Meyer 2004, Christianity in Africa

Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches
Author(s): Birgit Meyer

Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 33 (2004), pp. 447-474
Published by: Annual Reviews
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Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2004. 33:447-74

doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143835
2004 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
Copyright ?
First published online as a Review inAdvance on June 17, 2004
in Africa:
Christianity
to Pentecostal-Charismatic
Independent
Birgit Meyer
Research
Centre
The Netherlands;
From African
Religion
email:
and
Society,
University
of Amsterdam,
Churches
Amsterdam,
b.meyer@uva.nl
African Independent Churches, Pentecostalism, Africanization,

Key Words
globalization, public sphere
Abstract
Taking as a point of departure Fernandez's survey (1978), this review
seeks to show how research on African Independent Churches (AICs) has been recon
figured by new approaches to the anthropology of Christianity in Africa, in general,
and the recent salient popularity of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in par
ticular. If the adjectives "African" and "Independent" were once employed asmarkers
of authentic, indigenous interpretations of Christianity, these terms proved to be in
creasingly problematic to capture the rise, spread, and phenomenal appeal of PCCs
and "traditional religion,"
inAfrica. Identifying three discursive frames?Christianity
Africa and "the wider world," religion and politics?which
organize(d) research on
AICs and PCCs in the course of the past 25 years, this chapter critically reviews dis
cussions about "Africanization," globalization and modernity, and the role of religion
in the public sphere in postcolonial African societies.
INTRODUCTION
since African Independent Churches became a central research focus for
in the 1960s, these churches have not only formed fascinating
anthropologists
research locations but also have been major sites for more general theoretical re
flection and innovation in anthropology. Classical works published in the 1960s and
Ever
1970s (e.g., Fabian 1971, Jules-Rosette

1975, Peel 1968, Sundkler 1961 [1948])
showed how African Independent Churches or movements
instigated the develop
ment of alternatives to the then still dominant structural-functionalist
paradigm,
which failed to address "social change" in a theoretically adequate way (see also
Fabian 1981). As this vast interdisciplinary research field has been surveyed up to
the mid-1980s
1994), this
(Fernandez 1978, Ranger 1986; see also Jules-Rosette
review is confined to the past 25 years. It does not aim to present a comprehensive
survey but seeks to highlight some major trends from an anthropological perspec
tive. In this period, the study of African Independent Churches (AICs), or, as some
1981) or
prefer to call them, African Indigenous Churches (e.g., Appiah-Kubi
0084-6570/04/1021-0447$14.00
447
448
MEYER
African
Initiated Churches (Anderson 2001), has been considerably reconfigured,

empirically as well as theoretically. Nothing can better evoke what is at stake than
the salience of the contrast between the familiar image of African prophets from
Zionist, Nazarite, or Aladura churches, dressed in white gowns, carrying crosses,
and going to pray in the bush, and the flamboyant leaders of the new mega-churches,
who dress in the latest (African) fashion, drive nothing less than aMercedez Benz,
participate in the global Pentecostal jetset, broadcast the message
through flashy
TV and radio programs, and preach the Prosperity Gospel to their deprived and
hitherto-hopeless
born-again followers at home and in the diaspora (Marshall
Fratani 2001). Although it would be too simple to assume that the latter simply
replaced the former, the emergence of these new figures suggests that the appropri
ation of Christianity inAfrica has entered a new phase. If in the 1980s Independent
Churches were found to be attractive, by African Christians as well as researchers,
above all because they seemed to offer amore "authentic," Africanized version of
mainline churches, current
Christianity than do the presumably Western-oriented
Pentecostal-Charismatic
Churches (PCCs) appear to derive their mass appeal at
least partly from propagating a "complete break with the past" (Meyer 1998a,
themselves from both mainline churches and African
2004). Dissociating
or
as
call
them, "Spiritual" Churches, the new PCCs promise
Independent,
they
to link up their born-again believers with global circuits. Although PCCs gain an
ever-increasing number of followers, also from the older AICs, anthropologists?
and African theologians?have
and, for that matter, missiologists
only recently
and reluctantly started to study them. This hesitance, of course, stems from the
fact that anthropologists, by the nature of their discipline, were usually attracted
by cultural difference and authenticity, whereas religious scholars had a strong
or "inculturation." PCCs, with their intensive links to
interest in Africanization
transnational circuits, in particular to American
televangelists, and their enthu
siastic drive to proselytize nonbelievers
(researchers included), were difficult to
as
of
viable
accept
objects
study.
This chapter seeks to highlight not only the shift from AICs to PCCs as new
Engelke
foci of empirical study but also the conceptual transformations to which it gave
In the first section, I show how anthropologists'
understanding of AICs
new
to
in
in
in Africa. I
relation
the
of
approaches
study
Christianity
changed
that
rise
raises
theoretical
PCCs'
argue
spectacular
questions and ren
important
rise.
ders the adjectives "African" and "Independent" increasingly problematic. Three

subsequent sections place particular emphasis on discursive contexts that have
been major frames organizing research in the period under review: (a) the re
lationship between Christianity and "traditional religion" and the question of
Africanization;
(b) the relationship between Africa and "the wider world" and the
question of globalization; and (c) the relationship between religion and politics
and the question of religion in the public sphere. My main concern is to show
how these frames have been reconfigured in the period under review, and in par
ticular by current research on PCCs, and to indicate fruitful avenues for further
research.
CHRISTIANITY INAFRICA
449
FROMAFRICAN INDEPENDENT
RECONFIGURATIONS:
CHURCHES
TO PENTECOSTAL-CHARISMATIC
Fernandez's earlier overview (1978) in the Annual Review of Anthropology marks
from a focus on typologies and
the transition in the study of AICs or movements
taxonomies and crisis cults to amore critical-reflexive and ethnographic approach.
approaches that
Critiquing earlier socio-structural as well as theMarxist-inspired
were en vogue in the 1970s (e.g., Van Binsbergen 1977,1981), Fernandez argued
that researchers' analytical terms and concepts tended to impose Western cate
"My point is, and I
gories on rather than revealing much about these movements:
think it is a very anthropological one, our real enlightenment lies not in the appli
cation of imageless ideas exported from theWest, but in beginning with African
is embedded in
images and by careful method learning what they imply?what
at a
them" (Fernandez 1978, p. 215). Calling for the study of these movements
grassroots level, he expressed his support of the "new historiography" represented
by Terence Ranger cum suis (Ranger & Kimambo 1972). He sought to stimulate
anthropologists to study African religious imaginations by striving to discern their
inherent "argument of images," that is, the way inwhich people face deprivation
and achieve revitalization by redeploying "primary images of body and household,
field and forest life" (Fernandez 1978, p. 228). His own work on the emergence
of the syncretist Bwiti religion among the Fang (Gabon) (1982, see also 1986) is
a magisterial example of this approach, which had amajor impact on subsequent
research and was a matter of much debate (Fernandez 1990; Schoffeleers
1986;
Werbner
1985,1990).
If Fernandez made a strong plea for semantic or symbolic ethnography to replace
social-structuralist approaches, in the Introduction to their influential collection
Van Binsbergen & Schoffeleers
(1985) argued for the necessity to integrate both
of these as a precondition for a better understanding of religious movements
in
Africa. As the contributions to their collection clearly document, since the mid
1980s both strands have certainly come closer together. This quest for integration
Jean Comaroff s Body of
also stood central in two ground-breaking monographs:
in
Power, Spirit of Resistance
(1985) and Karen Fields's Revival and Rebellion
Colonial Central Africa (1985). Both works, in their own manner, offer insight
into African religious practices and symbolic universes on the basis of detailed
empirical research and explore the relationship between religion and politics in a
new imaginative way, without reducing the former to the latter or maintaining a
Durkheimian view of religion as underpinning societal order (see also Werbner
1985). Examining the ways inwhich the British colonial administration perceived
outbreaks ofWatchtower activities inMalawi and Zambia in the first three decades
of the twentieth century as a major political threat, Fields showed how baptism,
speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing actually operated as effective political
tools. Her work challenges the often-implicit distinction between religion and the
secular, which assumes that politics and religion essentially belong to separate
spheres, and it shows that such a separation did not exist in colonial Central
450
MEYER
Africa, colonial officials' claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
Questioning
the very basis on which the (in practice untenable) distinction between religion
and politics thrives, Fields was able to show that religion was a continuously
contested part of the ideology of colonial modernity. Similarly, in her exploration of
Tshidi's material and symbolic struggle in the South African-Botswana
borderland
to act on the global and national forces that shape their lives, Comaroff argued for
the necessity to focus on colonial encounters between Western and local forces.
She thus integrated "what Fernandez calls the imageless concepts of mode of
production, class formation and underdevelopment with a profound exploration
of the argument of images in Tshidi Zionism" (Ranger 1986, p. 12). Although
she only engaged with Fernandez's approach in passing (Comaroff 1985, p. 170),
she clearly moved beyond his rather narrow understanding of ethnography as
being geared to African cultural and symbolic repertoires and the essentializing
opposition between Africa and theWest on which it thrives. In so doing she laid
the base for her and John Comaroff s later work (1991,1997), which reframed the
project of ethnography as not merely a thorough study of the Other but as a detailed
investigation of the zones of contact between Africa and theWest. Central to this
investigation stand the material, social, and cultural possibilities and constraints
articulated in the "long conversations" between Western missionaries,
traders,
and administrators
continued
ever
and local people, which
took off in colonial
times and have
since.
The studies by Fields and Comaroff also signal a growing awareness of the
need to situate AICs in a broader historical, social, and cultural frame. As Ranger
explained in his sophisticated overview, the treatment of Independent churches,
missionary Christianity, and traditional religion in isolation from each other was
"artificial and distorting" (1986, p. 49). He stresses that the study of AICs tended to
draw too strong a contrast with traditional religion, and tomisrepresent
the former
as the sole suitable laboratory for social change, whereas the latter was perceived as
static and hence merely a nostalgic point of reference doomed to disappear (Ranger
1993). Ranger also argues that an exclusive focus on AICs implies a far too rigid
contrast between presumably more "authentic" AICs and Westernized mainline
churches perceived as the ideological superstructure of colonialism and hence as
familiar and not worthy of anthropological
study (Ranger 1987). This contrast, he
occurred in
shows, was challenged by the fact that religious revival movements
mainline churches at the grassroots level (e.g., MacGaffey
1983), whereas AICs
and routinization, in the course of
experienced processes of institutionalization
"pastors" started to assume a more important role than did the prophets
who had initially broken away from mission churches (e.g., Probst 1989).
to focus on Christianity, or
The realization that it is fruitful for anthropologists
even religion, in Africa as a dynamic field, in which so-called AICs, mission, or
mainline churches and traditional religion are in ongoing exchange, conflict, and
which
dialogue with each other, changed the ways in which anthropology and African
theology constructed their research object. In the aftermath of a large conference
in
organized in Jos (Nigeria) in 1975, which resulted in the famous Christianity
CHRISTIANITY
INAFRICA
451
Independent Africa (Fashol?-Luke et al. 1978), the scope of research gradually

