Christian Revivalism and Political Imagination in Madagascar

Abstract

The point of departure for this paper is the particular role of Christian movements in Madagascar’s most recent political crisis. During the coup d’état in March 2009, ritual specialists from the Christian revival movementFifohazanawere called on to carry out an exorcism to cleanse the presidential palace of evil forces. This incident not only shows the significance of Christian revival movements within the Malagasy political landscape and society in general, but also indicates how Malagasy politics is imagined in spiritual terms. With its recurrent efforts to restore the nation-state, Malagasy national politics is impossible to understand without taking into account how thoroughly the Malagasy political imagination is infused with the cosmology and ontologies of power. This paper explores the ambivalent relationships between the various Christian movements and national politics in the light of history as well as through the recent transmutations of power, showing howFifohazanahave provided a site for the (re)production of the contemporary political imagination.

Ancestral cites: Citation politics and canonical figures in Protestant communities

“…As we saw in his thesis, Rateaver endorsed a Christian practice of unifying political action and religious commitment. Rateaver’s politically informed Christianity is not unusual in Madagascar as Malagasy Protestant pastors have played an influential role in political movements, from secret anticolonial societies like Vy, Vato, Sakelika in the early colonial period (Randrianja and Ellis, 2009) to the contested election of Marc Ravalomanana as president in 2002 (Nielsson and Skeie, 2014). Rateaver’s theological views could be interpreted as providing an alternative to scholarship on “pure” Christian theological reflection or dematerialized piety.…”