The videos below correspond to six summaries (each a maximum of about ten minutes) of six 1.5-hour lectures (totaling 9 hours of teaching), given on South Sudan at AUAN (Neuilly University and Artistic Association) in spring 2025.
Africa, Postcolonial Christianity
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HISTORY OF SOUTH SUDAN (six videos)
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Pan-African encounter
The current social, cultural, and political mutations in Africa combine two dimensions.On one hand, there is a rise in postcolonial sovereigntism. On the other hand, new pan-African dynamics are emerging, which could be described as a "pan-Africanism of nations."
This provides an opportunity to recommend the following book:
Adekeye Adebajo, The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers, Manchester University Press, 2021 (680 pages).
This book is a significant academic anthology that explores Pan-Africanism through the contributions of 36 key figures, spanning from pioneers like Edward Wilmot Blyden and Marcus Garvey to contemporary thinkers such as Wangari Maathai and Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Adebajo, a professor and former director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in South Africa, brings together scholars and writers to offer a multidimensional analysis of the movement, encompassing its historical, intellectual, cultural, and political aspects. Recently published, it provides an updated and comprehensive approach, making it a valuable resource.
Based in Addis-Abeba, the institution at the heart of these pan-African dynamics remains the African Union.
This is an opportunity for me to warmly thank Ms. Paska Nyaboth for her visit to the GSRL earlier this month, and the great discussion provided. I also extend my gratitude to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which supported her visit as part of the PIPA program (Program for Inviting Future Leaders).
With Ms Nyaboth Paska (African Union, PIPA program)
A South Sudanese national, Ms. Paska Nyaboth is one of the very bright minds shaping the pan-African Africa of today and tomorrow. She seeks solutions, informed by the experiences of peoples and nations, including French-speaking ways (in Africa and in France) to deal with religious diversity and secularism.
To be continued!
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African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development
In most, if not all African nations, religion is a key player in the social fabric. This is why such a remarkable scholarly book should not be missed.Released in 2020, this volume investigates the substantial and growing contribution which African Independent and Pentecostal Churches are making to sustainable development in all its manifold forms.
Good news !
It is downloadable for free on ResearchGate (link).
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Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions
Just released : Edited by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, this Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Religions offers...- Comprehensively details a multitude of Caribbean religions in one volume
- Geographic chapters focus on religious practices in complex nations
- Thematic chapters explore a large number of religious traditions
A must-have ! Link
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Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered Millennials and Social Change in African Perspective
Building from a behind-the-scenes case study of Kenya's Nairobi Chapel and its "daughter" Mavuno Church, Dr. Wanjiru M. Gitau's book expands their story into a narrative that offers analysis of the rise, growth, and place of megachurches worldwide in the new millennium. The author helps us rethink what African megachurches can be – and what we can learn out of the American framework. Gitau shows that recognizing the psychological, spiritual, and social destabilization of modernizing societies is the first step to valuing the place of megachurches in contemporary Christianity. The book won the 2019 Christianity Today’s book of the year award in the Global Missions category.
A must-read.
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Read La Croix International
LA CROIX is Europe’s pre-eminent Catholic daily providing quality journalism on world events, politics, science, culture, technology, economy and much more. La CROIX which first appeared as a daily newspaper in 1883 is a highly respected and world leading, independent Catholic daily.Published in english, LA CROIX international is the premier online Catholic daily providing unique quality content about topics that matter in the world such as politics, society, religion, culture, education and ethics.
Some of the chronicles I am honored to publish in the French version have been translated for LA CROIX international.
Check here (link)., for example "Pan African impulses inspired by Christianity".
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TB Joshua unmasked long ago by Bisola Hephzi-Bah Johnson
Leading the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) based in Nigeria, late Prophet T.B. Joshua (1963-2021) has been one of the most prominent African neopentecostal prophet of the last 40 years. The recent BBC documentary reveals he committed systemic abuse on some women and disciples.To the people who challenge BBC's timing and European/white angle, let's remind them that huge evidence was already revealed 4 years ago by Lady Bisola Johnson in a very long TV interview in Abuja to Asabe Afrika TV (a purely African TV) by Lady Bisola Johnson (link).
Evangelist Bisola Hephzi-Bah Johnson, who escaped T.B. Joshua's cult after heavy involvement in the Prophet's first circle, wrote also a very revealing and long 2017 book with enormous evidence (link).
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CAIRN INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Do you know CAIRN international ?"Founded in 2005 by four Belgian and French academic publishers, Cairn.info offers the most comprehensive online collection of francophone publications in social sciences and humanities. In 2023, more than 600 journals and 18 000 eBooks from major French, Belgian and Swiss publishers can be accessed by students, scholars and librarians worldwide on www.cairn.info. To make this invaluable content accessible to a non–francophone readership, Cairn.info launched Cairn International Edition, an English-language platform where abstracts and selected articles from key journals on Cairn.info are translated from French into English, enabling users to search, browse and read this content without speaking a word of French".
