Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected
| PentecostalTheology.com
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
The Newer Pentecostal and
Charismatic Churches: The Shape of Future Christianity in Africa?
Allan H. Anderson
The New Factor in African Christianity
The role of a new and rapidly growing form of African Christianity,
1 here called “ newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches” (NPCs), is increasingly being recognized.
2
This movement, which has only emerged since 1970, is fast becoming one of the most signiŽ cant expressions of Christianity on the continent, especially in Africa’ s cities. We can’ t under- stand 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 and the Aladura/Zionist churches.
3
I would argue that this newer Pentecostal and Charismatic movement is not fun- damentally different from the Holy Spirit movements and the so-called “ prophet-healing” and “ spiritual churches” that preceded it in the Afri- can Initiated Churches (AICs),
4
but it is a continuation of them in a very different context. The older “ prophet-healing” AICs, the “ classical” Pente- costals, and the newer Pentecostal churches have all responded to the existential needs of the African worldview. They have all offered a per- sonal encounter with God through the power of the Spirit, healing from sickness, and deliverance from evil in all its manifestations, spiritual,
1
This article is adapted from Chapter 8 of my forthcoming book, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000). I have opted for “ newer” rather than “ new” because some of these churches have been 2 established for almost three decades.
David Maxwell, “ Witches, Prophets and Avenging Spirits: The Second Christian Movement in North-East Zimbabwe,” Journal of Religion in Africa 25, no. 3 (1995): 313; Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (London: Hurst, 1998), 31; Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South 3 Africa (Pretoria, South Africa: University of South Africa Press, 2000), 237-55.
Ogbu U. Kalu, “ The Third Response: Pentecostalism and the Reconstruction of Christian Experience in Africa, 1970-1995,” Journal of African Christian Thought 1, no. 2 (1998): 4 3.
The terms “ African Independent Church” and “ African Indigenous Church” have been replaced more recently with “ African Initiated Church” or “ African Initiated Church,” all using the now familiar acronym AIC.
© 2002 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden
pp. 167– 184
1
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
social, and structural. This is not to say that there are no tensions or dif- ferences between the “ new” and the “ old” AICs, which will be obvious in this article. In a study of NPCs in northeast 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 geron- tocratic religions that have lost their charismatic power. As Maxwell points out, even the older Pentecostal churches, whether AICs or founded by Western missions, “ can lose their pentecostal vigour” through a process of bureaucratization and “ ageing.”5
The entrance and pervading in uence of many different kinds of NPCs on the African Christian scene now make it even more difŽ cult, if not impossible, to put AICs into types and categories. It is becoming increas- ingly difŽ cult to deŽ ne ‘ Pentecostal’ precisely, and if we persist with nar- row 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. The Pentecostal and Charismatic movement is better understood as a movement concerned primarily with the experience of the working of the Holy Spirit and the practice of spir- itual gifts. In this sense, in Africa the term would include the majority of older AICs, those classical Pentecostals originating in Western Pentecostal missions, and those newer independent churches, “ fellowships,” and “ min- istries” in Africa that are the focus of this article. 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 (such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God) are also a very active and growing phe- nomenon throughout Africa and undoubtedly played a signiŽ cant role in the emergence of some of these newer groups. But as these were founded by missionaries mostly from Britain and North America— although with more African involvement in leadership and Ž nancial 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 untir- ing efforts of African preachers.
5
Maxwell, “ Witches,” 316-17.
168
2
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
Pentecostal churches of Western origins have operated in Africa for most of the twentieth century. Most of these churches trace their histori- cal origins to the impetus generated by the Azusa Street Revival, which sent out missionaries to Ž fty nations within two years.
6
The connections between this classical Pentecostal movement and AICs throughout Africa have been amply demonstrated.
7
Some of these classical Pentecostal churches have become vibrant and rapidly expanding African churches throughout the continent, in particular the Assemblies of God, which oper- ates in most countries of the Sub-Sahara. Throughout the history of AICs there has been a predominance of Pentecostal features and phenomena. Harvey Cox is at least partly correct to refer to the Apostolic/Zionist, Lumpa, and Kimbanguist churches as “ the African expression of the world- wide Pentecostal movement,” but these churches do not usually deŽ ne 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.8
The Development of Newer Churches
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 in uenced by the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement in Europe and North America and by established Pentecostal mission churches in Africa. It must be remembered, however, that these churches were largely independent of foreign churches and had
6
Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (London: SCM, 1972), 22-24; Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand 7 Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 84-106.
