Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines Pentecostal embodiment through a study of the way prayer is spoken of and performed in a prominent Nigerian Deliverance church. It argues that the Deliverance churches’ exaggerated emphasis on the demonic serves to re-purpose prayer as an embodied violent performance that is often as much directed to the devil as it is to God. This article thus reveals the ways in which the entanglement of divine and demonic beings in the Pentecostal body results in the production of a subject that does not just act upon itself, but in fact seeks to defeat and hence deliver itself. Moreover, in offering a detailed account of how the movement’s theology of the body is made manifest in performances of prayer, the article argues for scholarly attention to the role that theological doctrines play in the constitution of embodied experience in the study of religions more generally.
Highlights
That so many born-again Christians regard their bodies as a kind of medium through which to access the transcendent is a fact that is impressed upon any casual observer who is sensitive to the rhythms and moods of Pentecostal worship
Three summarising observations emerge from this exploration of prayer
The first is that prayer is an act of spiritual warfare that is played out upon the battlefield of the Pentecostal body
Summary
Olukoya encourages his worshippers to kenotically self-empty their bodily vessels of demonic pollutants on the road to deliverance This makes space for the Holy Spirit to pour the anointing ‘oil’ into the openings of the body, a process that requires the Spirit’s assistance in slackening the grasp of the demonic and points towards the implicit Pentecostal distinction between the Spirit within and the Spirit without. (Olukoya 2001a) In this cosmology, the devil acts to frustrate Christian efforts to communicate with God, standing literally between him and his creation It is not uncommon for those leading prayer at MFM services to chastise the congregation if it is felt that they are not praying violently enough, encouraging them to use their voices and bodies more intensely. Olukoya encourages both male and female worshippers to embody the fervour that is associated with feminine piety and devotion, so that they may experience the presence of the Spirit within their bodies and convert that sense of empowerment into spiritual lust for the divine
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