THE PENTECOSTAL GOSPEL RELIGION AND CULTURE

IN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

Allan Anderson

Graduate Institute for Theology and ReligionUniversity of Birmingham

Elmfield House, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6LQ, UK

Characteristics of the Pentecostal ‘Full Gospel’

In many parts of the world, Pentecostals are notorious for rather aggressive forms of

evangelism and proselytism, and Africa is no exception. From its beginning, the

Pentecostal movement was characterised by an emphasis on evangelistic outreach, and

Pentecostal mission strategy placed evangelism as its highest priority. Evangelism meant to

go out and reach the ‘lost’ for Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Early Pentecostals

from North America and Europe preached the ‘full gospel’ or the ‘foursquare’ gospel, by

which Jesus Christ was roundly declared to be ‘Saviour, Healer, Baptiser in the Spirit and

Soon Coming King’.1[1] The beginnings of North American Pentecostalism in 1906 in the

Azusa Street revival of Los Angeles resulted in a category of ordinary but ‘called’ people

called ‘missionaries’ fanning out to every corner of the globe within a remarkably short

space of time. ‘Mission’ was mainly understood as ‘foreign mission’ (mostly from ‘white’

to ‘other’ peoples), and these ‘missionaries’ were mostly untrained and inexperienced.

Their only qualification was the baptism in the Spirit and a divine call, their motivation and

task was to evangelise the world before the imminent coming of Christ, and so evangelism

was more important than education or ‘civilisation’.2[2] Pentecostal missiologist Grant

McClung says that the early Pentecostals’ ‘last days mission theology’ included

1[1] Donald W Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen,NJ & London: Scarecrow Press, 1987), 21-22; D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: the Significance of Eschatology in the development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 28.

2[2] Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (London: SCM, 1972), 34.

‘Premillenialism, dispensationalism, and the belief in the imminency of Christ’s return’

which ‘forged the evangelistic fervor of the movement in its infancy’.3[3] Premillenialism

rose to prominence in the late 19th Century, and promoted the idea that the gospel must be

preached to all nations before the imminent return of Christ. This eschatological urgency

was fuelled by the Scofield Reference Bible and the writings of AB Simpson, both popular

among western Pentecostals at least until the seventies.4[4]

Gary McGee describes the first twenty years of Pentecostalism as mostly ‘chaotic in

operation’. Reports filtering back to the West to garnish newsletters would be full of

optimistic and triumphalistic accounts of how many people were converted, healed and had

received Spirit baptism, seldom mentioning any difficulties encountered or the inevitable

cultural blunders made. These blunders, however, can be clearly discerned in early reports

published in Pentecostal periodicals. Early Pentecostal missionaries from North America and

Europe were often paternalistic, creating dependency, and sometimes they were blatantly

racist.5[5] There were notable exceptions to this general chaos, however. As Willem Saayman

has observed, most Pentecostal movements ‘came into being as missionary institutions’ and

their mission work was ‘not the result of some clearly thought out theological decision, and so

policy and methods were formed mostly in the crucible of missionary praxis’. It must be

acknowledged that despite the seeming naiveté of many early Pentecostals, their evangelistic

methods were flexible, pragmatic and astonishingly successful. They claimed that the rapid

growth of the Pentecostal movement vindicated the apostle Paul’s statement that God uses the

weak and despised to confound the mighty. Pentecostal churches all over the world were

missionary by nature, and the dichotomy between ‘church’ and ‘mission’ that for so long

plagued other Christian churches did not exist. This ‘central missiological thrust’ was clearly

a ‘strong point in Pentecostalism’ and central to its existence.6[6]

This rapid spread was not without its serious difficulties, however. The parochialism

3[3] L Grant McClung, Jr. (ed), Azusa Street and Beyond: Pentecostal Missions and Church Growth in the Twentieth Century (South Plainfield, NJ: Logos, 1986), 51.

4[4] M.A. Dempster, B.D. Klaus & D. Petersen, Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991), 207.

5[5] Gary McGee, ‘Pentecostal Missiology: Moving beyond triumphalism to face the issues’. Pneuma: The Journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies, 16:2 (1994), 208, 211.

and rivalry of many Pentecostal missions made ecumenical co-operation difficult, even

between the different Pentecostal groups. The tendencies towards paternalism created a

reluctance to listen to voices from the Third World, and the need for a greater involvement in

the plight of the poor and in opposing socio-political oppression are some of the issues that

must still be addressed by Pentecostals. But in spite of these problems, there are many lessons

from Pentecostalism about the expansion of Christianity in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Gary McGee observes:

The history of Pentecostal missions demonstrates that the Pentecostals have rarely retreated from challenges,  affirming dependence on the Holy Spirit to guide their responses. Their irrepressible advance from obscurity to center stage within  ninety years suggests that only the unwary will underestimate their fortitude.[7]

Pentecostals believe that the coming of the Spirit brings the ability to perform ‘signs

and wonders’ in the name of Jesus Christ to accompany and authenticate their evangelism.

Pentecostals all over the world, but especially in the Third World, see the role of healing as

good news for the poor and afflicted. Early 20th Century Pentecostal newsletters and

periodicals abounded with ‘thousands of testimonies to physical healings, exorcisms and

deliverances’.7[8] McClung says that divine healing is an ‘evangelistic door-opener’ for

Pentecostals, and that ‘signs and wonders’ are the ‘evangelistic means whereby the

message of the kingdom is actualized in “person-centered” deliverance’.8[9] The ‘signs and

wonders’ promoted by independent Pentecostal evangelists led to the rapid growth of

Pentecostal churches in many parts of the world, although these evangelists have seldom

been without controversy.9[10] The Pentecostal understanding of the preaching of the Word

in evangelism was that ‘signs and wonders’ should accompany it, and divine healing in

particular was an indispensable part of Pentecostal evangelistic methodology.10[11]

6[6] Willem A. Saayman, ‘Some reflections on the development of the Pentecostal mission model in South Africa’. Missionalia 21:1 (1993), 42, 51.

