The Liveliness of Pentecostal-Charismatic Popular Culture in Africa

For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV

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Pentecostalism in Africa

Presence and Impact of Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies

Edited by

Martin Lindhardt

LEIDEN | BOSTON


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Contents

List of Contributors vii

1 IntroductionPresence and Impact of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity

in Africa 1Martin Lindhardt

2 ‘‘Stretching out hands to God’’Origins and Development of Pentecostalism in Africa 54

Allan Heaton Anderson

3 wfp Burton and the Birth of Congolese Pentecostalism 75David J. Garrard

4 Pentecostalism and the Transformation of the African Christian Landscape 100

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu

5 Unity and Diversity within African PentecostalismComparison of the Christianities of Daniel Olukoya and David Oyedepo 115

Paul Gifford

6 “All Answers”On the phenomenal success of a Brazilian Pentecostal Charismatic Church in South Africa 136

Ilana van Wyk

7 Continuity, Change or Coevalness?Charismatic Christianity and Tradition in Contemporary Tanzania 163

Martin Lindhardt

8 Gender and Pentecostalism in Africa 191Jane Soothill

9 Pentecostalism, ‘Post- secularism,’ and the Politics of AffectIn Africa and Beyond 220

Jean Comaroff


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contents

10 Pentecostalism and Development in sub-Saharan Africa 248Ben Jones

11 Encoding Caesar’s Realm – Variants of Spiritual Warfare Politics in Africa 270

Andreas Heuser

12 Pentecostals and Politics in Nigeria and ZambiaAn Historical Perspective 291

Richard Burgess

13 Pentecostals and PoliticsRedefining Big Man Rule in Africa 322

John F. McCauley

14 The liveliness of Pentecostal/charismatic popular culture in Africa 345

Katrien Pype

Afterword 379William K. Kay

Index 383

For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004281875_015

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1 For pioneering work in the study of Africa’s popular culture see, among others, Barber (1987, 1997a, 1997b, 2009), Fabian (1998), and Newell (2002).

2 The conversation between Christianity and entertainment is not new, and the influence has gone in both directions. In various parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Christian churches have been foundational for the emergence of a secular leisure culture (Fabian 1990, Martin 1996, Tshimanga, 2001, Pype 2010).

chapter 14

The Liveliness of Pentecostal/Charismatic Popular Culture in Africa

Katrien Pype

In 1997, Karin Barber published Readings in African Popular Culture (1997a). This collection, which is considered the most important introduction to the study of cultural creativity on the continent,1 comprises chapters on dress, car-toons, theatre, music, movies and literature, all of which are analyzed through the lenses of modernity and globalization, and considered in their dialectical relationship to political cultures, gender dynamics, and dis/continuities with other fields of cultural creativity. None of the 22 chapters in the collection deal with religious popular culture. If Readings were to be updated today, it would probably include a number of chapters on Christian popular culture, since, as has been documented, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity reigns hege-monic in Africa’s public spheres (Anderson 1991, Corten and Marshall-Fratani 2001, Ellis and Ter Haar 2004, Gifford 1998, 2004, Hackett 1998, Laurent 2003, Lindhardt 2009, Marshall 2009, Maxwell 2006, Meyer 2004, Moore and Sanders 2001, Moyet 2005, Van De Kamp and Van Dijk 2010, Van Dijk 1998, 2000). This type of Christianity, which gained momentum on the African continent espe-cially after the late 1980s, has invaded the zone of entertainment, thus pulver-izing the analytical boundaries between popular culture and religion, or between leisure practices and expressions of faith.2 Many African Christians look to religious music or Christian radio stations to remain connected to divine messages during more “mundane” activities such as driving, cooking, or studying. Religious tracts, audiotapes and videos come from the United States, France, Germany, or are produced in Nigeria, South Africa, and elsewhere. Printed and audiovisual messages promoting the spread of Pentecostal/charis-matic Christianity circulate on the continent. These “media of the miraculous,” as Jean Comaroff (2008:11) calls them, are inherently related to the influence of


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American televangelists, yet, it is important to acknowledge that African art-ists and cultural entrepreneurs are also producing their own cultural forms, explaining the spiritual battle between Jesus and the devil, describing apt strategies for becoming (and remaining) a “good Christian,” and depicting mir-acles performed by Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders. These themes are represented on car stickers, pamphlets, songs, dances, films, radio and tv shows, websites and Internet chat groups, and other media genres. Apart from dominating the semiotics of African urban spaces, a whole Christian celebrity culture thrives in African communities (and in the diasporas), producing new public leaders, inspiring various media genres, and coloring the visual and sonic spaces of Africans’ life worlds, both locally and in diaspora settings. Gospel musicians like Machanic Joseph Manyeruke, Charles Charamba, Olivia Charamba and Shuvai Wutawunashe occupy the center of artistic production in Zimbabwe (Chitando 2002:49); and they are global celebrities whose music travels across transnational Pentecostal/charismatic communities. The Nigerian tb Joshua has become a household name in the Anglophone African Pentecostal community thanks to his tv station, globally available through sat-ellite technology, and via his website, which also allows for online interaction with the pastor and his staff anywhere a follower can connect to the internet. What are the particularities of this space of cultural expression? How can we make sense of this new realm of leadership and new opportunities for practic-ing the faith, which are so close to commercial entertainment and risk distract-ing the attention of the audiences away from the message (Meyer, 2006a:295)?

Defining Pentecostal/Charismatic Popular Culture

Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians have conquered African urban and transnational public spaces both physically and symbolically, even to the extent that one can discern a zone of “Pentecostal/charismatic popular cul-ture” (hereafter pcpc). This field of oral and written “texts,” or “utterance[s] (oral or written) that [are] woven together in order to attract attention and to outlast the moment,” as Barber (2007:107) defines “texts,” is more than a mirror of Pentecostal/charismatic Christians’ main beliefs. It occupies a central space within the evangelizing mission of Christian actors and in the production of Pentecostal and Charismatic selves.

pcpc then is a particular cultural space of creativity, persuasion, experi-ence, and world-making that is distinguishable from other kinds of popular culture through its own artistic, creative and genre features. We could define “Pentecostal/charismatic popular culture” as a zone of cultural production and


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3 See Kidula (2013) for a detailed and historical analysis of the Christian soundscape in the Logooli cultural space. She indicates how gospel songs from American origins were already sung and translated in the first decades of the 20th century.

4 Zairian Catholic priests for example developed a Messe Zairoise, a liturgy that combined Roman Catholic styles with local ethnic rhythms, songs, and ambiance (Mpongo 1978).

creativity closely related to Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity in terms of content (as representation of charismatic Christian beliefs), and in terms of production and consumption (through sponsors, commissioners, trad-ers, and/or producers and performers), populated with its own celebrities, con-strued along its own themes and plotlines, and packaged according to its own particular styles, formats, and cultural genres.

The concept of “pcpc” thus refers to a wide range of cultural expressions, such as jokes, slogans, poems, novels, pamphlets, radio shows, television pro-grams, movies, dance forms, fashion, paintings, photography, and other tech-nologies of popular culture, which do the work of explaining Pentecostal/charismatic principles and beliefs, and where experience is translated into communicable expressions along the lines of these beliefs. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian leaders and believers are using these cultural “texts” to grow spiritually and to express their religious identity. Hence, these texts have been critical to the emergence and expansion of Christian communities.