broadened from the study of AICs to the history and anthropology of Christianity
inAfrica [e.g., James & Johnson 1988, Spear & Kimambu 1999; see also Hastings'
(2000) perceptive overview]. Most notable in the field of history are the accounts
by Hastings (1979, 1995), Isichei (1995), and Sundkler & Steed (2000), which
take as a point of departure African agency (see also Gray 1990, Maxwell
1997,
1996). As mission ormainline churches were no longer considered solely
the domain of theologians and missiologists
(Beidelman 1982, Etherington 1983),
they became a new study object for anthropologists and historians (Comaroff &
Comaroff 1991, 1997; Etherington 1996; Landau 1995; Meyer 1999; Peel 1990,
1995; Ter Haar 1992). These historical
1995; Pels 1999; Ross & Bredecamp
not
take
for
works
do
anthropological
granted the mission of Western-derived
with
but
instead
them
the same historical and ethnographic
churches,
explore
as
to account for African evangelists'
so-called
AICs.
The
of
how
question
vigor
own narratives and agency without neglecting theWestern part in the encounter
nor reinserting colonial power claims to the history of Christianity inAfrica gave
Salaome
rise tomuch debate (Peel 1995, Comaroff & Comaroff 1997).

studies focus on plural religious fields, tak
Although many anthropological
ing into account dissenting voices and conflicts (Middleton 1983, Schoffeleers
1985,1994; Werbner 1989; Maxwell
1999a; Meyer 1999), most publications still
concentrate on a single movement or organization (see Spear & Kimambo 1999,
Blakely et al. 1994). A more elaborate engagement with Islam as part of these
fields is still very scarce (but see Peel 2003, Sanneh 1996), though this shortcom
ing has been signaled by several authors (Maxwell 1997, p. 147; Hastings 2000,
p. 42). Strangely, the term Independent remains current even after scholars broad
ened their research focus and questioned the usefulness of the opposition between
Western missionary concepts and practices and their indigenous appropriation in
AICs. Maxwell
(1999b) notes that Christian independency, originally a colonial
term to designate Christian movements
lacking white supervision, does not make
sense in the postcolonial era. The use of a supposedly neutral terminology, initially
employed tomark the difference between "authentic" AICs and "foreign" mission
the interrelatedness of these supposedly different
churches, fails to acknowledge
kinds of organizations.
The study of AICs was reconfigured not only by researchers' awareness that
these churches were part of a broader field, but also by the salient popularity of
new PCCs from the 1970s onward. Initially, these African-founded,
yet globally
oriented, PCCs were not regarded as suitable objects of anthropological
study be
cause of their presumed link with Western conservatives and fundamentalists. This
link intrigued Gifford ( 1987,1991 ), prompting him to conduct his early research on
the influence of European and American evangelists on PCCs in Southern Africa
to the latest edition of theWorld Christian
(see also Arntsen 1997). According
(Barrett 2001, see also Anderson 2001), in 2000 there were 83 mil
Encyclopedia
lion Independents and 126 million Pentecostal-charismatics
in Africa. Although
these categories partially overlap, the figures exceed earlier projections by far. If
452
MEYER
Christianity appears to be on the wane in (Northern) Europe (and thus seemed
to offer a prime case in favor of the secularization thesis), a new global brand of
Pentecostalism
thrives inAfrica, Latin America, and Asia (Corten 1997, Droogers
2001, Freston 1998, Jenkins 2002, Lehman 2001, Martin 2002, Poewe 1994).
The Wold Christian Encyclopedia's
confusion about the use of categories such
as AIC and PCC shows how difficult it is to capture with adequate terms the di
in Africa. If for good conceptual reasons (Fabian 1981)
versity of Christianity
anthropologists pleaded to use "movement" rather than "church," African Chris
tians seemed to prefer the latter term, presumably because of itsmore solid, official
connotations. In describing themselves and others, they tend to adopt categories
such as mission or mainline church, AIC or PCC. AICs, in particular, increasingly
came under attack by the fast-growing PCCs (both in terms of membership
and
sheer number), which were founded by and organized around the personality of a
charismatic African
leader and remained institutionally independent from, though

