African Independent Churches Research Articles

Religion and Development from Below: Independent Christianity in South Africa

AbstractMost of the literature on African independent churches (AICs) in South Africa has not paid much attention to their economic and developmental role. In contrast, this article will show how AICs are involved in important economic activities such as voluntary mutual benefit societies, savings clubs, lending societies, stokvels (informal savings funds), and burial societies that control millions of South African rand. In light of firsthand empirical research, this article investigates these kinds of activities, and analyses independent churches’ developmental role. This will allow us to better understand how these communities play a strong and supportive function among Africans in a deprived economic situation. In a period of socio-political transformation in South Africa, AICs are able to answer the needs of the people and their hunger to rebuild an identity. My major critique of classical research on AICs is the failure of the literature to address ‘social change’ in a theoretically adequate way, as something more than just descriptions of ‘traditional’ social structures away from interpretations of modernity.

Spiritual Life of Deaf People in South Africa

Spiritual Life of Deaf People in South Africa A. L. Smit (bio) To date, no overview of the spiritual life of Deaf people has been available across the different religious affiliations in South Africa. Therefore, in this article I attempt to give a partial overview, informed by unpublished reports, personal observations, and the experiences of experts in this field over the past two decades in South Africa. Religious Demographic Profile of South Africa The most recent South African census (2001) showed that 79.8% of the population of 44.8 million was Christian. The African Independent Churches (31.8%), Protestants (25.5%), Pentecostal/ Charismatic churches (7.6%), Catholic churches (7.1%), and various other Christian groupings (7.8%) make up the Christian section of the population. The rest of the population is made up of adherents to Islam (1.5%), Hinduism (1.2%), African traditional beliefs (0.3%), and Judaism (0.2%), with other groupings claiming 0.6%. Those who indicate no religion constitute 15.1% (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009; Statistics South Africa, 2005, pp. 24, 28). Data on the religious demographic profile of the Deaf South African population of 453,104 (according to the 2001 Census; cf. Statistics South Africa, 2005, p. 51) are not available, but it can be assumed that it differs from that of hearing people because communication barriers make it difficult for Deaf people to fully participate in the religious groupings of their choice. Some of the groupings make special efforts to accommodate Deaf people using interpreters and different forms of visual communication, and they even designate religious functionaries for Deaf members of their grouping. However, limitations to Deaf members’ participation exist in religious rituals and leadership positions. To a large extent, Deaf members are usually seen only as the objects of religious care and instruction, and not as the subjects thereof. Consequently, it appears that the religious potential of Deaf people has to date been neither appreciated nor developed, and this is believed to have caused many Deaf people to look for alternatives or to become apathetic. One of the alternatives is to start Deaf gatherings or churches. South African Deaf Christians who prefer Deaf churches and fellowships are members of 15 churches or fellowships in the provinces of Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, and Gauteng that are affiliated with the Deaf Ecumenical Forum of South Africa. However, these congregations account for only about 4,000 Deaf people and their families. A number of Deaf South Africans are members of Jehovah’s Witnesses sign language congregations and sign language groups in various cities and towns across South Africa. A number of Deaf South Africans are Muslims. Al Waagah Madrasssah for the Deaf is an Islamic service provider for Deaf Muslims in Cape Town. A trend among Deaf people is that preference is given to religious groupings that use sign language as their [End Page 514] communication medium and practice Deaf culture. Doctrine and dogma seem to play a secondary role in their choice. Features of Deaf Culture Some of the features of Deaf culture seem particularly pertinent to the spiritual lives of Deaf people (Siple, Greer, & Holcomb, 2004). (Although there are good reasons for the development of these features, their causes will not be discussed here.) Collectivism One of the main attributes of Deaf culture in South Africa, as is the case internationally, is the inclusion of all Deaf people. Deafness is a bond that transcends national boundaries, race, gender, and creed. Loyalty The Deaf community sometimes displays what some might label a jealous possessiveness toward specific cultural and language property, which it keeps away from the hearing (Lane, 1992). Attitude Toward Hearing People in General Many Deaf people express a negative attitude toward hearing people, seeing them as the oppressors. There is also the belief that the only difference between hearing and Deaf people is that Deaf people cannot hear. Concept of God Christian research done at various schools for the Deaf in South Africa indicated that little or no concept of God was formed in Deaf children as a result of the method and content of religious instruction. They did not show any understanding of the omnipresence...