While pcpc can be regarded as a rather new analytical space, as a cultural reality it is not that recent, however. Given the long history and the many phases of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity on the continent (see Anderson infra; Garrard infra), it is not surprising that pamphlets and religious songs for instance have circulated among African believers3 since the arrival of Pentecostal Christianity in Africa; or that pcpc shares some of its core features (such as openness towards other cultures, hybrid forms) with other strands of Christianity.4

What is new with the third wave of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity, however, is its public role in African societies and its dedicated mobilization of popular culture. This is a consequence of the combined effects of electronic globalization since the 1970s, economic deterioration since the early 1980s, and political changes, which affected many African societies in the 1990s. The pro-liferation of local print media with Pentecostal content has of course only been possible with the increased availability of advanced media technology, such as desktop publishing, video-recording, and nowadays digital communi-cation. But cultural globalization, with its uneven circulation of images, tech-nologies, money, and people (Appadurai 1996), also contributed to the increase of pcpc because of the intimacies shared between Pentecostal/charismatic


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Christianity and the era of what Arjun Appadurai (1996) calls “electronic glo-balization,” where the arts and the imagination have begun playing an unprec-edented role in daily life, offering people endless “possible scripts” through the constant flood of images and narratives from other worlds, distant and past. More than any other brand of Christianity, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity taps into the imagination of its (potential) followers. As a religion that claims to set people free from the restrictions of tradition, the past, and social class, Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders evidently favor popular culture as the ultimate space in which spiritual growth, financial success, and alternative worldviews can be presented, imagined, and acclaimed. Playing with the boundaries between fiction and reality; inserting special effects to visualize invisible actions; preferring melodrama as a cultural form; and copying aes-thetics from the world of advertising – that other dream-producing machine dominating public spaces (the media included) – Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian leaders emphasize that “with God, all is possible.” The electronic mass media thus play an important role in creating pcpc as a space where the alternative modernity of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity can best be imagined and experienced.

In addition, Pentecostals’ emphasis on personal fulfillment and God’s prom-ises for a prosperous future, together with the interpretation of political and economic turmoil as the outcome of devilish dealings, produced a message that appealed to the masses, and had a multiplicatory effect on the new pub-lics these Pentecostal/charismatic media addressed.

Economic hardship also pushed African pastors to produce their own texts and invest locally in the mass communication of their beliefs. When in the 1980s the economic crisis made it harder to continue importing books from abroad, the use of books authored by African pastors increased enormously (Kalu 2008:114). By the end of the 1980s, it even became “the mark of a success-ful pastor to publish books” (Ibid.). Since then, many ministries have set up their own publishing houses, producing books, posters and audiovisual texts. These media-outlets are usually sponsored by fellow Pentecostals, who prefer to “sow” financial capital in the evangelizing mission. More than any other Christian strand, Pentecostal Christianity can successfully mobilize its mem-bers to donate money to leaders and Pentecostal business entrepreneurs, which is not only invested in the construction of churches, the acquisition of fancy clothes and cars for the church leaders, but also in the Christian media business (e.g. de Witte 2011c:195).

Finally, with the weakening of autocratic powers in various African coun-tries and the deregulation of mass media in the 1990s, media entrepreneurs with all kinds of objectives – proselytization being only one of them – could



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5 Englund (2001:236) for example argued that the Malawian Pentecostal electronic media are incomparable with that of Nigeria and Ghana, as a result of the tight government control on media and more poverty.

suddenly have their own media outlets, thus amplifying the presence of Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders and their message even further.

The sphere of pcpc should be regarded as a “-scape,” in Appadurai’s sense (1996, 2010). This framing allows us to acknowledge (a) the variety of vernacu-lar expressions of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, which must con-stantly adapt to the new challenges that confront Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians; (b) the utterly global but uneven5 circulation of people, ideas, and forms set in motion by the Pentecostal/charismatic music and film industries, as well as internet activity. These in turn generate new centers of artistic pro-duction constituting new possibilities and novel grounds for interpreting self and other. And (c) the constant creativity of circuits and forms in and through which beliefs and religious practices can travel (e.g. testimonies, Biblical narra-tives, soap operas, irony, e-chat groups, hip hop, Christianized advertisement slogans, etc.). pcpc is thus not a bounded cultural space, although its artists, consumers, believers, and pastors do establish their own boundaries (see below). pcpc is an ever-adapting field of cultural expression that travels glob-ally among fellow believers, while also trying to reach out to non-believers. It is both global and local. Everywhere localized, Christian artists engage with local rhythms, sounds, and styles, even as their audiences appreciate, scrutinize, or, at times, even reject the cultural texts they propose; yet, these same religious producers and their audiences also turn these texts global again by contribut-ing to the circulation of cds, printed testimonies, evangelizing films and elec-tronic prayers along trans-local networks of trade, religion, kinship, and work (see Brennan 2012b, Pype 2013).

My definition of a cultural space as pcpc is furthermore informed by the conscious self-identification of many of its producers as being Pentecostal, or Charismatic musicians, singers, entrepreneurs, and the like. In many African cities, people also know which artists are Christians and which are not. Such a public identity not only influences the content of their artistic work, but it also orients artists’ lifestyles, the ways they present themselves in public, and the tastes and attitudes of their audiences. Fans have different expectations con-cerning the private and public behavior of their Christian celebrities than that of artists who do not present themselves publicly as Christians. Along with particular aesthetic and cultural forms, specific sets of norms and expectations are traded through the scape of pcpc.


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It is important to emphasize that this boundary-making work is performed within the field of popular culture itself; pastors, artists and their audiences all guard the boundaries, though in different ways. Pentecostal/charismatic Christians indeed advocate an explicit and firm distinction between “Christian” and “non-Christian” forms of popular culture. In order to elevate their public image, Pentecostal artists constantly distance themselves from protagonists in the secular popular culture, which they define as a “demonic” space, or “worldly popular culture,” and which they denounce as being “unchristian” and “danger-ous” for Christians’ souls. All of this is part of a politics of inclusion and exclu-sion at play within larger public spheres in African societies, where pcpc is embedded within an ongoing competition between cultural leaders for popu-larity, respect, and influence. pcpc artists attempt to increase their charisma and influence by mobilizing the moral capital deriving from their religious profile. Furthermore, when pcpc artists transgress these boundaries, e.g. by adopting fashion or dance steps from the “sinful” popular culture, their audi-ences react, calling on their artists to correct themselves. So, even if as scholars we tend to approach pcpc as an open-ended, ever unfolding domain of flows and interactions, African Christian producers and their audiences delineate this cultural zone of pcpc.

Yet, despite local concerns with drawing strong boundaries between a Christian popular culture and its Other (“secular” popular culture, or “Muslim” popular culture in in Nigeria, for instance), there is a great deal of crossover between the two cultural spaces in terms of style and rhythms. Just as Pentecostal pastors, in sermons and other discursive genres, explicitly and directly engage in dialogue (sometimes in rather aggressive ways) with other cultural worlds, pcpc cultural producers are also in constant conversation with other spheres of popular culture. Ugandan Pentecostals, for example, have adapted African-American hip-hop and rap music brought in by local secular musicians (Kasibante 2012:69). Erasing language about sex and drugs was one of pcpc’s main acts of appropriation of this genre. In Nigeria Charismatic Christian musicians adopted senwele, a style commonly under-stood as an Islamic rhythm (Brennan 2014, see below). Scholars have also observed the reverse direction of influence, from Pentecostal worlds to Muslim communication. Barber notes that in late 1990s Ibadan, in the sonic and visual competition over public space between Reformist Muslims and Born-Again Christians, Pentecostals set the pace while Muslims struggled to keep up and were often provoked into adopting Christian idioms or public communication techniques (Barber email communication May 2013, also see Larkin 2008b). It is thus important to acknowledge that the insulation of a Pentecostal/charis-matic zone within the overall field of popular culture is empirically meaningful



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and analytical fruitful, yet the overlaps and shared aesthetics compel us to study these two spaces of cultural creativity as dialogical: borrowing from each other, emulating styles and rhythms, and incorporating each other’s icons and images.

This chapter then is an initial attempt to bring together some of the exciting scholarly work carried out on various genres of African Pentecostal/charis-matic popular culture. My main argument is that pcpc is very much a “live” popular culture. The notion of a “live popular culture” gains its meaning when analyzing how the experience of immediacy is manipulated (see also Brennan 2012a,b). This experience of immediacy is brought about by the potential of new technologies, and is also thematized within Pentecostal discourse itself. A theological dimension within Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity charges the concept of “live” with particular connotations, which foreground the expe-rienced, the felt, the lived through, and the present (the here and now, the “at hand”). Within Pentecostal/charismatic discourse, the concepts of “live” or “living” suggest that certain persons, objects or events are empowered with the Holy Spirit, a spiritual entity that can awaken souls, and bring life, hope, good-ness and joy, and thus change one’s horizon of expectations and experiences. Its opposite, i.e. demonic or satanic words, images, and agents, brings “death” and destruction, conflict, despair, and quarrels. Playing with the idiom of “life,” many Pentecostal and charismatic churches are called “Church of the Living Word” or “the Living God.” As scholarship on the reception of Gospel cds and booklets in Nigeria and Zambia respectively has shown (Brennan 2010, Kirsch 2008), the Bible is a “living text,” and recorded music becomes “alive” when it touches the listener (see below). So, for many Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians, the boundary between the printed/recorded and the spoken is eas-ily transcended. The printed becomes animated. This idiom of “life” thus sig-nificantly shapes the intentions and experiences of Pentecostal and charismatic producers and consumers of popular texts. Such understandings of the possi-ble outcomes of popular culture render the distinction between the “dead letter” and “the spoken word,” or the “live performance” and the “recorded con-cert” relatively meaningless; they also emphasize Pentecostals’ continuous awareness of the reality of the spiritual battle – an invisible affair in which just about anyone is participating, whether he or she knows it or not.

