Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

Meyer, Birgit

doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143835

Cited by 399 publications

(175 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…These syncretic notions of spirits acting in the world are characteristic of contemporary African Pentecostal churchs (Honwana, 2002;Meyer, 2004) and are widely shared in Chimoio's cane city, where the majority of residents are Christian and consider spiritual alongside natural causes when discussing etiologies of affliction (Chapman, 2010;Pfeiffer 2005).…”

Section: Global Public Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘All they do is pray’: Community labour and the narrowing of ‘care’ during Mozambique's HIV scale-up

Kalofonos

2014

Global Public Health

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This paper tracks the intertwined biographies of a community home-based care (CHBC) volunteer, Arminda, the community-based organisation she worked for, Mufudzi, and the HIV scale-up in Mozambique. The focus is on Arminda--the experiences, aspirations, skills, and values she brought to her work as a volunteer, and the ways her own life converged with the rise and fall of the organisation that pioneered CHBC in this region. CHBC began in Mozambique in the mid-1990s as a community-level response to the AIDS epidemic at a time when there were few such organised efforts. The rapid pace and technical orientation of the scale-up as well as the influx of funding altered the practice of CHBC by expanding the scope of the work to become more technically comprehensive, but at the same time more narrowly defining 'care' as clinically-oriented work. Over the course of the scale-up, Arminda and her colleagues felt exploited and ultimately abandoned, despite their work having served as the vanguard and national model for CHBC. This paper considers how this happened and raises questions about the communities constituted by global health interventions and about the role of and the voice of community health workers in large-scale interventions such as the HIV scale-up.

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Section: Global Public Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘All they do is pray’: Community labour and the narrowing of ‘care’ during Mozambique's HIV scale-up

Kalofonos

2014

Global Public Health

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“…By coupling a strong reliance on the miraculous experience of God with successful strategies of mediatization (Agha 2011) through print, radio, TV, CDs, DVDs, and the internet Pentecostal Christianity has attracted great masses of followers in Africa as elsewhere in the global South (Meyer 2004a;Robbins 2004). However, this impressive evangelistic dissemination has unfolded without clear authoritative contours.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flowing and framing

Reinhardt

2015

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Experiential and mediatized, Pentecostal Christianity is one of the most successful cases of contemporary religious globalization. However, it has often grown and expanded transnationally without clear authoritative contours. That is the case in contemporary Ghana, where Pentecostal claims about charismatic empowerment have fed public anxieties concerning the fake and the occult. This article examines how Pentecostalism's dysfunctional circulation is countered within seminaries, or Bible schools, by specific strategies of pastoral training. First, I revisit recent debates on Protestant language ideology in the anthropology of Christianity, and stress Pentecostalism's affinity with notions of flow and saturation of speech by divine presence. Second, I move to data collected in the Anagkazo Bible and Ministry Training Center, and investigate this institution's pedagogical framing of Pentecostalism's otherwise erratic flow of speech and power according to two normative operations: Biblical figuration and the emic notion of transmission as 'impartation' . I conclude by stressing how the metapragmatics of figuration and impartation in Anagkazo requires an understanding of religious circulation that exceeds the dominant scholarly focus on religion-as-mediation.

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“…(p. 171) While her focus is Latin America, researchers from every continent confirm that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing form of Christianity in various continents (Asamoah-Gyadu 2010:238;Meyer 2004;Omenyo 2006;Togarasei, Mmolai & Nkomazana 2011:120). What kind of hermeneutical frames inform Pentecostal interpretations and what kind of gender relations are constructed in their biblical readings?…”

Section: Introduction the Spirit In The Wordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many researchers of African neo-Pentecostal movements underline its democratic style of worship (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005:129-131;Meyer 2004). According to Asamoah-Gyadu (2005) democratic worship is the belief that:…”

Section: Introduction the Spirit In The Wordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between the Spirit and the Word: Reading the Gendered African Pentecostal Bible

Dube

2014

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

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This article reviews the gendered Pentecostal Bible as documented by various researchers. It assesses how the prophetic-spirit framework encounters and functions within the framework of the inerrant but patriarchal written word. The Spirit framework is an oral canon that opens spaces of gender empowerment. Yet Pentecostal scholars problematise the supposedly liberating Spirit, highlighting that it sometimes denies the materiality of human existence and inhabits the constraining parameters of patriarchal church structures. The article suggests that in addition to the Spirit-Word framework, new Pentecostal theological categories, such as healing and deliverance and the prosperity gospel need to be investigated for the new spaces they open for gender justice. 'The authority of the Bible as the word of God, and the experience of the Holy Spirit form two of the most important sources of Pentecostal theology ' (Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu 2004:390).

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Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

Cited by 399 publications

References 88 publications

‘All they do is pray’: Community labour and the narrowing of ‘care’ during Mozambique's HIV scale-up

‘All they do is pray’: Community labour and the narrowing of ‘care’ during Mozambique's HIV scale-up

Flowing and framing

Between the Spirit and the Word: Reading the Gendered African Pentecostal Bible

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