The Nation That Fears God Prospers

A Critique of Zambian Pentecostal Theopolitical Imaginations

Chammah J. Kaunda

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781506447056
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506447070
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Through its strength in numbers and remarkable presence in politics, Pentecostalism has become a force to reckon with in twenty-first-century Zambian society. Yet, some fundamental questions in the study of Zambian Pentecostalism and politics remain largely unaddressed by African scholars. Situated within an interdisciplinary perspective, this unique volume explores the challenge of continuity in the Zambian Pentecostal understanding and practice of spiritual power in relation to political engagement. Chammah J. Kaunda argues that the challenge of Pentecostal political imagination is found in the inculturation of spiritual power with political praxis. The result of this inculturation is that Zambian Pentecostals sacralize the political authority of state power through the charisma of the national president and other major political personalities. It has also contributed to the construction of Zambian Pentecostal leadership that is deified rather than leadership that is formed through the struggles and experiences of the marginalized and powerless. Kaunda argues that the solution does not lie either in desacralization of powers or the separation between the church and the state, but rather in rethinking the Christ event as a paradigm for the recovery of Pentecostalism's sociopolitical prophetic dynamism.

III

Transforming Politics

8

Transforming Politics from Spiritual Realm: Demonologist Political Theology

Introduction

The preceding chapters have developed the overall Zambian Pentecostal theology of national imaginaries, which informs their various paradigms and approaches to national politics. This chapter begins by exploring the various theopolitical paradigms, with their models, to determine how various Pentecostals in Zambia think and approach national politics. In this chapter, I examine the demonologist critique of a secular view of politics. By demonologist is meant those Pentecostals who emphasize the spiritual aspect of national politics. This approach, which is not monolithic (as there are various explanations and approaches to politics) has become one of the most important political engagements among Zambian Pentecostals. Africanists argue that the over-emphasis which is placed on spiritual warfare, deliverance and prophesy, appears to be the residue of African religious thoughts which promote the indivisibility of spiritual–material causality.^[1] As will be explained later, some Pentecostals prioritize spiritual causality. In a way, these Pentecostals adhere to the idea of reality proposed by Rudolf Ott, which he describes as “a one-sidedly intellectualistic and rationalistic interpretation.”^[2] This uncritical bias determines the way in which demonologists interpret reality, which essentially influences how they approach political matters.

Demonologico-Political Imagination

The Zambian demonological approach is a system of thinking which seeks to explain material reality as a reflection of the other-worldly reality. It explains national politics based on spiritualism and Africa’s religio-cultural past. Demonologists argue that various Zambian ethnic groups founded their geopolitics on ungodly (ancestral) spiritual foundations. As with most African Pentecostals, they only reject certain aspects of the African cultural heritage (such as ancestor veneration and witchcraft) which are blamed for national underdevelopment.^[3] This rejection is not a discontinuity but a subtle continuity of traditional African religious symbolisms, which have been rephrased through a demonological frame and genuflect at the feet of Jesus Christ in absolute affirmation of his Lordship, thereby being completely subjected to the power of the Holy Spirit. Rev. Frazer Katanga of Northmead Assembly of God explains:

It is not necessarily abandoning the culture, you know the Bible is about transforming … So, culture needs to be brought to that place where it’s transformed, so that the transformation that we are looking, culture must play into that. You may of course at some point have to walk away from some rigid teaching that will not change to fit the teaching of scripture. There is a place where African culture agree[s] with the teaching of the Bible, there is also a part our African culture [that] is intangible with our Bible. Now not only African culture, all cultures of the world, they are in that place where some of it agrees with what the scripture preaches.^[4]

Similarly, Ignatius Kashoka (whose royal name is Chief Ngabwe), a Pentecostal pastor and traditional leader of the Lamba-Lenje-Lima-speaking people of Central Province, highlights that “for a long time some people have argued that Pentecostals are destroying African culture.” He questions:

What culture has Christianity destroyed? Look, I refuse to be bathed in certain things which they believe will give me power and I believe that I already got power from God. So what culture have I destroyed? Because that culture they are talking about is supposed to only affect that individual who is supposed to sit on the throne. But I am saying I already have power. I am sealed by God who has put me on the chair.^[5]

The chief does not see himself as discontinuing his tradition, but rather as having found a more potent power than that which manifests within African traditions. He merely overpowered and subjected traditional spiritual powers to the newfound power of the Holy Spirit. A similar view is taken by a Pentecostal singer, Kings Mumbi Chisenga (Malembe Malembe), who stresses:

