African Witchcraft and Pentecostalism

Many African scholars have held differing positions on the actual nomenclature or name to be given to African religion. According to Dopamu, “the indigenous Religion of the Africans has been inconsistently labeled African Traditional Religion (ATR), African Religions, African Indigenous Religion (AIR), African Systems of Thought, Primal Heritage … scholars like Parrinder and Mbiti inconsistently used African Traditional Religion and African Religion.”1 Nevertheless, we shall make use of African religion as suggested by the editors of this book. It may also be necessary to define African religion. Awolalu and Dopamu define African religion in this way: When we speak of African traditional religion we mean the indigenous religion of the Africans. It is the religion that has been handed down from generation to generation by the forebears of the present generation of Africans; it is not a fossil religion (a thing of the past) but a religion that Africans today have made theirs by living it and practicing it. This is a religion that has no written literature yet it is “written” everywhere for those who care to see and read. It is largely written in the peoples’ myths and folktales, in their songs and dances, in their liturgies and shrines and in their proverbs and pithy sayings. It is a religion whose historical founder is neither known nor worshipped. It is a religion that has no zeal for membership drive, yet it offers persistent fascination for Africans, young or old.2

The New Prophetic Churches is a religion in the mix, demonstrated by their points of contact with classical Pentecostalism, the prosperity gospel, African independent churches, and African traditional religion. New Prophetic Churches have points of contact with classical Pentecostalism with reference to the doctrine of baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. They are also influenced by the African traditional religions with reference to their connection with the spirit world. In addition, they have points of contact with the African independent churches concerning the use of healing and deliverance products. Furthermore, they have points of contact with the prosperity gospel in teaching the message of material blessing. The original form of these influences is presented in this article as opium religion, whereas the corrupted form of these influences is presented as opioid forms of religion. The latter refers to a somewhat dangerous mix of religious teachings, advocated by self-appointed spiritual leaders within the New Prophetic Churches. These spiritual leaders have concocted this mixture contrary to the original purpose of such teachings with the intention to satisfy their commercial desires to the detriment of the spiritual wellbeing of their followers and the sa-credness of religious teachings, particularly Christian teachings. Relying on a literary analysis, this article challenges the religious teachings of opioid religions that undermine the original good intentions with which these teachings are mixed. It suggests that any religious teaching in the Christian tradition should be consistent with the eternal purpose of God's mission, identity in Christ, and the fundamental tenets of the Christian tradition. There are neo-Pentecostal churches that are consistent with the mission of God, bringing solutions to various challenges in Africa. However, the focus here is on the New Prophetic Churches that have transited from the opium of religion to religion as opioids.

Oral Roberts is perhaps the first North American Pentecostal preacher to have a truly global ministry. Th is article discusses his influence on Pentecostalism in Africa through the holding of evangelical healing crusades around the world and also hosting a worldwide media ministry through the use of radio, television, and the distribution of books and magazines. Th rough these visits and media ministry, Oral Roberts inspired and influenced many leading Pentecostal leaders in Africa, including the late Archbishop Benson Idahosa of Nigeria and Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams of Ghana. An important and enduring influence of the ministry of Oral Roberts in Africa, this article suggests, is in the theology of “Seed Faith,” founded on the principle of sowing and reaping, which was an important feature of what later became known as the prosperity gospel. In studying the ministry of Oral Roberts and its influence on the African Christian context, we have an important case study on the globalization of Christianity as a world phenomenon and its appropriation as a local stream of Christianity.

Religion, especially Christianity and Islam, continues to be indicted for fomenting anti-queer tenors and validating the ostracisation of queer-identifying and gender non-conforming people. The interrogation of the roles of African Traditional Religions (ATRs) in queer narratives is important; thus, I examine Buki Papillon’s An Ordinary Wonder, a text which characterises an intersex protagonist, to underscore the ways ATRs are projected as supportive of diversity and encouraging of agency and resilience against oppressive and defining structures in Nigerian fictional narratives. Drawing from Gloria Anzaldúa’s theories on queerness and spirituality, I submit that ATRs are intricately tied to belief systems and cultures, and may thus avail positive outcomes in the discourse of religions and non-normative identities. As an attempt towards queer advocacy, Papillon’s work is an intervention to decolonise non-normative identities in a society that still suffers from the demonisation of African traditional beliefs and religions.

