiritism’, ‘voodooism’, ‘vampirism’ and ‘native doctors’ making use of fly whisks and the Eye of Horus. Witches meet at their traditional places deep in the forest, and also at urban apartments. They have the ability to change into an animal form – not only into the traditional night birds, but also into parrots, dogs, cats and even rabbits. The witches pursue the anti-social ends prescribed by custom; they unleash unbridled destruction on their close kin, but they are also bound to Christian evil, as personified in their lord, Beelzebub the Great, with his biblical roots. In both movies, witches are predominately women. While there are some male witches, and Lord Beelzebub is a male personality, all the witches directly responsible for the downfall of the male victims are women. Again this raises the question of origin. According to Peter Pels (1998: 201), the term ‘witchcraft’ itself is charged with the power relations of the colonial encounter, constructing a female concept of African spiritual power vis-à-vis the male European colonizer. But there is also ample evidence for female agency in anti-social spiritual power in many African religious traditions. Regardless of the origins, popular concepts of witchcraft in contemporary Nigeria seem to favour women as its agents. In Ukpabio’s movies the witches are ‘witches’ rather than amusu, aje, embuga, ifót- or mbatsav. They are witches that transcend ethnic boundaries, but they are women in the majority, and to ascertain female spiritual power is one of the most important messages carried by Ukpabio’s movies. Both movies tell stories of the spiritual power of women. In both, the most powerful actor, the agent in control over the spiritual forces, is the Pentecostal pastor played by Helen Ukpabio. In both movies men are destroyed, and women are saved. In Married to a Witch, the little sister and brother of the male protagonist encounter spiritual danger when they move in with their brother and his wife, the witch. When offered the choice by the pastor, the

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sister chooses to be born-again and is saved, although she has to endure many a hardship. The brother rejects, relying on his physical strength, and is killed. The pastor comments: ‘You have failed already. You want to fight a spiritual battle with your physical strength’. This unequal balance of power between men and women is reproduced in the rescue of the male protagonist. The father, armed with a machete, ends up contributing no more than physically carrying his son to safety, while the female pastor armed with spiritual weapons disposes of the witch in spiritual battle. In The End of the Wicked, the witch kills her son, while his wife chooses to be born-again, gains spiritual power, and uses this power to return the witchcraft attack to its sender, her mother-in-law. With regard to spiritual power female agency is not limited to the ‘good girls’ either, with most of the ‘bad guys’ being women, while the men are largely restricted to the role of the victims, to be imprisoned or slaughtered by the female witches. To over 90 per cent the movies indulge in this dark side of predominately female spiritual power, in the fascinating and repulsing transgressions of witchcraft, in sex and violence, in blood and gore, in pure evil and utter anti-social destructiveness. The empowerment of women is not restricted to the screen, but extends to the real world. They can take part in the ‘mediated centre’ that defines what is important for society. Nick Couldry (2003) analyses the power of media with regard to everyday encounters with media celebrities, to pilgrimages to the settings of media productions or events, or to confessions on television talk shows. In the Nigerian context, the consumers of Christian horror films cannot only meet the movie-star pastor Helen Ukpabio in real life, but can also become born-again members of her church, just like the characters in the videos, and they can even confess their being a witch and seek deliverance in front of a Pentecostal audience. To become born again in Christ empowers not only against the forces of darkness, but also against African traditional religions, against the wider social obligations within traditional systems of authority and the economic claims of relatives left behind in the village. Pentecostal Christianity claims superior spiritual power and moral righteousness, as in The End of the Wicked, where the born-again wife rejects the witchcraft ordeal ordered by the male representative of the traditional religious authority, and the spiritual power of the Pentecostal pastor reveals the real witch.

Conclusions The analysis of Pentecostal witchcraft movies with regard to female empowerment sheds light on the tactics of the consumers in Michel de Certeau’s (1984) sense. By affirming the reality of the spiritual forces represented in the movies,

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consumers can partake in the capital at stake in the social game of religion. In the battle between Pentecostal Christianity and the witches, it is not only Ukpabio who gains symbolic capital, but ordinary women also. They can join the church and become empowered born-again Christians, or if they are brave, even born-again witches, thus combining the flirtation with the dark side of female spiritual power with the respectability of born-again Christianity. Or they can enjoy watching the movies, dreaming of or reliving stories of female empowerment. And they can indulge in the dark fantasies of the witchcraft covens, which make up for more than 90 per cent of the movies and which also provide the cultural capital, the knowledge it takes to use the power of prayer against the forces of darkness or to confess being a witch. For ‘you are a witch or not too sure’ is one of the problems the Liberty Gospel Church deals with effectively without resorting to physical violence. This personal gain in cultural and symbolic capital explains, we believe, why the movies are especially popular with women between 26 and 35 years and why they rightly claim that they watch these movies ‘to seek knowledge, Christian truth and values’. And it also helps to explain why the Liberty Gospel Church is especially popular with women. The central innovation of Helen Ukpabio is to retain and transform the female power of witchcraft in a truly dialectical fashion, as exemplified in her life history as a born-again witch, who uses her insider knowledge into the evils of witchcraft to further the good of Pentecostal Christianity.

Notes 1. ‘The fear of witches’, Daily Sun (Lagos), Tuesday, August 21, 2007. 2. See Obinna Ubani-Ebere, ‘Mass hysteria and the rise of barbaric empires, utucracy, domestic terror networks, youth hooliganism, deadly vigilante groups and illegal jails in Ngwa villages of Abia State, Nigeria’, http://www.nigerian-newspaper.com/ abia-state-villages.htm, accessed 28 August 2007. For details on the complexity of witchcraft beliefs and the anxieties they produce in contemporary Africa, see David Westerlund (2006: 165–208). 3. Obinna Ubani-Ebere, ‘Mass hysteria and the rise of barbaric empires, utucracy, domestic terror networks, youth hooliganism, deadly vigilante groups and illegal jails in Ngwa villages of Abia State, Nigeria’. 4. Isioma Madike, ‘Killing in the name of witchcraft’, Daily Independent (Lagos), http:// odili.net/news/source/2007/jul/7/607.html, accessed 28 August 2007. 5. Isioma Madike, ‘Killing in the name of witchcraft’. 6. Ibid. 7. Some Nigerian Pentecostal pastors, such as Enoch Adeboye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), teach that by not testifying to being redeemed or receiving a miracle, a Christian invites more serious afflictions.

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8. Interview with Helen Ukpabio, 15 October 2002. 9. Interview with Chief Ossy Affason, 51 Iweka Road, Onitsha, 14 October 2002. Chief Affason is the principal marketer of Liberty Films and the president of the Video-Films Marketers Association of Nigeria. 10. Holy Crime was aimed at exposing the ‘satanic’ activities of Ukpabio’s former co-religionists at the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star. 11. See the jacket of The Coven 1. 12. Interview with Helen Ukpabio, 15 October 2002. 13. The poster will be published in Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2008. 14. See, for example http://odili.net/news/source/2007/jul/7/607.html, accessed 28 August 2007. 15. http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-2307.0.html, accessed 30 August 2007. 16. Interview with Louisa Inyang, 13 September 2002. 17. All quotations from the movies are the authors’ transcription.

References Apter, Andrew (1993). ‘Atinga revisited: Yoruba witchcraft and the cocoa economy, 1950–1951’, in Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (eds), Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 111–28. Ayegboyin, Deji (2005). ‘“. . . But deliver us from evil . . . ”: the riposte of the MFM and its implications for the “reverse in mission”’, Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies XXXVII/1–2, pp. 33–63. Badstuebner, Jennifer (2003). ‘“Drinking the hot blood of humans”: witchcraft confessions in a South African Pentecostal church’, Anthropology and Humanism XXVIII/1, pp. 8–22. Barber, Karin (1997). ‘Introduction’, in Karin Barber (ed.), Readings in African Popular Culture. Oxford: James Curry, pp. 1–12. Bastian, Misty (2001). ‘Vulture men, campus cultists and teenage witches: modern magics in Nigerian popular media’, in Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders (eds), Magical Interpretations, Material Realities, Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: Routledge, pp. 71–96. Bastian, Misty (2002). ‘“The daughter she will eat agousie in the world of the spirits”: confessions of a witch in missionized Onitsha, 1890’, Africa LXXII/1, pp. 84–111. Bourdieu, Pierre (1997). Méditations pascaliennes. Paris: Seuil. Certeau, Michel de (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Couldry, Nick (2003). Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge. Danfulani, Umar H. D. (1999). ‘Exorcising witchcraft: the return of the gods in new religious movements on the Jos Plateau and the Benue regions of Nigeria’, African Affairs XCVIII, pp. 167–93. Essien, Anthonia M. (2005). Religion and Reproductive Health in Nigeria. Lagos: African Heritage Publications.

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Evans-Pritchard, Edward (1937). Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geschiere, Peter (1997). The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in PostColonial Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Gottlieb, Alma (1989). ‘Witches, kings, and the sacrifice of identity or the power of paradox and the paradox of power among the Beng of Ivory Coast’, in W Arens and Ivan Karp (eds), Creativity of Power: Cosmology and Action in African Society. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 245–72. Hackett, Rosalind I. J. (2003). ‘Discourse of demonization in Africa and beyond’, Diogenes L, pp. 61–75. Idowu, E. Bolaji (1994). Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief. New York: Original Publications. Ifeka, Caroline (2006). ‘Youth culture and the fetishization of violence in Nigeria’, Review of African Political Economy CX, pp. 721–36. Ikenga-Metuh, Emefie (1988). Comparative Studies of African Traditional Religions. Onitsha: Imico Publishers. Kalu, Ogbu U. (2007). ‘Pentecostalism and African mission 1970–2000’, Mission Studies XXIV/1, pp. 9–45. Meyer, Birgit (2006a). ‘Religious revelation, secrecy and the limits of visual representation’: Anthropological Theory VI, pp. 431–53. (2006b). ‘Impossible representations. Pentecostalism, vision and video technology in Ghana’, in Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors (eds), Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 290–312. Miguel, Edward (2005). ‘Poverty and witch killing’, Review of Economic Studies LXXII, pp. 1153–72. Müller, Bernard (2005). ‘The irruption of trance in contemporary Yoruba theatre: theatre, witchcraft, and social fragmentation in Lagos, Nigeria’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power XII/2, pp. 175–94. Offiong, Daniel O. (1991). Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic and Social Order Among the Ibibio of Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension. Parish, Jane (2000). ‘From the body to the wallet: conceptualizing Akan witchcraft at home and abroad’, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute VI, pp. 487–500. Peel, J. Y. D. (2000). Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pels, Peter (1998). ‘The magic of Africa: reflections on a Western commonplace’, African Studies Review XLI/3, pp. 193–209. Röschenthaler, Ute (2004). ‘Transacting Obasinjom: the dissemination of a cult agency in the Cross River area’, Africa LXXIV/2, pp. 241–76. Ukah, Asonzeh (2003). ‘Advertising God: Nigerian Christian video-films and the power of consumer culture’, Journal of Religion in Africa XXX, pp. 658–69. (2005). ‘The local and the global in the media and material culture of Nigerian Pentecostalism’, in Laurent Fourchard, André Mary and René Otayek (eds), Entreprises religieuses transnationales en Afrique de l’ouest. Paris: Karthala, Ibadan: IFRA, pp. 285–313. (2008). ‘Seeing is more than believing: posters and proselytization in Nigeria’, in Rosalind Hackett (ed.), Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets and Culture Wars. London: Equinox, pp 167–198.

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Westerlund, David (2006). African Indigenous Religions and Disease Causation: From Spiritual Beings to Living Humans. Leiden: Brill. Yusuf, Y. K. (2001). ‘English and Yorúba proverbs and the spiritual denigration of women’, in Lawrence Olufemi Adewole (ed.), Ifá and Related Genres. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. 1–10. Zachrisson, Per (2007). ‘Witchcraft and witchcraft cleansing in southern Zimbabwe’, Anthropos CII, pp. 33–45.

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5 Contesting God Nigerian Pentecostals and Their Relations with Islam and Muslims ■

Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah

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igeria is home to a diversity of religions, all strenuously competitive in their outlook and theologies. The oldest of these religions is a complex of indigenous religions that inherently exhibit not only unusual tolerance but also resilience, which made the accommodation of other religious traditions possible. Indigenous religions are internally variegated, because individuals affiliate themselves to the worship of one or more deities as their circumstances dictate. Islam was introduced into what later became Nigeria in the eleventh century through trade contacts between North Africa and the empire of Kanem Borno. Muslim merchants and scholars introduced an enviable culture of learning, public administration and business. The expansion of Islam enhanced trade and administration of a large area which is now northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt area and parts of the forest kingdom of Oyo. The six-year jihad of Othman Dan Fodio launched in 1804, initiated to purify Islamic practices by the political leaders of the north who were perceived to be practising a corrupted form of Islam, definitively established the religion as the preferred option for the ruling class. Evidently, part of the attraction of Islam for the ruling elite has remained Islam’s political theology: political governance is undergirded by religious ideas (Chima J. Korieh 2005). But even after this period, the type of Islam that evolved in northern Nigeria ‘was not a single monolithic entity; there were infinite permutations in its relationship with traditional cultures, as there were in the case of Christianity’ (Elizabeth Isichei 1995: 153). Christianity was first introduced into Nigeria in the fifteenth century when Portuguese traders and missionaries came inland to what is today Benin 93

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City and Warri Kingdoms. Because of several factors such as lack of workforce, tropical diseases and malaria-causing mosquitoes, as well as the involvement of the Portuguese in slave raiding and trading, this form of palace Christianity all but died out. The second, and by far more permanent, introduction of Christianity into Nigeria was in the mid-nineteenth century when exslaves from Sierra Leone were in the forefront of missionary activities, first in Badagry and then in the hinterland of Abeokuta. This second time, Christianity came with all its variety, divisions and contradictions: Methodists, Anglicans (Church Missionary Society [CMS]), Catholics, Presbyterians and others. Of these three major religious traditions in Nigeria, the two Abrahamic religions of Islam and Christianity have exhibited the most aggressive proselytizing tendencies. In the post-colonial period, the traditional tussle between both religions has trickled down to their ordinary adherents, who now perceive one another as rivals contesting ‘for the control of converts and of the state’ (Toyin Falola 2001: 37). Historically, Islam had employed physical and social coercion to convert adherents of indigenous religions. Christians have also used both fair and unfair methods in attracting, or rather luring, the members of indigenous religions into its folds. While Christians have not resorted to physical force or violence as part of their proselytizing strategy, they have partaken in both subtle and overt critique of Islam and its practices in trying to convert Muslims. In addition, Christian missionaries have tried to demonstrate the practical usefulness of Christianity, particularly in the areas of education and ‘Whiteman’s technology’ in making their case against Islam. Part of the argument of early Christian missionaries in northern Nigeria is that, aside from Islam being worse than ‘heathenism’, it is also an obsolete religion that got ‘in the way of development’ (Andrew E. Barnes 2004: 62). Both religions share a commonality that may be worrying in its implications for the socio-political order: their self-representation as the only true faith – with an inevitable intolerance of any other faith. The proliferation of division within Christianity, particularly with the introduction of Pentecostalism, altered the religious landscape of Nigeria so significantly that it also restructured the nature of the relationship that existed between Muslims and Christians. But Pentecostalism is not monolithic in its doctrines, practices and history; this is most evident by the presence of a plethora of Nigeria’s new Pentecostal churches and ministries that sprouted and expanded like wild fire after the end of the Civil War (1967–70). Writing on the nature of the competition for strategic resources by these new-breed churches and ‘fundamentalist Islamic groups’ in northern Nigeria, Matthews A. Ojo (2007: 175) argues that both groups are forms of ‘revivalist groups

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within each religion’ representing ‘a new dimension in religious fundamentalism in contemporary Nigeria because of their strong negative attitude towards other religions’. Ojo’s perspective presupposes that Muslim groups are monolithic to warrant a common attitude to Christians and Christianity. Likewise, Pentecostal groups are not of the same hue across Nigeria; hence, their attitude or posturing towards Islam and Muslims varies significantly. Furthermore, since it is hard to historically evaluate the waning of Christianity in Nigeria, as is the case in Europe, for example, it is even harder to argue that the new churches are revivalist groups. Such ‘clash of fundamentalisms’ (Tariq Ali 2002) perspective requires unpacking in order to underscore the subtleties and nuances inherent in the different shades of Pentecostalisms in Nigeria and its reflection on the relationship with Islam and Muslims. The new churches, however, may be categorized as ‘strong’, ‘militant’ groups (Gabriel A. R. Almond, Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan 2003), but hardly ‘fundamentalist’ in the sense in which the concept of ‘fundamentalism’ has evolved and has been deployed in the rhetorics of Western media and scholarship (Martin E. Marty and Scott R. Appleby 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1994, 1995). Today, Nigeria is home to ‘intolerant forms of Christianity and Islam’ (Andrew Apter 2005: 284), which seems to appeal to many young people who are sadly disappointed by the experience of a failed or receding state. In a virtually collapsing state, intolerant and resurgent religions hold sway. Part of what accounts for the ‘strong’ and ‘militant’ character of Nigeria’s new churches is the nature of their theology of God and the gospel command to ‘preach the gospel from the hilltop’ to ‘all the corners of the world’. The nature of competition for patronage and power among these churches also has a significant impact on the texture of vitality and militancy among the churches (Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2004). This theology is moderated by historical, social and economic exigencies which introduce new twists and accommodation to doctrinal orientations and missionary zeal. This chapter examines how a particularly prominent Pentecostal church that is both old and new in its history and social practice manifests this tension to preach and convert the world to its brand of Christianity and how such fiery intention is accommodated by more practical concerns of tolerance, domination and accommodation. This church is the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).

Nigerian Pentecostalisms The term ‘Nigerian Pentecostalisms’ is used here advisedly. Pentecostalism is recognized as a global religious ideology (Karla Poewe 1994; David Martin 2002); however, it has so inculturated in Nigeria that its local imprint

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is a defining feature wherever it has been exported.1 Furthermore, it is so internally polarized and sometimes mutually exclusive and unaccommodating that it makes sense to use the plural in characterizing these cultural and ideological permutations. Made up of a complex of protean as well as amorphous processes, the cultural constructions of Pentecostalism seem to favour a multiplicity of identities and belongings simultaneously. Being aggressively expansionary, Nigerian Pentecostalisms demonstrate clearly ambiguous characteristics and historical pathways of emergence. Many Pentecostal Christians trace their origin to the New Testament events of Acts 2 when the Spirit descended on the followers of Jesus Christ. Anderson (2004: 19–38; Michael Battle 2006) provides a historical trajectory of the evolution of the movement, starting from the New Testament period to the European Middle Ages through the Reformation and the Holiness and Healing Movements through the Keswick revival to the activities of the racist Charles Fox Parham (1873–1929) and his one time mentee, William Seymour.2 The origins of ‘Pentecostalism’ in Nigeria are contested. One school of thought, vigorously represented by Harold Turner (1979: 121–8), Ogbu U. Kalu (2007) and Matthews A. Ojo (2006a, 2006b), argue that it was a local innovation through the activities of ‘spontaneous and independent prophetic or “spiritual” movements in communities where non-Pentecostal missions had already planted churches’ (Turner 1979: 121). Another school of thought is rather inclined to believe that Pentecostalism was an introduction by Western missions in early 1931 ( J. D. Y. Peel 2000: 314), although these foreign missionaries built on fertile grounds prepared by local ‘proto-Pentecostal’ groups. Because of these contentions, Kalu’s (2000: 104) timely call for a careful study of the phenomenon is apposite: There are nagging questions about the African character of the movement, given a tendency toward eclecticism; there is a need for a proper typology, understanding the interior structures, vertical and horizontal expansion, the external linkages and responses to the socio-economic and political challenges.

While the emergence of Pentecostalism is aptly characterized as the ‘third wave’ of African responses to the Christian message, it is itself divided into four discernible strands according to their historical pathways of evolution. The precursors of Pentecostalism are distinctive indigenous Christian groups with no connection with external organizations. Although these groups did not call themselves explicitly ‘Pentecostal’, they exhibited the traits of what later became known as Pentecostalism. These features include prophecy, spontaneous prayer, second baptism, possession by the Spirit, exuberant liturgical expression, faith healing, stress on dreams, visions and glossolalia, among

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others (George D. Chryssides 2001: 28–9). J. D. Y. Peel (2000) also recognizes these features as ‘original Aladura hallmarks’, implying that the Aladura (Yoruba for ‘Owners of Prayers’) churches of Nigeria were in some real sense precursors to the Pentecostal movements. As we shall see, some of the Aladura churches, like the RCCG, metamorphosed into manifestly Pentecostal organizations. Among churches belonging to the precursor movements to the Pentecostal movement is the Garrick Solakri Braide movement, which emerged from within the Anglican Church in the Niger Delta area and came to national prominence about 1915 (Turner 1979: 122–3, 139). According to Matthews A. Ojo (2006a: 31), ‘the movement could have had a much wider impact if not for the opposition and the persecution by the white missionaries and the Colonial Administration’. Braide died in 1918,3 shortly after being released from prison. The Braide movement and others like it were clearly ‘Pentecostallike’ as well as prophet-healing type and form the bedrock upon which the Pentecostal movements were built. The first strand within the Pentecostal complex is represented by mission Pentecostal churches established by British–American mother churches. The first contact with any of these foreign Pentecostal bodies was made by the fundamentalist denomination Faith Tabernacle of Philadelphia with the Egbe Okuta Iyebiye (the Diamond, or the Precious Stone Society) in 1923 through correspondence ( J. D. Y. Peel 1968: 62–3; Deji Ayegboyin and Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2002). Several American and British Pentecostal groups whose historical roots were traced back to the Azusa Street Revival soon established congregations in Nigeria. The classical mission Pentecostal organizations that came to Nigeria include the Assemblies of God (1939),4 The British Apostolic Church (1931), The Foursquare Gospel Church (1941) and The Apostolic Faith Mission. These groups ‘were more hierarchical and institutionalised’ than the Aladura groups that were already operating before their arrival, ‘relying upon rational-legal justifications for the leadership’s authority’ (Sam Krinsky 2006: 22), unlike their Aladura precursors. A second strand of Pentecostal churches comprise those churches, now regarded as part of classical Pentecostal groups, established by Nigerians without any links with external bodies like the classical mission churches. As Matthews A. Ojo documents (2006a: 35–6), some of the Evangelical activities of the foreign mission Pentecostal churches – particularly the personal influence of the Revd S. G. Elton of The Apostolic Church – gave rise to the grooming of local Pentecostal Christians who absolved these teachings and went on to establish indigenous Pentecostal churches, which they headed without external oversight. Two prominent groups are the Salem Gospel Mission and the Gospel Faith Mission (Matthews A. Ojo 1999: 26). The difference between

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these churches and those belonging to the previous strand is partly obvious in the style of leadership, organization and doctrinal emphasis. The third strand of Pentecostalism is the Charismatic groups that emerged from within the mainline or mission churches, most notably the Roman Catholic and the Anglican Churches. It is important to distinguish this Charismatic strand from the larger classical/missionary Pentecostals, or the latter neo-Pentecostal variety, because of the important historical, institutional and doctrinal contexts of their emergence, which have strongly influenced their growth and development in Nigeria. The Charismatic Renewal Movement within the Catholic Church in Nigeria started in the Dominican Community at Samanda, Ibadan, in 1972. It was from here that the movement spread to other Catholic churches in the country, but under the firm guidance of the institutional authority of the church (Bradley P. Holt 1977; Innocent O. Dim 2003; Ogbu U. Kalu 2007). For example, because of their institutional and historical backgrounds, the Charismatic movements have not multiplied unguardedly or engaged in aggressive proselytization like the churches within other strands. Furthermore, their doctrinal emphases have been monitored and regulated by the mother church of which they are an integral part, unlike the independent Pentecostal churches. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal remains the most prominent branch within the Charismatic movement strand, but the Anglican Youth Fellowship also easily comes to mind. Lastly, the fourth strand of Pentecostalism in Nigeria is more appropriately called ‘neo-Pentecostalism’ (Ruth Marshall 1992). This is a newer brand of Pentecostalism, sometimes referred to as ‘new wave’ movement, which combines elements from classical Pentecostalism such as faith healing with accommodation with the world or with modernity. This new group in essence represents a later appropriation and adaptation of old Pentecostal teachings and practices with American-developed media and marketing practices as well as prosperity teachings. It has evolved its own peculiar character with emphasis on healing, deliverance, wealth and ‘blissful living’ packaged into media razzmatazz, often spearheaded by persons ‘who use business principles to discharge their pastoral responsibilities and make profit’ (John Olushola Magbadelo 2005: 45). These adopt an aggressive and expansionary proselytizing ideology, which historically emerged in the context of a post–Civil War Nigeria, a deregulated media policy, and socio-economic and political crises that resulted in a near melt down of the formal state. They have an obvious American influence in terms of theology (faith healing and prosperity teaching), media and advertising strategies, message content and organizational style (Matthews A. Ojo 2006b: 155–67; cf. Paul Gifford 1990: 382– 400; 1994: 513–33). Their proliferation, or rather fission, was occasioned by the socio-political and economic upheavals in Nigeria, beginning from the

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late 1980s. Some older Pentecostal churches, such as the RCCG, have transformed their doctrines, liturgies and self-image into prosperity churches in order to contest effectively with the fast-growing faith churches. The stagflation brought about by military misrule, gross appropriation of the state treasury, misapplication of International Monetary Fund–induced economic policies and decay of state infrastructure such as education, medical and health facilities came to a peak in the 1990s. This period was characterized by huge graduate unemployment and dwindling business activities as well as little consumer demands by the large army of economically disempowered citizenry. This situation of near state break-up was the backcloth against which these ‘new wave’ Pentecostal structures spouted and proliferated, trying to respond to the needs of the common people who were left to eke out a livelihood whichever way they could. According to Gideon A. Oshitelu (2000: 101), who carried out a survey of some of these churches and the reasons for their dizzying proliferation in Yorubaland, ‘the main reason for [the] increase in the membership and rapid establishment of neo-Pentecostal churches is the economic depression in our country which has resulted in many people being sacked or prematurely retired from work’. The situation is not necessarily one of ‘cause–effect’ type; however, the social situation is important in giving content and meaning to religious ideas, zeal and creativities. The most important defining characteristic of this strand of churches is their appropriation of the ‘Faith gospel’, also known as the ‘health and wealth theology’ (E. M. Okwori 1995). Applying Roy Wallis’ (1984) trichotomous scheme of analysing new religious movements on these different strands of Nigerian Pentecostalisms would yield some fruitful results. While none of these strands could be classified as ‘world-rejecting’, the classical Pentecostal and the Charismatic groups would probably fit the ‘world-accommodating’ category rather than the ‘worldaffirming’ one within which the neo-Pentecostals would normally be grouped. Because of the historical and doctrinal backgrounds of the variety of Pentecostalisms in Nigeria as already identified earlier in the chapter, there is also a variety of ambivalences characterizing the different churches in their relationship with Islam and Muslims. The RCCG exemplifies some of the tensions inherent in the theologies and practices of the Pentecostal sub-sector of Nigerian Christianity.

The RCCG: A History of Religious Rebranding The history of the RCCG encapsulates the different strands of Pentecostalisms and their historical trajectory as identified earlier in this chapter.5 The RCCG

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started as a fringe Aladura group, became a local branch of a foreign mission Pentecostal church, transformed into a Holiness church and is now a prosperity church. Such transformation is a typical case of ‘religious rebranding’. As is common with corporations, an organization rebrands in order to strategically reposition and add value to itself – in some cases by promising to add value to its customers – in a dynamic market so as to compete effectively with other similar organizations to capture and retain a niche (Martin Lindstrom 2004; Ngus Jenkinson, Branko Sain and Kevin Bishop 2005). Although the ‘brand’ is ‘nebulous, impossible to define and highly fragmented’, it is usually a symbolic mark of quality and importance which exists not only as a physical symbol but also as a mental image, ‘the sum of understanding’ in the minds of people that evokes emotions of satisfaction and attraction (John Noble 2006: 206; Steven M. Kates and Charles Goh 2003). When an organizational brand or its product is not doing very well in the industry market, the brand is relaunched or rebranded in order to evoke the expected associations in the minds of the public or consumers. For the RCCG, each time it changed its name, or introduced a new product or ritual, it was trying to position itself in the market for religious goods. The brand and rebranding are strategic elements in corporate identity management. Rebranding is not restricted only to corporate organizations, but it also extends to religious organizations which in many societies today exist in a vibrant, dynamic and competitive religious market; religious organizations engage in rebranding in order to attract and maintain a market niche (specific public or discrete group); and remain vibrant and competitively effective (Michael R. Darby and Edi Karni 1973; A. H. Walle 1988; Robert E. Morgan and Carolyn A. Strong 1998; Gerald Vinten 2000; Kent Miller 2002). This process of rebranding as an effective competitive strategy is very obvious in the history of the RCCG as shall be detailed in this section. Founded by the Revd Josiah Olufemi Akindayomi, an apostle of the Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church Movement (C&S), in 1952 in Ebute-Metta, the dirty, swampy backwaters of Lagos, the RCCG today represents a church of distinction with many doctrinal, liturgical and historical layers and hues. Akindayomi was born in 1907 in Ondo town into a family of worshippers of Ogun, the Yoruba deity of iron and war. His original names were Ogunribido (Ogun has a place to dwell) Akindolie; he grew up to become a renowned babalawo (father of secrets/mystery or diviner) and an onisegun (traditional medicine man). About 1925 he converted to the mission of the Anglican CMS in the town as he became interested in acquiring a Western type of education; he was baptized and substituted Ogunribido with Josiah. Although formally a Christian now, ‘he still retained a belief in Yoruba gods and practices’ (Gbolahan Olukayode Akinsanya 2000: 174). This fact would significantly shape his future spiritual quest.

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Josiah spent about 5 years in the Anglican Church, where he soon abandoned his quest for Western literacy, before moving on to join the C&S as a result of his encounter with a prophetess of the church who later became his spiritual mentor. As a renowned onisegun, Josiah had put a hex on this old C&S prophetess for interfering in his business without due invitation. He had expected the woman to be bitten by a poisonous snake as a result of the curse he had placed on her. Weeks passed and nothing of the expected calamity befell the prophetess. Josiah confronted her to enquire the source of her spiritual power to withstand his mystical powers. The encounter precipitated his reaffiliation from the CMS to the C&S.6 While the quest for the acquisition and manifestation of power through intense spiritual engagement might be said to be manifestly responsible for Josiah’s switch of church affiliation,7 the latent or remote cause could be ‘his dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church’ and its sterile and boring doctrine and liturgy. In 1941, after his apprenticeship under the prophetess mentor, Josiah left his family house in Ogun for Ile-Ife, where he was formally inducted as a peripatetic prophet and was married before he moved on to Lagos, claiming the place was where God had instructed him to relocate for his full-time prophetic ministry. In Lagos, he sojourned at the Mount Zion branch, the same parish where one of the co-founders of the C&S, Moses Orimolade Tunolase, had headed a congregation before the latter’s death on 19 October 1933 (Akinyele J. Omoyajowo 182: 38; Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2003: 51). Tunolase’s successor, Abraham William Onanuga, welcomed and encouraged Josiah who soon achieved popularity and fame as a prophet and healer. His eminence attracted a small group of followers around him; he organized the group into a Bible study group called Egbe Ogo Oluwa, the Glory of God Fellowship (GGF).8 Josiah soon moved the activities of the GGF from the church premises to his flat, fuelling the suspicion of harbouring an intention to break away from the C&S. When efforts to get him to bring the fellowship under the oversight authority of the C&S failed, he was formally excommunicated in 1952, together with his followers for gross insubordination to constituted ecclesiastical authority of the C&S. He quickly reconstituted the fellowship into a church, changing the name to Ijo Ogo Oluwa, the Glory of God Church. Not satisfied with its present name, and suffering from a crisis of identity, he changed the Glory of God Church to Ijo Irapada, the Redeemed Church. Yet again in 1954, the group modified its name to the Redeemed Apostolic Church, an effort that clearly demonstrates the agitations and pains of the nascent church to generate an identity separate from its Aladura mother church, the C&S. Four years after its inception, the young church sought and became affiliated to the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM), a segregated, white mission Pentecostal

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church jointly founded by John G. Lake and Thomas Hezmalhalch in 1908 (see Allan Anderson 1999, 2000; Kristina Helgesson 2006). With the commencement of the affiliation with the AFM, the Nigerian group changed its name to the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (Nigeria branch). The affiliation lasted from 1956 to 1960, but not without another change of name midway to the Apostolic Faith Mission of West Africa. The relationship with the AFM was terminated when Nigeria achieved political independence from Britain and severed political and cultural relationships with South Africa because of the latter’s apartheid policy. After the disaffiliation with the AFM, the church finally settled for the RCCG, a name it bears till today, claiming that God revealed it mysteriously to its founder. As the RCCG evolved from an Aladura church to a classical Pentecostal church with close relationship with the Assemblies of God Church (AOG), the AFM and the Faith Tabernacle, its doctrines and identity also changed from one decade to the other. The church cultivated the doctrines of other flourishing Pentecostal churches around it, and used the Sunday School manual of the AOG from the mid-1950s to 1982, until it designed its own manual under a successor to Josiah. The latter died on 2 November 1980, after 28 years of founding, leading and transforming an Aladura church to a Classical or Holiness Pentecostal church, where the collection of money was not allowed during services, women and men were segregated during services, women were prohibited from wearing makeup and trousers and were mandated to cover their heads while in church. More importantly, women did not have any leadership role and were not ordained as pastors or deacons. Josiah was succeeded by a young university lecturer, Enoch Adejare Adeboye, who assumed office after a lengthy leadership fight. Born in 1942, Adeboye reaffiliated from the Anglican Church in 1973, studied mathematics up to a doctorate level and acquired a Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Lagos, where he taught for a while before joining the University of Ilorin. He resigned from his employment as a senior lecturer after ascending to the top leadership position of the church. In 1981, the RCCG had 31 small congregations scattered in Lagos as well as in the Yoruba countryside; a senior pastor aptly described it as a ‘tribal church’ with many old, illiterate men and women. It was this church that Adeboye turned around by successfully rebranding it so that in 2006 it had more than 10,000 branches, over 2000 of these in 75 countries outside Nigeria. To commence this process of rebranding, the new leader started attending the Annual Kenneth Hagin (1917–2003) Youth Camp in Tulsa, the USA. Hagin is generally regarded as the ‘father’ or pioneer of the faith or ‘prosperity’ gospel (D. R. McConnell 1987; Milmon F. Harrison 2005; Shayne Lee 2005: 99). Through this exposure, Adeboye restructured

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the RCCG organizationally, liturgically and doctrinally, incorporating the faith gospel tenets. All the prohibitions put in place by Josiah were overturned by Adeboye, under whom the RCCG transformed once more from a ‘Holiness church’ to a ‘Prosperity church’. The theology of religion – particularly as it concerns relations with Islam and Muslims – as it now exists in the RCCG is the brain child of Adeboye who has constructed his charisma as superior to his predecessor’s. We shall now turn to the content of this theology of religion.

Demonizing Islam and Redeeming Muslims For both Islam and Christianity in Nigeria, indigenous religions have been a poaching ground for converts. Nigeria’s new Pentecostalism demonstrates more aggressiveness towards these religions by violently rejecting traditional religious objects, artefacts, customs and symbols. With many of the emergent New Pentecostal Class (NPC) untiringly blaming the work of ancestral ‘idols’, ancient curses and covenant for Nigeria’s poverty – both individual and collective – objects representing any aspect of indigenous religions have been either destroyed by public burning or secretly stolen and handed over to some church leaders who triumphantly immolate them. Many youths affiliated to this new religion have demonstrated rampaging rage against cultural items and ways of life, believing that (the Christian) God brooks no rival.9 The new Pentecostalism has thus constructed traditional religions as its ‘Other’ against which it frames its self-image and efficacy. By portraying the ‘sinister’ and dangerous power of this ‘Other’ it will now test and demonstrate its own capacity to bring about lasting change. Although adherents of indigenous religions do not have official spokespersons or activists who defend and protect their religious shrines and paraphernalia from abuse and assault, these religions have shown great resilience and continue to thrive even within Christianity and Islam (Umar H. D. Danfulani 1999; Makau Mutua 1999). As a Holiness church, the RCCG in the 1970s was known as a group with a sprinkling of firebrand leaders who opposed every religion other than ‘born again Christianity’ as the handiwork of Satan. Although the church did not produce any articulated treatises on its theology of religions, it produced popular and aggressive rhetorics against Nigeria’s hosting of the Second World Black and African Festival in 1977, commonly known as FESTAC ’77. The church claimed that FESTAC ’77 was a domestication and celebration of foreign gods and deities with the resources the Christian God has bestowed on the Nigerian peoples (Adekola 1989: 240). Consequently, the RCCG under the inspiration of the young, firebrand, holiness preacher, Adeboye, decided to organize its version of a festival celebrating God and his works in the

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world. Such attitude on the part of the RCCG was a measure of its zeal, but more importantly of the leadership’s self-understanding at the time as well as its vision and agenda. It is this church’s practical verdict on African indigenous religions. Irony may be the handmaid of history; the head of state of Nigeria during FESTAC ’77, Olusegun Obasanjo, reemerged in 1998 as a born-again Christian, espousing a Pentecostal-inspired programme of governance. Adeboye, who was the arrowhead against Obasanjo’s FESTAC, played a prominent role in the image laundry of Obasanjo, a former Baptist who went on to rule Nigeria for 8 years as a civilian president. In the 1990s, the RCCG’s intolerance of the 1970s, which demonstrated the ‘anti-establishment diatribes’ of the Holiness churches of the time (Ogbu U. Kalu 2004: 252), gave way to a pragmatic accommodation. Yet still, there are subtleties that demand to be unpacked in the RCCG’s relationship with Islam and Muslims. Generally, Pentecostal churches construct Islam ‘as the illegitimate religion of the bondwoman. As Ishmael’s descendants constitute a threat to the children of Isaac, so does Islam constitute a threat to Christians’ (Ogbu U. Kalu 2004: 256). As a church that has transformed over several years to appropriate Pentecostal doctrines, the RCCG deploys two basic but related tactics on dealing with Islam and Muslims. This can be stated as an interwoven strategy of demonizing Islam in order to redeem Muslims. The RCCG demonizes Islam as a religion inspired by Satan. This position is not new in itself, since it builds on a popular book by the ex-Muslim G. J. O. Moshay, Who Is This Allah? (1990), which insists that Allah is one of the 360 preIslamic Arabian gods. Also, educated pastors of the church are acutely aware of Ethel Miller’s The Truth about Muhammed (1926: 21), which contested the colonial government’s covert promotion of Islam in northern Nigeria and called Islam a ‘barren wilderness’ founded by a Satan-possessed misogynist and murderer. However, the RCCG’s statement of its position is not as straightforward as Moshay’s or Miller’s, since doing so would inevitably produce backlashes frightening to contemplate considering the rapaciously violent nature of Muslim reactions to perceived Christian ‘insults’ on Islam or Muhammad (Rosalind I. J. Hackett 1999: 246–67; Ebenezer Obadare 2004). Thus, in the Church’s 42 articles of belief that state its central dogmas, there is no mention of Islam or Muslims, but there is a definitive declaration that those who do not espouse such stated beliefs are excluded from ‘making heaven’. In one instance, the RCCG places a curse on those, either as individuals or as groups, who make use of material objects in ritual service: they ‘shall perish with them’.10 In this respect, Islamic rituals that involve ablution, the sacrifice of animals at certain periods of the year, the observance of the moon and the star in relation to certain religious observances11 or the maintenance of

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particular physical position(s) during prayers, and some other things fall under RCCG’s anathemized practices. Furthermore, Islamic doctrines that deny the divinity of Christ or the Trinity are found offensive and are claimed to have been inspired by Satan. Article 3 of the RCCG’s fundamental beliefs is emphatic: ‘We believe that [Jesus Christ] is the Son of God . . . that Jesus is God and was born by Mary the Virgin.’ On the Trinity, the church states in article 5: ‘The egg is comprised of three parts: The yellow yolk, the whitish part, and the shell. Despite these three (3) substances, the egg is not three but one. Likewise, we believe that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are one God, but made of three persons – hence they are ONE IN TRINITY’ (emphasis in original). Adeboye, the chief theologian of the RCCG and the instigator of its doctrinal orientation, has been careful not to explicitly mention Islam or Muslims in his many writings or sermons, but emphasizes the church’s articulation of faith in those doctrines that clearly point to categorizing Islam as idolatry because it evidently denies the central pillars of beliefs. There is, however, one reference in the work of Adeboye where it is obvious that he equates Islam to a religion of Satan. In a recent book of daily readings titled Open Heavens (2007), Enoch Adejare Adeboye tells this story: How much is Satan offering you so you can annoy your God? He can never pay your price . . . There are [born again] believers who do not appreciate their value, and as a result are being bought for peanuts by Satan . . . Several years ago, when we were at Ilorin, some Muslims converged on one brother promising to build him a house, give him a car and lots of money if he converts to Islam . . . The night before this conversion, some Christians went to him and asked him if that was all he was worth . . . If Satan can pay a price greater than what Jesus paid for you, then he can have you.12

Apart from stating the nature of induced proselytization, which it claims Muslims are employing to get prominent Christians converted, this text is, to my knowledge, the only existing public statement by any RCCG minister which is bold enough to call Islam a religion of Satan and Muslims agents of Satan trying to buy Christians for the price of peanuts. It is not likely that Adeboye would have openly written about Islam in this manner if the context were to be other than a daily devotional reading designed for followers to nurture their spiritual life. He has a history of not referring to Islam but to Satan or the Devil when he intends to depict some disgust about interfaith situations in Nigeria. He writes, for instance: ‘I know that the issue of Nigeria [that is, the trouble with Nigeria] is not the issue of North [read: Islam] versus South [read: Christianity]. It has nothing to do with Moslems versus Christians. The issue of Nigeria is the devil versus God’s plan for Nigeria’

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(Enoch Adejare Adeboye 1999: 177). It is obvious – even in the face of this subtle, cautious representation of Islam as not the problem with Nigeria – that on a different level, the RCCG deeply stereotypes Islam as idolatry, a religion inspired by Satan, and Muslims as candidates of hell who need redemption as conceived in born-again Christianity. For Adeboye, Islam is not simply a conflation of religion and politics, but a spiritual force that opposes the plan of God for Nigeria. According to him, the plan and mission of God for Nigeria is that this country should be a Christian nation mandated to preach the second coming of Christ to the entire world. It is by fulfilling this destiny that the country will achieve its greatness in the comity of nations. He likens Nigeria to the trigger of a gun that will fire the end time revival out of Africa – which is the nozzle of the gun – to the rest of the world (Tony Ojo 2001: 119). In a similar metaphor, Adeboye conflates the destiny of his church with that of the nation: ‘I know [the] RCCG has been positioned by God to pull the trigger of that gun that will shoot down all the demonic operations and activities of Satan in the lives of men in the continent of Africa and the world over’ (cited in Tony Ojo 1997: 14). There are practical ramifications for the RCCG’s conceptualization of Islam as a religion of Satan. The first is to energize the church in its evangelistic zeal in proselytizing the Islamic realm. The Islamic world evidently supplies raw material for intense missionization by the RCCG. The church publishes an in-house magazine by its Missions Directorate instructively called The Catalyst. It is in this magazine that much of the church’s rhetoric against Islam is found. Knowing that ‘Islam has gradually grown to become the church’s biggest headache in Africa’ ( Joe Egwuda and Jentle Abul Malik 2002: 30) and that ‘the whole of Northern Nigeria is a mission field’ (Patrick Uponi 2002: 30),13 the RCCG goes on to recognize ‘the need to evangelise the Muslim world more than ever before’ ( Joe Egwuda and Jentle Abul Malik 2002: 30). According to Enoch Adejare Adeboye (1994: 6), the RCCG’s ‘major duty as Christians is to establish the kingdom of God on earth by destroying the kingdom of Satan here on earth’. Destroying the kingdom of Satan indirectly refers to destroying Islam, not by direct polemic engagement with Islamic structures and organizations, but by indirectly and subtly converting Muslims to Christianity. It is through proselytization that Muslims will be redeemed. This goal can be achieved, according to the leadership of the RCCG, through an indirect method of attracting Muslims by presenting the material benefits of being a Christian; this is seen as the most feasible strategy in converting Muslims. This includes miracles of health and wealth as well as social networks and connections to places of political and economic power. This caution in not confronting the ‘Islamic challenge’ directly issues

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apparently from the understanding that direct confrontation with Islam yields little fruits in terms of converts. Rather, it would exacerbate what Ebenezer Obadare (2004: 177) calls ‘the fundamentalist challenge to civil society in Nigeria’, producing in its wake unwarranted and avoidable backlashes in the form of suspicion and violent conflicts. Large-scale conversion in Nigeria is not simply a religious enterprise but also a political and economic project with serious implications for the country as a whole (Paul Gifford 2003: 16–28). In tune with the general frustration of Nigerian Pentecostals in their relation with Muslims, the RCCG is painfully aware of the hindrances to its mission work among Nigerian Muslims. Writing on this theme, Patrick Uponi (2002: 27–8), the acting Missions Director of the RCCG, enumerates a number of factors militating against converting Muslims. These include the colonial history of northern Nigeria that forbade Christian missionary activities, late establishment of a Western-type educational system due to fears about possible Christianization and secularization, the absence of medical and social services and the prevalence of ‘occultic and syncretic practices’ among some communities. Uponi concludes that ‘the originator of all hindrances to the gospel is Satan’ (Patrick Uponi 2002: 28). In a slightly different tone, another pastor of the church, Joel Oke (2002: 25), writes that all people without Christ, especially Muslims everywhere in the world, ‘are qualified candidates for hell’. For him, the RCCG will be held accountable by God for not converting these candidates of hell. Oke claims, not without a certain degree of hubris, that Nigerian born-again Christians constitute a formidable force (as the third largest population of born-again Christians in the world) with all the resources (wealth, connections and human resource) available to them to convert Muslims all over the world. He then asks rhetorically: ‘what excuse will Nigeria give to God for failing to bring Muslims into Christianity?’ It is obvious from the position of Oke that there are some leaders of the RCCG who regret that the church is not aggressive enough in its proselytization efforts directed towards Muslims and the speedy obliteration of the ‘Kingdom of Satan’, Islam. Bringing about the end to the Kingdom of Satan would involve the preaching of the good news and its validation by miracles of prosperity and healing as mediated by the charisma of Adeboye, who is conceived as pontifex, a bridge-maker between humans and God. This strategy makes a difference between the activities of the RCCG and the Islamic tactic of ‘buying’ converts from Christianity or inducing conversion through material enticements. The more cautious and less conversion-driven pastors maintain that subtle, more indirect but constructive engagement with Islam is more profitable

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than an all-out confrontation in the name of evangelism. Uponi, for instance, representing the first mentioned strand of thought, recommends making willing Muslims ‘secret disciples based on the Naaman/Nicodemus principle’, by which Muslim converts need ‘not attend church services or programmes until they are grounded enough and ready to make a public stand for their faith’. Other strategies of engaging with Muslims include having non-formal Bible fellowships with no fixed addresses for such meetings as well as no semblance of religion during such encounters. Muslims are encouraged to join the circle of new believers or ‘redeemed Muslims’ discretely and are tutored in secret; ‘during such meetings, the Bible is quietly studied and prayers quietly made, then at the end, the venue and time for the next meeting is fixed’ (Patrick Uponi 2002: 29). This caution and evasive tactic inform the discouragement of the use of video and audiocassette recordings in disseminating testimonies of Muslim converts, as doing this exposes the new converts to considerable risk and persecution from former colleagues or family members. The RCCG exists in tension between the theological imperative of demonizing Islam and the situational imperative of existing in a religiously plural context where the realistic demands for peaceful coexistence and appealing to wealthy Muslim politicians and business people for donation compels a theology of moderation. As a ‘prosperity’ church, the RCCG frequently demands for huge sums of donations from the public, claiming that it is the will of God that whoever gives to the church, irrespective of religious affiliation, will be handsomely rewarded in this life and the next. ‘Every one who sows would reap whether he is a Christian or not.’14 For the RCCG, such giving is not simply a donation to God but a form of ‘trading with God’; those who engage God in such exchange relationship ‘will never lose’, Enoch Adejare Adeboye teaches (1989: 29; see also Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah 2005). In order not to alienate the very wealthy individuals and politicians, many of whom are Muslims, the RCCG subsumes its theological imperative under an economic imperative, which forms its demands and needs to garner donations from the Muslim public.

Conclusions The RCCG’s theology of religion is different from its practice, which it normally should instigate. While Adeboye teaches that the fullest of life is guaranteed to the Muslim who converts to Christianity, he demands a practical demonstration of faith by the Muslim who gives generously to his church; the Christian God rewards anyone who financially supports him irrespective of religious allegiance. This pragmatic approach in practice makes conversion

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unnecessary for the Muslim who is now relieved of the burden of stigmatization or death associated with apostasy under Islamic law. Adeboye’s ‘inclusive theology’ is an extension of the ‘normal’ way of life found in many extended families among the Yoruba, where the three major religious traditions enjoy almost equal allegiance with family members attending Christian service on Sunday and visiting the mosque for services on Friday as well as actively participating in ceremonies in honour of some traditional deities. The theology of religion for Nigerian Pentecostals generally hinges on their theology of God. Nigerian Pentecostals have increasingly come to believe that Islam’s Allah is not the same as Yahweh, the loving father of Jesus Christ. Since Islam denies the Trinity, it is constructed as a religion inspired by Satan. Although the imperative of evangelizing Muslims is acutely felt and quietly discussed, in practice, many Pentecostal leaders refrain from open debates about Islam and its doctrines. Part of this apparent double standard is informed by the over popularization of the prosperity gospel which concentrates not on issues of conquering the Kingdom of Satan as represented by Islam and the socio-political dominations of Muslims but on the laws of prosperity and health. Since the demonstration of wealth and opulence is a public authentication of the gospel, many Pentecostal churches such as the Winners Chapel and Living Spring Chapel that were founded in high Muslim concentration areas in the 1980s have relocated to Christian-dominated areas where it is easier to ‘fish among fished fishes’, getting those already Christians to switch churches. As diverse as Pentecostal churches are, so are their doctrines about Islam and strategies relating to Muslims. The RCCG demonstrates how a church attenuates its theology of religion in line with its rebranding needs to compete effectively in a religiously vibrant but unpredictable market with serious implications for Christian–Muslim religions.

Notes 1. Inculturation is a process whereby an indigenous culture transforms and accommodates another culture which is foreign in origin and content (see Obododinma Oha 2002: 124; Innocent O. Dim 2003: 264–75). Acculturation is the opposite of inculturation: a process in which a foreign culture dominates and transforms a local culture. 2. Sridhar Pappu (2006: 96) records that Parham allowed Seymour ‘to hear his lectures – but only if he listened from outside the door’ because Parham ‘enforced the conventions of [racial] segregation’. 3. Matthews A. Ojo (2006a: 31) provides a different date – 1916 – for the death of Braide.

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4. For a summary of the history of the Assemblies of God in Nigeria, see Gbolahan Olukayode Akinsanya (2000: 146–61). 5. A complete history of the RCCG could be found in Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah (2008). 6. Distinction should be made between ‘conversion’, which I take to mean a switch between religious traditions, such as when a Christian becomes a Muslim, and ‘reaffiliation’, which I take to mean movement within different strands of one religious tradition, such as when a Methodist becomes a Catholic. 7. The C&S was a breakaway group from the Anglican Church whose establishment in 1925 was informed by the manifestation of the power of God to heal the sick and reveal future events through dreams, visions and prophecy. For the history of this group, see J. D. Y. Peel (1968: 71–113), Robert Cameron Mitchell (1970) and Akinyele J. Omoyajowo (1982). 8. ‘Fellowship groups’ within larger churches have a long history of metamorphosing into full-fledged churches as was the case with the Precious Stone Society. 9. See Exodus 20:5. 10. The RCCG: Our Fundamental Beliefs in the Bible (Lagos, the CRM Book Ministry, 1999), article 23. 11. The condemnation of such Islamic beliefs is based on the assumption that astrology is idolatry and as such contrary to biblical belief. However, as Rodney Stark (2007: 5) correctly observes, ‘not only does the Bible not condemn astrology, the story of the Magi following the star might seem to suggest that it is valid. However, in the fifth century Saint Augustine (354–430) reasoned that astrology is false because to believe that one’s fate is predestined in the stars stands in opposition to God’s gift of free will’. 12. Tuesday 31 July reading. (The pages of this book are not numbered, but each day’s reading represents a page.) 13. Uponi is a senior pastor of the RCCG and the deputy director of the Missions Directorate of the RCCG. 14. Adeboye, Congress News/People (Lagos), I/2, December 2005, p. 7.

References Adeboye, Enoch Adejare (1989). How to Turn Your Austerity to Prosperity. Lagos: The CRM Book Ministry. (1994). Spiritual Warfare. Lagos: The CRM Book Ministry. (1999). ‘Sermon to commemorate the 39th anniversary of Nigeria’s independence’, in Olusegun Bankole (ed.), Trees Clap Their Hands: A Photobook on the Redemption Camp of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Lagos: El-Shalom Press, pp. 177–83. (2007). Open Heavens: A Daily Guide to Close Fellowship with God, Vol. 7. Lagos: Tie Communications Ltd. Adekola, Moses A. (1989). “The redeemed Christian church of God: a study of an indigenous Pentecostal church in Nigeria”, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Religious Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Akinsanya, Gbolahan Olukayode (2000). ‘“You shall receive power”: the establishment of the Pentecostal movement in the Nigerian context’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University.

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Ali, Tariq (2002). The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. London: Verso Books. Almond, Gabriel A. R., Scott Appleby and Emmanuel Sivan (2003). Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Anderson, Allan (1999). ‘Dangerous memories for South Africa Pentecostals’, in A. Anderson and W. J. Hollenweger (eds), Pentecostals After a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 89–107. (2000). Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zion/Apostolic Churches in South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press. (2004). An introduction to Pentecostalism: Global charismatic Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Apter, Andrew (2005). The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ayegboyin, Deji and Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah (2002). ‘Taxonomy of churches in Nigeria: a historical perspective’, Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies, XXXIV/1–2, pp. 68– 86. Barnes, Andrew E. (2004). ‘“Religious insults”: Christian critiques of Islam and the government in colonial northern Nigeria’, Journal of Religion in Africa, XXXIV/1–2, pp. 62–81. Battle, Michael (2006). The Black Church in America: African American Christian Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Chryssides, George D. (2001). Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Danfulani, Umar H. D. (1999). ‘Exorcising witchcraft: the return of the gods in new religious movements on the Jos Plateau and the Benue regions of Nigeria’, African Affairs XCVIII/391, pp. 167–93. Darby, Michael R. and Edi Karni (1973). ‘Free competition and optimal amount of fraud’, Journal of Law and Economics XVI/1, pp. 67–88. Dim, Innocent O. (2003). Reception of Vatican II in Nigeria/Igbo Church with Reference to Awka Diocese. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Egwuda, Joe and Jentle Abul Malik (2002). ‘Discipling Muslim converts in Africa’, The Catalyst I/3, pp. 30–2. Falola, Toyin (2001). Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Gifford, Paul (1990). ‘Prosperity: a new and foreign element in African Christianity’, Religion Vol. XX, no. 4, pp. 373–388. (1994). ‘Some recent development in African Christianity’, African Affairs XC111/373, pp. 513–33. (2003). ‘The Bible as a political document in Africa’, in Niels Kastfelt (ed.), Scriptural Politics: The Bible and the Koran as Political Models in the Middle East and Africa. London: C. Hurst Publishers, pp. 16–28. Hackett, Rosalind I. J. (1999). ‘Radical Christian revivalism in Nigeria and Ghana: recent patterns of intolerance and conflict’, in Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (ed.), Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, pp. 246–67. Harrison, Milmon F. (2005). Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Helgesson, Kristina (2006). ‘Walking in the Spirit’: The Complexity of Belonging in Two Pentecostal Churches in Durban, South Africa, and Documents in Cultural Anthropology no 7. Uppsala: Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology. Holt, Bradley P. (1977). ‘Healing in the Charismatic movement: the Catholics in Nigeria’, Religions II/2, pp. 38–68. Isichei, Elizabeth (1995). A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present. London: SPCK. Jenkinson, Ngus, Branko Sain and Kevin Bishop (2005). ‘Optimising communications for Charity Brand Management’, International Journal of Non-Profit and Voluntary Sector Marketing X/2, pp. 79–92. Kalu, Ogbu U. (2000). Power, Poverty and Prayer: The Challenges of Poverty and Pluralism in African Christianity, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. (2004). ‘Sharia and Islam in Nigerian Pentecostal rhetoric’, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies XXVI/2, pp. 242–61. (2007). ‘Pentecostalism and African mission 1970–2000’, Mission Studies XXIV/1, pp. 9–45. Kates, Steven M. and Charles Goh (2003). ‘Brand morphing: implications for advertising theory and practice’, Journal of Advertising XXXII/1, pp. 59–68. Korieh, Chima J. (2005). ‘Islam and politics in Nigeria: historical perspectives’, in Chima J. Korieh and G. Ugo Nwokeji (eds), Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ogbu U. Kalu. New York: University Press of America, pp. 109–24. Krinsky, Sam (2006). ‘“In search of new beginnings”: Pentecostalism, development, and the burden of history in Yoruba thought’, B.A. Thesis, Development Studies, Brown University. Lee, Shayne (2005). T. D. Jakes: America’s New Preacher. New York: New York University Press. Lindstrom, Martin (2004). ‘Branding is no longer child’s play’, Journal of Consumer Marketing XXI/3, pp. 175–82. Magbadelo, John Olushola (2005). ‘Pentecostalism in Nigeria: exploring or edifying the masses?’, CODESRIA Bulletin 1 & 2, pp. 44–50. Marshall, Ruth (1992). ‘Pentecostalism in southern Nigeria: an overview’, in Paul Gifford (ed.), New Dimensions in African Christianity. Ibadan: Sefer Publications, pp. 7–32. Martin, David (2002). Pentecostalism. The World Their Parish. London: Blackwell Publishers. Marty, Martin E. and Scott R. Appleby (eds) (1991). Fundamentalisms Observed. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (eds) (1993a). Fundamentalisms and Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (eds) (1993b). Fundamentalisms and the State. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (eds) (1994). Accounting for Fundamentalisms. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (eds) (1995). Fundamentalisms Comprehended. Chicago: Chicago University Press. McConnell, D. R. (1987). A Different Gospel: A Historical and Biblical Analysis of the Modern Faith Movement. Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. Miller, Ethel (1926). The Truth About Muhammed. Minna: The Niger Press. Miller, Kent D. (2002). ‘Competitive strategies of religious organizations’, Strategic Management Journal XXIII, pp. 435–56.

