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Bird’s-Eye View of Contemporary Christianity in Africa

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Opoku Onyinah

I first met Professor J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu when I was studying at the Regent Theological College at Nantwich, in the UK, and our meeting was providential and fortuitous. The Director of Studies at Regent had recommended that I pursue a Doctor of Philosophy degree in theology, but he preferred that my supervisor be a Pentecostal theologian. During this time, our school hosted a Pentecostal conference, and a student from the University of Birmingham attended. This student gave me a greeting and a telephone number from Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, who was then a PhD student at Birmingham. I contacted Kwabena, who introduced me to Professor Allan Anderson, one of the premier scholars of Pentecostalism, and he graciously agreed to be my PhD supervisor. This was in perfect accord with what my director of studies had recommended. Soon, my family moved to Birmingham, and we stayed at Griffin Close, next door to Asamoah-Gyadu and his family, and a great friendship developed. We shared things together and often joined in prayer. He told me that when he finished his course, he wanted to return to Ghana and equip people in Christian education.

Like a prophet, Professor Anderson (who was Asamoah-Gyadu’s internal examiner) told me that Kwabena had the potential to become a great scholar. Indeed, that is what has happened. Asamoah-Gyadu is a world-renowned African Christian educationist.22 His writings and teachings have proven to be timely and relevant for African Christians now that the Western missionary enterprise in Africa has significantly declined, and the Christian faith is in African hands. The missionary effort resulted in the spread of Western Christianity across sub-Saharan Africa. Missionaries sought to evangelize the continent and to keep the faith—and its followers—pure, with no syncretism. To achieve this, missionaries often removed believers from their homes and placed them in so-called “Salem” environments. But those days of partitioning African Christians from Africa are long gone. In the latter part of the twentieth century, Christian churches in Africa transitioned to be led by African leaders.

This chapter looks at what African Christians consider to be the vital, essential parts of the faith. In short, they seek a direct, victorious, supernatural encounter with God, who transforms all aspects of their lives. Under African leadership, this reformed Christian experience, dubbed as the “Pentecostalization” of Christianity, evolved through African ingenuity in the transformation of Evangelical Pentecostal Christianity, which had been tied to American Pentecostal/Charismatic spirituality. Professor Asamoah-Gyadu has helped guide this shift. His writings and teachings are evidence of what David Barrett predicted in 1970, that “African Christians might well tip the balance and transform Christianity permanently into a non-western religion.”23 This is not just happening on African soil. African Christians who have traveled abroad have transported their Christian experience to the diaspora, where many of them worship the Lord in the same manner in which they worship Him in Africa. In this chapter, I will also take note of that very significant movement.

I shall begin by giving a historical overview of Christianity in Africa. The emergence of the Pentecostal movement and its impact on the mainline churches follows. Then I will end with the contemporary Christianity in Africa and its worldwide influence.

Early Christian Activities and Nineteenth-Century Missionary Activities

Christianity entered Africa as early as the New Testament times as we see Philip ministered to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26–40. We assume that the eunuch carried the Gospel back to Africa. Quite quickly, North Africa became the center of Christian activities and this lasted from the second through the fifth centuries. Africa produced notable Christian leaders such as Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, Origen of Alexandria, Athanasius, and Augustine of Hippo. The African faith was strong. During times of Imperial Roman persecution, many chose death rather than recant their faith. However, from the sixth century, the faith waned, and the church in North Africa was divided through doctrinal issues and internal struggles. The desire for ecclesiastical and political power replaced the evangelistic zeal. These factors facilitated the spread of the new Islamic religion across North Africa from the seventh century onward.

