Charismatic Prophet Research Articles

“Die Empörten Weiber”: Gender, Authority and Protestant Modernism in Jeremiah 44

Because of Protestant modernism’s reconstrual of older Protestant views of inspiration around the Romantic notion of the male charismatic prophet, it unintentionally opened doors for the latent gender inequality of its misogynist cultural context when interpreting female religious activity in the prophets. Because of Protestant modernism’s inability to distinguish itself from its 19th-20th century social elite status, it can end up enabling gender stereotypes of its time and thus engage in unexamined gender bias. Vestiges at times remain in literature that assumes the non- or reduced agency of women in Israelite religion. This is a case study in one of the founders of historical-critical Jeremiah study, Sigmund Mowinckel, focusing not on Protestant modernism broadly but rather on Mowinckel’s clear expression of the modernist Protestant notion of the inspiration of sacred speech.

Continuing Revelation and Institutionalization: Joseph Smith, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charismatic Leadership in Antebellum America

Nineteenth-century North American religious history is filled with divinely inspired people who received and recorded new revelations. This article presents Joseph Smith Jr and Ralph Waldo Emerson as charismatic prophets who promoted the idea of continuing revelation. Drawing on Max Weber's concept of charismatic authority, it will contrast their forms of new sacred writing with one another to show how both had experienced encounters with the divine. The second part will then explore how different conceptualizations of revelation led to opposing concepts of religious authority, with consequences for the possibility of institution-building processes. While Smith would reify revelation in hierarchy, Emerson eventually promoted extreme spiritual individualization by rejecting the idea of an exclusive institution as the centre of revelatory authority.

Review of Daniel BECK, Evolution of the Early Qurʾān: From Anonymous Apocalypse to Charismatic Prophet

Review of Daniel BECK, Evolution of the Early Qurʾān: From Anonymous Apocalypse to Charismatic Prophet

Pentecostal intimacies: women and intimate citizenship in the ministry of repentance and holiness in Kenya

ABSTRACTThis article explores the intersections of gender, sexuality and citizenship in the context of one prominent neo-Pentecostal movement in Kenya, the Ministry of Repentance and Holiness (MRH) led by the charismatic Prophet David Owuor. Employing the concept of intimate citizenship, the article analyses, first, how MRH engages in a contestation of intimate citizenship in the contemporary Kenyan public sphere, especially in relation to women’s bodies. Second, it examines how MRH simultaneously configures, through a range of highly intimate beliefs, practices and techniques, an alternative form of intimate citizenship defined by moral purity and concerned with a political project of moral regeneration. Coining the notion of ‘Pentecostal intimacies’, the article provides insight into the reasons why so many people, especially women, are attracted to MRH, and hence it interrogates the liberal frame in which intimate citizenship is usually conceptualised.

A critical analysis of Pentecostalism and development in sub-Saharan Africa

Can religion in Africa be a genuine and permanent partner for sustainable development in an asymmetrical world and modern world system? Can indigenous African peoples create African futures within the aforesaid question and in the midst of spiritual coloniality? Despite apparent differences between the regions and cultural groups on this colossal continent, we can identify similar elements in religion. Religion has proven to be the highest social institution with an overwhelming influence on the lives of indigenous peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa, in contrast to other social institutions. This is evidenced by the contemporary realities that wherever you turn in this region’s communities, Churches overwhelm the landscape. Therefore, this is a testimony that belief in religion has grown stronger in the same region compared to the yesteryears. Of colossal interest in this article is the comparison between the classical Pentecostalism and the new Pentecostalism / Charismaticalism Mega-Churches. The former’s approach was and/or is more oriented in empowerment in its thrust – thus, they are conduits for sustainable development, whereas the latter’s thrust is more inclined in food distribution than in development programs and projects, as well as their theological, behavioural activities and characteristics or distinctive are the opposite of the former. The latter’s charismatic prophets and preachers who are sole owners of these Mega-Churches accumulate wealth more than their governments. Their spiritual advice is shrouded with ‘gospreneurship’ premised on carnal, greedy, treacherous and selfish inveiglement that seeks to continue fleecing and milking unsuspecting poor masses of congregants of their hard earned. There is mass enslavement here. Therefore, in relation to the aforesaid challenges posed by these new Pentecostal/Charismatic Mega-Churches in Africa the article’s contention is that there is a need for freedom or liberation from spiritual coloniality for sustainable development in order to create new humanism and genuine African futures.