had
links
to,Western Pentecostal churches. To view the popularity
strong
they
as an entirely new phenomenon would be mistaken. Although
of Pentecostalism
Pentecostal churches, such as the Assemblies
of God or the Apostolic Church,
a
scene
role
in
the
African
Christian
since
the 1920s, scholars did not draw
played
a strong distinction between these churches and AICs until around 1990. Southern
African AICs especially developed typical Pentecostal features such as glossolalia
(Daneel 1970, Sundkler 1961) and scholars took them as paradigmatic of African
Pentecostalism
(Cox 1994a,b). At the same time, many AICs straddled the typolog
ical divide and recast themselves as Pentecostal churches (Meyer 1999, Maxwell
2001, Ukah 2003a). What is new is the fact that the hitherto blurred typological
distinction between AICs and Pentecostal churches became increasingly polarized
in the course of PCCs' massive expansion.
Therefore, scholars should not take for granted these classifications, but instead
understand them as part and parcel of a politics of self-representation.
Pente
costal rhetoric about the disappearance of AICs notwithstanding,
these churches
persist and attract followers and researchers (Adogame 2000, Dozon 1995). Es
pecially in South Africa, Zionist Churches still have a mass appeal (M. Fraehm
Arp, unpublished manuscript; Gunnner 2002; Kiernan 1992,1994; Niehaus et al.
2001), although growth of PCCs is on the rise (M. Fraehm Arp, P. Germond &
I. Niehaus, personal communication)?an
issue that calls for detailed future re
in general, quite similar to AICs, PCCs stress the importance of
the Holy Spirit above biblical doctrines and provide room for prophetism, dreams
and visions, speaking in tongues, prayer healing, and deliverance from evil spirits.
The attraction of charismatic Pentecostalism
throughout Africa is not confined
to PCCs, but also materializes
in prayer groups in the confines of established
search. More
Protestant Churches, the charismatic renewal in the Roman Catholic Church, and
nondenominational
that born-again Christians attend without leav
fellowships
1997, Ayuk 2002, Meyer
1999, Ojo 1988,
ing their churches (Asamoah-Gyadu
Ter Haar 1992, Milingo
1984). Therefore, a crude distinction between AICs,
PCCs, and mainline churches is as problematic as the earlier "taxonomic games"
CHRISTIANITY
INAFRICA
453
types of AICs, which has been critiqued by Fernandez (1978) and

distinguishing
Fabian (1981). Nevertheless,
the PCCs of the 1990s are characterized by a distinct
form, in terms of scale, organization, theology, and religious practice, and this
distinct form warrants investigators seeing them as a new phenomenon
(Corten &
Marshall Fratani 2001; M. Fraehm-Arp, unpublished manuscript; Gifford 1998).
seems
entity?fission
Although
they should not be approached as a monolithic
to be intrinsic to Pentecostalism
and hence a broad spectrum of PCCs with dif
ferences in doctrinal emphasis and style exists throughout Africa (Martin 2002,
p. 176)?they
clearly share a number of significant family resemblances.
Because there has been little systematic, comparative research on PCCs in
different African countries (but see Gifford 1998), it is not easy for anthropolo
scale in British
gists to explain why PCCs arose earlier and on a more massive
such as Ghana and Nigeria. The rise of PCCs depends at least in
ex-colonies,
part on a plural religious arena and the existence of AICs, against which PCCs
define themselves. Important historical factors to be considered concern differ
ences between religious cultures inAnglophone
and Francophone ex-colonies and
the extent to which states endorse or reject religious pluralism (Barrett 1968),
as well as the predominance of Islam. Conversely, the fact that PCCs eventually
did become increasingly popular in several francophone countries such as Togo,
Benin, and Cameroon, whose Catholic elites for long distrusted Pentecostalism
for "tending to draw its adherents into a mainly Protestant, U.S.-oriented,
anglo
also calls for explanation. As Konings
sphere" (J. Peel, personal correspondence),
(2003) suggests in accounting for the long-term absence and yet the recent rise of
PCCs in Cameroon (2003), political liberalization, resulting from implementation
forms of good governance and democ
of International Monetary Fund-instigated
a
for
successful manifestation
and massive
forms
condition
PCCs'
ratization,
key
mobilization
of followers (see also Laurent 2001a, Mayrargue 2001).
What is distinctly new about PCCs is their propagation of the Prosperity Gospel
and their strong global inclination. Their names, which often refer to the church's
aspired "international" or "global" (out)reach, highlight PCCs' aim to develop and
international branches in other African countries and theWest, and to
deploy notions of identity and belonging that deliberately reach beyond Africa. In
this sense, PCCs are a global phenomenon
that calls for comparison with similar
churches in other parts of the world, most notably South America. As is shown
inmore detail below, much current research on PCCs explores the personal, cul
maintain
tural, political, social, and economic dimensions of being born-again, as well as

the ways inwhich the upsurge of these churches is related to the crisis of the post
colonial nation-state, transnationalism and diasporic culture, the rise of neo-liberal
"millennial capitalism"
(Comaroff & Comaroff
2001 ), and mass-mediated
popular
culture.
If Fernandez (1978) could still state that religious movements

(in any case
those like Bwiti), though giving "evidence of a successful adaptation to themod
ern world," "remain community enterprises within, resisting modernization
in the
current
sense"
do
Pentecostal-Charismatic
Churches
capitalist
(p. 217), obviously
454
MEYER
not engage in this type of resistance and, on the contrary, even seem to eagerly
embrace capitalism. Such empirical shifts demand new theory and, against the
backdrop of the fact thatmany churches act on a transnational scale, new methods.
Thus, within a span of 25 years, Fernandez's plea to turn to African imagery as a
prerequisite for a true understanding of AICs collided with the realization that the
condition for understanding Pentecostalism's
appeal and impact lies inmoving be
or
at
"African"
and
least
yond,
"Independent" as taken-for-granted
problematizing,
Mudimbe
Whereas
Fernandez's point to conduct
1988).
categories (Appiah 1992,
an ethnographic study of African religious imaginations may have been well taken
at the time, it proved to be problematic in the long run because of the rather es
sentializing understanding of the attribute "African" on which it depends. The
seemingly "un-African," globally inclined PCCs challenge the usefulness of the
notion of "African" as amarker of cultural difference and call for a reformulation
of the major discursive
contexts
through which AICs have been approached.
CHRISTIANITYAND "TRADITIONAL
RELIGION"
A major discursive context framing research on AICs focuses on the relation
ship between Christianity and "traditional religion." As intimated in the Introduc
and
tion, for a long time the research interests of anthropologists, missiologists,
African theologians converged on the issue of Africanization,
and this conver
gence opened up a space for interdisciplinary debate, above all in the Journal of
there has never been an agreement among scholars
Religion in Africa. Although
as well as religious practitioners about the appropriate nomenclature
(terms like
or African the
Africanization,
Inculturation, Indigenization, Contextualization,
ology were all in circulation), the key concern was the search for an "authentic
African expression of Christianity" (Mbiti 1980, Ojo 1988, Wijsen 2000). Phrases
such as Traditional Religion and Christianity: Continuities and Conflicts (the title
inAfrica by Fashol?-Luke et al.
of the second part of the collection Christianity
1978) pinpoint a particular discursive context that informed both religious schol
ars' seemingly irresolvable question, "how to be Christians and Africans at the
same time," (Appiah-Kubi 1981, Ba?ta 1968, Mugambi
1996, Sindima 1994) and
as
the
of African authenticity
of
AICs
backbones
anthropologists' understanding
[or even as "surrogate tribes," as Fabian (1980) put it critically]. The dualism of
these reified categories, Christianity and traditional religion, has been criticized in
creasingly for its inherent, unquestioned assumptions, which misrepresent African
religious traditions as static, mission churches as alien(ating), and AICs as syn
cretically mixing elements from both yet ultimately rooted in and geared toward
traditional culture. Such a view not only neglects African agency in processes of
conversion in the context of mission churches, but also is unable to acknowledge
the extent to which AICs actually oppose(d) traditional notions and practices and
incorporate(d) key notions "from outside," as has been documented inmany older
studies of AICs (without, however, being sufficiently theorized).
anthropological
Ranger (1987) argues that "we should see mission churches as much less alien
CHRISTIANITY
INAFRICA
455
the
and independent churches as much less 'African'" (p. 31) and acknowledge
extent towhich AICs derive inspiration from revivalist movements within mission
churches and in the context of European and North American Pentecostalism
(see
also Maxwell
1997, Ojo 1988).

