Toyin Falola

Christianity and Social Change in Africa Essays in Honor of J.D.Y. Peel

edited by Toyin Falola

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Christianity and social change in Africa : essays in honor of J.D.Y. Peel / edited by Toyin Falola. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-59460-135-6 1. Church and social problems—Nigeria. 2. Church and social problems—Africa, West. 3. Social change—Nigeria. 4. Social change—Africa, West. 5. Nigeria—Social conditions—1960– 6. Africa, West—Social conditions—1960– I. Peel, J. D. Y. (John David Yeadon), 1941– II. Falola, Toy in. III. Title.

HN39.N55C48 2005 306.6'76608—dc22 2005007640

Carolina Academic Press 700 Kent St. Durham, NC 27701 Telephone (919) 489-7486 Fax (919) 493-5668 www.cap-press.com

Printed in the United States of America Contents

List of Figures Contributors

Part A Context and Personality Chapter 1 Introduction 3 Toyin Falola Chapter 2 John Peel 27 T.C. McCaskie

Part B Yoruba World Chapter 3 The Cultural Work of Yoruba Globalization 41 Stephan Palmié Chapter 4 Confusion and Empiricism: Several Connected Thoughts 83 Jane I. Guyer Chapter 5 Between the Yoruba and the Deep Blue Sea: The Gradual Integration of Ewe Fishermen on the Lagos-Badagry Seabeach 99 Axel Klein Chapter 6 “In the Olden Days”: Histories of Misbehaving Women in Ado-Odo, Southwestern Nigeria 117 Andrea Cornwall Chapter 7 “Let your garments always be white...” Expressions of Past and Present in Yoruba Religious Textiles 139 Elisha P. Renne Chapter 8 Shrine Sanctuary and Mission Sanctuary in West Africa 165 Sandra T. Barnes

v vi contents

Part C Media, Politics, and Nationalism Chapter 9 Translation, Publics, and the Vernacular Press in 1920s Lagos 185 Karin Barber Chapter 10 Cultural Politics and Nationalist History: A Background to Wole Soyinka’s Isara 209 Insa Nolte Chapter 11 Religion, Public Space, and the Press in Contemporary Nigeria 233 Matthews A. Ojo

Part D Aladura and Pentecostalism Chapter 12 “Those Who Trade with God Never Lose”: The Economics of Pentecostal Activism in Nigeria 251 Asonzeh F-K. Ukah Chapter 13 Mediating Tradition: Pentecostal Pastors, African Priests, and Chiefs in Ghanaian Popular Films 275 Birgit Meyer Chapter 14 Continuity or Change? Aladura and Born-Again Yor uba Christianity in London 307 Hermione Harris Chapter 15 “Ndi Afe Ocha”: The Early Aladura of Igboland, 1925–1975 335 Ogbu U. Kalu Chapter 16 Afro-Brazilian Religion, Progressive Catholicism, and Pentecostalism in Northeast Brazil: Notes on Conﬂuence 361 Miriam Cristina M. Rabelo

Part E Christianity and Knowledge Without Borders Chapter 17 Managing Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa 389 Matthew Hassan Kukah Chapter 18 Conversion, Conquest, and the Qua Iboe Mission 413 David Pratten contents vii

Chapter 19 Christianity, Colonial Rule, and Ethnicity: The Mission of the White Fathers among the Dagara (Ghana/Burkina Faso) 441 Carola Lentz Chapter 20 A “Religious Encounter” in Amedzofe: Women and Change Through the Twentieth Century 471 Lynne Brydon Chapter 21 Anglicanism and Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh 489 T.C. McCaskie Chapter 22 Chiefdoms, Cantons, and Contentious Land: Mapping out a Mission Field in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cameroon 517 Guy Thomas Chapter 23 Religion and Healing in Hausaland 549 Murray Last Chapter 24 “Listen While I Read”: Patriotic Christianity Among the Young Gikuyu 563 John Lonsdale Chapter 25 The Holy Trinity, or the Reduced Marx, Weber, Durkheim 595 Gavin Williams Chapter 26 At the Baraza:Socializing and Intellectual Practice at the Swahili Coast 613 Kai Kresse Index 633