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Mitchell, Robert Cameron (1970). ‘Religious change and modernization: the Aladura churches among the Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Morgan, Robert E. and Carolyn A. Strong (1998). ‘Market orientation and dimensions of strategic orientation’, European Journal of Marketing XXXII/11,12, pp. 1051–73. Moshay, G. J. O. (1990). Who Is This Allah? Ibadan: Fireliners International. Mutua, Makau (1999). ‘Returning to my root: African “religion” and the state’, in Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (ed.), Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, pp. 169–90. Noble, John (2006). ‘Branding from a commercial perspective’, Brand Management XIII/3, pp. 206–14. Obadare, Ebenezer (2004). ‘In search of a public sphere: the fundamentalist challenge to civil society in Nigeria’, Patterns of Prejudice XXXVIII/2, pp. 177–97. Oha, Obododinma (2002). ‘Yoruba Christian video narrative and indigenous imaginations: dialogue and duelogue’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 165, pp. 121–42. Ojo, Matthews A. (1999). ‘The Church in the African state: the Charismatic/Pentecostal experience in Nigeria’, Journal of African Christian Thought I/2, pp. 25–32. (2006a). The End-Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. (2006b). ‘American Pentecostalism and the growth of Pentecostal–Charismatic movements in Nigeria’, in R. Drew Smith (ed.), Freedom’s Distant Shores: American Protestants and Post-Colonial Alliances with Africa. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, pp. 155–67. (2007). ‘Pentecostal movements, Islam and the contest for public space in northern Nigeria’, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations XVIII/2, pp. 175–88. Ojo, Tony (1997). The Redeemed Christian Church of God in Prophecy: The Explosive Story. Lagos: Redemption Light Publishers. (2001). Let Somebody Shout Hallelujah! The Life and Ministry of Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye. Lagos: Honeycombs Cards and Prints. Oke, Joel (2002). ‘Tragedies of the missing opportunities’, The Catalyst I/3, pp. 25–7. Okwori, E. M. (1995). Godliness for Gain: An Evaluation of the Nigerian Version of the Prosperity Gospel. Jos: CAPRO Media Services. Omoyajowo, Akinyele J. (1982). Cherubim and Seraphim: The History of an African Independent Church. New York: NOK Publishers International. Oshitelu, Gideon A. (2000). ‘The trends and development of Orthodox and Pentecostal churches in Yorubaland’, Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies XXXII/1–2, pp. 100–14. Pappu, Sridhar (2006). ‘The preacher’, The Atlantic Monthly CCXCVII/March, pp. 92–103. Peel, J. D. Y. (1968). Aladura: A Religious Movement Among the Yoruba. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2000). Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Poewe, Karla (ed.) (1994). Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture. Columbia: University of South Carolina.

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Stark, Rodney (2007). Discovering God: A New Look at the Origins of the Great Religions. New York: HarperOne. Turner, Harold W. (1979). Religious Innovations in Africa: Collected Essays on New Religious Movements, Boston: MA: G. K. Hall & Co. Ukah, Asonzeh F.-K. (2003). The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Nigeria: Local Identities and Global Processes in African Pentecostalism, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bayreuth, Germany, http://opus.ub.uni-bayreuth.de/ volltexte/2004/73/pdf/Ukah.pdf (2004). ‘Pentecostalism, religious expansion and the city: lesson from the Nigerian Bible belt’, in Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (eds), Resistance and Expansion: Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa. Münster: Lit, pp. 415–441. (2005). ‘“Those who trade with God never lose”: the economics of Pentecostal activism in Nigeria’, in Toyin Falola (ed.), Christianity and Social Change in Africa: Essays in Honor of John D. Y. Peel. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 251–74. (2008). A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: The Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Uponi, Patrick (2002). ‘Missions approach: northern Nigeria’, The Catalyst I/3, pp. 27–30. Vinten, Gerald (2000). ‘Business theology’, Management Decision XXXVIII/3, pp. 209–15. Walle, A. H. (1988). ‘The positioning of the good news: the Christian gospels as marketing communications’, European Journal of Marketing XXII/6, pp. 35–48. Wallis, Roy (1984). The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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6 Pentecostalism in India and China in the Early Twentieth Century and Inter-Religious Relations ■

Allan Anderson

Introduction Pentecostalism emerged in the early twentieth century as a subset of radical evangelicalism.1 Its missionaries were biblical literalists and premillennialists, believing that the ‘poor heathen in darkness’ had to be evangelized quickly before the soon return of Christ.2 In Asia they displayed general ignorance of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism as well as, in most cases, great prejudice. Pentecostal missionaries from western countries who went to Asia after 1906 inherited the presuppositions of the nineteenth-century evangelical missionary movement. Pentecostalism was in the process of formation and was not seen as a distinct form of Christianity at least until a decade after the revival and missionary movements in which it was entwined. Seen from this perspective, Pentecostalism is not a movement with a distinct beginning in the USA or anywhere else, nor is it a movement based on a particular doctrine. Rather, it is a movement or a series of movements that took several years and several different formative ideas and events to emerge. Pentecostalism, then and now, is a polynucleated and variegated phenomenon, best seen from its pneumatological centre as historically related movements where the emphasis is on the experience of the Spirit and the exercise of spiritual gifts. Within less than a century, Pentecostalism in all its diversity had expanded into almost every country on earth. In its many forms, it had turned 117

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into extremely significant movements both inside and outside older, ‘historic’ churches, possibly the fastest growing religious movement/s of the twentieth century. With up to a quarter of the world’s Christian population, Pentecostalism had become predominantly a non-Western and independent church phenomenon with a significant Catholic component (David B. Barrett et al. 2006: 28). Scholars write of the ‘Pentecostalization’ of Asian Christianity and Harvey Cox (1996: 214) of ‘the rapid spread of the Spirit-oriented forms of Christianity in Asia’. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (David B. Barrett et al. 2001: 13), Christianity formed 9.6 per cent (about 313 million people) of the total population of Asia in 2000.3 The ‘explosive’ growth of Pentecostalism in several Asian countries with an estimated 135 million Pentecostals and Charismatics in Asia compared favourably with 80 million in North America, 141 million in Latin America, 126 million in Africa and only 38 million in Europe (David B. Barrett et al. 2001: 13–15).4 According to these statisticians, Asia has the second largest number of Pentecostals and Charismatics of all continents of the world, and is fast catching up with the largest, Latin America. Of course, statistics are controversial and require very careful analysis, particularly when it comes to defining what we mean by ‘Pentecostal’. In all probability, no one actually knows with certainty how many Pentecostals there are in the world or who they are. But there is no doubt that Pentecostalism is proliferating and that during the twentieth century it has contributed to the reshaping of the nature of Christianity itself and has become ‘globalized’ in every sense of the word. This has enormous ecumenical, social and interreligious implications, as its adherents are found in every Christian denomination and are often on the cutting edge of the encounter with people of other faiths. In some countries of Asia affected by revival movements, such as India, Korea and China, distinct forms of Pentecostalism have existed for a long time (although not always given this label), and these have affected the character of the classical Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement that came much later to these areas. This chapter considers the reasons for the early global expansion of Pentecostal missions, with special attention given to India and China in the first 20 years of the twentieth century. Pentecostalism began slowly in these countries, with a relatively small number of missionaries, and ‘converts’ often from existing Christian missions and with Western education. Based on reports from and about the missionaries themselves, the chapter goes on to consider the attitudes of these missionaries towards the surrounding religions, how these beginnings affected the globalization of Pentecostalism thereafter, and the creation of independent, ‘indigenous’ forms of Christianity.

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The Motivations of Pentecostal Missionaries Early Pentecostalism received most of its missionaries and many of its members from the strands of various Holiness and revivalist movements, and in particular, from non-denominational ‘faith missions’ like the China Inland Mission (CIM) and the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), among many others, that were established from 1865 onwards to give expression to this revivalist emphasis. The mission activities of these movements were linked to their belief that the gospel had to be preached with urgency to every nation before the imminent coming of Christ, and that the ‘heathen nations’ of the world were in desperate need of their help. Pentecostal mission history is permanently wedded to this premillennial conviction. The followers of this radical evangelicalism saw ultimate sacrifice and commitment to the Lord to be found in service in the foreign ‘mission fields’. Significantly, the majority of the missionary volunteers (possibly two-thirds) were women. In mission service, women had found a public role abroad for which there was little room at home, either in the churches they were part of or in other forms of public life. Furthermore, the foreign missionary was seen as an exotic, romantic adventurer, and for the home constituency these missionaries were often their only contact with ‘distant shores’, the stuff that both popular adventure novels and the reports of intrepid explorers were made of. Following in the wake of David Livingstone and others, the missionaries brought home peculiar and colourful stories of encounters with strange cultures and even stranger, ‘demonic’ religions. The dramatic martyrdom of John Williams in 1839 in the South Pacific began a tradition of missionary heroism in popular evangelicalism (Alvyn Austin 2003: 137; Brian Stanley 1990: 78). This was just as true of Pentecostal missionaries, whom Grant Wacker (2001: 160) characterized as ‘the true celebrity-heroes of the movement’. Missionaries were somewhat idealized heroes whose reports in the periodicals and their deputizing on ‘homeland furloughs’ had a profound effect both on their home culture and on evangelical Christianity as a whole. For some it confirmed their prejudices against the so-called primitive and distant lands, but for others there was a more positive result. As Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker (2003: 8) have put it: ‘The missionary culture placed a human face on the alien, making it seem less distant, less foreign’. As a result of this public interest in the activities of missionaries, Pentecostal churches placed their mission high on their list of priorities and missionaries were given considerable support, both materially and spiritually. This was strengthened by a revivalist theology that linked the power of the Spirit in the

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last days with missionary service. Missionary appeals appearing in periodicals were often based on population statistics that emphasized the large number of missionaries needed to ‘reach’ the vast millions of ‘heathen’, giving estimated numbers of people to each missionary in the hundreds of thousands. China and India received special attention; China alone had more people than in the whole of North America, South America and Africa combined and thus needed the greatest number of missionaries.5 The common belief in evangelical circles was that revivals would result in increased missionary activities. This was not just a case of ‘from the West to the rest’. Reports of the revivals in India, for example, were accompanied by the news of ‘the establishment of home and foreign missionary societies in the Native Church’, and these were initiated completely by Indian Christians themselves.6 This was the stream of missionary fervour at the beginning of the twentieth century in the midst of which Pentecostalism arose. This new movement was an extension of the missionary movement and was to become a major player in the remarkable globalization of evangelical Christianity within a relatively short period. The words from the first issue of the Azusa Street (Los Angeles) revival newspaper The Apostolic Faith in 1906 reveal the essence of the Pentecostal missionary thrust: ‘Many are speaking in new tongues’, it gushed, ‘and some are on their way to the foreign fields, with the gift of the language’. In this way, God was ‘solving the missionary problem, sending out new-tongued missionaries on the apostolic faith line, without purse or scrip, and the Lord is going before them preparing the way’. The ‘missionary problem’ was how to get enough missionaries out all over the world in the shortest possible time without any unnecessary delays like theological preparation and language learning.7 Early Pentecostals believed they had the shortcut to missionary training and were mostly untrained and inexperienced. Their only qualification was the baptism in the Spirit and a divine call, their motivation was to evangelize the world before the coming of Christ. Pentecostal workers from the Western world usually saw their mission in terms of from a civilized, Christian ‘home’ to a Satanic and heathen ‘foreign land’, where sometimes their own personal difficulties, prejudices (and possible failures) in adapting to a radically different culture, living conditions and religion were projected in their newsletters home. There were at least four factors creating impetus for the international movement of hundreds of independent Pentecostal missionaries in the early twentieth century. First, this was a time when the vast migration of people was unprecedented in extent, facilitated by new steamship and railway networks that had made travelling vast distances possible. Second, the pre-millennial eschatology of these Pentecostals posited the urgent task of world evangelism

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at the end of time before the imminent return of Christ. These eschatological expectations motivated them in their task and filled the earliest reports of their activities. Third, they had a firm belief in their experience of Spirit baptism by which they had been given ‘foreign languages’ to preach their gospel to the nations of the world. Pentecostalism, in common with other Christian revivalist movements at the time, held that their ecstatic manifestations were evidence of the end-time outpouring of the Spirit given to evangelize the world within the shortest possible time. Pentecostals would seek to identify which particular language they had been given (usually through some member of the assembly who would be ‘familiar’ with a foreign language), and then they would make arrangements to go to that country as soon as possible. Early Pentecostal publications were filled with these missionary expectations, often referring to their tongues as the ‘gift of languages’. Speaking in ‘missionary tongues’ was undoubtedly the primary reason for a sudden surge of missionary activity among Pentecostals from 1906 onwards. Fourth, these missionaries often met up with other, more experienced missionaries once in the field, especially when they discovered that God had not given them the ability to speak any language that people could understand. Missionary networks like those of the CMA were very significant in the spread of Pentecostal ideas throughout the world, especially in China and India. The Bridegroom’s Messenger reported the astonishing news in December 1908 that in India, 60 missionaries had received Spirit baptism and 15 missionary societies had ‘witnesses to Pentecost’ in 28 stations throughout the country.8 All this had happened within the span of only one year.

Early Pentecostals in India and China Alfred and Lillian Garr were the first Pentecostal missionaries from the West to come to India in December 1906. They had come from the Azusa Street revival and found the subcontinent in turmoil. Indians had developed a deep resentment of the imperialistic policies that had impoverished its people. Evangelical societies of the ‘faith mission’ type were increasing and independent Pentecostal missionaries made use of these contacts. India, like China, was regarded by Evangelicals as a land of unparalleled opportunities. As far as India was concerned, this was a country whose people were receptive to the gospel as never before. These missionaries, however, found that they had been preceded by Pentecostal revivals in India in 1905 in the Khasi Hills in North-East India and in the regions of Bombay and Pune in Central India, where a revival in Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Mission began a series of events that accelerated Pentecostal expansion in this country (Allan Anderson 2007: 75–108).

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W.K. Norton (1916: 202), born in India and son of a missionary, believed that Pentecostals had no time to lose. They had the solution for the salvation of the lost millions of India, whose ‘awful need of help’ could be met through the power of the Spirit. He said that there were ‘millions of people now in India’ who had ‘never once heard the Name of Jesus, a heaven to go to or a hell to be warned of ’. Thousands of these people were ‘dying daily without Christ’. The problem in India was not receptivity, but the great shortage of missionary volunteers, according to these circles. Pentecostals were urged to join an ‘aggressive campaign’ to reach the ‘depressed classes’. The caste system was one of the greatest challenges for Western missionaries. Pentecostals joined in its general condemnation by Christian missionaries, pointing to the benefits of the message that proclaims unity and equality of all in Christ (S.H. Auernheimer 1913: 17). The ‘Pariah’ (Dalit) caste was considered the most open to Christian advances and missionaries were urged to penetrate into their villages.9 China was a favourite destination for these early Pentecostals, regarded as the most important place for missionaries to go to, having a quarter of the estimated world population at the time with very few Protestant Christians – despite a century of missions. The radical evangelical ‘faith missions’, especially the CIM and the CMA, had the greatest influence on the activities and policies of the Pentecostals, as many of their missionaries came from these organizations. Pentecostal periodicals made regular pleas for more missionaries to China, declaring that a million Chinese souls were passing into eternity every month and the onerous responsibility was that ‘to us God has committed the destinies of the human race’.10 China was seen as the biblical land of Sinim from which the prophet Isaiah had prophesied that people would come to join God’s people.11 This was a land of great need but also of unparalleled opportunities, where the interior had opened up to Western interests as never before and the missionaries could easily flood in. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, many new and independent missionaries arrived from the West, including the Pentecostals. Pentecostal missionaries from North America, Scandinavia, Britain and the Netherlands began arriving in China from 1907 onwards. The first among them were T.J. and Annie McIntosh in the Portuguese colony of Macau, while many Pentecostals from the USA, including the Garrs, ended up in the British colony of Hong Kong. Antoinette Moomau, a former American Presbyterian in Shanghai, received Spirit baptism at Azusa Street and returned to Shanghai as a Pentecostal missionary, establishing a thriving congregation there. Norwegians Bernt and Magna Berntsen, Scandinavian Alliance missionaries in Shandong since 1904, received Spirit baptism at Azusa Street in 1907. In

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early 1908, they returned with a team of 13 missionaries and their ten children to spread Pentecostalism in Zhengding, some 200 miles south-east of Beijing in Hebei province. They held regular meetings and cared for the poor and orphans – feeding 50–100 ‘beggars’ every day for seven months. They lived together with a community in one house, learned Chinese and made evangelistic forays to surrounding villages, distributing Christian tracts. Four of the missionary children died in the first year, two from the Berntsen family. The mission expanded with some missionaries leaving and others coming in to fill their places from Norway and Canada, and by 1909 a second mission station had been opened further north in Baoding. In 1910, Berntsen went on a tour of Norway and the USA (leaving his family in China) and wrote that he had recruited 12 Norwegian missionaries to accompany him back to China. There were three foreign and six Chinese evangelists associated with this mission by 1914 (Cecil M. Robeck 2006: 260–2).12 The Berntsens founded a Chinese periodical called Popular Gospel Truth in 1914. Berntsen stated his intention ‘to stay in China until Jesus comes’. This periodical called the church under which it operated the Faith Union an important influence in the founding of the True Jesus Church, one of the largest independent Pentecostal churches in China today (Daniel H. Bays 1995: 130). This period also saw the establishment of other Chinese independent churches, particularly because of the desire to be independent from paternalistic foreign dominance in leadership and financial control, but also because of the ‘three self ’ policies adopted by most Protestant missions but seldom implemented. Many of these independent groups were Pentecostal and influenced by foreign Pentecostal missionaries (Daniel H. Bays 1995: 124–7). The national missionary conference in Shanghai in 1907 was attended by all existing Protestant missions at the time but very few Chinese. These missions operated under smoothly running comity arrangements respected by all, restricting each mission to defined areas (Daniel H. Bays 1999: 50–1). The scene was set for dramatic change, as most Pentecostals did not have the word ‘comity’ in their vocabulary. Alfred and Lillian Garr and their African-American helper Maria Gardner, after an invitation by missionaries in Hong Kong, arrived there in October 1907, to be followed three days later by two women from Seattle who had travelled with a party of Pentecostal missionaries to Japan, May Law and Rosa Pittman, who on arrival had neither plans nor accommodation. They were directed to the American Board (congregational) mission where the first Pentecostal services were held and where the Garrs joined them. These missionaries were augmented by further missionaries in October 1908.13 The meetings in the American Board mission were interpreted by a

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capable Chinese schoolteacher, Mok Lai Chi, who became the most influential Chinese Pentecostal of the period. In this mission, The Apostolic Faith reported, ‘a glorious revival’ broke out,14 and later, that ‘a good many of the Chinese’ had ‘received their Pentecost and are singing, praying, and praising in new tongues’. It went on: ‘The best part is to see these dear Chinese Christians yielding fully to God and being filled with the blessed Holy Spirit’.15 By January 1908 all the converts were Chinese. The new Pentecostal believers were encouraged by fellowship with the McIntoshes from Macao, who visited them regularly.16 Between 400 and 700 people attended the first meetings, but opposition from the missionaries mounted; they were ejected from the American Board building, and they moved to the much smaller venue of Mok Lai Chi’s school. A hostile missionary critic charged ‘the authoritative Garr’ with pronouncing anathemas on him and other ‘faithful missionaries of Hongkong’ (Cecil M. Robeck 2006: 246; Steve Thompson & Adam Gordon 2003: 70, 90–5). A Shanghai missionary periodical said that Hong Kong had been disturbed by the ‘Pentecostal church’, a ‘sect’ whose aim seemed ‘rather to pervert Christian Chinese than to convert the heathen’ (Daniel H. Bays 1999: 54). Within six months, about a hundred people in South China had become Pentecostal. In Hong Kong, about 30 people met regularly at Mok’s school. During this time, as Garr later related, their financial needs were met by a Chinese woman. A photograph of the Pentecostal mission taken early in 1908 shows the Garrs, Gardner, Law, Pittman and Mok with a group of 40 Chinese adults and children (Steve Thompson & Adam Gordon 2003: 90; S.H. Sung 1982: 8).17 These were hard times. Lillian Garr gave birth to a stillborn child, and in March 1908 their invaluable assistant Maria Gardner and three-year-old daughter Virginia died of smallpox within a day of each other. After these tragic events, they spent two months with Ryan in Japan and returned to America, where they itinerated for over a year on behalf of the Chinese church. They were back in Hong Kong in October 1909 to open a missionary home; they left for India three months later, and returned to Hong Kong for another year during which time their son was born.18 The Garrs left permanently for the USA in December 1911 (Steve Thompson & Adam Gordon 2003: 113–72). China was the largest of the early fields for Pentecostal missions, with perhaps as many as 150 expatriate Pentecostal missionaries by 1915. The emergence of the American Assemblies of God in 1914 and the affiliation of the majority of these missionaries with them meant that by 1920 they were, by far, the largest of the Pentecostal bodies in China. But even more significant was the fact that by that time there were already strong nationalist forces forming

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churches totally independent from Western missions and developing a Pentecostal spirituality that was distinctively Chinese. These Chinese churches already formed the majority of Pentecostals by the time the expatriate missionaries were forced to leave China in 1949. China was the main focus of the earliest Pentecostal missions, perhaps the result of the popular evangelical imagination excited by the stories of the faith missions there. Comparatively little was accomplished elsewhere by Pentecostals in this region. By 1920 there were more foreign Pentecostal missionaries in China than in any other country. The work of the Westerners was augmented and taken far beyond their sphere of influence by Chinese leaders who were to make this as one of the most thriving Pentecostal missions anywhere (Allan Anderson 2007: 109–48).

Pentecostal Attitudes to Other Religions One Pentecostal missionary in India in 1910 felt ‘unseen forces’ or ‘powers of evil’ that were ‘too awful to describe’. These powers restricted her freedom and feeling of well-being that she was accustomed to in her home country. They affected everything she did, said or felt in the dark, foreign land she was now living in. They pervaded every part of her being and she did not know how to handle it or describe it.19 This fundamental sense of alienation affected the attitudes of expatriate missionaries to other religions, cultures, political systems and societies. In these spheres, Pentecostalism had emerged in a particular context of marginalization that has not been given sufficient recognition in popular histories. Its background in radical evangelicalism and revivalism, and its missionaries’ own socio-political context in the Western world had certain consequences. Among these consequences were the ways in which expatriate Pentecostals approached other religions, and how they were influenced by racial and cultural stereotypes. The result was often not a pretty picture. The head of the CMA, A.B. Simpson (1896: 1), described his impressions following a world tour in 1896 that included India, China and Japan, in what he called the ‘shadows of heathenism’. In it he portrayed ‘some pictures that may deepen upon your hearts the conviction which I am sure has been settling down upon us all, these days, the need of the evangelization of the world’. His language was stark – he saw nothing whatsoever that attracted him to ‘the foreign heathen races’, only destitution, misery, shame and degradation of ‘idolatrous races’, and religions he described as ‘the heathendom of the East, the religions of the Orient, that have been painted in such false colors’, which were ‘but a covering of an awful skeleton’. These dichotomies were created to give greater effect to the emphasis on recruiting more missionaries. But a culture of difference had evolved during the nineteenth century

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as a result of colonialism that would be very difficult to erase in the future. The urge for world evangelization was made all the more acute through stark assumptions made about the religious and cultural conditions of the people to whom foreign missionaries went. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a prevalent missionary assumption was that ‘the baneful influence of idolatry extended to all aspects of a people’s culture and society’ (Brian Stanley 1990: 64–5). The evangelical missionary movement of the nineteenth century almost unanimously saw all other religions except Protestant, conservative evangelical Christianity as ‘idolatry’ and ‘heathenism’, sometimes with the exception of Islam, whose strictly conservative morality they admired. This was the inheritance of the Pentecostal missionaries who went from Western countries to Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The other religions they encountered were invariably condemned in the most negative terms. Western missionaries saw the societies and cultures around them as degraded and benighted of all hope by these ‘idolatrous’ religions, and only Western ‘civilization’ could provide the antidote. Western Pentecostals went out to ‘foreign fields’, like many other Christian missionaries before them, with a fundamental conviction that they were sent as light to remove darkness, and that the ancient cultures and religions of the nations to which they were sent were heathen, pagan and demonic, to be conquered for Christ. This was part of their evangelical conviction that ‘heathen idolatry’ was a manifestation of rebellion against the true God (Brian Stanley 1990: 64; Adrian Hastings 2003: 15–21). Western culture was ‘Christian’ culture while all other cultures were dark, whose foreboding problems were to be solved by the light of the gospel, replacing the old ‘paganism’ with the new ‘Christianity’. Aimee Semple McPherson (1923: 64) reflected on her three-month experience of Hong Kong in 1910, where her first husband died, saying that she felt there ‘as never before the need of the Holy Spirit as a Comforter, and found it much more difficult to pray through’. It seemed to her ‘as though the air were filled with demons and the hosts of hell, in this wicked, benighted country, where for many centuries devil worship has been an open custom’. She said that in China, ‘ancestral worship is observed by almost all’. These authoritative pronouncements were made after only three months, in which most of the time she was heavily pregnant, giving birth to a daughter and tending to a dying husband in hospital. Pentecostal periodicals regularly gave reports about the negative qualities and failings of the ancient religions of Asia. Even when other missionaries were more appreciative of Asian religions, religious intolerance and bigoted ignorance were common features of some of the Pentecostal missionary reports. This is illustrated by a lament from a British Pentecostal missionary in

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India in 1914 who exclaimed, ‘Oh, what a dark, sad land this seems to be, and the longer one lives in it, the more one feels the darkness all around’. She referred to a discussion of other missionaries that she overheard, where the subject was the contribution of Hinduism to Christianity, and she felt it ‘a pity to see young missionaries occupying their time and thoughts with such things, instead of studying and pondering over the Word of God . . . Why, the best thing any Hindu can do is to die to all his Hinduism and all its distinct lines of thought, and to be baptised into Jesus Christ’.20 Almost four years later, the same missionary was writing about Hindu temples as ‘the works of the devil’, and that ‘Ram’ was ‘a favourite god of the Hindus . . . supposed to be an incarnation of the second person of the Hindu Trinity’.21 With such an approach, it was not surprising that these missionaries found it difficult to get a hearing, although they did not always understand why people were not queuing up to hear them. Progress in India was painfully slow. One Pentecostal missionary was totally surprised by the seeming indifference of Hindu people to her message, and such a ‘strange thing’ it was that ‘among all the hundreds to whom we must have preached, we have never met anyone who has been a seeker after the true God and who, after hearing the truth from us, has admitted that he was dissatisfied with his heathen religion, and was really longing for the light. No, not even one have we met’, she despaired.22 Another missionary discussed Hinduism, quoting the apostle Paul (‘they sacrifice to devils, and not to God’) and said that ‘the Devil’ was ‘at the bottom of all their worship’.23 At a missionary convention in London in 1924, Walter Clifford, Pentecostal missionary from Ceylon, described Hinduism as ‘a religion of fear, not a religion of love’ and that many of the Indian holy men were ‘demon possessed’ because ‘you can see the devil shining out of their eyes. They have given themselves over to him.’24 British worker Frank Trevitt, who died in China in 1916, sent back a report from ‘dark China’, where he had observed ‘heathendom truly, without light or love, not even as much as a dumb beast would have’. They had ‘seen much of this spirit, which truly is the “Dragon’s” spirit, which is as you know, China’s ensign’. He exclaimed: ‘Oh, how one’s heart longs and sighs for the coming of Christ’s glorious Ensign, to be placed where the Dragon holds such sway’.25 Trevitt’s obvious identification of a treasured Chinese national symbol with the devil was bound to cause offence. Later, he referred to Tibetan Lama priests as Satan’s ‘wicked messengers’, and that ‘Satan through them hates Christ in us’.26 Another Pentecostal missionary, John Beruldsen, reported on a visit to a Mongolian ‘Lama Temple’ in Beijing and described a priest worshipping ‘a large idol from 90 to 100 English feet high’. He commented that ‘one could almost smell and feel the atmosphere of hell in these places. Poor benighted

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people! The power of God could save them from it all, if only they knew it’27 – apparently, they did not know. A Canadian Pentecostal missionary to Mongolia, Thomas Hindle, remarked that ‘all heathen religions are more or less demon worship’. The theological basis of all these statements lay in Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians that ‘what the heathen sacrifice to idols they sacrifice to demons’.28 Satan was the cause of it all. This all-embracing influence of ‘the devil’ in other religions included ancestor veneration in China. One missionary, observing religious rituals in Yunnan, wrote: ‘The heathen spent one whole day in worshipping the graves of relatives – burning incense and weeping and wailing. Oh the mockery of it all. How Satan blinds their eyes!’29 Sometimes, these Pentecostals conflated their views of the ‘demonic’ nature of the ‘heathen’ religions with the culture and identity of the nation itself, one writing that ‘China is almost the very seat of the devil’.30 Islam was not usually seen as ‘idolatrous’, but was nevertheless regarded as an enemy, an ‘Anti-Christ’ religion to be overcome by proclaiming the Christian message. An address by George Brelsford, a Pentecostal missionary in Egypt, during his furlough in the USA typifies this approach. He said that ‘very little is really known about Jesus’ in Egypt; it was ‘almost exclusively Mohammedan’, which meant to Brelsford that it was ‘anti-Christ, completely against Christ as the Son of God’, who was ‘recognized in the Koran, and mentioned as a prophet; they are willing to acknowledge Him as a prophet, as a man, but not as the Son of the living God’. He continued: ‘That makes a great difference, takes away the divinity of Christ and of the atonement through that precious blood. So it becomes necessary to preach Jesus in that land as the Son of God’.31 What missionaries sometimes saw as Egypt’s mixture of Islam and ancient Coptic Christianity came in for particular criticism. C.W. Doner had only been there two months when he wrote of his labours among ‘the downtrodden in darkest Egypt’ where ‘superstition and heathen darkness reigns’. There, he asserted, the Muslim ‘worships their false prophet’ and the Copt ‘falls down to a fallen Priestcraft, and neither worship God nor serve Jesus Christ’. Their job as missionaries was simply to ‘wage persistent warfare by prayer and the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God’ and to proclaim ‘liberty and deliverance from all the power of the devil’.32 For most of these missionaries, it was a simple truth–error dichotomy between their kind of Christianity and their superficial observations of the other religion. Pentecostal periodicals in the West, like evangelical ones, continued to foment ignorance and prejudice against Islam. ‘Mohommedanism [sic]’, they declared, was the ‘curse of Eastern life’ that had spread and left ‘bondage and superstition and sin in its wake’.33 But not every Pentecostal shared these negative views about Islam. Some like Andrew Urshan, an Assyrian

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Pentecostal, spoke appreciatively of the positive aspects of Muslim devotion. His ‘countrymen’ were ‘not heathen as many people think’. He thought that Muslims were ‘the most religious people you ever saw’. He went on: If we were as faithful in prayer as they are in their forms of prayer we might have converted them ere now. They have set times of prayer and will pray even on the streets no matter how many people are passing. They are a temperate people and the liquor traffic is under a curse in their religion. Some of them know the Bible better than some of us do. In order for us to make those Mohammedans believe that Jesus is the Son of God we will have to show them the power of the glorious Gospel; preaching doctrines will not do it.34

Clearly, most of these Western Pentecostal missionaries had inherited from their evangelical cousins an attitude that can mostly be described as condemnatory and exclusivist. Often, these denunciations made use of broad generalizations. Elizabeth Sexton expressed this in an editorial when she wrote: ‘All religions of the heathen world are dead formalities, ceremonies, and idol worship. Their gods have no life-giving power. They cannot save from sin or transform a sinful life’.35 Albert Norton described India as ‘this dark land of heathenism’, and such depictions of India and Hinduism pervaded missionary literature.36 Brian Stanley (1990: 64) writes of the ‘extreme negativism which characterized the missionary approach to other religions for most of the nineteenth century’, and the evangelical missionary enterprise was seen as a ‘crusade against idolatry’. China fared little better. American evangelical missionaries writing from Macau in 1905 exclaimed: ‘Oh, you cannot realize how dense is the darkness in a heathen heart. No conception of God or heaven or purity or right’.37 The same attitude was shown by British Pentecostal missionary Ethel Cook in her letters to her mission board, describing the funeral of the mother of a Christian-educated Chinese governor in Yunnan, who invited the missionaries to ‘feasts’. ‘But of course’ she said, they did not go, but she witnessed ‘a grand procession with all the usual heathen paraphernalia on an extensive scale’ where ‘the very skies seemed to shew their displeasure, for rain fell heavily nearly all day’. Her conclusion was that Christian education had no effect ‘if the Holy Spirit is not working in [the Governor’s] heart’.38 One wonders how much more would have been accomplished for the missionaries’ cause if they had accepted the Governor’s invitation and shown solidarity with him and his community in their grief. On another occasion, the Christians held a prayer meeting for rain after ‘the heathen had an idolatrous fast for a few days’. The letter did not say, but of course it assumed, which prayer effort, Christian or ‘heathen’, resulted in the ‘abundance of rain’ that fell thereafter, but this time the rain signified God’s bounty and not God’s displeasure.39 Cook

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continued in her tirades against Buddhism in particular, writing of ‘the utter depravity and filthiness of the heathen mind’.40 Pentecostal missionaries, in common with their evangelical counterparts, expected their converts to make a radical break with the past ‘idolatrous’ religion. This was often expressed by a ceremony in which the convert brought ‘idols’, charms, incense urns, potions and other religious accoutrements to be publicly burned. In China, paper writings to the ancestors and ‘heaven and earth tablets’ in Christian homes were to be removed, burned and replaced with Scripture texts. This is only one side of the story, however. By and large, the worldview of the Pentecostal missionaries, unlike that of most of their Protestant cousins, was one of spirits and evil forces that were prevalent everywhere, which could be overcome and exorcized by the superior power of the Christian God through the Holy Spirit. In many aspects, this worldview was identical to that of the people outside the European and North American rationalistic Enlightenment sphere of influence. In actuality, despite the seeming confrontation and intolerance, there was general acceptance by Pentecostal missionaries of the genuineness of the spiritual experiences of the people in Africa and Asia. And even more significantly, Pentecostal converts and local preachers began to relate their message of the transforming power of the Spirit to their own religious worlds, creating continuity between certain aspects of the old religions and this new form of Christianity. Pentecostal missionaries from the Western world who went into Africa, Asia and Latin America did not have to face the secular and rationalized cultures they knew at home. The very existence of God was doubted or, at best, God was thought of as a remote supreme being not involved in everyday human life. There was a fundamental difference between the religious approach of Pentecostal missionaries and that of most of their Protestant counterparts. For the latter, local cultures and religious practices, including beliefs in witchcraft, ancestors and shamanism, were ignorant superstitions to be overcome by education, and disease was a problem to be solved by medical science. To be sure, Pentecostals had a confrontational and often insensitive approach to other religions and cultures, but also had a conviction that the evil they thought they were confronting was real – that an active God was able to break through into this world of ancestors, spirits and sorcery, and give protection and power to cope with stresses in daily life. From the perspective of some of the hearers of the new Pentecostal message, these missionaries offered a real alternative that resonated with their belief in the involvement of the divine in the mundane affairs of life. In particular, the independent churches influenced by Pentecostalism provided many examples of innovative approaches whereby popular culture and religious practices were adapted and transformed with Christian meanings.

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Pentecostal missionaries proclaimed a pragmatic gospel that sought to address practical issues like sickness, poverty, unemployment, loneliness, evil spirits, witchcraft and sorcery – issues that were fundamental to the preChristian religions of the local people. In varying degrees and in their many different forms, and precisely because of their inherent flexibility that belied their outward coating of biblical literalism, Pentecostals were able to offer answers to some of the basic questions asked in local contexts. A more sympathetic approach to their converts’ cultures and the retention of certain cultural practices in their free liturgies were undoubtedly major reasons for their attraction. At the same time, both local and foreign Pentecostal missionaries confronted existing beliefs about sorcery with a message of a more powerful protection against sorcery and a more effective healing from sickness than either the existing missions or popular rituals had offered. Healing, guidance, protection from evil, and success were some of the practical benefits offered to faithful members of their churches. The cultures and religions of the people to which the Pentecostal missionaries went were a fertile soil for their message of salvation and deliverance. So, the new Pentecostal expression of Christianity was rather less encumbered by the more Western cultural forms. As it encountered other living religions, however, transformation took place in two directions. First, the Pentecostal message challenged, confronted and changed whatever seemed incompatible with it or inadequate in the other religions and cultures. Second, the other religions and cultures transformed and enriched the Christian message as proclaimed by the Pentecostal missionaries so that it was understandable and relevant within the worldview in which it was submerged. In this way, Christianity (as understood by the Pentecostals) became more relevant and comprehensible to both those people with whom it was shared and to those missionaries who shared it. It was not a case of Western Christianity replacing or superseding a ‘heathen’ religion or culture. There was an appropriation and transformation taking place within a particular context that involved all the participants. The Pentecostals’ message of the power of the Spirit found familiar ground in countries where spiritual power was absolutely basic to the popular understanding of the universe. This is perhaps one of the main reasons for the proliferation of Pentecostal and independent churches throughout the Majority World during the twentieth century. Their message of the power of the Spirit challenged evil powers and what were roundly declared to be the work of Satan. Sorcerers, witches, and even shamans and healers were boldly declared to be agents of the devil. Pentecostal missionaries acknowledged all these various forces as real problems to be overcome, and not as ignorant superstitions from which people simply needed enlightenment. They offered realistic solutions by accepting these problems as genuine, conscientiously

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attempting to provide authentic explanations and expecting to resolve the problems through faith in the Christian God. The Pentecostal response involved prayer to an all-powerful God for deliverance from the evil, protection from its possible future occurrences and the restoration of that well-being found in Christ. In the eyes of these Pentecostals, the outcome was that God was glorified as demonstrably more powerful than other divinities and powers.

Conclusions Although Pentecostalism with its offer of empowerment for all without preconditions was possibly more effective in raising up local leadership than other missions were, Pentecostal missionaries were also impassioned with ideas of global spiritual conquest, an expansionist conviction influenced both by the colonialism of the time and their premillennial eschatological expectations that the nations of the world had to be conquered for Christ before his imminent coming to rule the earth (Brian Stanley 1990: 62; Allan Anderson 2007: 232–59). The seeds of this global dominance were sown early in the twentieth century. But this domination is mitigated by the fact that the centres of Pentecostalism are no longer mainly in the USA. Pentecostalism has rapidly become a polynucleated phenomenon where US forms, while still hegemonic and representing the US-invented tradition that is to be emulated, are in an intense relationship of competition and assimilation with varieties of Pentecostalism from the South and the East. The resultant Pentecostalisms in different regions and nations are no longer influenced only by US American forms but are emerging with their own character and centres of influence, and these in turn sometimes relate to centres of Pentecostalisms in other parts of the world. Although Pentecostals in many parts of the world are on the cutting edge of encounters with people of other faiths, the lack of serious engagement or dialogue with other religions continues to challenge Pentecostalism today. Pentecostalism has always been a missionary movement in foundation and essence. It emerged with a firm conviction that the Spirit had been poured out in ‘signs and wonders’ in order for the nations of the world to be reached for Christ before the end of the age. Its missionaries proclaimed a ‘full gospel’ that included individual salvation, physical healing, personal holiness, baptism with the Spirit and a life on the edge lived in expectation of the imminent return of Christ. For this message, its pioneers were prepared to lay down their lives and many of them did. They were human vessels who cannot be emulated in many respects – especially when it comes to attitudes towards other religions and cultures. But the selfless dedication and sacrifices in the face

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of immense difficulties of these courageous women and men of early Pentecostalism, among countless others, can only be admired. Without them, the composition of global Christianity today would certainly look very different and perhaps in a state of permanent decline.

Notes 1. This paper is adapted from Allan Anderson (2007), to which the reader is referred for more detail. References in the endnotes are to missionary letters in Pentecostal periodicals, taken from the digital editions of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center (Springfield, Missouri) and the Revival Library (Bishops Waltham, UK), and the archives of the Donald Gee Research Centre (Mattersey, UK). 2. Jessie Biggs, Flames of Fire XDIX (May 1917), p. 9. 3. According to another estimate, Christianity formed 8.6 per cent of the Asian population in 2000, some 316 million people (Patrick Johnstone & Jason Mandryk 2001: 41). 4. Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk (2001: 21, 32, 34, 41, 52) have significantly lower figures. They estimate 87 million Pentecostals and Charismatics in Asia, compared to 72 million in North America, 85 million in Latin America, 84 million in Africa and 14 million in Europe. 5. Robert McJannet, Word & Work XXI/1 ( July 1899), p. 83; XXI/6 (October 1899), p. 181. 6. ‘Native missionary movement in India’, Word & Work XXVIII/4 (April 1906), p. 117. 7. Apostolic Faith III (November 1906), p. 2; I (September 1906), p. 1. 8. ‘A late report from Bombay’, Bridegroom’s Messenger XXVII (1 December 1908), p. 2. 9. Editorial, ‘The next great revival’, Flames of Fire IX ( January 1913), p. 3. 10. ‘Startling facts’, Word & Work XXXII ( January 1910), p. 30. 11. Isaiah 49.12 (AV); Editorial, ‘The next great revival’, Flames of Fire IX ( January 1913), p. 2. 12. Apostolic Faith X (September 1907), p. 1; XI (October 1907–January 1908), p. 1; XII ( January 1908), p. 3; B. Berntsen, Word & Work XXX/7 ( July 1908), pp. 218–19; B. Berntsen, Bridegroom’s Messenger XXVI (15 November 1908), p. 4; XXXIV (15 March 1909), p. 4; DI (1 December 1909), p. 3; DXIV (15 June 1910), p. 4; DXI (1 August 1910), p. 1; DXIV (15 July 1912), p. 1; B. Berntsen, Pentecost I/5 ( January 1909), pp. 2–3; B. Berntsen, Upper Room I/3 (August 1909), p. 5; B. Berntsen, Word & Witness X/4 (April 1914), p. 4. 13. Nellie Bettex, Confidence V/5 (May 1912), p. 113; E. May Law, Bridegroom’s Messenger CXXIX (15 March 1913), p. 3; Bertha Milligan, Latter Rain Evangel XI/8 (May 1919), p. 11; XII/12 (September 1920), p. 20. 14. Apostolic Faith 11 ( January 1908), p. 1. 15. Apostolic Faith 13 (May 1908), p. 3. 16. A.G. Garr and wife, Bridegroom’s Messenger IX (1 March 1908), p. 4. 17. E. May Law, Bridegroom’s Messenger XII (15 April 1908), p. 2; Apostolic Faith XIII (May 1908), p. 1; A.G. Garr, Latter Rain Evangel VI/10 ( July 1914), p. 19.

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18. A.G. Garr, Upper Room I/7 (February 1910), p. 54. 19. ‘A Glimpse into India’s Needs’, Triumphs of Faith XXX/11 (November 1910), p. 261. 20. Grace Elkington, Confidence VII/12 (December 1914), p. 238. 21. Grace Elkington, Confidence XI/3 ( July–September 1918), p. 57. 22. Grace Elkington, Flames of Fire XXIII ( January 1915), p. 8. 23. 1 Corinthians 10: 20; Confidence X/1 ( January–February 1917), p. 11. 24. Walter Clifford, Redemption Tidings I/2 (October 1924), p. 17. 25. Frank Trevitt, Confidence IV/8 (August 1911), p. 191. 26. Frank Trevitt, Confidence V/9 (September 1912), p. 215; V/12 (December 1912), p. 286. 27. John Beruldsen, Confidence VI/4 (April 1913), p. 84. 28. Thomas Hindle, Latter Rain Evangel IX/8 (May 1917), p. 7. 29. Fanny E. Jenner, Confidence VIII/6 ( June 1915), p. 118. 30. Ethel V. Webb, Latter Rain Evangel X/11 (August 1917), p. 7. 31. George Brelsford, Latter Rain Evangel III/2 (November 1910), p. 7. 32. C.W. Doner, Latter Rain Evangel VI/6 (March 1914), p. 14. 33. Pentecost II/11–12 (November–December 1910), p. 5. 34. Andrew Urshan, Latter Rain Evangel V/11 (August 1913), p. 3. 35. Elisabeth Sexton, Editorial, Bridegroom’s Messenger XCVII (1 November 1911), p. 1. 36. Albert Norton, Upper Room II/3 (November 1910), p. 5; Bridegroom’s Messenger DIIIIX (1 July 1911), p. 1. 37. E.R. Munroe, Word & Work XXVII/8 (August 1905), p. 210. 38. Letter, Ethel Cook to T.H. Mundell, 7 August 1915, PMU Archive, Donald Gee Research Centre, Mattersey, UK. 39. Letter, Ethel Cook to T.H. Mundell, 1 April 1915. 40. Letter, Ethel Cook to T.H. Mundell, 14 March 1921.

References Anderson, Allan (2007). Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. London: SCM; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Austin, Alvyn (2003). ‘“Hotbed of Missions”: The China Inland mission, Toronto Bible College, and the faith missions – Bible school connection’, in Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker (eds), The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 134–51. Barrett, David B., George T. Kurian and Todd M. Johnson (2001). World Christian Encyclopedia (2nd edn), Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. Barrett, David B., Todd M. Johnson and Peter F. Crossing (2006). ‘Missiometrics 2006: goals, resources, doctrines of the 350 Christian world communions’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research XXX/1, pp. 27–30. Bays, Daniel H. (1995). ‘Indigenous Protestant churches in China 1900–1937: a Pentecostal case study’, in Steven Kaplan (ed.), Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity. New York and London: New York University Press, pp. 124–43. (1999). ‘The Protestant missionary establishment and the Pentecostal movement’, in Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler and Grant A. Wacker (eds), Pentecostal

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Currents in American Protestantism. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 50–67. Bays, Daniel H. and Grant Wacker (2003). ‘Introduction: the many faces of the missionary enterprise at home’, in Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker (eds), The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 1–9. Cox, Harvey (1996). Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century. London: Cassell. Hastings, Adrian (2003). ‘The clash of nationalism and universalism within twentiethcentury missionary Christianity’, in Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire. MI: Grand Rapids; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, pp. 15–33. Johnstone, Patrick and Jason Mandryk (2001). Operation World. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster. McPherson, Aimee Semple (1923). This is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings. Los Angeles, CA: Echo Park Evangelistic Association. Robeck, Cecil M. Jr (2006). The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. Stanley, Brian (1990). The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Leicester, UK: Apollos. Sung, S.H. (1982). Pentecostal Mission, Hong Kong & Kowloon 75 Anniversary 1907–1982. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Pentecostal Mission. Thompson, Steve and Adam Gordon (2003). A 20th Century Apostle: The Life of Alfred Garr. Wilkesboro, NC: MorningStar Publications. Wacker, Grant (2001). Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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7 The Resurgence of Neo-Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Contemporary Korea ■

Sung-Gun Kim

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ny understanding of the characteristics of the turbulent contemporary Korean society, which has been experiencing a so-called compressed modernization since the 1960s, would not be complete without some knowledge of the ‘Pentecostal success’ exemplified by Paul Yonggi Cho’s famous Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC) as a representative cultural phenomenon. YFGC, affiliated with the Assemblies of God, is the largest Christian congregation in the world and claims about 750,000 members, including 136,600 cell leaders as of 2006.1 Enormous buildings holding thousands of worshippers reflect both the emerging ‘neo-Pentecostal middle-class’2 as a new global phenomenon and what might be called ‘religious urbanization’ ( John Clammer 1984). Thus, impressed by the global expansion of Pentecostalism, Harvard liberal theologian Harvey Cox in Fire from Heaven (1995: 222) has focused particularly on the Korean Pentecostal success, therein asserting that Korean Pentecostalism has the unerring ability to absorb huge chunks of indigenous Korean shamanism and spirit possession into its worship. In line with this, a leading sociologist of religion, David Martin, who is an authority on global Pentecostalism, has also explored the nexus between Pentecostalism and shamanism in the Korean context (David Martin 1990). With regard to the Korean Pentecostal success, Martin proposed that the combination of 137

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Christianity with an aura of the most archaic layer of Korean religiosity, that is shamanism, appealed to the ‘upper lower’ groups in the country (David Martin 1990: 140). In a previous study (Sung G. Kim 2006a), I claimed that the Korean Pentecostal phenomenon, which began in the 1950s following the Korean War (1950–3), has succeeded on two fronts: first, it can demonstrate phenomenal church growth, and second, there has been a dissemination of Pentecostal beliefs and practices within the country. I have found the fact that evangelical Protestant Christianity, especially Pentecostalism, draws successfully upon ancient forms of Korean shamanism as well as employs modern capitalistic American materialism. Focusing on the problems of individuals, Pentecostal Christianity as a whole lacks a definitive political theology. But with their emphasis on ‘experience’ rather than on ‘doctrine’, Pentecostal churches have naturally succumbed to a pragmatic accommodation with authoritarian regimes, and despite this, they have achieved such rapid numerical growth. As a result, Protestant Christianity – and especially Pentecostalism – is in some real sense viewed within contemporary Korean society as ‘controversial’ (Sung G. Kim 2006a: 37). How can we evaluate the Korean Pentecostal success? The argument on Korean Pentecostal success is presented in this chapter in three parts. First, anthropologist James McClenon’s (2002) ‘ritual healing theory’, Oxford scholar John Ashton’s (2000) thesis on ‘Paul as the Mystic’ and theologian Jean-Jacques Suurmond’s (1994) ‘play-theology’ are reexamined for the theoretical underpinnings of this comparative study on ‘religious experience’. The premise here is that the core of all religions can be found in ‘religious experience’ (Williams James 1985). Second, to explore in depth the primary reasons for the Korean Pentecostal success, attention is drawn to find some similarities or ‘elective affinity’ (Weber’s term) between indigenous shamanism and neo-Pentecostalism. Unlike traditional Pentecostalism, neo-Pentecostalism draws primarily from the established or emerging middle class of the society. Third, as a conclusion, the implications of the global rebirth of experiential spiritualities are briefly discussed against the remarkable interface between this-worldly neo-Pentecostal spirituality and shamanism in contemporary world amid neoliberal globalization.

Religious Experience: Some Theoretical Considerations In Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution, and the Origin of Religion (2002: 155), James McClenon concludes: ‘The unexplained qualities within

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people’s experiences are an inherent feature within folk religious belief, and they provide the foundation for shamanism, the first religion’. McClenon’s view of shamanism as the first religion reminds us of the famous theory of Edward Tylor: all religions are based on ‘animism’. Edward Tylor (1958) defined animism as having two aspects: belief in the human soul that survives bodily death and belief in other spirits, including deities. He maintains that ‘savage animism’ is almost devoid of the ethical element and so the lower animism is not immoral but unmoral (Edward Tylor 1958: 446). Although McClenon’s biological perspective on shamanism is somewhat parallel to Tylor’s evolutionary orientation towards animism as the basis of all religions, it is notable that McClenon highlights the development of religious sentiment as a ‘rational process’. However, some sociologists of religion (e.g. Margaret M. Poloma 1989) define Pentecostal experience with Max Weber’s charismatic model of ‘affective action’. In their view, sentiment, rather than rationality, is the basis for affective action. Accordingly, I think that the complex interface between sentiment and rationality should be considered in any understanding of religious experience. In McClenon’s view, extraordinary mystical experiences such as faith healing and possession have effects on individuals in complex modern societies similar to the effects they had on ‘primitive’ peoples. Experience leads to belief in spiritual forces, not vice versa. The important clue in understanding McClenon’s ‘anomalous experiences’ in the biologically based spiritual healing practice known as shamanism lies in the concept of ‘hypnotizability’, that is an inherited trait that produces specific physiological and psychophysiological responses ( James McClenon 2002: 7, 88). Highly hypnotizable individuals have thin cognitive boundaries that provide greater access to the unconscious and susceptibility to the influence of hypnotic suggestion. Thus, hypnotizability provides a focused thought process that produces biological, behavioural and mental changes. This hypnotic capacity enhances recovery from disease3 as well as bolsters survival and reproduction. However, the shamanic syndrome has costs as well as benefits ( James McClenon 2002: 135). It causes people with thin cognitive boundaries to suffer from psychosomatic problems, as well as to benefit from ritual healing and to become shamans. Powerless people such as those who have a low social position, in particular, suffer the costs associated with the shamanic syndrome. But the research literature does not indicate an inverse relationship between social class and the propensity to experience anomalous events. In general, in McClenon’s view, thinness of cognitive boundaries provides ‘survival advantages’, allowing people to devise creative strategies that lead to their empowerment.

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To sum up, McClenon’s ‘ritual healing theory’ of religion argues that hypnotizability is genetically based but socially mediated, and maintains that the rate of survival of the hypnotizable is higher, thanks to ritual healing (shamanism), than that of the non-hypnotizable. Across 20 years of research in psirelated phenomena, McClenon observed two things: ‘Very different cultures often use similar spiritual healing practices’ and ‘certain types of people benefit from these practices to a greater degree than others’ (James McClenon 2002: 4). Keeping in mind McClenon’s thesis, I will briefly review John Ashton’s interesting but challenging comparison of the Apostle Paul’s religious experience with shamanism. In The Religion of Paul the Apostle (2000), Ashton attempts to understand the apostle’s religious life by comparing Paul’s experiences with shamanism. Ashton’s main focus is on what Paul ‘experienced in Christ’ instead of what he ‘believed’. In Ashton’s view, shamans, like Paul who experienced a kind of dramatic dying and rising at Damascus, usually receive a call through a traumatic experience. Thus, Ashton notes the frequency of otherworldly journeys, much like Paul’s in 2 Cor 12:2–4 and 1 Cor 5:3–4. Also, Ashton points out that for both shamans and Paul, a career of power and authority over spirits follows the traumatic call. In summary, Ashton’s comparative work on the phenomenon of ‘spirit possession’ leads us to a clear understanding of Paul’s relation to the realm of spirits in a world where belief in such beings pervaded people’s lives. The phenomenon of spirit possession is helpful in interpreting Paul’s language of occupation as expressed in Rom 6–8 and what he meant by being ‘in Christ’. It is true that for most evangelical Protestants who are opposed to shamanism, Paul is still the most respected apostle. It should be pointed out that, in Ashton’s view, Paul particularly resembles the typical shaman in his relation to the spirit world (John Ashton 2000: 214). Ashton’s assertion of the structural resemblances between Paul’s career and that of shamans raises a significant question regarding the identity of Christianity today (John Ashton 2000: 30). But to me, Ashton’s comparative approach, as well as McClenon’s fascinating theory, seems to be valuable and significant in searching for the main reasons of the Korean Pentecostal success. Finally, the most in-depth analysis of Pentecostal experience in terms of mysticism was offered as a theology of play by Jean-Jacques Suurmond (Peter Althouse 2001: 402). He argued that to understand the charismatic experience of the Pentecostal movement, one needs to understand it as an outpour of the celebration of ‘play between Word and Spirit’. Play-theology sees the charismatic experience of glossolalia as a meaningless way of communicating, in which ‘the self in Word and Spirit . . . is an expression of a bond with

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God and other people which transcends barriers (of language)’ (Jean-Jacques Suurmond 1994: 156). In Suurmond’s view, Pentecostals experience the conversion (awareness of God) and illumination (experience of peace and joy) of the mystical journey. He asserts, however, that they are often unable to experience the ‘dark night’ (Christian maturation in which God is seemingly absent) and to enter into the deeper experience of union with God (Jean-Jacques Suurmond 1994: 157–60). So, awareness develops among the religious faithful and nonbelievers alike that a mature spirituality is critical for resilience in the face of life’s most devastating experiences (Ruth H. Bersin 2002: 270).