My understanding of a “live pcpc” thus incorporates and goes beyond Johannes Fabian’s (1998:134) argument about African popular culture, that “it never ceases to speak with a live voice.” Indicating the closeness between popular culture and lived realities of Africans, or as he calls it “the principle of contemporaneity” (1998:134), for Fabian, the “live” idiom highlights popular culture as a privileged analytical space for understanding many aspects of


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contemporary life, i.e. sports, popular painting, radio broadcasts, and televised drama, that traditional anthropological approaches tended to ignore (1998: 138). Undoubtedly, a close analysis of protagonists, themes, and experiences within African pcpc is crucial to any understanding of contemporary African quotidian worlds and culture production.

In the following, I draw together three themes from research carried out by scholars working on African pcpc in order to show how it becomes “a live pop-ular culture,” and how Christian songs, performances, and recorded or printed texts are experienced as animating and/or animated. These themes are: (a) the role of pcpc in the transformation (sacralization) of African public spaces; (b) pcpc as a device for producing Christian subjects; and (c) Pentecostal/charis-matic aesthetics as symbolic technologies that give meaning to local and global worlds. All three render sounds and images “alive.” The spiritual battle is “pre-sented” in these sensual spaces, rendered as something to be felt, and made meaningful, with all the risks that acts of signification and presencing bring with them.

Inspiriting Africa’s Public Spaces

Observing daily life in many African towns, one can say that African Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians first and foremost attempt to occupy public space visu-ally and acoustically (Hackett 1998, Graetz 2011, 2014). According to Kalu (2010: 17), Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity has gained its “spatial importance because of its sounds.” Charismatic liturgy, in worship, music, and dance, are its most attractive features. In Lagos, the struggle for presence in public space is articulated in conflicts about sound (Brennan 2012a). Charismatic Christians use electronic amplifiers that allow their songs and sermons to travel beyond the walls of the church compound; they enter into confrontation with the Nigerian State, however, when they are forced to shut down their churches due to noise violations. Control over the acoustic is not confined to the experience of Lagotian Charismatic Christians. In Accra, sonic competition opposes Pentecostal believers to other religious communities such as Neo-Traditionalists and animistic spiritualists. Pentecostals do not respect ritual noise bans (30 days of silence), which have been installed to honour deities worshipped by the Ga ethnic group,6 claiming instead their right to freedom of worship and openly confronting the “Traditionalists.” This has led, between 1998 and 2002, to violent clashes, raided churches, wounded worshippers, and seized

6 The Ga are the founding people of Accra.



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instruments (de Witte 2008:690). Competition for dominance in the urban soundscape also happens in less violent ways, as pcpc carefully penetrates the spaces of urban hedonism, “seduction,” and “sin.” In Lome’s (Togo) nightclubs, for example, “church disco” (Piot 2010:53) is increasingly replacing “worldly dance music.”

These struggles over the soundscapes of contemporary African cities are attempts to resignify space, to imbue places with new symbolic meanings trumping the “old,” “traditional” sacred qualities of that space, and anchoring these within the ideology of the spiritual battle.

The Pentecostal colonization of public space occurs in the first instance in so-called “non-spaces” (non-lieux) (Mary 2008:373). These are places without history, identity, or sacredness such as abandoned warehouses, rooms in back-yards, or else collective spaces like football stadiums and markets. While we can mention economic factors as immediate reasons for this turn toward spaces devoid of firm symbolic meaning (it is cheaper or even free to organize mass events in these spaces), such choices also emphasize Pentecostals’ detachment from land and earth (Mary 2008). This de-territorial feature of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is the outcome of a global belief system, which continuously attempts to transcend local reality, and which claims not to be anchored within the material world. It also pushes Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian leaders toward cyberworlds, blurring the distinction between Religion Online and Online Religion. In an interesting comparative study on the Internet-based activities of Ghanaian Christian Churches, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (2007) observes a striking difference: while for mainline Christian Churches the Internet provides a space for communicating church-related information (hours of service, contact details etc.), Pentecostal/Charismatic Church groups allow people to submit prayer requests, chat with religious leaders and even participate in online streamed worship. Virtual worlds have become attractive “territory” for Pentecostal/charismatic Christians to practice their faith in ways that other religions often cannot due to material restraints.

Moving from Publics to Audiences and BackWhat the Pentecostal/charismatic evangelizers seek to bring about is precisely the engagement of the (not yet) believer with Christian songs, films, and other forms of pcpc. pcpc actively construes publics as anonymous groups of peo-ple, “urban masses” whose individual members have no choice but to engage with the Christian sounds spilling over church compound walls, and who are captivated by sweating and shouting pastors who preach on television screens or radio station recording studios. Warnings about the upcoming Apocalypse,


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printed on leaflets that circulate in various social circles, interpellate people who either accidentally or consciously glimpse at such documents; these texts might frighten the audiences or might appear exaggerated. Yet, these messages are ubiquitous, and can reach quasi-infinite publics through airwaves and small media.

This way of addressing anonymous publics, who are pcpc’s conversion tar-gets, is facilitated by the expansion of new media technologies, which only appeared in African public cultures during and through colonization. As Barber (2009) has pointed out the power of mass media, as a set of technolo-gies that address and appeal to Africans, is related to changes in the nature of sociality “precipitated by wage labour, urbanisation, literacy, the church, the school, dating back, in some parts of Africa, to the early nineteenth century” (Barber 2009:9). Two consequences in sociality that Barber (Ibid.) identifies are significant for our analysis of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christian invest-ment in mass media: first, the possibility of imagining audiences as “publics,” i.e. the idea of an anonymous readership or spectatorship; and second, the demise of social differentiation according to access to knowledge. Mass evan-gelization, or the public spread of religious messages, obviously can only be successful when it addresses publics, that is, an assemblage of anonymous indi-viduals, who all have equal access to religious information.

However, this is not to say that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian lead-ers only engage with anonymous publics. When observing Pentecostal/charis-matic forms of address during mass performances (whether mass-mediated or not), one can discern a constant movement between addressing members of an anonymous collectivity and an intimate audience, populated by individu-als, some of whom the preacher or emcee communicates with personally. Pastors, dubbers of evangelizing films, actors, and also Christian musicians, often mention individual people’s names or refer to events that occurred within the intimate circle of the church board. It is also very common to hear Christians stating that while watching a videoed sermon or a televised reli-gious performance, they felt that the evangelizer was speaking to them person-ally and directly. One of pcpc’s strengths is to give its spectators or listeners the impression that they are not part of an anonymous public, but rather members of a community intimately connected to the preacher.

The constant back and forth in the experience of belonging to a public and then also to a community, as well as the simultaneity of addressing anonymous publics and communities at once, occur both in mass-mediated and “live” church meetings, usually during moments of inspiration and improvisation. During such wild moments, often characterized by heavy sweating (and remov-ing the sweat with the obligatory handkerchief), shouting, breathlessness, and



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accelerated speech, the evangelizer often claims to have received a special message for a particular individual. At times a name is given, or a part of a per-sonal spiritual biography is revealed. Phrases such as “You, who had a quarrel with your mother just before coming to church,” or “The Holy Spirit just told me someone in the group is suffering from an unidentified illness. I will pray for you,” are often uttered while pointing to the amassed crowd or the camera. These “immediate addresses,” performed during a church sermon or during a televised prayer taking place in a tv studio, are oftentimes vague, and multiple individuals might perceive these revelations as designated for them personally. These utterances point at discursive strategies meant to persuade the greater “masses.” Individuals in the crowd, in the living room, or in the taxi, are given a sense of personal participation in the global spiritual battle, and are thus given a sense of being lifted above the larger, anonymous public. Unsurprisingly, the most skillful evangelizers are able to obscure the anonymising work of mass media.

