Genders, Sexualities, and Spiritualities in African Pentecostalism

'Your Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit'

Chammah J. Kaunda

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030423957
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030423964
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the complex and multifaceted nature of African Pentecostal engagements with genders and sexualities. In the last three decades, African Pentecostalism has emerged as one the most visible and profound aspects of religious change on the continent, and is a social force that straddles cultural, economic, and political spheres. Its conventional and selective literal interpretations of the Bible with respect to gender and sexualities are increasingly perceived as exhibiting a strong influence on many aspects of social and public institutions and their moral orientations. This collection features articles which examine sexualities and genders in African Pentecostalism using interdisciplinary methodological and theoretical approaches grounded within traditional African thought systems, with the goal of enabling a broader understanding of Pentecostalism and sexualities in Africa.

© The Author(s) 2020

C. J. Kaunda (ed.)Genders, Sexualities, and Spiritualities in African PentecostalismChristianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42396-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: African Pentecostalism, Genders, Sexualities and Spirituality

Chammah J. Kaunda^{1, 2, 3} and Sokfa F. John⁴

(1)

Global Institute of Theology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

(2)

College of Theology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

(3)

United Graduate School of Theology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

(4)

University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Chammah J. Kaunda (Corresponding author)

Sokfa F. John

End Abstract

Introduction

Sex and sexualities discourses are rich, complex, controversial, and embrace discourses of gender, orientation, politics, power, culture and religion/spirituality.¹ African Pentecostalism is increasingly regarded as one of the key religio-cultural imaginations influencing public moral discourse on sexualities in Africa. They are generally known to insist on sexual purity and holiness. The aim of this volume is to examine some of the perspectives and practices around sexualities found in African Pentecostalism.² The collection features articles with various disciplinary and methodological approaches within the parade of the human and social sciences. Generally, the objective is to broaden current considerations on religion and sexualities with a focus on Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in various parts of the continent. The studies demonstrate the complex and multifaceted notions of sexualities in this spiritual and cultural landscape. They show that religion, particularly Pentecostal and Charismatic spirituality are at the heart of the beliefs, attitudes, moralities and legalities surrounding sexualities in Africa today. It also shows that their role is not limited to the religious or spiritual domain but is felt in other aspects of life including the political and state responses to sexualities. Thus, this collection, as the nature of its chapters and authors demonstrate, is constructed on the premise that a multidisciplinary approach will enable a better and closer understanding of Pentecostalism (religion more broadly) and sexualities in Africa.

Additionally, in different ways and contexts, the chapters in this collection all revisit the complex and rather disturbing history of the relationship between Christian religion and spirituality with human sexualities, especially in Africa. And how Pentecostal and Charismatic groups situate themselves in this spectrum, often, on the conservative side, and sometimes with stricter moral injunctions that alienate and demonize certain forms of human sexualities and practices. However, it also reveals liberal and unconventional practices and attitudes toward sexualities among some Pentecostals which are different and in contradiction to what is more dominantly obtainable in these movements.

The interaction of Pentecostalism and African cultures and traditions is an important running theme in this collection. The chapters highlight the paradoxical relationship between Pentecostalism in African cultures. On the one hand, the Pentecostal and Charismatic radical disconnection with the past (often tradition, culture) as encouraged at conversion and on the journey to holiness, relegates many cultural practices to the realm of the demonic as that which is unholy and unacceptable, an impediment to spiritual, moral and socio-economic progress. However, on the other hand, Pentecostal teachings align with, agree with and even appropriate perceived cultural or traditional arguments on sexualities. On non-heteronormative sexualities and non-conservative sexual practices, Pentecostalism and claims about African Traditional and cultural ethics on sexualities appear to merge without tension. Thus, Pentecostal arguments draw on “imagined” African cultures.

African Pentecostalism: A Definition

Contributors generally used the term African Pentecostalism or Afro-Pentecostalism to refer to Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian expressions of faith found in Africa (and among the African Diaspora). While these have identifiable features and “family resemblances” that make them part of the global Pentecostalism, the “Afro-“ prefix or “African” adjective seeks to indicate that specific cultural interactions, appropriations, contestations, modification and novel [re]productions of Pentecostalism on the African continent have given them unique features that make them distinguishable from Pentecostalism elsewhere and beyond mere geographical location. Additionally, the term Charismatic as used in this collection also include charismatic movements within mainline churches.

