African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development

Sustainable Development in Pentecostal and Independent Churches

Philipp Öhlmann, Wilhelm Gräb, Marie-Luise Frost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000733426
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book investigates the substantial and growing contribution which African Independent and Pentecostal Churches are making to sustainable development in all its manifold forms. Moreover, this volume seeks to elucidate how these churches reshape the very notion of sustainable development and contribute to the decolonisation of development.

Fostering both overarching and comparative perspectives, the book includes chapters on West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso) and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe and South Africa). It aims to open up a subfield focused on African Initiated Christianity within the religion and development discourse, substantially broadening the scope of the existing literature. Written predominantly by scholars from the African continent, the chapters in this volume illuminate potentials and perspectives of African Initiated Christianity, combining theoretical contributions, essays by renowned church leaders, and case studies focusing on particular churches or regional contexts.

While the contributions in this book focus on the African continent, the notion of development underlying the concept of the volume is deliberately wide and multidimensional, covering economic, social, ecological, political, and cultural dimensions. Therefore, the book will be useful for the community of scholars interested in religion and development as well as researchers within African studies, anthropology, development studies, political science, religious studies, sociology of religion, and theology. It will also be a key resource for development policymakers and practitioners.

1 Introduction

African Initiated Christianity and
sustainable development

Philipp Öhlmann, Wilhelm Gräb, and
Marie-Luise Frost

Approaching the field: religion and development

The past 20 years have witnessed a ‘religious turn’ (Kaag and Saint-Lary 2011, 1) in international development theory, policy, and practice. A growing corpus of literature has begun to explore the manifold relationships and interactions of religion and development (Jones and Petersen 2011; Swart and Nell 2016) – in themselves two vast fields of research. Religion and development is of cross-disciplinary interest, with research spanning from religious studies and theology (e.g. Gifford 2015; Heuser 2013, 2015) to anthropology (e.g. Bornstein 2005; Freeman 2012b), sociology (e.g. Berger 2010), politics (e.g. Bompani 2010; Clarke and Jennings 2008), development studies (e.g. Deneulin and Bano 2009), and economics (e.g. Barro and McCleary 2003; Beck and Gundersen 2016; Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2003). A new interdisciplinary and dynamic research field on religion and development has emerged (Bompani 2019; Ter Haar 2011; Tomalin 2015).

At the same time, development policymakers and practitioners have recognised religion as a relevant factor (Tomalin 2015). Leading examples are the initiatives by the World Bank, the British Department for International Development, and, more recently, the initiative by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, inter alia leading to the foundation of the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (Belshaw, Calderisi, and Sugden 2001; BMZ 2016; Deneulin and Rakodi 2011; Ter Haar 2011). The recent interest in the relationship of development and religion is not limited to governmental and multilateral institutions, but extends to religious communities and institutions as illustrated by a volume published by the Lutheran World Federation in 2013 (Mtata 2013) and the special issue on religion and development of the Ecumenical Review published by the World Council of Churches in 2016.

However, the current religion and development discourse has largely been taking place within the secular frameworks of the western-dominated development discourses. Where religious communities come into view, the perspective is mainly functional: it asks whether religion is conducive to development or hinders it (e.g. Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger 2018). The focus of the attention is on the contribution of religious communities to secular development agendas (Deneulin and Bano 2009; Jones and Petersen 2011). As we have pointed out elsewhere

[t]he development agenda and imagination, as framed in (inter-) governmental strategies such as the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development … remains a secular one. Nowhere in the United Nations resolution on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is religion or are religious communities mentioned explicitly.

(Öhlmann et al. 2018, 4)

This secular framework of the development discourse is not only challenged by the decolonial and postcolonial debate (e.g. Mawere 2014; Bowers-Du Toit, Chapter 21, this volume), but also by the perspective of religious actors themselves. For many religious communities ‘development is part of religion’, i.e. professional and academic experts’ notions of development represent only one dimension in a more comprehensive human and social transformation (Öhlmann, Frost, and Gräb 2016, 10) that is informed by and interrelated with religious, situated and indigenous knowledge. In this it is vital to also recognise that ‘[f]or most people in the developing world, religion is part of a vision of the “good life” … [R]eligion is part of the social fabric, integrated with other dimensions of life’ (Ter Haar 2011, 5–6). Van Wensveen (2011) introduced a twofold typology of the contributions of religious communities to sustainable development, differentiating between an ‘additive pattern’ and an ‘integral pattern’. Development concepts and practices that follow secular western development policies can be characterised as making an ‘instrumental addition of religion to the pre-set, mechanistic sustainable development production process’ (van Wensveen 2011, 85). In difference to this ‘additive pattern’, she identifies an opposite model, in which religion does not function as an instrument for secular development goals, but in which religious communities set the agenda bringing to the table their own religious-inspired concepts and practices of sustainable development. ‘[D]evelopment as part of religion’ (Öhlmann, Frost, and Gräb 2016, 10) encapsulates precisely this ‘integral pattern’ brought forward by van Wensveen (2011).

While in the functional approach religious communities are viewed as actors of ‘mainstream development policies and programmes’ (van Wensveen 2011, 82), their own aims go beyond the specific concepts of sustainable development outlined e.g. in the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (United Nations 2015). This can imply a fundamental critique of dominant concepts of (sustainable) development. They (re)shape the very notions of development based on their religious worldviews and their situated knowledge due to the embeddedness in local contexts and cultures (see Bowers-Du Toit, Chapter 21, this volume). This is what we refer to as a process of decolonisation of development in the title of this volume.

