Power, Poverty and Prayer: The Challenges of Poverty and Pluralism in African Christianity 1960–1996 (review)

A criticism of much of the work on African theology written north of the Limpopo is that it has been too culture obsessed. It has focused more on the affronts of ethnocentric missionaries to African sensibilities than on more pressing material concerns. Another weakness is that African theologians have not drawn from history and political science but instead have worked within the idealized and essentialist models of the past derived from cultural nationalists. Ogbu Kalu’s engaging volume, which interacts with a range of literatures as well as with his own West African experience, is a useful antidote to such tendencies: “A mature church can engage no longer in missionary-bashing but rather in self-criticism. The history of Christianity in Africa is not what the missionaries did or did not do, but what Africans did with the gospel entrusted to their care” (247). And when it comes to self-criticism he observes: “the church in Africa, has for the most part, failed to produce an adequate theology and institutional force to oppose the approaching power of the state or deal with the problem of pauperisation” (xv). For solutions he looks not to the “pronouncements of church leaders and institutional organisations” but among “the huge body of believers and to popular forms of Christian beliefs and practices” (xv). In particular, he believes that connection should be made with the sizeable and vital Pentecostal and charismatic movement which has swept the continent since the 1970s.

Kalu sees within Pentecostalism the capacity to mobilize women and youth, two marginal categories in African society. He also argues that the Pentecostal contribution to political culture is more productive than other scholars have acknowledged. Pentecostalism rebuilds the individual by creating new sources of empowerment and personal security, and it produces models of responsible leadership through biblical models founded on the biographies of figures such as Cyrus and Mordecai (ch. 5). The danger of Pentecostalism lies in its exclusivist tendencies, particularly where these come into contact with an equally totalizing Islam, as in Northern Nigeria. Kalu argues for a greater pluralism and the need for dialogue between these two vital strands of contemporary global religions. Their goal should be to join forces to restrain predatory African states led by overbearing “big-men” politicians (ch. 6). He proposes a new theology, attentive not just to gender and generation, but also to the environment. The ideological basis of this new theology should be drawn from primal African religion (ch. 3).

Kalu deploys a spectrum of literatures to make this argument. Historians of African Christianity will be familiar with much of his data, but he is particularly keen to emphasize African creativity in the Church’s response to society. This emphasis is a useful counter to the work of Paul Gifford, especially his African Christianity: Its Public Role (Indiana University Press, 1998). What is also valuable is Kalu’s use of examples from some of the less high-profile African states such as Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea. However, some of his arguments need sharpening. He is overly selective toward the precolonial African past which, in fact, offers examples of female oppression and degradation of the environment as easily as models of feminine liberation or environmental concern. And Pentecostals are usually more concerned with the erasure of tradition than with making connections with it. The most disappointing aspect of the book is its poor copyediting; distracting typos are frequent. However, this is not Kalu’s fault, and his book deserves to be read widely as a refreshing and constructive contribution to African theology by an influential African Christian thinker.