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? 

Link

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.

Link

The white church as a racialized organization (W.E.B Du Bois)

The so-called "Black Church" is often described and analyzed within the US context. But what about the White church?

Let's thank Damon Mayrl for his very stimulating article released in Sociology of Religion this spring (vol 84, issue 1, sprin 2023). Its title is: 

The Funk of White Souls: Toward a Du Boisian Theory of the White Church

Link

World Vision: God's Internationalists

As the amount of research on Christian Nationalism is growing rapidly (for good reasons), let's not forget that Evangelicalism per se can't be simply coined as a whole as "nationalist". A very robust internationalist and transnational trend can be noticed all over its contemporary history, including on the US ground.

Time to remind readers of this highly valuable piece of research published by David P. King in 2019 on one of the World's biggest humanitarian NGO today : World Vision.

"Chronicling the evolution of World Vision's practices, theology, rhetoric, and organizational structure, King demonstrates how the organization rearticulated and retained its Christian identity even as it expanded beyond a narrow American evangelical subculture". 

Link

Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

"You can cage the singer but not the song"

Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

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.

Link

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.

"Black women living in the French empire played a key role in the decolonial movements of the mid-twentieth century. Thinkers and activists, these women lived lives of commitment and risk that landed them in war zones and concentration camps and saw them declared enemies of the state. Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel mines published writings and untapped archives to reveal the anticolonialist endeavors of seven women. Though often overlooked today, Suzanne Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Eugénie Éboué-Tell, Jane Vialle, Andrée Blouin, Aoua Kéita, and Eslanda Robeson took part in a forceful transnational movement. Their activism and thought challenged France's imperial system by shaping forms of citizenship that encouraged multiple cultural and racial identities. Expanding the possibilities of belonging beyond national and even Francophone borders, these women imagined new pan-African and pan-Caribbean identities informed by black feminist intellectual frameworks and practices. The visions they articulated also shifted the idea of citizenship itself, replacing a single form of collective identity and political participation with an expansive plurality of forms of belonging".

Link

White US Evangelicals and Politics: a documentary to watch

From the Cold War to the present day, the rise of white Evangelical Christianity in America has brought religion clearly into the public sphere. A must-watch: this three-part documentary (from ARTE Channel) on how the politico-religious machine of US white evangelicalism is determined to reshape USA.... and the world (with the participation of the sociologist Philippe Gonzalez).

9% of the French population today are Christian, but not Catholic

According to the French national institute for statistical and economic studies (INSEE), in 2019‑2020, 51% of the population aged 18 to 59 in metropolitan France declared that they had no religion.

On the increase over the past ten years, this religious disaffiliation concerns 58% of people without immigrant ancestry, 19% of immigrants who arrived after 16 years of age and 26% of descendants of two immigrant parents. If Catholicism remains the first religion (29% of the population declares itself Catholic), Islam is declared by a growing number of faithful (10%) and confirms its place as the second religion in France. The number of people declaring another Christian religion also increases, reaching 9%.

The whole study is available here (link)

Disaffiliation within Canadian Evangelical communities

Evangelical Protestantism is often studied from the angle of proselytizing and conversion dynamics.

Research on departures and defectors from Evangelicalism are much rarer. For example, Canadian evangelical communities have not received much attention in recent years regarding disaffiliation, even though this phenomenon exists throughout Canada and most notably in the Quebec province.

This excellent article (written in french) from Benjamin Gagné sheds very useful analytical light on theses processes.

 

Available in full text here (Studies in Religion)

Evangelicals and Electoral Politics in Latin America

For a deeper understanding of the various ways through which Evangelicals get involved in Politics in Latin America, this new book from Prof. Taylor Boas (Boston University) is a must-read:

"Why are religious minorities well represented and politically influential in some democracies but not others? Focusing on evangelical Christians in Latin America, this book argues that religious minorities seek and gain electoral representation when they face significant threats to their material interests and worldview, and when their community is not internally divided by cross-cutting cleavages. Differences in Latin American evangelicals' political ambitions emerged as a result of two critical junctures: episodes of secular reform in the early twentieth century and the rise of sexuality politics at the turn of the twenty-first.

In Brazil, significant threats at both junctures prompted extensive electoral mobilization; in Chile, minimal threats meant that mobilization lagged. In Peru, where major cleavages divide both evangelicals and broader society, threats prompt less electoral mobilization than otherwise expected. The multi-method argument leverages interviews, content analysis, survey experiments, ecological analysis, and secondary case studies of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala."

Link

(Un)believing in modern society

Professor at Lausanne University (Switzerland), Jörg Stolz was invited today for the GSRL monthly seminar.

He spoke about the secularization process from an international perspective.

An occasion to remind that he was among the editors of this important book:

Stolz, J., Könemann, J., Schneuwly Purdie, M., Englberger, T. and Krüggeler, M. (2016). (Un)Believing in modern society. Religion, spirituality, and religious-secular competition. London: Routledge.

Lien

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.

Link to the publisher

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".

 

Link.

Christian nationalism : PRRI 2023 survey

According to the PRRI, "The rising influence of Christian nationalism in some segments of American politics" may pose "a major threat to the health of our democracy. Increasingly, the major battle lines of the culture war are being drawn between a right animated by a Christian nationalist worldview and Americans who embrace the country’s growing racial and religious diversity".

