The Pentecostal movement seeks a healthier form of community
IMPERIALISM THE HIGHEST FORM OF PROTESTANTISM
by University of Helsinki

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Pentecostalism is the largest and fastest growing branch of Christianity in the world after the Catholic Church. Thanks to its focus on missionary work, Pentecostalism wields significant power particularly in areas where western secular culture has not gained dominant status, sch as in many parts of Africa.

"It's also a major political and social movement. Pentecostal demonology views demons as active agents with the power to influence people and various aspects of their daily lives. Other Christian denominations see this as problematic, as it tends to generate unhealthy phenomena and can result in practices and interpretations that are ethically problematic," explains Sanna Urvas, a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Theology in University of Helsinki, Finland.

"In many African countries and places such as Papua New Guinea, witchcraft is a part of the traditional culture, but the Christian interpretation sees it as the work of evil spirits. Accusations of witchcraft are typically leveled at women, young people or the poor."

Evil comes from people, not demons

Theologians Amos Yong from the USA and Opoku Onyinah from Ghana are trying to reform Pentecostal thinking and its understanding of sin and evil.

"Yong's approach is exceptional in the Pentecostal context, as he accuses people and communities of evil, instead of demons. This means that evil could be banished by renouncing corruption and unhealthy power structures while protecting the weak, for example."

Onyinah emphasizes the significance of people's personal choices and the responsibilities of the communities instead of blaming misfortune on witchcraft perpetrated by a neighbor," Sanna Urvas describes.

"Both Yong and Onyinah are producing theology that aims at improving the lives of these communities. Both of them protect the underdog by highlighting unfair practices and undoing interpretations that enable abuses of power. Both unequivocally condemn teachings that claim a Christian might be possessed by a demon.

Demonology infringes on human rights

According to Sanna Urvas, belief in demonic possession enables psychological and spiritual violence while polarizing communities.

"Based on studies conducted in Africa, interpreting developmental disabilities as demonic has significantly eroded the human rights of disabled people and reduced their agency. Various illnesses, such as depression, may also be seen as the fault of spirits. This causes significant psychological stress for the disabled or sick person as well as their family."

Claiming that anything out of the ordinary, such as dissident thought, is demonic in nature may also lead to human rights violations.

According to Urvas, various activities across the denominational lines have brought demonological interpretations to nearly all denominations.

"The issue of demonic possession is controversial in the churches and fellowships outside the mainline denominations. Classical Pentecostalism teaches that the sick can be healed through prayer. A constructive interpretation of this would be that the sick person receives support and believes that God can heal them miraculously. Refusal of medical interventions and resorting to exorcisms are more disturbing phenomena. The goal of my research is, among other things, to emphasize an understanding of the underlying causes of illness that combines a medical standpoint with the belief in a healing God. This way, the sick person will receive the best help modern medicine can provide while still benefitting from the psychological and spiritual support of others praying for them. Such an integrated understanding should be embraced throughout the Pentecostal Church and potentially even more broadly."

Women as equal theological authorities

Pentecostalism is a very patriarchal movement, both in Finland and elsewhere. At The Church of Pentecost in Ghana, which is the second case study in Sanna Urvas's research, women are not allowed to study theology or serve as pastors.

"Also in Finland, the Pentecostal Church has very few female theological authorities. It seems I'm the first Pentecostal woman to receive a doctorate in systematic theology at a research university while specializing in Pentecostal theology. Meeting the women in the Ghanaian church was a revelation for them: a woman can also be a doctrinal authority."

Urvas wants to empower all women in the Pentecostal church in Finland and elsewhere:

"We as women have equal rights and opportunities to build healthier beliefs and practices and therefore communities everywhere in the world."

Sanna Urvas, MTh and MA (Dance), will defend her doctoral thesis entitled Theology of sin and evil in Classical Pentecostalism—Two case studies at the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Theology on 16 October 2020 at 2pm. Docent Jaakko Rusama from the University of Helsinki will serve as the opponent and Professor Risto Saarinen as the custos.


Nearly half of Finnish pastors have a positive attitude towards euthanasia
Provided by University of Helsinki

Ghana - Anti-Gay Bill Seeks Long Jail Terms for LGBTQ People

Pixabay
Ghana national flag

28 JULY 2021
Deutsche Welle (Bonn)By Isaac Kaledzi

The proposed bill could see LGBTQ community members imprisoned between five to 10 years for identifying or advocating for their rights.

Ghana's laws already criminalize gay sex by forbidding "unnatural carnal knowledge".

Now West African country wants to go a step further in its efforts to outlaw the LGBTQ community.

If the bill is passed, people of the same sex who engage in sexual activity could be fined or jailed for between three to five years.

The law would also make it a crime to be LGBTQ -- it would be punishable by five years in prison for any person to identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, transsexual, queer, pansexual or non-binary (someone who doesn't identify as male or female).

The bill, entitled "The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021" was submitted to Ghana's parliament in June.

General support for anti-gay bill

It enjoys cross-party support, with Ghana's parliamentary speaker, Alban Bagbin openly backing the proposed law.

It is widely expected that the bill will win enough votes to become law in Ghana, a deeply religious society where homophobic persecution is widespread.

The bill also has strong support among Ghanaians.

Even if the bill does end up being thrown out, it has already endangered the lives of LGBTQ people "with the discussions that it fuels and the homophobia that it will empower," said Nana Yaa Agyepong, a member of Silent Majority Ghana, a transnational queer feminist group.

"This is something that we cannot have because we have Ghanaians that deserve to live safely and at peace at home and not forced into exile," she told DW in Accra.

No room for gay rights activism

Advocating for LGBQ rights would also be illegal under the bill, with activists facing jail sentences of between five and ten years.

