wrekwhfkabeihflujhinok35647pap5r

1. The old waste places: The Nigerian Context
A favourite bible text among Nigerian Pentecostals is the Isaiah passage, brimming with hope that some day, God will
fulfill His promise that, they that shall be with thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up foundations of
many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach. (Is. 58: 12). Here, we note both the role of
language in constructing meaning and identity and the perception, diagnosis and political vision of the group. This is
like a political mission, mandate and commitment in the midst of legitimacy crises, economic collapse, environmental
degradation and abuse of human rights in Nigeria. This West African nation has a population of over a hundred million
people, an enormous land size and mineral resources including oil. She became independent from thc British in 1960,
Instead of sourcing a polity from within, she adopted the Westminster political structure, Within half a decade, the
military smashed the system, caused a civil war and have been in power for twenty-seven of the last thirty-two years,
The unitary command of the army has vitiated the federal structure of the polity and the militarization of the society,
praetorian dictatorship and unbridled corruption have stunned the populace into apathy and cynicism. Every effort
towards the return to democracy has met with impasse. As R. Fatton (1995:67-99) argued, Mrican military bear little
resemblance to a complex organization capable of providing efficient, nationally-oriented and stable administration.
Rather, they are a coterie of armed camps owing primary client list allegiance to a handful of mutually competitive
officers of different ranks and seething with a variety of corporate, ethnic and personal grievances. Even the
Commonwealth Heads of State have been forced to intervene on behalf of many political prisoners and the executed
social activists. Economic collapse has forced huge emigration of educated people as the infrastructure rot. The
Structural Adjustment program has, as usual, taken immense toll among the poorer sector of the population. This is
because the crisis is not only at the macroeconomic level (where the debt stands at 27 billion dollars in 1998) but the
agricultural sector, the industrial and banking sectors have given way. Income per capita is now less than three
hundred dollars.

The demise of the state has terrible implications: the public space is monologic and morally empty as the military
constitutes itself into a theological state, monopolizing every discourse about the national interest and essaying to
intrude into every aspect of the individual's life. Civil society is emasculated and the political class compromised in a
certain intimacy of power as the government controls all the access to resources, utilizing patronage networks to web
local elites in a powerful state. The spoils are called settlements, denoting the practice of buying potential opposition
with money and brutalizing any who refuses to co-operate. In such a highly plural and segmented society this method
is very effective. Indeed, the local constituency expects their representative to bring home their own share from the
government which is the only surviving industry. Ironically, as the state's resources diminish, the competition in this
politics of the belly will grow more virulent. The centralization of power and resources has fuelled more violent forms of
ethnic and religious competition. Commentators use the technical terms, moral ethnicity and political tribalism, in
describing the deliberate construction of new identities and communities and the clawing among such groups to
appropriate the state's power for their own in a struggle for the national cake. Meanwhile, politics has turned into the
only arena for wealth as other means have dried up in the harmattan of military rule and causing havoc on political
culture and morality. Perhaps, it should be mentioned that what made the economic collapse traumatic was that the
new nation state started life with a buoyant coffer based on agricultural cash crops. Oil created a boom in the 1970's,
distorting the trend towards a single-product foreign exchange earner. The boom assisted the healing of the wounds of
the civil war of 1967-1970 but the after-effect was moral ruin. Corruption and indiscipline of the ruling class spawned
wild strategies which soon wiped out all the assets and created debts in the wake within two decades. Hosting the
Mrican Festival of Arts (1977) further opened the flood gates of squander mania. Multinational corporations teamed
with indigenous thieves or chiefs. Fela Ransome-Kuti, the Afro-jazz artist cut an album entitled, Authority Stealing,
crooning about a virulent form of pen-robbery. It was as if a society which worshiped success, deliberately blocked all
the legitimate routes, leaving the entrepreneurs to invent illegal routes. In order to survive unemployment, low wages
and state predation, the majority fend for itself by erecting underground economy, parallel to the formal sector.
Smuggling, fraud and other forms of deviance become lucrative business.
A number of implications follow: the stability of the nation especially, the pursuit of pluralism is threatened. First, Nigeria
was carved out of many tribes and tongues as the old national anthem declared but with the hope that in brotherhood,
we stand to hail the motherland. But soon, the hope became forlorn as the calabash of blood broke on our heads.
Second, the religious divide between Islam and Christianity has a geographical consolidation; most of the north is
Moslem while the south is Christian; many of the northern ethnic groups came under Arab influence as early as the
1oth Century, long before Christians came from the Atlantic ocean in the south in the 19th Century (since an earlier
contact in the 17th century failed). The interweave of ethnicity, religion and ecology re-defines pluralism in the Nigerian
context. As Ruth Marshall put the matter (1997:5):
Pluralism in Nigeria means not, as theorists of liberal democracy explain it, a plurality of interest~ meeting in a public
sphere whose underlying cohesion is determined by a principle of citizenship captured by the ideology of juridical
equality and symbolic force of the nation. Rather, it means a plurality of citizenships, each with its own moral vision,
invented history, symbolic forms, models of power and authority, and institutional expressions, all interacting in the
context of an authoritarian power whose control over public goods and accumulation is constantly under the pressure
of their claims, and whose legitimacy is challenged by their alternate Visions.
The problem of multiple identities, pauperization and collapse of social infrastructure combined to bring religion into the
public square; the enlarged field brought out all the frustrations of the past. The quest for new moorings caused anger
and violence. Religious violence in Nigeria has bedevilled the Nigerian political culture since the early 1980's.
(Ilesanmi, 1997).
Commentators have noted the resurgence of international Islamic fundamentalism from the 1980's. Nigeria has been
pivotal precisely because of the invented histories of the Sokoto Caliphate and the Bornu-Kanem Empire. Oil became
crucial in the OPEC effort to counter Western dominance through oil politics. Islamic politics had two other dimensions:
first, the process of decolonization built in a safety valve for the Moslem North by leaving her in control of the political
rein. The background is embedded in the innards of colonialism in Nigeria which we cannot indulge here. Second, in
the interior of Islam is the concept of state power as necessary for the promotion of religion. The call for a rotational
Presidency and power sharing became a struggle combining religion, economics, politics and ethnicity. Equally
important is that the top military echelon in Nigeria has been dominated by the Northerners, giving a certain colouring
to the political culture and the tone and major issue in Christian political theology and practice in the last two decades.
The Christian response to Islamic insurgence and the challenges of the old waste places constitute the burden of this
paper.
In summary, there was much hope at Independence. The colonial heritage was the modernization concept of economic
growth which posited the state as the key agent. In 1989, the World Bank Report, Sub-Sahara Africa: from Crisis to
Sustainable Growth blamed the failure of the dream to predatory, statist policies which stifled entrepreneurship and
investment, instability, incompetent and unpredictable management of public sector and failed legal systems. Although
the states are consuming more resources, they are often considered too weak, incompetent and undisciplined to carry
out their development objectives. It should have added that World Bank policies led to the destruction of the
educational system and that environmental degradation threatened the lives of many. Democracy cannot operate on
empty stomachs and might not be the solution. As Bradshaw (1995:39-65) argued, analysis of state failure in Africa
should include the complex interaction of the global sector, the national and the local. Much of the woes in Africa has
been from external sources. The impact of these on the family, as violence increased in the society is another large
matter. The task of witnessing in this harsh terrain confronts the Christian community and the effort in this paper is to
examine the response of one form of Christianity which exploded into the context at the same time as legitimacy crisis
was brewing in all its ramifications. Was the chronology fortuitous? Pentecostal upsurge occurred in Nigeria at various
times but the contemporary and large-scale phenomenon burst onto the religious scene massively from 1970 and
gained tremendous momentum in the midst of these untoward events. The first task will be to provide a brief
background to the birth of the born again and, then, to delineate their political theology. This will set the stage to deal
in some details with their political practice which they refer to as the practice of victorious life.