To check this PRRI survey about Christian Nationalism (2023), click here

 

Secularism in Comparative Perspective

Edited by Jonathan Laurence, this new book on Secularism in Comparative perspective

• Brings new texts on the critical issue of Secularism in comparative political contexts

• Includes many non-Western experiences and viewpoints on how secularism is theorized and lived

• Featuring the writing of preeminent scholars – such as Michael Walzer, Asma Afsaruddin, Sudipta Kaviraj AND Carol Ferrara, who wrote an essay on France, which provides a thorough history of the 1789 French Revolution, Church-state relations, colonialism, and education, and how the intersection of these elements with the evolution of French secularism led to modern-day laïcité

Link

'Fundamentalism and American Culture', third edition updated

'Fundamentalism and American Culture' (Marsden) has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.

In the twenty-first century, militantly conservative white evangelicals have become more prominent than ever in American life. Marsden's volume, which now takes the history through the end of the Trump administration, remains the essential starting point for understanding the degree to which that militancy has been shaped by the fundamentalist heritage of the twentieth century. 

To read more about this third and updated edition, click here (link)

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.

 

Link.

 

France : welcome to Campus Condorcet

Have you not heard  yet of the CAMPUS CONDORCET (France) ?

Time to catch up !

Apart from being my beautiful workplace, it is one of the world's biggest social science university campus.

"Campus Condorcet firmly believes that the exacting requirements of scientific excellence can be reconciled with social impact. It therefore intends to radically transform the approaches and practices used for research, training and innovation promotion in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) fields, as well as their interface with other sciences. This ambition for far-reaching change is on a par with the level of investment required to create a campus that will bring together an exceptionally large scientific community both by European and global standards (3500 researchers and 4600 doctoral students), in a dynamic region, and the many challenges that this entails". 

Link

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."

Link

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)

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).

Link

 

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 

(link)

GLOPENT, European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism

As Alexandre Antoine (EPHE-PSL) is going to defend tomorrow his PhD Thesis on the History of the Assemblies of God in France (1909-1968), it's time to highlight this stimulating European research network on Pentecostalism:

The European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GloPent) is an interdisciplinary academic networking initiative coordinated by experts on Pentecostal and Charismatic movements at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the University of Basel, the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge, the University of Heidelberg, SOAS University of London, and the University of Uppsala.

We are interested in:

• Networking active research about Pentecostal and Charismatic movements worldwide, with a special focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America
• Promoting scientific exchange through our conferences, our journal PentecoStudies, our mailing list, and our website
• Giving scholars a wider platform to introduce their work in Pentecostal Studies by providing bibliographies, papers, news, and links
• Providing academic information about global Pentecostalism to the European academia
• Providing study resources for the scholarly community, such as our dedicated GloPent Web Search Engine on Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements
• Facilitating discussion on theory and method in Pentecostal Studies
• Stimulating academic publications in Pentecostal Studies

Link

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".

Link

Asia and the secular

This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to attend the GSRL's monthly research seminar at Campus Condorcet.

We enjoyed a remarkable presentation of this book :

Asia and the Secular, Francophone Perspectives in a Global Age

• Edited by: Pascal Bourdeaux , Eddy Dufourmont , André Laliberté and Rémy Madinier

This volume looks at the secular state in the context of contemporary Asia and investigates whether there existed before modernity antecedents to the condition of secularity, understood as the differentiation of the sphere of the religious from other spheres of social life. The chapters presented in this book examine this issue in national contexts by looking at the historical formation of lexicons that defined the "secular", the "secular state," and "secularism". This approach requires paying attention to modern vernacular languages and their precedents in written traditions with often a very long tradition. This book presents three interpretive frameworks: multiple modernities, variety of secularisms, and typologies of post-colonial secular states.

Link

Protestantism in Spain: tribute to Frances Luttikhuizen

As Protestantism (mainly Evangelical/Pentecostal) is growing in Spain, let's not forget Frances Luttikhuizen, an English Philology lecturer, writer, and researcher of Protestantism, who passed away in Barcelona this last summer 2022.

Her main fields of interest included the history of translation, linguistic awareness, Cervantes' works, and the Spanish Reformation.

Among Luttikhuizen’s most important works is the book España y la Reforma Protestante (Spain and the Protestant Reformation, 2018, 468p (link), of which Spanish theologian José Moreno Berrocal has said it is “a work that represents a before and after in the studies of the Reformation in Spain (...).

There is a wealth of data and ideas that will make this book a constant and obligatory reference work”. 

Some reviews of this book are available, mostly in Spanish, including in this History of Philosophy publication (link)

Thank you Evangelical Focus for this obituary (link)

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 !

Link

The complexity of the French principle of Laïcité

Want to discover The groundbreaking volume published by Philippe Portier and Jean-Paul Willaime about religion and secularism in France ?

Reminder, Philippe Portier is Professor of History and Sociology of Secularism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France, and Jean-Paul Willaime is Emerite Professor of History and Sociology of Protestantism at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL, France. Both are outstanding scholars

Here are some points from the Chapter introduction (link)