Rights activist Agyepong sees this as worrying as it "squashes conversations and dissents around the bill so people would not be able to do public education or media appearances or even on social media," she told DW.

One of the eight members of parliament who proposed the bill, Sam George, said he was influenced by what he saw as the "growing advocacy" and "propaganda" of Ghana's LGBTQ community.

"We are just bringing our laws up to speed to ensure that so long as our national position has not changed and still homosexuality is an illegality, let's make the laws reflective of that," George told DW during an interview at his office in the capital, Accra.

He says there is no room for negotiation in the fight to curbing all forms of LGBTQ activism.

"Our constitution says rights can be curtailed so long as they pose existential threat to the public safety, public health and public moral," he told DW.

"This act of homosexuality poses a public health challenge and a public moral challenge."

Bill includes discredited conversion therapy

The bill would also allow for conversion therapy, also sometimes called 'gay cure therapy', which tries to change people's sexual orientation or gender identity.

A number of public health bodies, including Britain's National Health Service, have warned that conversion therapy is "unethical and potentially harmful." Germany has banned the practice for minors.

Despite the bill's general support, some Ghanaians are calling for review of the document before it gets put to a parliamentary vote.

Human rights lawyer and member of parliament Francis-Xavier Sosu, for one, has concerns.

"You can see for a fact that it has some challenges. Challenges in terms of how to criminalize values and culture of people. Challenges with the kind of sentence regime it seeks to impose particularly at a time that we have all complained about our prisons being choked," Sosu told reporters in parliament house in Accra.

The draft bill comes on the back of several recent crackdowns on Ghana's LGBTQ community.

Rights activists attending a workshop in the city of Ho, south of Ghana, were arrested in May in a high-profile police bust. Those arrested were attending a training for activists and paralegals when supporting LGBTQ people. They were released after more than three weeks in detention, but still face prosecution for holding an "unlawful gathering" and "advocating LGBTQ activities".

The office of the organization LGBT+ Rights Ghana was also raided and closed earlier this year.

Ghana's move to further criminalize LGBTQ people is in contrast to several other African countries, which have decriminalized homosexuality, such as Rwanda, Angola, Botswana and South Africa.

1. We’ll help to fine-tune anti-LGBTQI Bill – Pentecostal and ...

   1. https://freedomradiogh.com/well-help-to-fine-tune-anti-lgbtqi-bill...

      2021-07-28 · The Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC) says it is in full support of the new private members’ bill that seeks to explicitly criminalize LGBTQI activities in the country. Related Articles. Kumasi: Police identify 24-yr-old lady shot dead by men on motorbike. 2 weeks ago. Delta strain detected in Ghana

   (PDF) Homosexuality, Politics and Pentecostal Nationalism ...

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   ADRIAAN VAN KLINKEN Homosexuality, Politics and Pentecostal Nationalism in Zambia ABSTRACT Building upon debates about the politics of nationalism and sexuality in post-colonial Africa, this article highlights the role of religion in shaping nationalist ideologies that seek to regulate homosexuality. It specifically focuses on Pentecostal Christianity in Zambia, where the constitutional ...

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2. (PDF) A missional study of Ghanaian Pentecostal churches ...

   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278548236_A_missional_study_of...

   2015-06-11 · According to the tenet of the Apostolic Church, Ghana 

1. GPCC – Ghana

   https://gpccghana.org

   2020-07-31 · The Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC) has undergone a dynamic transformation over the years, as the leading mouth-piece for Penteco-Charismatics in Ghana. From a humble beginning of four (4) members at its inception in 1969, the Council now boasts of over two hundred (200) member churches with each individual church 

Sacred Spaces and the Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in ...

ugspace.ug.edu.gh/bitstream/handle/123456789/32925/Sacred Spac… · PDF file

For the Charismatic Churches in Ghana, Gifford posits that “there has also been a remarkable explosion of these new autonomous Pentecostal Churches. The word ‘Charismatic’ is used to distinguish them from the churches of recognized Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God church”. These churches according to

PENTECOSTALISM IN GHANA: AN AFRICAN REFORMATION

pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj13/amanor.pdf · PDF file

The Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, of which they served as the precursors, and which were initially on the fringes of society, has now moved into the center, crossing into every branch of the Church in Ghana. They have given a new face of Christianity to the country, which is outwardly expressive, inwardly liberating, and which provides adequate identity of a faith that can be truly ...

1. AFRICA S NEW BIG MAN RULE? PENTECOSTALISM AND …

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   pre-colonial norms, post-colonial institutions, and weak states created *John F. McCauley (mccauley@umd.edu) is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, USA. An earlier version of the article was presented at the Nigeria Centre for Pentecostal 

2. 1. Decolonising Western missionaries’ mission theology and ...

      www.scielo.org.za/pdf/ids/v51n1/15.pdf · PDF file

      forces of colonialism that perpetuates the subjugation and the exploitation of our minds, bodies, and land. Its ultimate purpose is to overturn the colonial structure and realise indigenous liberation (Waziyatawin & Yellow Bird 2012). It engages with imperialism and colonialism at every level. This entails the corporate and national takeover of things and institutions under colonial control ...

 

New book spotlights influence of Pentecostalism on California’s Mexican farmworkers

'Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California' recounts how 'divine healing' was seen as a pragmatic way to care for impoverished workers who lacked regular access to medical care.

Salinas Apostólicos harvesting. Members of a Salinas, California, church gather for a quasi-staged photograph in the mid-1940s. Standing on the far right is Manuel Vizcarra, the eventual presiding bishop of La Asamblea Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús (AAFCJ). Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra.

January 20, 2023

By 

Alejandra Molina

(RNS) — The farm labor history of California has often been told through the plight of agricultural laborers during the Depression era and the efforts, beginning in the early 1960s, of the United Farm Workers to improve working conditions of Mexicans in the fields.