2. The Born Again: Pentecostalism in Nigerian Church History
There is some problem about definition and terminology even when everyone agrees that there has been an implosion
of a new religious form in the nation since 1970 and that this form is the fastest -growing phenomenon in Christianity. It
has been surmised that it is this wind of God which explains the radical shift in the numerical balance of Christianity
from the North to the South. The research has barely gone far to provide data on the statistics and the nature of the
implosion. The perspective here is that the movement in Nigeria was not an off-shoot of Azusa Street Pentecostal
movement which Seymour started in 1907. The North-South and South-South relationships among Pentecostals do
exist and are quite important but it was not as if a movement started in the USA and spread to Nigeria. The Nigerian
phenomenon is not an extension of American electronic church or the creation of tele-evangelists. The Nigerians refer
to themselves as born again Christians. This is an affirmation that conversion is the first work of grace, spirit baptism is
a distinct and second work of grace, an experience of a new move of the Holy Spirit in one's life, requiring a deeper
level of commitment to Christ; an empowerment for the overcoming life and for service. Sanctification is thus a process
started at conversion. The emphasis is on the pneumatic resources of the bible, regaining the power released at the
Pentecost and the graces, charismata, promised and given by Christ to aid his pilgrim people, waiting for the rapture.
The eschatological concern is predominant in Pentecostal vision. As commentators say, there is no statement made on
the movement which cannot be challenged precisely because of the varieties in the broad stream. Still, technical
efforts have been made to distinguish charismatic movement which operates within mainline churches from the
Pentecostal which operates outside and independently of the mainline churches. In Nigeria, they are all born-again
brethren and are quite eclectic about their theology which breaks into four components: the conversion and born again
experience, encapsulation from backsliding through holy living and deliverance, engaging in spiritual warfare against
demonic forces or victorious living and evangelism in the end-times. Cryptically, these are the born again experience,
sanctification, deliverance and spiritual warfare and rapture. A peculiar greeting wishes the other person to be
rapturable! The out-working of these will be pursued later.

The affirmations inform the typology. There has been a plurality of voices in this broad movement consisting of I)
Interdenominational Fellowships; 2) Evangelistic Ministries, e.g. Deeper Life Bible Church; 3) Deliverance Ministries,
specializing in exorcism; 4) Prosperity or Faith Ministries e.g. Zoe Ministry, Idahosa's Church of God Mission; 5)
Intercessors, e.g. National Prayer House, Intercessors for Africa; 6) Missionary and Rural Evangelism, e.g. The
Christian Evangelical Social Movement, Christian Missionary Foundation; 7) Bible Distribution Ministries, e.g. Gideon
Bible International whose members must be born again and active in their churches; 8) Classical Pentecostals such as
Assemblies of God Mission, Four Square Gospel etc.; 9) Children Evangelism Ministry whose branches have
mushroomed nation-wide from the late 1980's. The lines of divide are between fellowships and churches and between
holiness and prosperity groups. A wide range of ministries which are interdenominational enable large numbers to
percolate among the various groups and their mainline churches. Much clientele relationship exists. Strong men of
God attract large numbers to their retreats, outreaches and power ministrations. Many ministries combine some or all
of these activities, specializing in a definite onc. The lines cannot be drawn too tightly. Two organizations mobilize the
born again movement in Nigeria: the Nigerian Pentecostal Fellowship and the Pentecostal Association of Nigeria.
The charismatic phenomenon or outbreak of spiritual power in mainline churches is a much older occurrence in
Nigeria; the character has changed through the years until the churches stopped excommunicating such people and
rather incorporated them with controlling guidelines. The period from 1910-1940 witnessed an upsurge in charismatic
outpouring in Nigeria: the Wade Harris ministry did not reach Nigeria, stopping in the Gold Coast but it was the same
period when cultural nationalists had woven a network along the entire coast of West Mrica. Many were aware and
excited with the phenomenal activities of the prophet, especially his challenge against European traders who made
Mricans to work on Sundays. Wade's holy water set fire to the ships of the recalcitrant ship masters to the delight and
amazement of the Mricans. Soon, a ministry akin to the prophet's burst at Bakana, in the Niger Delta. Garrick Braide
was a devoted member of the prayer band in the Anglican Church. In 1914, he discovered that he had an unusual
experience and a healing charisma. His minister, RA. Kemmer was quite supportive and basked in the numerical
growth ofthe church as many rushed to be healed. Other political forces came into the play: it was during the war and
the jittery British did not want any disruptive activities; the bishop misunderstood the entire matter; the two allies
colluded to jail Braide. He died there in 1918. His lieutenants carried the mission beyond the Delta and turned it into
one of the most successful campaigns in neighbouring Igboland till 1939 (Kalu, 1996: chapt.6). By this time, the
influenza and meningitis outbreaks had started. Within the Anglican churches in Western Nigeria, spiritual and healing
ministries emerged, too. They all resulted in indigenous churches termed Aladura, praying people. (Peel: 1968). In
1927, an ethnic group, the Ibibio of South-eastern Nigeria, witnessed a similar outbreak among the Qua Iboe Mission.
The founder was Samuel Bill, a beneficiary of the Welsh Revival. The leaders initially rejoiced but soon worried about
the loss of control over the Africans and turned to dousing the fire. The embers survived. Another band of Welshmen,
Idris Vaughan and pastor George Perfect had come to Nigeria at the invitation of an indigenous charismatic leader,
Babalola whose ministry was sweeping North-Eastern Yorubaland. The suspicious eyes of the colonial authorities
caught up with him for preaching sermons allegedly against the new taxation. By linking with a British group, he
escaped the cold embrace o[the law. When the two Welshmen moved to the Cross River, they shocked the
Presbyterians with a Pentecostal ministry garnished with the whole works-exorcism and prophetic preaching. This is the
origin of one branch o[the Apostolic Church. Nearby, at Umuahia, within the camp of the True Faith Tabernacle, a
certain Wogu suddenly had the Holy Spirit baptism and started speaking in tongues. Some friends joined but they were
all excommunicated. They formed the Church of Jesus Christ in 1934. Five years later, they invited the Assemblies of
God Mission to take over the CJc. This is how the Assemblies of God came to Nigeria. They did not bring the
phenomenon but joined an existing church.