Recently, the notion of Africanization has been problematized. Inmy historical
and ethnographic work on local appropriations of Christianity among the Ewe
in Ghana I have sought to point out (Meyer 1992, 1999) that it is a mistake to
as solely confined to AICs or to design it "from above" into
view Africanization
new theological programs (as was the case with the then acting moderator of the
Evangelical Presbyterian Church where I conducted my research). Africanization,
understood as appropriation of Christianity at the grassroots level, has been an
integral component of the spread of missionary Christianity from the outset. This
from below" came about through processes of both translation
"[A]fricanization
into the vernacular (Sanneh 1991) and the diabolization of Ewe religion (and
its construction as "heathendom"), thereby merging nineteenth-century
popular
missionary Christianity and local religious practices and ideas. Old gods and spirits,
and also witchcraft, continued to exist as Christian demons under the auspices
of the devil. Hence, in addition to investigating African ideas about God or the
positive convergence of African and Christian notions, I argued for the need for
scholars to consider also the negative incorporation of the spiritual entities in
African religious traditions into the image of the Christian devil as part and parcel
of local appropriations. In this way, the "old" and forbidden, from which Christians
were required to distance themselves, remained available, albeit in a new form (see
also Droz 1997).
in a singular manner and
Hence it makes little sense to use Africanization
as
was
reserve it for the AICs,
the tendency among anthropologists, or affirm the
in theology, as was, and still is, the tendency among many
need for Africanization
African theologians and missiologists
(e.g., Bediako 1995, but see Onyinah 2002).
as not simply entailing a positive
a
broad understanding of Africanization,
Such
or
to with the biblical trope of
its
revival
of
referred
tradition
(often
incorporation
"old wine in new skins"), pinpoints the necessity for scholars to revise the view
of AICs as the sole sites of successful, "syncretic" combinations of traditional
religious and Christian elements.1 Itmeans also that an understanding of tradition
in terms of more or less incorporable elements belonging to the past was found
to be much too static. Nevertheless
in the period under review here, it seems that
a sophisticated treatment of African religious traditions in relation to Christianity
is still relatively scarce (but see MacGaffey
1983; Maxwell
1999a; Peel 1992,
2003; Schoffeleers
1994; Werbner
1989). This
lack may be due to the fact that,
JMuchmore could be said about the politics of use of the term syncretism, which was often
so as to designate
in a pejorative
of mainline
churches
manner,
employed
by representatives
as
and
AIC Christian
deviant.
tended
understandings
impure
Conversely,
anthropologists
as
an
to celebrate
of
achieved
and
elements
(for a
synthesis
foreign
indigenous
syncretism
useful critical discussion see Stewart & Shaw 1994).
456
MEYER
from a Christian perspective, local traditions are often viewed in a temporalizing
perspective, which denies traditional religion its "coevalness" (Fabian 1983) with
(Meyer 1998a,
Christianity, allegedly the religion of modernity par excellence
Steegstra 2004). For a long time, scholars have rather uncritically reproduced this
temporalizing device, thus still echoing Sundkler's (1961) view of AICs "as the
bridge over which Africans are brought back to heathendom" (p. 297).
More general debates about the "invention" or "imagination of tradition"
(Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983), which stressed that tradition is not simply amatter
of the past and hence ultimately opposed to modernity, but an essential part of
of modernity, shaped the research of scholars of Christianity inAfrica.
to approach traditional beliefs and practices no longer as a given
started
They
state
but as actively produced in particular arenas, by colonial and postcolonial
of
the
artists
for
rehabilitation
African
Cultural
officials,
striving
Heritage and
Christian churches or movements.
far
from
Investigators argued that
simply alien
own
converts
their
African
from
and
African
missionaries
culture,
ating
evangelists
discourses
produced reified notions of indigenous culture, which affirmed cultural

and the imagination of distinct tribal or ethnic identities (Meyer 2002a,
Steegstra 2002, Vail 1989). Conversely, those cultural agents who refer
as a desirable point of reference and basis of cultural pride are often
difference
Peel 2003,
to tradition
involved in
a project of secularizing traditional rituals, thereby turning them into "harmless

culture" (Peel 1994, p. 163)
PCCs' rather merciless
attitude toward local cultural traditions and rejection
of village culture has caused many researchers to ponder these churches' stances
toward local religious traditions. Certainly those churches fiercely opposing local
traditions may be much more indebted to traditional ways of thinking than cultural
agents celebrating tradition as cultural heritage (Peel 1994; see also Coe 2000, Hall
1999, Meyer 1999, Steegstra 2004). Although charismatics tend to critique main
local culture through Africanization,
line churches for seeking to accommodate
for
dismiss
Churches"
they
"Spiritual
drawing on occult forces, making use of
as
and incense, and thus linking up with
elements
such
candles
idol?trie
allegedly
the "powers of darkness" (Sackey 2001). Tying into popular narratives (often put
and African evangelists) about
into circulation by nineteenth-century missionaries
the devil as the head of all the demons who were once cast out from heaven and
settled in Africa, many PCCs devote much room to deliverance from the satanic
forces, which possess members and are held to cause material and psychic prob
lems in the sphere of health and wealth. In such semipublic or private meetings,
Pentecostal pastors and members of the "prayer force" seek to cast out demons by
calling on theHoly Spirit to turn the demonically possessed into born-again Chris
tians (Asamoah-Gyadu
1997, p. 23 and subsequent pages; Laurent 2001b; Meyer
1999, p. 155 and and subsequent pages; for a detailed description from an insider
perspective see Onyina 2002, pp. 122-25). Such deliverance sessions happen both
in African rural and urban settings (in prayer camps or churches) as well as in
PCCs catering to the needs of (often illegal) African immigrants in the diaspora
In a sense, they offer a version of African Christianity that
(Van Dijk 1997,2002).
CHRISTIANITY
INAFRICA
457
does not make it necessary to (secretly) seek for help outside the confines of the
church. Being born-again is perceived as a radical rupture not only from one's
personal sinful past, but also from the wider family and village of origin (Engelke
1998; Meyer 1998a, 1999; Van Dijk 1992,
2004; Laurent 2001; Marshall-Fratani
at
these
while
first
churches
1998). Thus,
appeared as heavily antitraditional,
sight
closer investigation reveals that this attribute is problematic, as PCCs take seri
ously spiritual forces to a much larger extent than do mainline churches, which
tend to regard such beliefs as superstitious (albeit on the level of their theologically
trained leaders, not at the grassroots level).
The fact that PCCs affirm a negative, inversed image of traditional gods and
spirits and allow for spirit possession in the context of deliverance pinpoints the ex
tent towhich Christianity and local religious traditions are interrelated. In a sense,
PCCs' ongoing concern with deliverance shows the very impossibility of their
self-ascribed project to break with what Pentecostals discursively construct as the
"forces of the past." Claims to the ultimate power of the Holy Spirit notwithstand
ing, the despised evil spirits seem to be alive and kicking. Against this backdrop
it has become clear that, despite the need for analysis on the level of believers'
ideas, it would be much too simple for researchers to remain within PCCs' own
self-descriptions and take at face value the claim that they lead believers away from
their local background. This notion must be analyzed as a conversion narrative,
rather than as an achieved state (Engelke 2004). Pentecostal-charismatic
practice
ultimately affirms the impossibility for born-again Christians to escape from forces
grounded in and emanating from the local. In this sense, PCCs, while speaking to
desires to link up with the wider world and escape the constraints of poverty, also
articulate Christianity in relation to local concerns.
Whereas, up until now PCCs have mainly referred to local cultural and religious
traditions through diabolization or demonization,
signs indicate a more positive
appreciation of these traditions in charismatic circles. Pentecostal African theolo
gians recently started to reconcile African religious traditions and Christianity in a
postmodern synthesis (e.g., Onyinah 2002). For example, the charismatic leader of
the International Central Gospel Church [headquartered inAccra, Ghana (Gifford
1994, 1998, 2003; De Witte 2003), yet opening branches all over Africa] seeks
to develop the notion of African pride (Otabil 1992, see also Larbi 2001). Also
the emergence of new Gospel Music groups that deliberately incorporate tradi
tional signs and symbols into their lyrics and performance suggests that the rather
negative attitude toward tradition may be changing (M. deWitte, personal commu
nication). The question is, of course, what tomake of this revival of tradition (if it
gets through at all). Iwould suggest that rather than viewing this apparent revival
as a return to the "authentic," and thus relapse into the resilient yet false tempo
ralizing device that locates authenticity and tradition in the past, itmay be more
useful to understand it as a new practice of signification inwhich tradition features
as a cultural style (see also Ferguson 1999, p. 96). In any case, as
anthropologists
have successfully deconstructed themodernization perspective, on which the view
of tradition as a matter of the past ultimately depended, it has become difficult,
458
MEYER
though all the more challenging, to find an appropriate conceptual space for the
authentic or the traditional. This is one of themajor tasks researchers will face in
the future.
WIDERWORLD"
AFRICAAND "THE
Whereas
the notion of Africanization,
thriving in the interface of anthropology
and religious studies, ceased to be themain drive behind anthropological research,
globalization and modernity became the buzz words in the 1990s. This new focus
opened up new venues for interdisciplinary exchange with sociologists of religion
(Lehman 2001, Martin 2002), and opened up possibilities for debates about PCCs
across the limits of area studies (Coleman 2002, Corten & Marshall-Fratani
2001,
Corten & Mary 2001, Poewe 1994). Of course, the question as to how Africans
related to the "modem world" already informed earlier studies of AICs. Much
research in the 1960s and 1970s was conducted from a perspective of modern
ization, which saw indigenous culture as ultimately doomed to disappear with
and secularization. WTiether classified as escapist "crisis
ongoing Westernization
cults" or as creative Independent movements, AICs were regarded as indicators
of the extent to which Africans
still found themselves between traditional and
modem society. This perspective, with its reference points of "traditional religion"
and "new nation-state," was indebted to "a notion of society as a normally stable
arrangement of structures, roles and institutions" that regarded religious enthusi
asm as ultimately disturbing, at least conceptually if not politically (Fabian 1981
be it by offering
[1991], p. 114). AICs were held to cope with modernization,
into which
the capacity to "explain, predict and control" the larger macrocosm
Africans were drawn by colonialism through conversion to the High God (Horton
1975), or by enabling revitalization through a symbolic experience of "returning
to the whole" (Fernandez 1982). Horton's intellectualist approach is problematic
because it regards the individual quest for knowledge as the prime drive behind
and explanation for conversion, thereby neglecting themetaphoric richness of reli
gious thought and action, the emotive appeal of the sacred, and the power of more
structural political-economic
processes. Fernandez's position, as outlined above,
draws too strong a contrast between African images and the forces of colonialism
and modernization.
in the 1990s is a com
(re)tum tomodernity and globalization
Anthropology's
African
studies
and cannot be ad
which
far
exceeds
and
contested
matter,
plex
dressed here (see Appadurai
2002, Kearney
1996, Inda & Rosaldo
1995).
in the context of glob
Researchers of PCCs were pushed to rethink modernity
alization above all because, on the one hand, they were puzzled by these churches'
transnational organizational structure and the outspoken links made between be
ing born-again and going global, and, on the other hand, by the way in which
believers'
economic
life worlds were shaped by contradictions between political, social, and