7[8] Dempster, Klaus & Petersen, 206.

8[9] McClung, 74.

9[10] Dempster, Klaus & Petersen, 215.

10[11] Saayman, 46.

Indeed, in many religions of the world, and especially in African religions, a major

attraction for Pentecostalism has been its emphasis on healing. In these cultures, the

religious specialist or ‘person of God’ has power to heal the sick and ward off evil spirits

and sorcery. This holistic function, which does not separate the ‘physical’ from the

‘spiritual’, is restored in Pentecostalism, and indigenous peoples see it as a ‘powerful’

religion to meet human needs. For some Pentecostals, faith in God’s power to heal directly

through prayer resulted in a rejection of other methods of healing. The numerous healings

reported by Pentecostal evangelists confirmed that God’s Word was true, God’s power was

evidently on their efforts, and the result was that many were persuaded to become

Christians. This emphasis on healing is so much part of Pentecostal evangelism that large

public campaigns and tent crusades preceded by great publicity are frequently used in order

to reach as many ‘unevangelised’ people as possible. Hollenweger says that Pentecostals

are ‘efficient evangelists’ because of ‘the power of their experience’.11[12] Although we

may regard some manifestations of Pentecostalism with amusement, disdain or even alarm,

we cannot ignore this enormous factor in global Christianity.

 

Orality and the Pentecostal Gospel

The relationship between the gospel and culture, and by

implication, the relationship between the Christian faith and other

religions, is a much-debated topic. The expansion of Pentecostalism in

Africa in the 20th Century can be attributed, at least partially, to cultural

factors. Walter Hollenweger sees the ‘oral structures’ of Pentecostalism,

like Christianity itself, to be the reason for its initial growth, and not in

any ‘particular Pentecostal doctrine’. Hollenweger lists the

characteristics of these structures as an oral liturgy, a narrative theology

and witness, a reconciliatory and participant community, the inclusion of

11[12] Allan Anderson & Walter J. Hollenweger (eds), Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (JPT Sup. 15, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 190.

visions and dreams in worship, and understanding the relationship

between body and mind revealed in healing by prayer and liturgical

dance. These are also predominantly African cultural features, evident in

the leadership of the African American Azusa Street revival leader

William Seymour, whose ‘spirituality lay in his past’. His Pentecostal

experience meant more than the doctrine of speaking in tongues and

included loving in the face of hateful racism. For Hollenweger, Seymour

represents the ‘reconciling Pentecostal experience’ and ‘a congregation

where everybody is a potential contributor to the liturgy’. Seymour’s

Pentecostalism is ‘the oral missionary movement, with spiritual power to

overcome racism and chauvinism’.12[13] Hollenweger elaborates on

these oral structures in Pentecostal music and liturgy, pointing out that

spontaneity and enthusiasm, rather than leading to an absence of

liturgy, produce flexible oral liturgies memorised by the Pentecostal

congregation. The most important element of these liturgies is the active

participation of every member in the congregation.13[14] Pentecostal

liturgy has social and revolutionary implications, in that it empowers

marginalised people. It takes as acceptable what ordinary people have in

the worship of God and thus overcomes ‘the real barriers of race, social

status, and education’.14[15]

Hollenweger demonstrates the pervading influence of the Azusa

Street revival, both upon early Pentecostalism and upon later forms of

the movement, especially in the Third World, where the majority of

Pentecostal adherents now live. Pentecostalism is not a predominantly

western movement, but both fundamentally and dominantly a Third

12[13] Walter J Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997), 23.

13[14] Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 269-271.

14[15] Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 274-275.

World phenomenon. In spite of its significant growth in North America,

probably less than a quarter of its members in the world today are white,

and this proportion continues to decrease.15[16] The Pentecostal

emphasis on ‘freedom in the Spirit’ has rendered the movement

inherently flexible in different cultural and social contexts. This has

made the transplanting of its central tenets in the Third World and

among marginalised minorities in the western world more easily

assimilated. In Africa, this has resulted in a plethora of indigenous

Christian movements that loosely may be termed ‘Pentecostal’. Juan

Sepúlveda, a Chilean Pentecostal, writes that the reason for the dynamic

expansion of Pentecostalism in his country is to be found in its ability ‘to

translate the Protestant message into the forms of expression of the

local popular culture’.16[17] Harvey Cox declares that the great strength

of what he terms the ‘Pentecostal impulse’ lies in ‘its power to combine,

its aptitude for the language, the music, the cultural artefacts, the

religious tropes... of the setting in which it lives’.17[18] This was quite

different from the prevailing mission ethos at the turn of the 20th

Century. Many older missionary churches arose in western contexts of

set liturgies, theologies, highly educated and professional clergy, and

patterns of church structures and leadership with strongly centralised

control. This often contributed to the feeling in the Third World that

these churches were ‘foreign’, and that people first had to become

westerners before becoming Christians. In contrast, the Pentecostal

emphasis on immediate personal experience of God’s power by his Spirit

was more intuitive and emotional, and it recognised charismatic

15[16] David B Barrett, ‘Statistics, global’, Stanley M Burgess & Gary B McGee (eds),Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 810-30.

16[17] Anderson & Hollenweger, 128.

