Exterior of Assemblies of God church in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Before my substantive remarks, I should like to put on record my profound gratitude to my distinguished colleagues for their gracious acceptance of the invitation to respond to my work. I am genuinely and utterly grateful. Whatever I may think about their dispositions and disagreements, I am flattered and humbled that they have deemed my work worthy of their investment. If there is a fate worse than being criticized, it is being ignored.
For the sake of convenience, I will categorize those criticisms into three groups. The first concerns my basic argument on the historicity and meaning of the emergence and influence of clerical authority in Nigeria, the second my perspective on secularity, and the third my ostensible treatment of spirituality and liberalism as antithetical.
The Meaning of Clerical Authority
When it comes to clerical authority, my critics express reservations regarding my theory of causation (Premawardhana); whether I have “inflated the clerical authority’s ascendancy” while at the same time lessening the power of the intelligentsia (Afolayan, Van Klinken, Premawardhana); my apparent neglect of the nascent resistance to clerical authority, especially in the realm of literary criticism (Van Klinken); and lastly, my apparent insensitivity to the seeming fragility of clerical authority (Adelakun).
Are Pentecostal pastors in Nigeria really on the rise due to the decline of the intelligentsia or have these contrasting phenomena unfolded concurrently with no direct causal link? I continue to see the preponderance of the argument tilting in favor of my original intuition that the devitalization and degradation of the intelligentsia, located primarily but not exclusively within the university system, prepared the ground for the emergence of the pastorate. In other words, the evacuation of the intelligentsia created a vacuum that, I contend, the pastorate, boasting in addition the ballast of spiritual authority, was all too happy to step into. This transition from an authority based broadly on reason to one based on revelation is, I argue, one of the most consequential developments in postcolonial Nigerian history, and insofar as one finds both my account and interpretation of it more or less plausible, it is difficult to “inflate the ascendancy” of the Pentecostal pastor. Even if we can quibble on the meaning of the degradation of the Man of Letters (the term I use, though with some caution, throughout the book to refer to the intelligentsia) or the relative solidity of the clerical regime that I postulate as its aftermath, what cannot be doubted is the effect of the crisis and collapse of the Marxist ideology in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the Nigerian intelligentsia’s ideological identity and amour propre. That it has yet to recover from this calamity and, more to the point, that Pentecostalism filled the space formerly occupied by Marxism in the Nigerian university system, if not in the imagination of the intelligentsia, is precisely my core argument.
This transition from an authority based broadly on reason to one based on revelation is one of the most consequential developments in postcolonial Nigerian history.
If that is the case, not only can the decline of the Man of Letters not be overdetermined, in fact, the focus on the rise of the contemporary Nigerian Pentecostal pastor would seem totally warranted, if not justified. Whether or not one acknowledges it, the social ubiquity of the Pentecostal pastor is a plain fact. Not only is he, i.e., the pastor, the presiding spirit (pun intended) in what I refer to as an aristocracy of wonderment, such is the vividness of his stamp—on politics, procreation, and social relations more broadly—that one would be remiss in one’s duty as a student of religion and politics not to consider him. I do not dispute that the pastor is, all told, just one element in a “constellation of divines”; nevertheless, his emergent power as a multipurpose cultural broker is such that he has to be taken on his own terms.
Nor am I oblivious to the fact that his “reign” is contested, which is what my analysis of those “useless women” who put up a fight, albeit unsuccessfully, is meant to signal. (In the book, I use the coinage “useless women” to describe women who, refusing to lie down as expected, challenged the masculine authority of various pastors.) On the contrary, while I take this “resistance” for granted and in fact applaud it, I admit to being dubious about its efficacy, at least in the short term. The current order is likely to continue for as long as the sociological conditions that simultaneously froze the development of the university system (and the attendant intellectual culture) and authorized the emergence of what I have termed rule by prodigy are operative. It is not so much a matter of “writing the intelligentsia off” as admitting its relative diminishment.
