Transnational Construction and Local Imagination of "Crusade Christianity"

Abstract

This article focuses on a transnational urban crusade by a British representative of Pentecostal-type Christianity in 2006 in Kumasi, Ghana. Such mass-evangelism events have helped shape a new religious topography in most African countries since the mid-1980s. An integral part of the religious landscape, they accompany a "Pentecostalization" of African Christianity. This case study analyzes the interplay between international theological discourses and local appropriations of crusade Christianity. It presents crusades as performances and it researches crusade strategies to establish hegemony in public urban space. The central analysis of the theology of healing most popular in Pentecostal-type Christianity refers to the African religious discourse on well-being and disease causation in general. It concludes that local African discourses, more than crusade heroes, show a capacity to control transnational impact in crusade performances and theology.