Recent technological developments – social media in particular, but also religious call-in shows on radio and television – facilitate personal engage-ments with spiritual leaders. Interactivity, or immediate participation and the flow of information and power, is thus unsurprisingly one of the major features of Pentecostal/charismatic Christian aesthetics (see below).

A second change in sociality that Barber (2009:9) announces as having pro-vided an important feeding ground for the public relevance of mass mediated Pentecostal popular culture, is the emergence of new ideas about access to knowledge. Barber (2009) explains how “traditional” oral genres were pre-mised on the assumption that society is segmented, and that knowledge is by definition unequally distributed. As a consequence, the interpretation of texts requires knowledge of parallel, supplementary, oral traditions not contained within the texts themselves, and only known to certain people (Barber 2009:9). Print and electronic media then accelerated transformations in popular cul-ture towards more transparency, and introduced African audiences to popular texts that were now accessible to people not familiar with their authors, or with the events and protagonists they described. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, with its emphasis on unmediated communication with the numi-nous and its openness to youth and women, counters the secrecy and obscu-rity of so-called “traditional” religions, and thus taps into changes in sociality already underway in many African societies. In the field of visual arts, this has led to a “Pentecostalite style” (Meyer 2004), which is most apparent in evange-lizing films. Among its main features, Meyer (2004:101) mentions: an emphasis on vision and a voyeuristic indulgence in occult matters. Also special effects, depicting miracles and occult actions, are salient features within Pentecostal


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visual texts. These render visible what is normally only perceived by those with exceptional sight (pastors, witches and their aides). Visualizing the invisible in the genre of Pentecostal films and television serials thus allows for mass educa-tion on secret knowledge and tactics.

Christian Subjects as Participants

The influence of popular culture and in particular mass media on the expan-sion of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian churches should not be under-estimated. In a study of the Ano ni yo Church in Lagos, Vicki Brennan shows how growth has been facilitated by the insertion of a choir and the distribution of its recordings. As Brennan (2010) argues, “[the] use of recording technology and the subsequent distribution of the recording on cassette represented a new way of conceiving of evangelism. […] The recording was capable of circu-lating through networks created for the distribution of commercial music, potentially reaching new hearers.”

Indeed, when interviewing Pentecostal or Charismatic Christians about their “Awakening,” one often hears that their conversion to Pentecostal/charis-matic Christianity occurred after having watched a Gospel music video clip, having read a testimony of a born-again print on a pamphlet, or having lis-tened to a recorded sermon delivered by a Korean or American preacher. These moments of “Awakening” are often phrased in a very sensuous way: during those instances, they often report, the Holy Spirit has touched them.

This emphasis on emotions and affect (Csordas 1994, Poewe 1994) is, apart from its deterritorial nature (see above), another characteristic of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity that explicitly sets it apart from other Christian cur-rents. According to Meyer (2010:742), “[o]ne of the most salient features of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christian churches is their sensational appeal; they often operate via music and powerful oratory, through which born-again Christians are enabled to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit with and in their bodies, wherever they are, and to act on such feelings.”

Unsurprisingly, dance, the skillful manipulation of the body set to an acoustic background where rhythm and lyrics attune the performers’ souls to other worlds, is one of the most common forms of popular culture in Pentecostal/charismatic Christian meetings. Elsewhere, I wrote about Kinshasa’s dancing Pentecostals that “[t]hrough a bodily mediation, the soul makes contact with the divine, resulting in a kind of ‘embodied knowledge’ that is somatic and intuitive and informs about spiritual wisdom and moral behavior” (Pype 2006:313). For many Pentecostals and Charismatics, allowing



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7 One of the puzzles in contemporary Pentecostal studies is how and when the Pentecostal body becomes trained to receive divine messages. Believers can only acquire particular sensations when they have been taught how to experience and read sensations from the otherworldly (de Witte 2008, Lindhardt 2011, Robbins 2011), Popular culture outside the

the Holy Spirit to enter and feeling it in one’s body, are markers of being a “true Christian.”

Popular culture, whether “live” or recorded/printed, allows for the easy introduction of the Pentecostal/charismatic habitus among followers. In her study of music among Yoruba Christian Charismatics, Brennan (2012a,b:425–426) argues that “listening to recordings forms a disciplinary practice through which they train themselves exactly how to cultivate a particular feeling (one that draws on aesthetic values central to producing that feeling) and then discipline themselves in order to reproduce this feeling while singing.” Through Congolese evangelizing tv serials, Kinshasa’s tv spectators are instructed about apt and inapt feelings and emotional behavior. Apart from the signifi-cance of the melodramatic symbolic structure, also the visual broadcasting and the viewing experiences are significant. Indeed, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity has its own emotional regime (Reddy 1997), which has to compete with other emotional regimes within the same socio-cultural context (see Pype 2014). Popular culture is a significant “weapon” in this battle over the body. Through media shows and public performances in which Christian songs and melodramas take major roles, participants’ bodies are disciplined, molded, and interpreted according to Pentecostal/charismatic principles. Instructive genres such as sermons and films, as well as also other forms of expressive culture, explicitly give meaning to bodily sensations, which are also simultane-ously triggered through the reception of sound and images. Popular culture, with its various forms that explicitly focus on emotions, therefore, becomes a privileged site not only for transporting Pentecostal beliefs and principles but also for triggering experiences of the Divine, for healing (Pype 2006, 2012:149–151, 217–218), for conveying theosomatic knowledge (de Witte 2011a:506), and thus for actively producing “Christian subjects.”

Therefore, a phenomenological approach is helpful in unlocking the intersections of embodiment, popular culture, and religion (de Witte 2011a, Pype 2006, 2012) Such an analytical focus moves beyond the study of the repre-senting of the senses in preaching, sermons, religious music, songs, dance forms, and fiction, and indeed attempts to reconstruct the activation of “embodied knowledge” through popular culture. For many Pentecostal and Charismatic believers, Christian songs, music, dance, and fiction have become stock tools in the production of religious subjects.7 They heal, inspire, awaken,


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church compound and ritual moments during church gatherings are two significant spheres where these theosomatic instructions occur.

and empower singers, dancers, and their audiences, who usually sing and dance along with those performing on stage or in the radio and/or tv studio. Through popular culture, the body of the believer is made into a medium that connects to the power of the Holy Spirit. A closer relationship with the Holy Spirit is thus established.

The Visual and the AcousticPentecostal Christians emphasize the visual in their practices and in their visual culture. Church gatherings are often filmed; church members take pho-tographs of pastors preaching; evangelizing films and series contain special effects to represent miracles; and pastors are called “seers.” According to Meyer (2006b:439), this focus on vision follows Pentecostals’ opposition against “tra-ditional” religion, which asserts its rootedness in secrecy. During colonialism, missionary endeavors associated Christianity with light and public presence, while “traditional” religion was understood as hidden and wrapped in dark-ness. In contrast to “traditional” religion, where entry to the Real behind façades was restricted to distinguished priests, Protestantism – and its thriving offspring, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity – made it possible for all to acquire an understanding of what lay behind surface appearances. It is no sur-prise that one of the main spirits that Pentecostal leaders claim to possess is the “spirit of discernment.” This gift of being able to retrace the spiritual bonds of people and their actions, as well as the urge to expose “hidden,” “secret,” or “occult” dealings, connect well with the camera’s revelatory possibilities. This goal of exposure and revelation explains the central role of visual texts such as paintings, photographs, and films; just as pastors demystify witchcraft and its dealings in their sermons, Pentecostal films thematize occult workings in their dramatizations, and offer the possibility of visualization through special effects.

It is no coincidence that blindness often features in Pentecostals’ popular culture (in particular in Ghanaian films and Kinshasa’s tv serials). Visual impairment is depicted as an affliction with a highly symbolic meaning drawn from the visible-invisible axis that dominates local beliefs with regard to reality, personal well-being, and social balance. Blindness is a very strong metaphor that articulates possession, and highlights the absence of a personal bond with the Holy. In a society that attributes supernatural powers to people who “see” more than others, blind people are considered to be devoid of knowledge, control, or agency. Healing only occurs when someone reveals the truth about



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his or her occult activities, or when prayers chase impure spirits out of the disabled body.