Though Christianity survived for hundreds of years, ultimately, only the Coptic Church in Egypt was left standing (though we also affirm the tenacity of the Church in Ethiopia). Currently, the Coptic Orthodox Church represents 10 to 15 percent of Egypt’s population.24 This crippling of the Church in North Africa denied Christianity to the rest of Africa until later missionary enterprising activities. Christianity was introduced to sub-Saharan Africa in the fifteenth century. The Portuguese commercial voyages maintained some Roman Catholic priests to minister among their settlements. In Southern Africa, this began in 1458, while in West Africa this began in 1471. During this period, attempts were made to present the Christian faith to the Africans, but not much was accomplished. As of the beginning of the nineteenth century, only a few converts, some ruins of churches, sculptures, crucifixes, and archival records could be identified.25

In the eighteenth century the Moravian Church of Denmark or the United Brethren and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel also made various attempts to plant the Christian faith, but very little success was recorded.26 Christianity was, however, steadily established in the nineteenth century across Africa through the missionary activities of societies such as the Basel Mission, the Bremen Mission, Church Missionary Society (CMS) of the Anglican Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Society, and the Catholic Mission.27 In this paper, churches which are associated with these mission societies are referred to as “mainline churches.” The missionaries came with zeal. However, some of them had been impacted by the Enlightenment and were sympathetic to rationalism, critical biblical interpretation, and liberal theology.28 One hallmark of liberal theology is that it denies the belief in the supernatural, especially the belief in the devil, witches, and demons.

At the same time, other missionaries influenced by pietism still upheld the traditional “diabology” and the coexistence of God and the devil. Whereas both views—liberalism and pietism—had, until then, peacefully coexisted, from the second decade of the nineteenth century onward, the Protestant (and partly Catholic) Awakening heavily attacked rational and liberal theology in particular and secularization in general. As McLoughlin has shown, the aim of the Protestant Awakening was to restore and maintain the “old-time religion and traditional way of life.”29

The “old-time religion” was based upon the traditional interpretation of the Scriptures that the church had practiced from its inception through medieval times. This resulted in the denunciation of idol worship, the demonization of the Gentile gods, and the need to exorcize those who worshiped them. “To restore old time religion” inevitably meant that the Protestant Awakening sought to restore belief in the reality of the devil, life after death, the reality of heaven and hell, and the need to evangelize the “heathen.”30 Klaus Fiedler rightly points out that prominent among new initiatives and organizations, which each revival brings, are evangelistic efforts, social activities and foreign missions.31

The nineteenth-century missionary awareness, therefore, was the product of the Protestant Awakening. But slumber can still attack those who are wide awake. Harvey Cox brought to light Ralph Waldo Emerson’s warning to an audience at Harvard Divinity School in 1838, “The danger of a steady diet of other people’s religion is that it can dry up one’s own resource.”32 Keith Thomas argues that the “disenchantment of the world” during the Enlightenment33 did not extinguish traditional Christian belief in the devil and witchcraft; however, it still had a great impact on Protestant thinking. It was with this type of thinking—traditional Christian beliefs in the devil, weakened by the critical scholarship during the Enlightenment—with which missionaries began their ministries in Africa. This is reflected in David Livingstone’s oft-cited motivation, “I go back to Africa to make an open path for commerce and Christianity.”34

To be sure, missionary Christianity contributed immensely to the advancement of African society. The major contributions included the introduction of Western medical systems, the establishment of schools, and the abolition of slavery. Additionally, the missionaries promoted translation, including the development of vernacular alphabets and the production of grammars and dictionaries. However, as an effort to evangelize and civilize the indigenous people, the missionaries taught that the belief in the African spirit-forces—including witches, the deities or gods, and elves or dwarfs—was superstitious. Yet, at the same time, they also promoted the devil and demons as the power behind these spirit-forces. By the introduction of a personalized devil and identifying the gods with demons, the missionaries unwittingly strengthened the belief in them and the fear of them. However, the missionaries did not adequately answer this fear. For the Africans, these forces were real and life-threatening, but the missionary teaching left them stranded. In the light of this inadequate theology, some Africans started their independent churches.