17[18] Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (London: Cassell, 1996), 259.

leadership and indigenous church patterns wherever they arose. In most

cases, leadership was not kept long in the hands of western

missionaries, and the proportion of missionaries to church members was

usually much lower than that of older missions.

In Africa, preaching a message that promised solutions for present

felt needs like sickness and the fear of evil spirits, Pentecostal

missionaries (who were most often local people) were heeded and their

‘full gospel’ readily accepted by ordinary people. Churches were rapidly

planted as a result. African Initiated Churches are mostly churches of a

Pentecostal type that have contextualised and indigenised Christianity in

Africa. They are an ‘African expression of the worldwide Pentecostal

movement’ because of both their Pentecostal style and their Pentecostal

origins.18[20] Robert Anderson points out that whereas classical

Pentecostals in North America usually define themselves in terms of the

doctrine of ‘initial evidence’, the Pentecostal movement is more

correctly understood in a much broader context as a movement

concerned primarily with the experience of the working of the Holy Spirit

and the practice of spiritual gifts.19[21] Chinese American Pentecostal

Amos Yong suggests that the Pentecostal experience is best described

as ‘the complex of encounters with the Spirit’, and that these

pneumatological encounters demonstrate ‘indubitable similarities across

the religious traditions of the world’.20[22] I have also argued elsewhere

for the inclusion of African ‘Pentecostal-type’ churches as ‘Pentecostal’

18[20] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 246; Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 52.

19[21] Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1979), 4.

20[22] Amos Yong, ‘”Not Knowing Where the Wind Blows...”: On Envisioning a Pentecostal-Charismatic Theology of Religions’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14 (1999), 95, 99.

movements because of their emphasis and experience of the Spirit,21

[23] and the same could be argued for many Pentecostal churches all

over the Third World. In African Pentecostalism, experience and practice

are usually more important than the preciseness of dogma.

 

The Gospel, Indigenisation and Culture

Indigenisation is a principle that has been hotly debated and little

understood. Sometimes an attempt made by well-meaning foreign

missionaries to create a ‘supra cultural’ or ‘universal’ church in reality is

a glorification of the missionaries’ own culture. The ‘gospel’ is therefore

confused with ‘culture’, it has been colonialized, and a spurious

‘Christian culture’ is offered in place of a genuine and relevant Christian

message. One of the outstanding features of African Pentecostals is their

religious creativity and spontaneously indigenous character, a

characteristic held as an ideal by western missions for over a century.

The ‘three self’ formula for indigenisation (to create self-supporting, self-

governing and self-supporting churches) was automatically and

effortlessly achieved by many African Pentecostal movements long

before this goal was realised by older western mission churches.

Pioneering Pentecostal missiologist Melvin Hodges, former US

Assemblies of God missionary in Central America, enthusiastically

embraced and enlarged Rufus Anderson and Henry Venn’s ‘three self’

policy of church planting, the main theme of his The Indigenous Church,

but also introduced an emphasis lacking in earlier works on the subject.

The foundation for indigenisation to happen was the Holy Spirit.

Declared Hodges:

21[23] Allan Anderson, Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1992), 2-6. See also Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 2000).

There is no place on earth where, if the gospel seed be properly planted, it will not

produce an indigenous church. The Holy Spirit can work in one country as well as in

another. To proceed on the assumption that the infant church in any land must always

be cared for and provided for by the mother mission is an unconscious insult to the

people that we endeavour to serve, and is evidence of a lack of faith in God and in the

power of the gospel.22[24]

This was undoubtedly prophetic in 1953 and had a profound

impact on the growth of the Assemblies of God in many parts of the

world since. Hodges may have missed the fact that churches are not

guaranteed to become indigenous by attaining ‘three selfhood’ unless

the ‘three selfs’ are no longer patterned on foreign forms of being

church, and unless those churches are grounded in the thought patterns

and symbolism of popular religion and culture. But for Hodges, the

foundation for Pentecostal mission and the reason for its continued

expansion is the ‘personal filling of the Holy Spirit’ who gives gifts of

ministry to untold thousands of ‘common people’, creating active,

vibrantly expanding and indigenous churches all over the world.23[25]

In fact, thriving Pentecostal ‘indigenous churches’ were established in many parts

of Africa without the help of ‘foreign missionaries’ at all. These churches were founded in

innovative evangelistic initiatives unprecedented in Christian history, motivated by a

compelling need to preach and even more significantly, to experience a new message of the

power of the Spirit. Harvey Cox suggests two vitally important and underlying factors, that

‘for any religion to grow in today’s world it must possess two capabilities’. First, ‘it must

be able to include and transform at least certain elements of preexisting religions which still

retain a strong grip on the cultural subconscious’. Secondly, ‘it must also equip people to

live in rapidly changing societies’. He finds these two ‘key ingredients’ in Pentecostalism.24

22[24] Melvin L Hodges, The Indigenous Church (Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1953), 14.

23[25] Hodges, Indigenous Church, 132.

24[26] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 219.

[26] The inevitable question to be asked in assessing Pentecostalism in Africa is to what

extent is this an inculturated Christianity that has adapted to and transformed its cultural

and religious environment. Most of Pentecostalism in Africa is more obviously an

inculturated adaptation than a foreign imposition, with inevitable exceptions. African

Pentecostalism is in constant interaction with the African spirit world, and those who

censure African churches for their alleged ‘syncretism’ often fail to see that parallels with

ancient religions and cultures in their practices are also often continuous with the Biblical

revelation. Western Pentecostals do not have to look very far to see the same cultural and

religious influences in their own forms of Christianity — one example is the capitalistic

emphasis on prosperity and success, the ‘American dream’, which pervades many, perhaps

most, Pentecostal activities in the western world. Furthermore, Pentecostals in Africa

usually define their practices by reference to the Bible and not to traditional religions. They

see their activities as creative adaptations to the local cultural context. At the same time,

some forms of African Pentecostalism (especially the most recent variety) might need to

have a greater appreciation for the rich diversity of their cultural and religious past and not

feel the need to bow to the cultural hegemony of North American Pentecostalism.