How to become fundamentalist a hungarian charismatic prophet’s new religious movement in the carpathian basin (an anthropological discourse analysis)

This paper is an anthropological discourse analysis of a contemporary vernacular prophet's new religious movement, based on a seven years long anthropological fieldwork in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia. The author gives an insight to the process how someone can become a member of this Christian fundamentalist group (the "shines").

“Go Near and Join Thyself to This Chariot…”: African Pneumatic Movements and Transformational Discipleship

AbstractChristian religious innovation has been ongoing in Africa since the early 20th century. It started with indigenous charismatic prophets calling on people to turn over their old deities and submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The ministries of these itinerant prophets led to mass conversions culminating in the formation of what became known as the African independent/instituted/initiated churches (AICs). For the best part of the 20th century the AICs defined what counted as Christian in an African indigenous sense. The argument of this article is that the acronym AICs has, since the closing decades of the 20th century, acquired a much broader meaning to include the new Pentecostal/charismatic movements and churches that have burgeoned across the continent. Their trademarks include youthful urban‐centred congregations, media‐driven ministries, and the preaching of a gospel of prosperity. The contributions of both the classical AICs and the contemporary Pentecostals to African Christianity have been phenomenal. As Christian churches, however, we ought to evaluate them not just in terms of numerical or sociological impact, but most especially in terms of transformational discipleship. There is much to celebrate in transformational discipleship as far as the ministries of these African Reformation movements are concerned, but there as yet remain areas of concern that need to be dealt with for the optimization of Christian impact in Africa.

Christianity and Sports: Religious Functionaries and Charismatic Prophets in Ghana Soccer

This paper examines the way in which, within an African religious and spiritual context, athletes – and in particular footballers of Ghana – employ religious functionaries and religious means from a variety of traditions in an attempt to achieve sporting success. Specific examples and case studies illustrate and contextualise this search. The connections of this mode of searching for success with traditional African views of causality and with a Pentecostalist/charismatic prosperity ethic are explored, and its consequences are assessed.

Witchcraft Accusations and Christianity in Africa

January 2015 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, a contributing editor, is the Baeta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal/Charismatic Studies, Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Accra, Ghana. He has served as visiting scholar at Harvard University (2004), Luther Seminary in St. Paul (2007), and the Overseas Ministries Study Center (2012). —kwabena.asamoahgyadu@gmail.com I the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Deliver us from evil.” Such rescue from evil and its consequences is critical for anyone wishing to live by God’s promises in the Bible. For the churches in Africa, evil preeminently includes witchcraft. In Africa, successful Christian ministry (i.e., ministry with significant personal relevance and impact) is impossible unless one takes into account the supernatural evil implied by the word “witchcraft.” Grasping the power and influence of evil, including witchcraft, is critical, not only for realistic pastoral care, but also for understanding African responses to the Gospel throughout Christian mission history. For example, the spectacular growth of African Independent/Initiated Churches (AICs) in the early twentieth century is linked, in particular, to the inability of Western missions to come to terms with the reality of supernatural evil, especially witchcraft, and to articulate a Christian pastoral response to it. Historic Western mission Christianity has generally been perceived to be powerless when it comes to dealing with supernatural evil. Those who are spiritually afflicted and troubled have therefore turned to alternate resources outside the sphere of mission churches— traditional witchdoctors, medicine cults, charismatic prophets, or a combination of these—in search of diagnosis, explanations, and solutions to problems ranging from ill health to infertility to failing economic fortunes. A century after the emergence of AICs, witchcraft and belief in its destructive power remain resilient in African life and thought. Evil of supernatural provenance requires—and in AICs has called forth—powerful prayers of intervention. These churches deal with witchcraft in the context of activities of prophecy and spiritual warfare. Indeed, the single most important contribution made by indigenous churches toward the renewal of Christianity in Africa has been the integration of charismatic experiences, particularly prophecy, healing, and deliverance, into church life. The pneumatic churches, including here Africa’s independent Pentecostal and charismatic churches, as well as the classical AICs, for whom dealing with supernatural evil is a major pastoral focus, combine biblical notions with traditional ones in devising the hermeneutical interpretations, rituals, and sacred spaces to deal with supernatural evil’s perceived effects on people and society.