Yesuendoshi iyi kalamba because kumushi nga taulefwaya bakulowe walaya ufwaye naiwe kuti uyi chingilile, uwuchililepo. Ifwe tuya kuwuchililepo who is Jesus (Jesus is the greatest wizard of all time because in our culture when you are afraid of being bewitched, you seek for help from a greater witch or wizard than the one you suspect. Thus, for us we have found Jesus as the greatest wizard of all time). For them [traditionalists] to understand us properly is to use the language they use because if I just say Jesus is my doctor, he is my healer, they can’t understand. You need to use their language. Ilya eyakuti aisa kwipusha ati iwe ichikuchingilila chinshi because naliyesha ukwisa kulowa but nalifilwa? (When a witch or wizard comes and asks, what protects you because I have tried to kill you but failed?). Kumweba ati ine nalipanda ubwanga ubu kalamba ubwachila patumanga tonse (You tell him/her that have found the greater charms and fetishes than all the charms and fetishes in the world). That’s the language they understand.^[6]

It is clear here that there is a continuity of concepts, as well as linguistic and world views, for even within Zambians’ traditional understanding of power, the sources were never the same. It is contrary to Jose Casanova’s perception of pentecostals as “an uprooted local culture engaged in spiritual warfare with its own roots.”^[7] This also refutes Ruth Marshall’s classification of pentecostalism with some form of cultural discontinuity.^[8] Joel Robbins rightly argues that by affirming the African spiritual map, demonologists have preserved “traditional spiritual ontologies” through both critical appropriation and demonization.^[9] This may be what Birgit Meyer classifies as “Africanization from below.”^[10] Meyer believes Pentecostals’ strategic demonization of certain African cultural practices and beliefs did not represent a radical discontinuity with the past, but a subtle cultural critique and a modern frame of appropriating what is perceived as life-giving from the African cultural heritage.^[11] The believers in these churches have not been told to discard “the power of spirits or [to adopt] them as cultural heritage,”^[12] but rather to reinterpret them as belonging to the realm of the uncertain, which must be relentlessly scrutinized and purified. Thus, the difference between traditional spiritual power and the Holy Spirit’s power lies in the place tradition has been assigned in Pentecostal ontology, where life-giving power is perceived as having its source in the Holy Spirit, who is not only the ultimate power but also a force for the good of humanity.

To return to the point of the discussion, as argued in the preceding chapter, the Zambian demonological political imagination is influenced by traditional notions of icalo (ethnic-nation). Zambians believe that infwelo imitundu (ethnic-nations) were formed and established (ukusokola umushi) through spiritual pacts or ancestral covenants (ifipingano) with specific supernatural entities (nemilungu). The Bemba notion of ukusokolaicalo (formation of the nation) has spiritual connotations which relate to the cleansing and consecration of the land before it is inhabited by humans. It relates to secret ritual performances on which spiritual foundations (umufula) are established, and a hedge of protection (ukushilika) from spiritual attacks is erected for a newly established nation (icalo). National formation rituals are shrouded in mystery and secrets, which are protected from the uninitiated. They are only known by the founding leaders and spiritualists who perform the rituals, and who act as custodians of secret knowledge which is passed on to their successors. As demonstrated in chapter 3, there is a belief that, to lay these spiritual foundations and borders, human sacrifices were/are performed (either through witchcraft manipulation or by physically killing people who become the watchers of the nation). The latter was done especially in precolonial Christian societies. As one of the respondents stated:

This thing is not just casting out demons out of people. Its cleaning systems, everything has been invested […] on the demonic power. Some of them don’t look like they are demonic power[s] until you are inside and you fail to function as a Christian endowed with power from [on] high and then you can understand what is happening because it’s a battle … this is what we are saying by declaration, but when you become Christian, the Paul says […], you now need to be transformed, so the mind of the nation of Zambia needs to be transformed.^[13]

Pentecostals perceive such supernatural entities to be defiant to God’s purpose and resistant to the reign of Christ over the nation. Thus, these supernatural entities are believed to be in control, or to be the real governing authority of specific ethnic-geopolitical areas in Zambia. This makes politics a spiritual warfare, a space of confrontation between spiritual-political powers seeking to determine the destiny of the nation and its citizens. Zambian Pentecostals perceive the process of political power exchange not as taking place within the physical realm, but rather as being mirrored–the real site of political power struggles is in the spiritual realm.^[14] This means that spiritual political power is not acquired through democratic means; it is, rather, achieved through a confrontational and ferocious takeover. This perspective is confirmed by many scholars working on African Pentecostalism in various parts of the continent.^[15]

This philosophical line of thought dominates the thinking of most Pentecostals, including: Apostle Dr. Robert Bwalya of Bethel Church International, Bishop Dr. Bernard Nwaka of Living Water Global Church, Prophe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Preface: Of Priestly Presidents and Christian Nations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms
• Figures
• Introduction: The Legacy of African Religiopolitical Heritage: Pentecostalism as ‘Another Phase of the Quest for Power and Identity in Africa’
• On Rocky Terrain: Orientations
• Historical (Spiritual) Foundations
• Transforming Politics
• Towards a New Pentecostal Political Vision
• Index