The church history of Nigeria, 1920-1970, is characterized by the amazing growth of the Aladura churches rather than
the charismatic groups. Their creativity at the culture interface and reconstruction of Christian doctrine and practices
earned an extensive literature. They were the second response by Africans to the missionary message. The first was
the challenge of those dubbed as Ethiopians. Taking their cue from Psalm 68:31, these cultural nationalists set out to
challenge white control of power and ethnocentric paternalism in the church. As Wilmot Blyden intoned in his lecture in
Lagos in 1891, Africans must evangelize Africa. D.B. Vincent gave up his English name for the native one, Mojola
Agbebi. He wore only African clothes, refused financial aid for his school and church, which separated from the
Baptists. They founded African Churches. The Aladura challenge was beyond nationalism, tapping the pneumatic
resources of the gospel, exactly the area which missionaries avoided. The reasons for the neglect were racial and
based on the Enlightenment heritage. As the Aladura movement mushroomed, the fringe zone, occupied, in H. W.
Turner's typology, by the nativistic, messianic, revivalistic and vitalistic, shifted increasingly from biblical rooting,
introducing occuItic materials and other patently non-Christian features (1967: 1-33).

The past gave Pentecostalism much of her indigenous character: it is the third response to missionary message, at
once setting to work missionary preaching and evangelical principles and yet going beyond to renew the pneumatic
challenge of the charismatic and Aladura groups. Unlike the Aladura, the born again insist on strong Biblicism, testing
of the spirits with a keen awareness that not all spirits are of God. They reject the use of instruments in liturgy as well
as the occultic elements and operate both the gifts and the fruits of the spirit. But all three are rooted in primal
worldview in their concerns, theological emphases, deconstruction and reconstruction of that worldview in the light of
the gospel. As argued elsewhere (Kalu: 1997, 1998),

Pentecostalism can best be understood within the strand in African Church historiography which has urged attention to
the interweave between religious ecology and tic terms of Christian allegiance. It is a response to the deep-level
challenges of the eco-theatre, applying the pneumatic resources of biblical theology which missionary theology and
practice muted. Working within Mrican maps of the universe, they have shown how a creative use of biblical promises
can transform the lives of many with the tools of hope in the midst of the darkness which has hit Africa at noon-tide.
They have exploited the elasticity in Africa worldview, its capacity to make room, within its inherited body of traditions
for new realities, which though seemingly from the outside, come in to fulfil aspirations, within the tradition and, then, to
offer quite significantly the basis of self-understanding within the tradition. ( 1998:18).

Kwame Bediako (1995:84) said that this is what Paul did with Jewish traditions in the letter to the Hebrews. The
perception here is that in Pentecostal theology and practice, there is much effort at fleshing out the faith in the context
of contending religious and social forces in Nigeria.