arising from Africa's partial participation
aspirations and possibilities
INAFRICA
CHRISTIANITY
459
in the global economy. The key challenge was to develop a conceptual framework
that would allow for a more sophisticated understanding of the complicated rela
tionship between modern and traditional, or global and local; thus it became urgent
to discover how these seeming oppositions,
though called on in PCCs' practice,
are actually entangled. It was certainly not a question of returning to the mod
ernization perspective, although researchers, in their eagerness to make sense of
PCCs' self-descriptions, may occasionally find themselves relapse into this old dis
course. The main concern was to address modernity not from within the paradigm
of modernization,
but as a critique thereof. Taking as a point of departure critiques
of anthropology's bounded notions of culture that question a view of the local
as a primal category (Appadurai 1996; Fabian 1991, Ch. 10; Gupta & Ferguson
1997) and the realization that cultural specificity, rather than being opposed to
is an essential component of globalization's
dialectics of flow and
globalization,
closure (Clifford 1988, Meyer & Geschiere
1999), many anthropologists ventured
into ethnographies of modernity. This endeavor, characterized by a dialectical
understanding of the relationship between theory and empirical research, seeks
to explore how people's encounters with colonialism, missions, or the capitalist
market economy take a different shape in different localities. Hence one finds the
emphasis on multiple modernities situated at different times and places, rather than
on one single teleological structure (Comaroff & Comaroff 1993, Geschiere 1997).
Given the characteristics of PCCs, the framework of ethnographies of modernity
was perceived as appealing. In any case, "modernity" proved to be a powerful point
of reference, and is also good to disagree with (Englund & Leach 2000, see below).
Many PCCs present themselves as ultimate embodiments of modernity. Build
thousands of believers, making use of elab
ing huge churches to accommodate
sermons and appearances on TV and
orate technology to organize mass-scale
radio,
organizing
spectacular
crusades
throughout
the
country?often
parading
as to convert nominal Christians, Muslims,

and supporters
foreign speakers?so
of traditional religions, creating possibilities
for high-quality Gospel Music, and
instigating trend-setting modes of dress all create an image of successful mastery
of the modern world (deWitte 2003, personal observation; Droz 2001; Hackett
1998). PCCs owe at least part of their wealth to the fact that they successfully
oblige members to pay tithes (10% of their income). To help believers advance,
some PCCs offer a small loan to needy members, which should enable them to
aim desirable not only
engage in trade and become financially independent?an
to the person in question but also to the church, as it eventually yields higher
donations. Many PCCs represent prosperity as a God-given blessing and resent
the mainline churches for legitimizing poverty by referring to Jesus Christ as a
1998, Maxwell
1998, Meyer
poor man (Marshall-Fratani
1997). The figure of
the charismatic pastor?with
such stars as Nicolas Duncan-Williams
andMensah
Otabil (Ghana), Nevers Mumba (Zambia), and most important, Benson Idahosa
in exquisite garments and driving a
(Nigeria) as paradigmatic figures?dressed
posh car pinpoints
of the same coin.
that prosperity
and being born-again
are held to be two sides
460
MEYER
The question of how to relate religious content to social-economic
issues and
class has been addressed by many researchers, thus linking up with the sociol
in Latin America developed by Martin (1990, 2002) and
ogy of Pentecostalism
Freston (1998). These churches had tremendous appeal especially for young peo
ple, who seek to eschew g?rontocratie hierarchies and aspire to progress in life (the
upwardly mobile), yet think (realistically, perhaps) that this goal can be achieved
only through a God-given miracle. Indeed, "Your miracle is on the way" is a pop
ular slogan, to be seen on church advertisements, car stickers, and shops all over
Africa, which embodies the power of the still unfulfilled, yet resilient "expecta
tions of modernity," which are frustrated by daily experiences of disconnectedness
and marginalization
(Ferguson 1999). However, the Prosperity Gospel also risks
subverted by its own appeal, in particular if the promise of wealth
becoming
on which it thrives fails to materialize
among believers (Maxwell 1998, p. 366
Numerous
and subsequent pages).
scandals show many times over that power
even
and wealth may seduce
the staunchest born-again pastor to go astray (a fa
vorite topic of especially Nigerian video-movies).
Smith showed that charismatic
not only tends to reproduce the structures of inequality against
Pentecostalism
which it positions itself (see also Marshall
1998), but also stands "dangerously
close to the world of witchcraft," and, while critiquing the possibly evil, occult
sources of wealth, is easily suspected to draw on those (Smith 2001). In Owerri
(Nigeria) witchcraft suspicions regarding the wealth of flashy born-again pastors
led to public riots, in which the church premises and pastors' residences were
destroyed. More research needs to be conducted to assess the way in which the
Prosperity Gospel is at once PCCs' main attraction and, as the promise in the long
run fails tomaterialize among most ordinary believers, itsmain weakness.
Despite PCCs' strive for prosperity, the achievement of wealth is moralized
by distinguishing between divine and occult sources of wealth, often by referring
to traditional ideas concerning the nexus of wealth and morality
(Droz 2001).
Because the modern world is represented as thriving on temptation (Marshall
Fratani 1998, Meyer 2002b), PCCs appear to alert believers of being wary not
to lose themselves in crude consumptive behavior and to use wisely the money
they earn. People should avoid drinking alcohol, leading a loose moral life, and,
in the case of men, squandering money with "cheap girls." They offer elaborate
lessons on marriage, which young couples prior to their wedding must attend,
and special hours for marriage counseling. Though the issue of gender appears
to be pertinent, little research has been conducted in this regard (but see Mate
2002). The ideal is a moral self, not misled by the glitzy world of consumer
capitalism nor misguided by the outmoded world of tradition, but instead filled
the Holy Spirit. Although there is likely much overlap between the Protestant
the
of conduct thatMax Weber found to be typical of early Protestantism,
strong emphasis on becoming prosperous and showing off wealth distinguishes
PCCs from early modern Protestantism. Because the devil is supposed to operate
with
modes
not only through blood ties linking people to their extended family, in particular,
in the sphere
and local culture, in general, but also at the heart of modernity
461
of consumption,
the prospect of prosperity is made to depend on deliverance.
Occult forces, embodied by the Spirit of Poverty, may block the accumulation
of capital; seductive powers, as embodied by Mami Water, may induce them to
squander their money on petty things such as cosmetics, perfumes, and sweets,
and ancestral spirits may prevent them from prospering in life
1997;
(Bastian
Meyer 1998a,b; Ukah 2003b; see also Ellis & Ter Haar 1998, p. 183
and subsequent pages.). Linking up with ongoing debates about the "modernity
of witchcraft" in African studies (Cziekawy & Geschiere
1997,
1998, Geschiere
Moore & Sanders 2001), PCCs' witchcraft discourses express the contractions of
and promises (Comaroff & Comaroff 1993), and the
modernity, its malcontents
moral panics to which it gives rise (Marshall 1991).
As the (prospective) born-again person is PCCs' point of departure to change
the world, much research has focused on Pentecostal notions of the self, the way
inwhich members are enticed towrite new scripts for their lives. Inmy own work
whereas witchcraft
I tried to show that, as deliverance was understood as "cutting blood ties" (thus
preventing jealous family members and demanding spirits to intrude a person),
the invasion of the Holy Spirit through whom this severing occurred could be
understood as a symbolic creation of amodem individual subject (1999). Although
many charismatics are suspicious of the extended family and "the witches in the
village" is a recurrent trope inmany sermons, the extent towhich PCCs stimulate
the genesis of new forms of communality, which may act as a surrogate family,
should not be neglected (as emphasized by Van Dijk 1997,2002; see also Englund
& Leach 2000, p. 235). As Marshall-Fratani
(2001) argues, "it is not so much
the individualism of Pentecostal conversion which leads to the creation of modem
subjects, but theways inwhich its projection on a global scale of images, discourses
and ideas about renewal, change and salvation opens up possibilities for local actors
to incorporate these into their daily lives" (2001, p. 80; see also Marshall-Fratani &
Peclard 2002). Calling on believers as brothers and sisters in Christ, contemporary
PCCs incite imaginations of community that surpass the space of the ethnic group
or the nation as these imaginations are delocalized. This stance materializes
in
and
literature
that
available
and
circulate
sermons,
music,
video)
(cassette
widely
in global Pentecostal networks and entice the constitution of a new public of born
again believers with a strong global outlook (Ellis & Ter Haar 1998). It also plays
an important role in the diaspora, where many Africans do not have a staying permit
and yet are entitled to be married in the church, thereby surpassing national identity
politics (Van Dijk 2002). As Martin (2002) put it, "Charismatic Christianity is the
portable identity of people in diaspora" (p. 145). So far, however, anthropologists
have done little to develop more adequate research methodologies
taking into
of PCCs. They are still mainly studied at one
exception is Rijk van Dijk, who has
over
stretching
Europe and Africa and conducted
account the transnational dimension

