African Pentecostalism and World Christianity. Группа авторов
suspicious and religiously unwelcome. Therefore, by their very existence, African independent churches critiqued this belief and showed that Christianity without European culture is possible. Whatever the Europeans thought of as syncretism, the Africans believed to be contextualization. Thus, the Africans risked syncretism in order to be—a charge that we still hear today even though it is true that every expression of Christianity has some syncretism in it. Yet, by the time colonialism came to an end, they had grown at a significantly faster rate than missionary-led denominational churches.
Pentecostal, Charismatic, Neo-Charismatic, and Beyond
At the center of the argument of this chapter is the proposition that African independent churches have made African Christianity as we know it today possible. What Harris and Kimbangu did earlier on in the twentieth century, at the height of the colonial era became the template for the multiplication that we see in African Christianity in postcolonial Africa. Their spirit-empowered prophetic and healing ministries that critiqued and protested against the missionaries and the colonists foreshadow the many charismatic ministries that have emerged in Africa since the end of colonialism. They were both extremely successful in their evangelizing efforts. They understood how to engage their audiences from within their own cultures—the missionaries could never do this. They not only spoke local languages, they also understood the spiritual needs of Africans. Through prophetic and healing gifts, they presented to Africans a God who was both touched by their needs and was close enough to help. The Jesus of Harris and Kimbangu was not only concerned with saving souls from hellfire. Yes, people had to be saved, but they also had to trust Jesus’ Spirit for protection and healing. They had to burn their fetishes and be healed of their diseases through prayer. It should be no surprise that beginning in the 1960s and 1970s when European colonization of Africa started to unravel, and the colonial representatives and agents returned to Europe, it is the Harris or Kimbangu type of Christianity that emerged across sub-Saharan Africa. The process of decolonizing Christianity took much longer (and is said to have been a lot harder) than that of the political states but when it happened, a spirit-oriented Christianity emerged. Many Western missionaries tried to stay on, arguing that the “younger churches” of Africa were not mature enough yet to stand on their own. A majority of them had to be pushed to move on.81 But once the leadership of African churches was handed over to Africans, many churches began to allow some aspects of African culture shape their theology and ecclesiology and just like in the African independent churches of old, the Spirit came rushing in. Overall, it became clear that a decolonized African Christianity had to liberate itself from European thought systems.
Since the 1970s, the Christianity of African independent churches has come to shape a great deal of African Christianity. Without the widespread misunderstandings and persecutions from the missionaries and colonial governments, African independent churches have themselves thrived and multiplied. They are home to millions upon millions of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, both the Harrist and Kimbanguist churches have continued to grow. In southern Africa, Apostolic and Zionist churches have also continued to spread across many countries. Altogether, these classical African independent churches have millions of members both in Africa and in the African diaspora.82 Many other African independent churches have modernized and rebranded as Pentecostal denominations. Several large West African Pentecostal denominations started out as Aladura groups of praying people. Both the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Apostolic Church of Nigeria—with more than ten million members between them—have their roots in the Aladura movements of the 1920s. In addition, of course, the Pentecostal movement made it possible for many who wanted a spirit-oriented Christianity to find a home outside the mission-established and -controlled churches. Classical Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God and Foursquare have also benefitted, but in the context of Africa, they are far outnumbered by other enthusiastic expressions of Christianity. Neo-Pentecostal churches are generally modernized African independent churches. They have emerged in Africa after colonialism.
Consequently, they have a different set of concerns from those of the early AICs. In addition, most of them have Western connections and are largely informed by American popular Christianity. In addition, data coming out of America research organization puts African Pentecostal, Charismatic and Neo-Pentecostal Christians at 25 percent of the entire African Christian population. However, anecdotal reports coming from the continent are saying otherwise. Spirit-oriented Christianity influences almost all of African Christianity. Even those denominations that have come out of strict Reformed and cessationist movements have had to pentecostalize. Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, and all other mission-established churches have gone through a process of pentecostalizing. They have had no choice but to follow the crowd and transform themselves to allow African culture and worldview influence their theology and ecclesiology. We joke of Bapticostals and Prescostals as a way of I have heard from many friends, Lutherans from Nigeria, Anglicans from Kenya, and Presbyterians from Malawi saying, “If we cannot beat the Pentecostals, we better join them, otherwise we will lose all our members.” One would be hard pressed to find a denomination that has not been affected, some kicking and screaming. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, it was common for mission-founded churches to demand that their members should not fellowship with the tongue-speaking Charismatics. Some denominations excommunicated their members for behaving like Pentecostals. Today, we have generations of African Christians who have never belonged in a non-charismatic church, many who cannot imagine being church without the charismatic gifts of the Spirit being manifest.
We Need New Terms
In African Christianity, the lines between the Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Neo-Pentecostals are blurred and very permeable. Most people are not even clear whether they are Pentecostal or Charismatic and why they belong to those camps. Many do not even know what differentiates them from other traditions. A typical “Pentecostal” pastor in rural Africa has never heard of Azusa Street, Amos Yong, or Wayne Grudem. More important though, Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Neo-Pentecostals form only a small section of the many spirit-oriented Christians in the continent. Just like those Christians who formed AICs before the birth of Pentecostalism, African Christians do not need to be Pentecostals, Charismatics, or Neo-Pentecostals to believe in the active power of the Spirit. In addition, the lines between these spiritist denominations and mission-founded churches have also become thinner in Africa by the year. African Christians can be in a Catholic or a Presbyterian church and yet be filled with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues and find it normal. Generally speaking, Africans do not even need to be Christians to believe in the power of the spiritual world. The power of the spirits is part of their worldview. Such Africans find a Christianity without an active spirit-world impotent and strange. A religion whose spirit cannot perform miracles does not make sense to most Africans. A god that cannot help its people in times of need is not a god at all.
For this reason, when we use these generalized labels to describe African Christianity, we risk being vague and out-of-context. Of course, labels are important; they help us categorize whatever it is that we are working with, based on similarities, differences or any other criteria. Labels help us box similar things together and, at the same time, keep those things that are dissimilar, and do not belong, out of the box. However, labels always make sense in the perspective of the people doing the labelling. They hardly reflect the self-understanding of those being labelled. This explains why people reject labels given to them by others. In this conversation, all the labels that we use—Pentecostal, Charismatic, Neo-Pentecostal and/or Neo-Charismatic—are imported from the West. They work well when used to describe some sects of Western (and usually American) Christianity. However, it appears to me that, more often than not, when we import them to Africa, we often fail to recognize that what we identify as African Pentecostalism is in many ways different from American Pentecostalism. Even when we are talking about one and the same Pentecostal denomination operating in the United States and in Africa at the same time, (for instance, the Assemblies of God—a classical Pentecostal denomination in the United States that has found its way to many African countries), its American and African members do not always believe the same things. Their theologies are not congruent on all issues pertaining the Spirit. Even their belief in the gifts of the Spirit does not lead to the same behaviours and manifestations. Here in Britain where this writer resides, the Ghanaian-originated Pentecostal denomination, the Church of Pentecost, looks