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Sculpture of two Africans carrying a European in a hammock. 10 Figure 1.2 Livingstone, the missionary, in an African village close to Lua- bala village. 11 Figure 1.3 African sculpture of a colonial ofﬁcer and school teacher. 13 Figure 1.4 Dr. Diedre Badejo (left) and Iyalorisa Oloma Aina (right). Photo by Ramona LaRoche. 22 Figure 2.1 J.D.Y. Peel (photo by Sophie Baker). 28 Figure 3.1 Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. 72 Figure 4.1 European missionaries at a Yoruba village, 19th century. 88 Figure 5.1 Map of Yorubaland. 100 Figure 6.1 Yoruba Dowry (bridewealth) Container. 121 Figure 7.1 Altar draped with white cloth, with portrait of Moses Orimolade, Ogu Oluwa New Jerusalem Church, Eternal Sacred Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim, Mount Zion, Maryland, Lagos, 26 March 2003 (photo by E.P. Renne). 140 Figure 7.2 The three trunks of the large ose (baobab) tree near the Elekole’s palace are regularly wrapped with white cloth, in part to insure the peaceful unity of the town. Ikole-Ekiti, 29 July 2002 (photo by E.P. Renne). 144 Figure 7.3 Olori Omode, of the Imole Olua cult, Itapa-Ekiti, wearing an un- sewn, white cloth wrapper, with two apo yata bags with aso adodo [red cloth] straps, knotted aso oke waistband, holding uru with beaded handles, coral necklace, and otun. 147 Figure 7.4 Prophetess Ekuno.la Smart, wearing white dress and 4-cornered woli cap, Ondo, 24 February 2003 (photo by E.P. Renne). 149

ix x list of ﬁgures

Figure 7.5 Prayer warriors with special caps with a red band (some are em- broidered, “prayer warrior”) and white dresses with a red sash, St. Saviour’s United Church of Cherubim and Seraphim Cathe- dral, Owo, 28 March 2003. 151 Figure 7.6 Almanac printed by the Christ for All Nations organization show- ing Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke wearing a shirt made from locally woven aso oke cloth at the CfaN Gospel Campaign, Ogbomosho. 156 Figure 7.7 Cover from the video, Funfun L’Oluwa (Boye Ventures, Lagos, 2003). 160 Figure 10.1 Wole Soyinka. 210 Figure 10.2 Map of Isara in Nigeria. 212 Figure 12.1 Banner for a Pentecostal preacher in Lagos. 254 Figure 12.2 Billboards advertising Pentecostal preachers. 256 Figure 13.1 Scene from Stolen Bible. 285 Figure 13.2 Scene from Stolen Bible. 288 Figure 13.3 Scene from Time. 289 Figure 13.4 Video depiction of tradition. 296 Figure 13.5 Video representation of a chief. 299 Figure 15.1 Aladura document. 338 Figure 18.1 A lady missionary in late nineteenth century Africa. 424 Figure 18.2 Church in Qua Iboe. 435 Figure 19.1 Territoire Dagari, after Paternot 1949. 452 Figure 21.1 Agyeman Prempeh in exile at Elmina. 491 Figure 22.1 Heinrich Karl Dorsch. Copyright Basel Mission Archive; ref. QS- 30.001.174.01). 521 Figure 22.2 Returning from Bali, 1907. BMCA E-30.25.013: Gottlieb Frei- drich Spellenberg. Copyright Basel Mission Archive; ref. QS- 30.001.1174.01. 523 Figure 22.3 Dorsch map of Cameroon, 1908. “Karte des südwestlichen Teils von Kamerun (enthaltend das Basler Missionsgebiet) auf Grund von Original-Aufnahmen von Missionaren der Basler Mission sowie von Ofﬁzieren und Beamten unter Anlehnung an M. Moi- list of ﬁgures xi

sel gezeichnet von Heinrich Dorsch.”Basel: Verlag der Basler Mis- sionsbuchhandlung in Basel, 1908. (Copyright Basel Mission Archive). 524 Figure 22.4 Detail, Dorsch map of Cameroon, 1908. “Karte des südwest- lichen Teils von Kamerun (enthaltend das Basler Missionsgebiet) auf Grund von Original-Aufnahmen von Missionaren der Basler Mission sowie von Ofﬁzieren und Beamten unter Anlehnung an M. Moisel gezeichnet von Heinrich Dorsch.” Basel: Verlag der Basler Missionsbuchhandlung in Basel, 1908. (Copyright Basel Mission Archive). 526 Figure 22.5 Neue Aufnahmen von Gustav Conrau im Norden und Nord- westen des Kamerun-Gebirges aus den Jahren 1986 und 1897. Redigiert und gezeichnet von Max Moisel. Mittheilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten, Bd. XI, 1898. (Copyright Basel Mis- sion Archive). 527 Figure 22.6 G. Conrau's Wegeaufnahmen im Lande der Banyang, Bangwa, Kabo, Basosi und Bafo. Redigirt (sic) und gezeichnet von Max Moisel. Mittheilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten, Bd. XI, 1898. (Copyright Basel Mission Archive). 528 Figure 22.7 Hinterland des Manenguba-Gebirges, in: Der Evangelische Hei- denbote, December 1906(12), 93. 529 Figure 22.8 Copy (16 October 1905) of the original plan of the Basel Mission plot affixed to BMCA E-31.9,6, CI Bali, 2. Teil, Schenkung- surkunde, Bali, 31 January 1905. 541 Figure 22.6 BMCA E-31.9,6, CI Bali, 1. Teil, Certiﬁed plan of the Basel Mis- sion plot signed by A. C. Kemavor, Government Surveyor, 21.1. 1938. 545 Figure 23.1 Caliph entering Sokoto, 19th Century. 557 Figure 25.1 Karl Marx. 597