African-Initiated Churches

The first counter-response to missionary Christianity in Africa was that of a black nationalist group, labeled, “Ethiopians,” who wove a network of cultural protest against white domination in power and culture over the church.35 A few of the elite broke off to form African churches that resembled the mission churches. A second group, often called prophets, was poor in resources and in education, but also challenged the authority of the missionaries through the demonstration of healing with a blend of Christianity and African traditional religious practices. These prophets were not commissioned by missionaries, yet their mission activities helped to spread the Christian message in Africa. Prominent among them were William Wade Harris, Joseph Babalola, and Garrick Braide in West Africa; Isaiah Shembe in South Africa; and Simon Kimbangu in Zaire.36 The battle to find a place for such prophets within the mainline churches was a problem until the 1920s and 1930s, when another trend emerged: these prophets broke away from the mainline churches and established their own independent churches. Asamoah-Gyadu’s doctoral research, following his professor C. G. Baëta, centers around these churches. He is very sympathetic to them, and, like Allan Anderson, he describes them as “Indigenous Pentecostal-type churches.”37 Accordingly, he points out that “they were the first group of mass Christian religious movement to transform the religious landscape in Africa.”38

In their churches, worship is a blend of the Bible and all the colors of the African traditional spectrum. Their activities, growth, and creativity have engaged the attention of scholars as they have attempted to identify African contributions to world Christianity.39 Despite the fact that these African-initiated Churches have attracted many followers, the lack of theological understanding and little pastoral accountability have drawn some into unethical practices, such as exploitation and immorality. This has caused a decline in their patronage and paved the way for the popularity of the classical Pentecostal Churches.”40

Classical Pentecostal Churches

The origin and growth of Pentecostalism in Africa is a complex story. Asamoah-Gyadu observes that “classical Pentecostal denominations of both Western missionaries and indigenous kinds started in sub-Saharan Africa from the same time.”41 Some of the classical Pentecostal churches were originally initiated and established under the auspices of foreign Pentecostal missions. But in other churches, Africans initiated the process. They had read some gospel tracts that shared the Pentecostal practices, and they had experienced some of the phenomena. In consequence, they invited foreign Pentecostal missions to come to take control of their groups. Those churches that came to Africa included the Apostolic Faith Mission, the Assemblies of God, the Apostolic Church, and the Foursquare Gospel Church. Soon, especially, in West Africa, churches emerged as independent, indigenous, classical Pentecostal churches. The notable ones include the Christ Apostolic of Nigeria, the Gospel Faith Mission of Nigeria, and the Church of Pentecost of Ghana. Some of these churches not only have branches in neighboring West African countries but across the globe.42

South Africa became an important influence in the spread of Pentecostalism in Central Africa, especially with regard to the Anglophone countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi. Most of the classical Pentecostals who evangelized Central and Eastern Africa were from Pentecostal denominations in North America and Europe. The prominent ones include the Apostolic Faith Mission and Full Gospel Church. Similarly, the independent Pentecostal denominations from Europe and North America also expanded the Pentecostal faith in East Africa. Some well-known ones among them were the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, the Elim Pentecostal Church from the UK, the New Testament Church from the US, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church from the US.

Pentecostal Beliefs and Practices

Pentecostal beliefs and practices are very appealing to Africans, and these beliefs and practices resounded across the entire Christian spectrum in Africa. Thus, yes, it is a Pentecostalization of the faith, but it is also an Africanization because it has been shaped by Africans and it reveals what elements of the faith they most clearly embrace: a God who engages and lifts His people supernaturally and victoriously.

Pentecostalism presents the Bible in a way that speaks directly to the African worldview in both confirmation and condemnation. On the one hand, the gods, demons, sorcery, and witchcraft are taught as real and powerful. They can destroy people’s lives and destinies. Yet, on the other hand, God is taught as almighty, and His power supersedes those of the devil and the gods. Those who worshipped the gods, practiced traditional religion, got involved in witchcraft and sorcery are invited to denounce them and come to Jesus. The power of God can be given to anybody who believes and accepts His Son Jesus. To receive Him is to be born again. The fullness of His power is received through the baptism of the Holy Spirit with emphasis on speaking in tongues. This is considered a powerful weapon for evangelism. Healing and exorcism are to accompany those who are baptized in the Spirit in their evangelistic efforts.43