Demonising the cultural and religious past does not help explain the present attraction of

Pentecostalism to African peoples, even though it might help in the religious competition

that is a feature of pluralist societies all over the world.

Harvey Cox sees the largely unconscious interaction of Pentecostalism with so-

called ‘primal’ religions as helping people recover vital elements in their culture that are

threatened by modernization.25[27] Pentecostals throughout Africa have found in their own

context, both culturally and Biblically acceptable alternatives to and adaptations from the

practices of their old religions and are seeking to provide answers to the needs inherent

there. Any religion that does not offer at least the same benefits as the old religion does will

probably be unattractive. Christianity, particularly in its Pentecostal emphasis on the

transforming power of the Holy Spirit, purports to offer more than the other religions did.

In Africa, Pentecostal-like movements manifested in thousands of indigenous churches

have so radically changed the face of Christianity there, simply because they have

25[27] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 228.

proclaimed a holistic gospel that includes deliverance from all types of oppression like

sickness, sorcery, evil spirits and poverty. This has met the needs of Africans more

fundamentally than the rather spiritualised and intellectualised gospel that was mostly the

legacy of European and North American missionaries. The good news in Africa,

Pentecostal preachers declare, is that God meets all the needs of people, including their

spiritual salvation, physical healing, and other material necessities. The phenomenon of

mass urbanisation results in Pentecostal churches providing places of spiritual security and

personal communities for people unsettled by rapid social change. The more relevant the

church becomes to its cultural and social context, the more prepared it will be to serve the

wider society.

All the widely differing Pentecostal movements have important common features:

they proclaim and celebrate a salvation (or ‘healing’) that encompasses all of life’s

experiences and afflictions, and they offer an empowerment which provides a sense of

dignity and a coping mechanism for life, and all this drives their messengers forward into a

unique evangelistic mission. Their task was to share this all-embracing gospel with as many

people as possible, and to accomplish this, African Pentecostal missionaries travelled far

and wide. The astonishing journeys in 1914 of the famous Liberian prophet William Wade

Harris throughout the Ivory Coast to western Ghana, has been described as ‘the most

remarkable evangelical campaign Africa has ever witnessed’, resulting in tens of thousands

of conversions to Christianity.26[28] There were other such high profile preachers to follow,

but literally thousands of African preachers emphasised the manifestation of divine power

through healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues and other Pentecostal phenomena. The

message proclaimed by these charismatic preachers of receiving the power of the Holy

Spirit to meet human needs was welcome in societies where a lack of power was keenly felt

on a daily basis. The growth of Pentecostalism in Africa must be seen primarily as the

result of this proclamation rather than as a reaction to western missions, as some have

suggested.27[29] Nevertheless, because western cultural forms of Christianity were often

26[28] Adrian Hastings, A History of African Christianity 1950-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 1979), 67.

27[29] Hastings, A History, 69.

regarded as superficial and out of touch with many realities of existential life, it was

necessary for a new and culturally relevant Christianity to arise in each context.

Healing and protection from evil are among the most prominent features of the

Pentecostal gospel in Africa and are probably the most important part of Pentecostal

evangelism and church recruitment. The problems of disease and evil affect the whole

community in Africa, and are not simply relegated to individual pastoral care. As Cox

observes, African Pentecostals ‘provide a setting in which the African conviction that

spirituality and healing belong together is dramatically enacted.’28[30] African communities

were, to a large extent, health-orientated communities and in their traditional religions,

rituals for healing and protection are prominent. Pentecostals responded to what they

experienced as a void left by a rationalistic western form of Christianity which had

unwittingly initiated what was tantamount to the destruction of their cherished spiritual

values by seeking to separate ‘healing’ from ‘religion’ and secularising it. Pentecostals

declared a message that reclaimed ancient Biblical traditions of healing and protection from

evil and demonstrated the practical effects of these traditions. This resonated well with the

popular beliefs of African people. Pentecostalism went a long way towards meeting their

physical, emotional and spiritual needs, offering solutions to life's problems and ways to

cope in a threatening and hostile world.29[31]

 

The New Factor in African Christianity

The role of a new and rapidly growing form of African Christianity,30[32] newer

Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, is increasingly being recognized.31[33] This

movement, which has only emerged since 1970, is fast becoming one of the most

28[30] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 247.

29[31] Allan Anderson & Samuel Otwang, Tumelo: The Faith of African Pentecostals in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1993), 32.