The Elective Affinity Between Shamanism and Neo-Pentecostalism In Korea, beneath all imported religions, there are pre-Confucian, preBuddhist and pre-Taoist indigenous beliefs (Sung G. Kim 2006a: 27). It should be pointed out that Korea is one of the stories of Protestant Christianity’s success in Asia (Paul Freston 2001: 61), and Christian concepts of religion have had a great influence on how many Korean intellectuals view indigenous practices (Laurel Kendall 2004: 249). In its most primitive form, shamanism – ‘a belief in the spiritual power of nature’ common to all tribes ranging throughout northeast Asia, Mongolia and Siberia (Andrei A. Znamenski 1999) – developed as the predominant religious ethos of the Korean people (Mircea Eliade 1972: 461–2; Charles A. Clark 1961: 174). The core of shamanism is a polytheistic religion based on the animistic worship of spirit beings (Sung G. Kim 2006a: 27). In brief, spiritual exorcism, direct communication with the spirits, healing and worldly blessings are major aspects of shamanism. Thus, Mircea Eliade (1972: 4) describes shamanism as ‘techniques of ecstasy’. In Korea, shamanism (musok4 ), which has continued to play an important part in people’s lives despite a long history of severe persecution, is recently being rediscovered as an ancient Korean religio-cultural heritage (Hyun-Key Kim Hogarth 1999: 332). Thus, Kim T’aegon (1972), an expert at Korean shamanism, maintains that shamanism is ‘the source of the Korean people’s spiritual energy’. Notably, some Korean journalists, psychiatrists and social scientists, including myself, even go as far as to suggest that the essence of the so-called Hallyu5 (Korean wave) lies in shamanism. It is true that some famous Korean entertainers, such as pop singers and movie stars, are often the descendants of shamanic families.

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In addition to animistic beliefs, within Korea’s shamanistic pantheon there developed a concept of hierarchy of gods (D. W. Chung 1960: 208). Above all the spirits stood one supreme ruler named Hananim (or Hanulnim/ Hanunim). Korean faith in Hananim has been an integral part of Korean thought from primitive times. Conviction in the belief in Hananim was strengthened, not reduced, by the introduction of the amorphous Confucian concept of ch’on (Chinese t’ien). Furthermore, Korean neo-Confucianists of the Yi (Chosen) dynasty fell strongly under the influence of their own indigenous beliefs, which in part called for a ‘personalized’ view of God. It is worth noting that the national anthem of South Korea, which is regarded a secular state, contains a reference to ‘Hanunim’, a religio-paternalistic figure, who is the guardian of the Korean people. Missiologically speaking, Hananim/Hanunim was a point of contact with Korean culture which missionaries in China and Japan lacked. Protestantism, unlike its predecessor Roman Catholicism, readily adopted the term Hananim as the Supreme God, and thus the term Hananim became essential in providing a point of contact between Korean religious culture and the imported faith, thereby allowing for a smooth transition from the indigenous concept of God to that of the Christian image (A. E. Kim 2000: 123). In short, we could stress once again that traditional shamanism dovetails with the Protestant religion through its ‘personalized’ view of God. In line with this, given that modern Koreans in the 1970s and 1980s were still shamanistically inclined in their mindset, and spirit worshippers were in calamity, we could argue that the shamanic ‘personalized’ view of Hananim as the Supreme God presiding over the affairs of heaven and earth, and controlling the fate of human beings, was a key element in the rapid spread of Christian evangelism. This was particularly true in the case of its Pentecostal form, which stressed spiritism. Thus, Harvey Cox, following his Korean visit, asserts: ‘The paradox is that the Korean churches do preach against Shamanism, but at the same time they incorporate and Christianize elements of the Shamanistic world view and practice’.6 Indeed, Cox repeatedly emphasizes that one of Pentecostalism’s great strengths is its capacity to integrate pre-Christian cultural expressions into Christian practice. This stance seems to be consistent with liberation theologian Charles Elliott’s view on Paul Yonngi Cho as a Christian shaman: ‘The shaman offered catharsis, jung (heart), play and blessings. Cho and his many imitators offer an emotional release, sympathy and blessings’ (Charles Elliott 1989: 32). Also Boo Woong Yoo concludes: His [Cho’s] role in Sunday morning worship looks exactly like that of a shaman or mudang. The only difference is that a shaman performs his wonders in the name

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of spirits while Rev. Cho exorcises evil spirits and heals the sick in the name of Jesus (Boo Woong Yoo 1986: 74).

Exploring further the complex but interesting links between this-worldly neo-Pentecostalism and secular shamanism in the Korean context needs to appropriate both McClenon’s ritual healing theory of religion and Suurmond’s theology of play between Word and Spirit. My understanding of Suurmand’s play-theology is that the charismatic experience of the Pentecostal movement could be regarded as an expression of the celebration of play between Word and Spirit. From this review, in the following discussions, I want to seek some ‘structural’, ‘ritual’ and ‘ideational’ similarities between shamanism and neoPentecostalism in contemporary Korea. As I have already mentioned, in my view, the common points of emphasis in shamanism and neo-Pentecostalism could be summarized as follows: (1) exorcism through spiritual warfare, (2) spiritual healing and (3) this-worldly blessings. First, ‘music’ is one of the common methods to enable people attain an altered state of consciousness or ‘hypnosis’ (cognitive openness) in both shamanism (Hyun-Key Kim Hogarth 1999: 23) and neo-Pentecostalism.7 Predicting that Pentecostal Christianity and meditative traditions (the socalled New Age movement, or transpersonal psychology) will survive into the next century, Don Lattin, co-author of the book Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium, maintains that they have had a lot of ‘music’. According to him, it was a different kind of music: hypnotic, tribal, industrial music like the music at rave masses.8 He continues: People look as if they’re going in exactly the same states – they’re waving their arms around getting into some sort of a trance state and opening up spirituality, getting beyond the ego, or however you want to understand it.

In shamanism, the drum is universally used by the shaman as ‘technicians of consciousness’ (Michael Winkelman 2000) to enter into ‘trance’ (ecstasy) or ‘possession (spirit) trance’ (shindulim in Korean shamanism). Studies have shown that vibrations from rhythmic sounds have a profound effect on brain activity.9 The vibrations from this constant rhythm affect the brain in a very specific manner, allowing the shaman to achieve an altered state of mind and journey out of his or her own body.10 The world-famous Kim Deok-su’s Samul-nori, the (Korean) traditional percussion quartet, represents the importance of the drum in Korean shamanism. Meanwhile, interestingly, it is said that Methodist elder Ra Woon Mong, famous for his charismatic preaching on Spirit baptism and healing, always used drums and brass instruments during the revival meetings as early as in

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the 1940s. The appearance of drums and brass bands in the Christian worship service was very unusual in those days. At present, in my view, both electronic/metal ‘contemporary Christian music’ (CCM) produced by the high-tech band and various live music or dramatic sounds that spring out of the minister, choir and congregants in luxurious neo-Pentecostal Korean churches also serve ‘religious’ (healing) functions. Regarding the popularity of CCM in contemporary Korea, we could point out that the rise of worship music and the ways in which this music has influenced the Christian music industry and practices in evangelical communities are especially remarkable in the USA (Lynn S. Clark 2006: 477) and in ‘Americanized’ Korea. Thus, one expert on global Pentecostalism comments on his recent visit to YFGC in September 2002: As we enter the 11:00 am service, a performance of the highly professional orchestra and the about 200-voice choir is going on . . . The choir and orchestra strike up ‘Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,’ followed as quickly by ‘Chio’ (‘Lord!’) prayer. This may be the most moving part of the service, as 25,000 voices swell in simultaneous audible prayer (Allan Anderson 2004: 2–4).

Thus, although the connection between music and trance is not straightforward, one study (Scott R. Hutson 1999) on spiritual healing in the rave subculture interestingly treats the disc jockey as the ‘technoshaman’. In this study, Scott Hutson pays attention to shamanism, self-empowerment and spiritual healing in rave discourse. The result of his work supports the aforementioned Lattin’s assertion on the role of music. Following Hutson’s and Lattin’s arguments, I think that the disc jockey’s role is similar to that of a Korean shaman and that of a Pentecostal minister such as Revd Cho of YFGC. Second, speech (kongsu and sermon) in their rituals (kut as shamanic ritual and worship service in the church) holds special importance for both. It is noticeable that the essence of Korean shamanism is found in and around kut. So, one anthropologist talks about his fieldwork on shamanism in Korea: During the kut ritual, spirits (kwishin) speak. They talk with people. Although sometimes spirits do not speak verbally, they are, at least, expected to express what they want and why they are angry. So they cry, laugh, and dance, by being activated in shamanic ritual (C. H. Kim 2003: 35).

Spirit talk is essential in the Korean shamanic ritual, no matter what sort of shamanic technique is used and no matter who is in possession or trance. In kut, Korean shamans empower spirit(s) to speak through shamanic invocation. People usually expect spirit talk during a shamanic ritual.

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In kongsu as possessed speech or messages from the spirits through the possessed shaman’s mouth, panmal (familiar or blunt speech) rather than chondaemal (formal/cordial speech) is always used. In Korean shamanism, there are two different types of shamans: kangshinmu (‘god-descended’ mudang) in the north and sesummu (‘hereditary’ mudang) in the south. The main difference between them is ‘possession by spirits’. Kongsu, which is the most important element in kangshinmu’s kut, is lacking in sesummu’s kut (Hyun-Key Kim Hogarth 1999: 45). What complicates the issue further is the fact that they are all generally referred to as mudang by Koreans. The hereditary mudang as ‘quasi-shaman’ have highly developed dancing and singing skills, by which they evoke the spirits and entertain them. Although possession never occurs, they act out the speech and actions of the dead spirits. Apart from the absence of kongsu, the contents, structure and function of kut, performed by both types of mudang, are basically identical (Hyun-Key Kim Hogarth 1999: 178). Similarly, in the sermon of Pentecostal worship, narrative storytelling which features dramatic testimonies of religious experience rather than eloquent logical speech is commonly preferred. So Allan Anderson continues to talk about his recent visit to YFGC: In characteristic fashion, he [Cho] gives testimonies of people helped during his ministry spanning five decades . . . The sermon ends with Cho leading the people in responsive prayer and the audience applauds warmly (Allan Anderson 2004: 4).

It is true that since the early days of the Pentecostal movement, which emphasizes religious experience, a ‘narrative’ testimony has been treated as an important highlight in the services. As Suurmond’s play-theology insightfully stresses, we can say that, in both a neo-Pentecostal lively/dynamic service (such as YFGC’s) and a Korean kut, there commonly occurs an expression of the celebration of ‘play’ between ‘words (Word) and spirits (Spirit)’. This needs further explanation. In the process of kut, there is nori (play). Put differently, kut as a shamanistic ritual or a shamanic performance is itself ‘theatrical’ in the sense that it usually needs a sizable ‘audience’. It is interesting to note that when we talk about kut, Koreans usually use the verb ‘see’ (rather than ‘participate’), so they say the following: ‘Let’s go to “see’’ the kut.’ And the same is also true in the case of worship service in the church. So Koreans say that they go to church to ‘see’ (rather than ‘participate’ in) worship services. This reflects the fact that the Korean culture is ‘visual’ rather than ‘literal’. Given the effects of culture on sensory perceptions and their possible implications for religious

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visions (Padilla et al. 2007), the phrase ‘believing is seeing’ (Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2006) suits Korean religious culture well. In traditional Korea, people could watch shamanistic performances in their own community. Among several shamanic skills, ‘riding knives’ and the ‘ecstatic dramatic dance’ of northern mudang with more brilliant colours in their costumes and a more persistent musical beat have been somewhat more popular than the lengthy chants or songs of southern mudang whose words are unfamiliar (C. H. Kim 2003: 210). Regarding the importance of dramatic emotional speech, we can find many testimonials in Shinanggye (world of faith), a leading Pentecostal monthly magazine in Korea (M. S. Park 2004). The magazine, which was published in the latter half of the 1970s, has many stories of overcoming poverty and of miraculous healing. Although the majority of the testimonials are from members of YFGC, some are from members of other churches. The testimonials come from socially well-recognized people as well as from ordinary people. It should be pointed out that, on the basis of Cho’s teaching on ‘spiritual warfare’, most confessors made a diligent effort to ‘cry out’ their spiritual problems in order to solve them. Here we can see an ‘answer-theology’ (Kosuke Koyama 1976). Why has (neo-)Pentecostalism been so successful in the world? Part of the answer, The Economist asserts,11 lies in the ‘internal dynamics’ of the religion: ‘A Pentecostal service is an unforgettable experience, part religious service, part spectacle, part rock’n roll rave.’ With its charismatic preachers, dramatic testimonials and miraculous cures, neo-Pentecostalism is ‘telegenic’. As Boo Woong Yoo (1986) has already observed, shamanism’s immediate healing through spiritual exorcism and neo-Pentecostalism’s healing ministry on the basis of spiritual warfare or exorcism seem to exist side by side in the Korean context. It is noticeable that many scholars insist that the Christian ceremony is ‘shamanistic’ because of its use of trance. One Korean anthropologist observes in particular: In Soy [South Korea], I myself had the opportunity to observe a Christian exorcism rite for Muno in which a minister in charge used an ecstatic technique. Following the minister, attendants repeatedly shouted ‘Lord!’ (juyeo), and cried, and eventually some fell into trance . . . The spirit causing Muno’s illness was called ‘Satan’ . . . There were no offerings provided for the spirit in the healing ritual. Nor did the minister try to be (voluntarily) possessed by the spirit. What the minister tried to do was to expel the spirit with the power of God, who, according to the minister’s argument, was the most powerful force to expel spirits (C. H. Kim 2003: 37).

McClenon’s ritual healing theory describes how shamanic healing increased the frequency of genes related to hypnotizability (James McClenon

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2002: 8). Following McClenon’s theory, I would argue that the interlocking relationship between surviving shamanism and dynamic neo-Pentecostal Protestantism is in fact perfectly ‘natural’. This is already evidenced by Ashton’s interesting comparison of Apostle Paul’s religious experience with shamanism. Hence Martin can state: The world of New Testament Christianity contains ‘demons’ and it announces victory over ‘the powers’. . . Shamanism and spiritism are nearly everywhere, just below the surface or actually on the surface of contemporary life. Certainly they are on the surface in the Yucatan, in the Sertao and in Seoul (David Martin 1990: 140).

So believing, as they do, in the ‘universal presence of spirits’12 from indigenous shamanism, it neither was nor is difficult for Korean converts to Christianity to accept the doctrines of the ‘spiritual’ nature of (a personalized) God. Like shamanism and the Korean worldview filled with spirits (P.-C. Hahm 1988), Pentecostalism locates ‘evil’ which causes misfortune, traumatic disease and even a vicious circle of poverty ‘within’ the spirit world. And even though shamanism is stigmatized and despised as ‘superstition’ by many, especially Christian intellectuals, in reality, it is still ‘the spirit world of Korea’ (Rick Guisso & Chai-Shin Yu 1988; Laurel Kendall 2004). This reflects the ‘cultural paradox’ of Korean shamanism (C. H. Kim 2003). As I have already mentioned, the Pentecostal emphasis in Korea is first of all on ‘divine healing’ and the ‘baptism of the Spirit’ (David Martin 1990: 146). It should be stressed that besides an emphasis on private prayer, including ‘repetitious loud/cry out prayer’ and corporate intercessory prayer all night and in the early morning, exorcisms, healing and miracles prominently and specifically occur within the growing churches of Korea (David Martin 1990: 147). By 2000, 9 out of the 15 most prominent mega-churches in South Korea were charismatic or neo-Pentecostal (Y.-G. Hong 2000: 101, 104). It is said that Kim Ki-Dong, senior minister of Sung Rak Baptist Church in Seoul (well known for his emphasis on exorcisms), has raised seven people from the dead, three of them before their funerals. This is a potent source of growth and popularity for neo-Pentecostal Protestantism in the country. To my amazement, Martin suggests: ‘Maybe Christianity itself began in a similar manner’ (David Martin 1990: 147). With regard to the belief in the working of the Holy Spirit exemplified by, for instance, divine healing and exorcisms, there is currently no substantial difference between fundamentalists and Pentecostals in Korea. This contrasts with most Western theologians’ perspective on the two groups. For example, accepting the fact that fundamentalists and conservative Christians in the USA stridently disagree with the Pentecostals’ claim that miracles still take

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place in the present age, Harvey Cox (2006: 18–19) insists that Pentecostals are not to be classified as a sub-species of fundamentalism. Korean Protestantism has had a history of revivalism, the most notable being the Wonsan revival of 1903 and the ‘Holy Spirit movement’ (or the ‘Great Revival’) that commenced at a meeting of Presbyterian and Methodist missionaries at Pyongyang in 1907 (Allan Anderson 2004: 136; S. D. Oak 2006). The preachers’ ministry was accompanied by miracles and healings. Thus, the revival movement permeated all Protestant churches, although the Presbyterians and the Methodists declared both Yi Yong Do (Methodist mystic) and Ra Woon Mong (founder of the present-day ‘prayer mountain movement’) to be ‘heretics’ because of their unorthodox views (Allan Anderson 2004: 137). But with the legacy of the early ‘charismatic revivals’ plus the recent ‘pentecostalization of Korean Protestantism’ through which most Protestants are affected by a charismatic emphasis (Allan Anderson 2004: 136), both parties (fundamentalists and Pentecostals) now commonly believe that the age of miracles did not end with the apostles. According to Ten Nation13 Survey of Renewalists (2006) by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,14 Pentecostals generally are more likely than other Christians to report having experienced or witnessed divine healing, having received direct revelations from God and having experienced or seen exorcisms. It should be noted that among ten countries, only one country, South Korea, shows that ‘Charismatics’15 are a little more likely than Pentecostals to report having witnessed divine healings (61 vs. 56 per cent) and having experienced (or witnessed) exorcisms (35 vs. 30 per cent). These figures contrast with the case of the USA. There, Charismatics are less likely than Pentecostals to report having witnessed divine healings (46 vs. 62 per cent) and exorcisms (22 vs. 34 per cent). From this, we could say that there is ample evidence of ‘pentecostalization of Korean Protestantism’. Harvey Cox (2006: 23) unequivocally states that Pentecostalism provides people in a splintered postmodern world, such as the contemporary Korean society, with a bridge back to primal, pre-modern beliefs and ritual practices such as exorcism. Put differently, he insists that Pentecostalism fills the ‘ecstasy deficit’ left by cooler religions, thereby ‘reconnecting’ people with ‘primitive’ religious roots. Findings by Gallup Korea show that nearly 30 per cent of Protestants attest to some sort of ‘religious experiences’16 in their daily life. This high figure contrasts markedly with 5 per cent for Buddhists and 14 per cent for Roman Catholics (Gallup Korea 2004: 72–5). In summary, I would argue that the most important factor for the pentecostalized Korean Protestantism’s extraordinary growth seems to be its ‘healing ministry’ through spiritual exorcism or spiritual warfare. As of 2006,

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according to Ten Nation Survey of Renewalists, 90 per cent of Pentecostals and 92 per cent of Charismatics in Korea completely or mostly agree with the statement that ‘angels and demons are active in the world’. While a shaman performs his/her wonders such as healing in the name of spirits, Pentecostals or pentecostalized pastors, like Paul in the New Testament, exorcize evil spirits and heal the sick in the name of Jesus. So we can safely say that there are some ‘structural’ similarities between shamanism and neo-Pentecostalism in terms of divine healings. Finally, I would argue that both shamanism and neo-Pentecostalism can come together in the sense that both commonly stress this-worldly egocentric blessings, mainly health, wealth and prosperity. It should be noted at the outset that a ‘purely’ shamanistic worldview is not possible because Korean shamanism has undergone prolonged and intensive interaction with four religions – Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Christianity. Indeed, one of the reasons why Korean shamanism has been able to survive is the ‘facility’ or ‘adaptability’ with which it interacted with other, often less tolerant, religions (P.-C. Hahm 1988: 60). In the view of Korean shamanism with its emphasis on attaining a fully ‘human’ condition, our ‘this-worldly existence’ is the only thing that matters, since the believer acknowledges no transcendent state of human existence. Life in this world is too precious to be a mere preparatory transition to a more perfect and permanent life in another (nonhuman) dimension of existence (P.-C. Hahm 1988: 62). Also, in its interactions with Buddhism and Confucianism, which were neither monotheistic nor absolutist, Korean shamanism reinforced those beliefs and practices which were consistent with its own values. As a result, although a shamanistic person is capable of accepting an absolute, monotheistic deity who demands exclusive loyalty, such as Hananim, there is a limit to his/her adherence to such a divinity: he/she would retain his/her faith only so long as the Supreme Being proved to be ‘effectual’ in tangible ways (P.-C. Hahm 1988: 94). In the long run, merely abstract and intellectual experiences are insufficient for the shamanistic person. Indeed, the believer desires ‘sensory’ experience as a proof of god’s existence. So we could say that Korean Christians tend to ‘importune’ God for worldly benefits rather than to praise God or to pray for eternal salvation. David Martin’s (1990: 206) finding that evangelical religion and economic advancement often appear in tandem and mutually reinforce each other describes Korea. The many theologically conservative Protestants, especially neo-Pentecostals, who embrace the gospel of success value and endorse this connection, and are, in fact, noticeably more prosperous than people of

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other or no faith (Sung G. Kim 2006b: 226). The 2003 Institute for Church Growth (affiliated with YFGC) survey finds that despite proletariatization induced by the 1997 financial crisis, Protestantism stands out among religions as remarkably bourgeois middle class in social composition (Sung G. Kim 2004: 215–17). As the primitive Christian church offered the Gift of the Holy Spirit to all women and men without distinction, Charismatic Christianity, including Cho’s famous ‘Threefold Blessing’ – salvation for the soul, material prosperity and physical health (3 John 2) – engenders self-confidence or self-empowerment in persons previously economically marginalized (Linda Woodhead 2002: 175). The 2002 profile of the 15 largest Protestant mega-churches in Korea (Y.-G. Hong 2003: 239–40) – with estimated adult worshippers totalling more than 10,000 in each church – shows that three, including YFGC, are Assemblies of God and nine are mainline neo-Pentecostal Protestant churches. Russell P. Spittler (1988: 421) describes this phenomenon as the ‘pentecostalization of the (entire) church’. The profile also shows that most of the mega-churches are located in the centre of the capital, Seoul. Also, among the 15, three are in the Kangnam area, a centre for the rich middle class. My observation confirms that most prospering Korean churches (including the 15 mega-churches) are ‘neo-Pentecostal’ in theology, worship and practice. David Martin (1990: 143) dubs this Korean Protestant scene ‘a spiritual enterprise culture’. The economic success achieved by the consolidation of Korean conglomerates, chaebol (such as Samsung and Hyundai), has a parallel in the organization and demographic success attained by the religious ‘chaebol ’ of YFGC (Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford & Susan D. Rose 1996: 17). Pentecostal Protestant churches such as YFGC shifted the traditional exegesis of ‘blessings’ of the Holy Spirit so that the promise of divine provision of material rewards for true believers, a gospel of prosperity, assumed prominence (Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford & Susan D. Rose 1996: 29). Korean Pentecostals such as in YFGC, once at the bottom of the Protestant economic heap, are not now uniformly poor and meek. As full gospel believers have always expected divine intervention in health matters, some may find the neoPentecostal promise of and emphasis on material advance an attractive prospect. We should pay particular attention to the ‘elective affinity’ between neoPentecostalism and neoliberal globalization (Sturla J. Stalsett 2006b: 200). The neo-Pentecostal churches put their primary emphasis on spiritual warfare, exorcisms, immediate healings and personal prosperity of the here and now. Meanwhile, the kind of capitalism most prevalent in the globalized age is strongly influenced by neoliberal economic theory and ideology. Some

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liberation theologians criticize neoliberalism as ‘sacrificial’ economy in a resacralization/idolarization of money, and of the market (Sturla Stalsett 2006b: 207). And it is noticeable that sacrificial theology is at the heart of neoPentecostalism (Sturla Stalsett 2006b: 204). Faith is expected to produce results – concrete and immediate results. But this can only happen through sacrifice such as the offering of the tithe, which is the individual’s demonstration of faith. Thus, we can say that the most striking common traits of neoliberalism and neo-Pentecostalism are the emphasis on the immediate and on the present moment, and the sacrificial logic underpinning their respective ideology/theology and practices (Sturla Stalsett 2006b: 200).

Conclusions From the perspective of church history, it is true that Pentecostal Christianity within Latin America, Africa and Asia (including Korea) resembles the early Christian church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Similarities include the urban character of their congregations, collective effervescence (Durkheim’s term), exorcism, healing, possession and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. However, it is also true that neo-Pentecostalism has been criticized by conservative Evangelicals for its emphasis on experience over the gospel. Some attack neo-Pentecostal Christianity for being responsible for the loss of direction of the current religious scene.17 Korean neo-Pentecostal Protestants in the midst of neoliberal globalization display a growing middle-class orientation that prefers a religion of ‘success’ to one of ‘suffering’. While the teachings of Paul Yonggi Cho seem to take their tone from the American ministries of the Faith Movement as one of the many strands of what Gorden Melton refers to as the Pentecostal ‘family’ (Gordon Melton 1978), they are, as we have examined above, taught alongside demonology, shamanism and animism, which have more in common with traditional indigenous Korean forms of religion than with North American fundamentalism (Harvey Cox 1994: 213–15; Stephen Hunt 2000: 340). But, all in all, as Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (1996: 28–32) put it, with the market revolution, ‘Pentecostalism goes middle-class’. In this sense, the case of the neo-Pentecostal movement in present-day South Korea with its emerging economy is a prime example. In short, the popularity of the ‘health and wealth gospel’ or ‘answer-theology’ rather than ‘relationshiptheology’ (Koyama’s term) in Korea reflects the continuing influence of ‘thisworldly’ Korean shamanism on Christians as well as the commercialization and self-centred materialism of contemporary evangelical Christianity (Milmon F. Harrison 2005: 14).

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I would argue that ‘experiential spiritualities’ (e.g. spirit possession, healing etc.), expressed in both neo-Pentecostalism with emphasis on baptisms in the Holy Spirit and shamanism in which deities, spirits or ancestors are petitioned and sought for guidance, are remarkably ‘resurgent’ under similar conditions of neoliberal globalization across the world (Matthew Wood 2003). It is to be noted that, since the 1997 financial crisis, increasing numbers of urban South Koreans, especially lower middle class (self-employed and small business people), turn to traditional shamans in order to propitiate ancestors and deities as they engage in ‘high-risk enterprises on the periphery of the Korean economic miracle’ (Laurel Kendall 1996: 516). So British sociologist Matthew Wood (2003: 174) observes: A marked feature of the consequences of neoliberal globalization is the dichotomy, or ambiguity, that people are caught in as regards, on the one hand, their increased disempowerment over their working lives and, on the other hand, the increased demand upon them to exercise choices in such lives.

Thus, we can say that Wood mainly highlights the presence of ‘spirit possession’ in conditions of rapid social change such as neoliberal globalization over which ordinary people, especially the working class, have little or no power. Here I want to come back once again to The Economist ’s (23 December 2006) excellent report on Pentecostals: ‘Pentecostalism is not only burning through the “cities of the dispossessed’’. It is also consuming the elites of the developing world’. Indeed, it would be unwise to try to understand the spread of (neo-) Pentecostal Protestantism without a reference to sociology. But with regard to the ‘key’ reason of the ‘Korean Pentecostal success’, given the substance of the quote noted above, I would conclude that despite South Korea having experienced one of the most extraordinary economic and social transformations in history – from a traditional rural society in the early 1960s to a hyper-urban industrialized one in the 1990s – the country’s Pentecostal success vividly shows the ‘inner spiritual dynamics’ of the religion. In this sense, the present study strengthens the case for a link between practices of spirit possession and healing with the resurgence of both neo-Pentecostalism and shamanism in the Korean context.

Notes 1. http://www.cbs.co.kr/chnocut/email/news (4 March, 2007). 2. The term ‘neo-Pentecostalism’ in this chapter refers to a new form of the Pentecostal religion in which spiritual warfare, exorcisms, immediate healings and personal

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3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

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prosperity in this world have replaced traditional Pentecostalism’s emphasis on speaking in tongues; on strict, pietistic morals and on Jesus’ second coming and eternal salvation. It should be noted that this usage differs from the way the term was understood by sociologists of religion in North America in the 1970s, then referring to the charismatic renewal in mainline churches, both Protestant and Catholic. See Sturla J. Stalsett (2006a: 4–5). The conditions most amenable to ritual healing through hypnosis involve psychosomatic ailments, somatization, psychiatric disorders, chronic pain, hysterical conditions and interpersonal problems. See Michael Winkelman (2000). Generally used term for Korean shamanism. The ‘Korean wave’ refers to the popularity of South Korean popular culture in other countries. The Korean wave began with the export of Korean TV dramas across East and Southeast Asia; the growing success of Korean drama was shortly matched in the fields of movies and popular music. See ‘Korean wave’ in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Korean wave (5 March, 2007). Harvey Cox, email to Jeremy Reynalds, in Jeremy Reynalds (2000: 16). At the ‘Spirit in the World’ conference (5–7 October, 2006, University of Southern California), Donald E. Miller, the organizer of the conference, affirmed the need to study the role of ‘music’ in Pentecostal growth and experience in the concluding session (‘Pentecostalism and changes in the global religious economy’). Spiritual future shock: an interview with Don Lattin by Colleen O’Connor, http:// www/gracecathedral.org/enrichment/interviews/int 19990513.shtml (14 March, 2007). It is interesting to see both The Economist’s (23 December 2006) special survey on the brain and Time’s (29 January, 2007) cover story on the brain talk about the mystery of consciousness, mind and body, emotion and happiness, and so on coincidentally. This reflects the recent popularity of post-materialism, neuroscience and alternative spiritual ideologies, including new age’s ‘neo-shamanism’ in postwar Western culture. ‘Monks, shamans, drum beats, primitive cultures, rhythmic sound and the brain’, http://web-us.com/primitivebeats htm (14 March, 2007). Pentecostals: Christianity reborn (23 December, 2006). It could be pointed out that the term ‘sahoe’ (‘society’ in Korean) literally means the aggregation of ‘spirits’. Thus, if we take the word at face value, it means that Koreans are still living in a world of ‘spirits’ rather than as individuals or groups in the Western sense. The USA, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, India, the Phillippines and South Korea. http://pewforum.org (14 March, 2007). Protestants who do not belong to explicitly Pentecostal denominations but describe themselves as ‘charismatic Christians’. Healing, a feeling of punishment, a vision of hell or the kingdom of heaven, revelation from the divine or God, a feeling of satanic or demonic temptation or a sense of being born again. For example, see G. J. Paxton, ‘Religious experience over the word’, Present Truth 11, article 2, part 1, http://www.presenttruthmag.com/archive/X1/11-2p1.htm (4 March, 2007).

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References Althouse, Peter (2001). ‘Toward a theological understanding of the Pentecostal appeal to experience’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies XXXVIII/4, pp. 399–411. Anderson, Allan (2004). An Introduction to Pentecostalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ashton, John (2000). The Religion of Paul the Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bersin, Ruth H. (2002). ‘Healing traumatic memories: a spiritual journey’, in R. L. Petersen and N. M. Rourke (eds), Theological Literacy for the Twenty-First Century. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Brouwer, Steve, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (1996). Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism. London: Routledge. Chung, D. W. (1960). ‘Hanguk Sahoe-ui Chonggyo-chok Honhapchuui’ (Religious syncretism in Korean society) (in Korean), Sasanggye XXXVIII/3, pp. 201–33. Clammer, John (1984). ‘Secularization and religious change in contemporary Asia’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science XII/1, pp. 49–58. Clark, Charles A. (1961). Religions of Old Korea. Seoul: Christian Literature Society of Korea. Clark, Lynn S. (2006). ‘Introduction to a forum on religion, popular music, and globalization’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion XXXXV/4, pp. 475–80. Cox, Harvey (1994). Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. (2006). ‘Spirits of globalization: Pentecostalism and experiential spiritualities in a global era’, in S. J. Stalsett (ed.), Spirits of Globalization: The Growth of Pentecostalism and Experiential Spiritualities in a Global Age. London: SCM Press. Eliade, Mircea (1972). Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, W. Trask (trans.), Bollingen Series 76. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Elliott, Charles (1989). Sword & Spirit. London: BBC Books. Freston, Paul (2001). Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gallup Korea (2004). Religion in Korea (in Korean). Seoul: Gallup Korea. Guisso, Rick and Chai-Shin, Yu (1988). Shamanism: The Spirit World of Korea. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press. Hahm, P.-C. (1988). ‘Shamanism and the Korean world view, family life-cycle, society and social life’, in R. W. Guisso and C. Yu (eds), Shamanism: The Spirit World of Korea. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, pp. 60–97. Harrison, Milmon F. (2005). Righteous Riches: The Word of Faith Movement in Contemporary African American Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hogarth, Hyun-Key Kim (1999). Korean Shamanism and Cultural Nationalism. Seoul: Jimoondang Publishing Co. Hong, Y.-G. (2000). ‘The backgrounds and characteristics of the Charismatic megachurches in Korea’, Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies III/1, pp. 99–118. (2003). ‘Encounter with modernity: the McDonaldization and the Charismatization of Korean mega-churches’, International Review of Mission XCI/365, pp. 239–55. Hunt, Stephen (2000). ‘“Winning ways’’: globalisation and the impact of the health and wealth gospel’, Journal of Contemporary Religion XV/3, pp. 331–47.

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Hutson, Scott R. (1999). ‘Technoshamanism: spiritual healing in the rave subculture’, Popular Music and Society XXIII/3, pp. 53–77. James, Williams (1985). Variety of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kendall, Laurel (1996). ‘Korean shamans and the spirits of capitalism’, American Anthropologist XCVIII/3, pp. 512–27. (2004). ‘Korean shamans and the definition of “religion’’: a view from the grass roots’, in Jacob K. Olupona (ed.), Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity. London: Routledge. Kim, A. E. (2000). ‘Korean religious culture and its affinity to Christianity: the rise of Protestant Christianity in South Korea’, Sociology of Religion LXI/2, pp. 117–33. Kim, C. H. (2003). Korean Shamanism: The Cultural Paradox. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kim, S. G. (2004). ‘Church growth and switching in Korea: a sociological analysis’ (in Korean), The Conditions for Church Choice. Seoul: Institute for Church Growth. (2006a). ‘Pentecostalism, shamanism and capitalism within contemporary Korean society’, in S. J. Stalsett (ed.), Spirits of Globalization: The Growth of Pentecostalism and Experiential Spiritualities in a Global Age. London: SCM Press, pp. 23–38. (2006b). ‘Cultural globalization and the “subjective turn’’: the spiritual revolution in Korean Christianity’, Korea Observer XXXVII/1, pp. 217–36. Kim, T’aegon. G. (1972). ‘The influence of shamanism on the living pattern of people in contemporary Korea’, in T. G. Kim (ed.), The Modern Meaning of Shamanism. Seoul: Jipmoondang. Koyama, Kosuke (1976). No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind. London: SCM Press. Martin, David (1990). Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell. McClenon, James (2002). Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution, and the Origin of Religion. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Melton, Gordon (1978). Encyclopedia of American Religions. Wilmington, NC: McGrath. Oak, S. D. (2006). ‘The Azusa Street revival, 1906–1909: its characteristics and comparison with the 1907 Great Revival in Korea’, in Won-Mo Suh (ed.), Protestant Revivals in the 20th Century and Pyengyang Great Awakening Movement. Seoul: Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary Press. Padilla, Monica, Andrew Fogleman, Lisa Bitel and Norberto Grzywacz (2007). ‘Effects of culture on sensory perception and their possible implications for religious visions’, Paper presented at ‘Visionaries and Vision-Hunters’ workshop of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California, 8–10 February 2007. Park, M. S. (2004). ‘Korean Pentecostal spirituality as manifested in the testimonies of believers of the Yoido Full Gospel church’, Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies XII/1, pp. 35–56. Poloma, Margaret M. (1989). The Assemblies of God at the Crossroads: Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press. Reynalds, Jeremy (2000). ‘Shamanistic influences in Korean Pentecostal Christianity: an analysis’, www.rickross.com/reference/yoidoyonggi/yoidoI.html, accessed 1 March, 2002.

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Spittler, Russell P. (1988). ‘Implicit values in Pentecostal missions’, Missiology: An International Review XVI/4, pp. 409–24. Stalsett, Sturla J. (2006a). ‘Introduction: Pentecostal growth and global transformations’, in S. J. Stalsett (ed.), Spirits of Globalization: The Growth of Pentecostalism and Experiential Spiritualities in a Global Age. London: SCM Press, pp. 1–10. (2006b). ‘Offering on-time deliverance: the pathos of neo-Pentecostalism and the spirits of globalization’, in S. J. Stalsett (ed.), Spirits of Globalization: The Growth of Pentecostalism and Experiential Spiritualities in a Global Age. London: SCM Press, pp. 198–212. Suurmond, Jean-Jacques (1994). Word and Spirit at Play: Towards a Charismatic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Tylor, Edward (1958). Religion in Primitive Culture. New York: Harper. Winkelman, Michael (2000). Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Wood, Matthew (2003). ‘Capital possession: a comparative approach to “new age’’ and control of the means of possession’, Culture and Religion IV/1, pp. 159–82. Woodhead, Linda (2002). ‘Christianity’, in L. Woodhead (ed.), Religions in the Modern World. London: Routledge. Yoo, Boo Woong (1986). ‘Response to Korean shamanism by the Pentecostal church’, International Review of Mission LXXV/297, pp. 70–81. Znamenski, Andrei A. (1999). Shamanism and Christianity: Native Encounters with Russian Orthodox Missions in Siberia and Alaska, 1820–1917. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

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8 From Sect to Denomination The Russian Church of Evangelical Christians ■

Torsten Löfstedt

P

entecostalism is the third largest religious movement in Russia after the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Islam, and it is growing rapidly. There is, however, comparatively little published information available on Russian Pentecostalism. In this chapter, I focus on one Russian Pentecostal denomination’s self-presentation, that of the Russian Church of Evangelical Christians, (RCEC).1 I base my study primarily on an analysis of various versions of the denomination’s home page. I will analyse the denomination’s name as well as its history and theology as presented there, and show how these have been changed over time. It will be shown that most of these changes can be explained in the light of changed relations with the Russian government and the ROC. I will demonstrate how the RCEC has taken a series of steps to avoid being labelled a foreign sect, and to be recognized as an established Russian denomination instead. Both old and new versions of the denomination’s home page are readily accessible. An old version dating from 2003 is found at http://old.hve.ru, while the latest version is found at http://www.hve.ru; I have accessed this page repeatedly between 1 September 2006 and 1 September 2007. In most cases, no author is given for the information directly relating to the denomination on the home page.2 It is safe to assume that the information given on the home page has been approved by the leadership of the denomination, and is representative of their views.

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Background The RCEC is the largest registered Pentecostal denomination in Russia; it claims to have approximately 300,000 members,3 and has about 1350 congregations. The RCEC is also one of the fastest growing denominations in Russia.4 Though it has its roots in traditional Russian Pentecostalism, it also includes congregations with close ties to American and West European Charismatic churches. During the Soviet era, and especially after Stalin’s promulgation of the laws on religious cults in April 1929 (William C. Fletcher 1985: 45), the Pentecostal churches in Russia were largely isolated from the Pentecostals of rest of the world, and developed on their own. During this period of time, the RCEC, like most other denominations, struggled to survive. Many of its leaders were repeatedly arrested and some were killed by the Soviet authorities (Roman Lunkin 2004). In 1945, the denomination was forcibly merged together with other Protestant denominations to form the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (UEC-B), which operated under state control. Many congregations were disbanded while others kept operating in secret. During most of the Soviet period, theological literature, including Bibles, was hard to come by, and there was no freedom of the press (William C. Fletcher 1985: 55–6). It was therefore quite difficult for the Soviet Pentecostals to develop their theology. Meanwhile, the traditional Western Pentecostal churches had 70 years of relative peace and prosperity in which they developed their theology; during this period the neo-Pentecostal or Charismatic movements also took root in the West. These two traditions, the neo-Pentecostal Western and more traditional Russian Pentecostal traditions, came face to face after the promulgation of the law ‘On freedom of conscience and on religious organizations’ in 1990 and the break up of the Soviet Union in the following year. A large number of foreign missionaries now entered Russia, and began planting new congregations. According to the Center for Civil Society, some 760 Western churches and religious organizations were involved in missions in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1993 (Thomas Stoor 2001: 13).5 Among the new Charismatic churches that were established in Russia were church plants associated with the Word of Life , the Association of Vineyard Churches and the Calvary Chapel International (Mark Elliott & Anita Deyneka 1999: 223). The RCEC was now faced with a form of Pentecostalism that was recognizable, but still quite different from its own tradition. The two traditions were forced together in 1997. After the promulgation of the law ‘On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations’ in

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Russia this year, a large number of congregations founded by European, American and Asian missionaries chose to affiliate with the RCEC to be legally registered (Sergei Filatov 2000: 97). This led to a rapid numerical growth within the RCEC; however, it also put the unity of the denomination at risk. In fact, some considered it more of an umbrella organization for various de facto independent congregations rather than a true denomination. The RCEC became vulnerable to charges that it was a foreign sect, and thus risked losing the rights granted to long-established Russian denominations. In 1999, leaders of the RCEC took steps to unify the teachings and practices of the congregations making up the RCEC; several borrowings from Western neo-Pentecostalism were rejected.

Relations to the Orthodox Church The RCEC operates in a country that is becoming increasingly mindful of its Eastern Orthodox heritage. The RCEC has to be mindful of potential reactions from the leadership of the ROC in everything it does. The difference in size between the ROC and the RCEC is immense. The RCEC has approximately 300,000 members. The ROC counts as members virtually all ethnic Russians (as well as Belorussians and Ukrainians) and several non-Russian ethnicities, including several Fennic minorities, as well as Chuvash and Ossetians. Using this ethnic criterion, the 2002 Russian census gave the number of Russian Orthodox in the federation as 120 million (Sergei Filatov & Roman Lunkin 2006: 34). The number of practising believers is considerably less; Sergei Filatov and Roman Lunkin (2006: 46) give a range from 3 to 15 million. Many Russians consider themselves Orthodox, while at the same time professing to be atheists or agnostic. According to Emily Baran (2006: 642), in 1999, 42 per cent of self-professed atheists in Russia considered themselves Orthodox. A notable example from a neighbouring country is the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has called himself an ‘Orthodox atheist’ (Emily Baran 2006: 642). Sergei Filatov (2000: 93) writes regarding Russia: ‘There is hardly any anti-Orthodox or anti-clerical feeling in the country’. The ROC is a church in Roland Robertson’s (1970) sense of the term. It claims a monopoly on salvation, but has inclusive membership criteria. The Russian Orthodox tend to see other Christian denominations as sects of one sort or another. The ROC’s attitude towards other Christian denominations is expressed clearly in the document ‘Basic principles of the attitude toward non-Orthodox’, available on the home page of the Moscow Patriarchate. 6.1. The relations of the Russian Orthodox Church with non-Orthodox Christian communities in the CIS and Baltic states should be carried out in the same

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spirit of fraternal co-operation in which the Orthodox Church works with other traditional confessions in order to co-ordinate social work, promote social harmony and put an end to proselytism on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church. 6.2. The Russian Orthodox Church maintains that the mission of the traditional confessions is possible only if it is carried out without proselytism and not at the expense of “stealing’’ the faithful, especially with the aid of material benefits.6

Proselytism has been condemned twice in this passage from the Moscow Patriarchate. In November 1996, at a conference on mission and evangelism held in Brazil under the auspices of the World Council of Churches, Metropolitan Kirill said the following regarding proselytism: Proselytism is not some narrow religious activity generated by wrong understanding of missionary tasks. Proselytism is the fact of invasion by another culture, even if Christian, but developing according to its own laws and having its own history and tradition. This invasion is taking place after the old missionary patterns of colonial times. It is not merely a desire to reveal Christ to people – people who have confessed Christianity for over a thousand years at that – but also to refashion their culture in the Western mode.7

The ROC feels threatened by the presence of other Christian denominations in Russia. In part this is understandable; under Soviet rule, the ROC had not been able to train priests in the number required to serve all of Russia’s parishes, and since the dissolution of the Soviet Union it has been scrambling to provide its parishes with trained priests. New seminaries are still opening, so there is clearly still a demand for Orthodox education.8 Hundreds of Western denominations and non-denominational parachurch organizations saw this spiritual vacuum left by Communism and rushed to fill it. The Russian Orthodox feel that these denominations have an unfair economic advantage. The Roman Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations receive funding from Western countries; the Russian Orthodox sense that with these funds the denominations are able to buy converts by providing them with material aid. One might expect that the ROC would have become quite rich since the fall of the Soviet Union, as it was once again allowed to function as a legal person and has regained the property it lost after the revolution. But Per-Arne Bodin (1993: 91) maintains that the opposite is the case; the church now has more buildings to maintain (or rebuild) and more workers to remunerate, while it receives less in income, as the old women who used to support it with their gifts are becoming increasingly impoverished. It should also be admitted that many Protestants do not consider the average member of the ROC Christian. For some, it is enough to mention that most Russian Orthodox are baptized as children for the Orthodox to be

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disqualified; a Baptist would not consider infant baptism valid. Evangelicals may argue that the Russian Orthodox do not know the basics of the faith they supposedly adhere to. Is faith without intellectual content faith? Is everyone who is baptized and who takes communion Christian? A paper published by the Lausanne Committee in 1980 suggests that the answer is no: A nominal Christian Orthodox is any person who is born into an Orthodox family and is baptized by his church. He may or may not attend his church and may participate in the sacraments, but he does not have a personal experience of salvation and a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.9

It should be noted, however, that the RCEC has not endorsed this view of the average Russian Orthodox believer. In general, the RCEC does not take a confrontational approach to Orthodox (cf. Roman Lunkin 2003: 272). The statement issued by the Moscow Patriarchate speaks of ‘the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church’. By its canonical territory, the patriarchate means the area and the ethnic groups where the ROC was the one that first introduced Christianity. In practice, this territory is synonymous with ‘the CIS and Baltic states’.10 The notion of canonical territory is not just a desktop ideal; the ROC runs theological academies and seminaries not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Belorussia, Latvia, Moldavia and Uzbekistan.11 The Orthodox Church divides the people of these countries into traditionally Orthodox peoples and others. The traditionally Orthodox peoples include: Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Chuvash, Karelians, Komi, Mari, Mordovians, Ossetians and Udmurts (Sergei Filatov & Roman Lunkin 2006: 34). The ROC has first dibs on these people, as it were. It does not oppose the existence of the Estonian Lutheran Church as it is not a population group that traditionally belongs to the Russian Orthodox. But they do oppose Protestant proselytism among Russians and Ukrainians in the Baltic states, and are even more upset at proselytism among Russians in Russia. The notion of canonical territory cannot be enforced when the church is no longer part of the state, but this does not mean that the ROC has not tried to get the state to enforce its claims. After the break up of the Soviet Union, several religious groups competed to fill the vacuum left by the old Marxist ideology. The ROC has achieved considerable success in establishing itself as the new civil religion of the Russian Federation.12 It could point to the fact that it was established as Russia’s official religion over 1000 years earlier – 1988 marked the 1000-year anniversary of Vladimir’s baptism and the establishment of the ROC. Despite allegations that the church hierarchy cooperated with the KGB (cf. John B. Dunlop 1995: 30), most Russians have a positive view of the ROC.

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The ROC and the politicians associated with it have tried to limit the rights of other Christian denominations that were granted to them by the Soviet law on religious freedom in 1990. In June 1993, Patriarch Alexii II turned to the Russian government to help keep foreign missionaries from working in Russia (Thomas Stoor 2001: 196). The Russian constitution of 1993 declared that all religions were equal before the law, but Thomas Stoor (2001: 197) points out that individual provinces and ‘autonomous regions’ have since then promulgated laws contradicting the constitution.13 In 1995, and again in June 1997, the Duma, with the encouragement of the ROC, pushed for laws giving official recognition to ‘traditional Russian religions’, which it specified as Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. President Boris Yel’tsin vetoed these laws twice, but signed a modified formulation on 26 September 1997; this is the new law ‘On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations’.14 This law spoke of Christianity, rather than as the Duma originally suggested ‘Russian Orthodoxy’, as a traditional religion. This law maintains a distinction between religious ‘organizations’ that have been active for 15 years and religious groups (or ‘associations’) that have been active for less than 15 years (Thomas Stoor 2001: 201–202). This new law was apparently not restrictive enough for the likings of the ROC. On the home page of the Moscow Patriarchate, the ROC writes: While recognizing the right of non-Orthodox Christians to witness to their faith and conduct religious education among population groups that traditionally belong to them, the Orthodox Church is against any destructive missionary activity on the part of sects.15

The ROC does not consider Islam or Buddhism to be threatening, as they largely limit their activities to certain non-Russian ethnic groups such as Tatars and Kalmyks, respectively. Christian denominations that have historically primarily ministered to non-Russian minority groups, such as the Lutheran Church, are not considered to be a threat either. In contrast, the RCEC seeks to evangelize all the peoples in Russia, including Russians who are nominally members of the ROC, and has met with considerable success. For this reason, the RCEC has been labelled as a sect by the ROC. They are often grouped together with organizations such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishnas and the Unification Church.16 Here, the ROC is following Soviet tradition: Pentecostals were considered the sect par excellence by Soviet authorities (Roman Lunkin 2003: 257). There are several reasons why members of the ROC are opposed to the RCEC; some oppose the RCEC for theological reasons, others out of nationalistic reasons and still others probably out of habit.

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In the pages that follow, I will account for several steps taken by the RCEC that should help make the ROC’s charge that it is a sect less plausible. Among the areas investigated are: the RCEC’s name, the RCEC’s presentation of its history, its theology as expressed in its statement of faith, the openness and transparency of its leadership, its stance on the relation between church and state and ecumenical relations involving the RCEC.

A Significant Name Change The name Russian Church of Evangelical Christians is relatively new; it was previously known as the Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith – Pentecostals in Russia . The denomination agreed to a name change in the fall of 2002, and the new name was registered on 8 June 2004. I find the name change significant for several reasons. The denomination specifically calls itself . There are two adjectives in the Russian language that are translated as ‘Russian’ in English: one is the adjective , which refers to the ethnic Russian people; the other adjective, , does not refer to the ethnic group but generally to people living in the Russian state. The new designation suggests that the RCEC is a church for everyone in the Russian Federation, not only ethnic Russians. In contrast, the ROC is known in Russian as ,17 suggesting that it is ethnically Russian; as was noted, the ROC divides the peoples of the Russian Federation into those who are traditionally Orthodox and those who are not. The ROC considers the Russian people to be traditionally Orthodox. On the RCEC home page, the words (Russian Church) are written in a much larger font than the three words, . Should there be any doubt as to where the loyalties of the denomination lie, the first page includes a map of the Russian Federation and a suggestion of the Russian flag with three horizontal stripes in white, blue and red. The same first page is wholly in the colours white, blue and red. The denomination clearly does not want to be labelled foreign or un-Russian. The RCEC further identifies itself as a church, , implying that it has the same right to this title as the ROC. It should not be denigrated as a sect. The first page of the home page quotes Jesus’ words to Simon Peter: ‘and on this rock shall I found my Church’ (Matthew 16: 18),18 implying that the RCEC is also descended from and part of the church founded by Jesus.

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Finally, the label ‘Pentecostal’ has been dropped. The denomination had been using the designation ‘Pentecostal’ since 1998, perhaps to distinguish it from the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (UEC-B), with whom they were forced to merge in 1944 or 1945. But in 2002, the denomination decided to drop the designation ‘Pentecostal’. The reasons for this change are not entirely clear to me: perhaps this was done to accommodate the new Charismatic congregations that had chosen to affiliate with the union; perhaps the term ‘Pentecostal’ carried a negative connotation in Russia; or perhaps not all of the leaders of the RCEC considered themselves to be Pentecostal. Most likely, the change was made to lay claim to its origins in the Russian Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith , the name of the Pentecostal union founded in 1926 (see section ‘The RCEC Presents Its History’). This new name was also more similar to the name the denomination had in 1990: The Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith of the Russian Federation.19 In a country where legal rights are dependent on documented historical continuity, using conservative nomenclature does not hurt.20

The RCEC Presents Its History On its home page, the RCEC presents a short (approximately a page-long) overview of its history. Its new presentation differs considerably from that given on the home page earlier in 2003 (http://old.hve.ru). I will comment on and compare the two. The older RCEC home page from 2003 begins its historical survey with the establishment of a Pentecostal congregation in Finland in 1907, which was then a part of the Russian Empire, and continues by mentioning that the first Pentecostal congregations were established in St. Petersburg in 1913. The congregations and their founders are not named, nor are any references given. The new home page of the RCEC begins its narrative with Wilhelm Ebel, a Holiness preacher who established a missionary society in Riga (then a part of the Russian Empire) in 1902 and whose teaching reached the Volga Germans, in today’s central Russia.21 Ebel was not mentioned in the 2003 history. The new history continues by mentioning the establishment of the first truly Pentecostal congregation in Russian territory, the one in Helsinki, Finland. It explains that from there Alexander I. Ivanov and Nikolai P. Smorodin (both have ethnically Russian names) went to St. Petersburg, to preach the Pentecostal message; it further mentions that a congregation called ‘the Society of Evangelical Christians in the Spirit of the Apostles’ was established in St. Petersburg as early as 22 1914, as proven by the references to it in the newspaper,

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The new historical survey of the RCEC thus shows that Pentecostalism has roots extending 100 years back in Russia. It was established by Russians in St. Petersburg before the Russian Revolution and should not be treated as a new, foreign import. In tracing its history back to Wilhelm Ebel, this survey gives the impression that the origins of Pentecostalism in Russia even antedate the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles in 1906, which is often treated as the starting point for the Pentecostal movement. In fact, neither version of the historical survey makes any mention of the Azusa Street revival. Ivanov and Smorodin are certainly important figures in Russian Pentecostal history, but it is debatable whether the historical roots of the RCEC actually go back as far as to their ministry. They are said to have been Oneness or Jesus-Only Pentecostals, associated with the United Pentecostal Church, while the RCEC is traditionally Trinitarian (William C. Fletcher 1985: 29; Roman Lunkin 2003: 246). Jesus-Only Pentecostals baptize in the name of Jesus on the pattern of Acts 2: 38, rather than in ‘the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ on the pattern of Matthew 28: 19. But as the split between Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostals first took place in 1916 (Allan Anderson 2004: 47), and as it is not clear that Ivanov and Smorodin were actually anti-Trinitarians (William C. Fletcher 1985: 58), one can consider the congregation established by Ivanov and Smorodin to be, theologically speaking, ancestral to all Pentecostal churches in Russia.23 According to the present RCEC historical survey, the first Russian Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith was established by Ivan Efimovich Voronaev in Odessa in 1926. While individual congregations in the RCEC trace their roots back to Voronaev’s Union, it would be more correct to speak of the establishment of the ‘National [All-Union] Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith’ in 1926 (William C. Fletcher 1985: 43).24 Voronaev was active both in Ukraine and Russia; Odessa, the city where the union was founded, was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, not Russia. In 1926, both these republics were part of the Soviet Union. The denomination is not Ukrainian in origin, but its connections to Ukraine are deep. According to Allan Anderson (2004: 100), Ukraine has ‘the highest number of Pentecostals in any European nation’. In the Soviet era, Ukrainian Pentecostals were deported to remote parts of the Soviet Union, and many chose to stay where they had been sent. A quick look at the last names of the leaders within the RCEC will reveal a large number of Ukrainian-sounding last names. There are still close ties between Russian and Ukrainian Pentecostals. For instance, the leading theological institute of the RCEC, the Moscow Theological Institute, offers a master’s degree together with the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kiev. The RCEC is part of the United

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Eurasian Council of Christians of the Evangelical Faith-Pentecostals , which includes sister churches in the other countries in the CIS (including the Ukraine) and the Baltic states (Roman Lunkin 2003: 266). According to William C. Fletcher (1985: 42), Voronaev had been sent to Ukraine as a missionary by the Assemblies of God, but this fact is not mentioned in either version of the RCEC-historical survey. There may be several reasons for this. One is that the RCEC is not intending to provide a complete history. Another possibility is that given the nationalism so prevalent in Russia today, it is not in the RCEC’s interest to draw attention to any form of historical dependence on an American Pentecostal denomination. Finally, it is not certain that Voronaev saw himself as an Assemblies of God missionary. The date of the founding of Voronaev’s Pentecostal union may seem curious; the denomination was established in the Soviet era, a period of time that is usually associated with religious repression. Immediately after the Russian Revolution and during the period of the New Economic Policy in the 1920s, Protestant Russians had considerable religious freedom; Roman Lunkin (2003: 246) mentions that Ivanov and Smorodin successfully turned to Lenin with a request to open a prayer house in Petrograd in 1918. The situation changed in the late 1920s. Voronaev’s Pentecostal union was forced to close down in 1929, and in 1930 Voronaev was arrested, as both historical surveys mention. He died in Stalin’s camps in the 1930s (Roman Lunkin 2003: 251). The 2003 history also mentions the founding of the Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith of Poland in 1929, and explains that later, when the Soviet Union annexed what are now the western parts of Belorussia, Ukraine and the Baltic states, many Pentecostal congregations, organized around Georgi Schmidt, found themselves in the Soviet Union. Many of these congregations eventually joined the RCEC (Roman Lunkin 2003: 256). The Ukrainian and Polish unions are not mentioned in the new history in 2006–7; again the RCEC wishes to emphasize its Russian roots and not be treated as a foreign denomination. The RCEC historical surveys of both 2003 and 2006–7 mention that Pentecostals joined the UEC-B in 1945. Neither mentions that they were given no choice in the matter, that all Protestant congregations were forced to register with this denomination (Roman Lunkin 2004).25 Nor do they mention that Pentecostal congregations soon left the union in large numbers, and preferred to operate as unregistered, and therefore illegal congregations. According to Roman Lunkin, some 25,000 Pentecostals registered with the UCE-B in 1945, but most of these lived outside Russia, that is, in the Baltic states, Ukraine and Belorussia; most Russian Pentecostals chose to remain

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unregistered (Roman Lunkin 2004; see also William C. Fletcher 1985: 50).26 The fact that most Pentecostals were dissidents is not a secret, but it does not fit the image the RCEC wishes to project today. As was mentioned, a law passed in 1997 prohibited all religious bodies that had not been legally registered for at least 15 years from registering as legal persons. As soon as the new Soviet law on the Freedom of Conscience was promulgated in 1990, Russian Pentecostals who had belonged to the UCE-B left that union en masse to form a Pentecostal Union, together with autonomous Pentecostal congregations. This first meeting of the Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith in May 1990 explicitly restored Voronaev’s union that had been forced to close in 1929. The RCEC’s survey of Russian Pentecostal history serves many purposes. It serves to remind the curious Pentecostal reader of his or her own history. It is also intended to inspire the reader to keep trusting in God and to see his hand working in history. The new historical survey begins by referring to a scriptural passage: ‘Remember the path along which your God led you’ (Deut 8: 2). In its original context, this passage refers to how the Lord tried his people for 40 years in the desert and taught them to put their trust in Him alone. The parallel to the Russian Pentecostal experience is clear, but curiously the trials Pentecostals faced during the Soviet era are only hinted at; the RCEC is not capitalizing on martyrdom. There are also pragmatic reasons for the historical survey. According to a law from 1997, a denomination that had existed in Russia for less than 15 years could not be granted legal status, unless it is affiliated with another officially recognized denomination (Roman Lunkin 2005). The historical survey serves to remind the members of the individual congregations, many of which have been recently founded, that the denomination to which they belong has deep roots in Russian history, and that they should not allow themselves to be treated as a foreign sect. When the historical survey was revised, this message was made even clearer.