Nigeria as Secular State
A second criticism concerns my perspective on secularity (Lauterbach, Afolayan), specifically my assumption that Nigeria is a secular state. I admit the academic value of acknowledging the contestations around the term. However, such are the terms of religio-political engagement in Nigeria that normatively, I don’t see how I could have entertained a different point of departure. It is difficult to think of the Nigerian state as anything other than secular. As a matter of fact, contention over the terms of its taken for granted secularity has long been the defining element in Christian-Muslim political struggles, meaning that insofar as either side is content to have the balance shifted in its favor, it is because it perceives it to be otherwise in a notionally secular arrangement. Paradoxically, in their sworn desire to overturn it, rogue actors like Boko Haram are reminders of Nigeria’s secularity. In saying that Nigeria is a secular state, one is not disputing that religious actors and sentiments continue to exercise an outsize influence; on the contrary, one is acknowledging that, in principle, the Nigerian state is bound to an agnosticism which forbids either having a state religion or the privileging of the interests of one religious community over others. That the state frequently strays from this principle does nothing to nullify its secular status.
Liberalism and Spirituality
Finally, I have been challenged (Lauterbach) on my ostensible postulation of liberal democracy and spirituality as essentially antithetical. While I concede that the interplay between the two is neither unidimensional nor teleological, and while liberal democracies of course can and do draw sustenance from spiritual resources, what I am anxious to highlight is the danger of civic manipulation under certain conditions by actors invoking spiritual license or authority. By muddying the waters of rational deliberation, something that we have seen in too many cases, such actors provide a justification for rule by prodigy, a state of affairs that is harmful to the growth of liberal democracy.
Although I have doubled down on my core claims, there is no intention to wave off the earnest corrections and nudges of my colleagues. If anything, not only have I accepted much of their critique as just and taken it on board, they have alerted me to considerations that, in the fog of writing, one is always liable to overlook. None of us, it seems, is spared the fate of seeing through a glass darkly.
Ebenezer Obadare is Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Washington, D.C.; a fellow at the University of South Africa’s Institute of Theology, and contributing editor of Current History. Author and editor of numerous books on religion and politics and state and civil society in Africa, Obadare’s most recent work is Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender and Sexuality in Nigeria (Notre Dame Press, 2022). He is editor of Journal of Modern African Studies, published by Cambridge University Press.
Nigerian Women Worshipping. Image via Flickr user SIM USA. CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.
Ebenezer Obadare’s latest book, Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria—his second in a planned trilogy on Pentecostalism and Nigerian politics—is driven unapologetically by normative ends and ethical concerns. Central to the book and subject to critique is the figure of the Pentecostal pastor. Obadare spoke with many pastors, and names and describes specific ones at length. He is less interested in their variability, however, than in their commonality and what they reveal about contemporary Nigerian society. Thus, Obadare writes of these pastors in the abstract manner of an archetype: the “Man of God.” This is the new celebrity, the charismatic authority considered sacrosanct across all strata of society, even by political bigwigs. He (that this figure is a man is relevant) is above reproach or challenge, only to be followed and revered, though not entirely blindly thanks to a few brave Pentecostal laywomen (that these figures are women is also relevant).
What concerns Obadare specifically is Nigeria’s decades-long shift in moral authority from the intellectual class to the clerical class, from the “Man of Letters” to the “Man of God.” The 1980s stands as the fulcrum. That was when Nigeria’s military government gutted and coopted the universities, devaluing the Nigerian intelligentsia and particularly the professoriate. Obadare’s driving argument, to quote his clearest articulation, is as follows: “No one doubts that the Nigerian academy is in stasis or that the pastor is regnant. In Pastoral Power, Clerical State I posit a direct causal relationship between the two” (xx). The greatest strength of this book is the clarity of the case. Obadare openly positions himself in solidarity with his embattled fellow Nigerian intellectuals, especially those still laboring as he once did in Nigerian universities. In this book, he is at times a journalist (reporting from the front lines of the battle for recognition), at times a lawyer (carefully mounting evidence against the malfeasance of Nigeria’s new elites), and always an academic (researching and writing his way to both comprehension and, through it, potential transformation of the empirical facts).
In all this, Obadare is the quintessential Man of Letters. And it is hard not to read this book as a lament of and protest against the systematic weakening of the Nigerian intelligentsia. As an academic myself, I cannot but cheer on Obadare’s efforts to rescue Nigeria’s intellectuals from the displacement they have suffered. Moreover, there is a larger story hinted at in this struggle, one that goes beyond Nigeria. That is the crisis of legitimacy faced by elites and experts of all sorts—felt so acutely in countries like the United States and Brazil in their respective populations’ widespread resistance to public health recommendations during the COVID pandemic, in the increasing vitriol directed toward traditional media and news sources, and in the populist movements capable of ushering in authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro (both of them, incidentally, closely aligned with Pentecostal and similarly evangelical forms of Christianity).