With these teachings about the power and presence of God, the early Pentecostals were addressing the basic problems of Africans. These problems had also been presented to the missionaries, but the missionaries had failed to respond adequately. Because it connected with the people, Pentecostalism swept over the continent by winning many converts and drawing members from the mainline churches. Such members from the mainline churches were asked to receive Jesus again and be re-baptized by immersion.44

Contribution of Para-Church Organizations to Pentecostalization

In the 1980s, the parade of members from the mainline churches to the Pentecostal churches was boosted by those who had experienced new life in various parachurch organizations in Africa, especially those in tertiary institutions. The Fellowship of Christian Union (FOCUS) in Kenya facilitated the expansion of the Pentecostal renewal in the neighboring countries. In Ghana, the members of the Scripture Union (SU) and University Christian Union who had Pentecostal backgrounds spread the experience among their colleagues. Some Nigerians who did their language study in the francophone countries in West Africa (Togo, Benin, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire) also spread the experience.45

The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship (FGBMF), which was created in the US in 1951, spread throughout the continent in the 1980s. It contributed to the Pentecostal experience immensely through its breakfast meetings. The female counterpart of the FGBMF was the Women’s Aglow. These groups invited businessmen and women to their meetings. Through the sharing of testimonies, many people were won to Christ and were encouraged to seek for the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.46 Many people who joined the student movements and the business fellowships crossed over from the mainline churches to join the Pentecostal churches.

Response of Mainline Churches

As they lost members to the Pentecostal churches, the mainline churches soon raised an alarm. In Ghana, some of them established committees to investigate and make recommendations as to why people were leaving their fold to join the African-initiated Churches.47 Eventually, because of the spreading of the Pentecostal faith, and, in a way, as a response to the finding of such committees, renewal groups were organized within the mainline churches. Currently, the prayer meetings of such renewal groups follow the practices of their Pentecostal counterparts. Often it is difficult to notice a difference between a Pentecostal/Charismatic church and a renewal movement in a mainline church. Sometimes, after a mainline church has finished its liturgy, it will shift to the informal Pentecostal way of worship, which includes singing choruses, drumming, clapping hands, dancing, and simultaneous congregational prayer. This is the type of Christianity in Africa now. This is what some pastors and theologians see as the “Pentecostalization” of Christianity in Africa.48 It has changed the theology and form of Christianity in Africa, and it reveals a supernatural, active, victorious God.

Pentecostal Spirituality and the Resultant Proliferation of Churches

Pentecostalism depends greatly on charisma with no requisite of theological training. Based on 1 Peter 2:9–10, the priesthood of all believers is promoted. A major feature of Pentecostal spirituality is spontaneity, demonstrated in orality. Worship does not depend upon a scripted, written-and-taught liturgy. Therefore, preaching does not demand hermeneutical accuracy. The hermeneutics of Pentecostals is action based, with experience and Scripture handled in partnership. The Holy Spirit is believed to uphold the truth in life experience. Thus, priority is placed on experience, emotions, relations, and the freedom to interpret and appropriate the multiple meanings of biblical texts.

The preference is on narrative—or story—texts. Pastors read them eschatologically as the intrusion of the kingdom of God into the present and as empowerment for living out its promises. The sermon is presented in a transformative way so that the hearers must respond. Pentecostal Christians come to churches with their Bibles, iPads (or notebooks), smartphones, and pens to take notes. Many of the churches record the messages and sell CDs, DVDs, books, and magazines for congregational consumption. In addition to such traditional media, Pentecostals are active with new media (websites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) as tools for ministry. Considering how some Pentecostals and Charismatics touch the TV and the radio during preaching and prayer, Asamoah-Gyadu rightly asserts, “For contemporary Pentecostals, mass resources tend to be seen . . . as possessing a certain sacramental value.”49

One of the main challenges that accompanies Pentecostal spirituality is its liberty. A Nigerian Church historian, Ogbu Kalu, rightly observes, “Leadership thus becomes dependent upon proved worth and charisma and not upon inherent right. As soon as some detect a fault, a weakening of charisma or autocratic exercise of power, a split occurs.”50 With this freedom, new churches spring up daily. Many churches have arisen from renewal groups within the mainline churches and even the classical Pentecostal churches. There are many new Charismatic churches on the continent—and more are added regularly. Six or more churches can worship in one school block, each one in a different classroom. In many African cities, churches are found at every corner and in every vacant space. Their names are all different, and they tell of the excitement inside.