Classifying African Christianities: Past, Present, and Future: Part One

AbstractThis two-part article examines the practice of classifying African Christianities, looking at past and current approaches in order to make suggestions for the future. Noting advances in such classification from the disciplines of African church history and the anthropology of Christianity, it proposes a generational approach to African Christian communities. After reviewing past approaches and identifying their shortcomings, part one shows how Pentecostalism has disrupted such classifications further, prompting the late church historian Ogbu Kalu’s assertion of continuity within African Christianities through a longstanding pattern of revivalism. Kalu helpfully emphasizes African initiatives in Christian creativity and detects similarities over time in Christianity’s appeal to Africans. Yet he also relies on a problematic essentialist approach to Africa and, by foregrounding Pentecostals and African Independent (or Initiated) Churches, continues a trend that overlooks other African Christians. The challenge lies in developing classifications that include all African Christians, using concepts that generate insight-producing comparisons.

The Moral Economy of the African Diaspora: Citizenship, Networking and Permeable Ethnicity

AbstractScholarship on the African diaspora has documented the legal hurdles African migrants face in acquiring residence and begun to record the religious efflorescence of African Independent churches. Missing, however, is attention to the complex moral assumptions informing African diasporic sociality and claims to citizenship, whether through churches or voluntary associations. The present volume fills this hiatus by theorising the moral economy of citizenship claims and transnational giving. Its contributors explore the underlying ethical assumptions, ideas and practices of African migrants implied by their calls for recognition and the right to work and live in the diaspora, whether or not they possess the required legal documents, and despite being different racially and culturally. We interrogate both the tendency of migrants to encapsulate themselves in religious or home town associations with compatriots or coreligionists, and their expansive horizons and moves towards ‘permeable’ ethnicity, ‘cosmopolitan’ networking and multiculturalism, as they create, imagine and construct the ‘African diaspora’.

The role of religious values in extending social protection: A South African perspective

This article reflects critically on the role played by religious networks – in particular the African Independent Churches or African Initiated Churches (AICs) – in enhancing social protection by means of informal coping mechanisms in the South African context. It also examines various factors that contribute towards informal social security dependency in AICs, namely the influence of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, the limited scope of social security coverage, the restricted family concept (underlying much of the formal system which does not reflect the family context in South Africa), African traditional values, and Christian principles. In addition, the article investigates the nature of the relationship between informal coping mechanisms (such as those in AICs) and formal social security, i.e. whether informal social security strengthens or weakens formal social security. It finally explores ways and means of strengthening informal social security, in particular in the wake of challenges such as HIV/AIDS, urbanisation and migration.

Book Review: Prophetic Christianity in Western Kenya: Political, Cultural and Theological Aspects of African Independent Churches

Book Review: Prophetic Christianity in Western Kenya: Political, Cultural and Theological Aspects of African Independent Churches

Christ Holy Church International: The Story of an African Independent Church – By Thomas Oduro

Christ Holy Church International: The Story of an African Independent Church – By Thomas Oduro

Jackson hlungwani's altars: an african christian theology in wood and stone

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the architecture and sculpture of Jackson Hlungwani's New Jerusalem site at Mbhokota in the Limpopo Province in South Africa, against the background of the theology, architecture, and art of the African independent churches in South Africa. The paper examines Hlungwani's idiosyncratic approach to Christianity and its manifestation in a reworking of ancient stone ruins and the production of an entirely individual body of sculpture. It demonstrates how Hlungwani marries aspects of his Tsonga tradition with biblical imagery, and suggests that it was this marriage that enabled Hlungwani to reconcile the sale of his sculpture with his religious beliefs. The paper also establishes that Hlungwani's iconography is completely independent of orthodox Christian dogmas and is created in the context of an awareness of “art.”

Consecrated garments and spaces in the cherubim and seraphim church diaspora

ABSTRACTThe Cherubim and Seraphim Church, an African independent church founded in 1925 in Lagos, Nigeria, is best-known for its members' white garments, fashioned to resemble the angelic beings, the cherubim and seraphim, of the Bible. With the movement of church members to different parts of the globe, these garments have become increasingly important to some as spiritual ties with the Nigerian homeland. Similarly, these homeland connections may be established and maintained by the founding of churches in the United States and Canada, which serve as satellite churches for established C&S churches in Nigeria, sharing identical names, related personnel, and similar altar decoration. This paper considers that ways that C&S Church art and dress overcome distance through the connections made by holy bodies, and consecrated garments and spaces.

