Conflicting Futures, Entangled Pasts

Abstract

The Future of Pentecostalism. I would like to thank Miranda Klaver, who organized the conference, for the invitation and the inspiring program she put together, and Birgit Meyer, who acted as discussant, for her insightful comments. Furthermore, I would like to thank the other speakers and attendants for the many great conversations and discussions we had: in particular dr Samuel Lee, Miranda Holland, and Jon Bialecki. Finally, many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and sugegstions.

The Personal is Political: Pentecostal Approaches to Governance and Security

“…As Knibbe has argued, the missionary presence of this church in Europe both follows the pattern of and renders irrelevant the historical missions from Europe to the global South. It fundamentally challenges contemporary European understandings of Christianity as a remnant of the past, while reconceptualizing Europe as a dark continent that needs to be conquered for Jesus (Knibbe 2019). The selfunderstanding of African Pentecostals in Europe does not only throw into relief popular understandings of these churches as migrant churches in Europe, but also calls for further exploration of the moral imaginations and everyday practices of Pentecostalism.…”

“…(Oosterbaan, Van de Kamp, and Bahia 2019). This expansion can only partially be explained by how migration and diaspora communities have given rise to transnational religious fields (Schiller 2005), as from a Pentecostal perspective the world is seen as a global mission field and church planting across the globe is an active strategy to realize a missionary calling (Knibbe 2019(Knibbe , 2009.…”

“…The political aspirations and reach of these churches extend beyond the countries in which they were initiated and beyond the global south. In fact, the global map visualizing the mission statement and missionary strategy of the RCCG (Figure 1) locates Nigeria in the center of the world as the central sending force, planting churches around the world (Knibbe 2019).…”