Anderson, African Reformation , chap. 4-7; Allan H. Anderson and Gerald J. Pillay, “ The Segregated Spirit: The Pentecostals,” in Richard Elphick, and Rodney Davenport, eds., Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social and Cultural History (Oxford, England: James Currey and Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip, 1997), 228-29; Allan H. Anderson, “ Dangerous Memories for South African Pentecostals,” in Allan H. Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger, eds. Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (ShefŽ eld: ShefŽ eld Academic Press, 1999), 88-92; idem, Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa (Pretoria, South Africa: University of South Africa Press), 22- 24; 8idem, Zion and Pentecost , 56-74.
Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (London: Cassell, 1996), 246; Gifford, African Christianity , 33.
169
3
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
an African foundation. Many arose in the context of interdenominational and evangelical campus and school Christian organizations from which young charismatic leaders emerged with signiŽ cant followings, and often the NPCs eventually replaced the former interdenominational movements.
9 At Ž rst they were nondenominational churches, but in recent years, as they have expanded, many of these churches have developed denomina- tional structures, several prominent leaders have been “ episcopized,” and some are now international churches. 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 edu- cated, and consequently more Westernized leadership and membership, including young professionals and middle-class urban Africans. In lead- ership structures, theology, and liturgy, these churches differ quite markedly from both the older AICs and the Western mission-founded churches, Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal. Their services are usually emotional and enthusiastic, and many NPCs use electronic musical instruments, publish their own literature, and run their own Bible training centers for preach- ers, both men and women, to further propagate their message. These move- ments 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 intercontinentally, and some produce glossy booklets and broadcast radio and television programs. 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 NPCs are, like the older AICs before them, an African phe- nomenon, churches that, 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 orga- nizational 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 don’ t 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 soci- ety. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu makes the interesting point that one of the
9
Kwabena J. Asamoah-Gyadu, “ Traditional Missionary Christianity and New Religious Movements in Ghana” (Accra: M.Th. thesis, University of Ghana, 1996); Kalu, “ Third Response,” 7.
170
4
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
basic differences between the older AICs and the NPCs 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 NPCs, however, he says that “ each believer is empowered through the baptism of the Holy Spirit to overcome them.”10 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.
Some of the main methods employed by the NPCs are very similar to those used by most Pentecostals, including door-to-door evangelism, meet- ings 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.
11
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 programs there, public scandals notwith- standing. The strategies employed by these evangelists have been subject to criticism,
12
but have had the effect of promoting a form of Christianity that has appealed especially to the urbanized and signiŽ cantly Westernized new generation of Africans. Theologically, the NPCs are christocentric but share an emphasis on the power of the Spirit with other Pentecostals, including many AICs. A particular focus on personal encounter with Christ (being “ born again” ), long periods of individual and communal prayer, prayer for healing and for such problems as unemployment and poverty, deliverance from demons and the occult (this term often means traditional beliefs and witchcraft), the use of such spiritual gifts as speaking in tongues and (to a lesser extent) prophecy— these features more or less character- ize all NPCs.
10
Kwabena J. Asamoah-Gyadu, “ The Church in the African State: The Pentecostal/ Charismatic 11 Experience in Ghana,” Journal of African Christian Thought 1, no. 2 (1998): 56.
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 12more recently by Nigerian Benson Idahosa and German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke.
For example, see Paul Gifford, “ Reinhard Bonnke’ s mission to Africa, and his 1991 Nairobi crusade,” in Paul Gifford, ed., New Dimensions in African Christianity (Nairobi: All Africa Conference of Churches, 1992), 157.
171
5
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
Charismatics in West Africa
The growth of NPCs has been most dramatic in West Africa, espe- cially in Nigeria and Ghana. In these countries, many new churches arose in interdenominational university student groups, notably the Scripture Union and the Christian Union. These groups later became ‘ fellowships’ that grew into full-blown denominations often led by lecturers and teachers.