The Shift of Gravity of the Church to Sub-Saharan Africa: Theological and Ecclesiological Implications for Women

This article discusses the notion of the Church's shift of gravity to Sub-Saharan Africa. From an African feminist ethical and theological perspective, the intention is to outline the debates relating to the expansion of Christianity in Africa, particularly as it is embodied by the neo-Pentecostal, charismatic and African independent churches (AICs). The aim is to arrive at an understanding of prominent theologies professed by these churches and of ecclesiologies they inhabit or promote, with a view to discerning some of their implications for theologies and ecclesiologies in Africa, particularly for African women. The article begins with an appraisal of the statistical data and debates relating to the Church's shift of gravity. This is followed by an account of the insights of African feminist theologies and ethics in relation to the shift of gravity and its implications for women in Africa.

African Independent Churches in Post-Apartheid South Africa: New Political Interpretations**

Scholars continue to debate the issue of how African Independent Churches (AICs) relate to politics. Rather than evaluating AICs according to a literal, Eurocentric definition of politics, this article argues for a holistic interpretation of African Christianity that treats politics, like other aspects of the realities of religious communities, as integral to religious discourse. Drawing on a study – including participant-observation and interviews with leaders and ordinary members – of five independent churches in Jabulani (Soweto), the article shows that politics is not now, nor was it during the apartheid era, divorced from the religious sphere in the everyday lives of church members. It demonstrates that local religious communities vitally sustain broadly held popular expectations of obtaining the as yet unrealised benefits of social justice and full citizenship that were the promise of the liberation struggle. Space is thereby opened up to move beyond seeing politics exclusively in terms of direct opposition to or support for government policies and institutions, and to register the political nature of activities such as Sunday worship, group Bible study, and weekday evening prayer meetings.

Brigid M. Sackey. New Directions in Gender and Religion: The Changing Status of Women in African Independent Churches. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006. viii + 219 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $70.00. Cloth.

Brigid M. Sackey. New Directions in Gender and Religion: The Changing Status of Women in African Independent Churches. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006. viii + 219 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $70.00. Cloth. - Volume 51 Issue 1

A REVIEW OF ALLAN ANDERSON'S INTRODUCTION TO PENTECOSTALISM: GLOBAL CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY*

ABSTRACT Allan Anderson's An INTRODUCTION TO Pentecostalism seeks to provide an overview of the global Pentecostal and Charismatic movements today. The first part of the book examines aspects of the global historical development of Pentecostalism. Part Two explores various themes in Pentecostal and Charismatic theologies from around the world, beginning with the theology of the Spirit, which for Anderson is definitive of Pentecostal and Charismatic identity. Throughout the book Anderson opts for an inclusive definition of Pentecostalism that includes Classical Pentecostals (who trace their origins to the Azusa Street revival), Charismatics, Neopentecostals, African Independent Churches, and others who are distinguished mainly by a heightened experience of the Spirit. The book traces the history of these diverse global movements only through Western Protestant Christian streams of experience prior to 1900, and gives preeminent place in this narrative to the history of the Anglo-American Holiness movement in the USA. The effect here is to present Pentecostalism as essentially a EuropeanUS historical movement, with the global experiences being added on almost as afterthoughts. Nevertheless at several places in the text he points in the direction of a more global historiographical alternative. In the end this work stands head and shoulders above most other texts in the field today.

Sinkretisme as missiologiese uitdaging

Religious syncretism is usually seen as the intermingling of two religious systems to the extent that the uniqueness of a specific religion is compromised. It is thus understood as missiologically negative. This article attemps to view this from another – and more positive – angle. Here we show how the process of inculturation, the “incarnation” of the gospel within a culture is not much different from the process we term “positive syncretism”. It is also possible that the process could veer off in a negative direction. This process therefore remains a formidable challenge to mission in the sense that while there are always new cultural worlds to be penetrated by the gospel, the process cannot be controlled by any “outsiders”. This theory is applied and tested by looking at the phenomenon of African Independent Churches, and a simple two-dimensional model is developed as illustration of a typology.