location
in Africa.
particular
researched Pentecostal
One notable
networks
multi-sited
fieldwork inAccra, The Hague, and Botswana (1997, 2002, nd.).

Although the research presented so far in this section may suggest that PCCs'
their
practices translate smoothly into the notions of modernity and globalization,
462
MEYER
use has also triggered debate. Englund & Leach (2000) have criticized anthropo
logical fieldwork on PCCs for being "organized by the meta-narrative of moder
nity," which draws them into aWestern perspective that ultimately fails to capture
what actually goes on in these churches. In order to avoid misrepresentation,
they
advocate "to subscribe to a tradition of realist ethnography in which fieldwork as
lived experience is indispensable for the production of anthropological knowledge"
in Chinsapo (Malawi), Englund &
(p. 229). Presenting the case of Pentecostals
Leach offer valuable ethnographic material (see also Englund 1996), which indeed
cautions not to disregard the particularities of different localities at the expense of
sweeping generalizations about PCCs' attitude toward modernity. Although this is
not the place to discuss these authors' intervention in any detail (but see the com
ments on their piece in Current Anthropology),
Iwould like to briefly address the
relationship they propose between ethnography and theory. Their plea resonates
quite well with Fernandez's opposition of African imaginations and imageless
Western concepts. The problem with such a view, as I try to point out above, is
that it is based on an understanding of "African" or, as Englund & Leach call
it, "local" as ontologically prior to and distinct from "the wider world" (see also
Gupta 2000), and thus as impossible to capture by imageless theoretical frame
works, be it structural-functionalism, Marxism, or modernity. Given that themain
reason for turning to modernity
as outlined above, was the
(and globalization),
to
or
better
how
the
"African"
local relates to foreign or
grasp
quest
supposedly
on
forces
without
relocations, Englund & Leach's
global
relying
essentializing
theoretical intervention does not have much to offer.
The need to move beyond this position, which has been haunting African
studies?and
decades, has been
certainly research on Christianity in Africa?for
asserted by the French political scientist Jean-Fran?ois Bayart. In his reflections
(2000) on "extraversion," he seeks to surpass the "sterile distinction between the
internal dimension of African societies and their insertion in the international sys
tem" (p. 234; see also 1993). Insisting thatAfrica, in its own way, is a player in the
process of globalization
(rather than being merely disconnected), he investigates
how initially foreign, colonial forces subjected Africans by constituting them as
subjects. Building on Foucault's insights, Bayart argues that subjectivation, in both
senses of the term, occurs most successfully
as, for instance, was the case with missions
a new type of person characterized by new
ceived as irredeemably constitutive of one's
through a noncoercive use of power,

that played a key role in generating
internalized modes of conduct per
identity. For Bayart, appropriation is
but in his opinion it is not a question of "new
the prime strategy of extraversion;

wine in old skins," as was the case in the discursive context of Christianity and
traditional religion. Instead, the appropriators themselves change in the process
of appropriating new matters through external links. Here external and internal
are not absolute but dialectical categories that continuously erase each other (and
this, in the end, makes it difficult to say what exactly isAfrican about strategies of
extraversion, as Bayart still seems to claim). Extraversion, understood in this way,
should not however be viewed as innocently creative and positive; rather, as Bayart
CHRISTIANITY
INAFRICA
463
shows, through appropriation and other strategies of extraversion, Africans also

participate(d) dramatically in their own submission, resulting in political turmoil,
war, and despair, and the adoption of alternative strategies such as trickery and
brute coercion. Against the backdrop of this complex argumentation, which can
only be evoked here, it becomes clear that essentialist differences between Africa
and the world or the local and the global are impossible tomaintain. Accounting
for both structural constraints and creative appropriation, the notion of extraver
sion also allows scholars to reconcile an emphasis on narrativity and agency (Peel
1995), with attention paid to the "long conversation" initiated by the dynamics of
newly emerging power structures (Comaroff & Comaroff 1991).
The usefulness of Bayart's approach to the study of Christianity in general (see
Peel 2003) and PCCs in particular is obvious. Gifford (1998), for example, ob
serves: "[F]or all the talk within African circles of localisation, inculturalisation,
or indigenisation, external links have become more important than
Africanisation
ever" (p. 308). Extraversion being both a practice in place to incorporate external
and spiritual matters and a method of surviving, "Africa's newest Chris
tianity, while inmany ways reinforcing traditional beliefs, also serves [...] as one
of Africa's best remaining ways of opting into the global order" (p. 321). Corten &
Marshall-Fratani
(2001), Maxwell
(2000) and, somewhat surprisingly against the
backdrop of his earlier stance, Englund (2003) have drawn similar conclusions.
There is a danger, though, of overemphasizing
the creative and positive aspects of
extraversion, which would bring the notion disturbingly close to earlier approaches
toward Africanization
in the sense of tradition-oriented wholeness
and harmony.
In many respects, the study of PCCs has little eye for the possibly disorienting,
unsettling, and destructive implications of born-again Christianity, the contradic
tions on which it thrives and the disappointments
it generates (but see Behrend
1999, Marshall-Fratani
2001, Smith 2001). This omission may have to do with
the fact that the anthropology of religion as a whole still seems to be very much
biased toward an understanding of religion as stabilizing above all, in that it offers
modes of orientation and control and a secure place to feel at home.
material
RELIGIONAND THE PUBLICSPHERE