Theology The RCEC presents its basic beliefs on its home page under the title XBE (Statement of Faith of the RCEC). The present statement of faith replaced the earlier one in December 2006. While the earlier statement of faith showed clear borrowings from American denominations (most clear is the dependence on the 16 fundamental truths of the Assemblies of God), the new statement of faith seems to be a more

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independent creation.27 It includes biblical references supporting each of the creedal statements. This new statement of faith is not yet available in official English translation; I will offer my own translations where necessary. The first three articles refer to the three persons of the Trinity: God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Most Pentecostal denominations worldwide are Trinitarian, but, as mentioned above, there are some ‘Jesusonly’ or Oneness Pentecostals, for example, the United Pentecostal Church and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. In Russia, the Evangelical Christians in the Spirit of the Apostles is a union of about 70 Jesus-Only Pentecostal congregations, and according to Roman Lunkin (2004), the Jesus-Only Pentecostals dominated Russian Pentecostalism until the 1920s. The RCEC and its predecessors, going back to Voronaev, have always been Trinitarian – the Trinitarian teaching of the RCEC was equally clear in the earlier statement of faith; but in view of the religious climate in Russia today, it does not hurt to specify this in its present statement of faith. The official home page of the Moscow patriarchate states: The Orthodox Church draws a clear distinction between the non-Orthodox confessions that declare their faith in the Holy Trinity and the divine-human nature of Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the sects which reject fundamental Christian doctrines on the other.28

The RCEC affirms the triune God: ‘We believe in one true God, revealed in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ (Statement of Faith 2006, Article 1). The RCEC likewise explicitly affirms the divinity of Jesus Christ (Statement of Faith 2006, Article 2): ‘We believe in the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ . . . ’ thus showing that it cannot be considered a sect on the grounds of its Christology. The statement of faith says nothing about Christ’s humanity; it is presumably not contested.29 The earlier statement of faith read: ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit, who came forth from the Father and the Son to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, and to regenerate, sanctify and empower for ministry all who believe in Christ’ (Statement of Faith 2004, Article 4). To a learned Orthodox reader, this article would be unacceptable, in as much as it affirms the double procession of the Holy Spirit. Officially, the main reason that the Orthodox are not in communion with the Roman Catholics is that Rome added the word filioque, ‘and from the Son’, to the article about the procession of the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed. While the RCEC does not normally use the Nicene Creed as a defining document, they somehow managed to keep the filioque. In the new statement of faith, nothing is said of the procession of the Holy Spirit. It was presumably included in the earlier

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creed not so much out of theological conviction, but because the whole article had been borrowed from another church; it is identical to that of Horizon Christian fellowship in Bloomington, a congregation affiliated with Calvary Chapel.30 By replacing its statement on the Holy Spirit, the RCEC avoided some unnecessary tension with the ROC. (The new article on the Holy Spirit is discussed below.) Of course, it is unlikely that the ROC, whose defining feature is a creed that has not been modified since 381, will be impressed by a denomination that changed its creed completely in December 2006.

Is the RCEC Pentecostal? As mentioned above, the RCEC does not include in its self-designation the word Pentecostal. This raises the question whether they still consider themselves Pentecostal, and how Pentecostalism is to be defined. As would be expected of a Pentecostal denomination, the RCEC has a lot to say about the Holy Spirit. The introductory paragraph to the RCEC’s statement of faith reads: ‘We affirm the supernatural acts of the Holy Spirit in the church from the Day of Pentecost’. Further, the third article of faith speaks of the ‘necessity of receiving the Holy Spirit’. How then is the reception of the Holy Spirit manifested? In the early Pentecostal movement, speaking in tongues was seen as a proof of baptism in the Holy Spirit. According to William C. Fletcher (1985: 61), this was ‘the single doctrine on which all Pentecostals in the USSR agree’. Speaking in tongues is something which, as a rule, set the Pentecostals apart from other Protestants. As was mentioned, in August 1945, Pentecostals were forced by the state to join the All-Union Council of Evangelical ChristiansBaptists. One of the conditions for joining was that the Pentecostals would no longer allow speaking in tongues during public worship. The eighth point of the so-called August agreement reads: ‘Considering the words of apostle Paul about the fruitlessness of unknown tongues in the absence of an interpreter, both sides agreed to abstain from unknown tongues in general meetings’ (quoted in William C. Fletcher 1985: 93). The August agreement, in other words, accepted Pentecostals as long as they ceased worshipping like Pentecostals. Few Pentecostals accepted these restrictions, and today the RCEC officially approves of speaking in tongues. The tenth article of the present statement of faith mentions the gift of tongues: Baptism in the Holy Spirit is accomplished by Jesus Christ [. . . ]. The sign of other languages is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit and cannot be learned by people. It is a source of strength for service through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.31

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The statement of faith does not say that the gift of tongues is a necessary sign of baptism of the Holy Spirit, much less that it is a necessary proof of salvation. The English version of the earlier statement of faith included the following article: ‘We believe that the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a Special Experience Following Salvation that empowers believers for witnessing and effective service, just as it did in New Testament times’. This formulation was identical (down to the capitalizations!) to that of the Assemblies of God Fundamental Truth #7, but has now been replaced, perhaps to avoid dependence on American traditions. Speaking in tongues during worship is not common in all RCEC congregations, but prayer for healing is. The congregations share the Pentecostal belief that the Holy Spirit is active today, and that God can supernaturally intervene in the lives of people here and now. There is, in my view, therefore no reason to question the Pentecostality of the RCEC.

View of Bible The stance of the RCEC towards Scripture expressed in the earlier statement of faith was similar to that of many fundamentalist American denominations, using the inerrant/infallible language: ‘We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, fully inspired, without error in the original manuscripts, and the infallible rule of faith and practice’. The new statement of faith reads: ‘We believe that the Holy Scriptures, the books of the Old and New Testaments (the canonical Bible), are divinely inspired, given by God and are the only source for knowledge of God and our salvation’. The words ‘infallible’ and ‘without error’ are not used in this text; instead, the text continues that the believer ‘may not add to or take away from the Word of God’. Again, their stance towards Scripture has not changed. The statement was reformulated because the old one was clearly an American borrowing; it is identical to that of the Cincinnati Vineyard Community Church.32 By using the term ‘canonical Bible’, the RCEC presumably excludes those texts Protestants call Old Testament apocrypha, but which are included in the canon by the ROC.33 The congregations in the RCEC use the Russian Synodal translation in their services. This translation was first published in 1876 and is used by most Russian Christians including the Russian Orthodox. It is however generally not used by the Orthodox during church services, where the Church Slavonic is used as the liturgical text.

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Prosperity Gospel In the 1990s, many Charismatic churches associated with the Faith movement that preached a ‘prosperity gospel’ and consumer ethics were established in the former Soviet Union; among these are congregations belonging to The Word of Life . They taught that it is God’s will that those who believe should be blessed ‘here and now’ with health and wealth; all that is required is faith. This gospel was attractive to many Russians raised with communism, among people desirous of accepting the benefits of capitalism but lacking an understanding of the work involved. As Stephen Hunt (2002: 15ff ) writes, the prosperity gospel is an antithesis to the Protestant work ethic.34 Many of these new congregations affiliated with the RCEC, and because of their numbers they influenced the denomination as a whole. In 1999, some more traditional, senior elders of the RCEC challenged the new Charismatics; the conservative leaders officially came out against the ‘prosperity gospel’ and the extravagant signs of the Toronto blessing (Roman Lunkin 2003: 275). In doing so, the leadership of the RCEC took steps to make the RCEC more of a denomination and less of a sect. The ‘prosperity gospel’ was notoriously non-Russian. As Bodin writes, ‘no Christian tradition is as uninterested in worldly success as the Russian Orthodox’ (Per-Arne Bodin 1993: 106, my translation). In general, members of the RCEC are more socially active than members of Western Pentecostal or Charismatic churches. Stephen Hunt (2002: 5) writes about the ‘narcissistic tendencies’ of Western neo-Pentecostalism and notes ‘the movement has often been linked with the values of self-absorption and self-development’. This cannot be said about the RCEC, which is involved in all kinds of social outreach ministries such as ministries to prisoners, drug addicts, alcoholics and street children (Roman Lunkin 2003: 271). One of the primary goals of these ministries is to rehabilitate the person being ministered so that he becomes a functional member of society. The RCEC has established congregations within prison walls; recovering drug addicts are offered vocational schooling; and the vision statement for 2006–10 encourages members of the denomination to invite street children into their own homes.35

Ordination of Women In 1999, the traditional leadership of the RCEC refused to allow the ordination of women. In practice, those congregations that had already ordained women could, if they so chose, keep their women pastors (Roman Lunkin

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2003: 275). The RCEC could of course refer to the Scripture to support their stance (cf. 1 Cor 14: 34, 1; Tim 2: 12). In many American and European Pentecostal denominations, the ordination of women has not been a major issue of contention; for example, the Assemblies of God have ordained women ever since the denomination was founded in 1914, and one Pentecostal denomination, the Foursquare Church, was founded in Los Angeles in 1923 by a woman, Aimee Semple McPherson. In Russia, however, women pastors are virtually unheard of – the ROC has consistently rejected the ordination of women. Lutherans and Baptists in Russia do not ordain women either. The ordination of women could thus be seen as a Western innovation, even a sectarian trait. In banning women pastors, the RCEC actually took a step towards removing the sectarian label. This is not to say that the women in the RCEC are passive; they have other leading roles, just not that of pastor.

Ecclesiology and Ecumenism The RCEC has good relations with other Protestant denominations in Russia; for example, it participates in the Consultative Council of Heads of Protestant Churches. Doctrinal differences are relatively small; differences relate more to emphasis than to contents. In terms of its understanding of the church, the RCEC stands close to the traditional Baptist view. The statement of faith of the RCEC declares: ‘The local church consists of people who have been born again, and have received water baptism. Those who join from other churches must have written or oral witness’ (Statement of Faith 2006, Article 8). The present statement of faith thus does not specify whether the individual seeking membership has to necessarily be baptized as an adult, but according to Roman Lunkin (2003: 275), 14–16 years is the lower limit for the believer’s baptism and membership in the RCEC. The earlier statement of faith defined the church as those ‘who . . . have accepted God’s offer of redemption (regardless of religious denomination) through the sacrificial death of His son Jesus Christ’ (my emphasis). This very ecumenical formulation is identical to that of the Assemblies of God, Fundamental Truth #10. It was probably replaced not because the RCEC no longer has this view, but because the new statement of faith was not to be seen as dependent on a Western denomination. The RCEC’s current vision statement gives ecumenical work considerable emphasis; the seventh point there is entitled , ecumenical dialogue, showing that the RCEC considers this as one of the top priorities. Bishop Pavel Bak, vice-president of the RCEC, was interviewed on Radio Teos (January 22, 2007) regarding the prayer week for Christian Unity

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(see http://www.hve.ru). He is quoted as saying: ‘Any initiative in Christianity that is intended to strengthen unity, including partnership in prayer, is pleasing to God. The shortest path to unity is through prayer’; ‘All Christians are brothers. There are no cousins in Christ, only brothers’. The emphasis given to ecumenical dialogue also shows that the RCEC does not wish to be treated as a sect; one of the defining characteristics of sects is their claim to have a monopoly on salvation. By participating in ecumenical dialogue, and by its inclusive definition of the church, the RCEC shows that the sect designation is not applicable to them. While the RCEC generally has good relations with other Protestant denominations, relations with the ROC tend to be more tense, as was mentioned above. Relations to this church vary from congregation to congregation, however, depending in part on the attitude of the local Orthodox bishop. In some parts of Russia, such as Karelia, relations between Orthodox and Pentecostals are very good (Sergei Filatov & Roman Lunkin 2000: 29–31). The RCEC cooperates with congregations belonging to various denominations in other countries including South Korea and the USA (cf. Roman Lunkin 2003: 261, 283). Contacts tend to be on an individual or congregational level, rather than on a denominational level. Though the home page’s news section tells of visits from named church leaders from abroad, the denominations they belong to are seldom mentioned. This is consistent with a general tendency among Russian and Ukrainian Pentecostal churches. According to Allan Anderson (2004: 100), ‘the great majority of [these] churches are fiercely independent . . . and eschew formal links with the West’.

Transparent Leadership The home page of the RCEC is a model of transparency. The leadership structure of the RCEC is presented on its home page.36 The RCEC is divided into the following seven districts which in turn have various numbers of bishops: Central, Northwestern, Southern, Volga, Urals, Siberia and Far East. All leaders (president and bishops) are presented with name and photograph, and all have e-mail links. For the highest leaders, date and place of birth and a brief vita are given (including marital status and number of children).37 The street address of the denomination’s headquarters is also listed. No one can accuse the RCEC of secrecy regarding its leadership. While the RCEC is not unique among Pentecostal churches in the world in having an episcopal structure, it clearly fits Russian expectations for what a church should be. And as is the case with almost all Russian denominations with episcopal structure, all bishops within the RCEC are men.

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Politics In general, Russian Pentecostals obey the laws of the state in accordance with the teaching of St. Paul (Rom 13: 1) as long as they do not contradict Scripture (Roman Lunkin 2003: 271). In the Soviet era Pentecostals could not influence government policy, but after the break up of the Soviet Union members of the RCEC became politically active. The 2003 version of the historical survey states: The Union plays an active role in the country’s political life. Its leaders were involved in developing the draft of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which was approved by referendum in 1993; they also signed the Treaty of Civil Concordance, and participated in the work of the Presidential and Russian Council of Ministers committee on communications with religious organizations.38

The newer version of the historical survey does not include this information. The RCEC’s 2007 home page rather advocates a separation of church and state: ‘The church and the state have different tasks and goals’ (Vision #7). Ukrainian Evangelicals were influential in organizing the ‘Orange revolution’; it may be that the Russian government under Vladimir Putin fears that its Pentecostals may have similar ambitions, which in turn could inspire them to limit the religious freedom in the country. It is therefore in the RCEC’s interest to play down previous activity in the political arena. In contrast with the neutral stance of the RCEC, representatives of the ROC have encouraged closer ties with the government, and there are plans to teach ‘The law of God/ introduction to Orthodox culture’ in Russian schools. The RCEC has, together with other Protestant denominations, protested against these plans as they risk raising Russian Orthodoxy to the new state ideology. The RCEC’s political neutrality is not just a show. In the Soviet era, especially after the NEP period, Pentecostals frequently refused to serve in the military, and several of its leaders were imprisoned for this reason. Today, the RCEC does not take an official stance regarding military service (cf. Roman Lunkin 2003: 272). Military service is considered a valid reason for not being present in the Karelian Bible Institute, one of the seminaries run by the RCEC, implying that the students of theology are not dissuaded from serving in the military.39

Conclusions This chapter has reviewed several changes to the self-presentation of the RCEC including the name change, the revision of its history and the formulation of a new creedal statement. Most of these changes contribute to the portrayal of

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the denomination as a long-established, socially responsible and theologically conservative Russian denomination. Will the changes made by the RCEC in its self-presentation make any difference? As long as the ROC believes it has a monopoly on salvation, it will consider the RCEC a sect, regardless of what they profess. The real question is whether the ROC will continue to dominate Russian religious policy, and whether the Russian government and local regional governments will continue to be able to treat a denomination as large, as well-established and as socially active as the RCEC as a second-class religious import.

Notes 1. The denomination is also referred to as the Russian Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (RCCEF), which is a more direct translation of its Russian name, but I use the denomination’s own English language designation, taken from the English language version of their home page in early December 2006. The organization was formerly known as the Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith – Pentecostals (UCEFP). For the sake of clarity and simplicity, I will usually refer to the denomination as RCEC, even when speaking of events taking place before the name change. 2. A notable exception: the vision statement for 2006–10 (http://hve.ru/ru/index.php? categoryid=19) is authored by President Pavel Nikolaevich Okara. 3. Information from old home page, 2003 (http://old.hve.ru/history.php). Exact figures are hard to come by. Sergei Filatov and Roman Lunkin (2006: 44–5) write, ‘Registered Pentecostal congregations (and to a lesser extent those of other Protestant denominations) usually have an unregistered branch, often with its own pastor. Even the Pentecostal and Baptist headquarters do not have full details of these branch organisations, and nobody knows how many they are’. Their estimate of the total number of Pentecostals is as follows: ‘The total number of practicing Protestants in Russia is thus over 1.5 million (of whom at least 60 per cent are Pentecostals)’ (Sergei Filatov & Roman Lunkin 2006: 48). 4. Cf. Sergei Filatov (2000: 98): ‘The churches and congregations which are members of the two legal Pentecostal unions are the most rapidly growing Christian denominations, represented in all districts of Russia . . . ’. 5. For other statistics on foreign missionaries in Russia, see Mark Elliott and Anita Deyneka (1999: 199). 6. http://www.mospat.ru/index.php?mid=202 (accessed 1 September 2006). 7. Quoted in Thomas Stoor (2001: 190). 8. http://www.mospat.ru/index.php?mid=123 (accessed 31 August 2007). See also Wil van der Bercken (2004). 9. ‘Christian witness to nominal Christians among the Orthodox’ (1980), quoted in Thomas Stoor (2001: 38). For the full text, see http://www.lausanne.org/Brix?pageID= 14728#4 (accessed 12 April 2007). 10. Patriarch Aleksii II is quoted as writing in 1992: ‘The canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate includes not only Russia, but Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the countries of the Baltic, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia’ (John Dunlop 1995: 21).

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11. http://www.mospat.ru/index.php?mid=123. 12. The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Michael Bourdeaux 1995) includes several articles relating to this topic. See also Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia (John Witte & Michael Bourdeaux 1999). 13. These provinces include Kaliningrad, Kostroma, Ryazan, Tatarstan, Tula, Tver, Udmurtia, Vologda and Yaroslavl. According to Sergei Filatov (2000: 97), in Yaroslavl and Udmurtia Charismatic Protestants had ‘become a significant factor in local political life’. See also Lauren B. Homer and Lawrence A. Uzzell (1999). 14. Thomas Stoor (2001: 186); Emily Baran (2006: 651). Baran argues that this restrictive law was inspired by West European legislation. 15. ‘Basic principles of the attitude toward non-Orthodox 6.3’, at http://www.mospat.ru./ index.php?mid=202 (accessed 1 September 2006). 16. On the attitudes of the ROC to religious ‘sects’, see Emily Baran (2006). 17. http://www.mospat.ru. 18. 19. http://old.hve.ru/en/index.php (accessed 31 August 2007). 20. There are a number of Russian Pentecostal denominations that call themselves Evangelical Christians and the like. In its early years, the Pentecostal movement had close connections with congregations belonging to Prochanov’s Evangelical Christians (William C. Fletcher 1985: 28). 21. According to Valdis Teraudkalns (1999), Ebel belonged to the Church of God (Anderson, IN), which is not a Pentecostal denomination. William C. Fletcher (1985: 9) writes regarding Ebel, ‘It would not appear that his message emphasized glossolalia, so the identification of this missionary work . . . with the (subsequent) Pentecostal Church of God is almost surely mistaken’. According to Roman Lunkin (2003: 245), congregations belonging to Ebel’s Church of God began practising baptism in the Holy Spirit and glossolalia after 1945. 22. http://hve.ru/ru/index.php?categoryid=21 (accessed 14 February 2007). The home page refers to a newspaper article from 1914 referring to Pentecostal preaching in St. Petersburg. 23. Cf. William C. Fletcher (1985: 28): ‘By the end of World War I Smorodin was generally accepted as the leader of the Pentecostal congregations in Russia’. 24. The 2003 history states that the name of the 1926 union was ‘Ukrainian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith’, which does not seem to be correct. 25. William C. Fletcher (1985: 92) suggests that the Pentecostals were invited to join the Evangelical Christians and Baptists, but were not forced to do so. While Soviet authorities may have portrayed this as a voluntary merger, it was probably accompanied by implied threats in the case of non-compliance. 26. According to Roman Lunkin (2003: 252), Russian Pentecostals were not invited to join the UEC-B, as Pentecostalism was generally considered a Ukrainian phenomenon. 27. William C. Fletcher (1985: 58) also notes that Voronaev’s statements of faith showed dependence on an American prototype: ‘Voronaev . . . used the “Creed of the Faith of the Followers of Pentecostals of North America’’ of 1925 in his “Brief Doctrine of Christians of Evangelical Faith’’ which he compiled in 1926’. 28. ‘Basic principles of the attitude toward non-Orthodox 6.2’, at http:// www.mospat.ru /index.php?mid=202 (accessed 1 September 2006).

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29. Cf. William C. Fletcher (1985: 59): ‘. . . the Pentecostal doctrine of Christ is quite unexceptional. Soviet Pentecostals give assent to the traditional, orthodox Christology’. 30. http://www3.calvarychapel.com/bloomington/Stmt.htm (accessed 7 December 2006). 31. http://hve.ru/ru/index.php?categoryid=20. 32. http://www.vineyardcincinnati.com/vcc.php?id=36 (accessed 22 August 2007). 33. Cf. William C. Fletcher (1985: 56): ‘The Pentecostals accept only the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament as canonical; they reject the apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, and the like’. 34. On the ‘prosperity gospel’, see Simon Coleman (2000). 35. http://hve.ru/ru/index.php?categoryid=19 (accessed 31 August 2007). See also Roman Lunkin (2003: 271). 36. http://hve.ru/ru/index.php?categoryid=24 (accessed 31 August 2007). 37. http://hve.ru/ru/index.php?categoryid=23 (accessed 31 August 2007). 38. http://old.hve.ru/en/index.php. 39. http://kbi.narod.ru (accessed 1 December 2006).

References Anderson, Allan (2004). An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baran, Emily (2006). ‘Negotiating the limits of religious pluralism in post-Soviet Russia: the anticult movement in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990–2004’, Russian Review LXV, pp. 637–56. Bodin, Per-Arne (1993). ‘Ur djupen ropar jag’: kyrka och teologi i 1900-talets Ryssland. Tro & tanke 11. Uppsala: Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd. Bourdeaux, Michael (ed.) (1995). The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Coleman, Simon (2000). The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dunlop, John B. (1995). ‘The Russian Orthodox Church as an “empire-saving’’ institution’ in Michael Bourdeaux (ed.), The Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. Armonk, NY: Sharpe, pp. 15–40. Elliott, Mark and Anita Deyneka (1999). ‘Protestant missionaries in the former Soviet Union’, in John Witte and Michael Bourdeaux (eds), Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, pp. 197–223. Filatov, Sergei (2000). ‘Protestantism in post-Soviet Russia’, Religion, State and Society XXVIII/1, pp. 93–103. Filatov, Sergei and Roman Lunkin (2000). ‘Traditions of lay Orthodoxy in the Russian North’, Religion, State and Society XXVIII/1, pp. 23–35. (2006). ‘Statistics on religion in Russia: the reality behind the figures’, Religion, State and Society XXXIV/1, pp. 33–49. Fletcher, William C. (1985). Soviet Charismatics: The Pentecostals in the USSR. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Homer, Lauren B. and Lawrence A. Uzzell (1999). ‘Federal and provincial religious freedom laws in Russia’, in John Witte and Michael Bourdeaux (eds), Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, pp. 284–320.

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Hunt, Stephen (2002). ‘Deprivation and Western Pentecostalism revisited: neoPentecostalism’, Pentecostudies I. Lunkin, Roman (2003). CXBE’, in Michael Bourdeaux et al. (eds), Poccuu: 1.II. Moscow: Logos/Keston Institute, pp. 241–83. (2004). ‘Traditional Pentecostals in Russia’, East-West Church and Ministry Report XII/3, pp. 4–7. (2005). ‘The Charismatic movement in Russia’, East-West Church and Ministry Report XIII.1. Robertson, Roland (1970). The Sociological Interpretation of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. Stoor, Thomas (2001). Den oönskade missionen: proselytismen i Ryssland och den ortodoxa kyrkans reaktioner. Skellefteå: Norma. Teraudkalns, Valdis (1999). ‘Origins of Pentecostalism in Latvia’, Cyberjournal for Pentecostal Charismatic Research VI. van der Bercken, Wil (2004). ‘Theological education of laypeople in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine: a survey of Orthodox and Catholic institutions’, Religion, State and Society XXXII/3, pp. 299–311. Witte, John and Michael Bourdeaux (eds) (1999). Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.

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9 Pentecostalism and the Roma Cultural Compatibility and Ethno-Genesis ■

David Thurfjell

I

n the 1950s, a Breton minister named Clement le Cossec founded a small congregation in Paris with the explicit ambition of making Roma convert to Pentecostal Christianity. He called the congregation Mission Évangelique des Tziganes et des Forains de France (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 32), and the first to convert were local Roma of the so-called Manouche group (Thomas A. Acton 1979: 293; Angus Fraser 1992: 313; Matéo Maximoff 1965: 152). This event marked the beginning of a revivalist movement that has redrawn the religious map of European Roma since then. In the mid-1990s, 40 years after the first conversions, 500,000 European Roma were baptized in the Holy Spirit and 4600 had been trained as preachers (Sue Locke 1997: 21). Today the movement is much bigger. In France alone, one-third of the Roma are estimated to belong to Pentecostal churches (Angus Fraser 1992: 314), and because of successful missionary work, the revival has spread across Europe – to Spain, Portugal, Britain and Scandinavia as well as, maybe most strikingly, to the Balkan states (Thomas A. Acton 1979: 293). In this chapter, I will present some ways of understanding the reasons behind this massive revival from the perspective of a historian of religion. Why does Protestant revivalism gain such a hearing among the Roma? Why has it happened now? In order to answer these questions, we need to discuss the specific social and political situation that the Roma have been involved in during the last few decades. My theoretical approach in this chapter is functionalist. I will here analyse Pentecostalism as a movement that responds to certain social needs among its adherents. I will, in this particular text, not go into matters of individual spirituality and meaning. However, it is important to stress that these aspects are also important to focus if one seeks to comprehend Roma Pentecostalism in its full complexity.1 179

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The Roma It is a Herculean task to define who the Roma2 are. There are vivid discussions on this question. Scholars of Romani studies discuss the historical origins and development of the Roma and thereby seek to find ways of describing what constitutes this community. At an organizational level, different international Romani associations endeavour to define who is and who is not a Rom, in order to clarify their own legitimacy and to gain political strength. And administratively, various governmental institutions try to establish clear juridical demarcations and fixed definitions in order to be able to implement political policies concerning, for instance, minority rights. The issue is so problematic because the Roma is an umbrella term that is used for a variety of groups with different languages, religions, citizenships and self-identities. Some groups have an obvious and distinct ethnicity that differs from that of the majority culture. Others are much less distinct and are sometimes defined by their societal marginalization rather than by any specific cultural traits. In the International Romani Union (IRU), the Roma, Sinti and Kale groups are members (Thomas A. Acton & Ilona Klimanova 2000: 37). But then there is a discussion whether the Romanichal group, which consists of 250,000 people in three continents, should also be seen as a specific subcommunity. In addition to these major groups, we have, just to give a few examples, the Kalderash, the Finnish Kaale, the French Manouche, the Spanish Gitanos, the Swedish Resande, the Travellers and the Woonwagenbewoners in the Netherlands, who are all divided not least because of language. Romani is a language family with more than 80 different dialects of which Swedish Romani, Finnish Romani, Kelderash, Lovari, Tjurari, Sinto, Arli, Bugurji and Gurbet are just a few (Gerd Carling 2005: 27). The speakers of these languages are sometimes intermingled and sometimes clearly demarked or even hostile to one another. Certainly, many of the above-mentioned groups have a historical connection to a people or social grouping that left the Indian subcontinent more than a thousand years ago and who reached Europe sometime before the fifteenth century. This connection is proven by the clearly Indian features of the Romani languages. However, the Indian origin is only one central common feature of the multifaceted Romani identities. A maybe equally important feature is the polemical relation with the majority cultures of the societies in which the Roma have lived (Ingvar Svanberg & Mattias Tydén 1990: 157). To be a Rom has often been equal to being an outsider. Historically, the variety of the Romani communities was created when marginalized Roma of Indian descent mixed with other societal outsiders. The Resande, Travellers

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or Woonwagenbewoners are all examples of communities that have traces of such interaction. Now, the complexity of the Roma communities is not unique, and it would be a mistake to contrast the variety of the Roma groups with a perceived unity of other European ethnicities. Ethnicity is always a construction. And whether we discuss Spanish, Swedish or Turkish ethnicity, it is obvious that these were all created through historical processes in which influential nationalist leaders made efforts to create a national unity out of linguistic, religious and social plurality. By means of politics and historiography, these leaders have managed to create national identities that upgrade certain uniting features of a defined group of people whilst downgrading others. This process of ethno-genesis goes on continuously but was, for most European states, most intense during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This was also the period when nationalism, through leaders like Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), formulated the dream of a homeland for the stateless and shattered Jewish community. Unlike the Jews, however, neither the notion of national unity nor the idea of a nation state gained a hearing amongst European Roma at that time. Instead, it is only now that the process of a Romani ethno-genesis is growing strong in Europe (Nicolae Gheorghe 1997: 158). Today Romani people organize themselves in international organizations, make efforts to define and demarcate the borders of their community and try to standardize a Romani language. It is important to remember that this process is not significantly different from the parallel processes that took place in most European countries a hundred years ago. The contradiction between the social plurality and the focus on unity among contemporary Roma is therefore only problematic or unique if it is viewed through the lenses of the established nations and a pre-understanding in which the clear-cut nationalities of the established nation states are seen as default. So the Roma are presently going through a process of ethno-genesis. I will return to the impact that this has on the Pentecostal movement later on. Before doing that, I will say a few words about the Roma and religion in general.

The Roma and Religion The usual answer to the question whether there is a specific Romani religion is ‘no’. Traditionally, the Roma have adhered to the religion that dominates the societies in which they live. Hence, Roma in Muslim lands have been Muslims, while those living in a Christian country have been Christians

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of Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant orientation (Thomas A. Acton 1979: 290; Angus Fraser 1992: 311; Matéo Maximoff 1965: 151). Among certain Romani groups in the Balkans, there exist folktales which in a slightly comical manner explain the aetiology of this lack of a specific Romani religion. In one such story, it is said that the gypsies once had a revealed religion of their own and that its sacred texts were written down on cabbage leaves. Soon, however, a dog came and ate the cabbage after which the religion was soon forgotten (Elwood Trigg 1973: 174). In another story with a similar content, the gypsies once had a church of stone. But, since they wanted gold, they traded it for a church built of cheese. Soon they became hungry and ate the cheese church and thereby lost their religion (Alexander Petrovic 1939: 24–34). Stories like these are not to be taken primarily as serious myths but rather as humoristic folktales. Still, there may be a trait of seriousness in them. It is true that social and material problems historically have forced the Roma to abandon parts of their own heritage in order to survive in hostile surroundings. In the history of Romani studies, however, the folkloristic aspects of Romani traditions have often been exceedingly simplified and overemphasized. In the nineteenth century, the romantic and colonial mindset of many scholars made the Roma objects of a variety of simplified projections portraying them as counter-images of Christian civilization. The Roma’s alleged lack of religion here became especially important for the derogatory discourse. The British gyptologist Charles G. Leland (1873: 10), for instance, in the following way used the lack of religion as an argument for the dehumanization of Romani people: The real gypsy has, unlike all other men, unlike the lowest savage, positively no religion, no tie to a spiritual world, no fear of a future, nothing but a few trifling superstitions and legends, which in themselves indicate no faith whatever in anything deeply seated.

The ‘few trifling superstitions and legends’ that Leland speaks of in this quotation refer to a rich variety of folk traditions that exist among different Romani communities and which have gained a great deal of attention from folklorists during the recent century. Indeed, a majority of the books and articles about Romani culture that have been written before the 1970s are preoccupied with these traditions. Attention has been devoted especially to social taboos, issues of cleanliness and the elaborate rites and traditions connected to death (Carol Miller 1975; Judith Okely 1981; Michael Stewart 1997; Anne Sutherland 1975; Thomas W. Thompson 1922). This is not the place to go through the content of this research. Suffice it to say that studies of religiosity among the Roma, until the emergence of the Pentecostal revivalist movement, has mostly dealt with folk traditions. I will now proceed to the main

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focus of this chapter, that is the Pentecostal resurgence that has thoroughly changed this.

Roma Pentecostalism In this chapter, I use the terms Pentecostal Christianity or Pentecostalism in the broadest possible sense. Many scholars have chosen to denote the same movement among the Roma as Evangelical rather than Pentecostal. For the purpose of this presentation, it is not necessary do go into an in-depth discussion about the demarcations of these names. Suffice it to say that I here use Pentecostalism as an umbrella term for Protestant revivalist communities, which in teaching and practice strongly emphasize individual conversion, Bible reading and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The history of Pentecostal revival among the Roma is a part of the general resurgence of Pentecostalism during the latter half of the twentieth century. During this period, this form of Christianity started to attract great numbers of people from many different groups. The Roma community was only one of many mission fields towards which Charismatic missionaries turned their attention. The Romani revival, furthermore, must also be regarded as a part of the general endeavours to assimilate the Roma into the culture of the majority. ‘Mission work’, as Elin Strand puts it, ‘can be seen in a wider context of making “decent people’’ out of Gypsies’ (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 31). It may be appropriate to make a distinction between the Romani people who have become Pentecostals and a specific Romani Pentecostalism. Individual Roma have been attracted to Pentecostalism since the movement started in the 1920s. Many prominent preachers have been Roma. The most famous example is probably Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith (1860–1947), whose change from a poor orphaned British Romani boy to a remarkably successful revivalistpreacher has been the topic of many publications (Cornelius Smith 2000). When the neo-Pentecostal Charismatic revival began in North America and Europe in the 1960s, it attracted many individual Roma who became members in the new congregations together with other people (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 31). The specific Roma revival, although strongly interrelated to these movements, is something different. This is a part of a revivalist movement which is exclusively directed towards the Roma and which contains aspects that are specific to this group. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this movement began in the 1950s in France with the very determined mission work carried out by the gadzho (non-Roma) preacher Clement le Cossec. It has since then spread throughout Europe and to other continents as well.

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Characteristics Some characteristics of this specific Roma Pentecostalism are worth mentioning. In the message preached, emphasis on transformation seems to be central (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 13). In sermons and revivalist literature, the Roma are portrayed as a lost pariah group that finds its place in God (Sue Locke 1997; Joe Ridholls 1986). The salvation that Pentecostalism has brought about is a result of Jesus actively directing his attention to the situation of the Roma (Sue Locke 1997: 92). Here the glory of the present situation is enforced by a comparison to the destructive and disparaging past (Sue Locke 1997; Joe Ridholls 1986; Matéo Maximoff 1965; Cornelius Smith 2000). Some studies also indicate that there is often an unusually strong focus on eschatology. For instance, Strand in a study of a Kalderash congregation in the United Kingdom notes that the Book of Revelations was the most frequently cited in sermons (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 37). Others have argued that the theology presented in Romani congregations is often non-intellectual. Whether this is the case depends, of course, on one’s definition of intellectualism (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 45). It also depends on what period of time one seeks to describe. As the Roma congregations are becoming more established, the educational level of the preachers is also improving. Today a Romani Bible institute exists in France, and many congregations expect their pastors to have some kind of biblical education. Still, however, Pentecostalism has offered an authoritative position to young persons, which was not previously the case among Roma. Paloma Gay y Blasco (2000: 12) has argued that this change of authority structure indicates that Pentecostal revival has lead to a situation where deeds weigh more than age when it comes to giving social prestige.

Why Pentecostalism? Let me now move on to the main discussion of this chapter, namely the question of why Protestant revivalism gains such a hearing among the Roma and why this happens at this point in history. In the following discussion, I will present a number of possible answers to these questions. The answers presented have been proposed or hinted at by different scholars within this field. My main contribution is to compile them into a somewhat coherent analysis, while drawing on findings from my own field research on Roma in Sweden. I hope that the different explanations taken together may give some insight into this highly interesting and complex phenomenon. It may be argued that there are certain traits in Pentecostal piety that combine particularly well with the Romani culture. The perfect match between

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the two, one could suggest, explains the magnificent success that Pentecostalism has had lately among the Roma. There is, of course, a risk of cultural essentialism connected to this argument. All Roma are not the same, and it may not be possible or fruitful to look for general traits in this strongly heterogeneous group, at least not in an academic analysis. Yet there are certain features that are common to many Roma and that justify a closer look at this argument. I will briefly mention four such features. The first is music. Playing music remains a very central part in many Romani cultures. Romani men have often provided for their families by working as musicians or street entertainers. A large number of renowned Romani musicians exist in many different music genres, and traditional Romani music has had much influence on many forms of European music, not least on different forms of folk music in Balkan and Spain. Dance is also a central feature of many Romani traditions. Furthermore, both Roma and gadzhé often describe music performance to be a central part of Roma identity. Maybe, it is the lack of fixed institutions and a unifying language that has made music the number one unifying feature of Romani identity. It is through music rather than books that the Roma tell their history. The tunes and instrumental techniques are passed on from generation to generation and are filled with more meaning and memory along the way. Music plays a most significant role in Pentecostal piety too. Indeed, playing instruments and singing hymns constitute maybe the most central form of worship in this type of Christianity. Hence, it does not seem too far-fetched to argue that the attraction of Pentecostalism may lie in the fact that it offers a platform for a type of worship to which many Roma not only feel accustomed, but in which they are experts. A second cultural feature that combines well with Pentecostalism is the tradition of improvisation and the spoken word. Improvisation plays an important role, not only in Romani music, but also in many other aspects of the Romani cultures. Since Romani traditions to a large extent have been oral in nature, the position of story telling, memorization and culture transmittance through speech has been particularly strong. Hence, it has been highly esteemed to be skilled in conveying a story in a capturing way. Arguably, this emphasis on the spoken word and Charismatic preaching is also most prevalent in Pentecostal traditions, which may have contributed to making the conversion of Romani individuals and groups to Pentecostalism significantly smoother. The third feature concerns historiography and salvation history. It has been argued that the understanding of their own past by the Roma fits into the messianic pattern which is present in a Pentecostal perception of history (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 47). It is the feeling of improvement that is crucial here. The inglorious past as a low caste group in India and the subsequent centuries as lost and marginalized wanderers are reinterpreted in the light of

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the Christian message of salvation through Jesus Christ as the prehistory that leads up to a dramatic change that opens the gates to salvation and a glorious future. In some Romani circles, this Pentecostal version of history has lead to the idea that the Roma are actually a group of Jews who got lost during the 40 years of exile in the desert, but who now, through their Pentecostal engagement, finally have found their way home (Paloma Gay y Blasco 1999: 55). Fourthly, there are also organizational characteristics in the Pentecostal movement which have increased its appeal in Romani individuals and communities. Most important here is probably the congregational independence that is granted in Pentecostalism due to the lack of a bureaucratic and centralist hierarchy. For the Roma this has meant that one can form and uphold proper congregations without the interference of gadzhé. For Roma who belong to other churches, and maybe most predominantly to the Catholic Church, this freedom has not been granted because of the position of the ordained priests who have had exclusive right to perform sacraments and other crucial religious functions. In these cases, the Romani believers have had a common habit of coming to the church to do just precisely the part of the ritual in which the priest has to be involved and then to retreat to some other place where they can be alone, not rarely, interestingly enough, in Pentecostal churches. The acceptance of lay preachers that is found in Pentecostal congregations has also meant that Romani believers, among whom higher academic education is still scarce, have had the possibility to become leaders of the congregations. This has rarely been the case in the Catholic, Lutheran or Orthodox churches. It may, hence, be concluded that the isolationalism that is a common feature of many Romani groups has been in Pentecostalism in a unique way.

Pentecostalism in the Wider Framework of Social Change Pentecostalism certainly combines well with all the above-mentioned cultural characteristics of the Roma communities. But this cultural match does not suffice to explain the massive success of Pentecostalism among the Roma. In order to further explain this phenomenon, we need to contextualize Romani Pentecostalism into the wider social and economic processes that are taking place among the Roma. The Pentecostal movement coincides, strengthens and draws from other trends in the international Roma community. I will now elaborate on this. First of all, the different Romani communities of Europe are, as always, struggling to improve their social and economic status in society. Many Roma

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are burdened by unemployment, lack of education and discrimination. Different ways are sought to find a way out of societal marginalization. Pentecostalism is one of these ways, possibly the most successful of all. Charismatic movements like Pentecostalism have often been a way to revitalize Christianity for ordinary people (Malcolm J. C. Calley 1965: 2). The great awakenings in North America in the 1740s, in London in 1831 or in Keswick in the 1870s are only a few examples of this (Malcolm J. C. Calley 1965: 10; Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 30–1). Pentecostalism is a religion for upward social mobility. Its egalitarian structure and welcoming attitude to less privileged classes combined with the emphasis on individual self-improvement have made Pentecostalism a method through which people can come to terms with their problems and have a good life. Pentecostalism, as Gay y Blasco has pointed out, gives both ethnic identity and social capital to the modern world (Paloma Gay y Blasco 1999, 2000; Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 45). In offering this, Pentecostalism has also been relatively alone. No other church has so decisively directed evangelization towards the Roma as the Pentecostal. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that it has been almost unchallenged in this field during the latter half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, in order to climb the social scale, organization and communal harmony are essential. Also in this regard we can see a recent change among the European Roma. Traditionally, most Roma groups regulated the relations between different families through a system of social rules in which honour played a significant role. Although the threat of violence may be quite pertinent in these systems, they need not necessarily be particularly violent in practice. Among, for instance, the Finnish Kaale, the Spanish Gitanos and the English Romanichals, a feud- and honour-based avoidance system of justice exists. The risks of revenge or violence in these systems keep oppositional feuding families away from each other and thereby keep violence on a low level (Thomas A. Acton 1999; Martti Grönfors 1977). Traditionally, however, the feud system has provoked and challenged the Christian codes of morality promoted by the majority cultures. This is hardly surprising. The Romani customary law, known as romanipé (Jonathan Freud 2006: 148), contends with the legal system of the majority culture by claiming its own right to interpret law and impose punishment. However, in certain Romani traditions, and especially among the Kalderash, a different system of solving conflicts exists. In this system, a dispute can be solved by gathering a council, kris, in which the issue at stake is discussed and a verdict is given. The leader of the kris is known as the krisnatory. He is chosen by the person who gathers the kris and is approved by the defendant (Jonathan Freud 2006: 154).

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The interesting thing here is that the custom of gathering kris councils in order to solve disputes is regaining its importance among the Roma in Europe. It is also spreading to other groups apart from the Kalderash (Jonathan Freud 2006: 159). It has been suggested that the reason for this is that, since the majority cultures have failed to emancipate Romani citizens, the Roma have returned to their traditional institutions to find a way out of social misery (Jonathan Freud 2006: 159). Regardless of whether this analysis is correct or not, it is obvious that the reestablishment of the kris institution uplifts and encourages dialogue as a way of solving conflicts between the Romani groups (Paloma Gay y Blasco 2000: 11). Since such a path is more in line with the demands of the majority culture, this can be seen as a way of all Roma to become not only more Kalderash, but also more united across community borders. This social stability and pan-Romani unification also coincides with and is strengthened by the Pentecostal movement. Pentecostal preachers proclaim the equality of all people and encourage an attitude of forgiveness. It is also common (at least in certain countries) that the krisnatory is a Pentecostal leader or a preacher of some sort. Hence, the status improvement that Pentecostalism is believed to bring about may, to a certain extent, be linked to its beneficial effect on internal conflict resolution. We now return to something that was touched upon in the beginning of this chapter, namely the ongoing process of Romani ethno-genesis. Romani Pentecostalism is a movement that is intimately connected to this process. As many scholars have pointed out, Pentecostalism forms an arena for the construction of a globalized transnational identity for the Roma. By providing the means to engage politically, religiously and socially for the improvement of the position of Roma, and by making it possible to do this across the conventional boundaries between different Romani communities, as well as between Roma and gadzhé, Pentecostalism has become a unique platform in the struggle for social change (Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 2, 12; Thomas A. Acton 1979, 1998; Angus Fraser 1992; Paloma Gay y Blasco 1999, 2000). Indeed, as Fraser pointed out as early as 1992, the Roma Pentecostal movement constitutes ‘the first real example in Western Europe of a mass pan-Gypsy organization, transcending tribal subdivisions’ (Angus Fraser 1992: 315). The international Roma Evangelical movement (IREM) is one important example of an organization in which this new vision is being realized. In the wake of the Holocaust, known as Porrajmos (the devouring) among some Roma, in which maybe as many as 2 million Roma where murdered,3 pan-Roma movements have grown (Thomas A. Acton 1998: 10). The Pentecostal movement has to be seen as one of the most important components in this process. It has become an expression of pan-Roma self-consciousness

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(Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 46) and, to use the expression of Thomas A. Acton (1979: 295), ‘an indigenous church of the Gypsies’. Despite the fact that Pentecostal teachings open up for closer relations with gadzhé, the movement does not necessarily undermine traditional Romani values or lead to the disintegration of the Romani community. By revitalizing elements from the past in ways which modify social conditions, it may rather help to preserve and strengthen a firm, albeit changed, Romani identity (Ralph Linton 1979; Elin Pernilla Strand 2001: 51). In doing this, Pentecostalism may contribute to the ongoing process of Romani ethno-genesis.

Conclusions In this chapter, I have discussed the Pentecostal revivalist movement that since the 1950s is spreading with remarkable speed among the Roma. I have suggested that the cause of this success, to a certain extent, has to do with the cultural compatibility that is found between Romani cultures and Pentecostalism. I have also suggested that Pentecostalism provides a platform for the upward social mobility that many Roma seek. This happens because it promotes peaceful coexistence between different Romani communities and the majority cultures, and also because it contributes to the creation of a pan-Romani movement. Pentecostalism, hence, is a vital part in an ongoing ethno-genesis among the Roma. Roma Pentecostals often argue that being Pentecostal makes them a better Roma and being Roma makes them better Christians (Paloma Gay y Blasco 1999: 10; Thomas A. Acton 1979: 291). The suffering and the homelessness of the Romani people make them, in the self-image of many Pentecostals, especially fit to canalize the gospel to other peoples. The Roma have always lived under circumstances which in several ways are similar to those of Jews. Through the Pentecostal reinterpretation of their status and history, they also become a chosen people. In the self-esteem that comes from such understanding, many Roma can find a way to be heard in ways that are articulated by them. In the turbulent history of their people, this is, remarkably enough, something new.

Notes 1. I am much indebted to work done by other scholars, not the least to Paloma Gay y Blasco (1999, 2000) for her studies on Gitanos in Spain and Elin Pernilla Strand (2001) for her study of a Kalderash Roma congregation in Kilburn, United Kingdom. I am also much indebted to my Romani Pentecostal friends and informants in Sweden.

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2. In this chapter I will use the term Rom (singular), Roma (plural) and Romani (adjective) to denote the shattered community that I here speak of. For many reasons, this term is not unproblematic. First of all, the people that it seeks to denote belong to several different groups with many different self-identities and names, of which Roma is only one. The reason why I, despite this, have chosen to use this term is that it is used by many leading representatives of the Pentecostal movement that I wish to portray. The term Roma is, hence, emic. 3. Cederberg, Irka (n.d.). ‘Romer: romernas moderna europeiska historia’, retrieved 8 November 2007 from www.ne.se (http://www.ne.se/jsp/search/article.jsp?i art id= 295043&i sect id=29504301&i word=romer%20i%20f%F6rintelsen& i history=1).

References Acton, Thomas A. (1979). ‘The gypsy evangelical church’, in Stephen Cranford (ed.), The Ecumenical Review: Journal of the World Council of Churches XXXI/3, pp. 290–5. (1998). Authenticity, Expertice, Scholarship and Politics: Conflicting Goals in Romani Studies, Inaugural lecture series. London: Greenwich University Press. (1999). ‘Can three-dimensional model of Romani justice dissolve dichotomies between Romani and Gajo law?’, Unpublished paper presented at The Gypsy Lore Society Conference, University of Florence, 28 June. Acton, Thomas A. and Ilona Klimanova (2000). ‘The world Romani congress held in Prague 24–28 July 2000’, A report and analysis. Calley, Malcolm J. C. (1965). God’s People: West Indian Pentecostal Sects in England. London: Oxford University Press. Carling, Gerd (2005). Romani i svenskan: storstadsslang och standardspråk. Stockholm: Carlssons. Fraser, Angus (1992). The Gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell. Freud, Jonathan (2006). Romer. Stockholm: Leopard. Gay y Blasco, Paloma (1999). Gypsies in Madrid. Oxford: Berg. (2000). ‘The politics of evangelism: masculinity and religious conversion among Gitanos’, Romani Studies, Fifth Series X/1, pp. 1–22. Gheorghe, Nicolae (1997). ‘The social construction of Romani identity’, in Thomas Acton (ed.), Gypsy Politics and Traveller Identity. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press. Grönfors, Martti (1977). ‘Blood feuding among Finnish gypsies’, Tutkimuksia Research Report 213. Helsinki: Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, pp. 84–161. Leland, Charles G. (1873). The English Gypsies and Their Language. London: Trübner & Co. (1891). Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling. London: Trübner & Co. Linton, Ralph (1979). ‘Nativistic movements’, in William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (eds), Reader in Comparative Religion, 4th edition. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Locke, Sue (1997). Travelling Light: The Remarkable Story of Gypsy Revival. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

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Maximoff, Matéo (1965). ‘The evangelical gypsies in France’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Third Series XXXXIV, p. 44. Miller, Carol (1975). ‘American Rom and the ideology of defilement’, in Farnham Rehfisch (ed.), Gypsies, Tinkers and Travellers. London: Academic Press. Okely, Judith (1981). The Traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petrovic, Alexander (1939). ‘Contributions to the study of the Serbian gypsies’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Third Series XVIII, pp. 24–34. Ridholls, Joe (1986). Travelling Home: God’s Work of Revival among Gypsy Folk. Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering. Smith, Cornelius (2000). The Life Story of Gipsy Cornelius Smith. Great Britain: Romany & Traveller Family History Society. Stewart, Michael (1997). The Time of the Gypsies. Oxford: Westview Press. Strand, Elin Pernilla (2001). ‘Moving hearts: Pentecostalism and gypsy identity’, MA dissertation in Romani Studies and Social Science, School of Social Science, University of Greenwich. Sutherland, Anne (1975). Gypsies: The Hidden Americans. New York: The Free Press. Svanberg, Ingvar and Mattias Tydén (1990). ‘Zigenare, tattare och svensk rashygien’, in Jahn Otto Johansen (ed.), Zigenarnas holocaust. Stockholm: Symposion. Thompson, Thomas W. (1922). ‘The uncleanness of women among English gypsies’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Third Series I/1–2, pp. 15–43. Trigg, Elwood B. (1973). Gypsy Demons and Divinities: The Magical and Supernatural Practices of the Gypsies. London: Sheldon Press.

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10 Islam in Pentecostal Eyes A Swedish Example ■

David Westerlund

I

n some previous works,1 I have stressed the significance of focusing not only on academic but also on more popular theologies of religion. Moreover, I have emphasized the importance of studying not only religious dialogue but also polemics, which currently may be thriving more than ever, as well as situating the studies in a wider cultural context. This chapter is an example of such a study. My focus will be on a prolific Swedish Pentecostal pastor, Stanley Sjöberg, who is a significant voice in Swedish debates. His publications are read, and he is listened to by many Christians, inside as well as outside Pentecostal circles. In the main, he uses Christian media, but occasionally he participates, for instance, in non-religious radio and television programmes too. For several decades, Stanley Sjöberg has been a pastor and a missionary within the Swedish Pentecostal movement. He now works in a congregation called Centrumkyrkan in Sundbyberg, a suburb of Stockholm. Unlike most Swedish Pentecostal pastors, he has shown a deep interest in Islam and Muslims. This is partly because he has worked in two predominantly Muslim countries, Pakistan and Turkey. This chapter will present and discuss Sjöberg’s view on Islam and Muslims.

Introduction Stanley Sjöberg’s position will be studied mainly in a religio-theological perspective. The concept ‘theology of religion’ refers to the way people within one religion, or non-religious system of meaning, regard other religions (or secular systems of meaning). One extreme religio-theological position is often 193

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termed exclusivistic, which denotes the idea that only one religion, or religious denomination, is true and that beliefs and practices in other religions therefore are false to the extent that they are in conflict with this religion. It is by professing the true religion or denomination that a person can reach the ultimate goal and thus be saved, liberated or enlightened. The other extreme may be termed universalistic, which stands for the view that all religions are true and equal ways to reaching the ultimate goal, which may be called, for instance, heaven. As a rule, religious leaders or thinkers have more nuanced positions. Between a strict adherence to the extreme views, there may be a great variety of more modified attitudes (David Westerlund 2003b: 264).2 The discussion in this chapter will be based mainly on two books on Christian–Muslim relations by Sjöberg (from 1992 and 2005). A number of articles that he published in the Pentecostal newspaper Dagen in 1982 and, particularly, in 1992 have also been referred to. In addition to the religiotheological positioning of his writings, his work will be localized or situated in its wider Swedish context, with a special emphasis on religio-political issues. Particularly in the West, Pentecostals, as well as other ‘born again’ Christians, often strongly support the state of Israel and the return of Jews to this ‘holy land’. This is evident, for instance, in the backing of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, which takes the biblical injunctions to bless and comfort Jews as a contemporary Christian mandate. By contrast, attitudes to Islam and Muslims tend to be very negative.3 Hence, there are many examples of strong polemics against this religion, which – especially in the form of Islamism – may be seen as the leading ‘hindrance’ in the struggle for global evangelization and church growth. Among many Westerners, the ‘green’ enemy of Islam replaced the ‘red’ foe of communism as the ideological arch enemy after the fall of the iron curtain. Unlike Islam, Judaism – an ethnically based religion – as a rule does not compete in the struggle for conversion. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the problems of Islamophobia, or demonization of Islam, have tended to increase in the USA, as well as in other countries.4 Among some ‘born again’ Christians,5 this demonization may be understood in a literal sense, since they conceive of Islam as a satanic religion.6 The Pentecostal movement in the Nordic countries, including Sweden, was influenced by, among other things, the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles. As elsewhere, most Swedes who in the early decades of the new movement were attracted to it, in general, were poor and not highly educated. Gradually, however, the social structure became more mixed. Swedish Pentecostals developed a congregationalist system, with independent local congregations, although there was much national co-operation, for example in terms

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of publishing literature and in missionary endeavours, which were seen as crucially important. For several decades, Lewi Pethrus, a well-known pastor in the Filadelfia Church in the capital Stockholm, was the unofficial leader of the Pentecostal movement in Sweden, which now has almost 100,000 members.7 In recent years, however, the Pentecostal, or neo-Pentecostal growth, has taken place outside this classical movement rather than inside it, for example in the Word of Life, founded in 1983, which represents the so-called prosperity gospel and has a substantial number of – largely young – members with a middle-class background.8 In addition, there are several para-church Charismatic organizations and movements, as well as Charismatics within non-Pentecostal denominations. Hence, it is difficult or impossible to estimate the total number of Pentecostals and Charismatics.