13 One of the most remarkable and earliest of these movements in Nigeria is the Deeper Life Bible Church, with branches all over West Africa and intercontinentally, with over half a million members in Nigeria only ten years after its founding. William Folorunso Kumuyi (b. 1941) was a for- mer education lecturer at the University of Lagos and an Anglican who became a Pentecostal in the Apostolic Faith Church. He began a weekly interdenominational Bible study group in 1973 that spread to other parts of Nigeria and was called Deeper Christian Life Ministry. The Apostolic Faith Church expelled him in 1975 for preaching without being an ordained minister. Kumuyi began holding retreats at Easter and Christmas, empha- sizing healing and miracles and living a holy life. His followers distrib- uted thousands of free tracts, evangelized, and established Bible study groups all over Western Nigeria. The Ž rst Sunday service held in Lagos in 1982 is regarded as the foundation date of the new church. The fol- lowing year, Kumuyi sent some of his leading pastors to Yonggi Cho’ s Full Gospel Central Church (now, Yoido Full Gospel Church) in Seoul, Korea, after which a system of 5,000 “ home caring fellowships” based on the Korean model was instituted. Unlike more recent NPCs, which tend to be less prescriptive, Deeper Life emphasizes personal holiness evidenced by rejection of the “ world” and the keeping of a strict ethical code— and in this respect it is more like classical Pentecostal churches and some older AICs. The church prides itself in being a wholly African church totally independent of Western links, and here again it differs from many other NPCs that regularly promote Western Pentecostal media. It has tended to be exclusive in its approach to other churches, but its more re- cent involvement in ecumenical organizations has tempered this somewhat.
14
13
Ruth Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria: An Overview,” in Gifford, New Dimensions in African Christianity , 9; Paul Gifford, ed., The Christian Churches and the Democratization 14 of Africa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 244.
Matthews A. Ojo, “ Deeper Life Bible Church of Nigeria,” in Gifford, New Dimensions in African Christianity , 137-41, 150-53; Gifford, Christian Churches , 135; Patrick Johnstone, Operation World (Carlisle: OM Publishing, 1993), 421; Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 10.
172
6
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
Other prominent Nigerian examples of this new phenomenon are the Redeemed Christian Church of God of Pastor Adeboye (who has a Ph.D. in mathematics), and the Christ Chapel founded by Tunde Joda in 1985. Adeboye, now a prominent leader in Nigerian Christianity, took over a Yoruba church that had seceded from the Aladura movement in the 1950s, and he transformed it into a new, multiethnic Charismatic church.
15
One of the Ž rst NPCs, in Africa and probably the most in uential, is the Church of God Mission International of Benson Idahosa (1938-98), founded in 1972. Idahosa had some 300,000 members in 1991 and a headquarters in Benin City, where a “ Miracle Center” was erected in 1975 seating over 10,000, to which thousands ock every week to receive their own per- sonal miracles.
16
Idahosa, who became one of the best known preachers in Africa, attended the Christ for the Nations Institute in 1971 in Dallas, Texas. His stay there was short-lived, however, and he returned to Nigeria after three months with an increased “ burden” for his people. He began the Ž rst of many mass evangelistic crusades for which he was so well known. He received considerable Ž nancial support from well-known inde- pendent Pentecostal preachers in the United States, including his mentor, Gordon Lindsay, healing evangelist T.L. Osborne, and the televangelist Jim Bakker.
17
As part of the Miracle Center, Idahosa’ s church runs the All Nations for Christ Bible Institute, probably the most popular and in uential Bible school in West Africa, from which hundreds of preach- ers fan out into different parts of the region, often to plant new churches. Idahosa became a bishop in 1981 and later took the title Archbishop. He had formal ties with other NPCs throughout Africa, especially in Ghana, where he held his Ž rst crusade in 1978.
18
When Idahosa died suddenly in 1998, his wife, Margaret Idahosa, who had shared ministry and lead- ership with her husband since the church began, took his place as head of the Church of God Mission.
NPCs in Nigeria and in other parts of West Africa have begun to move from loose associations of “ ministries” to more institutionalized denom- inations, and in this transition many seem to be moving away from the
15
Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 17; Ruth Marshall-Fratani, “ Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 4 (1998): 16 298.
Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 16; Gifford, Christian Churches , 254, 17257.
Ruthanne Garlock, Fire in his Bones: The Story of Benson Idahosa (South PlainŽ eld: Logos, 18 1981), 117.
Asamoah-Gyadu, “ Traditional Missionary Christianity,” 60.