Contributors

Karen Barber is Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. She specializes in Yoruba culture, and also does comparative work on oral literature and popular culture across Africa. Her most recent book is, The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre (2000). Sandra T. Barnes is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsyl- vania, Founding Director of its African Studies Center, and in 2004–05 a fellow at the Stanford University Humanities Center. She is the editor of Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New, an interdisciplinary collection of recently expanded and revised essays that focus on West African religious culture and its contin- uing vitality in the diaspora. Her book, Patrons and Power: Creating a Politi- cal Community in Metropolitan Lagos (1986), won the Amaury Talbot Prize for the best book on Africa. She is President of the African Studies Associa- tion, and sits on the Boards of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Foundation for the Advancement of International Medical Education and Research. She has been a visiting faculty member at Johns Hop- kins University and the University of Ibadan (Nigeria). Her current research focuses on West Africa: pre-colonial social and cultural life along the Guinea Coast and post-colonial popular culture. Lynne Brydon is Senior Lecturer in the Centre of West African Studies, Uni- versity of Birmingham (UK). Among her publications are Women in the Third World (with Sylvia Chant) and Adjusting Society: The World Bank, the IMF and Ghana (with Karen Legge). She co-edits Ghana Studies Review (with Takyi- waa Manuh), and is a member of the Editorial Collective of the Review of African Political Economy. Andrea Cornwall is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, where she works on the politics of participation, gender, and governance, and sexual and reproductive rights. Her publications include Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (edited, with Nancy Lind- isfarne, 1994), Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Repro-

