African Reformation

The shift in Christianity’s centre of gravity to the Global South is now at the point where denominational leaders in the West are starting to take notice. That is one reason to take note of Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria by University of Toronto academic Ruth Marshall. Another reason is her provocative critique of development theory as applied in the African context. Development experts continue to presume that “the more ‘modern’ Africans become, the more … religious worldviews will recede from the realm of politics.” Contemporary developments in countries such as Nigeria reveal how reductive this presumption can be.

In religious terms, Nigeria exhibits an almost even split between Christian and Islamic adherents, along with some remaining identification with traditional African beliefs. The spectacular growth of Nigeria’s Pentecostal and independent charismatic churches Marshall terms the Born Again movement. This so-called holiness revival was associated first with Deeper Life, a movement emphasizing personal holiness and an all-consuming approach to prayer and bible study, which grew out of a small interdenominational bible study in the sitting room of its founder, a university lecturer named W.F. Kumuyi. The other main revival conduit was the Redeemed Christian Church of God, inspired by similar tenets, although exhibiting a somewhat more worldly perspective.

Harmonizing with attitudes stretching back to colonial times, the holiness revival and its aftermath represent a thoroughgoing rejection of traditional African beliefs. “Echoing the missionaries’ struggle against idolatry and ‘paganism’,” Marshall notes, “pastors and converts adapted Pentecostal doctrine into a local reading that interpreted many of the causes of suffering in terms of the work of evil, occult powers, explicitly associated with the local past.”

Orthodox Christian denominations and Islam are sometimes loosely implicated in this nexus of evil, although the object of most Born Again suspicion is an African strand of Christianity called the Aladura movement, based on syncretistic practices, many borrowed from native religions. It is seen by the Born Again as hopelessly mired in idolatry and devil worship.

By the end of the 1980s, a large fraction of the Born Again had switched allegiance to a second wave of churches and fellowships that teach a so-called prosperity gospel, a reaction to the legalism and anti-social attitudes of the Deeper Life and associated groups marked by a partial shift in emphasis from personal holiness to worldly wealth and health. The new gospel emphasizes signs and wonders associated with contemporary miracles, and the immediacy of God’s kingdom on earth. In the words of one Nigerian pastor quoted by Marshall:

Generally speaking, those churches that teach that wealth and health are God’s plan tend to be attracting larger numbers, while those that teach holiness of life tend to be smaller, although both are growing. It is not hard to understand why, given the Nigerian context of widespread poverty and enormous challenges to survival. And historically, there is some precedent for saying that Christian faith can lead to a more prosperous life. The early Methodists found that the teaching of a morally ordered, disciplined life led to changes of habit and mind that enabled many of its converts to learn to lead lives of sobriety, which resulted in relative prosperity. Max Weber found a similar principle typically worked for the Protestants he studied.

My own observations of the Nigerian scene, based on five years of living and teaching there in the 1980s, was that poverty and lack of formal education shape the context in which all realities, including those we term “religious realities,” are perceived. In the early 1980s the oil boom of the previous decade collapsed, leaving many in the burgeoning middle class to find new ways to survive. The Born Again movement had by that time established itself on every post-secondary campus, and many of these campus offshoots had grown into churches, which in turn were evangelizing across the Christian parts of the country.

If anything, the economic crisis of the 1980s merely accentuated the attractions of Born Again tenets. These attractions were greatest for groups that had the least invested in the old order of the boom era. Marshall contrasts the secret sources of knowledge and power commonly associated with the “Big Men” of the 1970s and ’80s with the open sources of knowledge and power preached by the Born Again movement : “constant individual study of Scripture and a vast quantity of literature and recorded messages.” She contends that new understanding of the appropriate social role of women constituted a real and significant improvement in actual lived status, choice and decision-making power for a large subsection of Nigerian society, even if the doctrine of the subordination of women is still taught in theory.