Pandemic Prophecy, or How to Have Faith in Reason

In scientific discourse, as well as in public debates, scientists are often presented as charismatic prophets with a message for the people. My aim, in this article, is to explore the place of prophecy in today’s politics of pandemic preparedness in the United States. How is the category of the unknown invoked in scientifically inspired prophetic proclamations? At stake in such an inquiry are the ways in which a prophetic existence is capacitated or incapacitated at the threshold of the known and the unknown. What does it take for the prophet’s voice to be recognized as reasonable and accepted as authoritative? Charismatic personality and discursive authorization play significant roles, to be sure. But the efficacy of pandemic prophecy must also be situated in relation to the temporal sensibilities and anxieties to which they respond. What is the architecture of these sensibilities and anxieties?

The Charismatic Dividual and the Sacred Self*

AbstractThe notion of ‘a break with the past’ foregrounds the individual as the new person reborn in Christian churches. Against that, across southern Africa Apostolic churches still face moral and metaphysical predicaments of the person being individual and, alternatively, dividual. The dividual is here taken to be someone who is composite or partible and permeated by others’ emotions and shared substances, including body dirt or sexual and other fluids. These personal predicaments are often experienced as dangerously unsettling—in need of careful spiritual regard, guidance and inspired remedy lest the person suffer ill-being, perhaps even occult harm. Dividuality opens the vulnerable person both to witchcraft attack (enemies may use organic bits for occult purposes, with malicious intent) and to pollution in contact with birth and death. In response, Apostolic church services constitute reformation. They reject indigenous tradition in forms of occult practice with charms and organic medicines—it is a sinful tradition, against God’s commandments and not Christian—but they do not deny the existence of witchcraft; nor do they start wholly afresh, even with the baptised. Apostolics find themselves earthly beings needing help and protection from God in heaven. As faithful Christians and hopeful of temporary relief, they confront the predicaments of alternative personhood within an ongoing war of good and evil. To get closer to God, if only vicariously, Apostolics turn to charismatic prophets as mediators through whom the Word of God can be heard, effectively and powerfully, and whose very bodies speak revealingly, in the gestures and postures of trance, to the needy condition of the faithful. Following a comparison with Catholic Charismatics in New England, this article addresses linguistic and phenomenological questions of Word, self and other with evidence from observed prophetic mediation by young men in séances of Eloyi, a transnational Apostolic church, and its offshoot church, Connolius, at Botswana’s capital. Included are issues of awesome narration, vicarious suffering, empathy with others, sacred cosmetics, and visionary realization.

Aliens Adored: Raël's UFO Religion (review)

