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15 Competing Universalisms: New Discourses of Emancipation in the African Context Rosalind I. J. Hackett At times the academic tributaries in one’s life can converge in revealing ways. My longstanding research on West African Pentecostalism, and more recently the evergrowing discourses of demonism that emanate from this religious orientation, have begun to flow into my newer focus on the intersections of religion and human rights. Even the most juridically oriented of scholars now recognise the salience of non-legal and non-legislative means of generating a human rights culture. The media , education and religion are primary means in this regard. There have been numerous studies of the major religious traditions and their capacity to generate or sustain the modern human rights idea (Hackett 2002b). But what of the potential of particular religious groups to militate – wittingly or unwittingly – against the new norms of constitutionalism and international human rights within democratising states? How might prevailing discourses of satanism be an anathema to the type of religious pluralism required by the new political dispensations of contemporary Africa ? In this paper I argue, based on findings and impressions that still need further substantiation, that both deliverance ministries and human rights organisations propose new forms of emancipation to Africa’s needy masses. These discourses of liberation from fear and want are often articulated in universalist terms. These new universalisms have gained momentum almost contemporaneously, although not necessarily uniformly, across the African continent. The Pentecostalists invoke the universal power of God to counteract the local and global manifestations of evil. The human rights advocates appeal to the power of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international norms to dispel injustice and abuses of human dignity in particular instances. Each group rationalises its strategies according to its analysis of human suffering and its vision of a better world. The respective proponents rarely engage each other’s worlds. The Pentecostalist, tending to shun things political 164 164 164 164 164 La rationalité, une ou plurielle? (while desiring as every other African citizen to inhabit a stable and prosperous nation-state), associates human rights discourse with secular politics. For the human rights advocate religion is generally more of a distraction, even a hindrance, than an asset. Former appeals to cultural heritage are now regarded with greater ambivalence as certain cultural practices are unmasked as exploitative, even abusive, of women and girls (see for example Quashigah 1998, 1999). At a recent conference on ‘Human Rights and Sustainable Democracy in Nigeria’ held at Harvard Law School, virtually none of the Nigerian speakers – whether academics or activists – addressed the role of religion in civil society or national governance. And this avoidance is all the more surprising in a country currently divided by the efforts of northern Muslims to implement full Shari`a. As a scholar of religion I am used to this reluctance or inability to analyse the religious dimension in national or international affairs (cf. Johnston and Sampson 1994; Rudolph 1997). Of course, 9/11 has been a wake-up call in that regard and the pundits have had to familiarise themselves with Islam and radical, apocalyptic expressions thereof. The reverberations of the terrorist attacks of 2001 have been felt in many parts of Africa with fears of Muslim expansion and dominance. In addition, the massacre of hundreds of members of the Ugandan Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God – a post-Catholic, apocalyptic movement – in March 2000 sent shock waves around Africa regarding the potential social dangers of minority religious groups (Hackett 2001).1 Only in South Africa has there been a serious public debate conjoining the fields of religion and human rights. In particular, the negotiation of air-time for religious groups has been a contested issue in the new South Africa (Hackett 2003b). The question of freedom of religion and belief has been intimately tied to the enjoyment of wider political, social and economic freedoms (Cochrane, Gruchy, and Martin 1999; Kilian 1993). This is perhaps not surprising given the religious underpinnings of apartheid rule. In an attempt to further ground some of the discussion of religion and human rights in particular contexts so that the dynamics of religious tolerance/intolerance can be better understood, I here examine the world construction and maintenance of a Nigerian deliverance ministry from a human rights perspective. While my arguments concerning the social impact of this particular type of religious orientation here derive from this one case study, I have elsewhere discussed more generally the growing circulation...

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