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Political Pentecostalism Leandro L. B. Fontana / Markus Luber (Eds.) POLITICAL PENTECOSTALISM Four Synoptic Surveys from Asia, Africa, and Latin America WELTKIRCHE UND MISSION 17 VERLAG FRIEDRICH PUSTET Weltkirche und Mission Band 17 Weltkirche und Mission herausgegeben von Markus Luber Band 17 Leandro L. B. Fontana / Markus Luber (Eds.) Political Pentecostalism Verlag Friedrich Pustet Regensburg Leandro L. B. Fontana / Markus Luber (Eds.) Political Pentecostalism Four Synoptic Surveys from Asia, Africa, and Latin America Verlag Friedrich Pustet Regensburg Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2021 Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg Gutenbergstraße 8 | 93051 Regensburg Tel. 0941/920220 | [email protected] eISBN 978‐3‐7917‐7386‐5 Umschlag: Martin Vollnhals, Neustadt a. d. Donau, nach einem Entwurf von Tobias Keßler, Frankfurt Produced in Germany 2021 Unser gesamtes Programm finden Sie im Webshop unter www.verlag‐pustet.de Table of Contents Preface Markus Luber ................................................................................................................ 7 Introduction Leandro L. B. Fontana ................................................................................................... 9 Pentecostalism and Politics in Nigeria: A Synoptic Essay Ebenezer Obadare ......................................................................................................... 25 The Diversity of Political Pentecostalism in Latin America José Luis Pérez Guadalupe and Brenda Carranza ......................................................... 52 Engaged Pentecostalism in Asia: Civic Welfare, Public Morality, and Political Participation Jayeel Cornelio ............................................................................................................. 136 Outlines of a Pentecostal Dominion Theology Andreas Heuser .......................................................................................................... 187 Notes on the Authors ............................................................................................. 247 Preface With volume 17 the series Weltkirche und Mission takes up again the topic of Pentecostal religiosity which made the start in the research projects conducted at the Institute for Global Church and Mission since 2010. The renewed engage- ment is motivated by the focus on the perception of an increasingly political and public activity of actors with Pentecostal background. Since 2016 there has been a project position “Pentecostalism” at the Institute that underlines the importance of scholarly discussion about the phenomenon. This is not only about the atten- tion for eccentric and exotic forms of Christianity and accompanying massive transformations of religious landscapes, but refers also to the missiological man- date to take into account the plurality of potential Christian realizations and to integrate them into theological reflection. In the same time the religio-phenome- nological interest meets with an appeal to the theological discussion regarding the holistic humanizing responsibility of Christian engagement. Wherever action is called for in the name of Christ, and even more so when the radius of action extends to social and political commitment, the question of normative conse- quences arises and must be answered. In this context, the two approaches do not just stand side by side. An open academic engagement that reflects its own posi- tionality and comprehensive knowledge of the subject matter are the prerequisites for any normative evaluation. The critical claim of theology requires not only vigilance against the legitimation of new religious practices that are not in line with the gospel message, but also attention to ethnocentric cultural attitudes that tend to ignore the inspiring provocations evoked by new religious practices. Ex- actly an awareness ad intra and ad extra is authoritative for a post-vatican missio- logical research design. Hence, I am grateful that the pursuit of a study of this kind regarding the phenomenon of political Pentecostalism was made possible by a grant from the German Bishops’ Conference Commission on International Church Affairs which in the past decades has repeatedly initiated and funded aca- demic projects on Pentecostal churches and made the results available through in- ternational conferences and publications. Therefore, I would like to thank Dr. Heike Rumbach-Thome from the German Bishops’ Conference’s Secretariat for her support of the project. Special thanks also go to Marion Waidlein and Santiago Valencia López for all their editing and formatting efforts. Finally, I thank Dr. Rudolf Zwank from the publisher Pustet Regensburg for his efforts to make the volume available online at short notice. Frankfurt am Main, July 11, 2021 Markus Luber Introduction Leandro L. B. Fontana This volume presents the results of a still ongoing research project that ventures quite an audacious undertaking, as it sets out to examine in greater detail the vexed relationship between religion and politics in the context of a globalized post-secular age – whereby post-secular, in this case, amounts to a heuristic framework, rather than to the ascertainment of a given, homogeneous state of affairs. This presupposes in its turn the emergence of new actors on the political scene. These protagonists, religious and political alike, have been mostly asso- ciated with Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians, and it is beyond doubt that they have evinced in the last decades an increased political and social engage- ment.1 To be sure, there is in the meantime a wide array of research works, mostly drawing on ethnographic case studies, that demonstrate and account for this development taking place in a large number of countries around the globe.2 However, there seems to be, as of yet, no sufficient evidence to substantiate the 1 Considering the large amount of studies published in that respect, especially in the last dec- ade, we confine ourselves to mentioning a few pioneering works: Gifford: New Dimensions in African Christianity (1992); Garrard/Stoll: Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America (1993); Martin: Tongues of Fire (1993); Cleary/Stewart-Gambino: Power, Politics, and Pen- tecostals in Latin America (1997); Freston: Evangelicals and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America (2001); Gifford: Ghana’s New Christianity (2004). 2 For Latin America, see exemplary Freston: Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Latin America (2008); Levine: Politics, Religion, & Society in Latin America (2012); Pérez Guada- lupe/Grundberger: Evangélicos y Poder en América Latina (2018); for the African continent, see Afolayan/Yacob-Haliso/Falola: Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa (2018); Lindhardt: Pentecostalism in Africa (2014); as for Asia, there are so far hardly studies which take account of the Pentecostal political engagement at a continental level. To a limited extent, see Chong: Pentecostal Megachurches in Southeast Asia (2018); otherwise, see Le: Vietnamese Evangel- icals and Pentecostalism (2019) for Vietnam and Maltese: Pentekostalismus, Politik und Ge- sellschaft in den Philippinen (2017) for the Philippines. As far as the Global North is con- cerned, it is safe to say that the Pentecostal involvement and visibility on the political scene is far from having the stature it has in the Global South, the USA clearly constituting an exception. Even the available literature on this topic is not as voluminous as that focusing on the Global South. To be sure, it would be very instructive to have taken account of this context as well, but for the reasons mentioned, especially as this study was conceived of as a literature survey, we opted for concentrating on the Global South. 10 Leandro L. B. Fontana argument that there are significant correspondences or even commonalities be- tween apparently similar phenomena occurring at different spots worldwide, especially with regard to theological patterns of argumentation and perfor- mance.3 A fundamental question therefore arises: can any meaningful, discern- ible nexus connecting various nodes of Pentecostal engagement in the political realm be identified, with particular attention being paid to the developments taking place in the Global South? The studies published in this volume constitute the first step toward that goal. By furnishing the research project with the state of their respective con- texts regarding the posited question, they lay the solid foundation for respond- ing to this concern. In a sense, precisely because of their particular contextual nature, these results, considered from a theoretical vantage point, do not seem to differ much from other equally up-to-date ethnographic investigations, at least at first glance. However, given that all studies presented in this volume, albeit having drawn on context-based literature, were designed and carried out on the basis of a set of common foundational queries raised at the inception of our research project, they do represent a distinguished groundwork on which the remaining comparative-systematic analysis can be based.4 Thus, rather than starting to engage with the topic in question, the following lines will primarily concentrate on laying bare those foundational questions mentioned above, addressing a few methodological issues, and embedding these findings in the
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