From the above, three models explain the implosion of contemporary Pentecostalism, namely, the cultural-historical,
the providential and the functionalist. The first images Pentecostalism as a continuation of African religion, emerging
from the primal worldview but critiquing the old solutions which have lost efficacy as the old system fell apart. It images
the Nigerian condition as an exilic wandering in the wilderness; the quest for new moorings not only intensify but take
different shapes. As Adrian Hastings said, what was happening in place after place was a spiritual revolution sparked
off by native evangelists in conditions created by the unsettlement of early colonial rule (1994:453). Other forms of
unsettlement sparked new forms of spiritual revolution. There was something providential about these new forms
precisely because the Classical Pentecostal groups which entered Nigeria, 1920-1940, did not grow much before
1970. Suddenly, even the Scripture Union, which had been a sedate bible study movement in Secondary Schools,
burst into spiritual fervour, speaking in tongues and raising a dead person in the bustling city of Onitsha in 1975. It was
beyond imagination; an inexplicable proliferation of young preachers, surging from the year 1970. The vertical growth
pattern indicates that in the 1960's, Pentecostal ministries such as Hour of Deliverance were attracting young people
around Lagos. But this post-civil war phenomenon started in the University of Ibadan, in Western Nigeria. A group of
students belonging to the Christian Union met on Tuesdays to pray and suddenly received the Holy Spirit baptism;
opposition and ridicule of fellow students did not deter them, rather they convened a revival Congress in May, 1970,
another once at Agbor in December and later formed the World Action Team for Christ. The revival spread to the
nearby University of Ife in 1972. The ground was so fertile that by 1975, students declared the University of Ife to be a
Jesus University, as a banner greeted at the gates. Two key aspects; the pioneers of most ministries possessed
University education. As the movement flowed from one campus to the other all over the country, it attracted
school-leavers and those with upward mobility trend. By the early 1980's many young professionals left their jobs for
full-time ministry, further enhancing the attraction among the educated elite. In the East of the country, Secondary
School students were the earliest pioneers though the CU was very active. The delay was because University students
were more keen to catch up with the rest of the country after the years which the war locust ate. But by mid 1970's,
Student Fellowships of mainline churches increasingly became charismatic. The figures of J.M.J. Emesin of the Hour of
Deliverance and David Oye of the Scripture Union loom large in the memory of the early pioneers of the Eastern zone.
Their revival outreaches touched off proliferation of Ministries. Further growth came from the splintering tendency of
the movement: personality clash, doctrinal differences, allegations of sexual offences or embezzlement would quickly
lead to setting up new altar. This was not a peculiarity of the Eastern zone. In Lagos, for instance, Household of God
Fellowship and Powerline Bible Church grew out of Tunde Jordan's Christ Chapel. Matters moved so fast in the East
that Pa S. G. Elton summoned all the Eastern groups in 1975 to a retreat in Onitsha, urging unity. This is the origin of
Grace of God Church because they saw the grace of God in their unity. It was Elton who introduced Benson Idahosa to
Gordon Lindsay of Dallas, Texas. He trained and sponsored Idahosa's Church of God Mission which has had an
enormous impact on West Africa. His All Nations Bible School has produced ministers serving in many parts of Africa.
His prosperity preaching, large infrastructure and flamboyant style continue to excite many.
By the 1980's the movement grew in the North, some pioneered by southerners such as Redemption Church in Jos
and Living Faith in Kaduna which arose from David Oyedope' s Faith Liberation Hour Ministries, Ilorin. Others were
founded by indigenous Northern Christians, such as Prevailing Faith Ministries, Jos, founded by Mai Waisi Oandaura
and Or. John Akpam's Christian Teaching Centre, Zaria. An Anglican medical doctor, he started a fellowship in the
Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital and flowered out into full ministry. In the North and Middle Belt, Teachers'
Colleges are very active in spreading Pentecostalism and many of the teachers leave for full-time ministry. One
conjecture is that these arc often the few educated members of the myriad ethnic groups which were not lslamized and
this form of religiosity encrust rebellion and assertion against Islamic domination. So, more political fall-outs could be
expected.
In time perspective, therefore, the movement in the 1970's focussed on the born again experience and prosperity. By
the 1980's, the faith-word variety became strong with increased foreign influence, leading to two tendencies: positive
thinking methods appeared among the prosperity preachers such as Anuzia of Zoe Ministries; deliverance ministry
gained immense force, with Faith Clinics, Deliverance Camps and such-like. By the 1990's, the Holiness groups who
had concentrated on evangelism and church growth turned their arsenal on recalling the movement to sobriety instead
of pursuing wealth. The effects of the collapse of tele-evangelists in the United States alarmed many. As Barrister
Emeka Nwankpa said, God will not allow in Nigeria what He has rejected elsewhere. He represents a new genre which
was gaining much ground, namely, Intercessors for the nation. To be an intercessor required deliverance from all
weights and holiness because one cannot fight the enemy from his camp. Spiritual Warfare assumed prominence. The
problem is the explanation of the chronological trend. Are there secular forces in the background, or does it result from
prophetic rhema?
This is where the functionalist model comes in. It focuses on the socioeconomic, political, materialist and other
instmmentalist reasoning. The pre-1970 growth is explained with the backdrop of influenza, 1919-1925, and the
psycho-social pressures of the colonial regime. The civil war made people pray more. However, this does not account
for the resort to primal religiosity to which war accounts have drawn attention. Moreover, Aladura spirituality which was
in ascendancy was the beneficiary for times which needed quick answers. As Pentecostalism grew, many Aladura
forms changed stripes to full Pentecostalism. Examples include Mike Okonkwo's Tme Redeemer Evangelical Mission,
Lagos and Or. Adegboye's The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Ebute Metta. However, prosperity preaching
sounded notes of hope for those emerging from the devastation of the war. The problem of the functionalist model is
that it is like the equivocator in Shakespeare who swears on both sides of the scale: boom years of the 1970's drove
people into Pentecostalism, lean years, following the collapse of the economy in the 1980-l990's, did so, too. The task
here is to isolate the political implications of the explosion of this phenomenon onto the Nigerian scene.

3. The repairer of the breach: Pentecostal Political Theology
For some, to mention political theology among Pentecostals smacks of oxymoron; they are supposed to be apolitical,
other-worldly or purveyors of individualized religion. Paul Gifford asserted that they show all the features of
fundamentalists who encourage passive acceptance of disasters, misfortune and a lack of social responsibility, leading
to the absence of any commitment to development (1991:9-20). He contrasted this sharply with the theology of the
mainline churches who
do not restrict salvation to a life after death, but relate it to this life, too. Salvation is understood as liberation not just
from sin and hell, but from fear, from want, from hunger, from ignorance, from anything that obscures the image of God
in a human being, from everything that diminishes human potential, from everything that dehumanises.(:9).

However, in 1994 (:513-534), he painted the recent developments in African Christianity against a dark
socio-economic foil, with Pentecostals burgeoning as the results of these. An aspect of the problem was that he
studied the movement from an a priori ideological stance, presuming them to be an outgrowth of American
Fundamentalist Right Wing. But Gifford performs the salutary task of defining the political, and therefore, the critical
task of political theology in the broadest terms. What is political theology? Theology is man's reflection on God's
relationship to humans and nature. Political theology brings the entire gamut of organizing human existence under the
eyes of God. Its critical task is to counter the privatizing tendency in the gist of the gospel and to deprivatize theology
and obviate the danger of relating God and salvation to the existential problem of the person only, reducing them to
the scale of the person and his personal private decision. The open-ended nature of the enterprise means that it does
not consist of what the leaders say in the encyclicals but also what the people feel, fear, hope and say. The political
refers to everything that touches their reality. Fatton (1995:70) describes this level of popular political discourse as
infra politics, the social space where subordinates develop their own discourse, norms and ways of producing and
consuming to celebrate their estrangement from the ruling class. It is a space where the forbidden is permissible,
where the vain and banal in authority is ridiculed and where popular culture is glorified, scornful of official myths.
Pentecostalism is a populist movement and there is no dearth of biblical roots for theology of political engagement.
This perception goes beyond Gifford's use of charitable institutions by missionaries as the measure of an effective
practice of political theology.

