PENTECOSTALISM has from its origins been conservative, if not reactionary, in matters of ideology and doctrine. Its ever-rising influence in Africa has therefore not been particularly salutary.
In Nigeria, Pentecostalism has inspired a popular subculture, some of whose elements are derived from the biblical worldview of supernatural forces, and from the unabashedly materialistic gospel of prosperity. Of particular concern is the Pentecostal counter-cultural doctrine that libels African indigenous philosophy and religious symbols as devilish, thereby compounding the self-alienation which ignorant clerics and marketers of the universal faiths have enthusiastically foisted on an unwitting people.
Pentecostalism in Africa has also become the harbinger of portentous challenges to the stability of fragile postcolonial societies. For example, its militant evangelical revival in Nigeria has, along with violent reactions from radical Islam, disrupted the delicate balance between the latter religion and Christianity, producing recurrent murderous upheavals.
Above all, Pentecostal neo-Christianity is actively fostering an anti-intellectual outlook by reinforcing the prevailing, pre-scientific worldview with biblical supernaturalistic belief in witchcraft, demons, and other malevolent forces that are supposed to control the destiny of mortals. In opposition to this bizarre world, Pentecostalism has also created a utopia where all men of faith will enjoy perfect health and achieve success and material wealth regardless of prevailing socio-economic circumstances. At least, this is the Pentecostal teaching based on selected sacred Hebrew biblical texts as parroted by ?evangelists? (with self-awarded titles of general overseer, bishop, and pastor) many of whom, being barely literate, are ignorant of their own history and culture, not to talk of Hebrew lores and mythologies.
But the magic ?works.? The ?prophecies? on ?breakthroughs? sometimes appear to come to pass, driven by Pentecostal pastors? relentless homilies on hustling (which have replaced Jesus? teaching on the danger of Mammon) and by endemic societal corruption. Thus, distinguished politicians convert public resources into private property, while prominent Pentecostal bank executives appropriate depositors? money to buy jets.
This particular essay is mainly on the religious significance of the Pentecostal phenomenon, including the worldview and the philosophy that inform its teachings. Also spotlighted are the Pentecostals and, by implication, the Nigerian philosophy of prayers, in relation to incantations, spells, and curses. Finally, there are the doublespeaks and open-ended prophesies presented as visions, and the psychological manipulations and illusions ? the so-called miracles ? that would evoke envy from a magician.
The fundamental difference between mainstream Christianity and the Pentecostal sect does not consist so much in the claim by Pentecostals to being born-again, or in the sect?s evangelistic/revivalist activities. The difference is mainly one of ideology. Thus, whereas the established churches have, by and large, accommodated modern enlightenment values, Pentecostals have reverted to the worldview of medieval times, which upholds the fundamentals of Christian belief. Accordingly, the Bible is God?s revelation, verbatim, rather than an unsystematic compendium of works of varying philosophical, moral, and spiritual profundity by several authors and editors.
Furthermore, Christianity, regardless of its chequered, bloody history, is the religion ordained for ALL mankind. By this token Buddhism, Orisa and all other faiths developed in different cultural settings are, to use the late Sheikh Gumi?s dismissive epithet popularised by Prof. Soyinka, ?nothing?. Indeed, indigenous African religions are of the devil; and African (and indeed other Third World) societies are under the malevolent influence of demons, occult powers, and principalities.
Three factors have facilitated the virus-like spread of Pentecostal ideas: firstly a deplorable human condition which has made Nigerians vulnerable to the pretensions of mountebanks to have solutions to all mundane problems; secondly, the resonance of Pentecostal doctrines about a supernatural, evil world of spirits, demons and other forces always scheming against one?s prosperity. The prevalence of this phantom, occult world in Africa lends credibility to its ancient Hebrew variety which came with the Bible and which confirms and reinforces the doctrine of the African world as truly demonic. Given the fact that there are traditional professional diviners like the Yoruba babalawo and adahunse to counteract these evil powers, Pentecostal pastors, while demonising the entire indigenous religious systems, have, nevertheless, adopted and adapted their therapeutic/religious roles, blending them with their miracles, in the name of Jesus.
The third factor in the spread of Pentecostal teachings is the failure of Nigeria?s intellectual and political leadership to adapt Western education as well as the main salutary influences of foreign religious systems to Nigerian needs. Unlike the Japanese and other peoples of Asia, we have profited little from the best elements of Western education. Rather, many of our leading scholars have become victims of the cultural imperialism of foreign religions by succumbing to the presumptuous claims of one or the other of the Semitic faiths (Islam and Christianity) to being the one and only religion revealed by God for all mankind. These leaders have therefore refused to acknowledge the failure of the imported creeds to proffer answers to our spiritual and existential needs. And they cannot see the virtual eclipse of the values anchored on the indigenous religious cultures as the main cause of our being stranded in a moral wilderness, with the adopted alien faiths incapable of charting a pathway out. Hence, both the intelligentsia and the political elite are content to be led by equally blind professional preachers to ascribe our multifarious problems to abstract forces which can only be counteracted through metaphysical means by the same magicians who diagnosed and prescribed the remedy for our condition.
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Akinola retired from the Department of History, University of Ibadan.
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