Taking as an ethnographic case study the Ghanaian Afrikania Mission's representation of traditional African religion as a world religion of the same stature as Christianity or Islam, this chapter argues against treating neo-traditional African religion and new African Christianity as mutually opposed and distinct religious phenomena. It traces the transnational genealogy of the notion of African traditional religion (ATR), which gained prominence when the first Christian missionaries arrived on the West African coast. The chapter explores Afrikania's history, to show how its reformulation of ATR speaks to all of these, while continuing this long conversation - to use Comaroff and Comaroff 's (1991) phrase - between global and local actors. It also explores how transnational dynamics have shaped and transformed the Afrikania Mission in Ghana and its revival of Afrikan Traditional Religion in national and transnational spaces. Keywords: African traditional religion (ATR); Afrikania Mission; Comaroff; Ghana; Ghanaian Afrikania Mission; new African Christianity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes “Global Religious Landscape,” Pew Research and Public Life Project, accessed June 2, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/. “Folk Religionists,” Pew Research and Public Life Project, accessed June 2, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-folk/. “A Religious Portrait of African Americans,” Pew Research and Public Life Project, accessed June 2, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2009/01/30/a-religious-portrait-of-african-americans/. Ibid. “Brazil's Changing Religious Landscape,” Pew Research and Public Life Project, accessed June 2, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2013/07/18/brazils-changing-religious-landscape/. Benjamin C. Ray, African Religions: Symbol, Ritual and Community (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000). Col. 3:22. Michael David Coogan et al., The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Benjamin C. Ray, African Religions: Symbol, Ritual and Community. Marthenus Daneel, “African Initiated Churches in Southern Africa: Protest Movements or Mission Churches,” in Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicism in the 20th Century, ed. Donald M Lewis (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 181–220. “Overview: Pentecostalism in Africa,” Pew Research and Public Life Project, accessed June 3, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2006/10/05/overview-pentecostalism-in-africa/. “Christian Movements and Denominations,” Pew Research and Public Life Project, accessed June 2, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-movements-and-denominations/. “Overview: Pentecostalism in Latin America,” accessed June 6, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2006/10/05/overview-pentecostalism-in-latin-america/. “Brazil's Changing Religious Landscape,” accessed June 5, 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/2013/07/18/brazils-changing-religious-landscape/. See for example Jonathan Walton, Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism (NYU Press, 2009); Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, The Black Megachurch: Theology, Gender and the Politics of Public Engagement (Baylor University Press, 2011); C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Duke University Press, 1990). Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, The Black Megachurch: Theology, Gender and the Politics of Public Engagement (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2011). Warren Bird, “The World's Largest Churches” Leadership Network, accessed June 3, 2014, http://leadnet.org/world/. According to Word of Faith theology donating money through tithes and offerings should be considered both an investment in the givers material prosperity and a sign of the givers faith that God will return the material investment exponentially. According to Paul Gifford in Ghana's New Christianity (2004) Oyedepo is a prototypical “name it and claim it” prosperity preacher. Winners Chapel has locations in several African countries including Ghana, Liberia and Kenya; and also in the U. S. and the U.K. Gifford, Ghana's New Christianity (Indiana University Press). Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs and Donn C. Worgs, “Black Morality Politics: Preachers, Politicians and Voters in the Battle over Same-sex Marriage,” Journal of Black Studies 45 (2014): 338–362, http://jbs.sagepub.com/content/45/4/338 Anthony Pinn, What is African American Religion? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011). Ibid.

John Mbiti, in his attempt to disprove the charge of paganism by EuroAmerican ethnographic and anthropological scholars against African Traditional Religions argues that traditional African religions are monotheistic. He insists that these traditional religious cultures have the same conception of God as found in the Abrahamic religions. The shared characteristics, according to him are foundational to the spread of the “gospel” in Africa. Mbiti’s effort, though motivated by the desire to refute the imperial charge of inferiority against African religions ran, I argue, into a conceptual and descriptive conflation of ATRs with monotheistic faiths. In this paper, I challenge the superimposition of Judeo-Christian categories upon African religions. I argue that monotheism is just a strand, out of many, that expresses belief in God(s), and that it differs substantially from the polytheistic pre-colonial African understanding of religion. I provide a panentheistic paradigm using traditional Igbo ontology and religion to refute Mbiti’s generalization.
 Keywords: Monotheism, African Traditional Religion, Igbo, Paganism, Theology.

The literature on African Pentecostalism is relatively vast and growing rapidly, but it is, unfortunately, caught in the circle of trying to define what African Pentecostalism is, and how it is what it is. How does African Pentecostalism constitute itself in relation to its sensibilities? How does it bear witness to its form of religiosity as a spirituality that is continually affected by African traditional religions, by economic exigencies and political developments in Africa, and by traditions, doctrines, and the gospel message of Christianity? What does it mean for Africans to express or modify Pentecostalism? How does one capture the style by which African Pentecostals leave their marks on Pentecostalism? The question of how African Pentecostalism defines itself is ultimately a question about Africa bearing witness to itself in African Pentecostalism, and about Pentecostalism expressing itself in an African context. The study of this religious movement, then, is not only about African Pentecostalism, but also about Africans bearing witness to their particular mode of being Pentecostal. It tells the story of the multi-directional openness of African Pentecostal social life without applying a constrictive universalizing framework to the fragmentary nature of African Pentecostalism. The movement is an assemblage of practices, ideas and theologies, and interpretations of reality, whose tangled roots burrow deep into the past, present, and future segments of African temporality. African Pentecostalism, like any other human endeavor, is full of fragments, and to understand it scholars must think in parts rather than in unified cultural wholes.