The Swedish Context Since the Protestant reformation of the sixteenth century and until 2000, the Swedish Church was the established church. Although there are now a great multitude of churches, as well as non-Christian organizations, in Sweden, this Lutheran Church still retains its old name, that is the Swedish Church. A special law regulates the affairs of this church, and politicians from regular political parties play important roles in ecclesiastical decision-making at the local as well as the national level. Although people now need to be baptised in order to become members of the Swedish Church,9 still about 75 per cent of the population are its members. Paradoxically, the studies of the World Values Survey, among others, show that Sweden is one of the most secular countries.10 For instance, church attendance is very low. Even though the concept of secularization should be, and has been, problematized (Peder Thalén 2007),11 this country appears to be a good example of what the sociologist Grace Davie (2002) in her book Europe: the Exceptional Case calls ‘belonging without believing’. Before the recent turn of the millennium (2000), Swedish non-Lutheran churches were referred to as ‘free churches’. Anachronistically, this term is still frequently utilized, and to some extent, this continued use may be seen as a critique of the special status of the Swedish Church. After the official ‘divorce’ between church and state in 2000, one of these churches has even changed its name from Nybygget (literally ‘the new building’) to Evangeliska Frikyrkan (the Evangelical Free Church). Since 1949, when the first Islamic congregation was formed in Sweden, more precisely in Stockholm, by Tatar Muslims, the number of – religiously more or less active – Muslims has grown to around 300,000 or more. On

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the whole, this previously religiously quite homogeneous country has become much more multi-religious.12 The immigration of Muslims accelerated in the 1960s and, even more, in the 1980s and after that. While most of the Muslims who arrived in earlier decades were workers attracted by openings in the Swedish labour market, the majority of Muslims who have immigrated recently are refugees. Among early Muslim immigrants, Turks made up the biggest group, whereas people from Iran, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Arab countries, particularly Iraq, are predominant among those who have arrived more recently. Most Muslims in Sweden live in cities, particularly in Stockholm; it has been estimated that about half of all the Muslims in Sweden live in the capital Stockholm.13 Before the turn of the millennium (2000), the Swedish policy on religion was confessional.14 Thus, the state was not religiously neutral. As indicated above, a Christian (Lutheran) tradition, organized in the Swedish Church, was politically established. Although, following the divorce between church and state, this church now has a more free position – for instance the government no longer appoints its bishops – some critics see it as ‘semi-established’. To many Swedes, being member of the Swedish Church is a part of Swedish national identity, and they tend to see this church more as a culture bearer than as a religious institution. Although regular church attendance is extremely low, about half of all weddings and most funerals (ca. 83 per cent) take place in the Swedish Church. The majority of Swedes (ca. 65 per cent) also baptise their children in this church.15 For homosexual couples, a blessing ceremony can be officiated there. In the process of institutional secularization, in which the ‘divorce’ between church and state became a particularly important milestone, the Swedish Church has lost some of its political and social functions, for instance in the sectors of health care and education. In the words of the American scholar of religion, Bruce Lincoln (2003: 5), its position has gradually changed, and continues to change, from a more ‘maximalist’ to a more ‘minimalist’ one. Whereas a maximalist religion, or religious denomination, in principle, permeates all spheres of human existence, a minimalist religion restricts its activities and influence to a more specialized sphere. As an established religious denomination, the Swedish Church was a ‘religion of status quo’, another term coined by Lincoln.16 Hence, it supported, and was supported by, the political elite. Since it retains a certain level of closeness to this elite, and has a special legal status, it may still be seen as a ‘religion of status quo’, albeit with a clearly weakened position. While being a member of the Swedish Church can be seen as a part of ‘Swedishness’, being a Muslim is, by contrast, often seen as something ‘un-Swedish’.17 According to one official quantitative study,

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80 per cent of the Swedish respondents held that Muslim culture is irreconcilable with Western norms and values.18 To many Swedes, the Swedish Church and Islam are poles apart. In Sweden, scholars have studied the ‘othering’ of Muslims in contexts such as schoolbooks (Kjell Härenstam 1983), popular literature (Magnus Berg 1998), media (Håkan Hvitfelt 1998) and debates about mosque buildings (Pia Karlsson and Ingvar Svanberg 1995).19 Discussions about Orientalism and postcolonial theorising have influenced some of the studies on Muslims as ‘the Other’. Recently, two books on Islamophobia were published (Göran Larsson 2006; Jonas Otterbeck and Pieter Bevelander 2006), and in a third study (Sami Lipponen 2006), stigmatization, exclusion and discrimination of Muslims in Sweden have been analysed. Jonas Otterbeck and Pieter Bevelander conclude, among other things, that race has been replaced by culture and, increasingly, religion in the repudiation of ‘the Other’. However, their study, as well as the others mentioned earlier, contains little information on attitudes to Islam and Muslims within Christian denominations, such as Pentecostalism, in Sweden. Thus, this is one of the fields where more research is needed.

Stanley Sjöberg’s Views on Islam and Muslims Due to its rapid trans-continental expansion, Pentecostalism has become an increasingly varied or ‘glocalized’ movement.20 Thus, attitudes to other religions and other Christian denominations can differ a great deal. Officially, however, Pentecostal theologies of religion tend to be, more or less, exclusivist. Stanley Sjöberg’s position is no exception in this respect.21 For instance, in his book Koranen och Bibeln (1992a: 46–7), he concludes that belief in Jesus as the son of God who died on a cross for the sake of all humankind is necessary for the salvation of human beings. According to Sjöberg (1992a: 37), ‘the Quranic view’ of God is in direct conflict with ‘the Biblical view’. The differences between the Quran and the Bible are said to be ‘dramatic’. Hence, it is not possible to believe in both (Stanley Sjöberg 1992a: 38). Sjöberg (1992a: 17) further argues that sharia (Islamic law) bears the stamp of values that are totally inconsistent with Christian views on human beings and legal conceptions of the ‘civilised world’. Since Muslims who come to ‘our countries’ are a threat to Christian values and ‘our culture’, missionary endeavours are needed in order to convert such Muslims to Christianity (Stanley Sjöberg 1992a: 27).

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Sjöberg criticizes liberal forms of Christianity for having enervated the European power of resistance against what he sees as the Muslim attempts to turn this part of the world into an Islamic continent. In the book Ärlighet och respekt mellan kristna och muslimer (2005: 62), he writes that the message of the Quran is ‘a threat to our spiritual safety, our societal system and our human relations’.22 ‘The truth about Islam’ must be revealed. This may lead to a ‘dangerous confrontation’, but even if it results in martyrdom, Christians must not hesitate – ‘it is worth sacrificing one’s life for Jesus’ (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 63). Here, and elsewhere, Sjöberg echoes the Islamologist Bernard Lewis’ ideas about a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Bernhard Lewis 1990) – later popularized by Samuel P. Huntington (1993, 1996). Although Sjöberg criticizes the Swedish Islamologists Jan Hjärpe and Christer Hedin, who are both well-known in Sweden and often appear in radio and television programmes, he supports and recommends the writings of Lewis. While Hjärpe is regarded as a ‘defence counsel of Islam’ (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 55), Hedin’s liberal, or historical-critical, discussions of the Bible and the Quran, presented in the book Bibeln och Koranen (Christer Hedin 2002), are interpreted as ‘a theological treachery’ (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 66–70).23 A few years after the Iranian revolution of 1979, Sjöberg wrote that a ‘demonic revival’ is the most dangerous threat to Christians and that Ayatollah Khomeini was influenced by evil spirits. According to Sjöberg’s eschatological beliefs, Islam represents ‘the false prophet’ who appears in the end, before the second coming of Christ (Stanley Sjöberg 1992b: 4). Due to the strength of socialist political forces in Sweden, this country is ill-equipped to meet the challenge. Sjöberg saw a co-operation between Khomeini, the Soviet Union and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as a threat to the survival of Israel (Stanley Sjöberg 1982: 5), which had been returned to the Jewish people by God (Stanley Sjöberg 1992a: 14). In 2005, he reiterated his call for a struggle on two fronts against socialists and Muslims who are united in their ‘contempt for Jesus’ and are enemies of Israel.24 If the expansion of Islam is not stopped, the cross will be replaced by the sword, and sinners will be severely punished instead of being redeemed by the grace of God (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 65). Like many other Western critics of Islam, Sjöberg stresses that, according to the Quran, women and men should be treated differently. Among other things, he mentions polygyny and Muhammad’s special ‘privileges’ in relation to women (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 40–2). Men’s right to administer corporal punishment to women (Stanley Sjöberg 1992a: 34), as well as sharia laws that discriminate against women, are mentioned as examples of ‘gross oppression’

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of women (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 43). He substantiates his criticism, or interpretations, by quoting from the Quran and the Sunna. However, Sjöberg sometimes expresses self-criticism too, and stresses the importance of differentiating between the divine ideals of Jesus and the way many Christians have practised Christianity. He provides historical examples of how the ideals of love have been ignored by church and state in, for instance, crusades and wars. Time and again, and hand in hand with state machineries, established churches have discriminated against non-conformists or dissidents. Hence, Sjöberg criticizes the way not only Islam but also Christianity has been practised on many occasions. Furthermore, he acknowledges that there are examples of Muslims who have lived, or live, morally exemplary lives (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 31–2, 34–7). In order to counteract problems of xenophobia, Sjöberg has encouraged dialogues with Muslims (Mikael Kindbom 1992: 3), although his aim is to convert them to Christianity. He dislikes the use of inflammatory terms like ‘crusade’ (Stanley Sjöberg 1992b: 4), which has frequently been utilized in evangelistic campaigns by some other ‘born again’ preachers, such as the wellknown Reinhard Bonnke from the mission organization Christus für alle Nationen (Christ for all nations).25 According to Stanley Sjöberg (1992c: 5), it is vitally important that the Christian message is offered to Muslims, and other non-Christians, with love and generosity. His aim is to establish a humble relation with Muslims, based on friendship, and to convince them of their need to become Christians (Stanley Sjöberg 1992d: 5). In order to persuade Muslims to revalue the message of the Quran, there must be an open discussion on the basis of freedom of religion (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 44).

Discussion Not surprisingly, Sjöberg’s presentation of Islam overlooks the great diversity of interpretations and practices found among Muslims. Thus, in his view, Islam tends to become petrified. He selects passages from the Quran and the Sunna to serve his purposes and provides his own interpretations. Oftentimes his texts have a sermonizing tone. In several respects, Sjöberg’s polemics against Islam is similar to that of more secular Western debaters. Oppression of women, cruel punishments and other forms of violence are frequently associated with Islam and Muslims. However, Sjöberg couches his ‘othering’ of Muslims in religious (Christian) terms rather than referring to human rights, which some debaters conceive of as secular rather than religious (Christian or Jewish-Christian).

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At times, Sjöberg criticizes the materialism of the (secular) West and the unfair way certain nations in ‘the Christian world’ (Sjöberg’s quotation marks) continue to treat some predominantly Muslim countries. Injustices between rich and poor nations, as well as the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, are seen as hindrances to peace and good relations between ‘the Christian world’ and the predominantly Muslim countries. There is a need for global justice, he stresses, without which there can be no peace (Stanley Sjöberg 1992a: 31; 2005: 60–1). Hence, there are examples of political statements in his writings. Apparently, however, Sjöberg does not aim at providing a ‘full political package’, even though he has repeatedly made clear that he is anti-socialist. He is opposed to maximalist conceptions of religion. Thus, he is critical of the common Islamic bonds between religion and politics, as well as of the Swedish Church’s history of close relations to the state. His tendency towards a minimalist conception is in line with the favouring of separation between church and state found within the Swedish free churches. In Sjöberg’s view, religion becomes compromised and secularized if it is politically established. Sjöberg’s exclusivist position is in contrast to more pluralist religiotheological and multiculturalist attitudes among some representatives of the Swedish Church and some other churches. Pentecostalism, as understood by him, may be seen as a ‘religion of resistance’, opposed to leading circles within the Swedish Church, the mainstream ‘religion of status quo’, as well as the values of most members of the political elite. Sjöberg explicitly criticizes Lutheran theologians who have a historical-critical view of the Bible and – unlike Muslims, he adds – who deny, for instance, that Jesus was born by a virgin for being too complaisant towards Europe’s Muslims. These theologians, who are financed by the state and suit themselves to what they think is politically correct, champion ‘an extreme feminist spirituality’ and strenuously express their support for homosexual relations. According to Sjöberg, Biblicist Christians must be aware of the theological perfidy used by liberal theologians who influence political decisions aimed at abandoning ‘our Christian heritage’ and replacing it with Islamic doctrines (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 67–8). In general, Sjöberg is involved in a struggle against, on the one hand, Islam (and other non-Christian religions) and, on the other hand, a largely secularly oriented mainstream elite of, in particular, leftist politicians and intellectuals. It may be noted that there are some paradoxes in his way of arguing, since he refers to the Quran and the Sunna in support of his own repudiating attitudes to, for instance, homosexuality (Stanley Sjöberg 2005: 67). There are examples of Pentecostals and other people from ‘free churches’ who have cooperated with (some) Muslims – as well as Jews and other non-Christians – to counteract proposals on socio-moral issues where they think they can form a

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common front against what they see as secular aberrations, supported by liberal religious people, especially from the hierarchy of the Swedish Church.26 Although exhortations to co-operation with followers of Islam are not a conspicuous element in Sjöberg’s writings, he occasionally argues that Christians may have something to learn from the devotion of some Muslims.

Conclusions In Stanley Sjöberg’s writings, there is little or no polemics against Judaism and Jews. Rather, Jewish norms and values are seen as a part of a ‘Jewish-Christian’ heritage that should be defended against Islamic and secular convictions. Likewise, Israel – the land of God’s chosen people – should be supported. In contrast to Judaism, Islam is depicted as the dangerous religious ‘Other’, and in Sjöberg’s view, its current expansion poses a serious threat to Europe (and other parts of the world). Thus, whereas there is a tendency to incorporate Judaism and Jews, Islam and Muslims instead tend to be excluded. Sjöberg’s stereotypes of Islam and Muslims, highlighting for example oppression of women, violence and certain sharia laws, are similar to the stereotypification presented by secularly oriented Western critics, and nowadays often labelled Islamophobia. His call to evangelize Muslims, with the purpose of converting them, is in accordance with his quite far-reaching exclusivist theology of religion. Apparently, Sjöberg has not changed his views on Islam and Muslims in any noteworthy way. Thus, despite dramatic events such as the terrorist destruction of World Trade Center in 2001, as well as the rapidly increasing Muslim population in Sweden, he does not seem to have become more critical of Islam and Muslims. However, in his recent book from 2005, he expresses even more strongly than earlier the importance of encountering them. He has written in favour of dialogues with Muslims, but his goal is clearly to convince them of their need to become Christians and thus abandon Islam. In the USA, ‘born again Christianity’, including Pentecostalism, is a very strong religious force, which cannot be ignored politically. In Sweden, as well as other parts of Europe – the religiously ‘exceptional’ continent – this type of Christianity is much weaker. Hence, Sjöberg’s polemics against Islam, and his strong support for Israel, are politically more controversial in Sweden than in the USA. As remarked earlier, his criticism of Islam is similar to the criticism that is expressed by more secularly oriented critics, but those critics may be equally opposed to Sjöberg’s (Pentecostal) religious orientation, which they find morally ‘backward’ and ‘anti-modern’. Against the interests of such critics, some Pentecostals and Muslims can occasionally, and paradoxically,

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support each other on certain issues, such as freedom of religion, resistance to homosexual marriages, and the way they think religious values and leaders should be treated in media.

Notes 1. See, for example, David Westerlund (2003a, 2003b). 2. Cf., for example, John Hick (1989) and David Westerlund (2001: 35). 3. For two recent overviews of Pentecostal relationships to Judaism and Islam, respectively, see Robert A. Berg (2006) and Leonard N. Bartlotti (2006). See also, for example, Walter Russell Mead (2006: 39–41). 4. Some examples can be found in, for example Mattias Gardell (2005: 199–206), concerning the USA, and Göran Larsson (2006), regarding Sweden. 5. ‘Born again Christianity’ includes, among others, Evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals. 6. See, for example Mattias Gardell (2005: 200–1, 297) for some American examples, and Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (1996: 175) for a Nigerian case (cf. Hugh Goddard 1995: 154–9). 7. The total population of Sweden is about 9 million. For details about the development of Pentecostalism in this country, see the new standard work edited by Claes Waern and Magnus Wahlström (2007). 8. In his recent book The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity (2000, digitally printed 2007), the British anthropologist Simon Coleman focuses on this group. 9. Before the ‘divorce’ of church and state in the year 2000, a new-born baby automatically became a member of the Swedish Church if at least one of the parents was a member. 10. See, for example Thorleif Pettersson (2008). 11. For two important international studies, see Peter Berger (1999) and David Martin (2005). 12. See, for example Ingvar Svanberg and David Westerlund (2008). 13. More details on Islam and Muslims in Sweden can be found in, for example Ingvar Svanberg and David Westerlund (1999) and Pernilla Ouis and Anne Sofie Roald (2003). A useful bibliography has been published by the scholar of religion Göran Larsson (2006). 14. The term ‘policy on religion’ denotes the position of the state in relation to the religious traditions within its sphere of jurisdiction. See Carl F. Hallencreutz and David Westerlund (1996: 2). 15. The figures are from 2006. Detailed statistics are available from the home page of the Swedish Church (www.svenskakyrkan.se). 16. For discussions of the terms ‘religions of status quo’, ‘religions of resistance’ and ‘religions of revolution’, see Bruce Lincoln (2003: 77–92). 17. A similar criticism was initially levelled against, for instance, the neo-Pentecostal Word of Life (Simon Coleman 2000: passim). 18. See further Sami Lipponen (2006: 9, passim). 19. For example Kjell Härenstam (1983), Magnus Berg (1998), Håkan Hvitfelt (1998) and Pia Karlsson and Ingvar Svanberg (1995).

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20. On the issue of the global and the local, see for example Peter Beyer (2006: 23–9) and Roland Robertson (1992). 21. However, a stronger criticism of Islam has been voiced by Ulf Ekman, and in some publications from his neo-Pentecostal Word of Life Church. See, for example, Ekman’s sermon after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, ‘When the World Is Shaken’, http://www.ulfekman.org/ulfekman/world shaking WTC.htm (retrieved 22 July, 2002). 22. All translations from Sjöberg’s Swedish texts are my own. 23. Here I will not discuss in detail Sjöberg’s criticism of Hjärpe and Hedin. It may be added, however, that there are certain similarities between his views and those of some secular scholars and others who criticize Islamologists, as well as other scholars of religion who specialize on Islam, for underestimating the problem of Islam, particularly Islamism, and for presenting a biased picture of Islam in Sweden that overlooks or plays down radical elements. For an example of such – largely distorted – views, see Aje Carlbom (2003). Like Sjöberg, although from a very different point of departure, Carlbom is critical of what he – misleadingly – calls the hegemonic multiculturalist ideology. For a detailed discussion of his book, see for example David Westerlund (2004). 24. Few, if any, Muslims would say that they feel contempt for Jesus. However, my aim is not to discuss the reliability of Sjöberg’s statements on Islam and Muslims but rather to present and analyse his way of portraying these. It may be remarked, also, that in Sweden the great majority of Muslims have voted for leftist parties, particularly the Social Democrats, while the great majority of Pentecostals have voted for non-socialist parties, especially the Christian Democrats. However, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the possible reasons for these differences. 25. For a discussion on Bonnke, the evangelist who perhaps draws the largest crowds in the world, see for example Gary Lease (1995) and Steve Brouwer, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (1996: 1–2, 151). Like Sjöberg, Reinhard Bonnke is a prolific writer. See, for example, his book Evangelism by Fire (1990 or later reprints). 26. Pentecostals have also co-operated with other Christians such as Catholics. An interesting example of such co-operation is the book Jesusmanifestet, co-written by the Swedish Catholic bishop Anders Arborelius and the current pastor of the earlier mentioned Pentecostal Filadelfia Church in Stockholm, Sten-Gunnar Hedin (Anders Arborelius and Sten-Gunnar Hedin 2003).

References Arborelius, Anders and Sten-Gunnar Hedin (2003). Jesusmanifestet. Örebro: Libris. Bartlotti, Leonard N. (2006). ‘Islam, relationship to’, in Stanley M. Burgess (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. London: Routledge, pp. 264–9. Berg, Magnus (1998). Hudud: ett resonemang om populärorientalismens bruksvärde och världsbild. Stockholm: Carlssons. Berg, Robert A. (2006), ‘Judaism, relationship to’, in Stanley M. Burgess (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. London: Routledge, pp. 271–4.

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Berger, Peter et al. (eds) (1999). The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Beyer, Peter (2006). Religions in Global Society. London and New York: Routledge. Bonnke, Reinhard (1990). Evangelism by Fire: Igniting Your Passion for the Lost. Frankfurt am Main: Christus für alle Nationen. Brouwer, Steve, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (1996). Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism. New York and London: Routledge. Carlbom, Aje (2003). The Imagined Versus the Real Other: Multiculturalism and the Representation of Muslims in Sweden, Lund Monographs in Social Anthropology 12. Lund: Department of Sociology. Coleman, Simon (2000, digitally printed 2007). The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davie, Grace (2002). Europe: The Exceptional Case; Parameters of Faith in the Modern World. Darton: Longman & Todd. Gardell, Mattias (2005). Bin Laden i våra hjärtan: globaliseringen och framväxten av politisk islam. Stockholm: Leopard. Goddard, Hugh (1995). Christians & Muslims: From Double Standards to Mutual Understanding. London: Curzon Press. Hallencreutz, Carl F. and David Westerlund (1996). ‘Introduction: anti-secularist policies of religion’, in David Westerlund (ed.), Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence of Religion in Politics. London, Hurst and New York: St Martin’s Press, pp. 1–23. Hedin, Christer (2002). Bibeln och Koranen. Stockholm: Verbum. Hick, John (1989). An Interpretation of Religion. Yale: Yale University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. (1993). ‘The clash of civilizations’, Foreign Affairs LXXII/3, pp. 22–49. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster. Hvitfelt, Håkan (1998). ‘Den muslimska faran: om mediebilden av islam’, in Ylva Brune (ed.), Mörk magi i vita medier: svensk nyhetsjournalistik om invandrare, flyktingar och rasism. Stockholm: Carlssons förlag, pp. 72–84. Härenstam, Kjell (1983). Skolboks-islam: analys av bilden av islam i läroböcker i religionskunskap. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgiensis. Karlsson, Pia and Ingvar Svanberg (1995). Moskéer i Sverige: en religionsetnologisk studie i intolerans och administrativ vanmakt, Tro och Tanke 7. Uppsala: Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd. Kindbom, Mikael (1992). ‘Frikyrkorådet vill lära känna muslimer’, Dagen 9 January, p. 3. Larsson, Göran (2006). Muslimerna kommer! Tankar om islamofobi, Studies on InterReligious Relations 32. Göteborg and Stockholm: Makadam. Lease, Gary (1995). ‘Reinhard Bonnke: German missionary in a strange land – an introduction to contemporary evangelization in Africa’, Journal for the Study of Religion VIII/2, pp. 59–73. Lewis, Bernhard (1990). ‘The roots of Muslim rage’, The Atlantic Monthly CCLXVI/3, pp. 47–60. Lincoln, Bruce (2003). Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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Lipponen, Sami (2006). ‘Islam – “den osvenska religionen”: stigmatisering, exkludering och diskriminering’ (unpublished manuscript). Martin, David (2005). On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. London: Ashgate. Mead, Walter Russell (2006). ‘God’s country?’, Foreign Affairs XCV/5, pp. 24–43. Otterbeck, Jonas and Pieter Bevelander (2006). Islamofobi – en studie av begreppet, ungdomars attityder och unga muslimers utsatthet. Stockholm: Forum för levande historia. Ouis, Pernilla and Anne Sofie Roald (2003). Muslim i Sverige. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Pettersson, Thorleif (2008). ‘Sekularisering’, in Ingvar Svanberg and David Westerlund (eds), Religion i Sverige. Stockholm: Dialogos, pp. 32–7. Robertson, Roland (1992). Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage. Sjöberg, Stanley (1982). ‘Demonisk väckelse måste bemötas nu!’, Dagen 5 June, p. 5. (1992a). Koranen och Bibeln – vad ska man tro på? Örebro: Marcus förlag. (1992b). ‘Utmanande islam som förlöjligar försoningen’, Dagen 24 November, p. 4. (1992c). ‘Viktigt värna om alla människors lika värde’, Dagen 4 March, p. 5. (1992d). ‘Jag söker vänskap med muslimerna’, Dagen 5 December, p. 5. (2005). Ärlighet och respekt mellan kristna och muslimer. Örebro: Marcus förlag. Svanberg, Ingvar and David Westerlund (eds) (1999). Blågul islam? Muslimer i Sverige, Uppsala Research Reports in the History of Religions 13. Nora: Nya Doxa. (eds) (2008). Religion i Sverige. Stockholm: Dialogos. Thalén, Peder (2007). Att mäta människors religiositet: filosofiska perspektiv på kvantitativ religionsforskning, Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskaps skriftserie 13. Gävle: Institutionen för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap, Högskolan i Gävle. Waern, Claes and Magnus Wahlström (eds) (2007). Pingströrelsen 100 år. Örebro: Libris. Westerlund, David (2001). Conflict or Peaceful Co-existence? Contemporary Christian– Muslim Relations, Studies on Inter-Religious Relations 1. Uppsala: Swedish Science Press. (2003a). ‘An outline for research on Christian–Muslim relations’, in Klaus Hock (ed.), The Interface Between Research and Dialogue: Christian–Muslim Relations in Africa, Adjunct Proceedings of the XVIIIth Quinquennial Congress of the International Association for the Study of Religions. Münster: LIT Verlag, pp. 125–45. (2003b). ‘Ahmed Deedat’s theology of religion: apologetics through polemics’, Journal of Religion in Africa XXXIII/3, pp. 263–78. (2004). ‘Review of Aje Carlbom’,The Imagined Versus the Real Other: Multiculturalism and the Representation of Muslims in Sweden, Lund Monographs in Social Anthropology 12. Lund: Department of Sociology; Svensk Religionshistorisk Årsskrift XIII, pp. 172–6.

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11 Casting Out Demons in Almolonga Spiritual Warfare and Economic Development in a Maya Town ■

Virginia Garrard-Burnett

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s the local bus rattles down the hill into Almolonga (population 13,880), a Ki’ché Maya town located a mere 3 km outside the highland city of Quetzaltenango, one is struck by several notable sights: the sudden appearance of small, but highly productive fields; the overflowing baskets of supersized vegetables – carrots as big around as a man’s forearm and beets the size of softballs – resting atop the circular cintas (headwraps) of Almolongueños; and the cell phone ringing from inside an indigenous woman’s shawl. A visitor will also not fail to miss the distinctive signage along Almolonga’s main street: Almolonga: Garden of the Americas, reads one, in both English and Spanish. Jesus is Lord of Almolonga another announces. Still others offer an even clearer sense of place: The Church of the Universal Prophecy reads a sign on the main road; another, simply, The Blessing. What a casual visitor to the town may not realize is that Almolonga is, like so many indigenous villages in highland Guatemala, a post-war town. It was here, according to its residents, that the overwhelming force of a superior army vanquished a band of dangerous outside agitators. But the struggle that took place in Almolonga, unlike so many other Mayan towns in the altiplano, was not between the Guatemalan army and the Marxist guerrillas, but between the Army of God and the dark forces of Satan. Almolonga, one quickly learns, is a battleground for Spiritual Warfare, a theological movement that has swept through contemporary Pentecostalism over the past ten years and which has taken root in this Mayan village. 209

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According to practitioners of Spiritual Warfare, Almolonga’s people have prayed, fasted and called upon God to ‘break Satan’s stronghold’ and deliver their town from sin, wickedness and idolatry. As a reward for their faithfulness, Almolongueños believe, God has poured out His blessings upon them in ways that are clearly manifest both materially and metaphysically. Fields are more fertile and produce more, bigger and better vegetables; crime has vanished; family violence has nearly disappeared; children are smarter and people are healthier and happier than ever before. Although many Almolongueños are not aware of its international aspect, Spiritual Warfare is part of a worldwide Pentecostal tendency that has its origins in the USA in the 1990s, although it is not a mainstream Pentecostal practice.1 Its early proponents, notably C. Peter Wagner (1997) and George Otis (1997) were associated with Fuller Theological Seminary, but there is a cohort of autonomous ‘rising stars’ in the movement in Latin America who enjoy a large, popular following. Although its origins are in the north, Spiritual Warfare has become a widespread movement with significant social and political implications throughout the global south. Carlos Annacondia, an Argentine preacher and televangelist, is one of the most well-known evangelists of the movement worldwide.2 Spiritual Warfare is a highly aggressive theological approach in which Pentecostal ‘Armies of God’ seek quite literally to cast out the demons that plague modern society. Spiritual Warriors engage in what they call ‘spiritual mapping,’ in which they purport to identify the dark spirits that have set up a ‘stronghold’ in a given locality. According to Francis Frangipane (2002: 29), a leading proponent: ‘There are satanic strongholds over countries and communities, and there are strongholds which influence churches and individuals. Wherever a stronghold exists, it is a demonically induced pattern of thinking. Specifically, it is a “house made of thoughts” that has become a dwelling place for satanic activity.’ These dark forces (‘fallen angels, principalities, dominions, and demons’) are summoned forth through prayers, fasting and exorcism; such godly manoeuvres eventually force the evil forces to relinquish their hold on that place (Harold Caballeros, n.d.). Once exorcised and ‘redeemed in Jesus’ name, Spiritual Warriors claim that the locality is, in terms of art, ‘transformed’ in ways that are measurable even by a secular yardstick, as in the case of Almolonga. As an adaptive strategy, Spiritual Warfare is highly malleable to local conditions, and its discursive elements often directly reflect the most volatile cultural fault lines within a given society. In Colombia, for example, Spiritual Warfare directly attacks narco-trafficking and murder; in the USA, among other things, the movement actively engages in sexual politics by claiming to

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‘exorcise the demons of homosexuality’ and offering ‘cures’ to gay people. In Guatemala, a nation deeply roiled by war, poverty, racism and an extremely fragile (un)civil society, not surprisingly, Spiritual Warfare is primarily concerned with personal welfare, productivity and bringing an end to rampant criminality and violence. As a strategy of both redemption and development, Spiritual Warfare has attracted thousands of followers, both in Latin America and beyond, as its message spreads through a sophisticated media campaign of preaching, broadcasts on radio and television, books, cassette tapes and videos. One such teaching video, called Transformations (Sentinel Group 1999), features Almolonga as a case study in redemption.3 The popularity of the video is such that Almolonga today is the destination for a modest amount of turismo cristiano (Christian tourism) – visitors from places such as El Salvador who wish to see the miracle first-hand. This study does not, obviously, seek to measure the claims of Spiritual Warriors, but rather uses Almolonga as a case study from which to understand how subalterns use Spiritual Warfare and Pentecostalism in general as a strategy of survival. I take as my theoretical starting point for this analysis the observation of Andres Corten, who has suggested that in societies that are confronting ‘modernity’, ‘Pentecostalism constitutes not only a discourse within modernity, but also a discourse about modernity, insofar as it elaborates a series of reflections on the present, adopting and adapting modernity’s techniques, discourses, and practices into a new imaginarie’ (Andres Corten & Mell Marshall-Fratani 2001: 4). I also borrow from Jean Comaroff ’s observation that the miraculous aspect of Spiritual Warfare may, on its own terms, be a response to modernity’s enchantments and contradictions.

The Social and Economic Context of Almolonga By almost anyone’s definition, Almolonga is indeed ‘blessed’; it is one of the most productive and affluent villages in highland Guatemala, known throughout the region for its agricultural bounty and for the geniality and prosperity of its people. A study produced ten years ago by the Guatemalan think tank, Asociación para el Avance de las Ciéncias Sociales en Guatemala (AVANSCO) stated that, ‘Almolonga appears before the eyes of many as the model of a municipio that has been able to achieve economic prosperity without parallel among the indigenous communities of the region where it is situated’ (AVANSCO 1994: 1). By the standards of rural Guatemala, Almolonga is,

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unquestionably, a place that works, both literally and figuratively. This is a view held not only by the people of the village, but also by residents of the nearby city of Quetzaltenango and of the neighbouring villages, who almost universally describe Almolongueños as ‘muy trabajadores’, ‘ricos’ and ‘gente bien – que tengan buenos terrenos y buenas familias’ (hardworking, rich and ‘good people’ who have good lands and good families). By many basic criteria, life in Almolonga is highly enviable: the village has such a low crime rate that in 1989 the municipal leaders turned the local jail into a community centre, which they rechristened the ‘Hall of Honor’ (Roland Ebel & Mell Winger 1997: 9). Alcoholism, intoxication and ‘senility’ (often alcohol related), the three leading causes of death in the neighbouring villages are so uncommon in Almolonga that the local government-run health centre no longer even lists them as diagnostic categories. Local farmers, on average, earn Q1200 ($170) per month, more than twice the monthly income in the closest village Zunil, 5 km away, where farmers earn around Q500 ($70) per month.4 Since Almolonga is so prosperous, unemployment is low. As a result, only a few of its men are forced to seek work on the South Coast or in the USA, the dreaded but economically essential destination of so many wage-earners in the neighbouring towns.5 Almolongueño families thus remain intact, and they enjoy enough relative prosperity to share their bounty. Almolonga’s neighbours still recall with astonishment when the village shipped out 50 trucks loaded up with locally produced food and relief supplies to victims of the El Salvador earthquakes in 2001.6 Almolonga, of course, is no paradise. The village still falls short by some basic social indicators: a large percentage of its population, particularly women, remain illiterate; schools are inadequate and children still die of easily preventable diseases that are caused by poor nutrition and contaminated water.7 Campesinos, though prosperous by the standards of the place, are farm plots that are relatively small (on average, between 20–30 cuerdas) and dangerously contaminated by years of over-reliance on pesticides, fertilizers and other chemical enhancements.8 Finally, though Almolonga managed to escape much of the political violence and common crime that has been endemic to Guatemala for the past four decades, it is not immune to violence. This was tragically demonstrated in June 1998, when the villagers cruelly lynched two teenage ladinos (non-indigenous) from Quetzaltenango in the mistaken belief that they had been the perpetrators in a series of bus robberies. Yet, despite these problems, Almolonga is, indeed, generally a positive place, where relative prosperity and bounty meld seamlessly with a strong indigenous identity – Almolongueños have, in a somewhat unique fashion, laid to rest the stereotypic truism that ‘to be Indian is to be poor’. The town, which is nearly 90 per cent indigenous, conducts life and business in Ki’ché language

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(true bilingualism is uncommon in Almolonga, especially among women, and monolingual Spanish speakers are nearly unheard of ).9 Schools and churches operate in Ki’ché and people take pride in their language. Almost all women in Almolonga, including girls, wear the huipil (embroidered blouse) and the cinta headpiece that places the wearer in the centre of the life force, the sun. These markers not only signify that the owner can afford expensive traje (native attire), but also clearly identify her as a proud member of her ethnicity and, especially, her most notable community (Liliana R. Goldin 1993). What are the reasons for Almolonga’s peace and prosperity? There are several quantifiable explanations. The first is that, unlike many of the neighbours, the villagers of Almolonga demonstrated an early willingness to move away from traditional milpa (corn field) subsistence economy to the commercial production of vegetables. Almolongueños were quick to embrace new agricultural technologies such as the fertilizers and pesticides first introduced by the Catholic Action movement in the late 1950s; this move supported and advanced the move towards agricultural diversity and integrating the town’s entry into the regional market system (Ricardo Falla 1972: 437–79; Liliana R. Goldin 1987: 369–83). The easy proximity to markets in Quetzaltenango and to a major highway, as well as Almolonga’s location in a fertile valley, all contributed to the village’s eventual economic success. However, these reasons do not explain why Almolonga, uniquely, was able to capitalize on these advantages, in contrast to the neighbouring villages such as Zunil, which is just 5 km up the road, or nearby municipalities such as Salcajá, which failed to tap into the same opportunities. Even today, Almolonga’s neighbours remain grounded either in a basic subsistence economy or in the exportation of their most vital resource – their men – to work outside the region (Liliana R. Goldin 1989: 45–8).

Adrift from Catholicism: The Religious History of Almolonga One factor that clearly distinguishes Almolonga from other villages in the region is that it is a Protestant town. According to the 2001 municipal census, 70 per cent of the residents are Evangelicals, belonging to some 21 churches, the vast majority of which are Pentecostal. The 2004 municipal Diagnóstico Integral notes that, ‘it is surprising to see how the population has changed its religion over the past fifteen years, having long been “folk Catholics’’ (costumbristas)’ (Diagnostico Almolonga 2004), a statement which the historical record suggests may not be entirely accurate. Certainly, traditionalist religion, led by a classic civil–religious hierarchy and managed by five local

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Catholic cofradias (religious brotherhoods), had a long and vibrant history in Almolonga but, unlike many other highland towns, for reasons that are not yet entirely clear, the cofradia system began to break down relatively early. By the end of the 1940s, the reformist (and highly anti-syncretistic) Catholic Action movement had begun to make significant inroads in Almolonga, seriously undermining both the civil–religious hierarchy and the traditionalist religious monopoly. Over the next 30 years, participation in both the cofradias and the traditionalist rituals dropped precipitously. Liliana Goldin, an anthropologist who has worked extensively in Almolonga, notes a drastic decline within a single generation in cofradia participation from 42 per cent to 26 per cent. Active participation in the Mayan rituals (costumbre) dropped by nearly half during the same period, from 82 per cent of the town’s population regularly engaging in such practices in the late 1960s to 42 per cent by the early 1970s (Liliana R. Goldin & Brent Mertz 1991: 30–4). Despite the decline in traditionalist practice, orthodox Catholicism did not rise to fill the spiritual vacuum; indeed, Almolonga did not even have a priest in residence for many years (Ebel & Winger 1998: 7).10 Without the leadership of a priest, local Catholic Action leaders were left to their own spiritual devices. It was during this period, Goldin suggests, that Catholics became informally protestantized without leaving the church (Liliana R. Goldin & Brent Mertz 1991: 337). With the ‘sacred canopy’ thus torn, by the 1970s, Almolonga found itself in the midst of what political scientists Roland Ebel and Mell Winger called the ‘Protestant Awakening’ that swept through Guatemala after the devastating 1976 earthquake and through the traumatic years of political violence in the 1980s (Ebel & Winger 1998). In fact, Protestant missionaries had actually worked in the area around Almolonga for many decades prior to that time. The Presbyterian church had maintained a significant presence in Quetzaltenango and in the nearby towns of Cantel and San Juan Ostuncalco dating back to the late 1890s, but they never established a mission station in Almolonga (Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1998: 60–1). The Church of God, a Pentecostal denomination based in Ohio, may have introduced a mission into Almolonga as early as the mid-1930s (Virginia Garrard-Burnett 1998: 39). However, there was no surviving Protestant church in the town by the early 1970s.

Almolonga’s ‘Protestant Awakening’ Despite Almolonga’s prominence in the worldwide Spiritual Warfare movement, the origins of this discourse of benediction within Almolonga itself, though well within the reach of common memory, are disputed. Local

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memory suggests that foreign Pentecostal missionaries came to the town ‘a long time ago’, but the people of Almolonga generally link conversion with the switch from subsistence to commercial farming. The account of these changes varies from one teller to the next: according to one oft-told story, the idea of raising commercial vegetables came to someone, in biblical fashion, in a dream, which, perhaps not coincidentally, is also one of the ways that a person realizes she/he is destined to become a daykeeper in the Ki’ché shamanic tradition (Barbara Tedlock 1982: 53). In another account, green onions (cebollitas) providentially began to grow in the yard of a respected elder, thus inspiring people to plant crops other than the traditional corn and beans; and in another, less-inculturated version, long-forgotten missionaries simply ‘taught us to grow vegetables’.11 Perhaps significantly, the initial ‘transformation’ of Almolonga actually predates the emergence of Spiritual Warfare as a specific, named movement within contemporary worldwide Pentecostalism, and it is not at all clear at what point church growth specialists began to claim Almolonga as one of their success stories. As far as the origin of modern Pentecostalism in Almolonga is concerned, Amy Sherman (1997: 104) reports that it took off in the mid-1970s after the visit of a Canadian Pentecostal preacher named Norman Parish. According to local memory, Parish happened to be passing through town at a time that it was in the midst of a minor epidemic of a rare and serious but unidentifiable illness. Parish preached and met the local Charismatic Catholic leaders. On perceiving that the illness was demonic in origin, Parish called for a three-day revival in which he and local pastors preached about the Holy Spirit and called for repentance and deliverance. At the revival, several hundred people ‘received the Spirit’ (manifest most notably through miraculous healing of the mystery illness, but also through speaking in tongues and other ecstatic behaviours). The group immediately converted to Pentecostalism en masse. A second version of the origins of blessing removes the missionary factor and instead credits local agency, in the form of a young farmer named Mariano Rixcaché.12 According to local lore, on an otherwise ordinary day in 1974, the young Rixcaché stepped outside the door of his modest home to find Jesus Himself standing directly in front of him. Jesus, who Rixcaché recalled, was ‘neither a dream nor a vision, but as real as I am here speaking to you right now’, told the young man that He had a special purpose for Almolonga.13 This miracle would only manifest itself, however, if the people were willing to confront Satan’s stronghold directly and expel the dark powers – the demons, principalities, thrones and dominions – that controlled the town.14 These included the trickster saint/god, San Simón, who resides in nearby

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Zunil, as well as other Mayan deities masked as Catholic saints such as the town’s patron, San Pedro Apostal. It also targeted non-anthromorphized demonic forces such as alcoholism, jealousy and fatalism. The method for deliverance was specific: the faithful, joining with the host of heaven, described in Spiritual Warfare literature as ‘worshiping armies’ (Francis Frangipane 2002: 80), were engaged in constant prayer, fasting and casting out dark spirits in the name of Jesus Christ. Rixcaché’s message spread rapidly, fed by what missiologists call ‘power encounters’ (C. Peter Wagner 1997) in which Rixcaché, soon joined by other Protestant pastors, began to exorcise spirits and engage in sanación, physical healing by faith. It is important to understand that within the precepts of Spiritual Warfare, these confrontations with the strongholds of evil are not considered to be allegorical, but genuine physical showdowns in which warriors in the Army of God, with their souls ‘covered’ in the armour of the Holy Spirit, directly take on the living and supremely dangerous forces of Satan, demons who are ‘real beings with malign intelligence’ (H. A. Maxwell Whyte 1973: 5; Carlos Annacondia 1997: 121–8). The struggle for Almolonga – a prelude to the final battle described in the Book of Revelation – played out in what spiritual warriors call the ‘heavenly places’ – Satan’s realm of operation ‘in the spirit world that immediately surrounds and blankets the consciousness of the mind’ (Francis Frangipane 2002: 99). But it also played out in the very bodies of Almolongueños. In the early days, at least 400 Almolongueños received exorcism, often in dramatic exhibitions that involved them being thrown across the room by the exiting demons or in spewing up blood and bile as Satan left their bodies. The violence of these encounters, according to Rixcaché, served as vivid evidence that the forces of evil must be confronted boldly and directly to show that God is all-powerful (Dios es todopoderoso). The spectacular nature of the exorcisms, conducted in a central and public location, naturally attracted many observers and, eventually, converts. Despite early Catholic opposition to the Pentecostals’ activities, including a much-recounted attempt on Rixcaché’s life, in which a loaded gun reportedly refused to fire, people continued to convert. Although Spiritual Warfare derives its rhetorical framework from international Pentecostalism, Almolonga’s battles took place on a distinctly Mayan spiritual terrain. Certainly, the most obvious enemies were figures such as San Simón, the Mayan deity whom Ebel and Winger have dubbed an ‘anti-saint’. San Simón – also known as Maximón, or sometimes, simply Mam – is a godsaint who is the possessor of an ambivalent dual nature. This permits him to be a pious, attentive and protective saint/healer who is in direct communication with the Mayan pantheon and deceased ancestors, simultaneously acting as

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the dueño (owner) of sexual matters, madness, treachery and illicit schemes.15 Both dearly beloved and greatly feared for his sundry and diverse powers, San Simón has a devout following throughout Guatemala, but never more than that in Zunil, where his eerie life-size image, clad in a Stetson hat and mirrored sunglasses, is propitiated day and night by petitioners who ply him with money, candles, food, animals, tobacco and, most importantly, alcohol. In an earlier era, foreign missionaries would have – and indeed have – dismissed San Simón as mere idol, a graven image made of plaster, wood and cloth whose ‘power’ could be derived only from the imaginations of its benighted followers. According to the precepts of Spiritual Warfare, however, San Simón and his ilk have genuine, living and malevolent power – the manifest authority of demons, of fallen angels and of Lucifer himself. They are, as such, a primary and tangible source of spiritual oppression. Such dark powers can only be identified through a process called ‘spiritual mapping’,16 in which Spiritual Warriors known as intercessors ‘research’ an area, such as a town or even a neighbourhood, in order to identify the specific demonic force that controls that locality (C. Peter Wagner 1997: 79; George Otis 1997).17 A well-known pastor in Guatemala City, Harold Caballeros, describes this process, ‘what x-rays are to a physician, spiritual mapping is to intercessors’ (Harold Caballeros 2000). This process is grounded in the belief that demons can be territorial; though demons are not necessarily confined to a single, limited geographic area, they do have their preferences. According to Spiritual Warriors, ‘some high-ranking spirits are assigned certain territories and they have the ability to postpone the accomplishment of certain things God has willed’ (C. Peter Wagner 1997). George Otis, who originated the technique of spiritual mapping, describes it thusly: Nested near the heart of spiritual mapping philosophy is the concept of territorial strongholds. . . . As anyone who has paid more than a casual visit to places such as India . . . Haiti . . . and China will attest, elaborate hierarchies of deities and spirits are regarded as commonplace. These incorporeal beings are perceived to rule over homes, villages, cities, valleys, provinces and nations, and they exercise extraordinary power over the behavior of local peoples. (George Otis 1997)

Intercessors, then, summon forth these fallen beings by name and confront them with the Holy and All Powerful Name of God.18 The use of the actual name of a spirit is considered to be an extremely helpful, if not absolutely essential, means of forcing a territorial spirit to pay attention and thus bring down its stronghold. Although the exorcisms are always dramatic, often long and frequently quite violent, the dark forces in almost every case are eventually expelled. In a commonly used phrase, ‘the strongman is bound’ and deliverance is complete.19

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This central element in Spiritual Warfare was congruent with the worldview of Almolonga’s Pentecostal pastors, virtually all of whom, in years past, had witnessed San Simón’s influence first-hand and had no reason to doubt that his power was absolutely real, not imaginary. The Spiritual Warriors’ ability to point a finger at San Simón – a character of dubious repute in people’s minds already – as the source of spiritual oppression and the blur of alcohol that surrounded his cult struck such a chord with Almolongueños that it provided a central focus to the mass conversion experience. In particular, the ritual use of alcohol associated with the devotion of San Simón became a metaphor for the conversion experience, signified by drunkenness (before) and sobriety (after).20 While San Simón made an easy target for Spiritual Warriors, the interior landscape of Mayan spirituality – a complex matrix of astronomy, mathematics, calendrical divination, astrology, ancient pantheism and preReformational Catholicism – was not so easily traversed, least of all by people who at some level continued to share elements of this world-view themselves. A useful example is the issue of mountain spirits, a belief that (although it is difficult to make generalizations) is widespread within traditional Mayan cosmovision. As beings that are more than simple spirits yet somewhat less than deities, these entities are morally neutral and easy to offend; even so, the power of the mountains is considered to be essential to both personal and community well-being (Richard Wilson 1995).21 The belief in the mountain spirits, common throughout highland Guatemala, is also prevalent in the Almolonga region, where the nearby Santa Maria volcano, the Tzanjayub and the Chinuitinimit mountains have all long been considered to be mighty vortices of power. Indeed, there are people in neighbouring villages who attribute Almolonga’s prosperity to the goodwill of Juan N’oj, the dueño de la Montaña who is the owner, resident and keeper of the mountains that surround Almolonga and Zunil (Barbara Tedlock 1982: 122).22 Within the conversion process, the mountain spirits – visibly represented at all times on the physical landscape – were less embattled than accommodated by Spiritual Warfare, in that new converts did not necessarily cease to believe in the spirits, but simply no longer feared their power. To a large extent, two factors made this possible. The first was the theological plasticity of Pentecostalism, which is generally more focused on the experience of God than on specific dogma and which could therefore freely accommodate, and even reconfigure, local beliefs that were not inconsistent with Christianity. The second was the prevalence of local pastors, who fully understood the complexities, fears and strengths of the traditional Mayan interior life. To illustrate this point, I borrow here from Ebel and Winger, who offer

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this lengthy but illustrative conversion testimony of a former Almolongueña catequista: We were a group of religious believers who thought that by fasting and prayer we could get closer to Jesus Christ, and for this reason we met weekly in the parroquia of Almolonga.One day we decided to go to one of the many mountains that ring the city. Being on the top in prayer and fasting, new emotions took possession (apoderaron) of us and we began to cry, some to jump, and there were those who began to speak in strange languages. We were unable to explain what had occurred and we returned to the parish church frightened (asustados). The (German) priest did not understand nor was he able to explain what had happened, believing it had arisen from [spiritual] darkness (tinieblas). He asked the group to remove themselves from the flock. Nevertheless, continuing to feel the ‘shaking’ (estremecimiento) in ourselves, we began to meet with greater frequency, and in the fact of those events, we came to the conclusion that a [mountain?] spirit ambushed us. Unable to provide an answer to our uncertainties, we turned to the evangelical church in order that a pastor might help us. Thus is was that a pastor came to Almolonga, entered the home where he found the confused ‘anointed ones’ (ungidos); his impression and expression was, “This has been caused by a spirit; [but] it is the unction of the Holy Spirit.’’ It was at this point that we all became Protestants (Bonilla n.d.: 7)23 (emphasis mine).

By 1990, Almolonga had reached a ‘tipping point’ not only in terms of achieving a Protestant majority. Rather, Protestant Almolongueños believe that the village had hit a critical mass of prayer, fasting, exorcism and conversion sufficient to effect actual ‘transformation’ (a Spiritual Warfare term of art), in which God’s blessing rained down abundance upon the village. This is the point that most Almolongueños mark as the town’s transition from poverty to prosperity. It is important to note that not all Protestants, or even all Pentecostals, subscribed to Rixcaché’s particular vision or methods. Some community leaders, Pentecostals among them, believe that Rixcaché has unjustifiably taken credit for a change that has more to do with Almolongueños’ willingness to adopt what might be called ‘Protestant values’ – the lifestyle choices and aesthetics taught by the evangelical churches such as industriousness, thrift, fidelity, an entrepreneurial spirit and, above all, temperance – than with celestial showdowns (Amy Sherman 1997: 104). Nevertheless, these characteristics over a period of a generation became so deeply engrained in Almolonga that they have come in many ways to define the village – a sort of Protestant costumbre. By the early twenty-first century, these so-called evangelical values had become so normative in Almolonga that most Catholics also adhered to the same aesthetic of work and family. Goldin has referred to this sector as the ‘hidden converts’ of Almolonga – but this phrase strikes me as somewhat

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misleading in a town where there is now a greater social stigma associated with being Catholic than with being Protestant (Liliana R. Goldin and Brent Mertz 1991: 30–4). Instead, it might be more useful to think of such Catholics simply as adaptive people who find the new community Weltanschauung to be contradictory to neither their faith nor their full participation in municipal life. Certainly, the protestantization of Almolonga offers some obvious explanations for Almolonga’s prosperity along the very lines parsed out long ago by Max Weber. The rapid expansion of commercial vegetable farming in the 1960s, followed by the expansion of Protestantism beginning in the 1970s, would strongly suggest an ‘elective affinity’ of the kind Max Weber described in his classic Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). More recent scholars of Guatemala, such as Sheldon Annis (1987) and Amy Sherman (1997), have trod a similar theoretical ground, arguing that Protestantism’s advance in Guatemala can be both anticipated and at least partly explained by the rapid expansion of entrepreneurial capitalism, and Almolonga would seem to offer solid evidence in this direction. Specifically, it is clear that Protestant Almolongueños have benefited from not paying what Annis has referred to as the ‘Catholic cultural tax’ of participating in cofradias and fiestas, expenses which Protestants, who do not participate, do not incur (Sheldon Annis 1987). It is also apparent that for a variety of self-sustaining reasons, they have abandoned the kind of traditionalist thinking that Annis calls ‘milpa logic’ (a farmer’s mentality) and instead have chosen to adopt an entrepreneurial work ethic that might as well be described as ‘Protestant’ (Sheldon Annis 1987: 60; Amy Sherman 1997: 159). Without doubt, the Protestant censure on alcohol consumption has served Almolonga very well, as evinced in every area from criminality to family coherence to public health. Almolonga, indeed, may be the perfect test case to advance Amy Sherman’s argument that Protestant converts in Guatemala adopt new ways of thinking by removing cultural constraints to self-improvement, innovation and ambition. This paradigmatically ‘Protestant’ outlook, Sherman argues, is conducive to the socio-economic development, particularly to the expansion of democratic capitalism (Amy Sherman 1997: 159). However, although Almolongueños are ardent capitalists, they are not economic determinists. From a cultural vantage point, if not a religious one, the key to Almolonga’s economic success may be in the villagers’ ability to construct and engage with a discourse that not only valourizes productive behaviour, but also affirms local identity and, to a certain extent, even culture. There is evidence that the villagers grasp and appreciate the power of Almolonga’s benediction at the discursive level.24 At the very least, the

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discursive power of Spiritual Warfare has indeed transformed a village (in secular terms that Almolongueños would generally not accept), by creating a narrative of success that permits people to move ahead. This is not merely a matter, as Sherman suggests, of creating a new mindset that is amenable to capitalism, but of creating a unique Mayan identity that is no longer ideologically linked to servitude and oppression, but to success and even privilege. What does all this mean in terms of inter-religious relations? The answer, of course, rests in which ‘other’ religion one is talking about. Without doubt, Spiritual Warfare is by definition overtly hostile to key Mayan cultural values, at least inasmuch as it directly attacks the traditional cosmovision reflected in the saints, deities, spirits and iconography of syncretic Mayan/Catholic religion, such as San Simón or the mountain spirits. Pentecostalism’s Spiritual Warriors defiantly repudiate Mayan cosmovision even as they are defined by it. The same could also be said of Christian groups that do not subscribe to the doctrine of Spiritual Warfare. As Spiritual Warfare is unique within Pentecostalism, all those who do not subscribe to its tenets – be they Catholic, mainline Protestants or even other Pentecostals – may, in the eyes of the Warriors, be part of the problem, the inadvertent minions of Satan. The Catholic Church and its clergy, of course, are unusually suspects in this regard, but Spiritual Warriors might also be quick to locate a demonic influence in other churches and church leaders, who, in negotiating the high-wires of deep spirituality might inadvertently fall into the boney hands of the Adversary.

Conclusion Despite such existing and potential ruptures, inter-religious relations remain relatively friendly in Almolonga, perhaps because, as the rising tide raises all boats, most of Almolonga’s residents, regardless of their religion, have benefited from the town’s ‘miracle’. Perhaps this is because economic prosperity has lessened religious tension. But another explanation is that, within the confines of this religious practice of Spiritual Warfare, one also finds a belief system that valourizes local culture and identity even as it quite literally demonizes it. Let us recall that the Spiritual Warfare movement in Almolonga is led by the Mayan pastors, who stress that God has bestowed special, even unique, blessing on the Mayan people, who have suffered and remained faithful despite decades – even centuries – of repression. The nearly universal use of traje and the widespread use of Ki’ché language in both private and public settings (even in church services where ladinos are present) underscore local pride in place and community that, at some level, transcends religious differences. These ethnic markers signal that Almolongueños have

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managed, on own terms, to become successful by the standards of the modern, non-indigenous world without assimilating to that world.