173
7
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
earlier emphasis on “ prosperity.”19 The NPCs tend to be more enthusias- tic in their services than the older Pentecostals are, and they usually empha- size miracles and healings more than personal holiness and ethical legalism. A particular emphasis in West African NPCs is a stress on the need for deliverance from a whole host of demonic forces, most of which are identiŽ ed with traditional deities and “ ancestral curses.”20 In 1986 the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) was formed, an ecumenical asso- ciation incorporating all the various “ born-again” movements and one of the most in uential ecumenical organizations in Nigeria. In 1995, Adeboye was president of the PFN, considered the most powerful voice in the national Christian Association of Nigeria, of which it is now a part. There were more than 700 churches registered as members of PFN in 1991 in Lagos State alone. In particular, the PFN sees one of its main tasks as that of uniting Christians against the perceived danger of the “ Islamization” of Nigeria.
21
Pentecostals are also prominent in Ghana, where the Church of Pentecost was the second largest denomination in Ghana after the Roman Catholics in 1993. This church has its roots in the pioneering work of Peter Anim, who invited the Apostolic Church in Britain to send a missionary, James McKeown, who later split from the Apostolic Church in 1953.
22
The church is now entirely African, although it has a working relationship with the Elim Pentecostal Church in Britain. Idahosa’ s 1978 crusade in Accra resulted in the subsequent formation of the Ž rst Charismatic min- istries there. Bishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, formerly of the Church of Pentecost, is leader of the largest and earliest NPC, Christian Action Faith Ministries, founded in 1980. Trained at Idahosa’ s Bible Institute, Duncan-Williams heads an association called the Council of Charismatic Ministers. Fraternization between the NPCs and the Rawlings govern- ment in Ghana led to a new church-state alliance, particularly as Duncan- Williams became virtually a national chaplain to the regime. Another rapidly growing NPC is the International Central Gospel Church, founded in 1984 by former Anglican Mensa Otabil, one of the best-known Ghanaian
19
20
Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 15-16, 25.
Birgit Meyer, “ ‘ Make a Complete Break with the Past:’ Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 4 (1998): 21 323-24; Gifford, African Christianity , 97-109.
Gifford, Christian Churches , 256; Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 23-29.22
Robert W. Wyllie, “ Pioneers of Ghanaian Pentecostalism: Peter Anim and James McKeown,” Journal of Religion in Africa 6, no. 2 (1974): 109-22.
174
8
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
Charismatic leaders outside Ghana. Otabil also heads an umbrella orga- nization called Charismatic Ministries Network and has become particu- larly well known for his brand of Black consciousness propagated in his writings and preaching that takes him to different parts of Africa.
23
Other leading NPCs in Ghana are the Holy Fire Ministries of Bishop Ofori Twumasi, the International Bible Worship Center of Sam Korankye Ankrah, Victory Bible Church of Tackie Nii Yarboi, and Broken Yoke Foundation of Eastwood Anaba. The last-named is an expanding organization espe- cially active in the remote and largely rural northeast region of Ghana. NPCs in Ghana also make extensive use of home groups to manage pas- toral care effectively.
24
The NPCs are also found in several other West African countries. In Monrovia, the fastest-growing churches in Liberia in 1989 were the Transcontinental Evangelical Association Church (Transcea) founded in 1982— not a typical NPC, as it rejects speaking in tongues, drums and dancing— and the Bethel World Outreach, founded in 1986, another example of the “ prosperity” type of NPC popular in several African cities.
25
In Abid- jan, Ivory Coast, a rapidly growing church led by Dion Robert is called the Yopougon Protestant Baptist Church and Mission, claiming over 70,000 members in 1995, and based on a well-structured home group system.
Pentecostals and Charismatics Elsewhere
During the 1980s, rapidly growing new Pentecostal groups began to emerge in East Africa, where they were sometimes seen as a threat by older churches, from whom they often gained members. Some of these new churches were directly affected by the phenomenon in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria and Ghana. Preachers like Benson Idahosa, Nicholas Duncan-Williams, and Mensa Otabil have traveled extensively in Africa. NPCs are active throughout Africa and in some countries they consist of many different smaller groups. One of the fastest growing churches in Kenya is the Winners Chapel in Nairobi, which dedicated a building in 1998 for its 3,500-member congregation after only one year of existence.
23
In particular, Otabil expounds this form of Black consciousness in his Beyond the Rivers of Ethiopia: A Biblical Revelation on God’ s Purpose for the Black Race (Accra: Altar 24International, 1992).