Here is an sample of articles (Evangelicalism and postcolonial christianity) translated in english from this amazing scholarly collection (link)
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Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity
"In the decades following the era of decolonization, global Christianity experienced a seismic shift. While Catholicism and Protestantism have declined in their historic European strongholds, they have sustained explosive growth in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
This demographic change has established Christians from the Global South as an increasingly dominant presence in modern Christian thought, culture, and politics. (...)
Contributors argue that the collapse of colonialism and broader cultural challenges to Western power fostered new organizations, theologies, and political engagements across the world, ultimately setting Christianity on its current trajectory away from its colonial heritage."
Thank you Elizabeth A. Foster and Udi Greenberg for this major collective work.
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Christian Missions and the Construction of South Sudan (AfCo)
What kind of impact did have the French on the long history of South Sudan (a land which became independant in 2011) ? This article, originally published in french in 2013, is available in english (full-text)
Christianity has been a driving force in the process of nation building in South Sudan. Focusing on the city of Wau (Bahr el-Ghazal), this study considers the impact of Catholicism. Starting with the legacy of the French Marchand Mission, which originated in the modern city of Wau, Catholicism expanded initially through the work of the Comboni Mission.
Following the horrors of the first civil war (1955–1972), Wau became a diocese in 1974, and the Catholic Church established a major medical center there headed by a white missionary, Father Hubert Barbier. In spite of the destruction wrought by the second civil war (1983–2005), the work continued against the backdrop of an international awareness-raising campaign led by Father Barbier in France.
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Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria
Ebenezer Obadare examines the overriding impact of Nigerian Pentecostal pastors on their churches, and how they have shaped the dynamics of state-society relations during Nigeria's Fourth Republic. (...)In contrast to rapidly eroding pastoral authority in the West, pastoral authority is increasing in Nigeria. This engaging book will appeal to those who want to understand the far-reaching political and social implications of religious movements―especially Christian charismatic and evangelical movements―in contemporary African societies.
A Book to read ! Link (Notre Dame University Press, 2022)
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Religion and Francophonie (French speaking world)
A GSRL program led by Pascal Bourdeaux and Sebastien Fath (GSRL) 321 million people worldwide are able to express themselves in French (OIF data 2023).
From a social sciences perspective, these French-speaking spaces lead us to think differently about religious interaction and dynamics. The French-speaking global framework (including Africa, Americas, Asia, Carribean isles, Pacific islands....) invites to reshape analysis beyond a hexagonal prism (French-centered) that remained hegemonic for long.
Deploying the analysis of religion in society in this French-speaking and postcolonial space-time, such is the purpose of this program “Religion and Francophonie (French-speaking world)”.
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MISTIC, a research program to discover
This blog gathers information related to the MISTIC research program (Migrations of religious specialists and transnational construction of competence) financed by the French Collaborative Institute on Migrations (CNRS).This research program focuses on the migration and transnational circulation of religious specialists of various faiths.
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Studies in World Christianity, 9.2
This issue of Studies in World Christianity includes a look at some of the papers from the 2022 Yale–Edinburgh Conference on ‘World Christianity: Legacy and the State of the Field’.- Kyama Mugambi, ‘The Gospel beyond the West: The Sanneh–Walls Legacy and Emerging Conversation Partners in World Christianity Studies’
- Jackie Jia Chyi Hwang, ‘Longing for Belonging: Forwarding Andrew Walls’ Thoughts on Migration and Mission through an Ethnographic Study on Diasporic Chinese in Singapore’s Christian Communities’
- John Sampson, ‘Unearthing Treasure in Clay Jars: T. C. Chao and the Formation of Chinese Dogmatic Theology
Together, these articles very much pay tribute to the pioneering work of Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh and the Yale–Edinburgh Group. But they also demonstrate the ways in which the ideas which gave birth to the field of World Christianity have been generative across a multiplicity of disciplines to open up new ways of understanding Christianity.
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Africa: towards the World's biggest megalopolis
According to a vast global study published in The Guardian,
"By 2100, the Lagos- Abidjan stretch is projected to be the largest zone of continuous, dense habitation on earth, with something in the order of half a billion people".
Among these people living in the World's biggest megalopolis, millions and millions of young French-speaking African citizens impacted by post-colonial Christianity and revivalism....in a context of massive Global warming, which is directly threatening the megalopolis, boosting people to leave.