If the two discursive contexts presented so far struggled, albeit in different ways,
with the question of the relationship between Africa and the world, the last?and
context to be presented here is organized along
still less developed?discursive
somewhat different faultlines: the relationship between Christianity and politics,
or, inmore general terms, religion and the secular. The question of AICs' political
having been a key concern for a long time, debates on the relationship
religion and politics tend to downplay one at the expense of the other
some scholars saw AICs as proto-nationalist
(Ranger 1986). Whereas
organiza
tions, others regarded them as inferior to political activity. Yet, Ranger (1986)
dimension
between
noted, "few can study these movements
without
feeling
that even if they were not
464
MEYER
unequivocally anticolonial they constituted a form of politics" (p. 6). This feeling
that religion and politics were entangled in a more complicated way than would
suggest their straightforward distinction and the academic division of labor asso
ciated with it (religious studies and political science) continued to inform debates
about questions of resistance and domination. In these debates the understanding
of resistance, and for that matter politics, was broadened so as to encompass the
sphere of everyday life. Comaroff (1985), for instance, presented Tshidi Zionism
under apartheid as constructing a "systematic counterculture, a modus operandi
explicitly associated with those estranged from the centers of power and communi
cation" (p. 191). Because afflicted people served asmetonyms for thewhole group,
healing and deliverance from evil spirits was not merely individual, but rather in
volved collective restorative work. That Zionist churches did not stimulate overt
collective political action was, Comaroff reasoned, due to a lack of opportunity to
protest openly. Therefore, the powerless protested within the domain of everyday
practice. Although Zionism could only mediate societal contradictions, but not
transcend them, it did not turn Tshidi into docile servants of Apartheid, but in
stead enabled them to express symbolic resistance against the system. Schoffeleers
(1991), building on similar data, argued that this understanding of resistance ex
tended the notion beyond recognition. He presented the Zionist churches, and for
that matter healing churches in general, as instilling political quiescence
in their
members?a
evoked
which
much
2002,
(Gunner
p. 6 and
position
disagreement
on
Research
the
relation
the
between
and
the
subsequent pages).
symbolic
polit
ical in AICs stretched "the semantics of the political" (Gunner 2002, p. 7) and
developed into more complex reflections on processes of domination and control,
in terms of Gramsci's notion of hegemony (see Comaroff & Comaroff 1991) or
Bayart's
notion
of
extraversion.
In my view, the relation between religion and politics is much more compli
cated than is highlighted in debates about the kind and extent of AICs' resistance.
Scholars recognized that, power being always "rooted in the fusion of the secular
and sacred worlds" (Akyeampong 1996, p. 167), itwas impossible to disentangle
religion and politics. Yet at the same time they reflected on religion and politics
in a modem framework, which stressed that both belonged to separate spheres.
In retrospect, one can observe that the master narrative of secularization, which,
if implicitly, informed theorizing about AICs' politics, collided with the press
ing realization that secularization made little sense with regard to the empirical
context under study. Fields's (1985) study, mentioned previously, was crucial in
highlighting this contradiction by showing that even in the colonial administration,
amodem site par excellence, itwas impossible to contain Christianity in a private
realm. Itwent disturbingly public.
If research on AICs' politics has mainly explored symbolic forms of resistance,
the new PCCs of the 1990s, often emerging in conjunction with processes of democ
ratization and liberalization, urged researchers to pose new questions about Chris
tianity's public role (e.g., Gifford 1998, Haynes 1996). Gilford's (1998) pioneer
ing work on Christianity's public role in Ghana, Uganda, Zambia, and Cameroon
CHRISTIANITY
INAFRICA
465
articulates the paradox at stake: "In theWest Christianity, while arguably a key
source of modernity, has declined in its public significance as modern society has
taken shape. InAfrica itmay be that Christianity is assuming an increasing signif
icance in the creation of amodern, pluralistic African society" (p. 20). Important
factors explaining Christianity's?not
role are the precarious
only PCCs'?public
role of the African postcolonial
state, with its run-down structures of governance
and failure to achieve legitimacy, and its loosening grip on "civil society" as a
result of IMF's pressure for "good governance" and "democratization." PCCs, in
particular, owe their appeal to the fact that they easily link up with popular world
views, which assert the power of invisible forces to impinge on the visual realm
and thus readily match Pentecostalism's
emphasis on evil spirits and deliverance.
The question of how to appreciate PCCs' politics is amatter of debate. Whereas,
for instance, the political scientist Haynes (1996) sees PCCs as catering to the real
needs of the people and countering the woes of modernization, Gifford is more
reserved. Critiqued by mainline churches for their irrational outlook and political
opportunism, PCCs easily "walk the corridors of power" (Gifford 1998, p. 341)
and align themselves with the government, as numerous examples given by Gifford
show. Conversely, those in power may parade their born-again identity, as was the
case for Zambia's president Chiluba or Benin's president K?r?kou. Nevertheless,
here too, it is problematic to generalize, as different charismatic pastors adopt
different stances toward politics and the government (as, for example, the case of
the Ghanaian Mensah Otabil, who was a fierce critic of the Rawlings government,
shows, whereas other charismatics aligned themselves with Rawlings) and PCCs'
members' attitudes toward politics has hardly been subject to research. Recently,
the question of PCCs' attitude toward democracy has become a new research focus
in a program funded by the Pew Foundation
which, for instance, materialized
in
Asia and Latin America," with Ranger acting
and
Politics
Africa,
"Evangelicals
as the head of the African dimension of the program (Ranger 2003). The link
between anthropological
and political science approaches in research on PCCs
and the recontextualization
of this research in a global frame is laudable. Yet,
an all-too-easy
slippage into the discursive frameworks of democracy and civil
current catch words of global development circuits?needs
to be
society?the
resisted because these notions are often employed in a Eurocentric and normative
way that is not helpful in understanding politics inAfrica.
The most important feature of Gifford's analysis is the suggestion to investigate
PCCs' popularity against the backdrop of the shifting role of the state in Africa.
in the era of one-part dictatorial regimes (aptly analyzed by Mbembe
Whereas
the state sought to contain Christianity outside the public realm (and often
fiercely resented mainline churches' criticisms leveled against its politics), the sit
uation changed significantly with the onset of democratization
and liberalization,
when politicians (to be) voted into power depended on the consent of their often
In such a situation, becoming Pentecostal may
largely born-again constituencies.
be a seductive political strategy, although, as Phiri (2003) has shown, declaring
2001)
Zambia
a Christian nation was of no help for the born-again president Chiluba
to
466
MEYER
stay in power. It is fruitful to proceed along these lines in the future because the
rise of particular PCCs and their public role can be understood only in reference
to the reconfiguration of the political field in general, and the state in particu
lar (Marshall-Fratani 1998). Capturing the entanglement of religion and politics
requires an analysis in which attention to religious content and its political posi
tioning converge, as argued (as well as demonstrated) by Ellis & Ter Haar (1998)
in their perceptive analysis of the political implications of religious tracts as part
and parcel of power struggles that straddle the boundary between the visible and
invisible world as easily as that between religion and politics, or fantasy and reality
(though, by calling attention to the religious dimension, they paradoxically reaffirm
the understanding of religion as a separate sphere, which they put into question).
The important and marked public role of PCCs testifies to the fact that the master
narrative of secularization, which claims an intrinsic link between modernization
and the decline of the public importance of religion, is inadequate to understand
PCCs' attraction and impact on the political as well as personal level.
What is likely at stake is the way in which charismatic movements
impinge
on the imagination of communities,
once the privileged sphere of the nation
state (Anderson 1991). Although our world is a world of nation-states, current
African politics shows the incapacity of postcolonial states to bind the citizens into
the vision of the nation. The constant occurrence of wars and terror in Africa?
presented as a seemingly natural feature that does not even call for explanation
in much press footage?pinpoints
that the state seems to reach its limits in the
face of both small-scale autochthonous
incentives and transnational movements
such as political Islam or PCCs. Recently
the role of PCCs in the formulation
of alternative imaginations of community has become a research topic. In this
context, the blurring of distinctions between politics and religion is addressed
in relation to the emergence of new modes of communication
and debate in the
have been found to
public realm. Many PCCs (as well as Islamist movements)
appropriate keenly new electronic media that have become easily accessible and,
in a context of media deregulation, allow for an active part to play in identity politics
(Marshall-Fratani 1998, Meyer 2004). In addition to the question of how newly
available media technologies impinge on and possibly transform existing practices
of mediation between the divine and the human world (Bastian 2001, Hackett 1998;
see also Lyons 1990, Lyons & Lyons 1991, de Witte 2003), investigators also pay
attention to the political and cultural implications of PCCs' new public voice. This
is a question not only of politics in a more narrow sense, but also of the way in
which PCCs contribute to the emergence of a new, more Christian public culture.
Interesting in this context is the question of how, as a result of PCCs' popularity,
public culture assumes a strong Pentecostal touch, yet also evokes strong opposition
from other camps, such as neo-traditionalists
(who increasingly tend to adopt the
same media formats as PCCs) andMuslims
(Meyer 2004).
In the future, there is a need not only for more comparative work between PCCs
in Africa
and other continents, but above all for more grounded investigations of
in a particular arena, taking into account Islam, neo-traditional
the different voices
CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA
467
and charismatic Christianity. An important issue concerns the way in