Asamoah-Gyadu, “ The Church in the African State,” 53, 55; Gerrie ter Haar, “ Standing Up for Jesus: A Survey of New Developments in Christianity in Ghana,” Exchange 23, 25no. 3 (1994): 225-36; Gifford, African Christianity , 76-109.
Gifford, New Dimensions , 33; Paul Gifford, Christianity and Politics in Doe’ s Liberia (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 163.
175
9
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
This congregation was commenced by Dayo Olutayo from Nigeria, who arrived in Kenya in 1995. The founder of the church in Nigeria is David O. Oyedepo, a former architect and now “ presiding bishop” of the Living Faith World Outreach Center in Lagos, which commenced in 1989. Oyedepo’ s church in Nigeria commenced in 1983 and claimed 200 churches in Nigeria with over 400 pastors in forty African nations in 1998. The media advertising hype for the dedication service in Nairobi gushed, “ Winners Chapel, Nairobi was built entirely debt free. No loans of bank borrowing and certainly no begging trips to the West!” The organization had two other Winners Chapels in Kisumu and Mombasa.
26
Uganda, dominated by Catholic and Anglican missions over the past century, has been fertile ground for NPCs since the late 1980s. Gifford speaks of “ homegrown pentecostal churches . . . mushrooming in luxuri- ant fashion” in Uganda. He describes four of the largest in Kampala: the Kampala Pentecostal Church with 5,000 members; Namirembe Christian Fellowship, founded by Simeon Kayiwa, a preacher well-known for his healing and miracle ministry; the Abundant Life Church, founded by Handel Leslie, a black Canadian; and the Holy Church of Christ, a church more in the prophet-healing AIC tradition, founded by Ghanaian prophet John Obiri Yeboah. Yeboah, who was in Uganda in the 1970s, returned to Ghana during Idi Amin’ s reign of terror and spent a further year in Uganda from 1986 until his death the following year. Several NPCs in Uganda owe their origins to him, and he organized the still-active asso- ciation of Pentecostal churches called the National Fellowship of Born Again Churches and United Reformed Council.
27
Tensions in the Anglican church over spiritual gifts led to the formation of the Charismatic Church of Uganda by the former provost of the cathedral in Kampala in 1991. The NPCs in East Africa, following the emphasis of the East African Revival, preach the need for a personal experience of God in Christ through being born again. But to this they add the Pentecostal and AIC emphasis on the power of the Spirit manifested in healing, speaking in tongues, prophecy, and deliverance from demons, manifestations that the East African Revival later discouraged. It was this that brought con ict with the inheritors of the Revival legacy, the Anglicans, and added to the impe- tus behind the new churches.
26
Charles Ouko, “ The Triumph of Vision,” The Sunday Nation , Nairobi, 15 February 1998.27
Gifford, African Christianity , 157-68.
176
10
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
In Malawi, young preachers in Blantyre in the 1970s propagated a “ born-again” message in their revival meetings that at Ž rst didn’ t always result in the formation of new churches. By the 1980s however, the pat- tern of NPCs elsewhere in Africa was emerging. These revival meetings had developed into ministries and fellowships, and inevitably some were further institutionalized into new churches. One of the largest of these was the Living Water Church, founded by Stanley Ndovi in 1984. As else- where, these Malawian movements focused on young people in schools, colleges, and universities.
28
President Frederick Chiluba, a born again Christian with a Pentecostal experience, declared Zambia a Christian nation two months after his land- slide election victory in 1991. He appointed born-again Christians to gov- ernment posts and regularly promotes Pentecostal evangelistic crusades and conventions, where he is sometimes featured as a preacher. Vice- President Godfrey Miyanda attends an NPC, the Jesus Worship Center led by Ernest Chelelwa. The NPCs are now in abundance in Zambia and the Charismatic movement has split some mainline churches. A leading NPC preacher, Nevers Mumba, founded Victory Faith Ministries in 1985 and is another product of Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas. He has a network of Victory Bible Churches and has even formed his own political party.