Cf. Howard W. French, "Megalopolis: how coastal west Africa will shape the coming century"
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Nigerian Gospel and "“Singing in Tongues”
The Nigerian gospel music industry has over the years witnessed the emergence of many artistic, cultural and philosophical movements. One of these movements is the “singing-in-tongues” paradigm, particularly endorsed by the new generation of Pentecostal hip-hop musicians, many of whom seem bent on redefining the boundaries of Nigerian gospel music. Although remarkable, the singing-in-tongues paradigm (as deployed by Nigerian artistes) has remained understudied or virtually non-theorized by scholars. This paper seeks to fill this apparent gap in knowledge by exploring the singing-in-tongues concept in the light of two philosophical/religious currents, namely esotericism and postmodernism. What has been the place of the singing-in-tongues paradigm in the evolution of the Nigerian gospel music industry?
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Discover the French Collaborative Institute on Migration
As I've just been honored to be accepted as a fellow at the French Collaborative Institute on Migration, let's put some light on this great research structure.
There are ten « Convergence Institutes » (collaborative institutes) in France that were created in 2016 and 2017 on behalf of an international jury leading the 2nd Programme des Investissements d’Avenir.
The goal is to gather scientific research by gathering 600 researchers from various institutions to combine disciplines and create an original training program. The French Collaborative Institute on Migration (CI Migration) is the only program that brings together social sciences, human sciences and health sciences.
Within the CI Migration, 5 specialised thematic departments and a department dedicated to the academic course (Master’s Degree on Migrations) have been established.
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Healing and Power in Ghana
African Initiated Churches are not always chronologically postcolonial. Many of them started during the colonization process, and encountered the hostility of the colonizers. This is the case of the oldest Ghanean African Initiated Church, which has been studied by Paul Grant in this remarkable book published in 2020 (Baylor University Press).In nineteenth-century Ghana, regional warfare rooted in profound social and economic transformations led thousands of displaced people to seek refuge in the small mountain kingdom of Akuapem. There they encountered missionaries from Germany whose message of sin and forgiveness struck many of these newcomers as irrelevant to their needs. However, together with Akuapem's natives, these newcomers began reformulating Christianity as a ritual tool for social and physical healing, as well as power, in a dangerous spiritual and human world. The result was Ghana's oldest African-initiated variant of Christianity: a homegrown expression of unbroken moral, political, and religious priorities.
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Imaginer la libération, des femmes noires face à l'Empire
Good news! Annette Joseph-Gabriel's landmark book entitled Reimagining Liberation: how Black women transformed citizenship in the French Empire, (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2019, 262 p) has now been translated in French. And will be available as soon as the beginning of May, 2023. -
Charismatic Healers in Contemporary Africa
Congratulations to Sandra Fancello (Anthology Editor), Alessandro Gusman (Anthology Editor)for this remarkable book.Based on ethnographic studies conducted in several African countries, this volume analyses the phenomenon of deliverance – which is promoted both in charismatic churches and in Islam as a weapon against witchcraft – in order to clarify the political dimensions of spiritual warfare in contemporary African societies. Deliverance from evil is part and parcel of the contemporary discourse on the struggle against witchcraft in most African contexts. However, contributors show how its importance extends beyond this, highlighting a pluralism of approaches to deliverance in geographically distant religious movements, which coexist in Africa. Against this background, the book reflects on the responsibilities of Pentecostal deliverance politics within the condition of 'epistemic anxiety' of contemporary African societies – to shed light on complex relational dimensions in which individual deliverance is part of a wider social and spiritual struggle.
Spanning across the study of religion, healing and politics, this book contributes to ongoing debates about witchcraft and deliverance in Africa.
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Prosperity Gospel in Africa
Marius Nel holds the research chair regarding Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.In this scholarly book, written from a pentecostal perspective, the author provides useful insights about the African roots of Prosperity Gospel, which till recently has been far too much related only to US influence.
"Africans' prevailing interest in the prosperity gospel is not only connected to the influence of American prosperity teachers reaching a worldwide audience through their imaginative use of the media, but is also related to the African worldview and African traditional religion, and its lasting influence on contemporary Africans and the way they think about prosperity, as well as their interest in prosperity in post-colonial Africa".
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Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa
How hard it is to grasp the whole picture of a continent !This scholarly book about Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa provides a good example of success.
Published in 2017, this comprehensive reference volume covers every country in Sub-Saharan Africa, offering reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners.
It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes and examines current trends.
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Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920)
Edited by Janet Wootton, "Women in Christianity in the Age of Empire (1800-1920)" offers a broad view of the nineteenth century as a time of dramatic change, particularly for women, critiqued in the light of postcolonial theory.This edited volume includes important contributions from academics in the field.
Overarching themes include the cult of domesticity, the changing impact of Christianity on views of women's nature in an age of scientific thinking, conflation of 'gospel' and 'civilization' in global mission, and the exclusion of women from public spheres of life."