African Initiatives Enriched by Western Pentecostal Preachers

The ministries of some Western Pentecostal preachers fueled the efforts of Africans to change the face of Christianity on the continent. This began in the 1970s when African ministers eagerly read the books and listened to the cassettes of the Western Pentecostal preachers in order to enhance their ministries. In addition, many of them—such as T. L. Osborn, Reinhard Bonnke (Germany), and Morris Cerullo—were invited to hold crusades on the continent.

In Africa, however, was the special role of Archbishop Benson Andrew Idahosa (1938–1998) of Nigeria, who was perhaps the most significant person in the history of Nigerian and Ghanaian Pentecostalism. (He also influenced other African countries.) Idahosa was greatly influenced by many North American Pentecostal preachers. He studied at the Christ for All Nations in the US, which was started by Gordon Lindsay. Afterward, he established the Church of God Mission International and a Bible School in Benin City, Nigeria, where he offered scholarships for people to study. Idahosa received many invitations from Pentecostals and Charismatics across the globe to speak and conduct healing services at their programs. Idahosa’s message was centered on faith and healing, and he was not labeled as a “Prosperity Gospel” preacher as such. However, his “flashy” lifestyle challenged ministers of the gospel to shed the poverty mentality and embrace prosperity as integral aspect of Christian living. He can rightly be labeled as a precursor to the Prosperity Gospel preaching in Africa.

Spiritual Warfare

Following this, in the early part of the 1980s, was the beginnings of the spiritual warfare movement and the associated books and cassettes (both video and audio) that increased people’s awareness of demons and how to exorcize them.51 In the latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s came an intensification of how to deal with these powers through deliverance, breaking generational curses, and exorcisms. Then, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the movement altered from demon possession to levels of “spiritual warfare.” Two levels were explained. Charles Kraft championed the “ground-level,” while Peter Wagner was concerned about “cosmic level,” which he called “strategic-level warfare.” Ground-level warfare is supposed to deal with evil spirits that inhabit people, while strategic-level warfare is supposed to deal with territorial spirits (Dan 10:13, 21), intuitional spirits, spirits assigned to supervise and promote special functions and vices, spirits assigned to spaces, as well as nonmaterial entities and ancestral spirits. Those in this camp tell us that strategic-level spirits are in charge of ground-level spirits and assign and supervise them as they carry out their various assignments.52

The spiritual warfare dimension resonated with the African concept of salvation. Salvation is considered transformation and empowerment. This means salvation must produce transformation in the lives of believers, such as the discontinuation of smoking, disco dancing, drinking, and fornication. Salvation must necessarily include prosperity, fruitfulness, healing of sickness, and deliverance from the demonic. Failure to experience these benefits as a Christian is interpreted as the presence of demons or ancestral curses in the person’s life and thereby calls for spiritual warfare.

Attempts to Oust All Evils in African Christianity

Spiritual warfare teachings led to a practice in African Christianity which I call “Witchdemonology.”53 Witchdemonology is the synthesis of the practices and beliefs of African witchcraft and Western Christian teachings of demonology and exorcism. These beliefs include the acceptance of the reality of witchcraft, demons and gods; the belief in territorial spirits and mapping them out; the belief in ancestral curses, and the identification of demonic realities and curses in both Christians and non-Christians. In order for people to be set free to prosper in life, special prayer sessions called “deliverance meetings” are held, either in groups or in private sessions.54