29
One of the largest denominations in Zimbabwe is the Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (popularly called ZAOGA), a Pentecostal church with roots in South African Pentecostalism. ZAOGA commenced in urban areas of Zimbabwe and is led by Archbishop Ezekiel Guti. In 1959 Guti, with a group of young African pastors, was expelled from the AFM after a disagreement with white missionaries. The group joined the South African Assemblies of God of Nicholas Bhengu, but separated from them in 1967 to form the Assemblies of God, Africa (later ZAOGA). Guti went to Christ for the Nations Institute in 1971 just as Idahosa had done, and he too received Ž nancial and other resources from the U.S.A. But Guti, like many NPC leaders, resists any attempts to identify his church with the Religious Right of the U.S.A. or to be controlled by neo-colonial interests. In a very pertinent development in 1986, leaders of twelve of the largest Pentecostal churches in Zimbabwe, including Guti, wrote a blistering rebuttal to a right-wing attack on the Zimbabwean state by a North American Charismatic
28
Richard van Dijk, “ Young Born-Again Preachers in Post-independence Malawi: The SigniŽ 29 cance of an Extraneous Identity,” in Gifford, New Dimensions , 55-65.
Gifford, African Christianity , 197-205, 220, 230, 233.
177
11
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
preacher.30 Since 1986, ZAOGA has also had churches in Britain, Zimbabwean ZAOGA missionaries went to South Africa to plant churches there in 1989, and the church also has branches in seventeen other African countries, called Forward in Faith. ZAOGA is now organized as a full- edged denomination with complex administrative structures headed by Guti. By 1999 ZAOGA had an estimated 600,000 afŽ liated members, which made it the third largest denomination in Zimbabwe after the Marange Apostles and the Roman Catholics, with over 10 percent of the total Christians in the country. ZAOGA itself claimed to be the largest, with one and a half million members in 1995, but this Ž gure is disputed. Guti’ s leadership style and expensive overseas trips were becoming con- tentious issues in the late 1990s. ZAOGA has already experienced vari- ous splits, one of the most signiŽ cant led by Guti’ s cofounder, Abel Sande.31 There are several rapidly expanding new Pentecostal churches with branches throughout Zimbabwe, some of the largest being the Family of God, founded by Andrew Wutaunashe (a former ZAOGA pastor), Faith Ministries, led by Ngwisa Mkandla, and the Glad Tidings Fellowship of Richmond Chiudza.
In South Africa, NPCs may not be as prominent as in other parts of Africa, but nevertheless are very signiŽ cant. Kenneth Meshoe, leader of the African Christian Democratic Party, which polled enough votes in the 1999 elections to gain seven members of parliament, is an NPC pastor of the Hope of Glory Tabernacle and was formerly an evangelist in Reinhard Bonnke’ s Christ for the Nations organization. The Director General of President Thabo Mbeki’ s OfŽ ce of the President, Frank Chikane, is a clas- sical Pentecostal and was still Vice-President of the Apostolic Faith Mission in 1999. Chikane is a person of considerable in uence in South Africa, having one of the most powerful executive positions in the ANC gov- ernment and well placed to speak on behalf of South Africa’ s large Christian constituency. He maintains personal relationships with the ruling ANC hierarchy and church leaders across the denominational board, from NPCs to ecumenical mainline churches. He has the unique distinction of hav- ing been General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches dur- ing apartheid’ s Ž nal years, the only Pentecostal to have occupied that position, and he also spent some time in Bonnke’ s organization. The largest
30
David Maxwell, “ ‘ Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty’ : Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Modernity in Zimbabwe,” Journal of Religion in Africa 28, no. 4 (1998): 357; Gifford, Christian 31 Churches , 123.
Maxwell, “ Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty,” 351-52, 366-68, 372, n. 8; Johnstone, Operation World , 598; Gifford, Christian Churches , 121.
178
12
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
single Christian congregation in Soweto, South Africa is the Grace Bible Church, led by Mosa Sono, with over 5,000 members in 1999. This church has planted new congregations in some major urban areas, including a poverty-stricken “ informal settlement” (slum) area. Sono, born in Soweto in 1961, grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church and attended the AFM Bible College in Soshanguve before leaving to attend white Charismatic leader Ray McCauley’ s Rhema Bible Training Center near Johannesburg. He formed Grace Bible Church in 1984 and became Vice-President of the International Fellowship of Christian Churches in 1996, the formerly white-dominated and largest association of Charismatic churches in Southern Africa, whose President is McCauley. Once again, the connection between some of these NPCs and North American “ prosperity” preachers is appar- ent, as McCauley’ s original inspiration and training came from the father of the “ faith message,” Kenneth Hagin of Tulsa, Oklahoma. But in spite of this association, Sono is much more cautious in this regard, and has repeatedly sought to distance himself from prosperity theology and Western, white domination, and there are signs that his stance is having a positive in uence on McCauley too.