New prophetic churches have a different approach to classical Pentecostalism when it comes to the practice of divine healing. Unlike classical Pentecostalism, new prophetic churches embrace the practice of consulting prophets in divine healing in the same way as that in which a traditional healer would be consulted in traditional African religions. During the consultation, the prophet charges a fee and prescribes sacred products that are similar to those of traditional African religious practices. This article uses a case study to illustrate the similarities between new prophetic churches and traditional African religions. Although there are similarities between the two movements, there is a need to also demonstrate their differences. The similarities are framed as continuities, and differences as discontinuities. When diagnosing the problem, a traditional healer throws traditional bones, but a prophet relies on the Holy Spirit to utter a prophetic word. When exorcising a demon causing sickness and diseases, a traditional healer uses rituals to invoke the spirits, but new prophetic churches, with all their weaknesses, would still use the name of Jesus to cast out the evil spirits. The findings in this article have some implications within the theoretical framework of syncretism. The similarities demonstrate syncretistic practices, and the discontinuities demonstrate the nonsyncretistic nature of new prophetic churches in South Africa.

This study critiques study of African religions as a singular phenomenon under the umbrella term "African Traditional Religion" and rejects this reductionist approach, suggesting that a more detailed approach that recognises the diversity and plurality of religions on the African continent would allow for more insightful results in the study of religion in Africa. Along with Islam and Christianity, many religions indigenous to African peoples are still practised in Africa. Information about African religions was first provided in the works written mostly by Westerners. The works written by Christian missionaries, anthropologists, soldiers and researchers on religious life in Africa, both before and after the colonial period, have been the trendsetters of the "religion in Africa" literature. In such studies, Africa was analysed as a totality and the term " African Traditional Religion" was created. Besides, these studies were mostly biased, they often looked at religious phenomena from the perspective of Christianity and tried to Christianise them, and even more importantly, they made generalisations and presented all religions as a single religion. Later works by Africans were mostly written by Africans who converted to Christianity. This has led to the continuation of the reductionist and generalising approach in the relevant literature. Studies conducted from this perspective have typically situated African religions within frameworks that emphasize concepts such as the Supreme Being, spirits, ancestor veneration, magic, and sorcery. By highlighting these shared phenomena and oral traditions, this reductionist and orientalist perspective has contributed to the perception of African religions as a singular, cohesive entity. Even today, this effect can be seen in many works. Just as it is an erroneous approach to consider the peoples of Africa as a single race or nation, it is equally problematic to consider the religions of Africa as a single religion. This approach, which places the understanding that there is a single religion in the whole continent based on some similarities observed among the religions in Africa, has prevented the understanding of religious diversity in Africa and African religions. Although it may seem like a practical and problem-free approach, it is obvious that this perspective hinders the understanding of African religions and hence the understanding of Africa. The articles and books analysed in the context of this study have been instrumental in identifying a number of problems associated with this perspective. Many researchers have used the singular term 'Traditional African Religion' and failed to acknowledge the differences between religions. Others have used the term “African Traditional Religion” in the singular, but have stated that religions in Africa should be considered in the plural. Some other researchers have sometimes used a singular and sometimes a plural expression and stated that these can change according to the context, and that both expressions are correct. A small number of researchers also acknowledged that the appropriate term is “religions in Africa” or “African Traditional Religions” in the plural form, in accordance with the points raised in this study. Therefore, this study argues that the individual characteristics of African religions should not be generalised and represented as a single phenomenon, but that a more accurate understanding of these still living religions, with particular emphasis on their differences, will contribute to the understanding of Africa.