African Pentecostalism describes varieties of Christian communities who attribute their daily life experiences and interactions with the world to the work of the Holy Spirit in keeping with the socio-historical and cultural contexts of Africa.³ Ogbu Kalu argues that “Pentecostalism has produced a culture of continuity by mining primal and worldview, reproducing an identifiable character, and regaining a pneumatic and charismatic religiosity that existed in traditional society.”⁴ This means that whatever African Pentecostalism is in essence, substance, function and even in its pneumatological expressions, is largely informed by African religio-cultural innovations. Hence, Nimi Wariboko highlights that:

African Pentecostalism is an assemblage of practices, ideas, and theologies—and interpretations of reality—whose tangled roots burrow deep into the three segments of African temporality … the ‘spirit’ of African Pentecostalism does not signify a distilled essence, changeless core, irreducible substrate, or perfection of being but is deployed for the sake of highlighting specific observations, contemplations, and questions that point to something of broader significance for understanding the multidirectional openness of African Pentecostal social life without presuming a constrictive universalizing framework.⁵

This is an astute description of contemporary African Pentecostalism, particularly as not a single entity but a multi-manifested, multi-expressed and multi-directional phenomenon. African Pentecostalism share the common feature of African-shaped pneumacentric⁶ sensibility in their interpretation of reality and interaction with the world. In other words, the African culturally embedded pneumatological thought system functions as both a life philosophy and an organizing principle for many African Pentecostal sociality and relationality. It can be argued that African Pentecostals live an African pneumato-social world.⁷ The classification of African Pentecostalism is utilized as an overarching explanation for all variegated movements that take the Holy Spirit as the framework for understanding and interacting with African reality and the world in general. In this book, African Pentecostalism are those Christian faiths that take an experiential, cultural and theological Spirit-orientation to everyday experiences.⁸ They cover what Allan Anderson refers to as classical Pentecostalism, African Initiated Churches (AICs), Older Charismatics in the mainline churches, neo-Pentecostalism and neo-Charismatics.⁹ Admittedly, contributions give more attention to classical and neo-Pentecostal-Charismatic trends than other movements in the classification.

Between and Betwixt Continuity and Discontinuity

In most African Pentecostal thought systems, notions of sexualities and spirituality are inseparable. This is because African religio-cultural worldviews provide analytical lenses which Pentecostalism appropriate to make meaning of all forms of sexualities. The African Pentecostal ideas about sexualities are significantly rooted in the meanings and interpretations derived from African cultural and spiritual heritage. However, these Pentecostal notions of sexualities are not simple or monolithic but dynamic and embrace many aspects of sexualities. Scholars argue that African Pentecostalism believe in the spiritual significance of all forms of sexualities.¹⁰ Spirituality cannot be removed from considerations of sexualities—all sexualities have a spiritual dimension. Yet, they are not simply biological, psychological, political, social, economic or spiritual nor are they absolute and fixed; rather, they exist in very fluid and quickly shifting sociopolitical and religio-cultural landscape. Sylvia Tamale cautions against “oversimplifying and essentializing the practice and discourse of sexualities in Africa.”¹¹ In agreement with other scholars Tamale underlines multiple and contextual engagements with sexualities in various socio-religious settings.¹² African Pentecostal notions of sexualities are emerging as “part of an ongoing and continuous process of religious and social change set within a specific socio-political, economic, and historical context.”¹³ And several emerging literature affirm the significance of such contextualization. One example is Linda van de Kamp’s work on Brazilian Pentecostalism in urban Mozambique and the notions of sexualities it engenders.¹⁴ Here, the practice of public romance therapy shapes a Brazilian-informed sexual intimacy for mostly upwardly mobile Pentecostal women who are encouraged to make a ”break” with their religio-cultural past perceived as either negatively affecting their marriages or hindering them from getting married. This process of liberation and creative alternative spaces of love and intimacy among Pentecostals in Mozambique sometimes places huge financial burdens on these women and results in ambiguous romantic relationships, in addition to the violent rupture with family and tradition that conversion demands on these women.¹⁵ Yet, this also exemplifies how African Pentecostalism taps into traditional and transnational notions of sexualities designed to achieve specific aims and objectives.

Contrary to the popular argument that African Pentecostalism claim “cultural discontinuity,”¹⁶ empirical evidence demonstrates a creation of “a culture of continuity.”¹⁷ To some degree, African Pentecostalism functions between continuity and discontinuity with African religio-cultural heritage in varying degrees.¹⁸ This means that while many Africans have converted to Pentecostalism, there are indications that their traditional African cultural worldviews have remained and still play a significant role in their lives. These worldviews appear to have been reinforced by biblical conceptions of existence, as permeated by spiritual forces and entities.¹⁹ Scholars observe that the key features of African spirituality are present in African Pentecostal interactions with the Holy Spirit.²⁰ These scholars note that African religio-cultural notions of sexualities remain salient and resilient in shaping African Pentecostal notions of sexualities interpreted within a Spirit framework.²¹ One manifestation of this is in the overemphasis on traditional family as the site for sexual expression and procreation.

This does not mean that African religio-cultural heritages do not affirm other forms of sexualities. To the contrary, Africa is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: African Pentecostalism, Genders, Sexualities and Spirituality
• Part I. Theological, Public, and Gendered Constructions and Violent Enactions
• Part II. Marriage, Family and Singleness
• Part III. Traditions, Non-conformity Genders/Sexualities
• Back Matter