However, the core of the political is power and the allocation of power either for production or reproduction. The
questions of power are, who holds power, for whom and for what end? From these have emerged certain patterns: the
theocratic, erastian or elitist and the democratic conceptions of power. The church should see her task as one of
social criticism, a prophetic voice in the public space, an advocate and practitioner of God's shalom. Has she
successfully done so in Africa? Contrary to Gifford's assertion, Lamin Sanneh argues that there is an in-built
ambivalence in Christian understanding of power which guiled her into collusion with both colonialism and liberalism
(1996: 10-13). He demonstrates this with a comparison with Islamic pursuit of power. Islam, he said, tends to take
command of prominent centres of public life, and from there proceeds to extend its sway over the rest of society.
AI-Bakri and Ibn Khaldhun observed that Christianity does not embrace religion as a state idea, and without the state
religious truth lacks the necessary political instrument to establish and maintain itself. The ambivalence may have
arisen from the doctrine of two kingdoms which has been fathered by many ancestors including Jesus, Paul and
Luther. Possibly, it is embedded in Christian worldview. Jim Wallis in his Soul of Politics (1994) pursues further the
dilemma of Evangelicals amidst the erosion of liberal theology and political correctness. Perhaps, it is the collapse of
the concept of the Christendom which has paralysed Christian political theology in the face of marauding liberalism.
Our task is to delineate the Pentecostal understanding of the faith in the Nigerian context and the social practices
arising there from. To what extent have they developed a theology of engagement and become the repairers of the
breach which has occurred in the land?
Within this wider purview of what is political, the prospects of an apolitical stance is no longer possible; the urgent issue
of the ecosystem, the exigencies of the context raise the matter of relevance for any religious group strongly. Every
form of religiosity answers problems of life or loses relevance. An African liturgical form admonishes the deity that if he
does not perform, the path to his grove would be overgrown. Votaries will ignore him for inefficacy! The major
contribution of the Pentecostal movement is how they address the continued reality of the forces expressed in African
cultural forms and the problems of political stagnation in more creative ways than other religious forms. The focus here
will be on their worldview and anthropology which are choreographed in their hermeneutics, homiletics, other ritual
practices and political practices.
Contrary to the early missionary attitude which urged rejection, Pentecostals take the African worldview seriously,
acknowledging that culture is both a redemptive gift as well as capable of being hijacked. They perceive a kindred
atmosphere and resonance in biblical worldview: the Godly covenant is shaped like the covenant with the gods of our
fathers and, like the bible, admonishes against the snares of other covenants and the need to test the spirits. This
suggests an appreciation of the tensile strength of the spiritual ecology in Africa, the clash of covenants and the task
of displacing the spirits at the gates of individuals and communities with a legitimate spiritual authority in Jesus Christ.
Salvation is imaged as a conflict scenario. As the Garrick Braide people used to sing, Jesus has come and Satan has
run away! Accepting the potency and reality of the spirits in the African environment, Pentecostals explore the lines of
congruence which go beyond deconstruction to reconstruction of reality.
Firstly, at the structural level, scholars have noted the similarity in myths of creation, emphasizing the activity of a
creator and creation of the world from chaotic, marshy base. This says much about the nature of humans and their
relative powers in the universe. There is also a shared three-dimensional perception of space. For instance, the
gospel declares that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow whether they exist in the heavenlies, on earth or
earth-beneath (which the Africans take for the ancestral world). Secondly, both affirm that things which are seen are
made of things which are not seen (Heb.II:3b) and that conflicts and situations in the manifest world are first
determined in the spirit world, therefore, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. This does not remove human
agency but limits it with possibilities of situations beyond human control and inexplicable. It regains a lost worldview
where the inexplicable was taken for a valid aspect of reality. This is the tendency of post -modernism. Both the primal
African and the Christian worldviews are spiritualised worldviews. The rule of Yahweh, the lordship of Christ and the
presence of the Holy Spirit create a spiritualised Christian worldview just as the ubiquitous presence of many spirits
does in the African religious ecology. Thirdly, the biblical worldview is that life is precarious as the traditional African
imagined; the enemy is ranged in a military formation as principalities, powers, rulers of darkness and wickedness in
high places. He goes to and fro to seek whom to devour. The Pentecostal goes through life as keenly aware of the
presence of evil forces as the African villager does. The Western urban dweller substitutes with ESP, other psychic
services and the spirits of Eastern religions. As an aside: there is much controversy raging within the Evangelical
camp, against the Third Wavers. Some argue that demons have been given more space than the gospel permits.
There is the beautiful quip by the ancestor of Western theologians, Karl Barth, that it has never been good for anyone
to look too frequently or lengthily or seriously at demons. It does not make the slightest impression on the demons if we
do so, and there is the imminent danger in so doing we ourselves might become just a little more than a little demonic
(Dogmatics, 3,3 ;51:3). The perspective here gingerly hops over the minefields of Western theological debate so as to
capture what the Africans are saying and doing unaware of the great debates in the pages of Pneuma (e.g. vo1.13, I,
1991). Others are concerned about a dualistic view of reality in which God and Satan lock horns and wonder what
happens to the natural and whether this scenario is biblical. Various exegetical and hermeneutical approaches answer
the questions differently. But in Africa, there is a certain ritual at New Yarn Festival when a celebrant would give a
piece of yam to a masquerade with the left hand, saying that he came to the world to meet evil spirits fighting the good
ones; he does not know the source of the quarrel but would prefer to be left out of it; so, he gives yam to God with the
right hand and to evil spirits with the left. He buys his peace in a dualistic world view buzzing with conflict. The primal
theology of the world is built on an alive universe where competition; humans manipulate the services of the good gods
against the machination of the evil ones, in the quest for an abundant life. Fourthly, rulers are perceived as people
who have been given power to exercise over communities; such power could be given by munificent spirits such as
ancestors or tapped from evil spirits. Thus, someone exhibiting unethical exercise of power is seen as possessed.
Satan even promised Jesus that he could be given such satanic authority. The tendency is to judge political leaders
from this perspective and to image autocratic and predatory rulers as possessed. Fifthly, Pentecostal anthropology
enables an understanding of witchcraft and sorcery, which are pervasive in African social relations, as soul-to-soul
attack.
To explain these assertions: the Pentecostal does not ignore the fact that the word kosmos can refer to the material
universe and the inhabitants of the world but fastens on the third usage referring to worldly affairs -- the worldly goods,
endowments, riches, pleasures and allurements (kosmetikos) which seduce from God. Thus, behind the classical idea
of kosmos as orderly arrangement is a mind behind the system, a world system established after the Fall by a
kosmokrator, a world ruler, the prince of this world, in rebellion. Friendship with him is enmity with God. It is a short
step from here to perceive territorial spirits allocated to various spaces for un-Godly activities. This idea was after all,
very prominent in Judaism and in the early church. There is a confluence of the spiritual and material worlds denying
the myth of materialism. Waiter Wink has in his trilogy (1984-1992) explored the language of power in the New
Testament and concluded that

Every power has a visible and invisible pole, an outcry and inner spirit or driving force that animates, legitimates and
regulates its physical manifestation in the world. Principalities and powers arc the inner and outer aspects or any given
manifestation of power. As the inner aspects, they arc the spirituality of institutions, the within of corporate structures
and systems, the inner essence of' outer organizations of power. (19g4:5).