30[32] See Chapter 8 of Allan Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000, forthcoming).

significant expressions of Christianity on the continent, especially in Africa’s cities. We

cannot understand African Christianity today without also understanding this latest

movement of revival and renewal. Ogbu Kalu calls it the ‘third response’ to white cultural

domination and power in the church, the former two responses being Ethiopianism, which

emerged in the 1890s onwards, and the Aladura/ Zionist churches, which commenced after

1918.32[34] I would argue that this newer Pentecostal and Charismatic movement is not

fundamentally different from the earlier Holy Spirit movements and so-called ‘prophet-

healing’ and ‘spiritual churches’ in the African Initiated Churches (AICs), but it is a

continuation of them in a very different context. The older ‘prophet-healing’ AICs, the

‘classical’ Pentecostals and the newer Pentecostal churches have all responded to the

existential needs of the African worldview. They have all offered a personal encounter with

God through the power of the Spirit, healing from sickness and deliverance from evil in all

its manifestations, spiritual, social and structural. This is not to say that there are no

tensions or differences between the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ AICs. In a study of Christian

movements in north-east Zimbabwe, David Maxwell points out that many Christian

movements in Africa (and, in fact, all over the world) have begun as movements of youth

and women. The new churches give opportunities not afforded them by patriarchal and

gerontocratic religions that have lost their charismatic power. As Maxwell points out, even

the older Pentecostal churches, whether AICs or those founded by western missions, ‘can

lose their pentecostal vigour’ through a process of bureaucratization and ‘ageing’.33[35]

In the 1970s, partly as a reaction to the bureaucratization process in established

churches, new independent Pentecostal and Charismatic churches began to emerge all over

Africa, but especially in West Africa. Many of these vigorous new churches were

31[33] David Maxwell, ‘Witches, Prophets and Avenging Spirits: The Second Christian Movement in North-East Zimbabwe’, Journal of Religion in Africa 25:3 (1995), 313; Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (London: Hurst, 1998), 31; Anderson, Zion and Pentecost, chapter 9.

32[34] Ogbu U. Kalu, ‘The Third Response: Pentecostalism and the Reconstruction of Christian Experience in Africa, 1970-1995’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2 (1998), 3.

33[35] Maxwell, ‘Witches’, 316-7.

influenced by the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in Europe and North America

and by established Pentecostal mission churches in Africa. However, it must be

remembered that these churches were largely independent of foreign churches and had

African origins. Many arose in the context of interdenominational and evangelical campus

and school Christian organizations, from which young charismatic leaders emerged with

significant followings, and often the new churches eventually replaced the former

interdenominational movements.34[36] At first they were called ‘nondenominational’

churches, but in recent years, as they have expanded, many of these churches have

developed denominational structures, several prominent leaders have been ‘episcopized’

and some, like the Deeper Life Bible Church and the Winner’s Chapel of Nigeria, are now

international churches. The entrance and pervading influence of these many different kinds

of new Pentecostal churches on the African scene now makes it even more difficult, if not

impossible, to put AICs into types and categories. It is also becoming increasingly difficult

to define ‘Pentecostal’ precisely, and if we persist with narrow perceptions of the term, we

will escape reality.

In the West, a limited, rather stereotyped and dogmatic understanding of

‘Pentecostal’ fails to recognize the great variety of different pentecostal movements in most

of the rest of the world, many of which arose quite independently of western

Pentecostalism and even of Azusa Street. In Africa the term would include the majority of

older AICs, those ‘classical’ Pentecostals originating in western Pentecostal missions, and

the newer independent churches, ‘fellowships’ and ‘ministries’ in Africa. It is in this sense

that we refer to these various movements as ‘newer Pentecostals’ and of course, the term

‘Pentecostal’ would also apply to a great number of other, older kinds of AICs that

emphasize the Holy Spirit in the church. The ‘classical’ or ‘denominational’ Pentecostals

(like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God) are also a very active and growing

phenomenon throughout Africa, and undoubtedly played a significant role in the emergence

of some of these new groups. But as these were founded by missionaries mostly from

Western Europe and North America— although with more African involvement in

34[36] Kwabena J. Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘Traditional missionary Christianity and new religious movements in Ghana’ (MTh thesis, Accra: University of Ghana, 1996); Kalu, ‘Third Response’, 7.

leadership and financial independence than was the case in most of the older missionary

founded churches—these ‘classical’ Pentecostals cannot be regarded primarily as African

initiated movements, even though most of their proliferation was due to the untiring efforts

of African preachers.

Pentecostal churches of western origins have operated in Africa for most of the 20th

Century. Most of these churches trace their historical origins to the impetus generated by

the Azusa Street Revival, which reportedly sent out missionaries to fifty nations within two

years.35[37] The connections between this ‘classical’ Pentecostal movement and AICs

throughout Africa have been amply demonstrated.36[38] Some of these ‘classical’

Pentecostal churches have become vibrant and rapidly expanding African churches

throughout the continent, in particular the Assemblies of God, which operates in most

countries of the Sub-Sahara. It has become a significant, and at least in the case of Burkina

Faso, the largest non-Catholic denomination. But there has also been a predominance of

Pentecostal features and phenomena throughout the history of AICs. Harvey Cox is at least

partly correct to refer to the Apostolic/ Zionist, Lumpa and Kimbanguist churches as ‘the

African expression of the worldwide Pentecostal movement’, but these churches do not

usually define themselves in this way. Nevertheless, not enough attention has been given to

this resonance, although Paul Gifford is right to question whether the older AICs can be

regarded as paradigmatic of the Pentecostal movement in Africa.37[39]

The process of ‘ageing’ and the proliferation of these new movements now continue

as their founders die (in at least one case) or approach old age. The African Charismatic

churches or ‘ministries’ initially tended to have a younger, more formally educated and

35[37] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 22-4; Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids & Cambridge, 1997), 84-106.

36[38] Anderson, African Reformation, chapters 4-7; Allan Anderson & Gerald J. Pillay, ‘The Segregated Spirit: The Pentecostals’, Elphick, Richard & Davenport, Rodney (eds.), Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social & Cultural History (Oxford: James Currey & Cape Town: David Philip, 1997), 228-9; Anderson & Hollenweger, 88-92; Anderson, Bazalwane, 22-4.