Sound, and in particular the sonic manifestation of divine inspired words, also occupies a central place in Pentecostal and Charismatic experiences of the numinous. For some, “hearing is stronger than reading” (as a Pentecostal told me, Pype 2012:163), thus explaining the centrality of Christian songs within the life worlds of African Pentecostals/Charismatics. For African Pentecostals and Charismatics, sounds and words have performative power: they can transform material reality. Music making, and especially singing, constitute important practices within African Pentecostal and Charismatic cults of worship at large, as these are considered the most efficient devices for diverting the soul away from material reality and directing it towards the Divine. The transition from the mundane to the spiritual occurs by means of Christian sounds, which allow the souls of individuals in the audience to move to another province of experience. Pentecostal and Charismatic producers of popular culture claim that through songs and music, they “prepare the minds” of believers to better receive divine blessings and knowledge. Brennan (2014:4) quotes the choir director of the Ano ni yo Church in Lagos: “The choir is there to draw the congregation into the presence of the Lord, and to prepare the mind of the congregation to receive the Lord’s blessings for the day.” A similar idea is expressed by Kinshasa’s evangelizing tv actors who frame episodes of their series with fragments of Christian music, “so that spectators who sing along with the opening scores open their soul to the Holy” (Pype 2012:162). This practice “enables them to view the story as a religious lesson or a sermon with-out running the risk of their soul being attacked.” (Ibid.)

The power of the word thus goes beyond the creation of a sense of commu-nitas (Turner 1969) because it makes sacred powers present. Ghanaian and Zambian ethnographies explain how inspirited discourse works from an emic perspective. Among Pentecostals in Accra, it is first and foremost the sonic manifestation of the “wind,” the “air” or the “breath” of the Holy Spirit that makes words uttered within a religious context powerful. “[The] physical, tactile, quality [of sound] makes the Spirit flow: the volume, tone and pitch of a preacher’s voice, a crowd of people uttering meaningless gibberish, the vibra-tions of the indecipherable shouting of a prophet on one’s eardrums, and the beat and melody of worship music” (de Witte 2008:700). Praying in tongues, crying, shouting and screaming are all sonic manifestations of the believer’s interaction with invisible powers, the divine, or the demonic.

Analyzing the public performances of preaching pastors and Bible readers in Zambia, Kirsch shows how the “auralization” of the Bible (the reading aloud of the written text, Kirsch 2008:145–154) has strong performative effects on


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audiences. Zambian Pentecostals make a distinction between “explaining or clarifying the Bible” (kupandulula) and “fulfilling the Bible” (kuzuzikizya). Sermons that fulfill the Bible thus “make the godly word happen.” This aural mediation settles “sediments of the spirit” within the listeners (Kirsch 2008). It is not the Holy Spirit in its totality that is being mediated, rather fragments of it are transported to listeners’ bodies, thereby reducing the possibility of other, evil, spirits entering, and also provoking an eagerness to hear more about the Bible and God, thus allowing for the gradual realization of sacred selves.

Given the emphasis on sound as a privileged channel for transferring Godly knowledge to human beings, it is no surprise that in Kinshasa’s Pentecostal melodramas, deafness and mutism (just like blindness, see above) are assumed to be the result of witchcraft. Both afflictions are symptoms of bodies that are no longer open to the Holy; rather, vital body orifices such as the ears and the mouth have been “blocked” by demons and the devil, thus preventing the indi-vidual from being fed by sacred sounds, knowledge, and powers (Pype 2008).

TouchBecause of their easy correlation with cultural forms such as film, songs, and dances, the visual and the acoustic have received the most attention in schol-arship on African pcpc. The sense most exploited by Pentecostals however is touch. “Being touched by the Spirit” is a common metaphor for how the invisi-ble or the Holy penetrates into material reality, in particular the believer’s body. Believers fall down or shake upon reception of the power of God, and perceive listening as a bodily practice. Sounds which are able to touch, and thus to mediate between the material and the immaterial, are received as “haptic sounds” (de Witte 2011a). Vision can be haptic as well. Divine touch can be mediated by the act of watching. Larkin (2008a:190) for instance writes that Nigerian melodramas provoke disgust and revulsion. “These are genres designed to generate physical effects. Like the Holy Spirit, they come in to take over your body.” Even though visuality occupies center stage in Pentecostal discourse, the latter is still dominated by touch. To that extent, the concept of “haptic visuality” has proven very fruitful. Pentecostals strongly engage in image production, in which sensational experiences are triggered. Through an aesthetics of pain and terror, Nigerian and Ghanaian Pentecostal films (Meyer 2010), and Kinshasa’s evangelizing teleserials trigger a haptic visual mode (Pype 2012:160).

Analysis of haptic sounds and images shows that for most Pentecostals and Charismatics, popular culture is more than a representative space of their beliefs. Rather, because spiritual entities are transferred onto audiences, pcpc is itself a space of spiritual battle and a “weapon” within occult warfare.



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Both Holy Spirit and evil powers are assumed to be transported by sounds and images, whether or not these are electronically mediated. As a result, songs, serials, or dvds and the like, might become fetish-like objects, evoking other worlds, bringing invisible powers into the hic et nunc, and both conquering audiences and being apt to be conquered by them. The Christianization of popular culture is then a “calculated attempt” to render popular culture “safe for consumption by born-again Christians” (Hackett 1998:258). Modern media are indeed “deemed an acceptable weapon for God’s army in the battle against Satan” (Ibid.). According to Zimbabwean Pentecostals, they “need to defeat the devil by using his own weapons” (Togarasei 2012:268). Popular culture, pcpc included, is considered to be very much “alive,” because it is perceived to be animated by numinous forces (Pype 2012:163).

InteractivityInteractivity with listeners of radio programs, spectators of tv shows, or online genres can be perceived as a political strategies, to obtain “a firm integration in local religious life” (Graetz 2014:64) and thus to compete with other religious actors. In Benin, the protestant broadcaster Radio Marantha employs call-in formats, encourages the creation of listeners’ associations and organizes open days during which listeners can visit the radio stations and experience the technology behind the broadcaster (Graetz 2014).

The desire of Pentecostal media actors to incite interactions between producers and publics/audiences, or at least the illusion thereof, can also be explained by the urgency of the spiritual battle that Pentecostals and Charismatics claim to be fighting. Live call-in television or radio shows and Internet prayers are media genres in which Pentecostal/charismatic leaders invest much time and effort. These formats are performative in that they allow for immediate participation in the so-called spiritual battle.

The urgency and necessity of immediacy impose certain aesthetic princi-ples. During healing radio and tv shows in Kinshasa, for example, callers first identify themselves with their names and the city in which they are living. They then describe their affliction or precarious situation. The healer, seated in the radio or tv studio, repeats the caller’s message and addresses the caller and anyone who is confronted with the same problems. This is followed by prayers whose efficacy impacts on the viewers or listeners (Pype 2012:249–251). Here, again, we encounter the complex interplay of Pentecostal/Charismatic communication: connecting with masses on the one hand, but addressing individuals on the other. The orientation is different compared to the pastors’ discourse as mentioned above, where people feel personally preached to within a context of mass communication. Here, by contrast, the public


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articulations of personal narratives of suffering, and public performances of healing interventions carried out through evangelizers and initially intended to bring relief or change within the soul of the individual callers or visitors, are moments of collective healing. By inviting audience members who are suf-fering from the same afflictions to perform the same actions as the initiator of the healing session in the radio or tv studio, the religious media practitioner transforms a highly individual ritual into one effective for a larger group of individuals, who are only connected in the virtual world by the idea that there are numerous others who share the same difficulties, that these others are sim-ilarly convinced that the Holy Spirit has the power to change this condition, and that this power can be transmitted through the audiovisual media.