movements,
which religions play into current identity politics, as they thrive in the limits of
the state, by adopting new media practices that enable them to assume a public
voice. Of particular interest is the question of how far, despite mutual disagree
ment and animosities, different religions actually tend to adopt similar formats
of public articulation and religious mediation
[as the striking similarities between
the charismatic Muslim
leader Haidara inMali (Schulz 2003) and Mensah Otabil
(deWitte 2003, Gifford 2003) suggest].
to pay attention to the shifting role
the need for anthropologists
Ultimately,
and place of religion inAfrica, which motivates much current research, also calls
for a critical investigation of the notion of religion itself. As Asad (1993) argues,
an understanding of religion in terms of "inner belief" is historically situated in
Western Christianity and can thus not be applied simply to different religious tra
ditions thatmay, for example, place much more emphasis on ritual and materiality
between missionaries
and Africans about
(the often-reported misunderstandings
the material outcome of conversion are telling in this regard). Much research on
PCCs, however, refers to the religious dimension in terms of a deeply seated inner
belief that constitutes the, in a sense, ungraspable power of religion, thereby reaf
firming a definition of religion as a separate sphere (e.g., Ellis & Ter Haar 1998,
Englund 2003, Hackett 1986). Although it is important to pay attention to PCCs'
power to evoke deeply felt emotions and tomediate experiences of the supernatu
ral, a universal definition of religion must be resisted. As Martin (2002) argues, for
instance, certain features such as the strong notions of the "mobile self and the
"portability of charismatic identity" raise the question of whether Pentecostalism
represents "postmodern religion" par excellence.
CONCLUDINGREMARKS
The main aim of this review has been to show how the shift from AICs, as prime
focus of study, to PCCs in the 1990s impinged on three discursive frames that
in Africa. Echoing
shaped, yet were transformed by, the study of Christianity
a more general trend in anthropology (and cultural studies), also in the field sur
veyed here, researchers' relative certainties about the classifications and categories
in use?as well as their usefulness?gave
way to, albeit contested, processes of
such notions as African, authentic, or local, detemporalizing
tra
de-essentializing
dition, deconstructing modernization, multiplying modernity, blurring the bound
ary between religion and politics, and even deuniversalizing
religion. Of course,
as I have tried to argue, these deconstructions happened for good reasons as, in a
sense, the object of study itself seemed to demand these conceptual "liquidations"
to be understood as part and parcel of a wider world. And yet, paradoxically, re
searchers' growing uneasiness about fixed categories and qualifications does not
seem to be paralleled in the world they study. The openings facilitated by the accel
eration of flows of people, goods, and ideas, the intensification of global links across
MEYER
468
national borders, and the compression of time and space seem to call into being new
boundaries. Attempts to de-exoticize Africa and grasp its entanglement with "the
wider world" notwithstanding,
it is equally clear that many Africans experience
and "forgotten." The mass appeal of PCCs can be explained,
being marginalized
at least in part, against this backdrop. Adopting a strategy of extraversion, which
deliberately develops external
nevertheless have to address
markers govern processes of
The challenge for the future
can and, equally importantly,
links and promises connection with theworld, PCCs

a politics of identity and belonging, in which fixed
in- and exclusion, both in Africa and the diaspora.
is not only to understand what charismatic religion
cannot do in such configurations, but also to grasp
the power of identity without naturalizing it, to deconstruct reifications without

neglecting their power. The call for solid ethnography is as pertinent as ever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to John Peel and my colleagues at the Research Centre Religion and
Society and the Department of Anthropology
(University of Amsterdam): Gerd
van
Peter
de
Baumann,
Geschiere, Mattijs
Port, Peter van Rooden, and Jojada
for
their
and
constructive comments on earlier
Verrips
perceptive, stimulating,
versions of this review.
The Annual Review of Anthropology
is online at http://anthro.annualreviews.org
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Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

Author(s): Birgit Meyer

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2004. 33:447-74

African Independent Churches, Pentecostalism, Africanization,

1970s (e.g., Fabian 1971, Jules-Rosette

Initiated Churches (Anderson 2001), has been considerably reconfigured,

ders the adjectives "African" and "Independent" increasingly problematic. Three

and local people, which

took off in colonial

times and have

Independent Africa (Fashol?-Luke et al. 1978), the scope of research gradually

rise tomuch debate (Peel 1995, Comaroff & Comaroff 1997).

leader and remained institutionally independent from, though

types of AICs, which has been critiqued by Fernandez (1978) and

tural, political, social, and economic dimensions of being born-again, as well as

(Comaroff & Comaroff

2001 ), and mass-mediated

If Fernandez (1978) could still state that religious movements

through which AICs have been approached.

1997, Ojo 1988).

lack may be due to the fact that,

useful critical discussion see Stewart & Shaw 1994).

produced reified notions of indigenous culture, which affirmed cultural

a project of secularizing traditional rituals, thereby turning them into "harmless

life worlds were shaped by contradictions between political, social, and

as to convert nominal Christians, Muslims,

and being born-again

are held to be two sides

account the transnational dimension

fieldwork inAccra, The Hague, and Botswana (1997, 2002, nd.).

through a noncoercive use of power,

the prime strategy of extraversion;

shows, through appropriation and other strategies of extraversion, Africans also

RELIGIONAND THE PUBLICSPHERE

noted, "few can study these movements

that even if they were not

a Christian nation was of no help for the born-again president Chiluba

the different voices

and charismatic Christianity. An important issue concerns the way in

links and promises connection with theworld, PCCs

the power of identity without naturalizing it, to deconstruct reifications without

tural Change. A Social History of Alcohol

Anderson AH. 2001. Types and butterflies:

Reflections on the Origins and Spread of

Religion and Medical Practice Among the

Relig. Afr. 30(l):3-29

Appiah KA. 1992. In My Father's House:

Asad T. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Disci

Univ. Calif. Press

out robes': lay charismatic fellowships and

costal Stud. 5(2): 189-204

Univ. Ghana, April 1965. London: Oxford

Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press

burgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press

Study of an East African

Blakely TD, Van Beek WEA, Thompson DL,

1997. The growth of the litera

tiques etpentec?tisme: Afrique/Am?rique du

costalism inAfrica. Christ. Century 111(32):

bridge, MA: Da Capo Press

Rhodesia: Aspects of African Independent

colonial Africa. Afr. Stud. Rev. 41(3): 1-209.

Clifford J. 1988. The Predicament of Culture

Revolution: The Dialectics ofModernity on