The publication of African Pentecostalism reflects the growing influence of Pentecostalism in the public spaces and private lives across the continent. The visibility of African Pentecostalism with its mega-churches, use of multi-media, and importance for African diasporas, has generated a considerable amount of scholarship. It is fair to say that no other religious movement has produced such an extensive bibliography over the past decade.
African Pentecostalism owes its origins to a course that Ogbu Kalu co-taught at McCormick Theological Seminary in the United States. The book is organised into four parts. The first two are historical, and examine the roots of Pentecostalism through the study of African religious movements (Part i), and the advance of Pentecostalism since in the 1970s (Part ii). Part iii offers a survey of Pentecostalism in what is termed the ‘African public space’. Part iv is titled ‘Pentecostal words and worlds’, and explores Pentecostal theology and the ‘reverse flow’ of global Christianity (the growing influence of African Pentecostalism in Europe and North America).
Early chapters are framed around concepts drawn from different societies in Africa. Chapter 1 introduces the Yoruba practice of Oriki – or praise poetry – and its relationship to Yoruba genealogy and historiography. The chapter then goes on to provide a semi-history of Pentecostalism, setting out the different ways in which the subject can be approached. Kalu introduces four ‘discourses’ which can be used to frame the study of Pentecostalism: historical, cultural, instrumentalist and religious. The next chapter takes in the Luganda concept of bazukufu – the ‘reawakened’ Christian – and surveys the rich history of religious movements in Africa.
These early chapters are paradigmatic. Kalu wants us to challenge the view that African Pentecostalism is rooted in the revivalist and charismatic experiences of Europe and North America. His focus is on the religious experience and institutions of African Christianity, albeit as part of the global mix. This is an important point, and I am sympathetic to the author's desire to reorient our approach to the study of Pentecostalism. The bias in historical research towards written archives makes it difficult to evaluate the impact and significance of movements when significance is mostly determined by the attentions of the colonial or post-colonial state.
But this ‘African turn’ needs a more sustained analysis than it gets in African Pentecostalism. On the one hand, the revivalist movements in Europe and North America which form the dominant narrative need better introduction; on the other hand, more information is needed on the Pentecostal, charismatic and revivalist strains in African Christianity to form Kalu's counter-narrative. The ‘Azusa Street Revival’, for example (p. 13), which forms a major part of the ‘Western’ narrative, is not dated nor is it properly described, while the Malakite movement – an African Christian movement which claimed more than 100,000 adherents and spread across East Africa in the 1920s and 1930s – is not mentioned.
Later chapters examine Pentecostalism's influence on public life in Africa, past and present. The Twi word sankofa conveys the complex relationship between Pentecostal theology and notions of ‘tradition’ in Africa (sankofa is the bird that looks back to see where it has come from) (p. 171). Kalu does a good job of showing the way Pentecostalism's commitment to being ‘born again’ rubs alongside the contradictions and experiences inherent in everyday life. Subsequent chapters cover a range of subjects, including public ethics (Chapter 10), the imposition of Sha'ria law in northern Nigeria (Chapter 12) and the influence of Pentecostalism among African diasporas (Chapter 14).
Though the range of these later sections holds the interest of the reader, they struggle to coalesce into an analytical whole. This is partly because we are never entirely sure whether the book is about ‘African Pentecostalism’ – a strand of a religious movement defined by its geographic location – or Pentecostalism in Africa. The book's title suggests the former, but is undercut by the apparent difficulty in synthesising cases and examples into a clear-eyed overview.
Strangely for a book aimed at introducing students to a new subject, the writing style is rather difficult to get a grip on. At times the prose lacks the clarity needed to place order on an otherwise unruly subject, and the structure of the book is overly complicated. Chapter 1, at twenty pages, has five sections, four discourses and four lists. Kalu is not helped in this by the slipshod editing of OUP (the American anthropologist Daniel Jordan Smith is referred to in the text and index as Jordan Smith (p. 120, 357), and in the bibliography as Jordan Daniel Smith (p. 341)). The formatting of the bibliography is remarkable for its inconsistency.
One further concern is the limited attention given to Pentecostal Christianity in rural parts of Africa. In terms of church attendance there are more African Pentecostals in the countryside. These rural congregations have a different form and flavour from some of the more studied strands of Pentecostalism in Africa's urban centres. There is often a focus on healing and sociality, rather than the promise of prosperity or separation. Moreover, if we follow the logic of the ‘counter-narrative’ introduced in Chapter 1, then these rural churches are more than a mere reflection of what goes on in town. They are likely to be generative of new religious practices, beliefs and institutions.
Ogbu Kalu passed away on 7 January 2009, at the relatively young age of 66. It is with some sadness that I conclude that his final study misses the precision and depth of earlier work. Pentecostalism in Africa needs a book that offers the student an introduction, and the specialist an overview of an already complex literature. African Pentecostalism is a step along the way.