Internet communication allows for another kind of immediate participa-tion in the Numinous. Asamoah-Gyadu (2007:233) describes a feature on the website of the International Central Gospel Church (icgc). Certain phrases pop up intermittently and once a visitor clicks on one, he or she receives a mes-sage saying “here is good news for you.” The “good news” refers to the Gospel. On the same site, a picture of a nicely wrapped box is shown, suggesting a parcel. “That parcel, once you click on it, takes you through the basic steps to become a Born Again Christian. There are six steps that lead you on to the gift as you click. These steps emphasize: faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, awareness of humankind’s separation from God and belief in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. This demands a prayer of confession and invitation.” (Ibid.) Finally, a picture of the pastor Mensa Otabil appears, welcoming the visitor into the Christian family. Also by that time, the visitor to the website has consciously accepted Christ as his/her personal Savior, and has registered as a member of the International Central Gospel Church (icgc), receiving “directions to the assembly closest to your place of abode” (Ibid.) Such e-aesthetics, which share a genealogy with video games and commercial websites, are immersed in the charismatic sense of the “immediate.”

Ruptures?Popular culture, a zone that, in the mindset of many people, is different from the banal, quotidian, and the ritualistic sphere, allows for punctuated experi-ences, not unlike the flashes of divine touch. Being absorbed by a Christian song or film thus produces the Christian self, enacts “the break with the past” (Meyer 1998).8 During moments of embodied reception of the Divine, the city of God is being actualized (Csordas 2011, Lindhardt 2011). Songs, dance forms,

8 The idiom of rupture is pervasive in Pentecostal discourse. Yet, it remains a discursive strat-egy of gaining influence over individuals’ life worlds, and a complete “break with the past”



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is hardly ever totally accomplished. For a critique on the notions of “break” and “rupture” see Daswani (2011), Engelke (2010), Lindhardt (2009, 2010, this volume), Mary (2008), and Pype (2011).

audiovisual and electronic media formats, and objects (dvds, photographs, etc.) thus have the potential to transform the individual’s body into a sacred object in touch with the Holy and capable of realizing God’s Kingdom, even if only for the moment of the song, the serial, the chat conversation, or the read-ing of a text message containing a Bible verse. This does not mean, however, that the experience of the Numinous is reserved for the moment in which one reads, sings, or engages spiritually with the Otherworldly. As Turner has indi-cated, liminal experiences always bring about a change (in Turner’s terms, a solution to a crisis), a new social being. This idea is also expressed by Pentecostal and Charismatic believers who claim that the social effects of embodied engagements with Christian popular culture are enduring because while “being in the Spirit” believers have received spiritual knowledge and guidance, have been healed, and are able to experience a more lasting presence of the Divine in their personal lives.

The consequences of a Christian song or film can also be extended by confining one’s participation in popular culture to an exclusive Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity. By avoiding influences from non-Christian popular culture one can produce a rupture from the mundane and dangerous world in a more stringent way. Listening exclusively to Christian songs in the car, avoid-ing American films, and not going out to nightclubs where modern dance music is played, are actions that create a life world dominated by Biblical verses and Christian preaching, and exclusively inhabited by fellow Christians.

In order to guide Christians as they navigate among various songs and images available in their life worlds, Pentecostals and Charismatics construe an elaborate media pedagogy, making a distinction between “good” and “bad” images, songs, dances, and sounds. In Kinshasa, for example, followers are warned not to watch music video clips of urban rumba songs, Harry Potter films, or horror films, as these are identified as visual documents “born out of pacts with the devil” and are thus “unchristian” (Pype 2012:151–167). The conse-quences of this media pedagogy are far-reaching, since their attempts to control the sensual surroundings of believers change the everyday environ-ment of believers. This media pedagogy influences daily activities such as listening to radio shows, watching television, and consulting the Internet on smartphones or on other devices. At the same time, since most of these activi-ties are done within a social context (a person rarely watches television on his


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or her own in urban Africa; radio consumption usually happens in a group as well), they also impact the social environment.

Significantly, this Pentecostal/charismatic media pedagogy is not limited to audiovisual media. The Internet (Asamoah-Gyadu 2007, Hackett 2009) and cellular technology (Pype in preparation) are also inserted within the prosely-tizing agenda of Pentecostals. Christians pray in virtual chat groups (such as Black Berry Messenger Service); listen to sermons and Christian songs, and read the Bible on their smartphones. In Kinshasa, the mobile phone is more and more included in Pentecostal teachings about courting and marital relationships, or about how to manage sexual and romantic intimacy. These instructions are immediately linked to Pentecostal understandings of witchcraft and practices of healing. Just as audiovisual media can be used by the devil, it is argued, mobile phones too can become channels for witches and demons to “open the door” for bad spirits to enter and take hold of the mobile phone users’ souls. Kinshasa’s Pentecostal Pastors warn their followers about not accepting mobile phones or phone credits from just anyone, as these gifts bind benefactors and recipients via occult means. Similar warnings about the insertion of electronic communication technologies within spiritual warfare also occur elsewhere in Africa, as Englund’s narrative (2007) about the Devil’s phone number (000 000 000 0) in Malawi illustrates (see also Smith 2006, Bonhomme 2011). Therefore, some media users limit their social and cultural worlds to sounds, images, and words with Christian content. In Togo, for exam-ple, Pentecostal members refigure commodities in Christian ways: watching strictly Pentecostal programming on television, putting only religious songs on their iPods, and configuring cell phones with Christian visuals and messages (Piot 2010:960–961).

Remediations and Its Risks

Apart from simultaneously reaching out to publics and communities and appealing to the senses, cultural hybridity is another feature of pcpc. Nadeau-Bernatchez (2012:168–169), who studied Kinshasa’s religious music scene, writes how difficult it was to categorize the songs and music he heard in Kinshasa’s Pentecostal churches. In one and the same ceremony, he heard modified Catholic songs, Gospel songs, original compositions on a base line of rumba, seben, reggae, and makossa; as well as songs which began by emulating speaking in tongues, but which then moved towards an incomprehensible rap. Elsewhere in Africa, other musical genres are combined. The Deliverance Church of Kenya mixes “traditional gospel music with western and African



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music” (Parsitau and Mwaura 2010:15), leading to genres like gospel reggae, hip hop, and rap. Zimbabwean gospel music also blends various musical styles and instruments to communicate Christian themes. These include the mbira beat from a Shona musical instrument, sungura or museve (like an arrow, it pierces the heart) from Zimbabwean popular music, rap and hip hop from African American culture, reggae from the African-Caribbean culture, Congolese soukous and other forms (Chitando, 2002:14). These three different forms of hybridity in rhythm, language, and style reflect the heterogeneity of Pentecostal cultural production and are indicative of an intense engagement with cultural and symbolic influences from global and local worlds.

An analysis of stylistic and generic continuities and discontinuities within the zone of pcpc allows us to better situate vernacular expressions of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity, to unravel how Christian producers value and de-value local and global phenomena, and, most importantly, to understand the ways that Pentecostals and Charismatics symbolically produce difference, and how they arrive at the (illusion of) the cultural insulation I describe at the beginning of this chapter.

An interesting example of how vernacular Pentecostal variations on the preservation of local idioms seep into popular culture is the ways in which plotlines of Ghanaian witchcraft films and Kinshasa’s evangelizing teleserials identify sources of evil (Pype 2012). While Ghanaian Pentecostals seem more concerned with breaking from kin relations that are deeply anchored in lin-eage obligations and taboos, elders and urban hedonistic popular culture are the two main adversaries of Kinshasa’s Pentecostals. These concerns get trans-lated differently in the fictional timeframes of the spiritual battle. In Ghanaian and Nigerian films, occult bonds initiated by ancestors or great-grandparents, who might already be deceased, influence the experiences and realities of the fictional characters. In Kinshasa’s religious teleserials, on the other hand, the fictional reality ultimately goes back to the moment when the character was conceived, pregnancy, and birth, but not beyond. The maleficent practices of parents (especially mothers) and living grandparents shape the protagonists’ afflictions and misfortunes in the present. Kinshasa’s Pentecostals are thus closer to Malawian Pentecostals (Van Dijk 2000), with whom they share a focus on generational competition instead of an obsession with ancestors.

RemediationDespite the desire for cultural insulation, pcpc does not operate in a culturally isolated space; rather it interacts with other zones of cultural expression such as secular tv drama, storytelling, theater-for-development, “folkloric,” ethnic, and urban dance forms. It is also in dialogue with religious expressive forms


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from other Christian and non-Christian traditions, which in themselves might be extremely hybrid (very much like the urban environments in which they thrive).