But to Lloyd Barba, a professor of religion at Amherst College, this history isn’t complete without factoring in religion, particularly the stories of California’s Mexican farmworkers who embraced Pentecostalism, a Christian movement generally seen at the time as a “distasteful new sect” with “cultish and fanatical tendencies.”

“I think about how often Latino history is told as labor history, and that makes sense … but where are the laborers going?” Barba said. “If we’re going to get a more balanced and accurate Latino history, we have to look at Latino religious life.”

In his recently released book, “Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California,” Barba writes about the Mexican and Mexican American Pentecostal agricultural workers who built houses of worship in the state’s agricultural towns, who turned to “divine healing” for injuries they sustained working in the fields and whose worship style inspired civil rights leader Cesar Chavez to incorporate music and singing in his union organizing.

Lloyd Barba. Photo courtesy of Amherst

Barba also writes about the role of women in these church spaces “who were the foundation of the church,” despite not given ministerial credentials to become preachers. They raised money for the building of churches by selling food and made the worship spaces look holy through their handmade goods, such as doilies and fabric embroidered with biblical phrases, Barba said.

“To do a material history of this Mexican Pentecostal movement is to do women’s history,” Barba told Religion News Service.

The book traces the development of Pentecostalism among migrant laborers between 1916 and 1966, before the heyday of the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. Barba felt it important to “describe a moment where the exploitation of Mexican workers is at its worst.”

Barba, in his book, recounts how “divine healing” was seen as a pragmatic way to care for impoverished workers who lacked regular access to medical care. For laborers working in tough conditions, it was about “hard work and fervent worship … work by day and worship by night,” Barba said.

“People are getting hurt. People are contracting tuberculosis. People are seeking out healing when there’s not a health care system in place to provide those kinds of services,” Barba said. “Whether we’re talking physical healing, or what we now refer to as mental health and counseling, these are spaces that offered respite in an otherwise punishing world.”

Worship services “would call for people who were sick to come up and to be healed,” Barba said. There was a “spectacle” side to it, he added, “in that it was a very public kind of ritual.”

In the book, Barba cites a flier distributed by La Iglesia Apostólica Cristiania del Pentecostés that invited residents in the Imperial County city of Calexico to revival services held “under the direction of the Holy Spirit.” These services were outdoor and presided by a Mexican orator and pastor who lived in Los Angeles. “All are invited. Bring your sick and God will bless them,” the flier declared.

Women and the Tamales Delivery Truck. Apostólico congregations transformed the tamales fundraiser into local cottage industries, complete with a streamlined production and clientele bases. In this 1940s photograph from Salinas, tamaleras pose proudly next to an early 1940s Chevrolet Carryall, which they customized and later came to know affectionately as the “tamales truck.” Photograph courtesy of Milca Montañez-Vizcarra

Barba writes about the “sonic elements of services,” which included “collective singing, exuberant worshipping, guitar playing, percussive striking, hand clapping, and shouting ‘aleluya.’”

The “vibrancy” of this sacred music inspired Chavez to later incorporate it into his organizational tactics. Barba wrote of the working relationship between Chavez — who at the time served with the Community Service Organization — and the Rev. Mariano Marín — a Pentecostal preacher and pastor — who led his immigrant congregation in the midst of Operation Wetback, which resulted in a mass deportation of Mexican nationals.

Through this partnership, Chavez witnessed Marín leading worship services out of a house in the San Joaquin Valley town of Madera and noticed a contrast between “the sonic and material world of Pentecostal and Catholic music,” Barba wrote.

Chavez recalled in his 1975 autobiography visiting a little church in Madera of a dozen men and women, describing “more spirit there than when I went to mass where there were two hundred.

“Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California” by Lloyd Barba. Courtesy image

“These people were really committed in their beliefs and this made them sing and clap and participate. I liked that,” he wrote. “I think that’s where I got the idea of singing at the meetings. That was one of the first things we did when I started the Union. And it was hard for me because I couldn’t carry a tune.”

For Barba, who hails from Stockton in the Central Valley, it’s noteworthy that this religious movement grew in rural agricultural areas.

He sees the influence of those early immigrant houses of worship today in the Spanish-language church signs across California’s Central Valley. A church that used to be “First Baptist Church” in many cities in the Central Valley may now be “Iglesia Bautista,” Barba said, adding that he also knows of church services in Mixtec among Indigenous Mexicans arriving in the area.

“Because of a large — first Mexican but more so now Central American — influx into the agricultural fields in California, you can note a very visible transformation of the religious demography,” Barba said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PENTECOSTAL 

CORPORATE CHRISTIANITY INC.

Hillsong is facing catastrophe but the Houston's will be loath to give up control

Analysis: the global church, founded almost 40 years ago in north-west Sydney, has little choice but to launch an independent inquiry

Hillsong’s church in Baulkham Hills, north-west Sydney. The global church is in crisis after the resignation of its founder Brian Houston. Photograph: Andrew Merry/Getty Images

Elle Hardy

THE GUARDIAN
Sun 27 Mar 2022 

Judgment Day has come for Hillsong – but not in the way its pastors promised.

To recap a damning week for the church, its founder and global senior pastor, Brian Houston, has resigned after an internal investigation found he had breached the church’s code of conduct twice over the past decade by behaving inappropriately towards two women.

The church has further been rocked by the revelation that the former Hillsong Dallas pastor Reed Bogard resigned last year after he was accused of rape. A former Hillsong college student also went public with claims that the church had covered up her sexual assault.


‘Disappointed and shocked’: Scott Morrison distances himself from Hillsong pastor Brian Houston

On Thursday Hillsong Atlanta’s lead pastor, Sam Collier, resigned, citing the ongoing scandals and accusations about various members of Hillsong. “A lot of our members were becoming really fatigued with a lot of the scandals and having to talk about it so much,” Collier said. “[Trust] is the only thing you have when building a church.”