Forging Identities: Women as Participants and Leaders in the Church among the Yoruba

There is a burgeoning of women in Yoruba church leadership, especially in the African Independent Churches and Pentecostal Churches. These female religious leaders are fast becoming forces to reckon with in contemporary Nigerian society. Who are these female religious leaders? What do they stand for? What are their styles of leadership? How have they negotiated the quicksand of patriarchal traditions and what are their prospects for the future Nigeria ecclesia? This essay grapples with such questions. It argues that women have been forging identities in the church among the Yoruba right from its inception, and the emergence of female leadership is another phase in an ongoing process of continual transformation. It aims at finding the erstwhile and current identities of the women in the church among the Yoruba. This study adopts Wilberta Chinn’s scheme as a working definition of identity. Chinn sets out the following summary of the identity problems faced by women in the church:

Book Review: Engaging Modernity: Methods and Cases for Studying African Independent Churches

Book Review: Engaging Modernity: Methods and Cases for Studying African Independent Churches

'Broken Calabashes and Covenants of Fruitfulness': Cursing Barrenness in Contemporary African Christianity

AbstractChildlessness is an issue of deep religious concern in Africa. Men, women and couples with problems of sexuality and childlessness make use not only of the resources of traditional African religions but also of the many Pentecostal/charismatic churches and movements that have burgeoned throughout sub-Saharan Africa in the last three decades. Initially this was the domain of the older African independent churches, as far as the Christian response to childlessness is concerned; the new Pentecostals have taken on the challenge too. Based on the same biblical and traditional worldviews that events have causes, these churches have mounted ritual contexts that wrestle with the issues of sexuality and childlessness. In pursuing this salvific endeavor, however, the needs of those who may never have children seem to have been neglected by the churches considered here and represented by the Pure Fire Miracle Ministries, a Ghana/Nigeria charismatic church located in Ghana. is partial approach to 'healing' childlessness has led to one-sided interpretations of what it means to be fruitful and prosperous and deepened the troubles of the childless.

Book Review: Engaging Modernity: Methods and Cases for Studying African Independent Churches in South Africa

Book Review: Engaging Modernity: Methods and Cases for Studying African Independent Churches in South Africa

Reinventing therapo-spiritual fellowships: The jolang'o in Luo African Independent Churches

Luo society has been cited frequently as one of the most traditional societies in western Kenya. In the past century, their religious situation has changed interestingly. Religious eclecticism is moving the focal point of healing by the jolang'o into dominant African Independent Churches where Luo beliefs handed down from the past are preserved and reorganized with new expression. In these churches, prayer, spiritual, and faith healing are central liturgical activities that meet an incessant need for puodhruok—holistic spiritual healing. The study identifies the major juogi or spiritual forces responsible for spirit attack and healer illumination. It appears that in the area of ethnomedicine, African beliefs are as strong and pervasive as ever before.

Engaging Modernity: Methods and cases for studying African Independent Churches in South Africa, edited by Dawid Venter. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 240 pp. $54.95. ISBN 0-275-96903-7 (hardback).

Engaging Modernity contains a collection of essays by four different authors who purport to open up new perspectives in the study of African Independent Churches (AICs) in South Africa. This is done largely by providing a detailed discussion of research methodologies and established theories. This methodological approach is supported by extended case studies, offering conceptual, community, national, and global perspectives. The book concludes with an epilogue about the possible future of AICs in South Africa. Engaging Modernity seeks new ways to resolve the modernity/tradition dilemma that has long beset the academic debate on AICs. The question is how successfully this is done. Although the book contains a lot of useful information, especially for those who want to familiarise themselves quickly with AICs and the difficulties in studying them, what we get is a rather disparate set of research stories, themselves interesting but not really advancing existing scholarship on AICs much beyond what we know already. Rather than helping overcome the tradition versus modernity debate, this volume perpetuates it, with different authors coming to contrasting conclusions. This seems largely due to the fact that there is no overarching or unifying approach that drives the argument and no consensus on how to operationalise the concept of modernity. Naturally enough, we therefore get very different answers to the question of whether and how AICs engage modernity. It also raises the question of how useful ‘modernity’ is as an analytical concept.