Analysing further, he argues that the language of power pervades the whole New Testament and while it could be
liquid, imprecise, interchangeable and unsystematic, a clear pattern of usage emerges. Powers could be used to refer
to heavenly, divine, spiritual, invisible forces as well as earthly, human, political and structural manifestations as long
as we realize that

The world of the ancients was not a physical planet spinning in empty space in a rotation around a nuclear reactor, the
sun; it was a single continuum of heaven and earth, in which spiritual beings were as much at home as humans
(ibid.,15).

Paul used dunamis to focus on the spiritual dimension of power in its capacity to determine terrestrial existence for
weal or for woe. Later, it assumed more the designation for God's enemies, engaged in a cosmic struggle to assert
lordship over the earth.
Some have assumed that African Christians have manufactured demons and enlarged their space in theology. They
abound in Jewish literature as defecting angels, sired giants who were drowned in the flood, their spirits live on as
demons, evil spirits or powers of Mastema. Their leaders were variously called Azazel, Mastema, Satan and Beliar.
Early Christians devised elaborate instructions on how to discern them. The ministry of Jesus was very much a cosmic
battle in which Jesus rescued humanity from evil powers. African Pentecostals have equated principalities, powers and
demons with the various categories of spirits in the African worldview and as enemies of man and God. They reinforce
the causality pattern in primal worldview before providing a solution beyond the purviews of indigenous cosmology.
They re-work the Pauline structure with native ingredients:

1. PRINCIPALITIES
i Apollyon Rev. 9: 11
ii Abaddon
iii Belial
v The Beast; symbol; the leopard
v. Ariel
2. POWERS
i Ashteroth (agricultural deities)
ii Baal (shrines on the earth and other worships of the earth)
iii Magog ego Ogun (Y oruba powers for medicine related to cutlass, gun, iron)
IV Beelzebub (witchcraft, wizardry) v Asmodee (sexualimmorality)
vi Mammon (powers related to love of money and the control by the allure of money)
vii Paimon (celestial demons which empower occultists) viii Aritan (magic, satanic justice)
3. RULERS OF DARKNESS
i Ogeaso (Bini), Ogbanje (Igbo )-spirits of children who come with pact to return early into the spirit world
ii Jezeebel, dark goddess of the loins, seductive spirit, harlotry iii Moleck, promoter of nudist fashion and pornography
iv Leviathan, a spirit which attracts people into unwholesome covenants
v Jeptha patron of thieves and robbers.

By turning the bible into a canon of tribal history and weaving the worldviews, Pentecostals directly address the
problems of evil forces; (i) they mine the interior of the worldviews to establish that the same covenantal structure
exists in both; therefore the solution to problems of affliction and defeat in life is to exchange the covenant with the
wicked spirits for the covenant with Christ; (ii) they produce large quantities of literature as discourses which expose
these forces, show individuals and communities how to overcome their dangerous and destructive influences; (iii) they
enable individuals and groups to constitute historical agents, empowered to do battle with these principalities and
powers and (iv) incite public testimonies about the works and victory over the wicked forces. Former agents of the
spirits describe in gory details their years of bondage serving the false spirits. Testimonies in public worship become
ceremonies of degradation and bridge-burning. As Ruth Marshall (op.cit.) argued, they do not reject the past
wholesale but engage with it, refashioning the history and domesticating it; they combine a wide range of self-help
discourses with exposures of spiritual machinations at ground-level, occultic and territorial spirit levels. With spiritual
diagnosis of social malaise goes the raising of an army to recapture the land. For instance, corruption is attributed to
the operation of the hunter or Nimrod spirit among Africans rulers, descendants of Ham. The shedding of blood
through fratricide (civil wars) brings curses reminiscent of the Cain! Abel saga in which the land withheld her increase.
Africa's economic woes are caused by polluting the land with blood. Emigration follows ineluctably as the earth spews
out her people.

