Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12504/59

Browse

Browsing Journal Articles by Subject "African Pentecostalism"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Innovation or Competition? A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Divine Healing Practices of Pentecostal Africans in Africa and the Diaspora
    (International Bulletin of Mission Research, 2020-10-12) Wabyanga, Robert Kuloba; Nyamnjoh, Henrietta; Ugba, Abel
    This article examines current practices of divine healing of Pentecostal Africans. It provides insights into current developments by using the explanatory concepts of innovation, competition, and agency. The article draws on data obtained through an interdisciplinary, transnational, and multisite investigation of eight Pentecostal churches in Kampala, Nairobi, Cape Town, and London. Methods used included ethnographic observation, visual ethnography, and semistructured interviews. Pentecostal Africans in Africa and the diaspora, this article argues, are simultaneously reenacting centuries-old faith-informed healing practices and creatively reinventing aspects of these practices to assert their relevance in a postmodern world characterized by religious plurality, competition, and secularism.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Investigating African pentecostalism: the problems, prospects and rewards of a multi-sited ethnography
    (Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024-11-06) Kuloba, R. Wabyanga
    Though undoubtedly one of the preferred approaches in the study of Religion, especially in cross-cultural and multinational contexts, the prospects of Multi-Sited Ethnography (MSE) present many intricacies and challenges when following some study patterns and trails in the study of Religion. In my experience in the study of African Pentecostalism, I focused on the innovations and creativities in healing practices of African Pentecostalism in Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya). The experience was characterized by recurrent need to (re)negotiate access, limited resources and inconsistency in trails being followed. In this chapter, I discuss the intricacies and strategies of MSE for further methodological reflections and innovations in the study of African Pentecostalism and other related fields.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Pentecostal Reinventions of the Passover: Contextual Reflections on the End of Year Night Worship Festivals in Uganda
    (Journal for the Study of Religion, 2024-12-13) Isiko, Alexander Paul; Kisekka, Enock
    Pentecostal scholarship in and about Africa is a vibrant arena in world Christianity, with an upswing in the proliferation of scholarly works on Pentecostal Churches and its centrality in the political and social fabric of African societies. Pentecostalism has been hailed for revival of Christian conservatism in Sub-Saharan Africa, predominated by the nominal Roman Catholics and Protestant Christianity. While some authors have studied African Pentecostalism with prejudgments based on other Christian traditions, some have hailed the theological innovations in healing and evangelism. The study of the Pentecostal end of year worship festivals unravels one of the innovations that justifies the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism, promulgating theologies and traditions on the one hand, and reinventing Judeo-Christian practices in African perspectives, which in a sense give African Pentecostal Churches a claim to divine originality, on the other. In another way, theologies, traditions, and practices emerging from the observance of the annual Pentecostal worship festivals place African Pentecostal Churches among the towering African Christian traditions, which then borrow rather than debunk such Pentecostal theological innovations. This article therefore discusses the Pentecostal Church reinvention of the ancient Jewish Passover festival to mirror the lives of African Christians in contemporary contexts. The ‘contextual theology’ analysis is employed to reflect on both the Jewish Passover and annual Pentecostal worship festivals, with a view of establishing how Passover (non-)parallels and reinventions have produced African Pentecostal theologies, traditions, and practices defining the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Pentecostal scholarship in Uganda: trends, trajectories and challenges
    (Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024-11-05) Robert, Kuloba Wabyanga; Alexander Paul Isiko
    Although there is a plethora of scholarly works on African Pentecostal scholarship in Uganda, there is a notable invisibility of local Ugandan scholars in the publication pages. Prominent in Pentecostal studies in this context are the works of foreign scholars such as (in no particular order) Barbra Bompani, Ben Jones, Elizabeth Bremner, Robert Gibbs, Lars H. Williams, K.T. Zemlicka and Alessandro Gusman, among others. This triggers questions that interrogate the invisibility of indigenous Ugandan scholars in the field of African Pentecostalism. This is not to discount efforts made by the few local scholars such as Paddy Musana, Moses Isabirye, Fred Jenga and Samuel Mugisa, although the focus of their studies on the phenomenon presents a different dimension of invisibility. In this chapter we interrogate the problem of invisibility—not only exposing the quantity in scholarship but also quality of works on the phenomenon by indigenous Ugandan scholars. Efforts are made to review scholarly works/terrain in contemporary African contexts, the quality of scholarly works of the Western scholars and researchers and finally examine the scholarly situation in the local context. We have also examined the scholarly landscape that informs the limited representation of indigenous Ugandan scholars in the field of study.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The God Who Answers by Fire (1 Kings 18:20–39):
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025-08-15) Kuloba, R.Wabyanga
    Ritual healing and deliverance creativities and innovations in African Pentecostal (AP) churches have become a phenomenon if not a hallmark of African Pentecostalism in sub-Saharan Africa, yet there is little contextual knowledge known that informs such innovations. Using fire healing ritual in the Pentecostal Church Universal (PCU) in Nairobi Kenya as a case study, the paper attempts to offer explanatory frameworks for ritual deliverance innovations and creativities. This chapter shows that healing rituals have cultural and biblical premises. Church pastors often blend the African traditional cultural symbolism with the bible narratives to innovate ritual materials—which make meaning to an African Christian. The usage of the Bible in grounding this ritual is part of the continued processes of Bible/Christianity Africanizing, especially in the socio-economic and technological spaces which call for creative approaches in creating meaning to life and religion.