Notes 1. Much of the language and discourse of Spiritual Warfare comes from the work of C. Peter Wagner of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, who published a six volume ‘Prayer Warrior Series’ in the 1990s (see e.g. C. Peter Wagner 1997). Other leading figures in the movement are Cindy Jacobs (e.g. Cindy Jacobs 1994), George Ortis, Jr, Douglas Layton and Francis Frangipane, as well as Carlos Annacondia. Spiritual Warfare gained attention in US Pentecostal congregations through a video that made the Sunday school circuit called ‘Transformations’, which described the Spiritual Warfare programmes in various blighted locations in Latin America, Africa and California. Almolonga is one of the locations that appeared in the first Transformations video. There is now a sequel. 2. See Matthew Marostica (1999: 150–4). For an example of Annacondia’s work, see Carlos Annacondia (1998). 3. See the Transformations volume 1 video, noted above. See also Mell Winger (1998: 231–9). 4. Diagnóstico Integral del Municipio de Almolonga, 2000–2004, p. 39 and Diagnóstico Integral Municipio: Santa Catalina de Alejandría, Zunil, 2000–2004, p. 5. These are official censuses of basic social statistics conducted for each municipality in the republic. 5. Diagnóstico Integral de Municipio, Almolonga, p. 55 and Diagnóstico Integral Zunil, p. 15. 6. Interview with Maria Martin, executive producer of GraciasVida productions, who reported a series on earthquake relief for Latino USA, 14 July, 2005. 7. See Diagnóstico Integral de Almolonga, pp. 59–74. 8. According to the 2004 Diagnóstico Integral de Almolonga (p. 42), 519 people owned 20–30 cuerdas of land, 396 owned 11–20 cuerdas and 165 owned 31–40 cuerdas. A cuerda is slightly smaller than an acre, or nearly 4000 m2 . 9. Among Almolongueños responding to the 2000 census, there were 86 per cent monolingual Ki’ché speakers, 11 per cent bilingual Ki’ché-Spanish, a small percentage who speak only Spanish (287) and a handful (16) who speak Mam (Diagnóstico Integral de Almolonga, p. 35). 10. Liliana R. Goldin and Brent Mertz (1991: 30–4). 11. Interview, Juan Machic, Almolonga, June 2004. 12. Rixcaché is now a pastor of El Calvario, Almolonga’s largest Pentecostal church, located, not coincidentally, in the heart of downtown at the head of the street where vendors sell their overflowing baskets of vegetables every day. 13. Interview, Mariano Rixcaché, Almolonga, June 2004. 14. The language, along with much of the imagery and methodology of Spiritual Warfare, comes from many of the Book of Acts, the Epistles of Paul and Book of Revelation. 15. San Simón, also known as Maximón, or simply, Mam (T’zutu’jil), has a strong association with ‘traitor’ figures such as Judas Iscariot and Pedro de Alvarado. According to

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17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

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some authors, he is the modern-day representation of Kukulkán (Quetzalcoatl), the Plumed Serpent so central to ancient Mesoamerican hagiography (see Mario Roberto Morales 1994: 17–20). Others associate him with the Lord of the Earth, one of the Twins of the Hero Twins of the creation story told in the Ki’ché holy text, the Popul Vuh (see Vincent Stanzione 2003: 43). He has virtually nothing in common with the Orthodox Christian saint, Saint Simón, save a shared saint’s day in the Christian liturgical calendar, October 28. The Ki’chéan root ‘xim’ means ‘bundle’ or ‘tie up’ while ‘ma’ is an honorific title in Kakchiquel. In his most simple representations, San Simón is portrayed as a bundle of sticks tied together. This symbolism may well date back to classic times, but documented ceremonial use of San Simón goes back only as far as the late eighteenth century. (Jim Pieper 2002: 15–19). See also Michael E. Mendelson, Los escándalos de Maximón (1965). Pentecostal theologian George Otis coined the term ‘spiritual mapping’ in 1990. Otis determined that the method was necessary ‘to learn to see the world as it really is, not as it appears to be’. C. Peter Wagner has called Otis ‘our number one Christian espionage agent’ (C. Peter Wagner 1997: 79). See Harold Caballeros (n.d.). See Cindy Jacobs (1994: 48). The use of the term ‘strongman’ to describe a force of evil is widely employed by Latin America’s leading proponents of Spiritual Warfare, Guatemala’s Harold Caballeros and Argentina’s Carlos Annacondia. This suggests that the imagery has a resonance as particular as in countries that have a history of authoritarianism. I have not seen much use of the term by US authors. See Roland Ebel and Mell Winger (1997: 7–8). Interview with Mariano Rixcaché, August 2003 and June 2004, interview with mayor of Zunil, anonymous by request, June 2004. Richard Wilson (1995) offers a meticulous description of the theology and praxis that surround the Q’eqchi’ mountain spirits, the Tzuultaq’aa in Alta Verapaz. While it would be misleading to suggest that the Ki’ché of the Quetzaltenango region share the exact beliefs and practices, they are similar enough to at least invite comparison. N’oj (minus the ‘Juan’) is one of the Day Lords in the 20-day cycles of the Ki’ché solar calendar (known as Mam in Ki’ché); N’oj is, like the other sacred days, used in divination and for determining one’s destiny. Interestingly, Tedlock notes that ‘On each occurrence of No’j during a No’j year, the priest shaman may think of a novel solution to a long-standing family, cantón [hamlet], or town problems’. Also, ‘a child born on No’j will be a creative and innovative thinker . . . such a child, because of his problem-solving abilities, could also become a civil or religious leader’. See Barbara Tedlock (1982: 122) and multiple other references to No’j. Celeste Bonilla (n.d.), ‘Almolonga: Una Esperanza para las Naciones’, Aleluya News, Año 2 (7), as cited in Roland Ebel and Mell Winger (1997: 8). Notably, in the most recent municipal Diagnostic Integral, more than half of the respondents of an otherwise well-answered survey declined to answer the question of whether or not they used chemical fertilizers on their fields, suggesting a profound reluctance to provide information that might in anyway undermine the supernatural explanation of the town’s transformation (Diagnostico Almolonga 2004: 46).

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References Annacondia, Carlos (1997). Oígame bien. Satanas. Betania: Editorial Caribe. Annis, Sheldon (1987). God and Production in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press. AVANSCO (Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala) (1994). Agricultura intensive y cambios en la comunidad de Almolonga: Quetzaltenango Guatemala. Guatemala City: Instituto AVANSCO. Bonilla, Celeste (n.d). ‘Almolonga: una esperanza para las naciones’, Aleluya News, Año 2 (7). Caballeros, Harold and Mell Winger (eds) (1998). El Poder transformador del Avivamiento: Estrategias proféticas para el siglo xxi. Buenos Aires: Editoriales Peniel. Caballeros, Harold (n.d.). Guerra espiritual: intercessión y mapeo espiritual; especial para todos aquellos que tienen una carga de oración por su nación. Guatemala City: Iglesia El Shaddai, Centro de Adiestramiento Cristiana. (2000). ‘Guerra espiritual: Intercesión y Mapeo espiritual,’ audiotape produced by Ministerios El Shaddai, Guatemala City, Instituto de Adiestrameinto Intensivo. (2001). Victorious Warfare: Discovering Your Rightful Place in God’s Kingdom. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Corten, Andres and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds) (2001). Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Ebel, Roland and Mell Winger (1997). ‘Almolonga: Guatemala’s city of miracles?’, SECOLAS Journal, pp. 3–17. Falla, Ricardo (1972). ‘Hacia la revolución verde: adopción y dependencia del fertilizante químico en un municipio del Quiché: Guatemala’, América Indígena XXXII/2, pp. 437–79. Frangipane, Francis (2002). The Three Battlegrounds: An In-Depth View of the Three Arenas of Spiritual Warfare; the Mind, the Church, and the Heavenly Places. Cedar Rapids IA: Arrow Publications. Garrard-Burnett, Virginia (1998). Protestantism in Latin America. Living in the New Jerusalem. Austin: University of Texas Press. Goldin, Liliana R. (1987). ‘The “peace of the market’’ in the midst of violence: a symbolic analysis of markets and exchanges in western Guatemala’. Ethnos 52(3–4): 368–83. Goldin, Liliana R. (1989). ‘Comercialización y cambil en San Pedro Almolonga: un caso Maya-Quiché,’ Mayab V, pp. 45–8. (1993). ‘Investigaciones conducidas en San Pedro Almolonga: enero 1993, segundo informe’, unpublished paper, Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica, CIRMA. Goldin, Liliana and Brent Mertz (1991). ‘An expression of cultural change: Invisible converts to Protestantism among highland Mayans,’ Ethonology XXX/4, pp. 325–38. Jacobs, Cindy (1994). Possessing the Enemy Within: A Training Manual for Militant Intercession. Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books. Marostica, Matthew (1999). ‘The defeat of denominational culture in the Argentina Evangelical movement’, in Christian Smith and Joshua Prokopy (eds.) Latin American Religion in Motion. London: Routledge, pp. 150–4.

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Mendelson, Michael E. (1965). Los escándalos de Maximón. Guatemala: Tipografia Nacional de Guatemala. Morales, Mario Roberto (1994). ‘La Quiebra de Maximón,’ Crónica 24 June, pp. 17–20. Otis, George (1997). Spiritual Mapping Field Guide. Ventura CA: Regal Books. Pieper, Jim (2002). Guatemalan Folk Saints. Los Angeles: Pieper and Associates. Sherman, Amy (1997). The Soul of Development: Biblical Christianity and Economic Transformation in Guatemala. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Christian and Joshua Prokopy (eds) (1999). Latin American Religion in Motion. London: Routledge. Stanzione, Vincent (2003). Rituals of Sacrifice: Walking the Face of the Earth on the Sacred Path of the Sun; a Journey through the Tz’utujil Maya World of Santiago Atitlán. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Tedlock, Barbara (1982). Time and the Highland Maya. Albuquerque, MN: University of New Mexico Press. Wagner, C. Peter (1997). Praying With Power. Ventura, CA: Regal Books. Weber, Max (1930). Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Allen and Unwin. Whyte, H. A. Maxwell (1973). Casting out Demons. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker Publishing House. Wilson, Richard (1995). The Maya Resurgence in Guatemala: Q’eqchi’ Experiences. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Winger, Mell (1998). ‘Almolonga, “La Ciudad de Milagro”’, in Harold Caballeros and Mell Winger (eds), El Poder transformatodor del Avivamiento: Estratégias proféticas para el siglo xxi. Buenos Aires: Editoriales Peniel, pp. 231–9.

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12 Pentecostalism in Colombia as Fundamentalism and Feminism ■

Elizabeth E. Brusco

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his chapter attempts to unravel the complex interweaving of gender, tradition and modernity in the Pentecostal practice in Colombia.1 The reasoning has been informed by the parameters set down by Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby in the multi-year Fundamentalism Project conducted under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The wide-ranging project aims to detail the diversities as well as the similarities in different types of fundamentalist religious movements. As editors of the five-volume series detailing the results from this project, Marty and Appleby acknowledge that many of the contributors were uncomfortable with the term ‘fundamentalism’ when applied to the movements on which they report. Despite this fact, the editors give some compelling reasons for retaining the term ‘fundamentalism’ as a coordinating description entailing certain unifying factors or ‘family resemblances’ of this hypothetical family (Martin Marty & R. Scott Appleby 1991b: 816). This chapter explores how some of these traits apply to the Colombian case, and where the fit is more problematic. Since I began studying the Colombian evangelical movement in 1982, I have avoided using the term ‘fundamentalist’ to describe the diverse Protestant and Pentecostal converts one encounters in this Andean nation. I have chosen to speak of them as they do of themselves, as Evangélicos, or Evangelicals. There are a number of reasons for my wariness of the term fundamentalist, not the least of which is the negative reaction the word usually evokes from academic audiences. In my discipline of Anthropology, we generally pride ourselves on exposing bias and undermining preconceptions about the various peoples of the world. Yet within this discipline, there is a surprising alacrity to 227

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prejudge and malign the Christian fundamentalists. This is usually done out of no greater knowledge of the movement than what appears on the news: a generalization of Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority and Jim and Tammy Faye Baker to all evangelical Christians everywhere. Recognizing this tendency, Susan Harding, who has studied the Moral Majority and Protestant fundamentalism in the USA, has written eloquently about ‘fundamentalism as one of modernism’s “others’’ ’ (1991: 393). Modern voices represent fundamentalists and their beliefs as an historical object, a cultural “other,’’ apart from, even antithetical to, “modernity,’’ which emerges as the positive term in an escalating string of oppositions between supernatural belief and unbelief, literal and critical, backward and progressive, bigoted and tolerant. Through polarities such as these between “us’’ and “them’’ the modern subject is secured (Susan Harding 1991: 374).

The task of reporting ethnographically on these religious movements becomes more involved when at each turn in the narrative we find ourselves challenging standard representations of fundamentalists. We must then take on the additional job of undoing explanations which ‘blot out fundamentalists’ realities’ (Susan Harding 1991: 374). As in all representations of the Other, the category ‘fundamentalist’ has been invented for a purpose, which, in Susan Harding’s terms, is ‘to secure the modern subject’ (1991: 374). Undoing these polarities can invoke much resistance. Specifically addressing the relationship of gender to fundamentalism, Karen McCarthy Brown comments on the “stab of recognition”, we have when associating fundamentalist religious movements with ‘the presence of a high degree of religiously sanctioned control of women’ (1994: 175). Such connections make it difficult indeed for feminist scholars to approach the subject of women in conservative religious movements with open minds, or to carefully explore their motivations, recognize their agency and generally get past a conviction that such women must be either the victims of coercion or false consciousness or both. Helen Hardacre, professor of Religious Studies at Harvard University, calls fundamentalism ‘the ultimate patriarchal mandate’. She states that ‘it is little wonder, then, that men are attracted to fundamentalist creeds, but the persuasive power of such creeds for women is much more difficult to comprehend’ (Helen Hardacre 1993: 141). Feminists in the USA do not have to go far to find evidence to support their antipathy for fundamentalist movements. The 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention amended its statement of beliefs in 1998 to add this phrase: ‘a woman should submit herself graciously to her husband’s leadership and a husband should provide for, protect, and lead his family’. This policy is based on the New Testament letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (chapter 5: verses 22–33): ‘Wives, be subject to your husband as to

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the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church’. If this is not a patriarchal mandate, then what is it? At the same time, contemporary feminist scholarship overcomes many of its blind sides of the past by recognizing the ‘embeddedness of human experience’ (Altha J. Cravey 2002: 281). In common with other contributors to a recent volume on feminist anthropologies in Latin America, Altha J. Cravey addresses the challenge ‘to conceive of places as uniquely constituted and produced by local inhabitants, their everyday negotiations, and their ongoing struggles to shape their lives’ (2002: 282). Careful attention to local interpretations and particularities of religious doctrines, and the uniquely contextualized experience of the resulting practices can result in a very different picture of what conservative religious movements ‘do’ for women.

Women in Colombian Evangelicalism I began my study of Colombian Evangelicals concerned about the experience of individuals, especially women, in the movement. There was ample evidence from past studies that women were attracted to evangelicalism in Latin America in greater numbers than men; that they often were the first to convert themselves, bringing their husbands (and children) in later; and that they achieved leadership roles and prominence in these churches, which was unusual in organized religion, especially Catholicism.2 This concern led me to investigate the impact of evangelical conversion on women and men over the course of their life cycles, in the context of different domestic settings. I was mostly interested in adult women, most of whom were married, either formally or living in consensual unions. I talked to women whose husbands had also converted and to women whose husbands had not. In general, women whose husbands had also converted experienced a more stable family life, a higher standard of living and improved relations with their spouses. I have argued that Colombian evangelicalism can be seen as a strategic form of women’s collective action, which, like Western feminism, seeks to transform gender roles to improve women’s position in society (Elizabeth E. Brusco 1986, 1993, 1995). This particular conclusion is a far cry from the received wisdom about fundamentalist Christians, and I will return to it later.

Latin American Evangelicalism and Liberation Theology Research on Latin American Evangelicals conducted in the 1980s challenged many of the polemics that had plagued the field for some time. Foremost

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among these is David Stoll’s Is Latin America Turning Protestant ? (1990) and a collection of essays edited by Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll, Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (1993). However, the treatment of women in Latin American fundamentalism is still highly problematic. Analyses of Latin American Protestantism have tended to look at social processes on the level of larger structures, a viewpoint that obscures the motivations of individual converts. A fascination with the political implications of evangelicalism in Latin America also explains the preferential focus on Liberation Theology as the religious movement of choice in academic writing. In much of the scholarly conceptualization of Catholic Liberation Theology and Protestant evangelicalism in Latin America, Liberation Theology has been portrayed as the good guy and evangelicalism as the bad one. Liberation Theology is lauded as the foundation of the Sandinista revolution, a religious movement through which the poor and oppressed are given voice. Evangelicalism, on the other hand, has been viewed as the ideological agent of imperialism and patriarchy, mystifying the exploitation of workers and women (see e.g. Steve Brouwer et al.1996). In this view, Liberation Theology is transformative and evangelicalism is conservative. Yet, as Daniel H. Levine noted (1995: 160): ‘Being a voice for the voiceless is not the same as letting the voiceless speak, and even with the best of intentions, liberationist activists have had problems shedding directive and paternalistic roles’. Even more pessimistically, David Stoll has said that ‘Liberation Theology may be better at filling faculties, bookshelves and graves than churches’ (1990: 310).3 Among the Maya of Guatemala, Linda Green feels that ‘fundamentalism’ in these instances is not so much a religion of repression, although initially it was so for many, nor the religion of advancement, as it has been for a few, but a ‘religion of survival’, a refuge from suffering and a space in which the women are able to reclaim some personal control over their lives. In this way, the women of Chicaj are utilizing a panoply of responses to the seemingly intractable economic misery and ongoing state repression (Linda Green 1993: 162). I would argue that both movements struggle towards a radical restructuring of society, but on different fronts. Nancy Ammerman states in her contribution to the Fundamentalism Project: ‘All social movements create and promulgate a particular vision of the future. The distinguishing mark of a fundamentalist social movement is the relationship it claims between past and future’ (Nancy T. Ammerman 1994: 153). Grounded in ethnographic terms, an important issue to be considered in this regard is the following: when it comes to gender roles and the family, are Colombian Evangelicals traditional or modern? And secondarily, how do current understandings of the terms

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‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ further our grasp of what Pentecostalism is doing for converts in Colombia, and how this is being accomplished?

Asceticism and Machismo One ‘family trait’ of fundamentalisms identified by Marty and Appelby is that they set boundaries. This is certainly the case for Colombian Evangelicals. In Colombia, the most distinctive and readily identifiable characteristic of evangélicos is their asceticism. Drinking, smoking, gambling, visiting prostitutes and listening to or dancing to secular music are labelled as vices and therefore prohibited. Significantly, the above-named ‘vices’ are all common characteristics of Colombian male social life, the kind of male subculture that goes along with that brand of Latin masculinity known as ‘machismo’. Conversion takes its greatest toll on machismo. The direct impact of the ascetic injunctions on the personal behaviour of most female converts is less dramatic, simply because they have not generally indulged in the prohibited ‘vices’ even before becoming Pentecostal. There is a saying in Colombia that ‘la mujer es de las casa, y el hombre de la calle’ (woman is of the home, and man of the street).4 Indirectly, however, as dependents on a male wage earner, women stand to benefit from their mate’s conversion. This outcome of conversion is the easiest to document. Over the past several years, as I have talked about the change in male habits that accompanies conversion and have argued that it explains in part the attraction of evangelicalism for Colombian women, I have repeatedly been asked: ‘But what’s in it for the men’? This question usually comes out of the equation of machismo with male dominance, and the perception that a man stands to lose much and gain little by converting. To clarify this issue, I would like to discuss the difference between machismo and patriarchy, which I see as thoroughly different male roles and versions of male dominance. The literature on Latin American kinship and gender reveals little consensus about what machismo is and many contradictions. Paul Kutsche (1984: 6–7) has usefully distinguished between machismo based on self-confidence and machismo based on self-doubt. The self-confident machista is the familiar patriarch, whose dominance over his family correlates with his responsibility to them.5 In part, the patriarch’s identity is derived from the status of his household. The other form of machismo, the self-doubting one, is characterized by the alienation of men from the household (including the attenuation of their roles as husbands and fathers) and their identification with the world outside rather than with the household. This is accompanied by an extreme divergence of men and women from common goals and understandings, resulting

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in exceptionally high rates of abandonment and female-headed households. This means that women are on the receiving end more often than not in terms of ‘the distribution of hardship’ (Roger Lancaster 1992: 110).6 While the economic well-being of women and children is enhanced when the husband converts, identifying the attraction of evangelicalism for women as simply a way to get hold of more of their husbands’ pay cheque is economic reductionism that does a great disservice to the religious experience of Colombian Evangelicals. Such a conclusion also continues the practice of treating Latin American evangelicalism as an ideology that serves to disguise reality rather than elucidating it. From this viewpoint, whether evangelicalism is mystifying the forces of imperialism in order to make the male convert into a disciplined and compliant worker, or provides the means by which his wife can divert more of his income into the household, the evangelical convert is a victim of false consciousness and inevitably not acting in his own self-interest. I think it is more accurate and productive to see conversion as stemming in part from a linked set of processes that re-negotiate gender and family relationships and personal identity in a climate of crisis.

Violence, Poverty and Machismo in Colombia Pedro and Consuelo live in the highland community of El Cocuy in Colombia. They converted to evangelicalism (Assemblies of God) 12 years ago. According to Consuelo, conversion has brought about a miraculous change in their life together. Before Pedro converted, he was a cruel man who drank heavily, beat his wife and was having difficulty supporting his family. She said, ‘When we were recently married we weren’t Christians – we were unconverted. And then the home was a disaster area, because we didn’t understand each other (no nos comprendíamos), there wasn’t affection, there wasn’t friendship, there wasn’t love or anything. Everything was a disaster.’ Shortly before he converted, she had decided to leave him, despite her anxiety about how she would be able to support their four children. During a visit to Bogotá, Pedro, who was then suffering from an illness, was compelled by his converted sister to attend an evangelical church service with her. That very night he was cured and converted himself. Both Pedro and Consuelo were criticized by the unconverted members of their families for converting. Pedro reports that only one brother supported his actions. When the family spoke of ‘ridding Pedro of these evil customs’, that is his evangelical practice, the brother replied: ‘But what evil customs? Now he doesn’t get drunk any more, nor does he smoke,

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nor does he fight, and he is responsible for his home . . . what do I have to say to him?’ What crisis do Colombians face that has led them, in increasing numbers, to separate themselves from the mainstream, sometimes alienating themselves from their families and communities, and fill the Pentecostal temples?7 Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby link the emergence of fundamentalisms to crises in social and personal identity: ‘The sense of danger may be keyed to oppressive and threatening social, economic, or political conditions, but the ensuing crisis is perceived as a crisis of identity ’ (1991b: 822–823). In Latin America, it is axiomatic that the rural migrants who become the urban poor experience a sense of anomie, loss of important kin and social support networks and so on that make them ‘a fertile seedbed for evangelical proselytism’ (Pablo Deiros 1991: 155). The dislocation of people as the result of ongoing violence from leftist guerilla groups, paramilitaries and narcotics trafficking in Colombia further aggravates this situation. What I would like to consider in the remaining chapter is the way in which the social and personal crises and the conversion choices are gendered experiences.8 Clearly, people continue to create families and domestic groups in the urban settings. In Colombia, the three great challenges to family security are the linked phenomena of violence, poverty and machismo. The torrent of violence in Colombia goes back a long way and gives no indication of abating. Even before the drug wars and terrorism of narcotraficantes made walking down the street in Bogotá perilous, Colombian journalists were reporting that the biggest cause of death for males in Colombia between the ages of 15 and 45 was homicide (Pachón de Galán 1981: 105). They link this fact directly to machismo and the behaviours that characterize it. The classic stance of the machista is intransigence in male–male relations and this coupled with all-male socializing centred on endless rounds of reciprocal drinks is a highly volatile combination. It is not unusual for a fight to have lethal consequences. A study has identified Colombia as having 31 per cent of female-headed households, the highest among seven South American countries examined. There are complex reasons (both historical and contemporary) for the high rate of abandonment (by husbands, both formal and consensual), which is partly responsible for this situation. One cause is the fleeing of people from violence. According to the United Nations, Colombia has the largest displaced population in the world after the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, women and their children being in vast majority. By 2001, there were over 34,000 displaced female-headed households in Colombia (PROFAMILIA 2001); 60 per cent of displaced women have no sources of income. Women often engage as labour in the informal sector to feed their families.

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Even in the formal sector, and despite new laws stemming from the 1991 Colombian constitution that prohibit gender discrimination in employment, women are still prohibited from working in many industries (some perceived to be dangerous), and there remains a difference of 30 per cent between the salaries of men and women. A recent study reveals another sad statistic: the primary cause of death in Colombian women aged between 15 and 44 is domestic violence. Evangelical teaching and preaching aggressively address the interconnected problems of machismo, violence and poverty, and offers solutions. Reorienting male social life from the street to the home and the church, from all male groups to mixed male–female ones, is a major step. This can only be accomplished with powerful ideological support. What is significant is that the rhetoric and ritual, although tied closely to the Bible, cannot be said to simply invoke or revert to ‘tradition’. Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby identify fundamentalists as ‘traditionalists who perceive some challenge or threat to their core identity, both social and personal’ (1991a: ix). However, we might ask here, what ‘tradition’ is in the Colombian context? I pose the question with specific reference to the ‘traditional’ sex roles, family forms and conjugal relations that Colombian evangelicalism seems to be so good at reinforcing.9 For some time, anthropologists have spoken of the ‘invention’ of tradition. The fluidity and flexibility of what had earlier been thought of as rigid and enduring have been established. Particularly useful to the present discussion is the following statement by Roger Lancaster (1992: 91): Rather than seeing tradition as the set of laws it purports to be, it would be better to see it as a certain form of discourse . . . whereby actors engage themselves in the social world, negotiate their multiple relations with others, formulate and justify their courses of action, and thereby . . . reconstruct the world every day in the light of self-interest.

Similarly, Jocelyn Linnekin, whose controversial work on the revival of Hawaiian culture has sparked much debate, sees tradition as ‘a selective representation of the past, fashioned in the present, responsive to contemporary priorities and agendas, and politically instrumental’ (1992: 251). Both these statements effectively capture the way ‘tradition’ is involved in re-inventing the family along evangelical lines. There is much evidence from the Colombian case to support the assertion by Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby that ‘fundamentalism has proven itself selectively traditional and selectively modern’ (1991b: 825). The constitution of male and female identities and conjugal relations is transformed from common patterns through religious practices that are at the same time restrictive and liberating.

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As a minority religion in a strongly Catholic country, Evangelicals in Colombia negotiate their identity and beliefs in opposition to dominant Catholic practice.10 In this regard, Colombian evangelical vocabulary is interesting. Evangelicals talk about when they became cristianos (Christians), but they do not mean that they were non-believers before. They use the term ‘Christian’ to describe themselves and their fellow believers, and this does not include Catholics. Evangelicals do not perceive themselves as being ‘religious’. The words religious and religion are used to refer to Catholic practices; they connote something that has to do with rites and rituals. An evangelical describing her non-converted mother as ‘a very religious woman’ might be implying something she sees as quite negative; for example, her mother had many statues of saints around the house; she attended mass and confession regularly; and she owned and believed in the efficacy of religious objects that had been blessed by the priest. Other words that might occur in the context of such a description are fanático (fanatic), idolotría (idolatry) and Romano (Roman Catholic). One of the main features of conversion to evangelicalism in Colombia is a strong rejection of what is seen as the ‘meaningless ritual’ of the Catholic Church. In this opposition frame, evangelicalism emerges as non-hierarchical and contemplative. The ‘priesthood of all believers’ means each individual is empowered to seek the truth through Bible-reading, reflection and direct divine inspiration. Pablo Deiros, professor of Mission History at Fuller Theological Seminary, reviewed Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America for the Fundamentalism Project (Pablo Deiros 1991). In the same work, he focuses primarily on the persuasive abilities of the male authority figure, be he the local pastor or the mass evangelist, and hence misses the diverse contributions of women who make up the majority of congregations. The Bible is the central symbol of evangelicalism in Colombia. Only relatively recently has the Catholic clergy encouraged or permitted the laity to own and read the Bible, and this Bible orientation still distinguishes evangelical practice. I might add that in the rural countryside and among the urban poor, for individuals with very little formal education, owning and reading a ‘book’ of any kind is a rarity.11 Evangelical vocabulary also distinguishes two different kinds of prayers: Catholics, it is claimed, resan, that is they recite prayers by rote; while Evangelicals oran, that is they spontaneously create prayers from their own experience appropriate to the setting. In brief, evangelical practice encourages individuals to reflect on their situations and analyse them according to a set of principles that derive from Bible reading. Keeping aside what this means on an ideological level for a moment, on a practical level the evangelical convert cultivates an introspective attitude and the ability to articulate her or his thoughts to a group, which is quite

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distinctive in this segment of the Colombian population. Women regularly lead prayer and Bible study sessions in their homes (this is, in fact, the backbone of evangelical ritual in Colombia), and these gatherings and the leadership role that women take on constitute an extraordinary break with the common pattern in which men speak in public settings and women stay quiet at home. Marina, a member of the Four-Square Gospel church in Bogotá, articulates her experience of this process: In order to prepare a sermon you start by praying. Then you go to the Bible. You don’t sit and write it all at once, the inspiration comes to you bit by bit, as you’re cooking, doing things around the house and all. The Holy Spirit guides you in terms of what to write down. You have to have love and discipline. When I prepared a sermon for a service at my church, I spent all week in prayer, and the Holy Spirit gave me the message little by little. The Holy Spirit helps you get over your nervousness, helps you to forget the people in front of you.

The feminine ethos of evangelicalism in Colombia is revealed in the imagery used by women in sermons. For example, a woman’s sermon during a culto de liberación (service of liberation) in a Pentecostal church evokes the daily feminine routine of cooking and cleaning: Some people say, my Bible is very pretty. I keep it as an adornment. Well, we may have a fine, clean Bible, but our life is not going to be as clean as the Bible, it will more likely be dirty. What is clean is the Lord’s word. Really, speaking is an art. What we have to tell the world is short, small, but substantial. It’s like food; it might be a little bit, but it should be nutritious.

For male converts too, there are reversals of common gender patterns, beginning with the ascetic codes mentioned above. In regard to ritual, the antihierarchical structure of evangelical religion is the antithesis to the system of patron–client ties that have characterized the relations of male peasants with Catholic priests as well as with hacendados. Male converts report a ‘search for the truth’ as a primary motivation for conversion. This search usually entails close reading of the Bible and personal interpretation. The words of a male convert in El Cocuy reveal the way in which conversion is an active choice based on a search for personal meaning: I would come down to town on Sundays to go to mass, and then I’d come out of mass and go to the evangelical service. Many times in both places they would be discussing the same part of the Gospel, the same chapter. But in the Catholic Church the explanations were very twisted, very different from what the chapter was trying to say. I felt that there must be something more.

At the same time, a receptivity to the diffuse power represented by the Holy Spirit is uncharacteristic for males: the image of male converts with their arms

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and faces upraised, inviting in the Holy Spirit is a stark contrast to the impenetrable stance of machismo.

Conclusions In their introduction to the Fundamentalism Project volumes, the editors selected the theme of ‘fighting’ as a key feature that distinguishes fundamentalisms (Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby 1991a: ix).12 They step off from the following statement included in Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem Friedman (1991: 255): ‘[fundamentalists] no longer perceive themselves as reeling under the corrosive effects of secular life. On the contrary, they perceive themselves as fighting back and doing so rather successfully’. In Colombia, ‘the corrosive effects of secular life’ do not fit into a neat dichotomy between tradition and modernity. Transformed roles and identities of males and females, and a redefinition of the relationships between them, constitute something distinctively evangelical and radically new. That evangelicalism takes on the homely task of healing both individuals and families accounts for its tremendous appeal in societies such as Colombia. James Fernandez, in his discussion of African religious movements (1978: 220), points out that Western Christian religions have given up attempts to explain, predict and control: ‘In the face of the worldly power of rationaltechnical thought and positivistic science . . . they have come to recognize religion as communion between persons and not as an explanation of the facts of existence’. He views the success of African religious movements as founded on the ‘fundamentalist desire for total explanation’. These observations also apply to the defection of Colombians from the established Catholicism. The explanatory power of Pentecostalism and its applications to this world provide a powerful format for living, especially in terms of the intimate areas of gender identity and family relationships. In an uncertain and chaotic environment, this knowledge is likely to be well received.

Notes 1. A version of this essay appeared in an earlier form in MixedBlessings (Brusco 1997), edited by Judy Brink and Joan Mencher, but the material contained in that publication has been substantially modified and adapted for the purposes and context of this new volume. I would like to thank Prof. David Westerlund of Södertörn University for the invitation to participate in the panels of Inter- and Intra-religious Aspects of the Global Growth of Pentecostalism at the Religion on the Borders conference in Stockholm in April 2007, where a version of this paper was presented. I also thank Dr. Elena Vuola for her comments in response to my paper, and for raising my

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awareness about the pitfalls of marianismo as a description of female gender identity in Latin America. Finally, Prof. Jan-Ake Alvarsson of Uppsala University, fellow anthropologist, challenged me to think again about whether Pentecostalism indeed has any of the qualities of ‘fundamentalism’, and though time did not allow me to delve into the interesting points in this chapter, I look forward to further conversations on the topic. The numerical preponderance of women in evangelicalism in both the USA and Latin America is mentioned in many texts, including Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (1975); Kendall Blanchard (1975); Cornelia B. Flora (1976); Vivian Garrison (1974); Michael J. Harrison (1974) and James Sexton (1978). Women’s leadership roles in evangelical churches have been noted by Cornelia B. Flora (1976), Hardesty (1979); Anthony L. LaRuffa (1971); Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (1979) and William J. Samarin (1972) to name a few. My own research in Colombia revealed that women are often the first to convert, bringing their husbands in later. This supports the earlier observations of Felicitas D. Goodman (1972, 1973); Anthony L. LaRuffa (1971) and Sidney W. Mintz (1960). Another noteworthy statement from David Stoll’s critique raises the important issue that people reshape missionary messages to suit their own needs and realities: ‘Catholic commentators tend to attribute evangelical gains to external agents, especially North American evangelists and money. But blaming evangelical growth on the United States suggests a deep distrust of the poor, an unwillingness to accept the possibility that they could turn an imported religion to their own purposes’ (David Stoll 1990: xvi). Recent feminist critiques from both anthropological (Marysa Navarro 2002) and theological (Elina Vuola 2006) perspectives have demolished marianismo as a helpful concept in understanding women’s gender roles in Latin America. ‘Marianismo is an ahistorical, essentialist, anachronistic, sexist, and orientalist fabrication’, states Marysa Navarro (2002: 272). Picking up this discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it should be noted that fieldwork in Colombia revealed some very entrenched emic notions about gender. Micaela di Leonardo usefully distinguishes between two connotations of the word ‘patriarchy’: the first is interchangeable with ‘institutional oppression’, referring to ‘a historically changing set of social relations among men which functions to maintain their power over women’. The second, a more precise definition, is relevant to the case of the self-confident machista, that is patriarchy as a ‘family type characteristic of feudalism in which older men were household heads, controlling younger men, women, and children’ (Micaela di Leonardo 1984: 193). This more precise usage follows Zillah Eisenstein (1979). Roger N. Lancaster (1992: 110) uses this phrase in his analysis of the impact of machismo on women and families in post-revolution Nicaragua. During the early 1980s, when I conducted my fieldwork, estimates of the number of Evangelicals in Colombia ranged from 900,000 to 2 million (out of a population of 29 million). For the period 1960–85, David Stoll (1990: 337) cites a growth factor of 6.2 per cent in the evangelical population, projecting ahead to the year 2010 when Evangelicals will comprise 15.1 per cent of the Colombian population. This figure apparently does not include the fastest growing segment of Evangelicals, the Pentecostals. A 2001 poll commissioned by the country’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo (US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2005), indicated that the country’s

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population is 81 per cent Catholic. Of the remaining respondents, 10 per cent identified themselves as ‘Christians’ and 3.5 per cent as ‘Evangelicals’. Another 1.9 per cent professed no religious beliefs. There is substantial evidence that urban poor are quite effective at creating networks, which replace whatever was lost when they moved from the countryside. In Colombia, urban–rural ties were strong and vital, and extended kin groups straddled the urban and rural locales. This is to say that the image of the lonely migrant fixing on the Pentecostal church as a substitute kin group is not a sufficient explanation for conversion. In a recent analysis of patriarchal gender politics in fundamentalist movements, Martin Riesebrodt and Kelly H. Chong (1999) provide a useful typological distinction between what they call ‘legalistic-literalist’ fundamentalism and ‘Charismatic’ fundamentalism, the former being politically active and the latter less so, at least overtly. They argue that the two forms have very different motivations and ramifications when it comes to gender. At least within North America and Latin America, they see Charismatic fundamentalism as ‘a self-organization of women actively attempting to reshape the patriarchal family in their own interest’ (Martin Riesebrodt & Kelly H. Chong 1999: 56). Legalistic-literalist fundamentalism is the opposite: ‘a self-organization of men who compensate for loss of authority and status by increasing their control over women’. Acknowledging that women convert to legalistic–literalist movements and men to Charismatic ones, they recognize that the dichotomy is imperfect and note that the outcome of participation in fundamentalist religions ultimately depends not so much on the ‘type’ of fundamentalism as on ‘existing authority structures’ (Martin Riesebrodt & Kelly H. Chong 1999: 57). This conclusion seems to be begging the question of how these religious movements affect the transformations that they do. Such an understanding can only be achieved by breaking down unexamined categories such as ‘the patriarchal family’ and recognizing women’s agency even within systems where male dominance seems overwhelming. People’s involvement in the Catholic Church in Colombia varies greatly; being identified as a Catholic, especially for men, may essentially mean a form of folk belief and very little institutional involvement. In the non-evangelical population, Christian, like Colombian, is a characteristic that is taken for granted. It is a status, like human, that one does not have to work to achieve. An estimated 60 per cent of respondents to the El Tiempo poll (2001) reported that they do not practise their faith actively. Evangelical families often experience upward mobility through education, and Evangelicals commonly place a high value on education. Evangelical schools, such as the Presbyterian-run Colegios Americanos, are popular even among non-Evangelicals due to their reputation as serious high-quality high schools that have a proven record of preparing students in building up their careers. Colombian Evangelicals certainly can be said to fight against a particular enemy. For much of the history of evangelicalism in Colombia, that enemy has been the Catholic Church. Freedom of religion has not been a basic value in Colombian society. In Colombia, all evangelical converts were Catholics. It is important to consider the particular nature of Colombian Catholicism. Colombia was the last country in the world to maintain a Concordat with the Vatican, granting the Catholic Church special powers over major junctures in the individual’s life cycle: birth, marriage and death were under the dominion of the church. Church and state were separated in

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Colombia as the result of a new constitution drafted in 1991. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has long identified with the Conservative Party in Colombia, and Liberals were routinely denounced from the pulpit. During the period of civil strife known as La Violencia, Liberals and Conservatives clashed and some 200,000 people were killed. Evangelicals tend to be identified as Liberals, and suffered a double persecution during that time.

References Ammerman, Nancy T. (1994). ‘Accounting for Christian fundamentalism: social dynamics and rhetorical strategies’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Accounting for Fundamentalisms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 149–70. Argyle, M. and B. Beit-Hallahmi (1975). The Social Psychology of Religion. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Blanchard, Kendall (1975). ‘Changing sex roles and Protestantism among the Navajo women in Ramah’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion XIV/1, pp. 43–50. Brouwer Steve, Paul Gifford and Susan D. Rose (1996). Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism. New York: Routledge. Brown, Karen McCarthy (1994). ‘Fundamentalism and the control of women’, in John Stratton Hawley (ed.), Fundamentalism and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 175–201. Brusco, Elizabeth E. (1986). ‘Colombian evangelicalism as a strategic form of women’s collective action’, Gender Issues VI/2, pp. 3–13. (1993). ‘The reformation of machismo: asceticism and masculinity among Colombian Evangelicals’, in Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (eds), Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 143–58. (1995). The Reformation of Machismo: Gender and Evangelical Conversion in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press. (1997). ‘The peace that passes all understanding: violence, the family, and fundamentalist knowledge in Colombia’, in Judy Brink and Joan Mencher (eds), Mixed Blessings: Gender and Religious Fundamentalism Cross Culturally. New York: Routledge, pp. 11–24. Cravey, Altha J. (2002). ‘Local/global: a view from geography’, in Rosario Montoya, LessieJo Frazier and Janise Hurtig (eds), Gender’s Place: Feminist Anthropologies of Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 281–87. Deiros, Pablo A. (1991). ‘Protestant fundamentalism in Latin America’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Observed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 142–96. di Leonardo, Micaela (1984). The Varieties of Ethnic Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Eisenstein, Zillah (1979). Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Fernandez, James W. (1978). ‘African religious movements’, Annual Review of Anthropology VII, pp. 195–234.

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Flora, Cornelia B. (1976). Pentecostalism in Colombia: Baptism by Fire and Spirit. Cranbury: Associated University Press. Garrard-Burnett, Virginia and David Stoll (eds) (1993). Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Garrison, Vivian (1974). ‘Sectarianism and psychosocial adjustment: a controlled comparison of Puerto Rican Pentecostals and Catholics,’ in Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone (eds), Religious Movements in Contemporary America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 298–329. Goodman, Felicitas D. (1972). Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (1973). ‘Apostolics of Yucatan: a case study of a religious movement’, in Erika Bourguignon (ed.), Religion, Altered States of Consciousness and Social Change. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, pp. 178–218. Green, Linda (1993). ‘Shifting affiliations: Mayan widows and evangélicos in Guatemala’, in Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (eds), Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 159–79. Hardacre, Helen (1993). ‘The impact of fundamentalisms on women, the family, and interpersonal relations’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 129–50. Hardesty, Nancy, Lucille S. Dayton and Donald W. Dayton (1979). ‘Women in the Holiness movement: feminism in the evangelical tradition’, in Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (eds), Women of Spirit. New York: Simon and Shuster, pp. 225–54. Harding, Susan (1991). ‘Representing fundamentalism: the problem of the repugnant cultural Other’, Social Research LVIII/2, pp. 373–93. Harrison, Michael J. (1974). ‘Sources of recruitment to Catholic Pentecostalism’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion XIII/1, pp. 49–64. Heilman, Samuel C. and Menachem Friedman (1991). ‘Religious fundamentalism and religious Jews: the case of the Haredim’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Observed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 197–264. Kutsche, Paul (1984). ‘On the lack of machismo in Costa Rica and New Mexico’, paper presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Denver, CO. Lancaster, Roger N. (1992). Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua. Berkeley: University of California Press. LaRuffa, Anthony L. (1971). San Cipriano Life in a Puerto Rican Community. New York: Gordon & Breach. Levine, Daniel H. (1995). ‘Protestants and Catholics in Latin America: a family portrait’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Comprehended. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 155–78. Linnekin, Jocelyn (1992). ‘On the theory and politics of cultural construction in the Pacific’, Oceania LXII, pp. 249–63. Marty, Martin E. and R. Scott Appleby (1991a). ‘Introduction: the Fundamentalism Project: a user’s guide’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Observed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. vii–xiii. (1991b). ‘Conclusion: an interim report on a hypothetical family’, in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds), Fundamentalisms Observed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 814–42.

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Mintz, Sidney W. (1960). Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History. New Haven: Yale University Press. Navarro, Marysa (2002). ‘Against marianismo’, in Rosario Montoya, LessieJo Frazier and Janise Hurtig (eds), Gender’s Place: Feminist Anthropologies of Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 257–72. Pachón de Galan, G. (1981). Se acaba la familia investigacion sobre la sociedad Colombiana. Bogotá: Editorial Pluma. PROFAMILIA (2001). Sexual and Reproductive Health in Underserved Conditions: A Survey of the Situation of Displaced Women in Colombia. Bogotá: PROFAMILIA. Riesebrodt, Martin and Kelly H. Chong (1999). ‘Fundamentalisms and patriarchal gender politics’, Journal of Women’s History X/4, pp. 55–77. Ruether, Rosemary and Eleanor McLaughlin (1979). ‘Women’s leadership in the Jewish and Christian traditions: continuity and change’, in Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin (eds), Women of Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 16–28. Samarin, William J. (1972). Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism. New York: Macmillan. Sexton, James (1978). ‘Protestantism and modernization in two Guatemalan towns’, American Ethnologist V/2, pp. 280–302. Stoll, David (1990). Is Latin America Turning Protestant? Berkeley: University of California Press. US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2005). International Religious Freedom Report 2005, ‘Colombia’. Washington, DC: US Department of State Public Communication Division. Vuola, Elina (2006). ‘Seriously harmful to your health? Religion, feminism and sexuality in Latin America’, in Marcella Althaus-Reid (ed.), Liberation Theology and Sexuality. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 137–59.

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13 Contemporary Pentecostal–Catholic Encounters in Argentina ■

Hans Geir Aasmundsen

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n this chapter I will discuss how Pentecostals in Argentina relate to society in general and more specifically to Catholics or Catholicism and vice versa.1 The spaces and channels available for communicating religious and politico-societal issues will be discussed from a point of departure that focuses on relationships, similarities and differences between Pentecostals and Catholics. During my stays in Buenos Aires in 2001, 2006 and 2007, I interviewed local pastors, priests, academics and other people. My questions concerned different topics such as the political role of Pentecostals, their involvement in the established political scene and the way they envisioned a future Argentinean society. Were they in a process of formulating a political ideology? Moreover, I enquired about their relations with or attitudes towards the Catholic Church and Catholicism in general. Finally, I explored how they divided ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ spheres of interest and involvement. In addition to the interviews, I studied some newspaper accounts about Catholicism and Pentecostalism.2 What were the newspapers writing about them? How was the material presented, and what people had a ‘voice’ in the media? I supplemented the interviews and media study by watching TV news regularly, swapping between several channels. Finally, my analysis is based on a body of academic and religious (Pentecostal and Catholic) literature such as books, articles, pamphlets, brochures and internet sites. I will first provide some historical background information about the Argentinean society as well as about Pentecostalism and the Catholic Church. 243

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My major interest is to reflect upon how and where Pentecostals and Catholics channel their communication and where the actual encounters occur. What are the arenas for the communication and encounters, and on what levels do they take place? I have chosen to focus mainly on three different ‘arenas’. The first is the public sphere, while the second is a more general arena where religious organizations and institutions like Pentecostal umbrella organizations and the Catholic Church speak more directly to each other. The third is what one might call the ‘private’ arena. This refers to opinions, feelings and thoughts that Pentecostals may have about the Catholic Church and society in general, but which are not always expressed explicitly.

The Study of Pentecostalism in Latin America As early as in the 1960s, Emilio Willems’ book Followers of the New Faith: Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile (1967) as well as Christian Lalive d’Epinay’s volume Haven of the Masses: The Pentecostal Movement in Chile (1968) represented groundbreaking research on the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America. Observing this phenomenon in relation to the accelerating urbanization of the continent, Willems claimed that the ‘new poor’ experienced anomaly and that Pentecostalism helped people by providing meaning and direction in a modernizing world. He concluded that Pentecostalism was a religion well suited for a new age, a time when the Catholic Church had little to offer. Furthermore, the religious process of change could promote democratization since the ‘new religion’ contained a stronger focus on the rights of the individuals. Lalive d’Epinay did not agree with Willems. The former understood the growth as a continuation of or return to some kind of ‘folk-Catholicism’. The restless poor in the rapidly growing cities obtained a new Caudillo or Patron in the pastors of the congregations. According to Lalive d’Epinay, this would not lead to democratization or liberalization. Jean-Pierre Bastian (1986) claimed that the strong links between evangélicos and North American interests represent an ideological threat to what is Latin American. Although Willems, Lalive d’Epinay and Bastian disagree in their interpretations, they have one important feature in common: they all explain a religious phenomenon, or a change in religious affiliation, as related to dramatic changes in society. To a very large degree, this understanding of Pentecostalism in Latin America is also reflected in research by some other pioneering scholars who have studied the Protestant expansion. In the 1990s, some important books

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were published by David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (1990); David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (1990); and Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the TwentyFirst Century (1996). They added new perspectives to the understanding of the socio-cultural context in which the religious struggle take place and challenged several of the stereotypes about Pentecostalism. In various ways I have been inspired by the pioneering research, focussing on Pentecostalism and Catholicism in relation to society, although my own studies deal mainly with a more recent time period.

Historical Background I have witnessed the awesome revival that began in my country 15 years ago. Today, many of us are praying that Argentina’s spiritual awakening will spread north to the United States.3 One of the most successful models of urban evangelism that I have recently been in contact with is taking place in Argentina.4

These statements by the leading Argentinean Pentecostal pastor Ed Silvoso and theologian C. Peter Wagner, respectively, may illustrate the position of Pentecostalism in Argentina and the status it has in the international Pentecostal ‘community’ today. Since the beginning of the 1980s, far-reaching transformations have taken place in the country. These can be observed at different levels of society: politically, there have been processes of democratization or re-democratization; economically, liberalization and an increasing influence of international or world markets as well as an aggravation of poverty have taken place; ideologically and religiously, the old ties between the Catholic Church and the state have been loosened and a wave of Protestantism, mainly Pentecostalism (evangélicos), has swept through the country.5 This study of intra-religious encounters in Argentina focuses on the period from around the end of the last dictatorship (1983) until the present time.6 The first Pentecostal churches were established in 1910, only four years after the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, the USA. However, for more than half a century, the dominant segment of Protestantism consisted of ‘classical’ immigration churches, which were established as religious ‘islands’ for German, English, Dutch, Scandinavian and other immigrants from the late nineteenth century onwards. In the 1950s and 1960s, charismatic influences affected Argentina too, but it was not until the late 1970s that Protestantism, with Pentecostalism as the main vehicle, grew considerably in strength. It is

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important to note that, due to the ‘pentecostalization’ of many, if not most, of the Protestant Churches, there is no obvious or easy way to differentiate between Protestant churches in Argentina today.7 However, some historical lines of division are normally accepted. Luis A. Cárdenas (2003: 21–2) distinguishes between three different ‘waves’ of Protestant churches: Historical (Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian), Evangelical (Baptist and Freebrethren) and Pentecostal (Asamblea de Dios, Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios, Iglesia Ondas de Amor y Paz and others). Pablo Deiros makes a similar division,8 although he emphasizes the unity of the Protestant (particularly Pentecostal) community in present-day Argentina.9 There is no reliable statistics that provides figures for the different Pentecostal or Protestant churches in Argentina today. The figures I received from the Secretario de Culto10 indicated that in 2001 more than 5 million or approximately 15 per cent of the population was evangélicos.11 Hilario Wynarczyk (2003: 143) regrets the lack of accurate statistics but estimates that the evangélicos represent between 5 and 10 per cent (i.e. between 1.8 and 3.6 million people) of the population. In the Guía de la diversidad religiosa de Buenos Aires (Fortunato Mallimaci 2003), some numbers for the different churches are provided, but there is no estimate of the total amount of evangélicos, Pentecostals or Protestants.12 According to this ‘guide’, Unión de Asambleas de Dios (Assembly of God) is, with over 1 million members, the largest of the listed Pentecostal churches.13 As has been already indicated, it is somewhat difficult to draw the lines between Pentecostals, evangélicos and other Protestants in Argentina. Today, according to Pablo Deiros,14 most Protestants are evangélicos and accept being called or call themselves Pentecostals. Hilario Wynarczyk (2003: 147) presents a table that illustrates the development of Pentecostal churches within the evangélicos ‘segment’ of Protestantism from 1920 until 1992. It shows that 4 per cent of the 25 churches that were ‘Evangelicals’ in 1920 were also Pentecostal. In 1970, the rate was 20 per cent, and in 1992, it had risen to 57 per cent. It is not surprising that the Pentecostal ‘dominance’ in the Protestant ‘community’ increases when numbers rise like this. Besides, those who are not ‘officially’ Pentecostals have been influenced by the Pentecostal ‘stream’. Hence, today there is a certain ‘unity’ of Protestant churches in Argentina under a Pentecostal ‘umbrella’. Simultaneous with the growth of Pentecostalism is the radical decrease in the numbers of Catholic church-goers. This can be interpreted as a result of secularization, which indeed several members of the Catholic community also practise (Guzmán Carriquiry 2005: 275).15 As these changes are of a dramatic character, their consequences are profound. Structurally, socio-politically and

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religiously they have an impact on the lives of people from all over the country, as they alter the very character of society. Economic, political, religious and other forces are fighting for the labour, votes and souls of Argentineans, creating at least as many problems as opportunities.

The Catholic Church and Society One evening in March 1976, a group of generals felt they needed approval from the hierarchy of the Argentinean Catholic Church to launch a coup d’état which was to commence one of the worst dictatorships in the history of Argentina. The generals said that the operation would be difficult and that many lives could be lost. The answer from the leaders of the church was that the generals had to do whatever they found necessary. The day after the coup saw the beginning of an era that lasted for seven years and that has been called the ‘dirty war’ because of the methods that were used to suppress any form of opposition. Thousands were put in jail without trial, and maybe as many as 30,000 people were killed or just disappeared. Although it is important to note that the Catholic Church or Catholic individuals by no means acted unanimously during the ‘dirty war’, the position of this church was, according to many observers, one of approval to the generals and of silent ignorance and denial of all the torture and violations of human rights that took place in the years that followed the coup of 1976 (Uki Gohni 1995;16 Horacio Verbitsky 200517 ). Why did the generals need the support of the Catholic Church, and why did the church provide such a support? To answer these questions, it is necessary to study the Argentinean history and the close ties that have existed between state and church. From the colonial era, Argentina inherited the patronato real, an arrangement that secured close ties between the state and the church, which had to answer first to the colonial power, the king of Spain, and after the liberation in 1816, to the new state authorities of the country. The Vatican was not pleased with this arrangement during colonial times, and the Catholic Church in Argentina in the early years of independence upheld a quite negative attitude to the patronate.18 However, as influences from the enlightenment era in Europe inspired the new growing bourgeoisie, and ‘secular’ ideas diminished Catholic influence, the church joined with conservatives to defend a relationship that was to reach its most negative state during the dark years of the dirty war. The patronate was replaced by a concordat in 1966, but that did not change the relationship between the Argentinean state and the Catholic Church state in any considerable way. The historically close ties between state

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and church ensured a solid dominance for Catholicism not only as a religious and political institution but also as a vital contributor to the cultural matrix of the nation. Even though democracy, at least for men, was established quite early – universal, secret and obligatory male suffrage in 1912, but female suffrage not until 1947 – the ‘secular’ forces, which counteracted the role of the Catholic Church in political, economic and cultural life, did not become strong enough to separate the juridical and institutional ties between church and state.19 Since the economic crisis that followed the crack on Wall Street in 1929, Argentina entered a turbulent period with eight coups until the end of the last military regime in 1983. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church took an opportunistic stance during these turbulent years, manoeuvring between and alongside different military regimes in such a way as to consolidate its position. These historically close ties and the generals’ understanding of the need for official Catholic support to suppress resistance more easily can give the answer, at least partly, to the questions why the generals needed the support of the Catholic Church and why the church did not oppose them.

The Public Sphere From the observations of the history of Pentecostalism and Catholicism in Argentina and the present tensions, communications and negotiations between global and local forces, a more detailed picture of the religio-societal landscape appears. ‘Globalizing forces’ spread, among other things, a EuroAmerican ideology of capitalism and democracy, including a structural differentiation of societies.20 There are also certain international or ‘global’ aspects of both Catholicism and Pentecostalism, which encounter more local Argentinean features such as a young, reborn democracy with a dictatorshipridden political history and Peronism as an ideological lodestar. While some Catholics speak about secularization, Pentecostals instead talk about spiritualization. Argentina is now a democracy with one foot in Peronism and another in a multi-party system of European origin. Its liberal economy has a centre-left-wing president,21 a limited pluralism and an increasingly more important public sphere. This sphere is of particular importance here. According to Jürgen Habermas, it is at the core of the democratic process in a modern society and a network for information and debates (Jürgen Habermas 1962). According to his model, communicative action through rational discussions will eventually transform into public opinion. A precondition for this process to ‘work’ is that the public arena is open for discussions and the arguments are rational. Habermas has recently showed particular interest in the

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role of religion in (post) modern societies, and his discussion about what is or is not rational is of special interest here, as I will show later in a section on who has or has not access to the established or alternative public sphere in Argentina. By using the concepts ‘established’ and ‘alternative’, I wish to stress that the public sphere does not necessarily mean one thing only. In addition to the ‘leading’, that is established, media and public segments of society, I refer to the more extended, or alternative, public sphere that is found particularly on internet sites, where Pentecostals and other groups of particular interest exchange ideas and try to mould opinions. The alternative sphere is by no means unimportant, but it is clearly less influential than the established public sphere. This observation is closely related to questions of power and position, and the lack of Pentecostal participation in the Argentinean established public sphere is a clear indicator of the ‘betwixt and between’ position of Pentecostals. Like Habermas, Niklas Luhmann refers to communicative action as the constituting element of a modern society (Niklas Luhmann 1984). However, his way of differentiating is different from that of Habermas. Luhmann’s ‘modernity’ involves autopoietic sub-systems that will operate in accordance with their own logic and communication, and where a public sphere will also follow the same rules of communication.22 According to Luhmann, the public sphere will have its own agenda, so to speak, and the modes of communication will secure and strengthen the sub-system itself. Dominated by actors within mass media, the public sphere will have its main ‘interest’ to secure its position rather than being a mediator or a democratic tool. This understanding is different from that of Habermas, and a discussion of Pentecostals’ communicative action can shed some light on which of the two versions we may find in Argentina (or in any modern society). How, then, should the public sphere be understood in the Argentinean society? In a ‘Habermasean’ or a ‘Luhmannian’ way – or yet another way? Is this a new scene where Catholics and Pentecostals fight for souls? And is this the scene where the Pentecostals are communicating their political strategies and crossing the border from religious marginality to political importance? I will also discuss if this is the scene where the Catholic Church now has to enter or increase its involvement in order to defend its position as ‘the religion of the people’ in Argentina? My overview suggests that the public sphere has evolved as an important arena for religio-political communication and that this arena is more open to Catholics than to Pentecostals. In addition, this sphere seems to be more important as an arena of power and influence than as an instrument of gaining new adherents.