That the church has chosen to act now against Houston, despite having known about the matters for some time, feels significant, and possibly indicative of an internal power struggle. Over the past two years a number of prominent Hillsong pastors have been sacked or moved to new roles for their own indiscretions, most notably the celebrity preacher Carl Lentz – but Houston remained the church’s undisputed leader.

In a transcript of a leaked private video conference last week, church leaders acknowledged the obvious: Hillsong is in crisis. I would go further: it is facing catastrophe. Scandals it largely tried to blame on individual shortcomings show a widespread culture that is rotten to its core.

Hillsong built an empire through an audience that is young, multicultural and majority female. They attend Hillsong because they like a particular pastor, attend a youth group, love the music, or to be among friends. That Collier, a popular and gifted young preacher, can no longer be associated with Hillsong marks a significant turn.

Hip-hop-focused Hillsong Atlanta, not even 12 months old, was supposed to be a new dawn. Collier was its first African American senior pastor. He was also among the first to undergo a more stringent vetting procedure after Lentz’s downfall.

Many leaders and churchgoers were awaiting the outcome of Houston’s criminal trial in Sydney for allegedly concealing child abuse by his father before making judgments for themselves. Collier’s decision may well spark an exodus.

Now, other more established local pastors hold the key to Hillsong’s fate. If leaders – or significant numbers of worshipers – in places including South Africa and other branches in the US take their leave, Hillsong may find itself in freefall.

That is certainly a live possibility. Having spoken to a number of Hillsongers, there is a feeling of profound sadness for what has occurred. Many are taking time for deep personal reflection.

On top of the moral questions, there is also, to borrow an Australian expression, the vibe of the thing. Thanks to its modern music and upbeat style of worship, Hillsong’s popularity is due in large part to the way it helps people feel good about their faith.

The vast majority of Hillsong attenders don’t have a personal connection to Brian Houston but to their local pastor. They had been able to overlook Lentz and other scandals. But the weight of them and media attention, including an explosive documentary released last week about the church, is taking its toll. Having to answer questions from friends and family about why they are still attending Hillsong will quickly dampen the feelgood appeal.

Hillsong’s Brian Houston resigns from megachurch

Then there’s the damage to the wider brand. Hillsong’s finances are fairly opaque, but we know from other similar churches that the vast majority of their income – upwards of 80% – come from music and merchandise sales. Some 50 million people sing Hillsong songs each week in churches around the world, and its channels have had more than a billion views on YouTube.

If they begin tuning out – or tuning into Hillsong’s many imitators – the entire brand could be in real trouble. For context, Hillsong church has 1.8 million Facebook followers. Its two musical arms, Hillsong United and Hillsong Worship, have a combined 12.8 million. Hillsong’s branding and financial muscle is entirely wedded to its musical empire, without which it wouldn’t have been able to spread aggressively and successfully across 30 countries on six continents.

I’ve previously written that Hillsong faced a decision about whether to become more bureaucratic and rein in its pastors and lose some of its appeal, or continue on defiantly. Now, it has little choice but to launch an independent inquiry across all of its branches. The church may even need to assess whether the music and education arms need to rebrand or devolve from central leadership.

Ultimately, I believe that the Houstons will be loath to give up control of the organisation that they have led for almost 40 years. Brian and his wife, Bobbie, built Hillsong from a congregation of 45 in north-west Sydney, and changed the global religious landscape in the process. No matter its reach, it remains very much a family firm.


Which is why I would expect that Phil Dooley – the lead pastor of Hillsong Cape Town, who took on global leadership when Houston stepped aside earlier this year to contest the charges – to continue to guide the church through this rocky time. Longer-term, I suspect we may see the Houstons’ daughter, Laura, and her husband, Peter Toganivalu, become the faces of a rebirth. The youth ministry leaders, who abbreviate their surname to “Toggs” on social media, don’t carry the Houston name and are more representative of a diverse, young, global Hillsong.

As for Brian Houston, expect him to stay silent until his trial is completed. Regardless of the outcome, I don’t see a man who believes so fervently in repentance and rebirth being willing to stay out of the spotlight for ever.

Whether there is still the Hillsong we know today waiting for his return is another matter. For the first time in its history, Hillsong’s survival is no longer in its own hands.

Elle Hardy is a freelance journalist and author of Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World

Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World Hardcover – 

March 15 2022

by Elle Hardy (Author)

Hardcover  $37.62 

How has a Christian movement, founded at the turn of the twentieth century by the son of freed slaves, become the fastest-growing religion on Earth? Pentecostalism has 600 million followers; by 2050, they'll be one in ten people worldwide. This is the religion of the Holy Spirit, withbelievers directly experiencing God and His blessings: success for the mind, body, spirit and wallet.

Pentecostalism is a social movement. It serves impoverished people in Africa and Latin America, and inspires anti-establishment leaders from Trump to Bolsonaro. In Australia, Europe and Korea, it throws itself into culture wars and social media, offering meaning and community to the rootless and marginalized in a fragmenting world.

Reporting this revolution from twelve countries and six US states, Elle Hardy weaves a timeless tale of miracles, money and power, set in our volatile age of extremes. By turns troubling and entertaining, Beyond Belief exposes the Pentecostal agenda: not just saving souls, but transforming societies and controlling politics. These modern prophets, embedded in our institutions, have the cash and the influence to wage their holy war.