32
The latest African churches in Europe are these independent Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. They have taken Western Europe by storm since the 1980s and now form the majority of African churches there.
33 A particularly prominent case is the Kingsway International Christian Centre in London. This church, founded in 1992 by a Nigerian, Matthew Ashimolowo, formerly a minister in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, had over 5,000 members in 1999 and had become the largest congregation in Britain, attracting national media attention. The majority of the members are West Africans, predominantly Niger- ians. Large Ghanaian churches like the Church of Pentecost, or other Nigerian ones like the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Deeper Life Bible Church, now have congregations all over Western Europe and in North America. The congregations of the Church of Pentecost are directed from its central headquarters in Accra, through its International Missions Director.
Indirectly related to the phenomenon of NPCs is a growing Charismatic movement in many of the older mission-founded churches in Africa, which
32
Anderson, Bazalwane, 52-55; idem, Zion and Pentecost , 201-17, 237-55; Gifford, African 33 Christianity , 236-37.
Gerrie ter Haar, Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe (Cardiff, Wales: Cardiff Academic Press, 1998), 97.
179
13
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
is having a profound effect on all forms of Christianity in the continent. Some of the leaders of this Holy Spirit movement in older churches have seceded in the past to form AICs and, more recently, NPCs. But there are still a considerable number of people who have remained in the older churches with a Charismatic form of Christianity, expressed in fellowship and prayer groups, Sunday services, and “ renewal” conferences— to some extent inspired and encouraged by similar movements in other parts of the world. The older churches have responded to the NPCs with innova- tions that can be described as charismatic, where a place is given to gifts of the Holy Spirit in the church. There are many examples of this through- out Africa. One of the best known was the controversial healing ministry of Zambian Roman Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who was removed to Rome thereafter. Other examples are a popular Anglican heal- ing center in Zimbabwe; the Charismatic Legion of Christ’ s Witnesses (Iviyo) association within South African Anglicanism, led by Bishop Alpheus Zulu long before the Charismatic movement began in America; a thriving Charismatic movement among Catholics in Uganda; one among Lutherans and in the interdenominational Big November Crusade in Tanzania; multitudes of Ghanaian Catholic, Methodist, and Presbyterian Charismatics; and the Charismatic movement in Nigerian Anglicanism, led by Professor Simeon Onibere.
34
The list could go on.
The Challenge of the Newer Churches
One of the main criticisms leveled against NPCs is that they propa- gate 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 expo- nent on this subject. He suggests that the biggest single factor in the emer- gence of these new churches is the collapse of African economies by the
34
Emmanuel Milingo, The World in Between: Christian Healing and the Struggle for Spiritual Survival (London: Hurst, 1984); Stephen Hayes, Black Charismatic Anglicans: The Iviyo loFakazi bakaKristu and Its Relations with Other Renewal Movements (Pretoria, South Africa: University of South Africa Press, 1990); Josiah R. Mlahagwa, “ Contending for the Faith: Spiritual Revival and the Fellowship Church in Tanzania,” in Thomas Spear and Isaria N. Kimambo eds., East African Expressions of Christianity (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), 296-306; Gifford, African Christianity , 95-96, 154, 227-28, 330; idem, Christianity and Politics , 127, 245.
180
14
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
1980s and the subsequent increasing dependence of NPCs 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 phe- nomenon as a type of neocolonialism propagated by American “ prosper- ity preachers,” a sort of “ conspiracy theory.”
35
But there is another side to this scenario. Gifford’ s analysis, which he has modiŽ ed to some extent more recently,
36
has been accepted in many church and academic circles. It seems, however, 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 Kalu points out, the relationship between the African NPC 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 Ž nancial resources. Kalu observes that in the 1990s, since the public disgracing of American televangelists, the mood in Africa has changed, and NPCs are now “ characterised by independence and an emphasis on the Africanist roots of the ministries.”37 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.
38
There are connections between some of the NPCs and the American “ health and wealth” movement, and it is also true that some of the new African churches reproduce and promote “ health and wealth” teaching and literature. But identifying NPCs with the American “ prosperity gospel” is a generaliza- tion that particularly fails to appreciate the reconstructions and innova- tions made by these new African movements in adapting to a radically different context, just as the older AICs did some years before.
The NPCs 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 NPCs increase at the expense of all types of older churches, including the prophet- healing AICs.