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As far as my study can reveal, Pentecostals are virtually absent from the public stage in Argentina today. Although several scholars depict Pentecostalism not only as a religious but also as a social movement (e.g. Jorge A. Soneira 2006: 32), which plays an increasingly important role in the public sphere (Daniel H. Levine 2006: 7; Jorge A. Soneira 2006: 33), little is reflected in the main newspapers and TV channels. Rather, one can observe the Pentecostal public involvement in the alternative public sphere, or at public events in big arenas or other public places. For instance, there have been rallies in Luna Park (Buenos Aires) or manifestaciones (demonstrations and gatherings) in public places such as the Obelisk in the heart of Buenos Aires. Some Pentecostals have their own newspapers and internet sites and produce a great deal of literature, but that material does not seem to find its way into the established public sphere. The few things I have observed that has been written about them by ‘established’ newspapers have a more or less negative bias against ‘sects’. Apparently, the reason for this is that dominant media have a secular basis and/or only accept the Catholic Church as a serious participant in the politico-societal discussions. It seems that actors in the established public sphere experience Pentecostals as a threat, either because their arguments are not found to be rational, as is expected in the ‘Habermasean’ understanding, or because the public sphere is a ‘closed’ entity operating out of its own logic of communication and does not work as a vehicle of democratization, as would be a ‘Luhmannian’ understanding. Catholics play a far greater role in the public sphere. I will not deal with all the different cases where they have been present in the media but will rather discuss why they have this ‘natural’ place. Jorge A. Soneira (2006: 32) refers to the quasi-monopoly of the Catholic Church in Argentina. Apparently, the media coverage reflects the Catholic position within the power structures of the Argentinean society. ‘Marginalized’ people like Pentecostals are not on top of the agenda of the established public sphere. However, although the Catholic Church dominates the ‘religious presence’ in this sphere, it increasingly loses its hold on the Argentinean population, either because of secularization or because people convert to Pentecostalism – or most probably because of both reasons. Thus, it seems that the lack of presence in the established public sphere is not an obstacle to the growth of Pentecostalism. Many new converts come from poor suburbs where the ‘voiceless’ have little interest in and little to gain from the Catholic Church and, more importantly, seem to be invisible to the main actors of the established public sphere. There may be several ways for Pentecostals to enter or play a greater role in this sphere, and I will mention three such ways. These are interlinked and thus should not be seen as three completely different ways. The first can be

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called the Pentecostal solution. This involves no active steps of Pentecostals to enter the established public sphere. Rather, they can wait for an ‘invitation’ to be accepted as an integrated part of the Argentinean community and be given a public voice as a religious or political force to be taken seriously. The other two ways take as a point of departure the public sphere in itself, with its special mode of communication. These solutions would mean an adaptation on behalf of the Pentecostals: either they can ‘rationalize’ their communication – the Habermaeian solution – or they can communicate their message in a way that is accepted by the dominant forces of the public sphere – the Luhmannian solution. Both ‘solutions’ require a degree of adaptation to the existing mode of communication in the Argentinean society. Which one of these three ‘ways’ is the most likely for the Pentecostals? It seems unlikely that the Pentecostal community will change very much in order to ‘rationalize’ their communication. They experience their arguments to be ‘rational’ on their own terms, and the risk of losing a ‘Pentecostal identity’ will probably prevent them from going too far in accepting that religion should be ‘set aside’ in the public moulding of opinions. Another question regarding ‘the Habermasean solution’ is whether a rational ‘formula’, if at all, exists to direct the moulding of public opinion. Then, maybe, ‘the Luhmannian solution’ will be a more likely choice for Pentecostals. If the established public sphere functions like a sub-system with its own mode of communication, which has no ‘rational formula’ as its core vehicle, then one might expect Pentecostals to enter the public sphere as long as they feel that they do not have to compromise too much. They will have to adapt to the rules of communication within the sub-system, but as long as those rules do not threaten their experience of having control of their message, this could be a favourable solution for them. It seems that there are few chances that they will be ‘invited’ into the established public sphere. For this to happen they would need stronger institutional support; they need to be observed by major actors in the established public sphere, as a ‘single body’, as one organization. The hierarchical Catholic Church has a clear advantage in this regard – it is easier to relate to one voice than to many. However, there are some strong umbrella organizations that in the future may act as the ‘voice’ for the many different Pentecostal churches.

The ‘Official’ Arena By ‘official’ I here mean some of the ‘voices’ that to a certain degree represent official or institutional segments of Pentecostal or Catholic elements in society. Thus, it is not the official statements from the Catholic Church itself or some official declarations from Pentecostal churches. To a very large extent – but

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not exclusively – I base my analysis on some chapters in two books: Guzmán Carriquiry’s Una apuesta por América Latina (with a foreword by the Argentinean Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio) from 2005 and the contribution by Hilario Wynarczyck in La libertad religiosa en la Argentina: aportes para una legislación (ed. Roberto Bosca) from 2003. Although they do not represent ‘the official’ intra-religious attitudes of Catholics and Pentecostals, they deal with some of the most important questions at hand in such a manner that they serve my purpose of briefly analysing ‘official’ or semi-official views and observations of what is going on in this arena. Carriquiry’s book focuses on a number of issues concerning the challenges that the Catholic Church is facing in contemporary Latin America. The foreword by the Argentinean Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio gives it an aura of official Catholic credibility. Although the book deals with Latin America rather than with Argentina in particular, it serves well as an introduction to where the Catholic Church stands on many issues. It also shows that the interests of the Catholic Church cannot easily be ‘localized’ but reflect the translocal or global character of many aspects of the questions at hand. Five pages (273–8) specifically discuss La expansion de evangélicos y pentecostales (the expansion of evangélicos and Pentecostals). Carriquiry starts by giving a brief history of revival churches in the USA in the nineteenth century and draws a line to the Pentecostal wave at the beginning of the twentieth century. He refers to the divisions of Pentecostal churches from the 1960s as a praxis of hara-kiri,23 before listing five reasons for the Pentecostal expansion and the Catholic decline – the two are related, according to Carriquiry – in Latin America. a. It was, and to some degree still is, a US-led project. The Protestants in

the north considered Latin America as a mission field and already had a very negative view of Catholicism since the end of the nineteenth century. The continent was to be enlightened and was to gain democracy through Protestantism. b. Secondly, the Pentecostal growth and the Catholic decline are seen as results of globalization and secularization. c. The third reason is linked to the second but involves more specifically the marginalization of a great number of people as a result of the rapid urbanization. There is some recognition that the Catholic Church has not played the role it should for the poor and the marginalized. The author refers to Lalive d’Epinay’s book El refugio de las masas (the refuge of the masses) to support this observation of the Pentecostals as particularly appealing to the new marginalized poor.

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d. Fourthly, the success of Pentecostalism is a result of its ‘recipe’ or message.

Sanación spiritual (spiritual healing) gives believers self-esteem and makes them feel ‘chosen’ and ‘selected’. This functionalist explanation of religion is not uncommon even in academic circles, and Carriquiry emphasizes some of the consequences of the new God-given self-esteem: Pentecostals change their lives, find employment and achieve social mobility. e. According to Carriquiry, the final reason for the expansion of the Pentecostals can be found in their extensive use of modern media technology. In his discussion, the author refers to academic explanations and ‘blames’ secular forces for the Pentecostal success. There are few traces of self-criticism, but the explicitly negative attitudes to evangélicos as ‘sects’ are not totally predominant.24 The academic, ‘secular’ and functionalist explanations place the Catholic Church in a somewhat ambiguous position in the Argentinean society. On the one hand, Catholics have been, and still want to be, in a powerful and dominant position and therefore cannot go too far in criticizing the current state of affairs. On the other hand, they do criticize it for causing secularization and opening up for Pentecostals (and other religions) who compete for and occupy the position they have taken for granted. This understanding of the development leads the Catholic Church to balance between the threat from, on the one hand, forces of secularization and ‘the dictatorship of relativism’ (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger 2005)25 and, on the other hand, the challenges from other religious groups, mainly Pentecostals. It appears that many Catholics experience the first threat as the most serious – as Carriquiry argues, it is also the cause of the second challenge, from Pentecostals – and there are some indications in Argentina today that point towards an improved relationship between Catholics and Protestants. In what was framed a historic ecumenical event by the Argentinean newspaper Clarin (7 May, 2006), Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was present at a ‘Charismatic’ rally in Luna Park in 2006. According to Pablo Deiros, Bergoglio was prayed for, and that day he accepted the new ‘religious scene’ in Argentina.26 As discussed before, however, this acceptance of ‘the sects’ as brothers in faith has a somewhat dubious flavour, and the future of the ‘ecumenical’ projects is still not clear. Many different groups in society have struggled for religious freedom in Argentina. The most important to observe in regard to this study are the Pentecostal contributions to that struggle and, since this has forced many different Pentecostal groups together, it may illustrate a ‘semi-official’ Pentecostal approach. I will now present some of these contributions, following

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Wynarczyk’s article ‘Los evangélicos en la sociedad argentina, la libertad de cultos y la igualdad: dilemas de una modernidad tardía’ (Hilario Wynarczyk 2003: 135–58) from the book on freedom of religion in Argentina (La libertad religiosa en la Argentina). The book is a result of an initiative from the Secretario de Culto in May 2000 with the purpose of providing an ‘unofficial’ survey about the state of religious freedom in Argentina. The initiative of the Secretario de Culto lead to the establishment of an organization or advisory board (CALIR, Consejo Argentino para la libertad religiosa), and the work on the theme of religious freedom illustrates the interest and importance of inter- and intra-religious affairs in Argentina today. As already mentioned, Wynarczyk divides evangélicos into three different ‘branches’. Most of these are organized in umbrella organizations: FAIE27 (representing ‘immigration churches’), FACIERA28 and FICEA29 (‘mission churches’, such as Baptist and Freebrethren) and finally FECEP and FIPA (Pentecostal churches).30 Three of these organizations (FAIE, FACIERA and FECEP), that is one from each of the three ‘branches’, are organized in the national umbrella organization CNCE (Consejo Nacional Cristiano Evangélico). CNCE has played an increasingly important role for the Pentecostals in their attempts to establish a dialogue within many different Pentecostal churches, as well as with the state and the Catholic Church (Hilario Wynarczyk 2003: 139). Being accepted as a religion and being given equal rights with the Catholic Church have been the main concerns of Pentecostals in their dealings with ‘official’ Argentina. They have experienced being seen as ‘minor’ religions or sectas not to be taken as seriously as the Catholic Church (Hilario Wynarczyk 2003: 148). Although there are some clear signs of a new religious scene in Argentina, where Catholics and Pentecostals may argue that they have common interests (e.g. against abortion, secularization and ‘the dictatorship of relativism’), the Catholic Church is still favoured by the Argentinean constitution, and there are several legal problems to sort out before Pentecostals and Catholics can be treated as equals. On the religio-societal arena, Hilario Wynarczyk (2003: 153) observes three main groups of interest today: (1) the state, represented especially by the Secretario de Culto; (2) Pentecostals (evangélicos), represented in particular by the CNCE and (3) the Catholic Church, represented mainly by the Argentinean Bishops’ Conference, CEA (Conferencia Episcopal Argentina). Whether these three organizations are able to improve the relationship between the different layers of the society remains to be seen. At least they have to take into consideration what happens in the public sphere. In addition, the voices of some leading figures will have to be listened to.

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The Private Arena I will here present interviews with pastor Mario Morana of Principe de Paz, a branch of the Assemblies of God, and pastor Ruben Salome of Iglesia de Dios (The Church of God). Although I interviewed them separately, I will only give some general remarks on their answers here, since their responses in several respects echoed each other. At the beginning, Morana and Salome were somewhat suspicious about my project. They both ‘needed’ to know that this was not a ‘normative’ scholarly project and that I had an open attitude to their beliefs. In response, I stressed the fact that this was an opportunity for them to give their versions and their own answers. It soon became clear that they had had some negative experiences with journalists and others who had portrayed their faith negatively in media or other places. They both expressed some kind of ‘neutrality’ towards the Catholic Church. They said they had ‘no problems’ with its representatives on issues of common interest. They had been engaged with Catholics in demonstrations and expressions regarding the crisis in 2001, and they had had some formal meetings now and then. However, when I later talked about the problems in Argentina, Salome stressed the ‘negative’ effects of the Catholic Church on Latin American history, so it seemed that the ‘neutrality’ was to some degree a word of courtesy and not only a reflection of sincerity. The pastors stressed that the Pentecostals today are not what they were ‘10 years ago’. Today they study at universities and have ‘regular’ work and positions. They participate in society in quite another way than before, a fact both pastors seemed to appreciate. Morana and Salome became more ‘intense’ in the conversation when we started to discuss politics. This was their ‘new arena’, and they both spoke with enthusiasm about how being involved in social affairs, helping the poor and entering the political scene were new and exiting steps for Pentecostals, not only in Argentina but ‘everywhere’. There was a political ‘awaking’ just around the corner. I asked how they envisioned the Argentinean society, or a good society in general, and they both became a little dubious. Thus, they did not provide any clear idea about what such a society should look like. With regard to Argentina, they stressed the problems of corruption and how the rich were exploiting the poor, but that was basically where it ended. In some ways, I had the feeling I was talking to socialists from the 1970s, who lacked the structural criticism of socialism.

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Conclusions On Pentecostal internet sites and in pamphlets, magazines and books, there is an increasing focus on ‘global’ as well as ‘local’ problems. Unjust politics, environmentalism and help to the poor are definitely on the agenda. The important questions today are where this political involvement is going to lead and whether a Pentecostal ideology will surface? The Catholics may be losing their position as the dominant religion in the ‘cultural matrix’ of the Argentinean society, but they still have power and a position to defend. In addition, there seems to be considerable room for them in the established public sphere, and it appears that they now are directing their efforts at that arena to win back the masses which they have lost to secularization and Pentecostalism. As indicated in the conference ‘Los Católicos en la Sociedad Civil y la Politica’ (November 2006), the focus on civil society and politics in many ways shows how Catholics now value the importance of being present in the public sphere.31 That is the main arena where they think they will win the battle against both secularization and other ‘threatening’ religions and secure the place of Catholicism as the religion of the people as well as of democracy. In this chapter, I have discussed some of the profound changes in Argentina during the recent decades, which have affected all sectors of society. To understand the role of religion in this context, it is also necessary to take into account what happens in non-religious spheres, like the political sphere, as well as in civil society. The relationships between different religions and religious denominations are not only affected by the dynamics of the process of change, but also contribute to it. The Catholic Church is seeking a way out of its negative trend by trying to increase its presence and strength in the public sphere, fighting secularization, preventing a ‘dictatorship of individualism’ and changing the attitudes towards Pentecostals. While continuing to fight for ‘religious space’ in society, Catholics may also unite with Pentecostals in a struggle against common enemies, such as secularization and abortion. The Pentecostals have a somewhat different perception of the current changes. They too want to fight secularization, but they are happy with a development that has lead to their rapid growth. Now, when they have become more established, they apparently aim at becoming more involved in politics and society.

Notes 1. The term Catholicism is here meant to reflect the Catholic religion in its broadest sense. 2. In La Nacion, Clarin, Pagina 12 and Buenos Aires Herald.

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3. Ed Silvoso, a native Argentinean, is the director of Harvest Evangelism in San José, California. The quotation is from: http://www.charismamag.com/cm498/cm49831.htm (retrieved 10 April 2003). 4. The Awesome Argentina Revival: Lessons in Evangelism and Spiritual Warfare from Argentina by Peter Wagner. From http://www.openheaven.com/library/history/ argentina.htm (retrieved 2 March 2008). 5. It is estimated that 75–90 per cent of the evangélicos in Argentina today are Pentecostals. 6. It is important to note, however, that Protestants there, albeit in small numbers, have a history of more than 100 years. 7. As noted by Pablo Deiros, Argentinean Baptist and scholar, in an interview, 15 November 2007. 8. Interview (Buenos Aires, 15 November 2007). 9. See also Hilario Wynarczyk (2007: 147). 10. Secretario de Culto is a section in the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto. 11. I received these numbers from Secretario de Culto Católico in 2001. They showed about 5 million evangélicos of which approximately 4.2 million were Pentecostals. However, these numbers are by no means certain. 12. Although the guide is for Buenos Aires, the different chapters on the various religions and denominations often give numbers on a nation-wide basis. 13. It should be stressed, however, that this is a ‘union’ of churches which are ‘members’ of Asambleas de Dios (Alejandro Irazabal and Guillermo Rochelle 2003: 294). 14. See note 8. 15. This was stressed also by Presbitero F. Delmar in my interview with him (Buenos Aires, 3 March 2001). 16. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42a/044.html (retrieved 12 April 2008). 17. http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-protest/catholicchurch 2709.jsp (retrieved 25 February 2008). 18. This was because the patronate meant that the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Argentina had to accept ‘secular’ interference in ‘religious’ affairs, like appointments of clergy and bishops that normally required the approval of civil authorities. 19. From the second article of the constitution, El Gobierno federal sostiene el culto católico, apostólico, romano (The Federal Government supports the Apostolic, Roman, Catholic religion). 20. The elements of globalization which I refer to here are only part of what, in my opinion, constitutes the many-folded processes inherent in the concept of globalization. 21. One cannot easily speak of ‘left-wing’, ‘centre’ and ‘right-wing’ politicians in Argentina since the political strata operate in a different way from those of European democracies. However, Argentinean media and others often themselves refer to political parties or persons by using such terms. 22. Autopoietic is a word Luhmann has borrowed from biology and which literally means ‘auto-creation’. It is meant to describe a sub-system that always is less complex than the environment that it operates in but that has a ‘life of its own’, so to speak. 23. A rhetoric statement about an organizational ‘culture’ that is very different from the traditional hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church.

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24. Information from interviews with, among others, Presbitero F. Delamar (Buenos Aires, 3 March 2001), pastor Ruben Salome (Buenos Aires, 5 November 2006), pastor Pablo Morana (Buenos Aires, 5 November 2006) and professor Pablo Deiros (Buenos Aires, 15 November 2007). 25. http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?id=33987 (retrieved 27 February 2008). 26. Interview with Deiros (Buenos Aires, 15 November 2007). 27. Federación Argentina de Iglesias Evangélicals. 28. Federación Alianza Cristiana de Iglesias Evangélicas de la República Argentina. 29. Federacón de Iglesias e Instituciones Cristianas Evangélicas Argentinas (hermanos libres). 30. Federación Confraternidad Evangélica Pentecostal and Federación de Iglesias Pentecostales Autónomas, respectively. 31. Conference held at the Catholic University of Buenos Aires in November 2006.

References Bastian, Jean-Pierre (1986). Historia protestantismo en America Latin. Mexico, D.F.: Casa Unida de Publicaciones. Bosca, Roberto (2003). La libertad religiosa en la Argentina: aportes para una legislación. Buenos Aires: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. Luis Cárdenas (2003). ‘Introdución Buenos Aires: megalópolis religiosa’, in Fortunato Mallimaci (ed.), Guía de la diversidad religiosa de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, pp. 17–27. Carriquiry, Guzmán (2005). Una apuesta por América Latina: memoria y destino históricos de un continente. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Cox, Harvey (1996). Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. London: Cassell. Habermas, Jürgen (1962). Borgerlig offentlighet. Oslo: Gyldendal. Irazabal, Alejandro and Guillermo Rochelle (2003). ‘Protestantes: union de asambleas de dios’, in Guía de la diversidad religiosa de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, pp. 291–8. Lalive d’Epinay, Christian (1968). Haven of the Masses: A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in Chile. London: Lutterworth. Levine, Daniel H. (2006). ‘Religión y política en América Latina: la nueva cara pública de la religión’, Sociedad y religión: sociología, antropología e historia de la religión en el cono sur XVII/26–27, pp. 7–31. Luhmann, Niklas (1984). Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Mallimaci, Fortunato (ed.) (2003). Guía de la diversidad religiosa de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos. Martin, David (1990). Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell. Soneira, Jorge A. (2005). Sociología de los nuevos movimientos religiosos en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Universidad del Salvador.

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(2006). ‘Comentarios al artículo “religión y política en America Latina: la nueva cara pública de la religión’’ ’, Sociedad y religión: sociología, Antropología e historia de la religión en el cono sur XVII/26–27, pp. 31–9. Stoll, David (1990). Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Willems, Emilio (1967). Followers of the New Faith: Culture, Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Wynarczyk, Hilario (2003). ‘Los evangélicos en la sociedad Argentina, la libertad de cultos y la igualdad: Dilemas de una modernidad tardía’, in Roberto Bosca (ed.), La libertad religiosa en la Argentina: aportes para una legislación. Buenos Aires: Konrad-AdenauerStiftung, pp.135–59.

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14 Religion as (Blurred) Moral Boundaries Umbanda and Pentecostalism in a Changing Social Context ■

Daniel P. Míguez

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entecostal growth has been one of the more prominent topics of research in the study of Latin American religion. After the pioneering initiatives of Emilio Willems (1967) and Christian Lalive d’Epinay (1968) and, especially, since the contributions of David Martin (1990) and David Stoll (1990) reopened the field, an ongoing production ensued. The approaches to Latin American Pentecostalism have been manifold, but some persistent questions have pervaded the academic field. The effects of Pentecostalism in the daily life of converts, especially the urban poor, have been one of the preferred topics of study. The aggregate impact of massive conversion in the economical and political institutions in Latin American nations has also been a predominant object of study. Initially, there was some controversy between Emilio Willems and Christian Lalive d’Epinay over the extent to which this kind of ‘popular Protestantism’ fostered social reform or improved the condition of the urban poor. However, towards the end of the 1990s, a growing consensus was established for finding a series of benign effects of Pentecostal growth in Latin American societies. At the personal level, many researchers reported the multiple adaptive strategies that conversion to Pentecostalism opened for those facing material needs or suffering from status stress. At the level of collective institutions, more audacious scholars speculated over the possible thrust or hindrance that massive conversion could represent for the modernization and democratization of Latin America (David Martin 1990; Jean Pierre Bastian 1997). 261

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In considering the micro and macro effects of Pentecostal growth, much of the argument has implicitly been put in terms of subjective and, in the end, moral reform. In almost every research, conversion to Pentecostalism has been seen either as promoting a new set of (modern) values or as reinforcing adhesion to them, immersing social subjects in a moral order that fostered habits and attitudes with extraordinary adaptive capacities – be these the ability to sustain self-esteem or long-term expectations and projects in the face of extreme deprivation or the capacity to promote the entrepreneurial and republican predispositions associated with industrialized and democratic societies. Thus, in this perspective, the effects of Pentecostalism emerge from its power to project conventional/modern values onto a transcendental dimension, making them less vulnerable or more desirable in otherwise unfavourable conditions. To put it in a slightly different way, Pentecostalism would establish categories of right and wrong that order the experienced world (Alfred Schutz 1974). This order favours habits and attitudes that at the same time benefit those suffering from deprivation and promote modern social institutions. Argentina was a late bloomer with respect to Pentecostalism as compared to other Latin American countries. Although the first Pentecostals arrived in Buenos Aires in the 1920s, significant growth and prominence of its churches were witnessed only in the late 1980s. This was about 20 years later than Brazil, Chile or parts of Central America where Pentecostalism had already experienced significant growth in the 1950s and 1960s and had a new expansive wave in the 1980s. As in the rest of Latin America, Argentinian Pentecostalism grew among the urban poor who found in its doctrine and rituals significant means to endure increasingly unfavourable social conditions. In the 1980s, a strong recession of the Argentinian labour market, associated to a rampant inflation, had put to test the traditional lifestyles characterized by stable nuclear families, reasonable expectations of upward social mobility and steady employment. In this context, Pentecostalism did not really introduce a new set of values or promote inexistent work or economic habits. It neither brought about dramatic changes in gender roles nor restructured family ties. Instead of introducing new elements in Argentinian culture, its doctrine and rituals served the purpose of giving, what were already secular values, a transcendental aura, helping those whose traditional lifestyle was being jeopardized to sustain their belief in it despite the growing instability and recurring crises. This process implied recasting the symbols, embodying those customary ways of life in a religious ritual context and language that gave them a sacred undertone. Moreover, given the role that Peronismo had played in establishing these habits, it was not unusual for women in leadership positions in churches to adopt postures and dressing style that resembled Evita (Pablo

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Semán & Daniel Míguez 2000) or to recast the social and work ethics introduced by Peronismo as a religious – Pentecostal – doctrine. However, if the changes in the social structure in the 1980s were to be associated with Pentecostal growth, the worsening conditions experienced by the urban poor in the 1990s did not seem to promote a further expansion of converts. Instead of continuing with ‘spiritual awakening’, the late 1990s and initial 2000s were associated with the fall of the big Pentecostal ministries, such as Ondas de Amor y Paz, Visión de Futuro and the healing ministry of Carlos Anaconndia,1 that had emerged in the 1980s. As early as in 1994–5, small neighbourhood churches stopped receiving the incoming flow of new converts they had welcomed in every Sunday service during the late 1980s. The drought in new converts may be linked to the long-term effects of a restrictive labour market. For the second or third generation of structurally unemployed – those who descended from the already unemployed parents and were trying to access the labour market in the 1990s – the worth of traditional lifestyles and values became increasingly relative. Among these generations, Pentecostal ritual and doctrine – its efforts to sustain what finally were customary habits and worldviews – faced a greater challenge. They could not appeal to deeply naturalized and unquestioned perceptions and attitudes, but had the more difficult task of attracting an increasingly reticent audience. A new generation emerged that had never experienced the conditions in which traditional lifestyles were sustained and, worse, lived in conditions that made them quite unviable. Therefore, Pentecostalism ended up proposing a lifestyle that many potential believers found hard to follow. While Pentecostalism was exposed to these new challenges, other religious alternatives, such as Afro-Brazilian Spiritism, found increasingly favourable grounds among the urban poor, especially in the more marginalized sectors within them. The capacity of these religions to blur the boundaries between good and evil and their tendency to challenge the traditional dualistic tendencies that are part of Christian conventionalism made them more ‘functional’ in the new social scenario. Although they did not grow into massive numbers, they became increasingly attractive in a context where material and social conditions turned mere survival into a paramount and daily problem. In fact, the morality of Afro-Brazilian religions reflects the profound changes in the structure of the social bonds characteristic of poor urban neighbourhoods. During the 1990s, while accessing the monetary market hardened by the lack of jobs, exchanges based on mutual trust were increasingly unviable, given a social context that limited the capacity of individuals to comply with their reciprocal obligations. Therefore, the traditional survival strategy of the urban poor of complementing monetary income with informal exchange based on

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trust (Larissa Lomnitz 1989) was progressively substituted by a more predatory logic. Delinquency became a more frequent way of life and theft and violence between ghetto dwellers increasingly common (Natalie Puex 2003). The morals fostered by certain varieties of Afro-Brazilian Spiritism that tolerated these sorts of transgression became, thus, more commonplace, as some people found in them an alternative, unconventional, moral order that justified those actions and spiritual beings that could favour them. However, the obvious costs of an unsafe and unstable lifestyle that resulted from embracing this alternative were not unfelt by followers. This, in part, explains why Afro-Brazilian Spiritism has remained a marginal and stigmatized religion in Argentina, even after its relative growth. These changes resulted in a complex scenario where an increasing number of moral and related religious alternatives were possible, each having its own benefits and liabilities. As we will try to show in what follows, the analysis of these differing possibilities allows us to understand the intricate relationships between social conditions and religious affiliation, and casts some light on the recent evolution of the Argentinian religious field.

Pentecostalism as a Survival Strategy It is by now common wisdom in the study of popular religion that the growth of Pentecostalism in many parts of the world is associated with the multiple means it provides to endure hardship. Therefore, it is also no surprise that the times of crises and social unrest are the more frequent scenarios of Pentecostal growth. The number of studies showing the ability of Pentecostalism to provide its followers with such adaptive means is by now quite extensive, to the point that it is impossible to present a thorough summary here. However, for the Latin American case, the study of Cecilia Mariz (1994) provides a good synthesis. Cecilia Mariz’s comparative perspective contrasts the material, political and cultural strategies that three religious groups (Pentecostalism, Catholic Base Communities and Afro-Brazilian Spiritism) provide to the urban poor. In exploring these alternatives, she finds that all religious groups offer some type of help in all of these fields, although there are differences between them in the way and degree in which help is provided. For example, in contrast with Catholic Base Communities and Afro-Brazilian Spiritism, Pentecostals do not usually offer direct material help. However, they do promote networks of mutual support that provide assistance in times of need; they, as well, create paths of economic improvement and occasionally of direct upward mobility for successful religious leaders, something that also tends to occur in Afro-Brazilian cults.

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Besides its (limited) capacity to provide material help, Pentecostalism seems ill-prepared to be of any ‘political’ assistance since its involvement in systems of political patronage is limited – even if it has occasionally made certain inroads into the political system (especially in Brazil), it never developed as a strong competitor or ally of traditional parties. However, while Mariz’s analysis shows that the material and political help provided by Pentecostals is limited in several aspects, it also clearly discovers a key dimension in explaining the cultural attraction that Pentecostalism exerts among the urban poor. An essential contribution of Mariz’s analysis starts with her perception that poverty is not solely a material issue; economic deprivation has significant consequences in other aspects of life. Poor people’s sensation of being socially worthless generates in them a low self-esteem and a loss of personal dignity, which is often conducive to damaging behaviours such as alcoholism and domestic violence. According to Mariz, Pentecostalism provides means to psychologically endure the damaging effects of poverty. The essential means are based on a symbolic contestation/adaptation to the social order that avoid the sense of worthlessness and senselessness that being poor in a consumer society produces. Cecilia Mariz describes a series of mechanisms that operate in this direction such as the ‘experiences of the supernatural’: The possibility that ordinary people can be in touch with the supernatural world is a characteristic of almost all religions that are popular among the poor [. . . ]. The belief that any participant in a religious organization can deal directly with God fosters the development of small, autonomous groups. This belief also increases the self-esteem of the poor (1994: 137).

A second mechanism by which Pentecostalism contributes to improve poor people’s condition is by ‘fostering experiences of human dignity’. Mariz shows how these are, in part, effected by stressing a formal treatment in everyday life (e.g. addressing other church members in formal ways and dressing in a very conservative manner) that help to elude the usual stigmatization suffered by the urban poor and win the appearance of respectable citizens: The appearance of decency and the conservative dress do in fact protect poor women from being treated like prostitutes and poor men from being considered thieves. As Gilkes shows, Pentecostal clothing also protects black women in the Unites States. Gilke’s opinion is shared by many Brazilian Pentecostals. Sebastiâo says young Pentecostals woman’s clothing serves as a form of protection. Neusa chose the word armadura, which means ‘armour’, to refer to the sober clothing of a believer. Therefore, the very much criticized repressive aspects of Pentecostal morality may play an instrumental role in supporting respectful treatment of the poor and strengthening poor people’s self esteem (Cecilia Mariz 1994: 142).

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A third way in which Pentecostalism helps the poor is by helping them to overcome a certain sense of powerlessness common to their condition. This creates the sensation that miraculous interventions in their life are possible, and therefore that any obstacle (health, material, family problems etc.) may be defeated. Contrary to what is often believed, in such situations people do not remain passive awaiting a miracle to happen. Instead, they engage in a persistent struggle to overcome their problems, assured by the sensation that if they do enough, God will eventually intervene in their favour. Another constitutive element of Pentecostal strategies to strive against poverty is given by what Mariz calls a ‘sense of coherence’: In contrast with Afro-Brazilian Spiritism, Pentecostalism emphasizes the meaning of miracles and their relationship to God’s will. Therefore, if a healing fails to occur, there must be some reason, a meaning to be ascribed. [...] Faith in a divine logic that guides and determines life offers a psychological advantage in the struggle for survival. An Israeli sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, identified what he called lawfulness, or a ‘sense of coherence’ as the principal psychological element that differentiated people who were able to survive concentration camps and establish a relatively healthy life from those who could never make this adjustment (Cecilia Mariz 1994: 147).

Besides Mariz’s findings, other studies show further fields where Pentecostalism may have benign effects. For example, Elisabeth Brusco (1995) and Lesly Gill (1993) discovered the same underlying mechanism of cultural reformation in curbing machismo. While David Smild (2003) found that turning Pentecostal is also a means to escape social violence among young gang members in Venezuela – those who convert are conceived as having ‘abandoned the game’ and are thus not included in the inter-gang reciprocal violence system called culebra. Pentecostalism has even been seen to create more peaceful environments among interns in otherwise very violent prisons, or to help addicts to overcome their habits when several ‘secular’ treatments have failed (Daniel Míguez 2002). Underlying all the different cases and contexts in which Pentecostalism is said to have beneficial effects, there seems to be one common mechanism already suggested by Mariz. Pentecostalism structures a causal order that allows converts to regain a feeling or sense of control over their lives. It provides believers a set of obligations with which they must comply, but in return they become worthy of much desired benefits. It thus establishes a moral order by which merits may be accumulated that, in the end, guarantee believers access to at least their basic needs if not to a relatively promissory future. As in Clifford Geertz’s (1973) definition of religion, the moral order acquires a

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factual capacity by the intervention of transcendental forces that may overcome any worldly obstacle, and in that, it allows believers to regain a sense of control of their lives. Comparative studies tend to see that Pentecostalism, in this respect, has certain advantages over other popular religious groups. For example, as Mariz herself implies, Afro-Brazilian Spiritism seems to be less governed by rules not being able to provide a sense of lawfulness and order – spiritual beings behave in a disorderly manner and there is no clear set of rules to gain control of them or of personal destiny (Gary Howe & Peter Fry 1975). Catholic Base Communities’ orientation towards politics allocate power in very worldly institutions, already experienced as exploitive or indifferent by the poor. However, the effects of these alternative moral orders need further exploration. Current and former studies of Pentecostalism tend to stress the adaptive capacities of a fairly conformist doctrine, since, in spite of a limited set of alternative values, the core tenets of Pentecostal theology seem fairly conventional. Thus, more than creating a confrontational set of values, Pentecostalism fosters the (cultural) conditions in which social outcasts can participate in conventional social institutions; here, the adaptive capacity that spun from a worldview that more radically rejects customary values and lifestyles has been less explored. In addition, it is probably this bias that, in comparative studies, repeatedly makes Pentecostalism the more suited religion for the urban poor, while underestimating the alternative possibilities underlying in less-explored religious options.

Afro-Brazilian Morals Afro-Brazilian Spiritism has resulted from a multi-faceted syncretism between Yoruba religion (brought by West African slaves in the nineteenth century), Catholicism, Kardec teachings and indigenous beliefs of Brazilian aborigines. The new religions initially resulted from the efforts made by slaves to preserve their original beliefs by merging the deities and ancestors they worshipped with Catholic saints. However, in this fusion, two moral orders were clearly at stake since the dualistic tendencies of Christianity did not resemble the unbounded morals of Yoruba spirits who did not respond to an abstract set of values but to the will and transactions between worshippers and spirits. The fusion, however, Christianized the more popular version of the cult, namely Umbanda, where ‘higher’ spiritual beings assumed a more conventional moral behaviour – although ‘lower’ spirits are less bounded by principles. At the same time, other Afro-Brazilian religions, such as Candomblé, remained as more pure ‘African’ alternatives, which did not become as deeply

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Christianized in their doctrine and ritual. In addition, even within Umbanda, kimbanda (black magic that involves evil spirits) remains as a common, although hidden, practice in most terreiros (places of worship): This syncretism represents the capture of the religion of the Orixás [Umbanda] within a model that presupposes, above all, the existence of two antagonistic poles that rule over every human action: good and evil; on one side virtue, and on the other sin. This Jewish/Christian conception did not exist in Africa. The relationships between gods and human beings, as it happens in other ancient polytheistic religions, were guided by sacrificial precepts and taboos. Every Orixá had its prescriptive and restrictive rules applicable to its devotees, as it can still be observed in Candomblé, where there is no code of behaviour that can be applied indistinctly to every member of society; whereas in the Christian tradition a unified law is the key for a universal system that classifies everything as part of good or evil, conceived as mutually exclusive categories.2 [my translation]

Thus, although Christianization affected the traditional morals enmeshed in Yoruba religion, part of them clearly survived in Afro-Brazilian Spiritism. These rebel undertones can also be seen in the fact that the Afro-Brazilian pantheon has identified with the outcasts of society. Although the higher spirits are usually identified with natural forces, lesser, but still very powerful, spirits may come from the lower levels of the social ladder: prostitutes (pomba giras), thieves, old African slaves (preto velhos), sailors (marinheros) and warriers of the aboriginal tribes (caboclos) form a substantial part of the Afro-Brazilian spiritual world. Thus, beyond a certain conventional facade, Afro-Brazilian cults champion an alternative perception of good and evil: We should not forget that Afro-Brazilian religions are religions that accept the world as it is. This world is considered as a place where all personal realizations are possible and morally desirable. The good follower of the religion of the Orixás has to do everything in his power to make his wishes come true, since it is through human realization that the gods become stronger and can help their followers. The effort to be happy cannot subside in front of any barrier, even if this happiness implies the misfortune of others.3 [my translation]

According to recent research, a relative de-Christianization is taking place in Afro-Brazilian religions. Formerly hidden aspects of rituals and doctrines are starting to appear in the public light, yielding a growing space for more unprincipled spirits such as marineros and bahianos.4 In the extreme limit appears what some analysts have called ‘Umbanda Bandido’ directly related to illegal or criminal activities, showing a growing tendency among Afro-Brazilian cults to deviate from conventional morals. The inroads of Afro-Brazilian religions in Argentina are complex. The more public and conventional aspects of Afro-Brazilian religions have been present since the 1960s, although they constituted a very small minority within

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the local religious field (Alejandro Frigerio & María Julia Carozzi 1992). However, in recent years, the presence of these religions among the marginal sectors of society has increased. In its more obvious aspect, this may be perceived in the growing numbers of terreiros and the increasing familiarity of people with their doctrines and ritual practices. At a more subtle level, they appear merged with traditional popular Catholicism, introducing new elements and perceptions that affect the way people conceive the transcendental world and their relationship with it. Many times this occurs without people consciously drawing on Afro-Brazilian beliefs and practices (in fact, most people have just a very superficial understanding of them). Instead, they spontaneously fuse elements at hand without thorough knowledge of doctrines and rituals. Extreme cases of these processes, holding metonymic relationships with more general changes in public morals among the urban poor, may be found by exploring the canonization of young delinquents gunned down by the police. Although the canonization of bandits is not completely new, subtle changes are present in the actual processes. For example, in traditional mythology, the unlawful actions of bandits were justified as amending previous injustice (Eric Hobsbawm 1976). Instead, in the canonization of Frente Vital, a juvenile delinquent who lived in the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires and was killed by the police, followers make no effort to redeem his illegal deeds. His worshippers portray Frente Vital as a thief, who enjoyed crime and had no regrets about it, although he is seen as a local Robin Hood by slum dwellers. His addiction to drugs has also not been a problem in his popular consecration as a saint. Moreover, guns and drugs are offered at his tomb in return for miracles. Besides the usual demand in matters of health, love and personal finance, young delinquents ask for help to commit crimes and deal with the police. Therefore, in his canonization, Frente Vital has not been transformed to adjust to conventional morals; instead, alternative values have been partly consecrated by projecting them onto the transcendental world through a, now, sacred being. The canonization of Frente Vital was accomplished by a complex syncretism between traditional Catholic devotions and a very loose practice of Afro-Brazilian Spiritism. Frente has been said to approach a local faith healer to ask for protection in criminal events. Although the faith healer did not exactly consider herself a Mae de Santo, a leader of Umbanda religion, she occasionally did practise certain Afro-Brazilian rites. Through her, Frente came to know Ogum, the Yoruba divinity of war and metal identified with Saint George. As a formerly human spirit, Ogum indulges in mundane treats. Offerings to him, hence, include beer, cigars and popcorn; even if, as a higher spiritual being, he cannot officially be asked to participate in wrongdoings,

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the lesser spirits within his order may be invoked to do so. But since the figure of Ogum is unfamiliar to Argentinian tradition, Frente – as, in general, many other juvenile delinquents – worshipped Ogum through the more familiar figure of Saint George, who paradoxically is also the patron saint of the local police forces. Besides tattooing a figure of Saint George on his back to win protection from the police, Frente also worshipped the Catholic saint by offering cigars and beer to him, something that is also common among juvenile delinquents. Hence, through the identification with Ogum, Saint George became at the same time the patron saint of police and juvenile delinquents, only that in the version worshipped by the latter, unconventional offerings become commonplace. Although Afro-Brazilian religions allow space to worship unconventional spirits, canonizations do not easily admit the devotion of those recently departed. Therefore, the time logics of these religions would hardly admit the worship of a recently deceased, as Frente Vital, although his unconventional morals would not represent a problem. Inversely, while the unconventional morals of Frente would not be openly accepted in popular Catholicism, immediate post-mortem canonization does not seem to be a problem. Hence, the devotion of Frente appears to combine the temporal logics of popular Catholicism with the moral logics of Afro-Brazilian Spiritism. As suggested, this syncretism projects an alternative moral view onto an other-worldly dimension. Actions and behaviours that appear to conflict with conventional values acquire legitimacy as they turn into principles accepted by transcendental beings, be they traditional Afro-Brazilian deities or the local saints created through these new forms of syncretism. In contrast with Pentecostalism, the adaptive strategy obtained through Afro-Brazilian Spiritism is not to create a series of habits and perceptions that favour conventional lifestyles in otherwise very unfavourable conditions; instead, it creates a moral order in which a completely unconventional or even ‘illegal’ lifestyle becomes more natural and acceptable. Of course, adopting this last alternative brings in its own costs. Social and psychological instability usually accompany a lifestyle that involves recurrent conflicts and violence. However, in contexts of extreme deprivation, and especially in certain stages in an individual’s lifespan, the capacity to exert and resist force becomes a dignifying experience that competes with the more peaceful strategies laid down by evangelicalism. When a restrictive labour market obtrudes the traditional and conventional ways of gaining self-esteem (professional and economic progress, being a provider for one’s family etc.), the physical exposure, braveness and endurance that are part of a conflictive lifestyle can be the basis of personal dignity – especially for the younger generations. In this manner, we find that, in

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a very different way than Pentecostalism, the moral and social order expressed and legitimized through Afro-Brazilian Spiritism also provides resources to psychologically and culturally endure deprivation – even if the personal losses that frequently result from violence and conflict can make its practitioners regret the chosen alternative. We can then see, through religious change, that two apparently contrasting social and moral orders, providing different types of adaptive resources, have become available to the urban poor in Argentina: the peaceful ways of Pentecostalism that favour inclusion in conventional institutions and the alternative expressed in Afro-Brazilian Spiritism that favours a more confrontational adaptive strategy. Now, even if these two alternatives appear as irreconcilable, the respective and, in certain ways, complementary costs and benefits that each brings under its wing in specific situations makes the frontiers that separate them more labile than one can initially suspect. As we will see, what lies under this process is not a chaotic or irrational conduct, but a cautious search for appropriate social, spiritual and moral resources in critical moments.

Conclusions Usually, comparative studies between Pentecostalism and other religious options for the poor have concluded that the growth of the former can be explained by the greater adaptive capacities fostered by it. Pentecostal growth in contexts of material and social deprivation has been seen as the result of its ability to integrate people into the conventional social order, diminishing the relative costs of marginalization. However, it has also been recognized that it carries its own liabilities. Frequent participation in Pentecostal networks may alienate people from former social ties among their kin, neighbours and unconverted friends. Also, the time-consuming activities in church may limit the capacity to assume other undertakings, such as job opportunities, that would further improve the condition of the less well-off (Bryan Roberts 1968; Cecilia Mariz 1994). In addition to these limitations, the cultural strategies of Pentecostalism also limit the possibility to question the social order. Even if Pentecostal doctrine and ritual usually contain certain rebel elements.5 They hardly propose a radical alternative. In the end, the lifestyle of Pentecostal converts follows basic social conventions. This is even more evident when we look at the alternatives generated by certain varieties of Afro-Brazilian Spiritism. The popular canonization processes that we have observed, where Afro-Brazilian Spiritism has played a central part, allow devotees to create

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an alternative moral order. Conventional criteria of good and evil are substituted for other principles that add legitimacy to alternative lifestyles. Thus, they create a social space where what is utterly rejected by society in general is openly accepted by transcendental beings: other-worldly moral becomes more venial than its inner-worldly counterpart, adjusted to traditional Christian principles. This strategy of creating a sort of ‘cocoon’ with alternative values to endure deprivation has also been seen as part of what Pentecostal churches provide to their members. What is different in this case is not the general strategy in itself, but the degree of confrontation with conventional society it fosters. However, as in the case of Pentecostalism, turning to the Afro-Brazilian option also has built-in costs. Alienating oneself from conventional society not only implies establishing a greater distance from other social ties, but also reinforces ongoing conflict with conventional institutions such as police and school. However, even more, in contrast with Pentecostal communities that promote close social bonds among their members, the same morals present in the varieties of Afro-Brazilian Spiritism being explored by us do not favour stable social ties. In fact, these devotions produce more of an (a)moral community than a social one. People do not frequently interact with one another as members of a church; they individually appeal to cult leaders and (through them) to spiritual beings for help. Because of this, the systems of mutual exchange based on trust favoured in Pentecostal communities do not necessarily find friendly grounds among members of Afro-Brazilian religions. In order to understand the way people have related to these religious and moral alternatives and evaluated their relative costs and possibilities, it is necessary to consider the social contexts that emerged from the structural changes of the 1980s and 1990s. Initially, in the 1980s, the traditional Catholic monopoly was challenged by Pentecostalism, as more and more people found in this form of evangelicalism means to endure the growing menaces to their traditional lifestyles. However, if the changes in the 1980s already implied a crisis in the more or less unified pattern that related income to stable employment in the formal job market, the changing social conditions in the 1990s promoted an even greater diversification of the sources of family income and personal lifestyles. Especially the younger generations experienced a turn to a combination (at the same or different times) that ranged from odd jobs still in the legal sphere, to semi-legal or directly illegal sources of income. Of course, the changing insertion in the job market not only affected the stability and origin of the household earnings, but also the complete traditional lifestyle including family structure, daily routines, places and context of socialization and sociability.

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Given these multiple contexts of insertion and interaction, for many among the urban poor, moral became situational: it could hardly be included in a set of stable and abstract principles appropriate for every circumstance. At times, the changing situations they had to face made conventional values (thus Pentecostalism) applicable; but, most of the time, the costs of accepting them appeared unbearable. For example, when the lack of a job made starvation an immediate possibility, robbery could seem a better alternative than an ongoing prayer; thus, a predatory behaviour and Afro-Brazilian Spirits could be of much help. When economic opportunities arose, even in the informal job market, ongoing effort and endurance could seem better than running the risks of a violent life. At this moment, conventional morals and Pentecostalism could provide a safer haven. Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that the change from one situation to the other could occur in a matter of weeks, or even days, making adhesion to moral options extremely labile. Thus, when we look at the context resulting from the changes in the 1990s, we find the structural bases that promoted a moral diversification among the urban poor. They turned what were very unconventional religious alternatives, such as Afro-Brazilian Spiritism, increasingly familiar and functional in comparison to more morally structured options as Pentecostalism. However, the new lifestyles and types of social relationships resulting from these changes were not so easily naturalized by the older generations; moreover, they brought in costs and bitter moments. Thus, the halt in Pentecostal growth was not followed by an explosion of adherents to Afro-Brazilian cults. Instead, it gave way to a cautious attitude; it made people explore the otherwise inadmissible options, not so much to blindly turn to them, but more to consider these alternatives as applicable in particular occasions. The emergence of Afro-Brazilian religion among the urban poor has made more legitimate what were otherwise very illegitimate options, but it did not predetermine in itself the alternative that a particular individual would select in a given scenario. Occasional adhesion to such religions, or to Pentecostalism, did (and does) not imply perpetual and abstract adherence to its code. This has resulted in a diversification of religious and moral options blurring the ‘official’ limits between them as people went about trying to make sense of their personal trajectories and canvass situational alternatives. Pentecostalism and Afro-Brazilian Spiritism, conventional dualist morals or their more ‘situational’ counterparts, have become options in an enlarging menu of possibilities. An expansion has resulted from the need to increase and diversify the social, spiritual and moral resources at hand in a context where traditional means were less and less available.

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Notes 1. See Hilario Wynarczyck (1989) and Matthew Maróstica (1997) for a story of these ministries. 2. O sincretismo representa a captura da religiâo dos orixás dentro de um modelo que pressupôe, antes de mais nada, a existencia de dois polos antagónicos que presidem todas as açoes humanas: o bem e o mal; de um lado a virtude, do outro o pecado. Essa concepçao, que é a judaico-cristâ, nâo existia na África. As relaçoes entre os seres humanos e os deuses, como ocorre em outras antigas religiôes politeistas, eram orientadas pelos preceptos sacrificiais e pelo tabu, e cada orixá tinha suas normas prescritivas e restritivas próprias aplicáveis aos seus devotos, como ainda se observa no candomblé, nâo havendo um código de comportamento e valores único aplicable a toda a sociedade indistintamente, como no cristianismo, uma lei única que é a chave para o establecimento universal de un sistema que tudo classifica como sendo do bem ou do mal, em categorías mutuamente exclusivas (Reginaldo Prandi forthcoming). 3. Devemos no lembrar que as religiôes afro-brasileiras sâo religiôes que aceitam o mundo como ele é. Este mundo é considerado o lugar onde todas as realizaçoes pessoais sâo moralmente desejáveis e possiveis. O bom seguidor das religiôes dos orixás deve fazer todo o possivel para que seus desejos se realizem, pois é a través de a realizaçao humana que os deuses ficam mais fortes, e podem assim mais nos ajudar. Esse empenho em ser feliz nâo pode se enfraquecer diante de nenhuma barreira, mesmo que a felicidade implique o infortunio de outro (Reginaldo Prandi 2001). 4. Bahianos and bahianas are happy spirits, identified with carnival, dancing and white attires. Usually, groups of bahianos and bahianas are part of the Scolas do Zamba during carnival parades. 5. The material goals of consumer society are substituted for spiritual ones and ‘the world’ is condemned as a place of sin from which the brethren are rescued.

References Bastian, Jean Pierre (1997). La mutación religiosa de América latina. México d.f.: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Brusco, Elizabeth (1995). The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: Texas Univesity Press. d’Epinay, Christian Lalive (1968). El refugio de las masas. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Pacífico. Frigerio, Alejandro and María Julia Carozzi (1992). ‘Las religiones afro-brasileñas en Argentina’, Cadernos de Antropología X, pp. 1–23. Geertz, Clifford (1973). ‘Religion as a social system’, in Clifford Geertz (ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gill, Lesly (1993). ‘Religious mobility and the many words of God in La Paz, Bolivia’, in David Stoll and Virginia Garrard-Burnett (eds), Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric (1976). Bandidos. Barcelona: Ariel. Howe, Gary and Peter Fry (1975). ‘Duas respostas a afliçao: umbanda e pentecostalismo’, Debate e Critica VI, pp. 27–53.

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Lomnitz, Larissa (1989). Cómo sobreviven los marginados? Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Marostica, Matthew (1997). ‘Pentecostals and politics: the creation of the evangelical Christian movement in Argentina, 1983–1993’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Berkeley University. Mariz, Cecilia (1994). Coping with Poverty: Pentecostals and Christian Base Communities in Brazil. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Martin, David (1990).Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell. Míguez, Daniel (2002). ‘Inscripta en la piel y en el alma: Cuerpo e identidad en profesionales, pentecostales y jóvenes delincuentes’, Religiâo & Sociedade XXII/1, pp. 21–56. Prandi, Reginaldo (1996). ‘Pombagira e as faces inconfessas do Brasil’, in Reginaldo Prandi (ed.), Herdeiras do axé. São Paulo: Hucitec. (2001). ‘Exu, de Mensageiro a Diabo: Sincretismo Católico e Demonização do Orixá Exu’, Dossiê Revista Cinqüenta 50, pp. 46–63. Puex, Natalie (2003). ‘Las formas de la violencia en tiempos de crisis: una villa miseria del conourbano bonaerense’, in Alejandro Isla and Daniel Míguez (eds), Heridas urbanas: Violencia delictiva y transformaciones sociales en los noventa. Buenos Aires: Editorial de las Ciencias, pp. 35–70. Roberts, Bryan (1968). ‘Protestant groups and coping with urban life in Guatemala City’, American Journal of Sociology LXXIII, pp 23–45. Schutz, Alfred (1974). El problema de la realidad social. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Semán, Pablo and Daniel Míguez (2000). ‘Spiritualisation de la politique ou politisation de l’esprit? Connections et ruptures entre la culture politique et le pentecôstisme en Argentine’, in Andre Corten and Mary André (eds), Imaginaires politiques et pentecotismes: Afrique/Amerique Latine. París: Karthala. Smild, David (2003). ‘Worthless enemies and exasperating victims: confronting violence through Pentecostalism in Caracas’, paper presented in annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Washington. Stoll, David (1990). Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Willems, Emilio (1967). Followers of the New Faith. Nashville: Vanderbilt University. Wynarczyck, Hilario (1989). ‘Tres evangélicos carismáticos. Omar Cabrera, Anaconndia, Gimenez’, unpublished research document.

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15 Traditional Amerindian Religion In the Eyes of an Indigenous Pentecostal Church ■

Jan-Åke Alvarsson

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n the border of Argentina and Bolivia, there are some Amerindian hunters and gatherers,1 the Wichí and the ‘Weenhayek,2 who in the 1970s and the 1980s turned Pentecostal. In their own words, conversion meant leaving ‘the old life’ and entering ‘the new life’. ‘We are new people now!’ has been their frequent claim for decades.3 Their relationship with the old life is somewhat complicated, however. When departing from their Pentecostal perspective, ‘the old life’ is seen as something heathen, very often as something that should be forgotten and left behind. From a more nostalgic perspective, however, the ‘good old days’ are depicted as something good – when people ate well, had a good time and were really healthy. Pentecostal theology is not very strong on inter-religious dialogue. For crossing cultural and religious borders, the suggested means has been ‘conversion’ rather than ‘communication’. Thus, the theology of the Pentecostal missionaries has been of little assistance to the ‘Weenhayek in their struggle to cope with the differences. They have had to chisel out a theological practice of their own. This complex and contradictory image of traditional Amerindian religion will be discussed in this chapter.

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The Pre-Pentecostal Period of the ‘Weenhayek Up until the 1970s, the Wichí and the ‘Weenhayek were, in the main, Amerindian traditionalists. In the late nineteenth century, a few Catholic mission initiatives on the Pilcomayo river attracted some adherents, but these missions were short lived as the ‘Weenhayek quickly deserted them ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 1988: 24–5).4 After the dawn of the twentieth century, and before the Chaco War (1932–6), the ‘Weenhayek were much persecuted for their resistance to ‘civilization’ in the form of Catholicism. Shamans were repeatedly arrested and harassed in many ways. Traditional religious ceremonies were officially prohibited. During the Chaco War, a conflict that upset the whole region, the ‘Weenhayek were put in concentration camp–like villages and found themselves under tremendous economic, political and cultural (and thus also religious) pressure. Still few, if any, converted to Christianity. In 1943, a Swedish missionary, Astrid Jansson, bought a house in Villa Montes, a town that constitutes both the northernmost settlement of the ‘Weenhayek and the administrative centre of the Bolivian Gran Chaco, dominated by mestizos.5 Jansson actually chose to have her residence in an area that was considered predominantly ‘Weenhayek. Later she moved to Capirendita, a large ‘Weenhayek village on the other side of the Pilcomayo. In 1949, she was joined by Gustaf and Märta Flood, who also settled in Villa Montes and took over the work there. In 1955, they were followed by a large group of Swedish immigrants and in the mid-1970s by yet another generation of missionaries (Göran Johansson 1992: 78–82; Jan-Åke Alvarsson 2002: 117–234). Today the mission is back to a one- to two-family staff, and a great deal is handed over to the ‘Weenhayek. The Swedes serve as consultants in legal, pedagogical, linguistic and, in particular, fund-raising activities. Apart from the Pentecostal church work, joint activities include health care, translation work and a large bilingual schooling programme. During the first six years of Swedish missionary work, from 1943 to 1949, confidence gradually built up between the ‘Weenhayek in the Villa Montes region and Astrid Jansson. She lived in a hut ‘just like ours’, (as the ‘Weenhayek put it), and she took time to sit and talk, sharing her private time with the Indians. Apart from Astrid teaching the Indians how to read and write, there was little traditional missionary work. Instead, her activities were more of a practical or diaconal character that slowly resulted in what Göran Johansson (1992: 27–33) calls a metanoia process, a type of gradual spiritual metamorphosis based on shared experience.