Hence, one desideratum in the research field is to juxtapose the notions of development dominant in (western and international) development policy with those of religious communities and to illuminate their respective ideological presuppositions. Alternative notions of development informed by contextual religious and cultural worldviews, such as holistic development (Owuso-Ansah and Adjei-Acquah, Chapter 14, this volume), integral development (Cochrane 2011), transformation or transformational development (Dah, Chapter 17, this volume; Masondo 2013; Myers 2011); human flourishing (Asamoah-Gyadu, Chapter 2, this volume; Marais 2015 ), Ubuntu (Bowers-Du Toit, Chapter 21, this volume; Gichimu, Chapter 5, this volume; Metz 2011; Padwick and Lubaale 2011); good life (Acosta 2016, Taru, Chapter 19, this volume); and prosperity (Asamoah- Gyadu, Chapter 2, this volume; Ajibade, Chapter 9, this volume; Gukurume, Chapter 18, this volume; Taru, Chapter 19, this volume; Togarasei 2016), need to be taken into account and their relationship to dominant secular notions of development and modernity needs to be investigated.

This volume situates itself within the dynamic research field of religion and development by elucidating the role of African Initiated Christianity for sustainable development. While mission-initiated Christianity in Africa, in the shape of the Catholic and historic Protestant Churches of European and North American provenience, have long been recognised as development actors both in the academic literature and in the international development policy discourse (see, e.g. Belshaw, Calderisi, and Sugden 2001; BMZ 2016; Gifford 2015; Ilo 2014), African Initiated Christianity in the shape of African Independent and Pentecostal Churches lack such recognition. Thus far, there are only a limited number of studies investigating African Independent and Pentecostal Churches’ contribution to development. Notable works in this area include, for example, the comprehensive overview by Turner (1980), the contributions by Oosthuizen and his collaborators (Cross, Oosthuizen, and Clark 1993; Oosthuizen 1997, 2002) or more recent contributions by Garner (2004), Bompani (2008, 2010), Freeman (2012a), and Öhlmann, Frost, and Gräb (2016). These studies indicate that there is a substantial and growing dynamic in the contribution made by African Independent and Pentecostal Churches to sustainable development in its manifold forms. Acknowledging the role of these religious movements as actors of sustainable development requires acknowledging their understanding of sustainable development as well as the wider notions and ideas that undergird and guide their actions. As decolonial and postcolonial religious movement, African Initiated Churches seem to be ideally positioned to contribute to decolonising concepts of sustainable development. Moving beyond a functional approach assessing contributions of religious communities to a secular development agenda, this volume furthermore seeks to elucidate how African Initiated Christianity contributes to reshaping notions of sustainable development.

The study of the relationship of African Initiated Christianity and sustainable development, hence, constitutes an important strand within the religion and development research field. Taking this as a point of departure, it is the aim of this book to substantially broaden the scope of the existing literature through contributions on African Independent and Pentecostal Churches and the different dimensions and forms of development in Africa from different thematic and disciplinary perspectives. Since much of the existing literature deals with South Africa (inter alia Bompani 2008, 2010; Cross, Oosthuizen, and Clark 1993; Öhlmann, Frost, and Gräb 2016; Masondo 2014; Oosthuizen 1997; Schlemmer 2008), this volume puts the West African context into the centre of attention (including case studies on Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso). To foster overarching and comparative perspectives, it also includes contributions with a pan-African scope and contributions on the Southern African context (Zimbabwe and South Africa). The perspective presented here is necessarily partial. Hence, the volume provides an important first step in a more comprehensive investigation of African Initiated Christianity and sustainable development. It intends to open up a subfield focused on African Initiated Christianity within the religion and development discourse, while at the same time acknowledging the need for further case studies in other African countries and regions and focusing on additional notions and subthemes of sustainable development.

Approaching African Initiated Christianity: towards a definition of African Initiated Churches

African Christianity fundamentally changed in the past 100 years. In what Allan Anderson (2001) termed African Reformation, new African expressions of Christianity emerged: the African Initiated Churches. While at the beginning of the twentieth century African Christianity was predominantly marked by the historic Protestant, Catholic (and, in the North East of the continent, Orthodox) Churches, today about one-third of Africa’s Christians can be estimated to be members of African Initiated Churches.

For the purposes of this volume and the research initiative it emerged from, we define African Initiated Churches as all those Christian religious communities that have their origins in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa (Anderson 2000, 2001). We draw on the original typology by Turner (1967, 17) to refer to churches that are ‘founded in Africa, by Africans, and primarily for Africans’ without ‘missionary Godfathers’ as Pobee and Ositelu (1998, 55) pointedly added. Their key feature is that they were founded by Africans and did not directly emerge from the European and North American mission initiatives of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹ This closely relates to the definition used by the Organization of African Instituted Churches (OAIC), which

understands an AIC to be a church that acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord, and which has separated by seceding from a mission church or an existing African independent church, or has been founded as an independent entity under African initiative and leadership.

(Gichimu 2016, 810)

To emphasise this overarching common characteristic of being initiated in Africa by Africans, we deliberately use the term African Initiated Churches instead of other commonly used interpretations of the ‘I’ in AIC such as Independent, Indigenous, and International (see Venter 2004 a for an overview). We argue that there are enough common characteristics to necessitate the use of this umbrella term. In the literature, the acronym AIC is often used to refer exclusively to churches originating in the first and second waves of African Initiated Christianity (see below). In this volume, we adopt the following systematisation to accommodate the different a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: African Initiated Christianity and sustainable development
• Part I Overarching perspectives
• Part II Nigerian perspectives
• Part III Ghanaian perspectives
• Part IV Perspectives from Burkina Faso
• Part V Zimbabwean perspectives
• Part VI South African perspectives
• Index