Reviewed by: Aliens Adored: Raël's UFO Religion Robert A. Stebbins (bio) Susan J. Palmer , Aliens Adored: Raël's UFO Religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004, 227 pp. This fascinating, highly readable ethnography of the Raelian movement adds significantly to our relatively meager social scientific knowledge of new religious movements, especially the UFO variety. This book is masterfully crafted by Susan Palmer, a teacher in religious studies at Dawson College and an adjunct professor and lecturer at Concordia University. The study is primarily based on long-term participant observation (Palmer's first contact with the Raelians dates to 1987), it is supplemented with some data from face-to-face interviews. Most of this work is Palmer's, but she also had trained help from some of her students at Dawson. The book covers the origins and history of the movement from its inception in France and its subsequent efflorescence in Quebec, all orchestrated by Raël (born in France as Claude Vorilhon), a charismatic prophet whose special qualities were gained, in part, from direct contact in France in 1973 with an alien who had just arrived by flying saucer. This alien — an "Eloha" (singular of the Hebrew elohim) — reveals to Vorilhon the latter's true identity as Raël, the last prophet sent by a race of superior scientists from a planet in another galaxy to convey a message to humankind. A popular book (1974) penned by the prophet follows, wherein he explains his entrusted mission to save the human race from nuclear disaster. A second alien contact occurred early in 1976. Raël has worked tirelessly since 1973 to spread the message he says he is obligated to disseminate on orders from the Elohim. This has led him to establish missions for the movement in over one hundred countries, the Quebec mission being one of the most dynamic and the focus of much of this book. In fact Quebec, the first missionary outpost (founded in 1976), has for some time, been the movement's headquarters. Here is where campaigns are launched and new ideas tried out. Here one finds its most elaborate bureaucratic expression, as evident in the various ranks of guides and animators and the Council of the Wise, which deals with errant members and controls heretics. Raël occupies the top of the organizational pyramid, the "Guide of Guides." Culturally, there are rituals centered on, among other areas, initiation and meditation. Ethical considerations abound as well; they relate to Raelian values and include respect for cultural differences, search for world peace, and promotion of nonviolence. And there are battles to be fought. One of them is against [End Page 391] the anticult propaganda emanating from the francophone countries in which Raelian presence has been strong. Another is the movement's reputation for being sexually libertine, for which there is some justifiable evidence. A third is Raël's unsavory reputation in France (which forced him to leave that country for Quebec), mainly the result, says Palmer, of "ambush journalism perpetrated by a television host, Christophe Deschavanne" (71). The latter's show saddled Raël in the eyes of French viewers with the reputation of depraved cultist, who breaks up families, leads single mothers into nymphomania, and endorses pedophilia. But by far the most internationally controversial aspect of the Raelian movement has been its position on and activity with reference to the question of human cloning. For Raël such cloning is a central part of the group's theology, put into practice in 1997 through an affiliated company called "Clonaid." Its goal and that of the movement is "to help humanity attain immortality" (178). The cloning program gives the movement both a scientific foundation and a humanitarian objective. More recently claims to have actually cloned a human being flooded the world press, though no convincing proof of such was ever found. This study is, as mentioned at the outset, an ethnography. As such it does not lay down grounded theory of, say, UFO cults or, more broadly, new religious movements. Palmer could have done this, but obviously chose not to, perhaps in belief that a detailed ethnography of such a group is...

The Origins of Charisma as Process: A Case Study of Hildegard of Bingen

A case study of the twelfth‐century visionary Hildegard of Bingen is presented to examine the process through which a charismatic relationship is constructed in interaction between an individual and significant others and more distant followers. Hildegard's identity as a charismatic prophet developed over a number of years through a process of interaction with various ecclesiastical authorities; alterations occurred in both the prophet's self‐identity and the way others viewed her, leading finally to her authorization as a prophet and visionary. The cultural context provided plausibility structures, relevant symbols, and limitations that influenced the form of Hildegard's charismatic status. This status led to unprecedented achievements for a woman of her time, but her efforts mainly supported and strengthened the institutional tradition in which she served.

Revolution and the Millennium: China, Mexico, and Iran (review)

