Of Lizards, Misfortune and Deliverance: Pentecostal Soteriology in the Life of a Migrant

Abstract

This article analyses why Nigerian migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa, are attracted to Pentecostal churches and the theological landscape of Pentecostal Christianity: what it is in these churches and their way of practising religion that makes particular sense for migrants. It argues that there are three reasons: first, the manner in which Pentecostalism employs the body in prayer allows migrants to achieve successful connection and communication with the ultimate more easily than in the Protestant tradition. Second, the theology of deliverance, through which a believer is enabled to break out of the bounds of evil, allows migrants to deal with the (social, economic, political, kinship) forces that they see as causing the misfortune they are experiencing. Third, and critically, this theology of evil allows migrants to deal with their kin relationships which are strained when migrants achieve some form of prosperity. The Pentecostal tradition is particularly helpful to migrants because they are able to link their experiences of misfortune and difficulties into the Pentecostal theology of evil; because the Pentecostal focus on the body allows migrants with little financial resources to use what they have, their body, to communicate with the ultimate; and because the positive understanding of the material in Pentecostalism allows migrants to make sense of their situation of depravity as one that does not define them as persons.