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3. Social Mobility and Politics in African Pentecostal Modernity
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THREE Social Mobility and Politics in African Pentecostal Modernity DAVID MAXWELL The coincidence of Africa’s born-again takeoff with the end of the Cold War and the dawn of the neoliberal era raises a host of questions about the movement ’s relation to social, economic, and political change. Peter Berger contends that Evangelicalism is “the most modern religious community in the contemporary world” because it is a movement constituted by choice: “The voluntary association is its natural social expression,engendered from within by its religious self-understanding.”1 Students of development grow increasingly interested in forms of Protestantism that can motivate large numbers of adherents to donate scarce resources to charity and church growth, and whose leaders inspire far greater levels of trust than politicians.2 As David Martin has recently observed, “Economists are also realists and may well be interested in people who refuse to be victims, organize for mutual assistance , and foster aspirations as a battalion of irregulars in the war on poverty .”3 Martin has also argued that Pentecostalism,Evangelicalism’s most vital strand, acts as a “school for democracy.” The results might be visible only in the longue durée, but by creating voluntary popular institutions, Pentecostal religion contributes to the formation of civil society and a broader culture of self-determination that provide the necessary ecology of democracy.4 My own research on African Pentecostalism confirms many of these tendencies.There are ethics,ascetic codes,and rituals of rupture that enhance social mobility, and there are practices that underpin a democratic political culture.However,contemporaryAfrican Pentecostalism is a broad river with currents flowing in different directions,creating contradictions that are continually being worked out. Pentecostal religion’s sectarian sources do create enclaves in which social relations can be reconstructed.5 However,the believer ’s consequent drive for respectability leads increasingly to a world-embracing culture. The populist voluntarist origins of the movement are in tension with a tendency toward hierarchy and authoritarianism in Pentecostal leadership. Given its protean quality, Pentecostalism is as much transformed 92 David Maxwell as socially transforming. As chapters in this volume by Bernice Martin and Tim and Rebecca Samuel Shah illustrate,patriarchy can reimpose itself upon egalitarian gender relations and Pentecostal communities can become riven by the politics of caste.Moreover,as Paul Freston has shown,successful bornagain leaders can lose touch with the egalitarian tendencies that initially animated their movements. In search of recognition, they get drawn into the clientalism and corporatism of modern African politics and practice nepotism and tribalism as they seek to pass on the fruits of their labors to their kin. Their leadership becomes characterized by a lack of accountability and transparency.6 Such corruption stymies free enterprise, removing ladders to social mobility from those who lack connections. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, this chapter explores the tensions inherent in Pentecostalism in order to offer an assessment of its significance in social, economic, and political realms. It will also describe modernity in an African Pentecostal setting. Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa (ZAOGA) and African Pentecostalism After a century of growth there is enormous variety within African Pentecostalism, reflecting its different traditions and the range of contexts in which it exists. The new South African movements such as Mosa Sono’s Grace Bible Church and Tshabi Mogale’s Divine Hope Bible Centre remain close in doctrine and organization to the classic Pentecostal missionary denominations from which their leaders emerged. In Ghana, Pentecostal leaders such as Lawrence Tetteh now place more emphasis on prosperity and success than upon personal moral reformation,and the born-again label appears to be little more than a token. At the other end of the Ghanaian spectrum, Mensa Otabil refutes much of the Faith/Prosperity Gospel and encourages his followers to take responsibility for their actions.7 The older Brazilian-derived Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, now active in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa, grows ever more bureaucratic and clerical in order to manage its enormous operation. In part it resembles the historic denominations,and yet it shares some ritual practices with Christian independency.8 A complication is whether one places the white-robe-wearing Aladura, Apostolic, and Zionist churches of Christian Independency, with their strong emphasis on exorcism and healing, within the Pentecostal category. Many of these movements certainly have Pentecostal missionary antecedents.9 Moreover,some have“Pentecostalized”though close proximity to Pentecostal media, Bible schools, and assemblies.10 In often-ignored rural [44.210.240.31] Project...