All of life is subjected to the authority of Christ and, while not denying personal responsibility, it recognizes that
individuals and circumstances could be driven by forces beyond their control. Here, the Pentecostal explanation for
witchcraft and sorcery by appeal to a biblical anthropology is fascinating. Arguing that God formed man and breathed
Himself into the body and man became nephesh, a living soul, the fall is imaged as a house which collapsed, burying
the spiritual resources. The soul (psuche), consisting of the intellect, will power and emotions constitute the strongest
part of man, seeking to dominate both the spirit man (pneuma) and the body (soma). Salvation comes by the spirit of
God, taking over the pneuma and exuding the power into the psuche, redeeming the constituent parts and the ground
and command the spirits to leave; sometimes, at emotional crusades, those with authority over the land and affairs of
the community will be asked to confess the iniquities of the fathers which are being visited upon their progenies and to
hand over the land to the authority of Jesus. This will ensure prosperity for all the people. In these ways, the born
again brethren in Africa bring a spiritual solution to the great issues of the day, taking the context, the worldview and
the ecology seriously but within the gospel mandate.
4. The Practice of Victorious Life: Pentecostal Political Practice
With the above perception of reality and diagnosis of the political stagnation in Nigeria, Pentecostal political practice
runs in four interlocking grooves: i) the rebuilding of the individual, the power to be truly human ii) a call to social
activism, attack on socio-political structures iii) the rule of saints, politics of engagement and iv) the new Israel,
empowerment and foretaste of new order. It thus breaks the dichotomy of individual! society, private/public, weaving a
multi-faceted and holistic response to human predicament in the Nigerian ecosystem, using the resources of the
gospel.
The pauperization of communities has two dimensions: people struggle to eke out a living as inflation reduces their
purchasing powers. Unstable conditions, militarization of the society join to create vulnerability, insecurity and
hopelessness. The first task of Christianity in such situations is to save people from hopelessness by creating new
tools of empowerment and new sources of security, not by repeating the old excuses about suffering as a sign of being
like Christ. Victims of predatory states are often great cynics; they see the gap, the shadow between the promises of
the rulers and the harsh reality of their conditions. Pentecostal message of God's promises of prosperity has been an
empowerment and tool of hope, contradicting the rulers. Prosperity goes beyond material wealth to cover such matters
as spiritual renewal of relationship with God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, health, reversal of economic
desolation and political and social well-being of individuals and communities. Psalm 24: 1-2 says that when the land is
returned to its owner, peace will reign and prosperity return. Prosperity is a function of repentance and renewal of a
relationship which had been broken by sin and pollution; it is also a sign that healing has occurred. The process
involves both repentance and claiming of promises in the bible. Objectors to the faith-word movement point to
insufficient recognition of the sovereignty and freedom of God. He is not a coin box. Others point to the danger of
pursuing material things as the Gentiles do, unaware of the spirit behind things and the allure of the world. In certain
African conditions, the argument is academic because of the degree of lack. Pentecostals conscientize the individual to
fight back, to refuse to accept defeat, want, failure and pessimism or negativity. This would make the person in the
image of the rulers and controllers of wealth. In the bible, Jabez, among others, refused to accept defeat and cried to
the Lord, worked hard to reverse the verdict of poverty. The contours of the prosperity genre do not bear much
repetition; suffice it to say that it does not teach the individual that he should not apply managerial techniques or not
work hard; much to the contrary these self-help aids are taught at special seminars during outreaches. Pentecostal
students' fellowships provide extra lessons for members in various subject areas to avoid the shame of seeing born
again students who fail their courses. It is not a crossless Christianity but refuses to idolize suffering. Quite often, the
discussion on why certain prayers are not answered, leads back to sin and the patience taught by suffering. However,
as the movement broadened, some preachers, in the heat of competition, have moved into positive thinking, urging
members to repeat certain laws or principles and claim!
The movement is usually an ecumenical bonding, creating a new family, the brethren, a caring, supportive group
providing solidarity in the midst of the breakdown of old moorings. Those of the household of faith constitute a new
identity, serving in ways which missionary denominations could not and buffering many in the midst of stagnation and
economic collapse. This new community nurtures and builds a corps of human agency to work with the divine in the
process of restoration. Within her ambits and spirituality, people receive the call to foray into the wider political arena.
This is important because participation in the public space must be rooted in conviction that God actually sent,
therefore, He will sustain and fund the participation. This the root of an ethic of metanoia, accountability and
transparency. These values which the World Bank mouthed could not be achieved through secularist ethics.
Pentecostals quote with seriousness the passage in Ecclesiastics 10:7: I have seen servants upon horses and princes
walking as servants upon the earth. This is an unnatural trend. As Jesus did with the woman who had spinal problem
by healing her and restoring her sense of worth as the daughter of Abraham, so do Pentecostals urge their members
to know who they are in God's scheme of affairs; that they are sons, daughters, princes and citizens of the heavenly
kingdom. They are to be heads not tails, to ride on horses rather than walk as servants. They foray to recover their
lost position, described as taking the chair back from Satan, through deliverance and intercessory ministries.
Deliverance includes expelling hindering spirits from individuals, places, offices and affairs of people, families and
communities. It is more than exorcism but includes replenishment with new power to cope victoriously. Some believe
that as soon as one is born again, the person would start to gain victories in life-situations. Other argue that until old
covenants have been deliberately broken such covenants would still be operative because Satan is very legalistic and
has legal authority to make demands on the individual. It is believed that both individual and communal problems are
results of such pollution, disobedience and iniquities of the fathers. Land deliverance becomes a restoration of the
covenant relationship between God, man and nature. As the deliverance of the land is done and handed back to her
owner, the political, economic and social affairs of the community will begin to improve. The hindrances or devourers
have been driven away and their authority withdrawn. The relation of deliverance to politics sometimes arises from the
diagnosis that some rulers hold the community in fearful sway by witchcraft or bewitchment. They tap unwholesome
powers from marine spirits or other evil sources to secure themselves and their political offices. Brethren counter such
powers through intercession and deliverance rituals.
The import of this is that affairs of the earth can be changed through prayers. Political dissent and action can be
pursued on the knees instead of carrying placards; that the worn knee approach is more effective and salutary
because it seeks the will of God on the earth and the battle is the Lord's. Human agency and divine activity is the
surest means of gaining true victory. Humanistic projects arc often tainted and may not always be vicarious. This
explains why revolutions derail and become more totalitarian than the system they replaced. To deal with spirits of
wickedness which possess rulers, Pentecostals apply fasting, prayer retreats, researches on the dominant spirits
possessing the gates of the communities and prayer actions. These may involve travelling through the boundaries of
the community, speaking and calling into being the good of the community. Everyone does not have the gift of
intercession; so the first activity is a Gideon method of selecting and training participants. Holy living, deliverance,
sense of call and gift of prayer are the pre-requisites. In recent times, Urban Prayer projects are proliferating in
Nigeria. They are attempts to deal with the rising level of frustration, unemployment and crimes in urban settings. The
Police cannot be trusted since they are likely to be participants in the crime waves. Intercessors reassure themselves
that God loves the city and has plans for the good of the city; Satan has hijacked the cities through evil rulers and
wicked people; their sins have produced the famine in the land.
The counter is to delegate prayer warriors to key areas of the city such as the markets, city hall, major industrial sites,
banks and so on. The group will denounce the evil spirits, order them to leave their strongholds, confess all the evils
which have been perpetrated since the founding of the city, hand over those areas to God and anoint the walls or
ground with olive oil, signifying sanctification and the presence of the Holy Spirit. From cities, the battle is carried to the
whole country. The National Prayer House is made up by young professionals who acquired university education in the
1970's and have gradually gone into full-time intercessory ministry. Emeka Nwankpa is a barrister-at-law; he studied at
the University of Ife and is co-ordinator for the Eastern zone. Steve Okitika is an Electrical Engineer, studied at the
University of Ife and is responsible for the entire House. Kola Akinboboye is a medical doctor in charge of the western
zone. Uduak Udofia is a medical doctor, trained in the USA and responsible for the South-Eastern zone. Ntiensen
lnyang is a Computer Engineer, trained in the USA, in charge of Lagos. The Nigerian body is linked to other national
houses in Africa. As the brochure says,
The Ministry is non-denominational but complements and supplements tbe Church as a service ann. Intercessors for
Nigeria has a network of cc11s in many cities or the country and each day or the week a number or cells uphold the
country in prayers according to 1s.62:6-7. Between God's prophetic abundance for Nigeria and its realization stands
the intercessor to pray it into being.
Affirming the relationship between divine initiative and human agency, they apply prayer as a tool to combat power and
poverty. They do not ignore economic analyses but use these as knowing what to pray for when they refer the
situation to God, who is the court of first instance.
Pentecostals affirm the rule of the saints as essential for the recovery of the nation. This implies gelling entangled in
soap-box hustling. Praying brethren into offices is now a familiar endeavour because when a ruler is just, the people
rejoice. The first aspect is the trenchant criticism oflhe state not only in words but in action. City projects, prayer tours,
retreats at crucial moments in the life of the nation (so as to confess the sins of the leaders which brought God's anger
on the land, the rulers and the people) all constitute strategies of political dissent, exercise of infrapolitics. For
instance, during the Constitutional Conference of 1995, some Moslems tried to change the Nigerian flag by adding a
red star. The committee was led by a powerful Moslem traditional ruler. Adoption seemed imminent. The National
Prayer House summoned about a hundred members to camp in Sheraton Hotel, Abuja, for three days before the
Plenary session would vote.