37[39] Cox, Fire from Heaven, 246; Gifford, African Christianity, 33.

consequently more westernized leadership and membership, including young professionals

and middle class urban Africans. In leadership structures, theology and liturgy, these

churches differ quite markedly from both the older AICs and the western mission-founded

churches, Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal alike. Their services are usually emotional and

enthusiastic, and many new churches use accoutrements of modernity: they form bands

with electronic musical instruments, publish their own literature and run their own Bible

training centres for preachers, both men and women, to further propagate their message.

These movements encourage the planting of new independent churches and make use of

schoolrooms, cinemas, community halls and even hotel conference rooms for their revival

meetings. Church leaders sometimes travel the continent and inter-continentally, and some

produce glossy booklets and broadcast radio and television programmes. They are often

linked to wider international networks of independent Charismatic preachers, some of

which, but by no means all, are dominated by North Americans.

These pentecostal churches are, like the older AICs before them, an African

phenomenon, churches which for the most part have been instituted by Africans for

Africans. They are also self-governing, self-propagating and (in some cases to a lesser

extent) self-supporting, and usually they have no organizational links with any outside

church or denomination. In fact, they may be regarded as ‘modern versions’ of older AICs.

Although they differ from the classical AICs in that they do not try as much to offer

solutions for traditional problems, yet they do address the problems faced by AICs, but

offer a radical reorientation to a modern and industrial, global society. Kwabena Asamoah-

Gyadu says that one of the basic differences between the older AICs and the new churches

lies in the fact that in the spiritual churches, ‘members are the clients of the prophets who

may be the custodians of powers to overcome the ills of life’. In the new churches,

however, he says that ‘each believer is empowered through the baptism of the Holy Spirit

to overcome them.’38[40] It may be argued that in the spiritual churches too, provision is

made for any person to become a prophet and therefore to be a custodian of spiritual power,

and that the difference might not be as great as imagined.

38[40] Kwabena J. Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘The Church in the African State: The Pentecostal/Charismatic Experience in Ghana’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2 (1998), 56.

Some of the main methods employed by the new churches are very similar to those

used by most Pentecostals—including door-to-door evangelism, meetings held in homes of

interested inquirers, preaching in trains, buses, on street corners and at places of public

concourse, and ‘tent crusades’ held all over the continent.39[41] Access to modern

communications has resulted in the popularizing of western (especially North American)

independent Pentecostal ‘televangelists’, several of whom make regular visits to Africa and

broadcast their own television programmes there, public scandals notwithstanding. The

strategies employed by these evangelists have been subject to criticism,40[42] but have had

the effect of promoting a form of Christianity that has appealed especially to the urbanized

and significantly westernized new generation of Africans. Theologically, the new churches

are Christocentric and share an emphasis on the power of the Spirit with other Pentecostals.

A particular focus on personal encounter with Christ (being ‘born again’), long periods of

individual and communal prayer, prayer for healing and problems like unemployment and

poverty, deliverance from demons and 'the occult’ (this term often means traditional beliefs

and witchcraft), the use of spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and (to a lesser extent)

prophecy—these features more or less characterize all new churches.

 

The Challenges of the Pentecostal Churches

One of the main criticisms levelled against the new Pentecostal churches is that they

propagate a ‘prosperity gospel’, the ‘Faith’ or ‘Word’ movement originating in North

American independent Charismatic movements, particularly found in the preaching and

writings of Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. This ‘health and wealth’ gospel seems

to reproduce some of the worst forms of capitalism in Christian guise. Paul Gifford has

become a leading exponent on this subject. He suggests that the biggest single factor in the

39[41] This latest expression of African Pentecostalism is to some extent the result of the popular method of tent evangelism pioneered mainly by North Americans in the 1940s and 1950s (with roots in the nineteenth century revivals). This was continued with considerable effect by popular South African black Pentecostals Nicholas Bhengu and Richard Ngidi, and more recently by Nigerian Benson Idahosa and German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke.

40[42] For example, Paul Gifford, ‘Reinhard Bonnke’s mission to Africa, and his 1991 Nairobi crusade’, Gifford, Paul (ed.), New Dimensions in African Christianity (Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, 1992), 157.

emergence of these new churches is the collapse of African economies by the 1980s and the

subsequent increasing dependence of the new churches on the USA. He proposes that it is

‘Americanization’ rather than any ‘African quality’ that is responsible for the growth of

these churches. He sees this new phenomenon as a type of neo-colonialism propagated by

American ‘prosperity preachers’, a sort of ‘conspiracy theory’. 41[43] But there is another

side to this scenario. Gifford’s analysis, which he has modified more recently,42[44] has

been accepted in many church and academic circles. However, it seems to ignore some

fundamental features of Pentecostalism, now predominantly a Third World phenomenon,

where experience and practice are more important than formal ideology or even theology.

As Ogbu Kalu points out, the relationship between the African Pentecostal pastor and his or

her ‘western patron’ is entirely eclectic, and the ‘dependency’ in fact has been mutual. The

western supporter often needs the African pastor to bolster his own international image and

increase his own financial resources. Kalu observes that in the 1990s, since the public

disgracing of American ‘televangelists’, the mood in Africa has changed, and the

Pentecostal churches are now ‘characterised by independence and an emphasis on the

Africanist roots of the ministries’.43[45] Daneel points out that in traditional Africa, ‘wealth

and success are naturally signs of the blessing of God’, so it is no wonder that such a

message should be uncritically accepted there—and this is as true for the newer AICs as it

is for the older ones.44[46] There are connections between some of the new churches and

the American ‘health and wealth’ movement, and it is also true that many of the new

African churches reproduce and promote ‘health and wealth’ teaching and literature. But

identifying these churches with the American ‘prosperity gospel’ is a generalization which

particularly fails to appreciate the reconstructions and innovations made by the new African

movements in adapting to a radically different context, just as the older AICs did some

41[43] Paul Gifford, Christianity and Politics in Doe’s Liberia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),196-9, 294, 314-5.