Reviewed by: Revolution and the Millennium: China, Mexico, and Iran Ranbir Vohra (bio) James F. Rinehart. Revolution and the Millennium: China, Mexico, and Iran. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1997. 194 pp. Hardcover $59.95, ISBN 0-275-95931-7. In his study of the relationship between millenarian movements and modern revolutions, James F. Rinehart contends that though the two activities are "distinctly different social phenomena" (p. 1), they both share some common characteristics: they emerge when society and polity are in a state of disequilibrium; both are based on the conviction that the old order has to be destroyed; and both "possess an unshakable belief in the inevitability of their actions" (p. 2) that promises to transform society and inaugurate an ideal era of social justice and harmony. Indeed, "Millenarian beliefs, . . . in varying degrees and forms, are present in all true revolutionary upheavals" (p. 3). This fact has not been fully understood, and, as a consequence, "little scholarship has been devoted" to the subject of revolutionary millenarianism (ibid.). Rinehart seeks to fill this "void" by presenting, in the work under review, a comparative analysis of the Chinese (1911, 1927-1928, and 1945-1949), Mexican (1910), and Iranian (1905 and 1978-1979) revolutions. However, the author informs us that his study " will not attempt to advance a general theory of millenarian revolution" (p. 6). The book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter, "Apocalyptic Prophesy to Millenarian Revolution," discusses the development of revolutionary millenarianism in the context of Western history. The author sees the first manifestation of the "dominant characteristics of the revolutionary millenarian paradigm" (p. 19) in the biblical account of Daniel's dream, which prophesies that after the elimination of foreign occupation—beginning with the Babylonians and ending with the Greeks—Israel, personified in the dream as the "Son of Man," would emerge "as an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (ibid.). According to the endnote this quotation is from "Daniel 8: 13-14." Rinehart's use of citations is sometimes exasperating, and this quote is a case in point. In the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible, Daniel 8: 13-14 reads as follows: 13 Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? 14 And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. If Rinehart did not use the Authorized Version he should have given a more detailed endnote. Putting aside the issue of citations for the moment (I will come [End Page 205] back to them later), the Daniel prophesy is viewed by Rinehart to be "political" millenarianism, a movement of devout, lower-class Jews directed against foreign domination and the Jewish elite, who were seen as working with the aggressors to corrupt Jewish religion and culture. In contrast to the Jewish millenarianism, later millenarian movements in medieval Europe are seen as "religious" in nature. The main support for these movements came from the lower classes, such as the peasantry, who had suffered the most from natural disaster or from some form of economic dislocation. The movements were often led by "charismatic prophets" who were dissatisfied with "an increasingly corrupt and unresponsive church" (p. 19). From the late twelfth century, after abbot Joachim had enunciated his theory of the three stages of history and prophesied that the last stage would bring the millennium, millenarianism began to spread more widely in Europe. In the eighteenth century, after it became associated with "the powerful Enlightenment idea of progress" (p. 23), millenarianism became "secularized," and this, ultimately, generated the belief that the Golden Age (Utopia), could be achieved through science, reason, and the human will. And, although Marx categorically rejected religion as the "opiate of the people," his writings "portrayed the arrival of the communist millennium as the advent of true human freedom," and, "not surprisingly, it is the millenarian element of Marxist thought that modern revolutionaries have tended to emphasize" (p. 28). Rinehart...

N.F.S. Grundtvig as Charismatic Prophet: an analysis of his life and work in the light of revitalization‐movement theory

An analysis of Grundtvig's personal development is presented, particularly as reflected in events between 1825 and 1832. These events and their consequences are seen primarily through the lens of an anthropological theory of social movements based on Anthony F.C. Wallace's concepts of cultural revitalization and ‘mazeway resynthesis’, the permanent alteration in personality that is undergone by the charismatic leader or prophet of a revitalization movement. Finally, an anthropological perspective is developed on the Danish folkelige social movements of the nineteenth century using Wallace's concept of the ‘revitalization movement’.

Prelude to African Christian Independency: the Afro-American Factor in African Christianity

A remarkable phenomenon in African Christianity occurred between about 1912 and 1930 when, mostly out of the ferment of indigenous reaction to Western Christian missions, local “prophets” emerged and founded African Independent Churches. “Independency” is the term employed to characterize this phenomenon which came to embrace both the charismatic prophet figures and the separatist churches they or their followers created. Over six thousand such movements were identified throughout Africa in 1968, with the situation still in considerable flux. By the end of the twentieth century it is estimated that some 350 million Africans will have converted to one form or another of the various types of Christian practice now active on the continent.