Religion Crossing Boundaries Religion and the Social Order An Offi cial Publication of the Association for the Sociology of Religion General Editor William H. Swatos, Jr. VOLUME 18 Religion Crossing Boundaries Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diaspora Edited by Afe Adogame and James V. Spickard LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010 Th is book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion crossing boundaries : transnational religious and social dynamics in Africa and the new African diaspora / edited by Afe Adogame and James V. Spickard. p. cm. -- (Religion and the social order, ISSN 1061-5210 ; v. 18) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-18730-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Blacks--Africa--Religion. 2. Blacks--Religion. 3. African diaspora. 4. Globalization--Religious aspects. I. Adogame, Afeosemime U. (Afeosemime Unuose), 1964- II. Spickard, James V. III. Title. IV. Series. BL2400.R3685 2010 200.89'96--dc22 2010023735 ISSN 1061-5210 ISBN 978 90 04 18730 6 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Th e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS Preface: Real Globalization: Everything is Local ..................................vii William H. Swatos, Jr. Introduction: Africa, Th e New African Diaspora, and Religious Transnationalism in a Global World .........................................................1 James V. Spickard and Afe Adogame TRANSNATIONAL DYNAMICS IN AFRICAN MIGRATION 1. Th e Visa God: Would-Be Migrants and the Instrumentalization of Religion ........................................................ 31 Ebenezer Obadare and Wale Adebanwi 2. A Nigerian Mother in Israel at Coney Island: Authority, Gender, and Translation in a Transnational Yoruba Religion ...................................................................................49 Mei-Mei Sanford 3. Mobility and Belonging among Transnational Congolese Pentecostal Congregations: Modernity and the Emergence of Socioeconomic Diff erences .......................................63 Géraldine Mossière 4. Mediating Spiritual Power: African Christianity, Transnationalism and the Media ...................................................... 87 J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu TRANSNATIONAL DYNAMICS WITHIN AFRICA 5. On the Inscrutability of the Ways of God: Th e Transnationalization of Pentecostalism on the West African Coast ........................................................................... 107 Joël Noret 6. Pentecostals Moving South-South: Brazilian and Ghanaian Transnationalism in Southern Africa .............................................123 Linda van de Kamp and Rijk van Dijk vi contents 7. “When you Make Sacrifi ce, No One is a Stranger”: Divination, Sacrifi ce and Identity among Translocals in the West African Urban Diaspora ............................................143 Laura S. Grillo 8. Th e Boundary-Crossing Infl uence of African Initiated Churches (AICs) on Youth in Emuhaya District, Western Kenya .................................................................................165 Susan M. Kilonzo 9. Gospel without Borders: Gender Dynamics of Transnational Religious Movements in Kenya and the Kenyan Diaspora ...............................................................185 Damaris Seleina Parsitau and Philomena Njeri Mwaura 10. Th e Bonnke Eff ect: Encounters with Transnational Evangelism in Southeastern Nigeria .............................................211 Edlyne E. Anugwom WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF TRANSNATIONAL AFRICAN RELIGIONS 11. Th e Pan-African Church: Nation, Self, and Spirit in Winners’ Chapel, Nigeria ...............................................................229 Samuel Krinsky 12. Transnational Tradition: Th e Global Dynamics of “African Traditional Religion” ....................................................... 253 Marleen de Witte Contributors ............................................................................................ 277 PREFACE REAL GLOBALIZATION: EVERYTHING IS LOCAL William H. Swatos, Jr. One of the supposed benefi ts of getting older is the opportunity to refl ect. More than any other volume under my editorship of this series, this one has provided that experience. I remember the appearances of the various ways in which sociology in the second half of the twenti- eth century confronted what was happening to our life-world. Immanuel Wallerstein analyzed “the modern world-system.” Roland Robertson spoke of the world as “a single place.” George Ritzer gave us “McDonaldization.” Th ough there were sometimes heated debates among these styles of conceptualization, there’s also a sense in which they were all right: Th e “world” had changed, and although one can take a longue durée approach to this process and go back to the fi rst voyages of global circumnavigation, the truth to which all these analy- ses point is that the eff ects of what we now term globalization hap- pened very fast. It was, indeed, the case that the “world” as a concept did change dramatically at the start of the sixteenth century. What happened at the end of the twentieth century was that the everyday life-worlds of “ordi- nary people” around the world began to incarnate the global concept. We went from the global as academic principle to the global as life- world in less than fi ft y years. Th is volume of the “Religion and the Social Order” series takes up this reality from two important vantage points: exchanges between and within Africa—in respect to both Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity and native African expressions of religious experience—and the life-world of persons of African descent now living at least part of their lives outside of Africa. Th ese couple with the Christian traditions of the West with which this encounter takes place, yet also (though perhaps somewhat less so) between Africa and other parts of what once were conceived as the “Th ird World” and the West. Whereas the fi ctitious Phileas Fogg could excite people’s imaginations with the adventures in his travels as he claimed to be able to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days, now viii preface anyone can circumnavigate the globe at least twice in eighty hours using commercial travel, while astronauts can do it twice daily. Two things are true as corollaries: the speed and relative economy of international travel has changed immigration/emigration patterns for what appears to be “all time”—and it works both ways. Let me speak about this personally in two respects. My grandparents on my father’s side were Czechoslovak immigrants of what Paul Spickard speaks of as the “Ellis Island model.” Perfectly. My grandparents (whom I never knew) predominately spoke Czech. My father could speak Czech—and would around my great aunt and uncle, and upon an encounter with the occasional 1950s immigrant who needed help of one sort or another, but he steadfastly refused to teach me any Czech whatsoever. “We are Americans. We speak English.” It was only out of respect or compassion that he would break this rule. I speak (and know) no Czech. On the other hand, as I live benignly in Galva, Illinois, exactly half- way between Peoria and the Iowa-Illinois Quad-Cities, I fi nd myself very much enmeshed in aspects of the globalization processes based on the dynamics illustrated in this book, though primarily from the African side, inasmuch as my—now Anglican, up until a few years ago Episcopalian—diocese is in the (South American) Province of the Southern Cone. Our most recently retired bishop is now Assistant Bishop of Bolivia. On top of which, I am incardinated in the most his- toric Anglican building of the diocese (and probably in the state of Illinois) at Christ Church Limestone. Hablo espagnol, but I don’t really have to, because about a mile away from us is an Anglican Benedictine monastery consisting of a Puerto Rican bishop (consecrated by Brazilian Old Catholics), priests, and brothers of our diocese. One or another of them fi lls in for me while I’m away. Our parishioners help keep them stocked with food. Together we have what we call a “Partnership in Mission and Ministry” in Peoria County. At one level it sounds simultaneously a bit fanciful and a bit absurd, but in prac- tice it works itself out week by week in ways that no one could have imagined twenty years ago. (As a totally unintended result of the “Anglicanization” of the Diocese of Quincy, I am now, by canonical residence, also senior priest of the diocese.) Our diocese as a whole in addition has an on-going relationship with the Diocese of Upper Shire in Malawi. Th e fact is, however (Marx would be pleased), that globalization didn’t come to this area because of Anglican troubles. It came because preface ix of the economy. For while I take fi endish pleasure in responding to the question, “Where is Galva?” by responding “Half-way between Toulon and Cambridge” (both county seats), I could explain instead—and make far