42[44] Gifford, African Christianity, 236-44.

43[45] Kalu, ‘Third Response’, 8.

44[46] Inus Daneel, Quest for Belonging (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1987), 46; Gifford, Christianity and Politics, 188.

years before.

These churches form a new challenge to the Christian church in Africa. To the

European mission-founded churches, they are demonstrations of a form of Christianity that

appeals to a new generation of Africans, and from which older churches can learn. There

are indications that the new churches increase at the expense of all types of older churches,

including the prophet-healing AICs.45[47] To these older AICs, with whom they actually

have much in common, they are consequently often a source of tension. The new churches

preach against ‘tribalism’ and parochial denominationalism. They are often sharply critical

of the older AICs, particularly in what they perceive as the African traditional religious

component of AIC practices, which are sometimes seen as manifestations of demons

needing ‘deliverance’.46[48] As a result, older AICs feel hurt and threatened by them. In

addition, the newer churches have to some extent embraced and externalized western

notions of a ‘nuclear family’ and individualized, urban lifestyles. This brings them into

further tension with African traditional culture and ethnic ties, thereby enabling members to

escape the onerous commitments to the extended family and to achieve success and

accumulate possessions independently.47[49] The new churches also sometimes castigate

‘mainline’ churches for their dead formalism and traditionalism, so the ‘mainline’ churches

also feel threatened by them. Commenting on this, Ogbu Kalu makes the salient point:

The established churches usually react in three stages: hostility, apologetics and

adaptation. Institutionalisation breeds late adoption of innovations. We witnessed this

pattern in the response to the Aladura challenge. It is being repeated without any

lessons learnt from history.48[50]

Gifford himself is aware of the problems inherent in a simplistic interpretation of

45[47] Gerrie ter Haar, ‘Standing Up for Jesus: a survey of new developments in Christianity in Ghana’, Exchange 23:3, 1994, 224; Gifford, African Christianity, 62-3, 95, 233.

46[48] Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘The church’, 56; Kalu, ‘Third Reponse’, 8.

47[49] Maxwell, 354.

48[50] Kalu, ‘Third Response’, 3.

the newer African Pentecostalism. After discussing Christian fundamentalism in the USA

and the ‘rapidly growing sector of African Christianity’ closely related to it, he says that the

American groups operating in Africa ‘find themselves functioning in a context considerably

different from that in the United States’.49[51] But perhaps Gifford has not taken this

‘considerably different’ context seriously enough in his substantial analyses of the newer

Pentecostals in Africa. The idea that ‘prosperity’ churches in Africa are led by

unscrupulous manipulators greedy for wealth and power does not account for the increasing

popularity of these new churches with educated and responsible people, who continue to

give financial support and feel their needs are met there. Often, those who are ‘anti-

charismatic’ and resent or are threatened by the growth and influence of the newer churches

are the source of these criticisms. Kalu says that in the decade after 1985, the new churches

‘blossomed into complex varieties’ and that in their development, ‘European influence

became more pronounced’. But he points out that that in spite of this, ‘the originators

continued to be African, imitating foreigners, eclectically producing foreign theologies but

transforming these for immediate contextual purposes’.50[52]

With reference to what is now possibly the largest non-Catholic denomination in

Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa of Ezekiel Guti (ZAOGA), David

Maxwell says that this movement’s ‘own dominant prosperity teachings have arisen from

predominantly southern African sources and are shaped by Zimbabwean concerns’. He says

that the ‘prosperity gospel’ is best explained ‘not in terms of false consciousness or right

wing conspiracy but as a means to enable pentecostals to make the best of rapid social

change’. ZAOGA’s teaching of the ‘Spirit of Poverty’, for instance, ‘resonates with ideas of

self-reliance, indigenous business and black empowerment propounded by the ruling party

and state controlled media’, while at the same time it ‘successfully explains and exploits

popular insecurities’.51[53] Similarly, Matthews Ojo, who writes extensively on Nigerian

new Pentecostal churches, says that they ‘are increasingly responding to the needs and

49[51] Gifford, African Christianity, 43.

50[52] Kalu, ‘Third Response’, 7.

51[53] Maxwell, 351, 358-9.

aspirations of Nigerians amid the uncertainty of their political life and the pain of their

constant and unending economic adjustments’.52[54] It is clear, then, that new churches are

not simply an ‘Americanization’ of African Christianity.

Like the churches before them, the new churches have a sense of identity as a

separated and egalitarian community with democratic access to spiritual power, whose

primary purpose is to promote their cause to those outside. These churches see themselves

as the ‘born again’ people of God, with a strong sense of belonging to the community of

God’s people, those chosen from out of the world to witness to the new life they experience

in the power of the Spirit. The cornerstone of their message is this ‘born again’ conversion

experience through repentance of sin and submission to Christ, and this is what identifies

them, even to outsiders. Unlike the older AICs, where there tends to be an emphasis on the

prophet figure or principal leader as the one dispensing God’s gifts to his or her followers,

the new churches usually emphasize the availability and encourage the practice of gifts of

the Holy Spirit by all of their members. The emergence of these churches at the end of the

20th Century indicates that there are many unresolved questions facing African Christianity,

such as the role of ‘success’ and ‘prosperity’ in God’s economy, enjoying God and his

gifts, including healing and material provision, and the holistic dimension of ‘salvation’

which is always meaningful in an African context. Asamoah-Gyadu believes that the

‘greatest virtue’ of the ‘health and wealth’ gospel for the new churches lies in ‘the

indomitable spirit that believers develop in the face of life’s odds.... In essence, misfortune

becomes only temporary’.53[55] The ‘here-and-now’ problems being addressed by new

churches in modern Africa are not unlike those faced by the older AICs decades before, and

these problems still challenge the church as a whole today. They remind us of the age-old

conviction of Africa that for any faith to be relevant and enduring, it must also be

experienced. These are some of the lessons from African Pentecostalism, of which the new

churches are their latest exponents.