To that extent, notions such as intertextuality (texts referring to other texts), entextualization (insertion of discourse in a new verbal context), cultural bor-rowing, appropriation, and “remediation” allow for detailed investigation of the ways in which Pentecostal/charismatic leaders and producers of popular cultural texts dialogue with “other” symbolic worlds. All these concepts draw attention to discursive and cultural interactions, to forms of agency, as well as to the kinds of “media” that are mobilized.

If we lift “remediation” from its initial meaning, as it was coined by Bolter and Grusin (1999) for whom remediation is the use of particular media (drama, songs, radio, photography, etc.) in new contexts, and give greater weight to intentionality, agency, and acts of transfer of meaning, we can then use the concept of “remediation” as an umbrella term that integrates practices of intertextuality, cultural borrowing, appropriation, and the circulation of content and form from one medium to another. Such an understanding of “remediation” allows us to think not only about the ways in which various cultural worlds “converse” with one another, but it also enables us to discover forms of continuity and discontinuity. The manner in which signs, rhythms and idioms are being “recycled,” and the new kinds of uses to which they are put, are not only important for the study of expressive forms of Christianity, but also reveal the political implications of pcpc. As Fabian (1998:3) reminds us, popular culture raises issues of power.

Intertextuality and entextualization are significant features of pcpc. Borrowing Biblical narratives and Pentecostal discursive rituals are among the first characteristic features of pcpc. The Bible is a central text in the preaching activities of pastors and constitutes the immediate source of inspiration for evangelizing artists and authors. In her analysis of self-help pamphlets for Nigerian and Ghanaian urbanites, Newell quotes the Nigerian scholar Matthews Ojo, who argues that “[t]he books are second in importance to the Bible, and some serve as commentaries or companions to the Bible” (Ojo in Newell 2005:300). Bible verses are shown on the screen corners of evan-gelizing melodramas as they are being broadcast in Kinshasa’s living rooms; and these verses are also often read out loud in onscreen conversations (Pype 2012). For many Pentecostal artists, their work supports Biblical teachings. Sometimes, pcpc even provokes behavior similar to being in church. In Kinshasa, I observed how spectators of evangelizing tv serials would take the Bible in their hands and read passages that were either evoked in tv drama dialogues or shown directly onscreen (Pype 2012:163).



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In addition to the Bible itself, Pentecostal ritual genres like confession and testimony also feed into popular culture. Evangelizing serials and films in the Ghanaian film industry and in Kinshasa evince many similarities to narratives about miracles, or about the workings of the devil, which all circu-late in church groups and via electronic forms. Confessions in particular are important turning points in the plots of Pentecostal Melodramas (Pype 2012); they are also often sources of inspiration for evangelizing fictional narratives (Pype 2012:56–57). This correlation between confessions and teleserials is not uncommon for African visual texts, as Meyer has noted a similar approach toward such products of popular culture in Ghana. “Although that visual product is not a direct confession, for the audience it amounts to one,” she writes (1995:251).

Yet non-Christian texts are also being entextualized in African pcpc. Christian pamphlets that are sold in urban communities in Accra and Lagos also quote from non-Biblical sources, local and international proverbs, and even Shakespeare and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, among others. The absorption of these non-Christian texts into religious discourse renders these words divine (Newell 2005:305–306). Kinshasa’s evangelizing television serials likewise borrow from ethnic tales and Nigerian witchcraft films. Ethnic-related songs and dances, as well as modern rumba dance forms appear in scenes of Kinshasa’s evangelizing teleserials, where witches and demons set the tune. Here, remediation follows the bifurcated ideology of Pente-costal thought: scenes and characters appear either on the “good” or on the “bad” side.

While an analytical focus on remediation enables us to embark on an analysis of the circulation, and thus continuity of forms and meanings, it also draws our attention to the ruptures, changes, and deep transformations that embedding signs and forms into other formats might entail. Protagonists of folkloric tales appear in Pentecostal narratives, though now with new mean-ings. Elsewhere (Pype 2010) I have analyzed evangelizing tv serials in terms of the longstanding figure of the trickster, a familiar protagonist in epic tales, myths and legends, whose instructive and entertaining power draws from its embodiment of both Good and Evil (see Hyde 1998, Pelton 1980, Radin 1972). With its strong Manichean logic, Pentecostalism cannot perpetuate the ambi-guity of the trickster. In Kinshasa’s evangelizing serials, trickster qualities are now distributed over three different characters: the pastor, the fool and the witch. Its protagonists are thus more trickster-like than actual tricksters. This distribution of Good and Evil across adversarial characters is the main characteristic of the Pentecostal Melodrama. Whereas in ethnic tales Good and Evil were embodied by one and the same character, thus serving to illustrate the


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duality of life and of the world at large, Christianity has thoroughly altered the ambivalence inherent in the persona of the tricksters (Pype 2010:131).

There are various explanations for the preservation of the cultural features of other symbolic worlds in Pentecostal/charismatic aesthetics. The first is located outside of the Christian world and is thus very “mundane.” Many Pentecostal/charismatic artists were already operating as artists before they converted. After conversion, these artists consciously or unconsciously per-petuate the styles with which they were familiar. In some cases, the move towards pcpc is the consequence of production or performance restrictions within the world of popular secular entertainment. Continuation of style and genre is here more likely. During the 1980s in Ghana (Shipley 2009:530), state taxes and government curfews established to curb moral “indiscipline” placed economic and political limitations on the production of popular culture. Some cultural producers moved to religious popular culture, using popular music and dance in worship and setting up gospel-highlife bands and theater groups. Also in Ghana, since the 1990s, Pentecostal/charismatic churches run commer-cial recording and editing studios and printing facilities, thereby drawing many artists who previously would have described themselves as “secular” into the sphere of Pentecostalism (Meyer 2004:96, Collins 2004).

Another explanation for this borrowing of cultural features can be found within Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity itself, where remediation is an intentional strategy within the evangelizing mission. Some have argued that Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity distinguishes itself from other forms of Christianity by its remarkable ability to adapt to the cultures into which it is introduced (Robbins 2004:118, Anderson, infra). According to Joel Robbins (2004:129), the preservation of indigenous spiritual ontologies and a continued ritual engagement with the spirits inhabiting these ontologies constitute the particularity of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity (see also Lindhardt, infra). Or, “[Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity] avails itself of locally mean-ingful idioms for talking about the past and about current social problems” (Robbins 2004:130). Karla Poewe (1994:17) even remarks that in many non-Western cultures, Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity only took off when theological indigenization took place. We can argue that it is exactly this openness to local meaningful worlds and Pentecostal concerns with local issues that construe different, vernacular, versions of Pentecostal Christianity and different styles of African pcpc. Addressing local issues in locally compre-hensible terms does not only mean integrating familiar idioms and figures into discursive and ritual forms, but also incorporating locally meaningful genres, musical rhythms, dance forms and protagonists of locally popular tales (legends, fictional narratives, films). Ghanaian Pentecostal filmmakers,



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therefore, combine slapstick humor, horror, action, and romance to cater to the expectations of as many social groups as possible (Meyer 2004:98). The seben, a musical rhythm, which is very popular in Kinshasa’s secular dance scene, was quickly incorporated into Kinshasa’s Pentecostal dance forms in order to attract non-converted Kinois (Pype 2006).

Insofar as Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity attempts to make sense of the life worlds of those it tries to convert, evangelizers integrate significant cultural forms in their proselytizing work. Persuasion occurs through the skill-ful re-signification of familiar images and sounds, not only in ideological and ritual practices but also in popular culture. Incorporating Biblical verses, folkloric songs and dances, proverbs, with clippings of (mostly foreign) films, the evangelizing actors give (positive or negative) value to the worlds that are conjured through these cultural expressions. Signs of “other worlds” are being interpreted through the lenses of apocalyptic battle and spiritual warfare, and through the gospels of health, wealth, and prosperity. These signs not only gain a new meaning, but they are immediately re-valued, approved, or dismissed. Remediation thus becomes a political act, even when performed in the zone of entertainment. The extraversion (Bayart, 2005[1996]) of pcpc, as manifested in the incorporation of “worldly elements,” and in the multiple overlaps with the secular popular culture, is not innocent; rather it is a strate-gic openness mobilized to gain more public influence and power among African publics.