39
To these older AICs, with whom they actually have much
35
36
Gifford, Christianity and Politics , 196-99, 294, 314-15.
37
See, e.g., Gifford, African Christianity , 236-44.
38
Kalu, “ Third Response,” 8.
Inus Daneel, Quest for Belonging (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1987), 46; Gifford, 39 Christianity and Politics , 188.
ter Haar, “ Standing Up,” 224; Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 5;
181
15
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
in common, they are consequently often a source of tension. The NPCs 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.
40
As a result, older AICs feel hurt and threatened by them. In addition, the NPCs 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.
41 The NPCs also sometimes castigate mainline churches for their dead for- malism 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.
42
Gifford himself is aware of the problems inherent in too simplistic an interpretation of the newer African Pentecostalism. After discussing Christian fundamentalism in the U.S.A. and the “ rapidly growing sector of African Christianity” closely related to it, he says that the American groups oper- ating in Africa “ Ž nd themselves functioning in a context considerably dif- ferent from that in the United States.”43 Perhaps Gifford has not taken this “ considerably different” context seriously enough in his substantial analyses of the newer Pentecostals in Africa. The oversimpliŽ ed and patronizing idea that “ prosperity” churches in Africa are led by unscrupu- lous manipulators greedy for wealth and power doesn’ t account for the increasing popularity of these NPCs with educated and responsible peo- ple, who continue to give Ž nancial support and feel that their needs are met there.44 Often, those who are anti-Charismatic and resent or are threat- ened by the growth and in uence of the newer churches are the source
Meyer, “ Make a Complete Break with the Past,” 319; Gifford, African Christianity , 62- 63, 4095, 233.
Asamoah-Gyadu, “ The Church in the African State,” 56; Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern 41 Nigeria,” 11; Kalu, “ Third Reponse,” 8.
Meyer, “ Make a Complete Break with the Past,” 320; Maxwell, “ Delivered from the 42Spirit of Poverty,” 354; Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 21-22.
43
Kalu, “ Third Response,” 3.
44
Gifford, African Christianity , 43.
Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 8, 24.
182
16
The Newer Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches
of these criticisms. Kalu says that in the decade after 1985, the NPCs “ blossomed into complex varieties” and that in their development, “ European in uence became more pronounced.” But he points out that in spite of this, “ the originators continued to be African, imitating foreigners, eclec- tically producing foreign theologies but transforming these for immedi- ate contextual purposes.”45
With reference to ZAOGA, 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 con- sciousness 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.”46 Similarly, Matthews Ojo, who writes extensively on Nigerian NPCs, says that they “ are increasingly respond- ing to the needs and aspirations of Nigerians amid the uncertainty of their political life and the pain of their constant and unending economic adjust- ments.”47 It is clear, then, that NPCs are far from being simply an Americanization of African Christianity.
Like the churches before them, the NPCs have a sense of identity as a separated and egalitarian community with democratic access to spirit- ual power, whose primary purpose is to promote their cause to those out- side. 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 identiŽ es them, even to outsiders.
48
Unlike the older AICs, where there tends to be an emphasis on the prophet Ž gure or principal leader as the one dispensing God’ s gifts to his or her followers, the NPCs usually emphasize the availability and encourage the practice of gifts of the Holy Spirit by all of their members. The emergence of these NPCs at the end of the twentieth century indicates that there are
45
46
Kalu, “ Third Response,” 7.
47
Maxwell, “ Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty,” 351, 358-59.
Matthews A. Ojo, “ The Church in the African State: The Charismatic/Pentecostal Experience 48 in Nigeria,” Journal of African Christian Thought 1, no. 2 (1998): 25.
Marshall, “ Pentecostalism in Southern Nigeria,” 9; Gifford, Christian Churches , 244.
183
17
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 24, No. 2, Fall 2002
unresolved questions facing the church in Africa, such as the role of suc- cess and prosperity in God’ s economy, enjoying God and God’ s 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 of the NPCs lies in “ the indomitable spirit that believers develop in the face of life’ s odds. . . . In essence, misfortune becomes only temporary.”49 The here-and-now problems being addressed by NPCs 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 the church of the age-old conviction of Africa that for any faith to be rele- vant and enduring, it must also be experienced. These are some of the lessons for the universal church from the AICs, and the NPCs are their latest exponents.
49
Asamoah-Gyadu, “ The Church in the African State,” 55.
184
18