Review

'Hardy is a first-class reporter. [...] Beyond Belief makes for an often gripping story, full of twists and turns.' -- The Sunday Times

'[An] elegant account [...] Hardy is an engaging usher round the Pentecostal world.' -- The Telegraph

'[A] lively book [and] a useful introduction to the world's fastest growing faith. [...] An empathetic observer Hardy may be, but she is clear-eyed about the challenge posed to secular societies by these strikingly modern holy warriors.' -- The Irish Times

'A fantastic read. Hardy gets right into the nucleus of the Pentecostal movement with empathy and a sharp journalistic eye. An incredibly important book.' -- Erica Buist, author of This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World's Death Festivals

'An arresting, page-turning narrative, worthy of the pageantry, vivacity and charm of Pentecostalism. Ambitious in its coverage and earnest in its exploration, Beyond Belief is a truly compelling account of the world's foremost Christian renewal movement.' -- Ebenezer Obadare, author of Pentecostal

Republic

'Informative, engaging, and unsettling, Beyond Belief is an in-depth exploration of global Pentecostalism in lively, accessible prose.' -- Chrissy Stroop, journalist, commentator and senior researcher on the Postsecular Conflicts Project

'An excellent panorama of the world's powerful and enigmatic Pentecostal movements. Path-breaking and thought-provoking, elegantly and lucidly written, this is an exceptional book.' -- Olufemi Vaughan, Chair of Black Studies, Amherst College, and author of Religion and the Making of Nigeria

'With a deft combination of reportage and analysis, Hardy's engaging book fills critical gaps in the popular understanding of Pentecostalism and its substantial sway over politics and society around the world.' -- Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of

Religious Nationalism

About the Author

Elle Hardy is a journalist and foreign correspondent who has reported from the United States, the former USSR and North Korea, among a long list of places. Her work has appeared in GQ, Lonely Planet, Foreign Policy and Business Insider, and on ABC Australia.

PENTECOSTAL COLONIALISM

The Nigerian priest saving Igbo deities from the bonfires

THE CATHOLIC  CHURCH IS A SYNCRETIC

RELIGION UNLIKE PROTESTANTISM

Wed, June 23, 2021, 

While some Pentecostal preachers in eastern Nigeria set fire to statues and other ancient artefacts that they regard as symbols of idolatry, one Catholic priest is collecting them instead.

The artefacts are central to the traditional religions practised by the region's Igbo people, who see them as sacred, and possessing supernatural powers.

But there are now very few adherents of these religions, as Christianity - led by Pentecostal churches - has become the area's dominant faith.

BBC Igbo's Chiagozie Nwonwu and Karina Igonikon report on the priest's efforts to protect a history that is being lost because of the actions of some preachers.

Short presentational grey line

Although he is referred to as "fire that burns", there is nothing frightening about Reverend Paul Obayi, who runs the Deities Museum in eastern Nigeria's Nsukka city.

Located in the compound of Saint Theresa's Catholic Cathedral, the three-roomed museum boasts hundreds of totems, masks, a stuffed lion and carvings of Igbo deities.

When communities abandon traditional religious beliefs, primarily under the influence of Christian Pentecostal churches, some pastors light bonfires to burn the artefacts, which they say contradict the faith's monotheistic beliefs, and which represent "evil spirits that bring bad luck".

Sometimes worshippers of the traditional religions also torch their deities, in accordance with a belief captured in the Igbo proverb: "If a God becomes too troublesome, it becomes wood for the fireplace."

But Reverend Obayi bucks the trend by preserving the rejected gods and goddesses, saying he uses religious powers to remove their supposed supernatural abilities. This has earned him the moniker Okunerere - "the fire that burns idols in the spirit".

"I've already destroyed the spirits," he said at his museum.

"What you have is just an empty shell. There is nothing inside."

Most of the artefacts at Deities Museum are wooden carvings

Reverend Obayi said he had been partially influenced by museums in Western countries, which are under enormous pressure to return artefacts, such as the Benin Bronzes, that were looted during the colonial era.

"I visit museums in the West and I see artefacts, some from Benin even, and I made up my mind to preserve ours."
A treasure trove of deities

The cathedral's administrator, Reverend Father Eugene Odo, supports his initiative, comparing it to a Catholic-owned museum in Italy.

"In Rome for instance there is the museum housing things that the Romans did as pagans, and people go there to see the stages of human development," he said.

Though the Deities Museum hosts visitors who come from as far as Lagos to see some of the tagged items, it is in dire need of care and attention. The artefacts, some of them centuries old, are strewn across the museum's floor, caked in dust. Some have been ravaged by termites.

But it is a treasure trove of Igbo deities - in one corner is a fearsome-looking mask surrounded by raffia, in another corner a deity used by tricksters - two oblong-shaped objects held together by string, used in the past to solve "mysteries" such as catching a thief. Hidden levers operated by the trickster were used to control the movement of the objects when the names of suspects were called out, making it look like an invisible force had discovered the thief.

But the pièce de résistance is the Adaada leja, a raffia-covered headless goddess, feted by those seeking children. Reverend Obayi said the deity was almost 200 years old.
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Nigeria's opportunity for return of Benin Bronzes

The items are from the "deliverance services" he has conducted over the past 20 years in towns and villages across Nigeria's south-east.

"People write letters inviting my ministry to come and remove the idols that are disturbing them," he said.
Ways of the ancestors

Odinani, an ancient Igbo religion, was practised before the arrival of Christianity and colonialism. It is a form of animism where people pray to a spirit - represented by a statue - known as chi. It seeks intercession on their behalf from a Supreme Being, or Chukwu.

Other deities worshipped include:


Ala - the goddess of fertility


Amadioha - the god of thunder


Ekwensu - the god of bargains and mischief


Ikenga - an avatar of the owner's spirit

Not many adherents of these ancient religions remain, and they endure persecution from the Christian majority.

Their sacred days are disregarded, traditions such as rites of passages are frowned upon and there have been instances where shrines have been invaded by Christians activists.

Nowadays, most practitioners of these religions are elderly, although a handful of youngsters are now rebelling against their Christian faith and learning the ways of their ancestors.