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From ‘Weenhayek’s oral history of this period, it is obvious that Astrid Jansson first of all succeeded in transmitting the message that she preferred the company of the oppressed Amerindians to that of the oppressing whites. Thus, she obviously surprised and impressed the ‘Weenhayek and seems to have won their confidence. The ‘Weenhayek narratives about her are impressive. One thing is repeatedly stated: she was mandada por Dios (‘sent by God’);6 that is she not only perceived her being called to work among the ‘Weenhayek as a divine vocation, but was also able to convey this conception to the Amerindians. Another statement is also recurrent: Amaba a los indígenas (‘She loved the indigenous people’), in contrast to the mestizo or white population of the area who despised the Amerindians in general and the ‘Weenhayek in particular. The claim that Astrid was different is often substantiated by a story about her travelling downriver with a donkey for the first time: ‘She did not mount the donkey,’ people said, ‘she just used it for carrying goods – gifts for us!’ ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 2003b: 54) The testimony and heritage of Astrid Jansson somehow managed to live on, in spite of subsequent changes in the mission that neither Astrid nor the majority of the ‘Weenhayek were particularly enthusiastic about. Her missionary strategy did not seem to be very efficient, however. After six years of work, she could present little as tangible results: no school buildings, no churches, no clinics and just a few believers. The first four coverts were all men, who were still often talked about in the mid-1970s. Since 1949, when the Flood family joined Astrid Jansson, until 1970, the missionary activities gradually changed. From an emphasis on ‘communion’ (and metanoia, gradual ‘transformation’, see Johansson 1992: 29), Gustaf Flood now led activities in a direction of ‘development’ (and apostrépho, instant ‘conversion’). He initiated housing projects for the Indians in Villa Montes, territorial rights, a church in town and several chapels in the villages, an elementary school, a clinic, and so on. In course of time, Gustaf established a veritable, fenced-in, Christian ‘mission’ in Villa Montes where only those ‘leading a Christian life’ were allowed to reside. Simultaneously, the church services took on a more formal character with Flood as el Pastor. According to Bolivian regulations at the time, all official activities, including church services, were to be carried out in Spanish. Furthermore, Flood saw the command of this language as a key to integration into the national society as well as into the Bible. This, and the Protestant lifestyle that he taught, came to be known as la vida nueva (‘the new life’) – placed in contrast to traditional ‘Weenhayek life, which was called la vida vieja (‘the old life’). Through this

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method, Gustaf and subsequent missionaries emphasized difference, ‘cultural’ conversion (apostrépho instead of metanoia) and a successive bifurcation of the ‘Weenhayek society. A small number of ‘Weenhayek, most certainly including a majority of the innovators (cf. Fredrik Barth 1969) keen on making the best of social and cultural change in the area, converted to Pentecostalism during this period. They moved into the mission in Villa Montes, held positions as encargados (‘responsible’) at the local village congregations and studied the Bible during repeated courses. The vast majority, however, were only simpatizantes (‘sympathizers’; i.e. not ordinary members) and faltered between a Christian and an Amerindian lifestyle. Many gave up drinking and smoking; many attended the church services and took advantage of the medical attendance at the mission clinic. But all too often they suddenly gave up their status as ‘Christians’ and went back to smoking and drinking, as well as consulting shamans, and were thus considered ‘backsliders’ by the missionaries and the encargados. In many villages, the division between believers and non-believers took spatial expressions and was akin to the situation described by Niels Fock (1982: 13) from the Wichí of the Argentine village of Yuto, in 1955–6: The rural village structure is marked by the existence of evangelical missions, with one of their many small churches usually situated in the village’s open space. Many Mataco are not Christian; many others have difficulty in deciding just which group they should align themselves with, creating the dilemma of choosing between family and religious affiliation. In a village like Yuto, for instance, the compound is often divided into two sections, each surrounding its own open space. In such a situation the village’s traditional nightlife of shaman seances, to the music of rattles and dances accompanied by the beating of drums, is confined to the ‘heathen’ or ‘halfhearted’ section, whereas the Christian zone tends to be much quieter at night.

Even for those who converted to Pentecostalism during this period, the situation may be described as a ‘parallelism’ between ‘the old life’ and ‘the new life’. On the one hand, ‘the new life’ consisted of speaking Spanish, going to Western-oriented church services and associating with the ‘waajkyàs, the missionaries. Implicitly, it also contained elements of a national, Bolivian identity as the Spanish language was used in the street, while talking to non‘Weenhayek, at the market, in the shops and while negotiating with the authorities. It was also the language of the church. Songs, sermons, prayers and scripture readings were all performed in Spanish. On the other hand, the ‘the old life’ was associated with the home sphere, speaking ‘Weenhayek and, at least tacitly, respecting the remains (i.e. the

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phenomena not noticed by the Scandinavian missionaries) of the ‘Weenhayek culture and religion. The latter included the technicalities of handicraft production or respecting taboos when hunting, gathering or cooking. The relationship with the lawoo’s, the keepers of nature, is a pregnant example (Niels Fock 1982: 25). The Amerindian domain also increased during the fishing season (from May to September), when a majority of the ‘Weenhayek moved to temporary camps by the Pilcomayo River, away from the influence of the missionaries. Many, otherwise good, Christians were known to ‘go back to sin’ during this part of the year. The dichotomy between ‘the old life’ and ‘the new life’ was reified by the words of a painting in the ‘Weenhayek Pentecostal church in Villa Montes, built by Flood in 1951 and called Asamblea de Dios (‘Assembly of God’). The naivist painting depicted an open Bible with a quotation from 1 Peter 2: 10: Vosotros que en otro tiempo no erais pueblo, pero ahora sois pueblo de Dios, 1 Pedro 2: 10. (‘Ye, which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God’). This quotation seemed to underline the idea that the ‘Weenhayek during ‘the old life’ were not ‘people’, but that they, through ‘the new life’, had become ‘real [civilized] people’, people of divine confirmation, ‘people of God’. The personal identity of the ‘Weenhayek was obviously Amerindian if one discussed cultural matters not openly associated with the religious sphere, such as handicraft or even economic activities, as no ‘Weenhayek was permanently employed (cf. Jan-Åke Alvarsson 1988: 202–5). If legal matters came up, however, like the issuing of ID cards, the ‘Weenhayek called themselves Mataco and professed Bolivian citizenship. When asked about their religious affiliation with Spanish, no one would openly admit to be ‘pagan’ (Amerindian) but all professed to be evangélicos (i.e. Pentecostal Christians).

The Incipient Pentecostal Period During the first years of the 1970s, this whole classificatory system suddenly changed – almost overnight. A new religious movement suddenly appeared in northern Gran Chaco and spread also to Villa Montes. In an Evangelical terminology – used by the missionaries – this was called a ‘revival’, but there was little to be ‘revived’ as there was no solid foundation of Christian faith. Nevertheless, religious activities among the ‘Weenhayek took a new course – and have remained different ever since. According to my informants, and the missionaries I have interviewed, this movement was entirely indigenous; that is no missionary was involved in the process. Naturally, it somehow related to the missionaries’ teachings,

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but it stands out as a notable fact that the latter category was not there. Instead, ‘Weenhayek (and probably also Wichí) evangelists were preaching (in the ‘Weenhayek language), praying day and night in the villages and performing miracles. One much talked about incident was when a bottle of water was transformed into wine (cf. John 2). Sick people were healed instantly (cf. John 5) and signs were seen in the sky (cf. Luke 21: 11). The incident most frequently commented upon was a sign of fire in the sky (cf. Acts 2: 2–3). Church services most often took place in the open. People used to sit – or most of the time stand up – in a circle. Liturgy was far from traditionally Swedish Pentecostal. Services were characterized by an alternation between prayer and singing, with an occasional, fairly short testimony. A new type of music was introduced – a type of chorus sung in a typical ‘Weenhayek mode of chanting. In the missionary services, reading abilities and cultural barriers prevented the majority from singing. Now everyone, without exception, tuned in and the sensation was mighty. Within a very short time, according to my sources, there was a wave of massive conversion to Pentecostal Christianity. People cried, prayed and repented. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, fell and rejoiced. All of a sudden, the many prayers of the missionaries were somehow answered – in their absence. This situation gradually transformed the religious identity of the ‘Weenhayek. Instead of being a minority movement, the Pentecostal church all of a sudden became a majority church. Before, those who remained outside the church were ‘mainstream’ ‘Weenhayek; now those who were within the church suddenly belonged to that category. Somehow, the category previously reserved for borrachos (‘drunkards’) and brujos (‘witches’, i.e. shamans) now included all those who were not mainstream ‘Weenhayek, that is all who were not confessing Pentecostals. In the late 1970s, the methods of the Swedish mission also changed, probably less as a result of the ‘revival’, but rather due to the arrival of a new generation of missionaries. The whole attitude towards ‘Weenhayek language and culture underwent a successive transformation. During ‘missionary services’, sermons were more frequently translated into ‘Weenhayek, and later some of the missionaries even used ‘Weenhayek while preaching. A linguistic project was initiated, and missionaries started to translate the New Testament into the ‘Weenhayek language. In due course, the former dichotomy between ‘the old life’ and ‘the new life’ was weakened, and a marked reappraisal of ‘Weenhayek culture became increasingly obvious both within and without the ‘Weenhayek society. Although there had always been encargados, the first being the assistants of Astrid Jansson, there had been no regular pastors. The head missionary in Villa

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Montes had always been el Pastor (with a symbolic capital ‘P’). In the 1970s, however, encargados were established in all of the villages. In ‘Weenhayek, they were often referred to as ‘nolhààmetwos (‘the keepers of the Word’).7 Simultaneously, more responsibility was entrusted to the Amerindians for spreading and preaching the Bible. In the late 1980s, all positions within the church, even the position of el Pastor, was handed over to ‘Weenhayek individuals. Today Pentecostalism is in fact a most important part of the ‘Weenhayek ethnic identity ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 2005).

Pentecostalism Versus Amerindian Religion: The Classical View As indicated above, the Pentecostalism of the early missionaries was most exclusivist. It does not pertain only to the theology of Pentecostalism. It goes right through mainstream Judaism and Christianity. It is based on claims in the Old Testament, like Exodus 20: 3 ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’, as well as in the New Testament, like John 14: 6 ‘no man cometh unto the Father, but by me’ or Matthew 12: 30 ‘He that is not with me is against me’.8 This exclusivist claim implied that cultural and religious borders could be crossed only in one way, that is through ‘conversion’ [from paganism to Christianity] rather than through ‘communication’. Everything outside the Pentecostal movement, however, even other Christian denominations, was seen with great suspicion. The Catholic Church in Bolivia, for example, could be called ‘The Synagogue of Satan’ without any problems.9 Consequently, the Amerindian religion was regarded not only as something non-Christian, but also as something diabolic. Several different religious figures of Amerindian origin were depicted as ‘the devil’. Again, this was not only restricted to the Pentecostals. There were tendencies of exclusivism also among the early Catholics. The ‘Weenhayek/Wichí trickster, Thokwjwaj10 ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 1982: 82–90) was, for example, associated with the ‘devil’ through one of the Catholic fathers, Joaquín Remedi (1896: 459). This also spread to the Mataco: in the 1960s, the Danish anthropologist Niels Fock observed that ‘Reform-minded Christians reveal a tendency to downgrade mythology; they depict the trickster as a devil rather than as a creature beyond good and evil’ (1982: 14). When the Anglican missionaries appeared on the scene in northern Argentina, in the early twentieth century, they were not much different.11 They ‘openly rejected some traditional customs’ and they ‘openly opposed to shamanism’. This made the Mataco regard ‘the remains of their traditional

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culture as the concrete expressions of an inevitable demonology’ ( José A. Braunstein 2003: 31–2). The Swedish Pentecostals imbibed this attitude fairly naturally. Already in Sweden, the Amerindians had been described as ‘this miserable, forgotten people’ tied in the ‘dark fetters of paganism’.12 And when the Swedish missionaries had been in contact with the Mataco for some time, they wrote about ‘the monotonous, terrible music that we heard in northern Argentina’ and ‘these terrible, devilish dances’ performed by people ‘as if they were possessed, which they probably are as well’.13 For the Amerindians who converted during this period, ‘the same opposition gradually became functional’. ‘Hence indigenous peoples were usually associated with the Demon’s religion, the Christian devil, something seemingly opposed to God’s religion’ ( José A. Braunstein 2003: 32, 20). When the ‘Weenhayek themselves preached about this dichotomy, they at times clearly reflected the missionaries’ perception. When the lay preacher from Villa Montes – Matakyeyis – talked about contracting marriage, he said: ‘The pastor will be notified. In that way, it will turn out well with our marriages, if we are under the power of God. Then you will not be in the power of the devil’ ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 2005: 200). Thus, the eternal struggle between good and evil was evidently coined in the terms ‘God’ and ‘devil’. Interestingly enough, this apparent dichotomy between traditional ‘Weenhayek ways and what is perceived as Pentecostal is terminologically referred to as between the Christian God, Yoos (from ‘Dios’, the Spanish name for God) and‘Ahààtaj, the ‘Weenhayek term for the ‘devil’. So if God as conceived by the missionaries was superimposed on a vague, pre-Christian concept of a supreme being (Rafael Karsten 1913: 202), the idea of the ‘devil’ has explicitly fused with the one of ‘Ahààtaj, the traditional ‘lord of the invisible: the dead, disease, dreams, secrets’ (Niels Fock 1982: 25, 28) among the Mataco peoples.

Pentecostalism Versus Amerindian Religion: The Reformed View The ‘Weenhayek revival experience in the 1970s, as well as the appearance of a new missionary generation, transformed this culturally and ethnically based dichotomy into something much less palpable. All of a sudden, the clear dichotomy between the ‘Christian’ and the ‘Amerindian’ religion was blurred. The clear distinction between, on the one hand, Christian, urban, civilized, theoretical and quiet, and on the other hand, ‘Weenhayek, rural (wilderness), original, practical and ecstatic was upset by the arrival of indigenized

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Pentecostalism. The Argentinean anthropologist José A. Braunstein (2003: 32) tells us how the ‘revival’ reached Las Lomitas in Argentina: In the early 70’s, from the Pentecostal Swedish mission of Km. 6, near the city of Tartagal, Salta province, a Christian cultural form began to be spread offering an alternative salvation modality to the faithful – the ‘Asamblea de Dios’. The new cult, strongly contrasting with the Anglican on the basis of more expressive ways as it included such forms as ecstasy, glossolalia, curing, etc., as manifestations of the Pentecostal spirit, precisely threatened the most ‘Mataco-like’ feature of the Anglican scheme – its static nature. However, concurrently, it offered a solution to the wrenching contradiction that was making the Mataco Anglican horizon tense – a cult form that contemplated curing and whose ecstatic modality approached the unredeemed shamanism.14

What Braunstein emphasizes in this quotation is the sudden change that occurs with the massive success of indigenous Pentecostalism. Before this, Christianity – Anglican services in the south as well as the Swedish missionary Pentecostalism in the north – was an organized modality that stood in stark contrast to the ‘wild’ and ecstatic nature of traditional ‘Weenhayek religion, including shamanism. After this ontological shift of Christianity, marked by original Pentecostalism (and its African or African-American roots) as well as by indigenization, the difference in practice between the two religions diminished radically. All of a sudden chanting, ecstasy and healing, for example, started belonging to both spheres. This blurring of the ontological differences between the two religious traditions made the ‘Weenhayek hesitate about what to think, or how to classify. From an easy good-and-evil dichotomy, it was now impossible to place some of the phenomena in just one of the currents. They belonged to both, most notably the expressions chanting, ecstasy and healing. Seen in a certain perspective, indigenized Pentecostal religion could also be regarded as a reinforcement and a ‘democratization’ of Amerindian religion ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 2005: 202), something that blurred the dividing lines even more. Theologically, this diffusion was increased by the arrival of a new generation of missionaries. These were influenced by Evangelical theologians like Don Richardson (1976, 1985) who had a devolutionist approach, claiming that all religions were of the same origin. This meant, of course, a dramatic change in the attitude towards the genesis of Amerindian religion. If this were true, which some of the missionaries at times doubted, it meant that ‘Weenhayek religion was of a divine origin – not a diabolic one. Naturally, the ‘Weenhayek themselves were most confused by this swift change. They had learned to condemn the ‘old times’ in official discourse. Most of them therefore avoided entering into speculation about the

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relationship between the two religions. Several times when I interviewed old ‘Weenhayek Christians in the mid-1970s, they told me about ‘the old ways’ with pleasure. ‘In those days people were healthy’, they claimed, adding that ‘they lived only from the products in the forest, which made them strong!’ This went on for some time until they suddenly remembered (it frequently happened, for instance, to my informant Nitipeyis): ‘No, that’s part of la vida vieja, we should not talk about it!’ And then he promptly stopped speaking. This sudden remorse reflected the fact that talking about the ‘good old days’ in the ‘Weenhayek language might have been accepted, but as an echo of something from the old missionary Flood’s teachings, when speaking Spanish, the old life was not to be mentioned – unless, of course, it was used as an example of how bad things were before the change ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 2003a: 233–4) This haltering view of the Amerindian religion might be regarded as a type of parallelism where the two alternate religious modalities somehow existed side by side. As the missionaries in general, and the Flood family in particular (see above), had started the missionary work in Spanish, everything related to the outside society (somehow the ‘official sphere’ for the ‘Weenhayek) was included in an ‘official code’. This code naturally included a discourse in Spanish on la vida vieja as well as on Pentecostalism. The attitude towards the old life was considerably different when speaking (and thinking) in ‘Weenhayek. The recurrent transition between these two spheres could easily be regarded as a type of ‘code-switching’, in the sense that this term is used in sociolinguistics. Code-switching was facilitated by the exclusive use of Spanish in the Pentecostal services, in all the dealings with the missionaries and in official discourse. As the early missionaries, apart from Astrid Jansson, did not learn any ‘Weenhayek, that sphere was closed from inspection and regulations. Views and opinions expressed in ‘Weenhayek, for example, on Amerindian religion, were never subjected to the missionary modality. So while official discourse (in Spanish), before the ‘revival’, was quite dualistic, the familiar one (in ‘Weenhayek), was much less so – something that occasionally and surprisingly was manifested in my conversations with informants in the mid1970s. In my most subjective appreciation, the extended use of ‘Weenhayek also in church services, the fusion of religious practices and the changing theological position on the origin of Amerindian religion therefore blurred the differences between not only the two religions, but also the two spheres, the official and the familiar. When participants in the indigenous cultos (‘services’) were outside the monitoring eyes of the missionaries, they let go of these borders and freely integrated elements from Amerindian religion that fitted well with what they (not the missionaries) perceived to be appropriate expressions

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of their spiritual experience. The (shrinking) official code still labelled this Pentecostalism without quotation marks. In this process there were clear signs of reconciliation between Pentecostalism and Amerindian religion. This second phase did not include the official recognition of the past, of ‘Weenhayek religion, but it did relocate it from the sphere of evil and the devil, to a type of detour from original creation that was not all bad.

Pentecostalism Versus Amerindian Religion: The Alternate View In what I would label the third phase of interreligious contact, Amerindian religion was seen as an alternative way of approaching the divine that somehow might be combined with traditional Pentecostalism. This view is not yet clearly visible among the ‘Weenhayek in Villa Montes, Bolivia, where I have conducted most of my fieldwork, but is clearly so further south, among the Wichí in northern Argentina. In 2003, one of my students, Gabriela Kristek, did fieldwork in Las Lomitas, locally instructed by my colleague José A. Braunstein. As I monitored this process closely, visiting Las Lomitas sometimes in the process, I freely make use of accounts written by both of them on this matter. First a note on the official discourse that is very similar to the one in Villa Montes. Gabriela Kristek (2005: 32), for example, claims that: ‘From what I heard the Wichí always condemned shamanism – even though I was also told that shamans can and do actually heal’. Thus, there seems to be little difference as regards what people say in Villa Montes and in Las Lomitas. Officially, shamanism or Amerindian religion is frowned upon. It is not considered useless or all negative, however. There is recognition of their efficacy in the claim that ‘shamans actually heal’. The latter point of view is actually emphasized by one of Kristek’s Pentecostal informants, Simón: They [the sorcerers] can send sickness to a person. The brujos like to drink. They know how to heal as well, they heal with the help of wine, and the people are healthy afterwards. Hiyawu’ [shaman] is the Wichí word for sorcerer. It was the religion from before, and the brujos today have been taught by their older relatives (Gabriela Kristek 2005: 32).

Thus, recognition now seems to be part of the view of ‘the other’. The distance to official gatekeepers in global Pentecostalism is by far larger in Las Lomitas than in Villa Montes, where, as we have seen, there are Swedish

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missionaries present for a good part of the year. Thus, the structural setup is different. Therefore, although there are many similarities in discourse and church practice, there is much difference in structure. In Villa Montes, there is still a single church for all the ‘Weenhayek, the Iglesia ‘Weenhayek, close by the old mission. In Las Lomitas, Pentecostalism is not the only professed faith, nor are the Wichí Pentecostals united in a single church. In fact, the movement has been atomized: ‘Each one of these religious movements come from a person, each priest builds his own church’ ( José A. Braunstein 2003: 33). These movements are somehow related to their pastors’ or leaders’ consensus, that is of those who actually build the church premises and who usually are ordered to do so in tohwilhek (ecstatic state). We have repeatedly seen a church come up and rapidly act as the core of a religious revival in the area until some months later when it declines and ends up in ruins. In those cases the prestige of the leader in charge of the church is lost. The Iglesia Evangélica Unida (IEU) of the Wichí inherited from shamanism, its idiosyncratic character being the expression of individual will. Each one of these religious movements comes from a person; each priest builds his own church.15 This quotation also alludes to the fact that indigenization of Pentecostalism has gone much further, and at a quicker pace in Las Lomitas than in Villa Montes. Kristek also points to the apparent continuity in practice, more expected here as the course has been shorter as well as more rapid: In the Wichí culto, however, it becomes quite clear that the ‘new’ Pentecostal service, as all ‘new’ rituals, bears many strong similarities to the rituals of the past. The praxis of Pentecostalism has been indigenised. [...] the ritual holds the whole faith together to an extent where a homogeneous discourse is not needed (Gabriela Kristek 2005: 65).

In the introduction to her essay from 2005, Kristek provides us with an example of such a case. She tells us of a healing in a Pentecostal setting but with typical Amerindian attributes and practices: During my fieldwork in the Gran Chaco I suffered from a bout of influenza, and on this particular day (1st of September 2003) I had a very sore throat as well, and therefore Ana Gómez, the Wichí healer, said she was going to cure me. We went inside my house to carry out the healing. While we were standing up, she and her assistant prayed in Wichí and laid their hands on my head. Ana ‘stroked’ or ‘brushed’ her hands over my back and chest in a strong downward motion, she blew on my throat, and rubbed a little saliva there with her fingers. After that she removed something out of my throat with her bare hand. The object she took out was a small bluish-purple piece of plastic. I saw it in her hand straight afterward; she was not trying to show it to me, but not attempting to hide it either (Gabriela Kristek 2005: 1).

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For anyone even distantly acquainted with Amerindian religious practices, this is a typical example of shamanic exorcism. The healer extracts the medium of the evil from the body of the patient. She uses saliva and the brushing of hands in the process. So far there is nothing new. The surprising matter, however, is that this is done in a Pentecostal setting. Ana is a major figure in the Pentecostal congregation at Lote 42, a few kilometres south of Las Lomitas. The prayers are carried out in a Pentecostal discourse, and Ana does not identify herself with the traditional healers. They represent something different, something else (Gabriela Kristek 2005: 32; cf. José A. Braunstein 2003: 36). The new attitude towards Amerindian religion is obvious, however. Although there are tendencies towards this third approach in Villa Montes also, it is in Las Lomitas that we see it much clearer. There is no longer a discussion of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ when it comes to different religious currents. Here, Amerindian practices represent another, somehow parallel line of approaching the divine. Most Pentecostals would still claim that their healing colleagues of the traditional Amerindian line should still become Christians and Pentecostals so that they are on an equal footing with them. Nevertheless, there is somehow a type of mutual respect across the religious borders.16 Different religious forms have always criss-crossed and interchanged. In such a context, religious denominations are used as markers of external identity rather than as markers of dogmatic or doctrinal differences. [...] In the celestial ways of the Mataco world the shamans meet Evangelical pastors and healers and viceversa. Rather than sectarian groups with dogmatic differences they make up social groups confronting the others on the plane of the transcendental power, although all share a physical and cosmological space generically similar to that of the traditional Mataco culture ( José A. Braunstein 2003: 37, 31).

This third phase of interreligious contact, where Amerindian religion is seen as an alternative way of approaching the divine and something that in part may be combined with classical Pentecostalism, seems to be strikingly different from the first phase of strict dichotomy. In practice, this apparent distance may be a mere illusion, however. It is fully possible that, in the minds of the ‘Weenhayek and the Wichí, these two worlds have always been fairly close. In that case, what is new is the transformed discourse. It might sound too conventional if we claim that the present discourse has been ‘indigenised’ or ‘de-colonized’, but that is at least one way of describing what has happened. When the missionaries appeared on the scene, first the British Anglicans and later the Swedish Pentecostals, they brought along a terminology that was coined in the Euro-American church world, extremely distant from that of the Bible and from that of the Amerindians of the Gran Chaco. These terms were

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superimposed on the ones already existing among the Wichí/‘Weenhayek. The value of these led to a discourse dichotomy that did not reflect the actual views of the Amerindians. In due course of time, and with the successive indigenization of religious terminology (also through an Amerindian reading of the Bible),17 we now have a clearer picture of how today’s indigenous Pentecostals actually perceive of their past and of their kinsmen still practising the Amerindian religion.

Conclusions In this chapter we have followed some of the changes in the relationship between Christianity, primarily in the form of Pentecostalism, and Amerindian religion, as represented by ‘Weenhayek/Wichí spirituality. It has been suggested that Pentecostalism, as presented by the early missionaries, in the main attracted the ‘Weenhayek as a form of humanitarian and protective modality, but that it resulted in few conversions – not even nominal ones. In 1971, when the ‘Weenhayek encountered another, this time indigenized, version of Pentecostalism, they reacted differently. A vast majority readily embraced this new modality, and massive conversions followed. In due course, this was regarded as their own, ‘Weenhayek form of Christianity and even became part of the basic elements that were considered to constitute the ‘Weenhayek identity. As a parallel course, we have followed the successive alterations in the ‘Weenhayek/Pentecostal view of their own traditional, Amerindian religion. I have suggested that the early Swedish missionaries introduced a clear-cut dichotomy of good and evil, and that Pentecostal Christianity was introduced as the representation of ‘good’, while traditional ‘Weenhayek religion came to symbolize ‘evil’. Even though this was not entirely embraced by the ‘Weenhayek, their discourse in Spanish clearly reflected it. When speaking ‘Weenhayek, the distinction was less clear. This was exemplified by the tacit respect for keepers of nature and taboos related to these. This haltering approach, here identified as code-switching, was made possible through the missionaries’ faltering command of ‘Weenhayek. I have called this incipient period of an apparently simple dichotomy ‘The Classical View’. In the wake of the movement in 1971, another perspective on traditional religion followed, what I have called ‘The Reformed View’. This position was characterized by problems of identification and classification and subsequent blurring of differences. The result was often that ‘Weenhayek individuals avoided talking about traditional religion at all. Whenever they did, language use was often decisive. In Spanish, for example, they would

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condemn traditional shamanism, while when speaking ‘Weenhayek, they would express respect for food taboos or for the keepers of nature. At the end of the 1990s, a third phase became notable. I have called it ‘The Alternate View’ because in this perspective, Pentecostal Christianity and traditional Amerindian religion are but two ways of approaching the divine and, for example, find cure for spiritual, psychological or physical plagues. Similar to the first perspective, there is a tendency to exclusivism, but unlike that view, there is now much more of mutual respect. From a cultural point of view, it might be claimed that the ‘Weenhayek have reconciled themselves with the past. ‘The new life’ has somehow merged with ‘the old life’, and the result is a democratized spirituality with several optional ways of reaching the divine – all of them under an ethnic, ‘Weenhayek umbrella.

Notes 1. The Wichí/‘Weenhayek are still in the main gatherers and fishermen, with some slashand-burn cultivation. They form part of the Mataco peoples who live in northern Argentina and southern Bolivia, in the territory between the Bermejo and the Pilcomayo rivers. Their language can be divided into no less than 12 different dialect groups ( José A. Braunstein 1993: 4). In total, they number some 40,000 individuals, whereas the ‘Weenhayek group (among whom I have conducted fieldwork since 1976) alone may amount to some 3000. They employ a bilateral kinship system of the Hawaiian variant ( Jan-Åke Alvarsson 1988: 81–7). They are monogamous, practising bride service and uxorilocal post-marital residence. They have no descent ideology, no inheritance rules and no chiefs with executive power. 2. Two terms are used to denote the two dialect groups in question: Wichí, which has become the common label for the Mataco groups in Argentina (used e.g. by José A. Braunstein 2003) and Weenhayek (which is the singular form), the common label for the northernmost dialect group, in all of Bolivia and the north tip of Argentina. When speaking of the whole ethnic group (or ‘linguistic chain’ of dialects that make up something that could be defined as an ethnic group), I use the traditional term Mataco. The Wichí–‘Weenhayek Indians, however, find this to be a depreciatory term, obviously because of the (erroneous) association between ‘mata-co’ and the Spanish verb matar (‘to kill’). (The origin of that word is probably from Spanish montaraces ‘bush people’.) This is why we try to use this term as little as possible. 3. The three expressions refer back to the three concepts used in local Spanish, vida vieja (‘old life’), vida nueva (‘new life’) and Somos gente nueva ahora (‘We are new people now’) (Gabriela Kristek 2005: 53; cf. Moniek Boerenkamp and Arjan Schuthof 1985: 79). 4. José A. Braunstein provides us with information on similar initiatives among the Wichí (2003: 27–8). 5. Villa Montes became the centre for my own fieldwork in the Gran Chaco, from 1976 up to the present. I have spent a total of around six years in the field, the longest period being slightly more than three years, and I have visited the Gran Chaco almost every year for 30 years. With this background, it is quite natural that Villa Montes is also at

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6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

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the centre of this article. As explained in the main text, the other location of focus is Las Lomitas in northern Argentina, in the Formosa province. See Jan-Åke Alvarsson (2003b) for the myth-making process around Astrid Jansson. There is an interesting terminological parallel here between the ‘Keepers of Nature’ (-woos) and the ‘Keepers of the Word’ that indicates an epistemological connection. This was further emphasized by the dichotomy between heaven and hell, instructing the believer not only to trust in God but to ‘fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’(Matthew 10: 28b). These quotations are from an article written by Swedish missionaries to Bolivia in the Pentecostal journal Evangelii Härold (1920) XLII, p. 167. The spelling, and even characterization, of this figure’s name varies with the region and with the linguist or the anthropologist concerned. Takwjwaj is another way of writing his name. In Joaquín Remedi’s text (1896: 459), for example, the name is spelled Tacjuaj. In spite of this, this anthropomorphic trickster is perhaps the most elaborated literary figure of his kind, even surpassing the Wakdjunkaga of the Winnebago, made famous by Paul Radin (1956). The Anglican Mission (SAM [South American Missionary Society]), lately known as Iniciativa Cristiana, extended their work into the territory of the ‘Weenhayek and thus also into Bolivia. As late as in the 1970s I met Anglican missionaries in the village of Crevaux. In the past two decades, partly because of the political tension between Great Britain and Argentina, they have given up their work among the ‘Weenhayek, leaving it to the Swedish/Norwegian missionaries. Quotations from Edwin Tallbacka in Evangelii Härold (1920) XIV, p. 52. Albin Gustafsson in Evangelii Härold 1923 XXXII, p. 378. The movement or ‘revival’ depicted by José A. Braunstein is the same as the one that appeared in Villa Montes in 1971. The IEU is a Pentecostal-like church founded by Mennonites but inspired by Argentinean Pentecostals. See further José A. Braunstein (2003). In the following quotations from Braunstein, ‘Evangelical’ should not be understood in the traditional North American sense, and as it is used in other parts of this article, but as a mere translation of evangélico, a term that in Latin America encompasses both Pentecostals and other Protestants, that is non-Catholic Christians. The full New Testament was translated into Wichí (Mataco-Véjoz) in 1962 and into ‘Weenhayek (Mataco-Noctenes) in 2001.

References Alvarsson, Jan-Åke (1982). Matacomytologins roll i social förändring, Working Paper. Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University. (1988). The Mataco of the Gran Chaco: An Ethnographic Account of Change and Continuity in Mataco Socio-Economic Organization, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 11. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. (2002). Till Bolivias indianer: berättelsen om svensk pingstmission i ‘Syd-Amerikas skogstrakter’. Örebro: Libris.

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(2003a). ‘True Pentecostals or true Amerindians – or both? Religious identity among the ‘Weenhayek Indians of southern Bolivia’, in Jan-Åke Alvarsson and Rita Laura Segato (eds), Religions in Transition: Mobility: Merging and Globalization in the Emergence of Contemporary Religious Adhesions, Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology 37, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, pp. 209–52. (2003b). ‘The woman and the donkey: the making of myth’, Acta Americana (Uppsala) XI/2, pp. 54–62. (2005). ‘The Ethnified gospel: the Christian message as presented by ‘Weenhayek preachers’, in Jan-Åke Alvarsson (ed.), The Missionary Process, Studia Missionalia Svecana 99. Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Missionary Research, pp. 169–208. Barth, Fredrik (ed.) (1969). Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Bergen and Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Boerenkamp, Moniek and Arjan Schuthof (1985). ‘Ahora trabajamos y tenemos la fe: Los Matacos de Crevaux en su respuesta al proceso de integración en la sociedad Boliviana’, Unpublished essay, University of Utrecht. Braunstein, José A. (2003). ‘“Indios’’ and “Cristianos”: religious movements in the eastern part of the Wichí ethnic chain’, Acta Americana XI/2, pp. 19–42. Fock, Niels (1982). ‘History of Mataco folk literature and research’, in Johannes Wilbert and Karin Simoneau (eds), Folk Literature of the Mataco Indians. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Studies, pp. 1–33. Johansson, Göran (1992). More Blessed to Give: A Pentecostal Mission to Bolivia in Anthropological Perspective, Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology 30. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Karsten, Rafael (1913). ‘La religión de los indios mataco-noctenes de Bolivia’, Anales del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Buenos Aires XXIV, pp. 199–218. Kristek, Gabriela (2005). ‘“We are new people now”: Pentecostalism as a means of ethnic continuity and social acceptance among the Wichí of Argentina’, Magisteruppsatser i kulturantropologi, Nr 7. Uppsala: Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University. Radin, Paul (1956). The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Remedi, Joaquín (1896). ‘América meriodonal: apuntes sobre el Gran Chaco y los Indios que lo habitan’, Las Misiónes Católicas (Barcelona), pp. 362–4, 411–4, 459–62, 509–11. Richardson, Don (1976). Fredsbarnet. Stockholm: Den kristna bokringen. (1985). Evigheten i deras hjärtan. Stockholm: Den kristna bokringen.

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Index

Aasmundsen, Hans Geir 15, 243–259 Ababio, Isaac 63 abortion 254, 256 Accra 63 Acts of the Apostles 44, 49, 151 Adam 48–49 Adeboye, Enoch Adejare 102–108 AFM, see Apostolic Faith Mission African Independent Churches (AIC) 5–6, 10, 57–62, 68, 70 African Indigenous Churches, see African Independent Churches African Initiated Churches, see African Independent Churches Afro-Brazilian religions 263, 267–268, 270, 272 Afro-Brazilian spiritism 263–264, 266–273 Agbozo, Enoch 63 agnosticism, agnostics 159 AIC, see African Independent Churches aje 87 Akindayomi, Josiah Olufemi 100–101 Akindolie, Ogunribido 100 Aladura churches/movements 11, 97, 100, 102 alcohol 14–15, 64, 212, 217–218, 220, 231–232, 269–270, 280 Allah 104, 109 All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists 169 Almolonga 14, 209–216, 218–221 Alvarsson, Jan-Åke 16, 277–293 Amata, Fred 80 Ammerman, Nancy 230 ancestor veneration 49–50, 52, 128 ancestors 10, 45–46, 48, 51–52, 77, 130, 152, 216, 267

Anderson, Allan 1–3, 5–6, 8, 12, 17, 45, 96, 117–135, 145, 165, 173 angels 149, 210, 217 Angley, Ernest 49, 51 Anglicanism, Anglicans 94, 289 Anim, Peter 60, 62 animism 139, 151 Annacondia, Carlos 210 Annis, Sheldon 220 anti-witchcraft movements 11, 75–77, 85–86 Antwi, Daniel 58 AOG, see Assemblies of God Assemblies of God (AOG) 9, 27–30, 32–36, 39–40, 43, 61, 102, 124, 137, 150, 166–167, 170, 172, 232, 255 Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) 29, 97, 101–102 Appleby, Scott R. 227, 233–234 Argentina, Argentineans 8, 15, 223, 243, 245–250, 252–256, 262, 264, 268, 271, 277, 283, 285, 287 Asamblea de Dios 246, 281, 285 Ashton, John 138, 140, 147 Atiemo, Abamfo O. 63, 65 Azusa Street 1, 5, 7, 27–28, 45, 97,120–122, 165, 194, 245 babalawo 100 Badstuebner, Jennifer 78 Bak, Pavel 172 Baker, Tammy Faye 228 Balkan 179, 182, 185 baptism 5, 52, 61–62, 68, 120–122, 132, 172 Baptists 161, 246, 254 Baran, Emily 159 Barber, Karin 60 Barrett, Thomas B. 7

295

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296 Bastian, Jean-Pierre 244 Bastian, Misty 77 Bays, Daniel H. 119 Bediako, Kwame 58 Belorussia, Belorussians 159, 161, 166 Benin City 93–94 Benson, Teco 79 Berg, Robert A. 3 Bergoglio, Jorge 252–253 Berntsen, Bernt 122–123 Berntsen, Magna 122–123 Beruldsen, John 127 Bevelander, Pieter 197 bible study 67, 101, 236 blessings 12, 53, 141–143, 149–150, 210 Bodin, Per-Arne 160, 171 Bolivia, Bolivians 277, 283, 287 Bonnke, Reinhard 11, 199 born-again Christianity, born-again Christians 61, 64–66, 68–70, 77, 88–89, 104, 172, 194, 199, 201 born-again witches 73, 77–79, 86, 89 Bosnia-Hercegovina 196 Braide movement 97 Braunstein, Jose A. 284, 287 Brazil, Brazilians 4, 7–8, 18, 160, 244, 262, 265, 267 Brelsford, George 128 Britain 7, 35, 102, 122, 179, 184 Brotherhood of the Cross and Star 82 Brouwer, Steve 1, 151 Brusco, Elizabeth 14, 227–242, 266 Buddhism, Buddhists 12, 117, 130, 141, 148–149, 162 Buenos Aires 243, 246, 250, 262, 269 Calvary Chapel 158, 169 Candomblé 8, 267–268 cannibalism 74 Cárdenas, Luis A. 246 Carriquiry, Guzmán 252–253 caste system 122 Catholic base communities 267 Catholicism, Catholics 2, 50, 59, 69, 98, 182, 214–216, 218–221, 229, 235–237, 243–256, 264, 267, 269–270, 272, 278, 283

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Index CEA, see Conferencia Episcopal Argentina de Certeau, Michel 88 Charismatic churches/movements 57, 63, 66–70, 98–99, 158, 187 children 30, 32, 46, 70, 73–74, 124, 160, 171, 210, 212, 229, 232–233; see also youth Chile, Chileans 8, 244, 262 Chimusoro, Samuel 48 China Inland Mission (CIM) 119, 122 China 6, 12, 117–135, 142, 217 Christ for All Nations 11, 44, 51 Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) 119, 121–122, 125 Christian Council of Ghana 10, 62 Church Missionary Society 77, 94 Church of Pentecost (COP) 57, 61–63 CIM, see China Inland Mission Clifford, Walter 127 CNCE, see Consejo Nacional Cristiano Evangélico Coleman, Simon 3 colonialism 126, 132, 247 Columbia, Colombians 14–15, 210, 227–242 Comaroff, Jean 211 communism, communists 7–8, 13, 160, 171, 194 Conferencia Episcopal Argentina (CEA) 254 confession 52, 77, 81, 84–86, 88, 160, 168, 235 Confucianism 149 Consejo Nacional Cristiano Evangélico (CNCE) 254 conversion, converts 70, 103, 105, 107, 118, 124, 141, 147, 179, 197, 199, 201, 215, 218–220, 227, 229–232, 235–236, 250, 261–263, 266, 279, 283–284 Cook, Ethel 129–130 COP, see Church of Pentecost Corten, Andres 211 Couldry, Nick 86, 88 Cox, Harvey 118, 137, 142, 147–148, 245 Creamer, Mark 32–33

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Index dance 6, 38, 51, 144, 146, 185, 280, 284 Danfulani, Umar H. D. 74 Daniels, David D. 4–5 Davie, Grace 195 death 46–51, 61, 64, 73–74, 101, 109, 139, 172, 182, 212, 233–234 Deiros, Pablo 235, 246, 253 demons 12, 48, 60, 126, 128, 147, 149, 209–225, 284 Deuschle, Bonnie 47 Deuschle, Tom 47, 50 devil, see Satan divination, diviners 45–46, 49, 75–76, 87, 218 Doner, C. W. 128 drugs 36, 49, 269, 285 Ebel, Roland 214, 216, 218–219 Ebel, Wilhelm 164–165 Echtler, Magnus 10, 73–92 education 1, 94, 99, 100, 107, 118, 129–130, 184, 186–187, 196, 235 Egbe Ogo Oluwa (Glory of God Fellowship) 101 El Salvador 8, 211–212 Elliott, Charles 142 Elton, S. G. 97 Embassy of God Church (Kiev) 7 EPC, see Evangelical Presbyterian Church d'Epinay, Christian Lalive 244, 252, 261 equality 13, 122, 188 Evangelical Pentecostal Union 7 Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) 66–67 evangelicalism, evangelicals 15, 64–65, 70, 117, 119, 121–122, 125, 151, 161, 174, 214, 227, 229–232, 234–237, 246, 252–254, 270, 272, 281, 285 Evans-Pritchard, Edward 74 Eve 48 evil 2, 9–10, 12, 16, 46, 48–49, 52–53, 60–61, 68, 73–75, 78, 80–81, 84–89, 125, 130–132, 143, 147, 149, 198, 210, 216, 232, 263, 268, 272, 283–285, 287, 289–290

297 evil spirits 46, 48, 53, 60, 73, 78, 131, 149, 198, 268; see also spirits Evita, see Peron exorcism 2, 5, 10, 12, 45, 47, 61, 78, 141, 143, 146–151, 210, 216–217, 219, 289 Faith gospel 44, 99, 103 Falwell, Jerry 9, 228 families, family values 32, 46, 50, 70, 109, 185, 187, 210, 212, 219–220, 227–228, 230–234, 237, 262, 270, 272 feminism 227–242 Fernandez, James 237 Filatov, Sergei 159 filioque 168 films 11, 77, 79, 82–86, 88 Fletcher, William C. 166, 169 Flood, Gustaf 278–281, 286 Flood, Märta 278–279, 281, 286 Fock, Niels 280, 283 France 13, 179, 183–184 Frangipane, Francis 210 Freebrethren, Freebrethren churches 246, 254 freedom of religion 253–254 Frente Vital 269–270 Friedman, Menachem 237 Fuller Theological Seminary 210, 235 fundamentalism, fundamentalists 95, 147–148, 151, 227–242 Gardner, Maria 123–124 Garr, Alfred 121–124 Garr, Lillian 121–124 Garrard-Burnett, Virginia 14, 209–225, 230 Gay y Blasco, Paloma 184, 187 Geertz, Clifford 266 gender 34, 40, 227–234, 236–237, 262 Germany, Germans 7, 164, 219, 245 Geschiere, Peter 11, 85 Gifford, Paul 1, 7, 43–44, 48, 151 Gill, Lesly 266 globalization 3–4, 12, 18, 118, 120, 139, 150–152, 252

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298 Goldin, Liliana 214, 219 Graham, Franklin 9 Green, Linda 230 Guatemala 211, 217–218, 220, 230 Gypsies 182, 189; see also Roma Gómez, Ana 288–289 Habermas, Jürgen 248–251 Hackett, Rosalind, I. J. 74 Hagin, Kenneth 44, 47 Hannerz, Ulf 3 Harare 47–48, 51 Hardacre, Helen 228 Harding, Susan 228 Hare Krishnas 162 healers 75, 79, 80, 216, 269, 288 healing 5–6, 10, 12, 14, 43–51, 53, 58–61, 68, 96, 98, 132, 139–141, 143–144, 146–152, 170, 216, 253, 282, 285 health 35, 44–45, 47–48, 50–51, 53, 80, 99, 106, 109, 149–151, 171, 196, 210, 212, 220, 266, 269, 277–278, 286–287 Hear the Word Ministries 43–55 Hedding, Malcolm 37 Hedin, Christer 198 Heilman, Samuel C. 237 Helgesson Kjellin, Kristina 9, 17, 27–42 Herzl, Theodor 181 Hezmalhalch, Thomas 102 Hindle, Thomas 128 Hinduism, Hindus 2, 12, 117, 127, 129 HIV/AIDS 32–33, 35–36, 51 Hjärpe, Jan 198 Holy Spirit 1–2, 5, 11–12, 48–49, 52–53, 58–59, 61, 68–70, 124, 126, 129–130, 147, 150–152, 168–170, 179, 182, 215–216, 219, 236–237, 282 homosexuality 200, 202, 211 Hunt, Stephen 171 Huntington, Samuel P. 198 Hutson, Scott 144 hypnosis 139–140, 143 IEU, see Iglesia Evangélica Unida Iglesia Evangélica Unida (IEU) 288 Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal 8

Index Iglesia Ondas de Amor y Paz 246 Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios 246 Ijo Irapada (the Redeemed Church) 101 Ijo Ogo Oluwa (the Glory of God Church) 101 Ikenga-Metuh, Emefie 73 illness 211–212, 215, 217, 232 India, Indians 185, 217, 278–279 International Christian Embassy Jerusalem 37 International Romani Union 180 Internet 86, 249–250, 256 Inyang, Louisa 86 Iran, Iranians 196, 198 Iraq 14, 37, 196, 200 Isaac and Ishmael 104 Islam 2–3, 9, 11–14, 17–18, 37, 93–114, 126, 128, 157, 162, 193–205 Islamic law, see sharia Islamism 194 Islamophobia 197, 201 Israel 37, 194, 198, 201 Ivanov, Alexander I. 164–166 Jansson, Astrid 278–279, 282, 286 Jehovah´s Witnesses 162 Jeltsin, Boris 162 Jesus 33, 44, 48–51, 59, 62, 64, 96, 127–128, 200, 209, 215 Jews 37, 181, 185, 189, 194, 200–201; see also Judaism Jihad of Othman Dan Fodio 93 jinns (spirits) 2 Johansson, Göran 278 Judaism 162, 194, 201, 283; see also Jews Kalu, Ogbu U. 96 Keswick revival/movement 7, 96 Khomeini, Ayatollah 198 Ki-Dong, Kim 147 Kiev 165 Kim, Sung-Gun 12, 137–156 Kingsway International Christian Centre 7 koinonia 58–59, 70 Koran, see Quran Kristek, Gabriela 287–288 Kutsche, Paul 231

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Index La Foy, Colin 35–36 Lai Chi, Mok 124 Lake, John G. 102 Lancaster, Roger 234 Lattin, Don 143–144 Law, May 123–124 Le Cossec, Clement 179, 183 Leland, Charles L. 182 Levine, Daniel H. 230 Lewis, Bernard 198 liberation theology 230 Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries 79 Liberty Gospel Church 11, 79, 82, 89 Lincoln, Bruce 196 Linnekin, Jocelyn 234 liturgy 282 Livingstone, David 119 London 187 Los Angeles 1, 5, 27–28, 165, 172, 194 Lucifer, see Satan Luhmann, Niklas 249–250 Lukashenko, Aleksandr 159 Lunkin, Roman 159, 166, 168, 172 Lutheranism, Lutherans 162, 195–196, 246 Lydia 50 Löfstedt, Torsten 12–13, 157–178 Mabasa, Agnetta 50 machismo 231–234 Maclue, Joan 34 Mariz, Cecilia 264–267 marriage 47, 58, 64–65, 202, 284 Martin, David 137–138, 150, 227, 231, 233–234, 245, 261 Mataco 283–285 Maxwell, David 43 Maya Indians 14, 221, 230 McCarthy Brown, Karen 228 McClenon, James 138–140, 143, 146–147 McIntosh, Annie 122, 124 McIntosh, T. J. 122, 124 McPherson, Aimee Semple 126, 172 media 86, 88, 95, 172, 193–194, 197–198, 202, 211, 243, 249–250, 253, 255; see also films meditation 47, 143 Melton, Gorden 151

299 men 4, 9, 15, 46, 73–76, 80, 87–88, 102, 106, 127, 133, 155, 173, 182, 185, 198, 212–213, 228–229, 231, 234, 236, 238–239, 248, 265, 279 Messiah 49 Messianic theology 37, 45 Methodism, Methodists 8, 246 Miguel, Edward 77 Miller, Ethel 104 miracles 148, 221, 266, 269 missionaries 93–94, 118, 120–123, 125–127, 131, 281–286, 288 Moomau, Antoinette 122 Moral Majority 228 morality 12–13, 126, 187, 263, 265 Morana, Mario 255 Moscow Theological Institute 165 Moses 51 Moshay, J. O. 104 Moscow Patriarchate 159–162, 168 mosque 37, 109, 197 Muhammad 104 Müller, Bernard 73 music 12–13, 58, 67, 81, 143–144, 185, 231, 282 Muslims 11–12, 17, 129, 181, 193–201 myth 86 Míguez, Daniel 15–16, 261–275 n’angas (healers) 46–47, 49, 52–53 necromancy 87 New Age 143, 244 Norton, Albert 129 Norton, W. K. 122 Obadare, Ebenezer 107 Obasanjo, Olusegun 104 offering 46 Ogum 269–270 Ojo, Matthews A. 94–97 Olive Tree congregation 9, 27–32, 34, 36–37 Olumba Olumba Obu 82 Omenyo, Cephas N. 2, 10, 57–72 Osei-Assibey, Anthony 69 Oshitelu, G. A. 99 Otis, George 210, 217

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300 Otterbeck, Jonas 197 Owusu, Afriyie 63 paganism, pagans 10, 49–50, 126, 283–284 Pakistan 193 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) 198 Parham, Charles Fox 96 Paris 179 Parish, Norman 215 parousia 61 Patriarch Alexii II 162 patronato real 247 Paul, the apostle 49–50, 127–128, 140, 147, 169, 174, 228 Peel, J. D. Y. 97 Pels, Peter 87 Pentecostal Assemblies of the World 168 Pentocostal Church of God (Puerto Rico) 8 Peron, Evita 262 peronism 16, 248, 262–263 Pethrus, Lewi 195 pietism 7 pilgrimage 88 Pittman, Rosa 123–124 pneumatology 4 polygamy 62 Portugal, Portuguese 7, 9, 93–94, 122, 179 possession 139, 143, 151–152 Presbyterianism, Presbyterians 59, 66–67, 94, 148, 246 Price, Fred 44 prophecy 45, 60, 96, 128 proselytism 13 Prosperity Gospel 1, 45, 99–100, 102–103 prostitution 46, 268 Protestantism, Protestants 179, 184, 195, 219–220, 230, 246, 252–253, 261, 279 Pune 5–6 Putin, Vladimir 174 Pyongyang 148 Quran 14, 128, 197–200 Ramabai, Pandita Saraswati 6, 121 Ranger, Terence 5

Index RCCG, see Redeemed Christian Church of God RCEC, see Russian Church of Evangelical Christians Red Hill congregation 27–30, 32–34, 36 Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) 11, 95, 97, 99–100, 102–109 Reformation 96 Remedi, Joaquin 283 Rhema Bible Church 44, 48 Richardson, Don 285 rituals 45–47, 50, 66, 75, 78, 83, 86 Rixcaché, Mariano 215–216, 219 Robertson, Roland 159 ROC, see Russian Orthodox Church Roma 13, 179–191 Romani 181, 185, 187–188 Rome 168 Rose, Susan D. 1, 151 Russia, Russians 157–178; see also Soviet Union Russian Church of Evangelical Christians (RCEC) 157–178 Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) 157–163 Russian Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith 164–165, 167 Sabbath 6 Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church Movement 100–101 sacrifice 104, 132, 151 saints 215–216, 221, 267, 269–270 Salome, Ruben 255 salvation 48, 51, 53, 58, 78, 149, 159, 170, 173, 184–186, 197, 285 Samuels, David 36 Samuels, Gloria 33 San Simón 215, 217–218, 220–221 sanctification 7 Sanderson, Noel 37 Sandinista revolution 230 Satan 2, 12, 44, 48–49, 52, 60, 78–79, 82, 103–107, 109, 126–128, 131, 209–210, 215–217, 221, 283, 287 Satyavrata, Ivan M. 3 Scandinavia 179, 245 Schmidt, Georgi 166

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Index Scripture Union 63 Secretario de Culto 254 sects 13, 66, 159, 162, 168, 173, 250, 253 secularization 248, 250, 253–254, 256 sexuality 47, 62, 64, 88, 217, 234 Seymour, William 96 shamanism, shamans 12, 16–17, 130–131, 137–142, 278, 280, 284–285, 287–288 sharia 11, 109, 197–198, 201 Sherman, Amy 215, 220 Shoko, Tabona 10, 43–55 Shona 43–47, 50, 52–53 Silvoso, Ed 245 Simpson, A. B. 125 Sjöberg, Stanley 13–14, 193–194, 197–201 Smild, David 266 Smith, "Gypsy" Rodney 183 Smorodin, Nikolai P. 164–166 Soneira, Jorge A. 250 sorcerers, sorcery 45, 52, 74 South Korea, South Koreans 4, 137–156, 173 Southern Baptist Convention 228 Soviet Union 158, 160–162, 165–166, 171, 174, 198; see also Russia Spain 179, 185, 247, 279, 280–281, 286 speaking in tongues 45, 62–63, 68, 120–121, 169–170, 215 Spirit baptism 5, 61, 121–122, 143 spirits 45–47, 52, 96, 145, 149, 217–218, 221, 268–270, 285; see also evil spirits spiritual warfare 9, 12, 14, 37, 143, 146, 148–150, 209–211, 214–218, 221 spiritualism 8 St. Petersburg 164–165 Stalin, Josef 158 Stanley, Brian 129 Stockholm 195–196 Stoll, David 230, 245, 261 Stoor, Thomas 162 Strand, Elin Pernilla 184 Sudan 233 suffrage 248 Sufism, Sufis 2, 18 Sumrall, Lester 44 Sunna 199–200

301 Suurmond, Jean-Jacques 138, 140–141, 143, 145 Sweden, Swedes 184, 194, 197, 201, 278 Swedish Church 195–197, 200–201 taboo 47 Taoism 149 Thurfjell, David 13, 179–191 tithe offering 12 Topeka 5 Trevitt, Frank 127 Trinity 48, 105, 109, 165, 168 True Jesus Church 123 Tsumba, Godfrey 50 Tunolase, Moses Orimolade 101 Turkey, Turks 193, 196 Turner, Harold 96 Tylor, Edward 139 Ukah, Asonzeh F. -K. 10–11, 73–92, 93–114 Ukpabio, Helen 11, 73, 81–84, 87–89 Ukraine, Ukrainans 165–166, 173 Umbanda 8, 15–16, 267–269 Unification Church 162 Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith of the Russian Federation 164 Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists 158, 164, 166–167 United Kingdom, see Britain United Pentecostal Church 168 Uponi, Patrick 107–108 urbanization 252 Urshan, Andrew 128 USA 173, 201, 210, 212, 228, 245, 252 Vatican 247 Venezuela 266 Vines, Jerry 9 Virgin Mary/Mary the Virgin 105 Voodooism 87 Voronaev, Ivan Efimovitch 164–168 Wacker, Grant 119 Wagner, Peter C. 210, 245 Wallis, Roy 99 Walls, Andrew 58

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302 Watt, Peter 30 Weber, Max 220 Wemter, Oskar 49 Westerlund, David 1–23, 193–205 Willem, Emilio 244, 261 Williams, John 119 Winger, Mell 214, 216, 218–219 Winners Chapel 109 witchcraft 4, 10–11, 45–47, 51–52, 60, 73–78, 80, 83–85, 88–89 witches 2, 17, 46, 52, 60, 73–81, 84–85, 87–89; see also born-again witches wizards 60, 73, 82 women 4, 9, 11, 13–15, 30–34, 38, 46, 60, 74–77, 79–80, 84, 87–89, 102, 119, 123, 133, 150, 161, 171–172, 198–199, 201, 212–213,133, 150, 161, 171–172, 198–199, 201, 212–213, 228–236, 238–239, 262, 265 Wood, Matthew 152 Woon Mong, Ra 143, 148 Woong Yoo, Boo 142, 146 Word Ministries Pentecostal Church 10

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Index Word of Life 158, 171 World Council of Churches 3, 8, 160 World Pentecostal Conference 36 worship 29, 32, 58, 60–62, 67–68, 93, 267–268, 270 Wynarczyk, Hilario 246, 252, 254 xenophobia 199 Yoido Full Gospel Church 137, 144–146, 150 Yoido Gospel Central Church (Seoul) 6–7 Yonggi Cho, David 6 Yonggi Cho, Paul 137, 142–143, 146, 151 Yoruba 11, 60, 74, 80 Yoruba religion 267–269 youth 45, 63, 68–69, 76–77, 79, 102–103, 172, 184, 213, 270 ZAOGA, see Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA) 43 Zionism 37