“Ablaze for God”: Constructing and Negotiating Identities in an African Pentecostal Church

Abstract

The Church as an organization provides a wealth of research opportunities to explore how the process of identity construction and negotiation function. The present work, therefore, is a study of members’ identity construction and negotiation in an African Pentecostal Prayer Camp, Moment of Glory Prayer Army (MOGPA). Through the theoretical frameworks that build on the constructs of communication theory of identity and the identity negotiation theory, this ethnographic study explores the identities constructed by the members of this organization and how they negotiate those identities in their quest for physical and spiritual wholeness. An analysis of the data collected shows that participants through their performances at the prayer camp gatherings construct multifaceted personal, gender, social, ethnic and professional identities. The ethnographic study also revealed that in negotiating their identities, the strategies adopted by participants included acts of adornments, socialization and immersive participation. The study concluded that identity construction and negotiation of members come through the process of social interactions and learning and impacted by the identity of the Prayer Camp’s. Keywords: Identity negotiation, ethnography, prayer camp, Pentecostalism, social interaction DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/10-24-03 Publication date: December 31 st 2020