Pentecostalism in a Rural Context

Abstract

Pentecostal Christianity originated as an urban movement in America, and as it spread to Africa it was initially taken up most enthusiastically in towns and capital cities. In Ethiopia the Pentecostal movement largely started in towns, but is increasingly being taken up by rural communities. This paper will explore why rural Ethiopian communities are attracted to Pentecostalism, and how it impacts on their social, cultural and economic practices. In particular, I consider the developmental consequences of Pentecostalism, and how Pentecostal beliefs and practices encourage or block processes of change that are generally termed “development”. As part of this I will explore the theory of development – of what constitutes “good change” – that is implicit in Pentecostal philosophy and that is generally known as “transformational development”. I will show how this notion of change is significantly different to notions of change prevalent in the secular development world in that they emphasize transformations of subjectivity and social relations first, then leading to economic transformation, rather than focusing solely on the economic, as is apparent in the work of many secular development NGOs.

Engaging Theory in Research: A Cogent Approach to Rigorous Scholarship in Religion and Development

“…Volume 1, Issue 2 Winter / Spring 2024 116 their churches in facilitating identity transformation (Freeman 2013(Freeman : 232, 246, 2015Togarasei and Biri 2018: 170-71). The discussion that follows in this section examines this claim in further depth to pin down the kind of transformation that Pentecostal converts experience.…”

Decolonising the Theologico-Political Problem

“…Indeed, in attesting to this same point, Mbembe writes, 'The most significant development of the last quarter of the twentieth century has been the unprecedented growth of Pentecostal Christianity among popular and elite urban sectors in Africa ' (2002a, 269). However, I would not proscribe this significance to the urban context (see, for example, Freeman 2013, Manglos 2010, Maxwell 2006, Premawardhana 2018. The important point is that Neo/Pentecostalism contributes to what Mbembe refers to as a process of African subjects transforming their own subjectivity and producing something new, 'something that does not belong to the domain of a lost identity that must at all cost be found again, but rather something radically different, something open to change and whose theory and vocabulary remain to be invented' (Mbembe 2002a, 269).…”

Development as a form of religious engineering? Religion and secularity in development discourse

“…Even in countries like Ethiopia, where a Marxist state appropriated the churches' development assets, the missionary impact proved to be remarkably resilient in the long run. Despite significant disruptions, churches and other Christian development organizations remained an important channel of development aid, to the point of these efforts providing a political foothold for their continued religious efforts under an anti-religious regime (Haustein, 2009;Freeman, 2013). Overall, capacity building and other development efforts were significant in prolonging missionary presence in all of Africa, with an estimated 30-40,000 Western missionaries still working in the continent by 1995 (Isichei, 1995, p. 327).…”