In the past, most Igbo homes had small altars for the Ikenga

Chinasa Nwosu, a Pentecostal bishop of the Royal Church in the southern city of Port Harcourt, is a fierce critic of the traditional beliefs.

Bishop Nwosu first shot into the limelight in the early 1990s for tearing down shrines, burning the so-called idols, and uprooting what he denounces as "evil trees".

These trees, some of them ancient, have their bases wrapped in white or red pieces of cloth and are sacred to adherents who worship and make small sacrifices to them. Some are in the family compound but most are in forests away from the community.

"God does not want us to practice idol worship. African religion, most of the time, is based on idolatry," he said.

"Blessings come when you remove those accursed things," he added, quoting the Bible.

Bishop Chinasa Nwosu burns objects that he believes are against Christian teachings

He said that carvings and other artworks such as the Benin Bronzes and Ife Heads, which are artefacts stolen from western Nigeria and are now in Europeans museums, had not been consecrated to a God so he was not opposed to them being returned.

But he warned the Nigerian government that if it brought back artefacts that could be traced to "idolatry", such as the Ikenga wood carvings in the British Museum, he would want them burnt.

Such views are vehemently opposed by Reverend Obayi, who remains determined to preserve the artefacts in his modest museum.

"They are artefacts that our children will see and they will understand how their forefathers lived," he said.

Brazilians march for Eshu, an Afro-Brazilian deity, to protest Christian intolerance

A march in honor of the orisha Eshu drew some 150,000 people in São Paulo recently, considered a rebuke to the rise of evangelical Christians’ political power.

People attend the March for Eshu, Aug. 18, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil. (Video screen grab)

August 27, 2024
By Eduardo Campos Lima


SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A march in honor of an Afro-Brazilian deity drew some 150,000 people in São Paulo on Aug. 18, shocking many in this historically Catholic country that has witnessed the growing numbers and political power of evangelical Christians.

The March for Eshu, honoring a West African Yoruba orisha, was widely interpreted as a rebuke to the evangelicals who are credited by political analysts with securing the presidency for conservative politician Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, much in the way American evangelicals championed Donald Trump. Bolsonaro has cited Trump as a model in the governing style as well.

In the Bolsonaro era and since — Bolsonaro lost his bid for a second term to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 — signs of evangelical Christians’ ascendancy have been everywhere, from the omnipresence of televangelists on the airwaves to the crucifixes and the Bible displayed in government offices to the 30-year-old March for Jesus, at which millions fill city streets around Brazil.

In marching for Eshu, adherents of Afro-Brazilian religions showed themselves ready to make their voices heard. “My idea was to combat intolerance against my faith. But not through confrontation. I just wanted to show the size of our creed and of our people,” said 32-year-old social media influencer and businessman Jonathan Pires, who organized the march.

Pires said he was disturbed by the way evangelicals have demonized his spirituality. Illegal in colonial times, the faiths brought by enslaved Africans to Brazil before slavery was outlawed in the late 1800s were practiced secretly, and orishas were often venerated after being renamed for Catholic saints. During Bolsonaro’s tenure (2019-2022), verbal and physical aggressions against those people grew exponentially.

Adherents of Afro-Brazilian faiths, which include Candomblé and Umbanda, were historically marginalized — and, many say, unrepresented: Out of fear and shame, many told surveyors they were Catholic.

Eshu has different aspects in Candomblé, which views him as an orisha, and in Umbanda, in which Eshu is an ancestral force, one often associated with bohemians and outcasts.

In either faith, said Maria Elise Rivas, a yalorisha (or priestess) of both Umbanda and Candomblé, “he’s a force with uncontrollable power, something that transforms him into a kind of transgressor, a manipulator and a destroyer.” He is also a messenger who mediates between humans and the gods.

In all this, Rivas pointed out, Eshu is problematic for monotheistic faiths and is often portrayed as a devil by Christians. “Those traditions have rigid rules, but for Eshu everything is flexible,” said Rivas. “There’s no idea of right and wrong, but a conception of building endless possibilities.”

Taking Eshu to the street, like the March for Eshu did, also challenged the racial and economic divisions in Brazilian society. A march made sense, said Rivas, “because the street doesn’t belong to anybody in particular, it belongs to all races and classes, and that’s the essence of Eshu.”

Jonathan Pires, center holding child, participates in the March for Eshu, Aug. 18, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Pires)

Social media has allowed followers of Afro-Brazilian traditions to unite against oppression and organize against attacks on them. In the past few years, Pires has become an activist on believers’ behalf. He created a bumper sticker reading: “It has never been luck, it has always been macumba,” a retort to familiar bumper stickers on Christians’ car bearing slogans like: “It has never been luck, it has always been Jesus.” (A macumba is a percussion instrument used in Candomblé rituals and a slur, positively reappropriated in the bumper sticker, for an adherent for an Afro-Brazilian faith.)

“Many people see our religion as one of poverty. I want to show to everybody that we’re also prosperous, given that Eshu opens the way for us,” Pires said.

His work on social media has earned him more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, which he uses not only to talk about religion, but to advertise his charitable work. When floods devastated the state of Rio Grande do Sul earlier this year, Pires managed to collect 120 tons of food and other basic items for those impacted, and he and his family spent more than two weeks in the region helping to distribute aid kits to flooded areas.

“That was also a way of demonstrating that Eshu is not about bad energies, like many people think. He feeds us and elevates us,” Pires said.

He said he paid for the costs of the march and refused when politicians offered their support. “Eshu is not a supporter of (Lula da Silva’s) Workers’ Party nor a supporter of Bolsonaro. My party is Eshu,” Pires said.

On social media, however, many people associated the march with the left wing, in part because Pires asked participants to wear red, one of Eshu’s ceremonial colors, but also the color of the Workers’ Party.