xiii xiv contributors ductive Wellbeing (co-edited, with Alice Welbourn, 2002), Readings in Gender in Africa (James Currey, 2004), “Spending power: love, money and the re- configuration of gender relations in Ado-Odo, southwestern Nigeria” (Amer- ican Ethnologist, 29:4, 2002), and “‘To be a man is more than a day’s work’: Shifting ideals of manliness in Ado-Odo, southwestern Nigeria” (in Lisa Lind- say and Stephan Miescher eds., Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa, Heinemann, 2003). Jane I. Guyer is Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research has focused on social and economic change in West and Central Africa over the past century. An African Niche Economy. Farming to Feed Ibadan 1968–88 (1997) studies a Yoruba town in the Ibadan hinterland, and Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (2004) re-analyzes ethnographic and historical evidence from several areas, including Southern Nigeria. A co-edited book (with LaRay Denzer and Adigun Agbaje), Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers in Southern Nigeria, 1986–1996 (2002; 2003, Ibadan) addresses some aspects of the “confusion” of her topic for this volume. Hermione Harris is a consultant researcher with the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR) at King’s College, London. Her publications include The Somali Community in the UK (2004). She has carried out extensive research on Yoruba churches in London, the subject of her doctoral thesis The Cherubim and Seraphim: the Concept and Practice of Empowerment in an African Church in London (2002). Ogbu U. Kalu, formerly of the University of Nigeria, is the Henry Winters Luce Professor of World Christianity and Mission, McCormick Theological Semi- nary, Chicago, and Associate Director of Chicago Center for Global Ministries. His book, Embattled Gods: Christianization of Igboland, 1841–1991 was first published in 1996, and has been republished by Africa World Press. The Uni- versity of South Africa Press is publishing his collection of essays, Clio in a Sa- cred Garb: Essays on Christian Presence and African Responses, 1900–2000.He is the editor of African Christianity: an African Story that is forthcoming under the Perspective Series, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Axel Klein is the Head of the International Unit at the UK-based NGO Drug Scope, working on a range of issues including drug policy, prison reform, and civil society capacity building. He has published on drug policy and the in- formal sector in Nigeria, and is currently editing a volume on illicit drugs in Africa with Isidore Obot. Previous publications include Caribbean Drugs: from Criminalisation to Harm rReduction,edited with Anthony Harriott and Mar- contributors xv cus Day, and Fragile Peace: State Failure, Violence and Development in Crisis Regions,co-edited with Tobias Debiel. Kai Kresse is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St. An- drews. His publications include Sagacious Reasoning: H. Odera Oruka in Memo- riam (Frankfurt/New York Peter Lang. 1997), co-edited with Anke Graness (reprinted in an Africa-edition by East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi, 1999); Symbolisches Flanieren: Kulturphilosophische Streifzuege. (Han- nover: Wehrhahn Verlag. 2001), co-edited with Roger Behrens & Ronnie Pe- plow; and, as editor, Reading Mudimbe,to appear as a special issue of Journal of African Cultural Studies (in press). He is currently finalizing a book manuscript on Swahili philosophical discourse, dealing with poets, thinkers, and intellectual practice in Mombasa. Recent articles in the Journal of Religion in Africa (2003), and edited collections, e.g. Scott Reese (ed), The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa.(Leiden: Brill. 2004). He was awarded the Evans- Pritchard Lectureship at All Souls College, Oxford, for the academic year 2005–6. He is also part of the editorial team of the online journal Polylog: Forum for Intercultural Philosophy.He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Hamburg, where he also studied Swahili, and an MSc and a Ph.D. in Anthropology and African Studies from the University of London. Matthew H. Kukah is a Catholic priest, Vicar General, Archdiocese of Kaduna, Nigeria. He studied philosophy and theology at St Augustine’s Seminary, Jos, and received his MA in Peace Studies at Bradford University, and his Ph.D. at the School of African and Oriental Studies, London. He has served as the Sec- retary General, Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria; Member, Human Rights Vio- lations Investigation Commission; Senior Rhodes Scholar, St Antony’s Col- lege, Oxford; and the Edward Mason Fellow, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Murray Last is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, Uni- versity College London. He specializes in both the pre-colonial history of Mus- lim northern Nigeria and the ethnography of illness and healing. He has been working in and on northern Nigeria since 1961, researching a wide variety of subjects with colleagues in Bayero University and elsewhere; he visits Nigeria every year. In 1967 he published The Sokoto Caliphate (London: Longmans Green), and edited (with G.L. Chavunduka), The Professionalisation of African Medicine in 1986 (Manchester: Manchester University Press for International African Institute); in addition he has over seventy publications on history and on anthropology. He edited the International African Institute’s journal AFRICA for fifteen years (1986–2001). xvi contributors