Witchdemonology opened the door for two types of prophetism. Dr. Emmanuel Anim, a Ghanaian Pentecostal theologian, identifies the first as the “Super-Charismatic Prophetic Movement.”55 These super-charismatic ministers speak to people about their future, reveal the causes of their problems, interpret dreams, reveal ways of dealing with difficult issues, and then pronounce blessings of prosperity and a bright future. Ministers in this category diagnose people’s problems through words of knowledge or prophecy. The ministry happens at normal church services, revivals, crusades, “all-night prayer services,” and through the media. This is not new; it is similar to divinatory-consultation, which I consider as the live wire of African Traditional Religion. The desires of many people are to prosper, enjoy good health, and be protected from evil forces.56 Ministering to people in this way serves as the charismatic substitute for the old shrine practices in African traditional religions.

The second category is the arena of “quasi-prophets.” While the super-charismatic ministers may be genuine Christians who embrace an unbiblical understanding of the spiritual gifts, the quasi-prophets are people whose identification with Christ is questionable. These are “prophets” who promote themselves through any means, including asking people to fake illnesses and claim to be healed after prayer is said for them.57 These so-called prophets are wreaking havoc on the continent.

In other words, what is happening on the continent of Africa is a mixture of Christian and non-Christian activities, all taking place in the name of Christ. Some researchers label everything as the “prosperity gospel,” but many of the practices do not fit neatly in that category. Still, Dr. Anim has succinctly argued that prosperity is an important part of the African worldview:

In African cosmology, the belief in, and pursuit of prosperity is paramount. Africans do not “honor” or accept suffering or poverty. It is a battle they have always sought to fight. The belief in the gods is, primarily, to ensure prosperity and well-being. The influence of the American type of prosperity teaching only served as a catalyst and also reinforced what was already prevailing in the matrix of primal worldview. Thus, local primal considerations offer important perspective in interpreting contemporary African Christianity.58

Against this backdrop, it can rightly be argued that the desire to worship in the biblical pattern, through the lens of primal spirituality, has resulted in the contemporary state of African Christian liturgy and activities, which has a strong emphasis on prosperity. Good health, fullness of life, fertility and prosperity were important aspects of those who were obedient to the Lord in the Old Testament, while wasting disease, premature death and dire poverty were the curses for those who disobeyed (e.g., Exod 15:26; 23:24; Deut 11:26–32; 28:15–68). Thus, wellbeing and prosperity have been important parts of both biblical and primal spirituality.

The right application of the prosperity teaching has enabled many churches in Africa to achieve what the early missionaries struggled to achieve: churches that are self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. On the other hand, the abuse that often accompanies the so-called Prosperity Gospel is alarming, and African Christian leaders must address this.

Africa Churches in the Diaspora

The 1980s and 1990s saw a great migration of Africans to the West. Initially, many of them contributed to the growth of Western churches. Yet they could not find their identity and enjoy the services. These types of divisions have a long history. Roswith Gerloff, a German scholar, writing about the African-American slaves rightly said, “The religion of the slaves [Africans] and the religion of the slave master [Whites] were never identical, even when both referred to the same Bible.”59 Contemporary African immigrants faced the same challenge. Thus, in the attempt to find their identity, they began to establish their own churches in the West. By the close of the twentieth century, the African churches had proliferated in the whole of the West, conducting services as they do at home. Currently this has attracted the attention of many scholars. Commenting on the African-initiated churches that he studied, Bengt Sundkler, a Swedish-Tanzanian Church historian and missiologist, said, “In these churches one would be able to see what the African Christian, when left to himself, regarded as important and relevant in Christian faith and Christian church.”60 The issue that remains is whether this form of Pentecostalization of Christianity in Africa will continue to meet the needs of diasporan Africans and how it will relate faithfully to the Christian faith. Time will tell.