But Caio Fábio, a prominent evangelical pastor who has become a critic of the religious right, pointed out that, given the Brazilian right wing’s close ties to evangelicals and conservative Catholics, the March for Jesus has become regarded as a political rally for rightist politicians such as Bolsonaro. “The March for Jesus has always been ideological and political,” Fábio said.

“It became a perverted event, full of politics. And that phenomenon was accompanied, of course, by the deterioration of the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, which also became aggressively politicized.”

Ironically, he said, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches have long assimilated elements of the Afro-Brazilian religions as they tried to convert their adherents. The frantic circular dance known among evangelicals as the reteté accompanies their speaking in tongues as they feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, a usual component of neo-Pentecostal celebrations many times associated to African-Brazilian religions.

“Many people left their original African Brazilian creeds and began to frequent evangelical churches, which scandalously appropriated some of their ritual forms,” Fabio said.

But many, he added, especially the youth, are returning to Umbanda or Candomblé because of the politicization of the evangelical churches.

Pires said that since the first March for Eshu in 2023, people are becoming more comfortable with outwardly showing their Umbanda or Candomblé faith. “More and more Camdomblé or Umbanda practitioners feel comfortable to wear our traditional bead necklaces on the street. People used to be afraid or ashamed of doing so,” he said.

Ivanir dos Santos, a Candomblé leader in Rio de Janeiro and a longtime opponent of religious intolerance, said the March for Eshu is a natural reaction from a people who can’t stand to be attacked anymore.

“The March for Jesus has a conservative, moralistic, homophobic and intolerant agenda. That segment reacted in order to elevate its own self-esteem,” he told RNS.

Dos Santos has argued for opposing intolerance not through marches of Afro-Brazilian believers alone, but a variety faiths. “That’s why I defend the idea of promoting walks that join people from other creeds and social segments that promote freedom and democracy, instead of marches,” he said.

Pires said that he met a number of Catholic priests and evangelical pastors at his march, but some experts said the opposition had to begin with Eshu.

“The African Brazilian religions have a marvelous ability of resisting,” said Rivas. “And Eshu is a great reference in that process, because he is the one who rebuilds reality for all the people, no matter who they are.

SUNDAY SERMON

The Seeds of Political Violence Are Being Sown in Church

The new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

DAVID FRENCH

On Thursday night in Castle Rock, Colorado, a group called “FEC United” (FEC stands for faith, education, and commerce) held a “town hall” meeting that featured a potpourri of GOP candidates and election conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the event included John Eastman, the Claremont scholar who authored the notorious legal memos that purported to justify the decertification and reversal of the 2020 election results.

During the meeting, a man named Shawn Smith accused Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold of election misconduct. “You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”

“I was accused of endorsing violence,” he went on. “I’m not endorsing violence, I’m saying once you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.” As soon as he said, “you deserve to hang,” an audience member shouted “Yeah!” and applause filled the room. You can watch the moment here.

The moment, almost entirely ignored by the national media, is worth noting on its own terms, but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.

If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.

Last week, the New York Times’s Robert Draper wrote a must-read profile of former President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn. Before January 6, Flynn advocated military intervention, including martial law, to assist in overturning the election results.

During the Biden administration, he’s taken his show on the road, launching a “ReAwaken America” tour that features conferences that combine “elements of a tent revival, a trade fair and a sci-fi convention.” It is striking to see Flynn’s use of Christian channels and venues to spread his apocalyptic message of election corruption and national doom.

Draper caught up with the tour at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where 3,500 people had shown up to see Flynn and his collection of speakers. Flynn, Draper says, is “the single greatest draw besides Trump himself” in the “parallel universe” of the Make America Great Again movement.

Intrigued by the Dream City Church reference in Draper’s article, I went to the ReAwaken America tour page to see where Flynn was headed next. The first thing you notice is that the tour is sponsored by Charisma News, a charismatic Christian outlet. The next thing you should notice is the list of upcoming venues: Trinity Gospel Temple in Ohio, Awaken Church in California, The River Church in Oregon, and Burnsview Baptist Church in South Carolina.

It is always difficult to know when and how to cover extremism. Does highlighting a fringe provide an artificial sense of their danger and strength, in much the same way that “nutpicking” works in online spaces to exaggerate the extremism of your opponents? Or does ignoring a fringe allow it to flourish outside the spotlight and shock the nation when it finally emerges?

When it comes to Christian nationalism, the bar for concern has been passed by any conceivable measure. When a movement is strong enough to storm the Capitol, then it is worth continued monitoring and continued concern. Moreover, it’s important to understand why it continues to flourish, and why it is so difficult to understand, much less combat.

First, MAGA Christian nationalism is emotional and spiritual, not intellectual or ideological. While a number of scholars have done yeoman’s work in identifying the basic tenets of Christian nationalism, I’m still partial to Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd’s formulation of the ideology as “more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” Kidd provides a telling example:


I recently saw a yard sign that read “Make Faith Great Again: Trump 2020.” I wondered, How can re-electing Donald Trump make “faith” great again? What faith? When did it stop being great? No coherent answers would be forthcoming to such questions, but that’s the point. The sign speaks to a person’s ethnic, religious, and cultural identity in ways easier to notice than to explain.

But a MAGA Christian nationalist will read that sign and know exactly what it means–when Trump wins, America wins, and the church wins. The man, the nation, and the church are the movement.

Second, MAGA Christian nationalism is concentrated in the churches most removed from elite American culture, including from elite Evangelicalism. While there may be some Christian nationalists in seminaries, or in the pews of big, highly-educated suburban churches, or in the leadership of America’s largest denominations, you’re far more likely to find the true believers in exactly the kind of nondenominational, independent, and often-charismatic churches that populate the list of ReAwaken America tour stops.