African Traditional Religion (ATR) is the religion that was practised throughout Africa before the arrival of Western missionaries. The core premise of ATR is the maintenance of African culture and its main feature is loyalty to the ancestors and accompanying rituals that express this loyalty. With the introduction of two foreign religions into the mega city of Lagos, the interest has shifted from traditional religion to the two other religions. This study adopted the sociological theory of Emile Durkheim, which argues that Stability and cohesion shared in religion binds people closely together and contribute to the growth of the society. Various authors have written on the question of monotheism versus polytheism and the nature and position of revelation in religion and in order to understand the place of African Religion in light of contemporary religions, the exegesis approach is applied in the discussion of Africans belief in the worship of one Supreme Being and veneration of ancestors as intermediaries to the one Supreme Being. The paper explores the question of religious tolerance within the megacity of Lagos. Finally, the study reveals how Lagosian adherents of the traditional religion interface with members of the other religions. Finally the paper concluded that Lagosian Christians or Muslims continue their veneration and practice of indigenous religion whilst upholding their foreign religious identity.Keywords: Lagos, African religion, foreign religions, the melting pot of Nigerian Society

Traditional African Religions (TARs) play a vital role in the lives of millions of people in Africa, shaping their cultural, spiritual, and social identities. However, the experiences of people with disabilities within TARs remain largely unexplored. This study aims to address this knowledge gap by examining the paradoxes of inclusion and exclusion faced by people with disabilities in TARs in Africa, with a special focus on Zimbabwe and South Africa. This qualitative desktop and critical discourse analysis study analyzed existing literature and primary data from online sources. The study employed a critical discourse analysis framework to examine how TARs construct and respond to disability. The study reveals that TARs exhibit both inclusive and exclusionary tendencies toward people with disabilities. While some TARs promote inclusive practices and recognize the spiritual agency of people with disabilities, others perpetuate stigma, marginalization, and exclusion. The study highlights the need for greater awareness, understanding, and inclusion of people with disabilities within TARs. It recommends that TAR leaders and communities promote inclusive spiritual practices, challenge stigma and marginalization, and recognize the spiritual agency and contributions of people with disabilities.

Many African scholars such as Bolaji Idowu, Mbiti, Bediako and others have posed a question about the interrelationship between traditional African religion and Christianity. Some scholars tend to exalt traditional African religion at the expense of the biblical meaning of salvation, as well as undermining the value of traditional African religion. In seeking to establish the interface between traditional African religion and Christianity, this article engages Bediako as one of the most influential African theologians who has thoroughly considered traditional African religion as a preparation for the Gospel. This approach has a danger of misidentifying the unique place of Israel in God’s redemptive history, as well as diminishing the biblical meaning of conversion and the newness of the Gospel. Thus, in contrast to Bediako’s inclusivism position, the article offers an alternative approach which argues that God’s general revelation in all pre-Christian traditional religions is a non-preparation for the Gospel. This is because in Pauline theology (Rm 1:18–32), general revelation grants humanity a very limited insight into the divine nature.

The aim of this study is to illustrate the ethnocentrism of Western thought by projecting its own science-oriented culture onto cultures with different beliefs. A comparative study between African witchcraft and the Greek phenomenon of the evil eye will be done to investigate whether similar reasons can be given for their existence today. The article reflects on the view that has been prevalent since the Enlightenment, namely that belief in the supernatural is “primitive” and has no place in a world where most things can be explained or solved scientifically. Against this background, contemporary Western perspectives on evil are explained and compared with those of the Greek Orthodox worldview, which shows similarities with New Testament textual evidence. This correlation is demonstrated by an anthropological perspective on the phenomenon of the evil eye as seen from a social, cultural and ecological point of view. These insights are compared with the belief in witchcraft, demonic possession and exorcism within African tradition and spirituality.

The rapid expansion of the neo-prophetic strand of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Africa has resulted in much public and academic scrutiny against the backdrop of perceived appropriation of elements of indigenous African faith. Even though African countries have retained secularism in place of a state religion, many African states, notably Ghana, have remained steadfastly committed to their traditional religions, sometimes even working in tandem with monotheistic Abrahamic religions like Islam and Christianity. Unquestionably, indigenous African religious beliefs have had a significant impact on African mental matrixes, which in turn has affected the practice of Christianity. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate how Ghanaian Christianity was impacted by traditional African beliefs and customs. In particular, a study of neo-prophetic churches at Manso Dome-Beposo within the Ashanti Region of Ghana was employed. The data for the study was gathered using interview guidelines and qualitative approaches. The data collected was thematically analyzed in line with the reviewed literature. The study found that most prophetic explorations involve the use of rituals, artefacts, and stylistic forms, which are similar to Abisa in the Akan spiritual cosmology. The study found out again that, there are several elements suggestive of African traditional religious influence on Christianity. For instance, it was observed that the notion of the existence of evil spirits in Akan cosmology has strongly influenced contemporary prophetism in Ghana. The study concluded that although the idea that Christianity has been affected by African traditional religion may not have empirical validity, there are plenty of visible indicators to back up this assertion. It has been recommended that with the evidence of possible syncretism, a clear distinction should be made between the culture and the religious activities of the people since at times the church wrongfully accuses members even when they are performing culturing duties. This will help the church authorities to inculturate Christian liturgy. Keywords: Inculturation, African Traditional Religion, Syncretism