Abstract
This study explores the ways in which the born-again traditional leaders in Zambia are redefining neo-Pentecostal interaction with nonhuman creation. It demonstrates their attempts to rapture new religious imaginations in interstitial spaces between neo-Pentecostalism and Africa’s old spiritual systems. Since eco-spirituality is foundational to most African traditional institutions, some born again traditional leaders are forced to search for contextualized forms of neo-Pentecostalism to form new collective expressions of the spirituality of healing and reconciliation of all things. Grounded in the third space translation approach, this study analyzes ‘The Ngabwe Covenant’ which was made by the late neo-Pentecostal clergy and later traditional leader Ngabwe upon his inauguration as the traditional leader of Lamba-Lenje-and–Lima people of Central Province in Zambia. The study argues that Chief Ngabwe attempted to translate neo-Pentecostal spirituality through a traditional spiritual system of eco-relationality. In so doing, neo-Pentecostal spirituality and traditional religio-cultural heritages found new meaning and home within the hybridized (new) religious space. The study underlines that the resultant religious view which could be described as an African theology of eco-pneumato-relational way of being was envisioned as a new spiritual foundation for the Ngabwe kingdom. The article concludes that Rev. TL. Ngabwe’s theology of Spirit’s indwelling of the natural world is a critical contribution to neo-Pentecostal search for life-giving interactions between human and nonhuman creation.
Highlights
It has been increasingly argued that the drastic missionary expansion of neo-Pentecostalism is deeply entrenched in African religio-cultural impulse (Gifford 1998; Anderson 2004; Maxwell 2006; Kaunda 2018b)
Which was made by the late neo-Pentecostal clergy and later traditional leader Ngabwe upon his inauguration as the traditional leader of Lamba-Lenje-and–Lima people of Central Province in Zambia
The study underlines that the resultant religious view which could be described as an African theology of eco-pneumato-relational way of being was envisioned as a new spiritual foundation for the Ngabwe kingdom
Summary
It has been increasingly argued that the drastic missionary expansion of neo-Pentecostalism is deeply entrenched in African religio-cultural impulse (Gifford 1998; Anderson 2004; Maxwell 2006; Kaunda 2018b). A critical dialogue between neo-Pentecostal pneumatology and Lamba-Lenje-and-Lima eco-relationality results in a hybrid construction of ‘the third pace’ which could be described as eco-pneumato-relational way of being, formed a new spiritual foundation, providing Ngabwe kingdom with the same, only more powerful spiritual resources and more accurate answers to existential questions than both Western informed classical Pentecostalism and indigenous religions have provided In this way, it is argued that such missiological appropriative translations have the potential to expand and enrich both neo-Pentecostal pneumatological experiences and African religious heritages as they remain resilient through self-reproduction in modern Africa. Ngabwe to demonstrate how he envisioned to translate his neo-Pentecostal pneumatological experience into Lamba-Lenje-and-Lima eco-relationality This means that engaging with his methods and how the community understood, received and expressed Rev. TL. This view is described as an African theology of an eco-pneumato-relational way of being theology
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