Carola Lentz is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, and was a fellow of the Netherland’s Institute for Advanced Studies in 2000–2001. Following her doctoral research on labor migration and ethnicity in Ecuador, she has conducted research on ethnicity, elite formation, and history in North-Western Ghana. She is author of Ethnic Unity and Local Patriotism: The Production of History in North-Western Ghana, 1870–1990 (forthcoming), as well many related articles, and co-editor of Eth- nicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (2000). Further publications include the edited volumes Les Dagara et leurs voisins: Histoire de peuplement et relations interethniques au sud-ouest du Burkina Faso (2001), and Histoire du peuplement et relations interethnique au Burkina Faso (2003). Her current research focuses on mobility, land rights, and the politics of belonging in North-Western Ghana and South-Western Burkina Faso. John M. Lonsdale is Emeritus Professor of Modern African History at the Uni- versity of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His published work includes Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (1992, with Bruce Berman), and Mau Mau and Nationhood (edited, with Atieno Odhi- ambo, 2003). He is a past general editor of the Cambridge University Press African Studies Series, past chairman of the African Studies Centre at Cam- bridge and past president of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom. He is currently working on the intellectual life of Jomo Kenyatta, the British decolonization of Kenya, and the historical relationship between religion and politics in Kenya. T. C. McCaskie is Professor of Asante History, Centre of West African Stud- ies, University of Birmingham, U.K. He is author of State and Society in Pre- Colonial Asante (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Asante Identities: His- tory and Modernity in an African Village 1850–1950 (Indiana and Edinburgh University Presses, 2000), as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles on Asante history and culture. Most recently, he was co-editor with A. Adu Boahen, E. Akyeampong, N. Lawler, and I. Wilks of The History of Ashanti Kings and the whole country itself, and Other Writings by Otumfuo, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I (Oxford University Press for the British Academy). He is presently writing a book on contemporary Asante. Birgit Meyer is professor of Religion and Society in the Department of Sociol- ogy and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and professor of the anthropology of religion at the Free University, Amsterdam. Her publications include Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana (1999), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (1999, edited contributors xvii with Peter Geschiere). Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Con- cealment (edited with Peter Pels), and Religion, Media and the Public Sphere (in press, edited with Annelies Moors). Her current research focuses on the interface of religion and media in Ghana. Insa Nolte is a lecturer at the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her publications include “Identity and Violence: The Politics of Youth in Ijebu-Remo, Nigeria” (2004, JMAS 42/1), and “Chieftaincy and the State in Abacha’s Nigeria: Kingship, Political Rivalry and Competing Histories in Abeokuta During the 1990s” (2002, Africa 72/3). She is presently writing a monograph on power, politics and Obafemi Awolowo in Ijebu- Remo. Matthews A. Ojo completed his doctoral studies in theology at the University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies, and King’s College, Lon- don) in 1987. His research interest is African Christianity with particular ref- erence to the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. He has published ex- tensively in this field, and recently in the area of religion and politics in Nigeria. In 1999, he was involved in a British Academy-funded research on religion and media in Nigeria. In 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University Divinity School and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University. He is presently a Professor and Head of Department of Religious Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Stephan Palmié is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. His publications include Das Exil der Götter: Geschichte und Vorstel- lungswelt einer afrokubanischen Religion (1991), Wizards and Scientists: Explo- rations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (2002), an edited volume on Slave Cultures and the Cultures of Slavery (1995), and a co-edition of the original manuscript of C.G.A. Oldendorp’s History of the Mission of the Moravian Brethren in the Caribbean Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John (1767–77) in four volumes (2000, 2002). David Pratten is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Sussex. His forthcoming publications include The Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria, and various articles on youth, violence and vigilantism in southern Nigeria. Miriam Rabelo teaches at the Department of Sociology and Postgraduate Pro- gram in Social Sciences of the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil). She has carried out research in the field of anthropology of religion and health in Brazil, with a special focus on religious healing. Among her publications are: Experiéncia de Doença e Narrativa with Paulo César Alves and Iara Souza (Ed- xviii contributors itora Fiocruz, 1999), and Antropologia da Saúde: traçando identidades e ex- plorando fronteiras with Paulo César Alves (Editora Fiocruz, 1998). Elisha P. Renne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michi- gan. Her research focuses on fertility and reproductive health, gender relations, religion, and social change, and the anthropology of cloth, specifically in Nigeria. Publications include Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town (Ed- inburgh and Michigan, 2003), Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, In- terpretations (with E. van de Walle; Chicago, 2001), and Cloth That Does Not Die: The Meaning of Cloth in Bunu Social Life (Washington, 1995). She is presently co-editing a volume (with B. Agbaje-Williams), Yoruba Religious Tex- tiles,which will be published early in 2005. Guy Thomas is Director of the Archives and Library of Mission 21 and Lec- turer in African history at the University of Basel. While heading the project to set up the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon Central Archives and Library (PCCCAL), he was among the founding members of the Association of Friends of Archives and Antiquities-Cameroon (AFAAC). He is a core member of the Centre for African Studies in Basel and is on the Advisory Board of the journal Le Fait Missionaire.He has published several articles, and is about to produce his first book on the mediation, appropriation, and domestication of Christianity in twentieth-century anglophone Cameroon. Ongoing research covers a wide range of themes linked to the social history of Christian mis- sions, primarily in West and West-Central Africa. Asonzeh F.-K. Ukah is a Research Fellow at the Centre of African Studies (CAS), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His publications include, “Pentecostalism, Religious Expansion and the City: Lesson from the Nigerian Bible Belt,” in: Peter Probst & Gerd Spittler (eds), Resistance and Expansion: Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa, Lit Münster (2004); “Advertising God: Nigerian Christian Video-Films and the Power of Consumer Culture”, JRA, (2003); “Reklame für Gott: Religiöse Werbung in Nigeria,”in Tobias Wendl (ed.), Afrikanische Reklamekunst (2002); “The Local and the Global in the Media and Material Culture of Nigerian Pentecostalism” (forthcoming); “Mobilities, Migration and Multiplication: The Expansion of the Religious Field of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Nige- ria” (forthcoming). His current research interests focus on the economics of Pentecostal popular culture in Africa, African Pentecostal Video films; and African Diasporan Religions. contributors xix

Gavin Williams is Fellow and Tutor in Politics at St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he teaches comparative politics, political and social theories, and politics in Africa. He studied at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Oxford. He has published articles and edited books on politics and political economy and on land and agricultural policies in Africa, particularly Nigeria, and more recently South Africa, and on the discourses and practices of development and of the World Bank. He is writing a history of the South African wine industry.