Conclusion

The chapter has shown that the Christian missionary enterprise that began in the nineteenth century in Africa, was from one perspective, enormously successful. Christianity flooded sub-Saharan Africa to the extent that it can be assumed that Africa is now Christianized. Nevertheless, the sort of Christianity that the missionary expected to remain in Africa has changed drastically. African Christianity has been Pentecostalized; that is, it is the sort of Christianity that Africans think will benefit them. This new Christian experience in Africa evolved through African ingenuity in the appropriation of the Evangelical Pentecostal Christianity, which was tied to Western, mostly American Pentecostal/Charismatic spirituality. This modern Christianity has replaced the missionary Christianity and that of the early African-initiated churches, yet it is still adorned with the colors of the initial missionary strand. How the Africans can effectively and attractively manage these various colors is the task of African theologians and missiologists.

22. See Asamoah-Gyadu, “Theological Education.”

23. Barrett quoted in Asamoah-Gyadu, “Growth and Trends,” 67.

24. CIA, “Africa: Egypt.” Note that in 1974 Operation World placed the number at 8 percent (Johnstone et al., Operation World, 233).

25. Denis, “Christianity in Southern Africa”; Agbeti, West Africa Church History, 3.

26. Falk, Growth of the Church in Africa, 118.

27. Olwa, “Christianity in Eastern Africa”; Hasting, Church in Africa.

28. Gerrish, Prince of the Church, 47.

29. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, 108.

30. For instance, Orr records that in 1860, in Edinburgh, the Carrubber’s Close Mission ejected an Atheist Club from their premises; they described the house of prostitutes as “a fortress of the Devil” (Orr, Second Great Awakening in Great Britain, 74).

31. Fiedler, Story of Faith Mission, 113.

32. Cox, Fire from Heaven, 14.

33. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 571–85, 640, 655.

34. Price, “Missionary Struggle with Complexity,” 101

35. Ogbu, “Third Response,” 3.

36. For discussion on the prophetic and how it has been reinvented into the contemporary prophetic practices in Africa, see Asamoah-Gyadu, “From Every Nation Under Heaven,” xxx.

37. Anderson, Bazalwane, 7; Asamoah-Gyadu, “Renewal within African Christianity,” 22.

38. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Introduction into the Typology of African Christianity,” 63.

39. Turner, Church of the Lord; Parrinder, Religion in an African City; Welbourn and Ogot, Place to Feel at Home.

40. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Renewal within African Christianity,” 133.

41. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Growth and Trends,” 70.

42. Onyinah, “African Christianity.”

43. Asamoah-Gyadu, “You Shall Receive Power,” 45–66.

44. Onyinah, “African Christianity,” 305–14.

45. Ojo, “Church in the African State.”

46. For reading on the Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship International, see Asamoah-Gyadu, Sighs and Signs of the Spirit.

47. Asamoah-Gyadu, African Charismatics, 63.

48. Anderson, African Reformation; Asamoah-Gyadu, “Growth and Trends.”

49. Asamoah-Gyadu, Sighs and Signs of the Spirit, 64

50. Kalu, “Third Response,” 18.

51. Irvine, From Witchcraft to Christ; Brown, He Came to Set the Captive Free; Prepare for War; Prince, Blessings or Cursing; From Cursing to Blessing; They Shall Expel Demons; Basham, Can a Christian Have a Demon?

52. Kraft, Defeating the Dark Angels; Christianity with Power; Wagner, Warfare Prayer [1991]; Warfare Prayer [1992]; Engaging the Enemy; Confronting the Powers.

53. Onyinah, “Contemporary ‘Witch-Demonology.’”

54. Onyinah, Pentecostal Exorcism.

55. Anim, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” 122.

56. Quayesi-Amakye, “Prophetism in Ghana’s New Prophetic Movement”; Anim, “Prosperity Gospel and the Primal Imagination”; Hackett, “Charismatic/Pentecostal Appropriation.”

57. Some claim even frequently to raise the cripple, open the eyes of the blind and open the ears of the deaf, release the mouth of the dumb, and even raise the dead. Some in the attempt have duped the rich and poor, and as a result are placed in prison. Some of these are trending on social media.

58. Anim, “Prosperity Gospel and the Primal Imagination,” 30. See also Anim, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

59. Gerloff, “Holy Spirit and the African Diaspora,” 91.

60. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, 17.

African Pentecostalism and World Christianity

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