The Risks of RemediationIntertextuality, entextualization and remediation are more than mere modes of representing a reality; rather, they are also forms of production. The cultural text, be it a song, a screenplay, or a dance form “does not depict or disclose existing social relations and subjectivities; rather it is part of the ‘technology’ by which they are produced” (Barber 2007: Kindle 1820–1823). Intertextual dia-logues thus do not simply remain within the (fictitious) space of entertain-ment, but also impact social worlds. For many African Pentecostals and Charismatics, the borrowing of cultural features of other, non-Christian, worlds brings along a range of risks. Among Nigerian Charismatic Christians, for example, the senwele style leads to confusion. As a genre that initially devel-oped in a primarily Islamic city by Muslim musicians drawing on Muslim genres such as waka songs sung to welcome returning Hajj pilgrims, senwele is highly contentious (Brennan 2014). Within the Nigerian Charismatic Christian imagination, Islamic traditions are perceived to be “worse” than so-called tra-ditional elements. In the Yoruba vernacular of Christian experience in urban Nigeria, “tradition” and “Islam” thus obtain different meanings, reflected in the


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ways that “Christian” characters in songs are being defended. Senwele is, as Brennan argues, a “promiscuous form.” Brennan draws on Larkin’s definition of promiscuity in public spheres, as something that happens “when one public takes the discursive forms used to constitute another public” (Larkin 2008b: 105). In the context of senwele, references to non-religious contexts of perfor-mance remain in order to “reinforce the difference between Christian and Muslim publics in Nigeria” (Brennan 2014).

Expressions of fear manifest uncertainties concerning authenticity or the perceived “Christian” identity or power of an artistic product. At times, audi-ences might be puzzled about whether really to “like” and find pleasure in a particular genre because it seems too hybrid. Brennan (2014) quotes one of her informants who was surprised about the pleasure a friend found in listening to senwele, asking “do you really like that?” The fear suggested in this question relates to the potential spiritual effects of the song on the listener’s soul. Similar anxieties have been documented in the space of Kinshasa’s evangelizing tv serials. When Kinshasa’s tv actors perform rumba dances, which are perceived by Pentecostals as being “unchristian” and mediating demonic powers, Christian actors and their audiences become concerned about their own spiri-tual safety (Pype 2012:145). Africa’s Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian art-ists and media producers thus are faced with critical audiences, who interpret the artistic performances in terms of the spiritual battle. Being too familiar with non-Pentecostal genres or displaying too much eagerness to incorporate tunes, lyrics, or rhythms from non-Christian worlds can seriously jeopardize the artists’ reputations. In particular, for artists with non-Christian episodes in their personal biographies, continuing to incorporate non-Pentecostal aes-thetics can also arouse suspicion about an artist’s “real” Christian identity. In Kinshasa, television actors are sometimes openly questioned about their morality, forcing them to have recourse to other platforms (talk shows on radio and television, church meetings, among others) where they can re-inscribe themselves within the Pentecostal community (Pype 2009). Charismatics/Pentecostals have criticized the dress styles (bling bling) and dance forms of Kenyan Gospel musicians as too worldly and un-Christian (Parsitau 2008:61). And the category of “fake pastors,” who transgress the borders of acceptable and non-acceptable behavior, is widespread in Africa (Pype 2010, Shipley 2009).

These ethnographic examples illustrate how cultural hybridity can easily lead to moral ambiguity; in a symbolic system where “appearances deceive,” because invisible powers govern material reality, and moral uncertainty colours social relationships, players within the pcpc (especially the most successful) are confronted with the symbolic instability that constitutes one of the pillars of the Pentecostal/charismatic imagination.



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Concluding Notes: “Live” Modalities of Pcpc

In this chapter, I have explored the main characteristics of pcpc, which is a particular zone of cultural production. Even though pcpc is very hybrid, drawing in styles, sounds and protagonists of other cultural spheres, cultural insulation is a matter of significant concern for the main producers of pcpc as well as for some of their audiences. There is an explicit awareness of the boundaries that exclude artists who do not produce pcpc, or rhythms and genres that are not assessed as pcpc. I have shown that pcpc communicates religious beliefs in public and virtual spaces, generates new Christian selves, and prefers cultural genres that impose upon their followers/audiences an active engagement with the texts and cultural forms because of the urgency of the spiritual battle.

Following the Pentecostal/charismatic emphasis on the immediate, and Pentecostal/charismatic Christians’ eager embrace of new information and communication technologies that allow “live” participation, one could argue that pcpc is very much a “live pcpc.” To conclude this chapter, I want to engage with Fabian’s statement, which I mentioned earlier, about pc as a “live” entry into contemporary African worlds. The analysis of pcpc suggests three differ-ent ways in which African pcpc can be perceived as “live texts.”

First, pcpc become “live texts” when they are used by Christians to grow spiritually. The “live” modality of pc refers here to the active role of recorded texts, call-in shows, and online prayer events in the creation of religious selves. Here, the distinction between “recorded” and “live” texts is erased. Brennan (2012a) makes this argument when she shows how recordings made by Nigerian church choir musicians become part of their regular musical and religious practice. Through the musical labor of training, practice, and rehearsal, choir members engage with the recordings in order to regulate affective and emo-tional responses and expressions during church worship. These texts create a charismatic habitus, they allow for the emergence of a shared knowledge in recognizing and responding to sacred powers (Brennan 2012a). The deploy-ment of these recordings by Christian followers outside of the choir also contributes to the ways in which pcpc becomes a “live” text. For choir fans as well, the recordings have immediate effects.

Second, the “live” idiom draws our attention to time. Miracles happen in the immediate; they cannot be scripted or counted upon. At best, the stage for miracles can be prepared, but whether or not the Holy Spirit actually descends and intervenes depends on God’s will. Pentecostal/charismatics emphasize how difficult it is to control the mediation of spiritual knowledge and the transfer of transcendent powers. In this sense, “live” refers to immediate,


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spontaneous, and evidently uncontrollable numinous forces; and, just like “live” media shows happen in the moment and are unpredictable and difficult to control, “live events” can have unanticipated yet lasting and irreversible consequences. Both Holy Spirit and evil entities might suddenly interrupt people’s lives and transform them forever.

Finally, “live” also refers to Pentecostal/charismatics’ emphasis on the “lived,” that is, the bodily experience of the spiritual battle and God’s miracu-lous interventions. We might argue that the expansion of Pentecostal/ charismatic Christianity depends upon the mobilization of “live” pcpc. On the one hand, the “live” mode of pcpc allows believers to combine personal and collective work. While attempting to be healed spiritually, one contributes one’s efforts to the spiritual war. With its emphasis on sound and touch, pcpc can trigger the presence of the Holy Spirit – even if this only lasts for the dura-tion of the song or the dance, the Holy Spirit will have imbued the follower with knowledge and trust that outlast the moment of the performance. pcpc’s “liveliness” can also be perceived as the main feeding ground for individual participation in the spiritual war: “live participation” gives individuals the feeling of being engaged with spiritual powers and leaders as individuals, while at the same time being members of a larger, more encompassing community.

From emic perspectives, African pcpc is thus very much “live” and “alive,” and it constantly keeps up with new sounds and genres, new spirits and new terrains of the spiritual battle. Christian popular culture has become a serious business – producing new subjects, and new forms of practicing the faith, inventing new aesthetics and representational modes, spreading the gospel further and further. Those who produce pcpc and contribute to its circulation very much counter the temporal, spontaneous and sudden presence of the Holy Spirit by incessantly producing and distributing pcpc texts, thus offering Christians constant possibilities to be touched by the Holy Spirit and to become healthier, wealthier and more successful. They also contribute to the gradual expansion of pcpc as a space of cultural production, thus embedding pcpc even firmer in public and private spaces, bringing in new modes of money making and consumption, and allowing for ever-expanding forms of entertain-ment and modes of self-stylization.

Acknowledgements

I first of all would like to thank Clapperton Mavhunga, Annalisa Buttici and Devaka Premarwadhana, who participated in the workshop on “New Directions in the Study of African Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity” (November 2012,



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Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology, Cambridge), and Vicki Brennan. They all commented on a first version of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Karin Barber and Rosalind Hackett for their inspiring comments and even sugges-tions for a follow-up of this chapter. I also acknowledge Isabelle de Rezende’s help with the language editing. Finally, I would like to extend my appreciation to Martin Lindhardt for inviting me to contribute to this timely edition, and for helping me to clarify some arguments I have made here.

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