Church and (re)Birth: Legacies of Christianity for Maternal Care in Nigeria

Abstract

AbstractReligious conversion has long paralleled and often intersected development schemes in Africa with reproductive health interventions. For example, the rapid expansion of Pentecostalism in Nigeria has impacted women's labor and delivery practices, and is more recently being pit against state‐run maternal health programs. This essay examines these dynamics and calls for a re‐thinking of secularization theories alongside the changing role of religion in the modern state. For international aid organizations, achievements in reproductive health often serve as markers of development and are seen as steps toward modernization. Although hundreds of millions of dollars have been put towards maternal health modernization, little “progress” has been made in Nigeria, where woman often deliver their children in mission homes, which are run by Pentecostal churches, shun biomedicine, and use prayer alone to assist childbirth. Seen as a stagnation of development projects by the state, these religious birthing practices are being linked to a protracted process of secularization. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in southwestern Nigeria, this article explores how transformations in religiosity shape the care of pregnant and birthing women in a predominantly Christian region of Nigeria. It discusses state efforts to both arbitrate over and assimilate mission homes and the implications these confrontations have on the reproductive lives of women. Last, it reflects on the figure of the “religious fanatic” in healthcare settings.