They told God that this was a ploy for bringing the Islamic symbol; that they are opposed to this; God should intelVene
in spite ofthe high position of the Chair of the committee. On the fourth day, the matter was tabled for voting. Suddenly,
someone stood up and declared the tinkering with the flag and national anthem to be diversionary. The members
yelled in support, the motion was rejected to the confusion of the big man ... The jubilant prayers warriors thanked God
and packed for home. This is a new form of Christian political activism in the country. Without denying that Nigeria is a
secular state, they act with the vision of a theocracy, where Yahweh rules. Pentecostals are, therefore, heavily
involved in the Christian Association of Nigeria, designed to promote the interest of Christianity in a hostile
environment in which the Moslems seek dominance and the use of Nigerian state to prosper the interests of Islam.
Enwerem (1995) calls this a Dangerous Awakening because it threatens the pluralistic ideology of the modern state
and it demonizes Islam as the spirit of the bondwoman. Coming at the same time as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism,
it has contributed to the surge of religious violencc as frustrated Moslems watch resurgent Christianity in the prcselVcd
zone which colonialism calVed. This explains the Moslem protest which led to the cancellation of Reinhardt Bonkke' s
program in Kano, 1994. The literature on the implosion of religion into the public space in Nigeria has burgeoned. The
rise of Pentecostal theology of engagement is a crucial aspect to these developments. The irony, however, is that
sometimes, the Pentecostals use the image ofCyrus to move beyond sectarian lines when praying for a leader who will
be guided by the fingers of God. This radical politics rekindles the hopes of ethnic groups in Northern Nigeria who were
not Islamized but incorporated politically under Islamic rulership in the aftermath of colonialism and in furtherance of
colonial indirect rule system, utilizing the Emirs. Here, the relationship between evangelism and political mobilization
must be emphasized. There is a conscious use of evangelism to build up potential voters for Godly candidates.
Beyond running for offices and encouraging the brethren in top political posts to be Modercais, their political theology
has a very strong eschatological emphasis. The not-yet has intruded into the here-and-now. The foretaste of the
not-yet should be increasingly experienced as the dynamic waiting period draws towards a close. Admittedly, Satan's
reaction would increase but fruits of victorious life must be experienced. Human agency works with the divine in
charitable institutions, refugee programs, financial investment institutions and various forms of aid to those of the the
state modes of organizing power, her institutionalizing of domination, her general principles of state and norms of
behaviour. Since the state tends towards patronage of Islam, Pentecostals demonize Islam and challenge her vision
through politics of engagement and an evangelization program designed to breed voters. This is an enormous shift
from a pietistic view of social activism as a means of restraining evil to politics as a means of advancing the kingdom.
Pentecostals re-conceptualize the moral order claiming for it a redemptive vision of citizenship; re-instilling values in
the family, they empower the vulnerable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BEl)IAKO, K., Christianity in Africa, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 1992. BRUEGGERMANN, W, The Land, Philadelphia,
Fortress Press, 1977. BRADSIIAW, YW. et als., Rc-thinking Theoretical and Mclhodological
Approaches to the Study of African Development, African Studies Rev., 3&( I 995),239-65.
ENWEREM, LM., A dangerous awakening: The Politicization o( Religion in Nigeria, Ibadan:IFRA, 1995.
FATTON, R., Africa in the Age of Democratization: The civic limitations of civil society African Studies Rev.,38
(1995),267-99.
GIFFORD, P., Christian Fundamentalism and Development, Rev.lifA/;'. Po!. h'col/., 52(] 991), 9-20.
___ Some recent developments in African Christianity, African Alli/irs, 93 (1994), no 373:513-534.
HASTINGS, A, The Church in A/rica. 1450-1950, Oxford, CIarendonl'ress, 1994. ILESANMI, S.O., Religious Pluralism
and the Nigerian State, Athens, Ohio University, Centre for Intemational Studies, AIrica Series, 1997, nO.o(l.
JOHNS, c.B., Pentecostal Formation, ShelTield, Academic Press, 1 ()(J)
KALU, 0.1], The emhattled gods: Christianization (if'lgholand, IR41-/99/, Lagos/London, Minaj Publishers, 19%.
__ ~ The third response: Pentecostalism and the reconstruction of Christian experience in Africa, 1970-1995, Yale -
Edinburgh Consultation, New Haven, 1997
___ Continuity in Change: Pentecostalism in African Maps of the Universe Seminar on Pentecostalism, Emmanuel
College, University of Toronto, 1998.
MARSHALL-FRATANI, R., Winning Nigeria for Christ: Pentecostalism, Transnationalism and the Media, Conference of
Int'l. Soc. of Religion, Toulouse, 1997.
M.A, Charismatic Movements in Africa, in C. Fyfe & AF. Walls, Christianity In Africa in the 1990's, University of
Edinburgh, Centre for African Studies, 1996.PEEL, JD.Y, Aladura, Oxford University Press, 196&.
POEWF, K., Charismatic Christianity in a Global Culture, University of South Carolina, 1994.
RAMBO, L Understanding Cconversion, New I Haven, Yale University Press, 1993. SANNEH, L., Piety and Power:
Muslims and Christians in West Africa, N. Y., Orbis Books, 1996
TURNER, H.W. A Typology for Modem African Religious Movements, in Joumal of Religion in Africa, 1(1967), 1,1 -33.
WALLIS, J., The Soul (i/Politics, Orbis Books & The New Press, 1994.
WINK, W., Naming the Powers: The Language of power in the New Testament, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 19&4.
Engaging the powers, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1992