Faith Healing, Migration and Gendered Conversions in Pentecostal Churches in Johannesburg

Abstract

This chapter explores how Pentecostal Churches understand, capitalise on, and address issues of distress and emotional suffering among migrant populations in South Africa. It describes how religious interventions work in specific cultural contexts by assisting with migrants’ need for healing in post-conflict situations and considers how, through their healing work, cultural notions and practices of gender are shaped by the church. The study looks at the experiences of migrant congregants and pastors in Turffontein, south of Johannesburg. In-depth interviews were conducted with both migrant congregants and pastors in two churches (one Nigerian and one Congolese). In addition, participatory observation was conducted in order to better understand the processes of indoctrination and initiation that migrants—as well as local participants—undergo in order to be delivered and ultimately healed. The forms and causes of distress that migrants present to the church are diverse, ranging from unemployment, poverty or lack of economic improvement, as well as poor interpersonal relations, illness and family problems, including domestic violence and infertility. A significant dimension of the healing and conversion processes in Pentecostal Churches in Africa is their role in saving members from the threats posed by the spiritual world, as conceived by traditional African religions. The church aims at establishing a different spiritual order by defeating the ancestral entities that have ruled the life of African people for so long. That dimension is of central interest to this work as it is embedded in these conceptions that notions and prescriptions about gender are crafted.