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Exorcizing the Spirit of Protestantism (Ethiopia)
Diego Maria Malara's fascinating article discusses the exorcism of Protestant spirits from Ethiopian Orthodox hosts in Addis Ababa.This controversial ritual is animated by injunctions to draw essential distinctions and boundaries between Protestantism and Orthodoxy, at a time of religious liberalisation. The expulsion of Protestant spirits provides an occasion to reaffirm the centrality of local Orthodoxy to Ethiopian identity,... but at what cost ?
Read here (link)
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New French-speaking role models for Christian Africa ?
Based in Accra (Ghana) Pastor Dag Heward-Mills is one of the most prominent postcolonial Evangelical leader in West Africa. Here below (link) he's advertised in Ivory Coast.Less knowed is the fact that French-speaking West Africa is experiencing, over the last 25 years, a major Evangelical/Pentecostal revival, creating new French-speaking role models for Christian Africa.To know more, click below to discover this Field Album (pics done during a 8 days stay in Abidjan, Ivory Coast). -
Harrist Church : still vibrant in Ivory Coast today
"Prophet Harris, The 'Black Elijah' of West Africa" (David Shank, Brill, 1994, 346p) offers the only comprehensive study of the thought of William Wade Harris, the Glebo (Liberia) loyalist whose prophetic mission from 1910-29 moved tens of thousands of West Africans out of traditional religion into the stream of Christianity and modernization, particularly in the Ivory Coast.
It reviews that unparalleled breakthrough, thoroughly examines traditional African, Western missionary and colonial influences which helped determine religious innovation and shape his vocation as prophet of Christ's reign of peace and prosperity." (link). -
Christianity in Ivory Coast: read Bony Guiblehon
As I'm getting ready to go to Ivory Coast for field research, let's thank Professor Bony Guiblehon (Bouaké University / IMAF) for this very good piece of research (among many others): Guiblehon, B. “LES JEUNES ET LE MARCHÉ DE LA SPIRITUALITÉ PENTECÔTISTE EN CÔTE D’IVOIRE”. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, Vol. 8, no. 24, Oct. 2012 (link)
The main objective of this paper is to question the Pentecostal spirituality market filled by a generation of young pastors who position themselves in the Ivorian religious audience. Indeed, the market of spirituality arose in the 1990s in the context of socio-economic crises, political and religious freedom, showing a new generation of self-proclaimed servants, "pastors", "bishops", "doctors" , "apostles", "prophets" ... in the Pentecostal movement. These young people perceive spirituality as an opportunity for self-recognition, social dignity and professional integration. To reach their goal, they put on the religious market products such as theology of prosperity and healing, they are involved in communication enterprise, take care of their style ( look) and leadership to meet the social and spiritual expectations of people experiencing the anguish of life pressure. Mobilizing social marketing strategy they capture potential believers and financial resources that could contribute to their personal success
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A separate Canaan
Why so many postcolonial churches today? One reason may be that the "universalism of the Gospel" taught by Europeans did not always translate/lead into a redefinition of social, economic, status boundaries.Result: enslaved or colonized people remained both "connected and separated by the Christian faith".
A "separate Canaan"....
Without challenging systemic injustice and economic exploitation.
To bring light on this issue from a Colonial North-American perspective, let's remind this brilliant book published in 1998 by John Sensbach:
"Based on German church documents, including dozens of rare biographies of black Moravians, A Separate Canaan is the first full-length study of contact between people of German and African descent in early America. Exploring the fluidity of race in Revolutionary era America, it highlights the struggle of African Americans to secure their fragile place in a culture unwilling to give them full human rights. In the early nineteenth century, white Moravians forsook their spiritual inclusiveness, installing blacks in a separate church. Just as white Americans throughout the new republic rejected African American equality, the Moravian story illustrates the power of slavery and race to overwhelm other ideals".
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Honorary doctorate for Leonora Miano and Denis Mukwege
Warmest congratulations to Dr Coyault, dean of the Protestant Faculty of Brussels and director of the CARES (a research center already presented in this blog) and to his team.The conference about Afropean condition organized in Brussels on the 19th and 20th of october 2022 has been a tremendous success.
Among the guests, Dr Denis Mukwege, Peace Nobel Prize 2018, and outstanding writer Leonora Miano.
Both received an honorary doctorate. Both gave very powerful speeches.
It was such an honor to attend !
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Prayer and the Political Praxis of Spiritual Warfare in Nigeria
Combining religious studies with ethnography, Powerful Devices (forthcoming) explores Nigerian Pentecostals and US Evangelicals’ praxis of transnational spiritual warfare.By closely studying spiritual warfare prayers as a “device,” Powerful Devices shows how the rituals of prayer enable an apprehension of time, paradigms of self-enhancement, and the subversion of politics and authority.
Abimbola Adunni Adelakun explores charismatic Christianity’s relationship to science and secular authority, technology and temporality, neoliberalism, and reactionary ideology.
