African Pentecostalism and World Christianity. Группа авторов
as “a fortress of the Devil” (Orr, Second Great Awakening in Great Britain, 74).
31. Fiedler, Story of Faith Mission, 113.
32. Cox, Fire from Heaven, 14.
33. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 571–85, 640, 655.
34. Price, “Missionary Struggle with Complexity,” 101
35. Ogbu, “Third Response,” 3.
36. For discussion on the prophetic and how it has been reinvented into the contemporary prophetic practices in Africa, see Asamoah-Gyadu, “From Every Nation Under Heaven,” xxx.
37. Anderson, Bazalwane, 7; Asamoah-Gyadu, “Renewal within African Christianity,” 22.
38. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Introduction into the Typology of African Christianity,” 63.
39. Turner, Church of the Lord; Parrinder, Religion in an African City; Welbourn and Ogot, Place to Feel at Home.
40. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Renewal within African Christianity,” 133.
41. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Growth and Trends,” 70.
42. Onyinah, “African Christianity.”
43. Asamoah-Gyadu, “You Shall Receive Power,” 45–66.
44. Onyinah, “African Christianity,” 305–14.
45. Ojo, “Church in the African State.”
46. For reading on the Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship International, see Asamoah-Gyadu, Sighs and Signs of the Spirit.
47. Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics, 63.
48. Anderson, African Reformation; Asamoah-Gyadu, “Growth and Trends.”
49. Asamoah-Gyadu, Sighs and Signs of the Spirit, 64
50. Kalu, “Third Response,” 18.
51. Irvine, From Witchcraft to Christ; Brown, He Came to Set the Captive Free; Prepare for War; Prince, Blessings or Cursing; From Cursing to Blessing; They Shall Expel Demons; Basham, Can a Christian Have a Demon?
52. Kraft, Defeating the Dark Angels; Christianity with Power; Wagner, Warfare Prayer [1991]; Warfare Prayer [1992]; Engaging the Enemy; Confronting the Powers.
53. Onyinah, “Contemporary ‘Witch-Demonology.’”
54. Onyinah, Pentecostal Exorcism.
55. Anim, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” 122.
56. Quayesi-Amakye, “Prophetism in Ghana’s New Prophetic Movement”; Anim, “Prosperity Gospel and the Primal Imagination”; Hackett, “Charismatic/Pentecostal Appropriation.”
57. Some claim even frequently to raise the cripple, open the eyes of the blind and open the ears of the deaf, release the mouth of the dumb, and even raise the dead. Some in the attempt have duped the rich and poor, and as a result are placed in prison. Some of these are trending on social media.
58. Anim, “Prosperity Gospel and the Primal Imagination,” 30. See also Anim, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
59. Gerloff, “Holy Spirit and the African Diaspora,” 91.
60. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, 17.
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Independent, Enthusiastic, and African
Reframing the Story of Christianity in Africa
Harvey C. Kwiyani
Exploring Africa’s Enthusiastic Christianity
My intention in this essay is to discuss the significance of Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu’s expansive work on African Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in the context of Africa’s widespread enthusiastic Christianity.61 To do this, I will attempt to situate Asamoah-Gyadu’s work in the wider story of the development of African Christianity. I will draw connections between the early African encounters with the missionaries in the nineteenth century and the currently ongoing charismatization of African Christianity. I will also attempt to locate it in the wider subject of world Christianity as Africa will shape Christianity in the world for this century. I make use of a historical phenomenology to make sense of the twentieth-century narrative of Africa’s spirit-centered Christianity and to make two suggestions. First, a properly contextualized Christianity will be enthusiastic in its outlook. Thus, I argue that only a Christianity that can engage the spirit world just like the old African traditional religions did would be viable both in colonial and post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. The emergence of African independent churches suggests that on the one hand, attempts to limit expressions of Christianity in Africa to non-charismatic denominations are often a form of miscontextualization (or undercontextualization, or even non-contextualization) and can only result in a religious and theological identity crisis for Africans.
On the other hand, the labels that we use for African Christianity do not sufficiently describe what is happening on the ground. Many African independent churches precede Pentecostalism and most of them do not subscribe to Pentecostal theology even though they are often lumped together as Pentecostals. Second, I argue that Asamoah-Gyadu’s work is of greater and broader significance as it (inadvertently, I believe) announces the full arrival—or the mainstreaming—of spirit-centered expressions of Christianity in the form of Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Neo-Pentecostal movements in the continent in Africa. Looking back at the body of his literature, it becomes rather clear that he presents to us African Christianity at a tipping point where it confidently assumes its identity as African Christianity both in the continent and in the diaspora, and in the process, it begins to influence world Christianity. He catches the story at a moment when Africa Christianity is able to actually become African. I attempt to connect this current