52[54] Matthews A.Ojo, ‘The Church in the African State: The Charismatic/Pentecostal Experience in Nigeria’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2 (1998), 25.

53[55] Asamoah-Gyadu, ‘The church’, 55.

Pentecostals in Africa proclaim a pragmatic gospel that seeks to

address practical needs like sickness, poverty, unemployment,

loneliness, evil spirits and sorcery. In varying degrees and in their many

and varied forms, and precisely because of their inherent flexibility,

these Pentecostals attain an authentically indigenous character which

enables them to offer answers to some of the fundamental questions

asked in their own context. A sympathetic approach to local culture and

the retention of certain cultural practices are undoubtedly major reasons

for their attraction, especially for those millions overwhelmed by

urbanisation with its transition from a personal rural society to an

impersonal urban one. At the same time, Pentecostals confront old views

by declaring what they are convinced is a more powerful protection

against sorcery and a more effective healing from sickness than either

the existing churches or the traditional rituals had offered. Healing,

guidance, protection from evil, and success and prosperity are some of

the practical benefits offered to faithful members of Pentecostal

churches. Although Pentecostals do not have all the right answers or are

to be emulated in all respects, the enormous and unparalleled

contribution made by Pentecostals to alter the face of African

Christianity is to be recognised.

© 2000 Allan Anderson

 

References Cited

Anderson, Allan, Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1992

Anderson, Allan, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2000

Anderson, Allan, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000, forthcoming

Anderson, Allan & Hollenweger, Walter J. (eds), Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition. JPT Sup. 15, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999

Anderson, Allan & Otwang, Samuel, Tumelo: The Faith of African Pentecostals in South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1993

Anderson, Allan & Pillay, Gerald J. ‘The Segregated Spirit: The Pentecostals’, Elphick, Richard & Davenport, Rodney (eds.), Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social & Cultural History. Oxford: James Currey & Cape Town: David Philip, 1997 (227-241)

Anderson, Robert M. Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1979

Asamoah-Gyadu, Kwabena J. ‘Traditional missionary Christianity and new religious movements in Ghana’. MTh thesis, Accra: University of Ghana, 1996

Asamoah-Gyadu, Kwabena J. ‘The Church in the African State: The Pentecostal/Charismatic Experience in Ghana’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2, 1998 (51-57)

Barrett, David B. ‘Statistics, global’, Stanley M Burgess & Gary B McGee (eds),Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988 (810-830).

Cox, Harvey, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century. London: Cassell, 1996

Daneel, Inus, Quest for Belonging. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1987

Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen,NJ & London: Scarecrow Press, 1987

Dempster, M.A. Klaus, B.D. & Petersen, D. Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991

Faupel, D. William, The Everlasting Gospel: the Significance of Eschatology in the development of Pentecostal Thought. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996

Gifford, Paul, ‘Reinhard Bonnke’s mission to Africa, and his 1991 Nairobi crusade’, Gifford, Paul (ed.), New Dimensions in African Christianity. Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, 1992 (157-182)

Gifford, Paul, Christianity and Politics in Doe’s Liberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Gifford, Paul, African Christianity: Its Public Role. London: Hurst, 1998

Hastings, Adrian, A History of African Christianity 1950-1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979

Hodges, Melvin L. The Indigenous Church. Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1953

Hollenweger, Walter J. The Pentecostals. London: SCM, 1972

Hollenweger, Walter J Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997

Kalu, Ogbu U. ‘The Third Response: Pentecostalism and the Reconstruction of Christian Experience in Africa, 1970-1995’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2, 1998 (3-16)

Maxwell, David, ‘Witches, Prophets and Avenging Spirits: The Second Christian Movement in North-East Zimbabwe’, Journal of Religion in Africa 25:3, 1995

McClung, Jr. L Grant, (ed), Azusa Street and Beyond: Pentecostal Missions and Church Growth in the Twentieth Century. South Plainfield, NJ: Logos, 1986

McGee, Gary, ‘Pentecostal Missiology: Moving beyond triumphalism to face the issues’. Pneuma: The Journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies, 16:2, 1994 (275-282)

Ojo, Matthews A. ‘The Church in the African State: The Charismatic/Pentecostal Experience in Nigeria’, Journal of African Christian Thought, 1:2, 1998 (25-32)

Saayman, Willem A. ‘Some reflections on the development of the Pentecostal mission model in South Africa’. Missionalia 21:1, 1993 (40-56)

Synan, Vinson, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century. Grand Rapids & Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997

ter Haar, Gerrie, ‘Standing Up for Jesus: a survey of new developments in Christianity in Ghana’, Exchange 23:3, 1994

Yong, Amos, ‘”Not Knowing Where the Wind Blows...”: On Envisioning a Pentecostal-Charismatic Theology of Religions’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14, 1999 (81-112)

54[7] Dempster, Klaus & Petersen, 219-20.

55[19] The older terms ‘African Independent Church’ and ‘African Indigenous Church’ have been substituted more recently with ‘African Initiated Church’ or ‘African Instituted Church’, all using the now familiar acronym ‘AIC’.

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