Her experience is that in practice women in the Born Again movement face far more egalitarian conditions than before. Moreover, religious allegiances in Born Again circles typically trump loyalties to tribe, clan or parents, thereby reducing the tribalism that has plagued Nigerian political life. Along with the new free and open access to sources of knowledge and power, and increased power of the laity, these practices have become so widespread throughout Nigeria that they must have a significant impact on the future development of the country, and its democratizing potential. Marshall’s observations match my own during my stay in the 1980s and on a return visit in 2005.

The evolution of the Born Again movement is far from over. Marshall sketches the rapid growth since the 1990s of solo ministries associated with the second wave of churches subscribing to the prosperity gospel. These churches tend not to be attached to any denominational structures, but are understood as part of the larger Born Again community. Disadvantages of this well-documented trend include an even further deterioration of standards in pastoral training. Membership is much more fluid, while adherents may worship in a church on Sunday but feel much more connected to their more intimate fellowship group meetings on weekdays. For the older established denominations, all of these changes are disconcerting, to say the least.

My conversations with Anglican and other denominational church leaders in 2005 conveyed a sense of gloom about the future of organized denominations, as they have found it increasingly difficult to persuade young people interested in pastoral ministry to spend the time and money necessary for seminary or bible college, when all they need to do to start up a new church is have a vision. Meanwhile, the influence of Born Again doctrines continues to expand. Marshall claims that the movement’s basic tenets are now widely accepted across the broad denominational spectrum. Again this matches my observations in 2005. But it bears closer study for confirmation. If true its implications for the future of Nigerian, and global, Christianity are immense, thanks to the country’s major presence internationally, and not just in Born Again circles. The country’s Anglican primate, Peter Akinola, for example, oversees the largest national Anglican province in the world.

There are also important political implications of the entrenchment of Born Again beliefs. Marshall deals with the sordid aspects of the recent political past in Nigeria in sad and sometimes gruesome detail. Most notoriously in 1998 the private villa of former military dictator Sani Abacha was discovered, after his death, to contain shrines and a river where humans were ritually sacrificed to crocodiles. Marshall describes such depravity not to titillate, but because it forms the backdrop against which Born Again preachers launch their message. Through mass media, the general public has been treated to sordid details of episodes such as the Abacha affair, often based on real events if regularly sensationalized. So when preachers blamed occult and demonic influences for the corruption and injustice of political life in Nigeria, their words fell on ears ready to hear.

Marshall makes a convincing case that the ongoing and seemingly unresolvable corruption in government is a ready-made target for preachers, as the public has constantly complained of it since the 1970s. By the late 1990s the credibility of the Nigerian state had been strained almost beyond limit, with a majority of citizens no longer believing that any government would ever be able to root out corruption through legal means alone. Spiritual solutions have thus become more compelling, not least because there is a widespread consensus that individual responsibility must be exercised in a more civic-minded manner if the country is ever to achieve orderly governance. Thanks to her trademark stance, which combines an outsider’s keen analytical eye with an empathy for Born Again aims, Marshall gives as compelling an account of all of this as we can find anywhere in post-colonial literature.

When the prosperity gospel pastors themselves are accused of occult practices or corruption, it has often had the effect of emptying out churches. So far, however, Marshall’s research seems to suggest that the pace of Born Again expansion as a whole has not slackened because of those scandals, a result we might expect to see in the future if the trend becomes more widespread and prolonged. For the moment, the Nigerian church today demonstrates far greater maturity, self-reliance and self-confidence than it did 30 years ago. But the constant tension and potential of conflict with Islam is also more keenly felt.

Here, as on so many other topics, Marshall provides a fascinating perspective, although only in preliminary form, by noting to what extent Born Again Christianity and radical reformist Islam, while dissimilar in many respects, are doppelgangers in their shared appeal to religious and political aspirations, as well as the expression of these aspirations in a hybrid of local and global forms. The great irony is that growing friction between these two movements might end up subverting the broader societal aims of both. But this is a subject that should be further explored by Marshall in another book. In the meantime, she has done a significant intellectual service to all with an interest in African Christianity and its continuing evolution.