Pentecostal Christianity, despite its immense size, is about as far from elite American culture as Mercury is from Mars. And this means it’s quite distant from elite Evangelical culture as well. Right-wing blue-check theologians and pastors who speak disdainfully of warnings about Christian nationalism because it’s not something they see in their churches never darken the door of a Pentecostal church.

They’re almost wholly unfamiliar with the world of “prophets” and “apostles” who have helped fuel much of the fervor for Trump. It’s no coincidence that Paula White, a pentecostal pastor herself, was Trump’s spiritual adviser. Trumpism penetrated pentecostalism early. I do not mean to say that all pentecostals are Trump supporters, much less Christian nationalists. But you can’t understand the Trumpist Christian core without understanding its pentecostal connection.

Third, MAGA Christian nationalism is often rooted in purported prophecies. I’ve spent every single day of the Trump era living deep in the heart of Trump country, surrounded by Trump-supporting friends, and attending church with Trump-supporting Christians. If there’s anything I know by heart, it’s the “Christian case for Trump.” I’ve read all the essays. I’ve heard all the arguments. It’s in the air out here.

There’s the pragmatic or prudential cost/benefit analysis—he’s a bad man, but his judicial appointments are good. There’s the cultural argument about threat—the left has grown so terrible that we have to punch back. But there’s also another argument entirely, one that’s impossible to discuss rationally—that Trump is divinely anointed by God to save this nation from imminent destruction.

I have up-close experience with this level of fervor. Some readers may remember that I debated Eric Metaxas at John Brown University in September 2020. While the debate was civil enough, it was clear to me that Metaxas was operating with a level of commitment to Trump that went well beyond reason. He truly believed Joe Biden would destroy America. He truly believed Trump was God’s chosen man for the moment.

Then, after the election, Metaxas escalated his rhetoric considerably. Let’s recall some of his quotes about the election:


“It’s like stealing the heart and soul of America. It’s like holding a rusty knife to the throat of Lady Liberty.”

“You might as well spit on the grave of George Washington.”

“This is evil. It’s like somebody has been raped or murdered. … This is like that times a thousand.”

Indeed, Metaxas claimed certainty even in the absence of proof: “So who cares what I can prove in the courts? This is right. This happened, and I am going to do anything I can to uncover this horror, this evil.”

Don’t forget that Metaxas was a key figure in the so-called “Jericho March,” a December 2020 protest in Washington that was so apocalyptic in tone that it should have served as an alarm that violence was imminent. (Michael Flynn participated there, too.) Indeed, on December 13, 2020, I wrote this: “While I hope and pray that protests remain peaceful and that seditious statements are confined to social media, we’d be fools to presume that peace will reign.”

Were there prophecies at the Jericho March? Oh yes:

Rod Dreher @roddreherFounder of Jericho March claims God poked him in the side and woke him up. "God said it's not over." Then God showed him a vision of the Jericho Marches. Then God introduced him to a woman who had the same vision. None of this, you understand, can be questioned. It's revealed.
December 12th 202040 Retweets500 Likes

It’s possible to overreact to this, to paint with too broad a brush. Michael Flynn is not speaking for the Evangelical mainstream. Millions of Republican Evangelicals have likely never even heard of the ReAwaken America tour. They dismiss “prophecies.” They’re legitimately aggrieved when they’re lumped into a movement and an ethos they find strange and appalling.

In fact, one underappreciated reason why conspiracies that Antifa was at least partly responsible for January 6 or that the attack was incited by the FBI have taken hold amongst Republicans is the firm conviction in many Republican hearts that Republicans don’t act like that. That is not what we do. Thus, there has to be an alternative explanation.

So we have to be careful. When dealing with a potentially insurrectionary subculture, it’s important to separate it from the population. Wrongly tie them to the mainstream, and members of the mainstream may wrongly see the insurrectionists as allies.

But underreaction can be dangerous too. We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. We know that they can be both deadly and destabilizing. A Christian political movement that’s so focused on the threat from the left can often unwittingly facilitate the rise of radicals, through sins of both commission and omission.

The sin of commission is constant threat-inflation. By focusing relentlessly on “wokeism” or the worst of the left, Christian media exacerbates the sense that Evangelicals are under siege and hanging on to their place in American society by their fingertips. As a leader in a well-known Christian activist group told me this week, threat-inflation leads to “cornered-animal syndrome,” rendering Christians vulnerable to the siren call of the extremists. Join us. We’re the last hope for the nation and the church.

The sin of omission is the deafening silence from so many Christian leaders about the threat to the church and the nation from the far right. Convinced by threat-inflation of the danger from the left, and desperate for the unity that is perceived as necessary to confront existential risks, the last thing they want to do is to divide the right. Indeed, they scorn those public voices who dare “punch right.”

Moreover, if Christians know anything about the far right, they know it’s vicious. Silence is the safe course. For all the (legitimate) talk of cancel culture from the left, many Christians self-censor out of fear of the right. They know Michael Flynn is dangerous, but saying so out loud carries a cost. So they remain silent. They stay in their anti-left lane.

The proper response to fear and fanaticism is reason and faith. It’s demonstrating by word and deed that the response even to the worst forms of extremism on the left is not to stampede to extremism on the other side. But we have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

One more thing …

This week Curtis and I hosted Dr. Derwin Gray on our Good Faith podcast, and I can’t recommend the conversation highly enough. Dr. Gray has a remarkable life story, one that took him from Texas to Brigham Young University, to the Indianapolis Colts, to seminary, and to founding a multi-ethnic church in South Carolina.

We go into everything, including critical race theory, navigating political and racial tensions in church, his new book, How to Heal Our Racial Divide, and how he proposes reaching a profoundly polarized church.

Listen to the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did.

David French