In arguing strenuously against the anti-intellectualism of contemporary Nigeria, as exemplified by the growing clout of unlettered and uncredentialed influencers, Obadare makes no apologies for the book’s evident antipathy toward Pentecostal pastors: “If the reader detects a whiff of an impatient anti-clericalism within these pages, it is at bottom a yearning for some sort of intellectual restoration, which I happily admit is one of the founding impulses behind the book” (5). This candor is to be commended. Scholarship is not neutral, and Obadare makes clear the existential stakes of this book: “I have tried, as much as possible, to bring [my] personal, intellectual, and emotional formation to bear on my analysis” (18). This level of self-awareness and self-reflexivity is a credit to Obadare’s scholarship. Problematic is not the presence of biases, prejudices, and norms. Problematic is the failure to acknowledge them, the pretense of objectivity that denies how one’s research reflects one’s commitments.
Obadare is the quintessential Man of Letters. And it is hard not to read this book as a lament of and protest against the systematic weakening of the Nigerian intelligentsia.
There are two points on which I invite Obadare to further clarify his central argument. The first is the basic question asked of any scientific study: Are the two conditions—in this case, the decline of the Nigerian intelligentsia and the rise of the Pentecostal pastorate—connected by causation or correlation? Obadare strongly suggests, as in the quote above, “a direct causal relationship between the two.” Yet, throughout the book, he outlines a series of other originating factors—“a many-threaded social process” (4) as he rightly describes it—that include military misrule, economic collapse, the nascency of Nigerian democracy, the retreat of ideological systems, and the weakening of the state. All of these, and potentially any of these, could be posited as the cause of both the decline of the professoriate and the rise of the pastorate, in which case those two phenomena are related through correlation, not through causation. What would such a concession do to Obadare’s argument? It seems it would require a softening of the denunciatory tone against Pentecostal pastors. Their prominence would have to be seen not as the cause of the decline of the intelligentsia, but as the outgrowth of a deeper malaise.
My second point builds on the first one and centers on the question: Why does Obadare seem so determined to isolate the Pentecostal pastorate as the cause or, at least, the prime example of Nigeria’s problems today? There are other spiritual authorities whom Obadare mentions, but always only in passing: “a constellation of ‘divines,’ ranging from seers to palm readers, mediums, psychics, shamans, Muslim clerics, witch doctors, astrologers, and other spiritual practitioners normally characterized as ‘traditional’” (11). All these appear to contribute in some way or emanate out of Nigeria’s current climate of anti-intellectualism. Especially noteworthy but, for that reason, especially conspicuous in the lack of sustained treatment, are Muslim clerics—also Men of God, of course—who could just as well have received equal coverage to that of the Pentecostal clerics, and perhaps ought to have given the undeniably important role of Islam in setting the course of contemporary Nigerian society. Granted, every book requires focus, and there’s no flaw in delimiting one’s study for the sake of clarity and feasibility. Yet, there is a certain irony in attending almost exclusively to the Pentecostal pastor in a narrative lamenting the outsized prominence of the Pentecostal pastor; the choice of focus ends up reinforcing that which is being lamented. One way to decenter Pentecostal pastors in the society at large may be to decenter Pentecostal pastors in a book like this. But that was not the path taken. Why not? And how does Obadare see other charismatic figures fitting into the story of Nigeria’s shift from reason-based to revelation-based forms of authority?
The book’s second half focuses on gender and sexuality as manifest in the discourse and practices of pastors, and in the responses of the mostly female worshippers in Pentecostal churches. It is a credit to Obadare that he takes on such themes still too often ignored in scholarship on African Pentecostalism. In particular, his argument that the “reformation of machismo,” to use Elizabeth Brusco’s phrase well-known to scholars of Pentecostalism and gender, redounds to the benefit of the male pastor is compelling and original. Pentecostal laymen may be domesticated and tamed, disciplined by their faith to be less philandering and more responsible, but that leaves the pastor “the only man left standing in the church” (91), and from this comes the potential for abuses of power in all ways, not least sexual.
One way to decenter Pentecostal pastors in the society at large may be to decenter Pentecostal pastors in a book like this. But that was not the path taken. Why not?
In the most moving story of the book, Obadare writes of an anonymous young woman pushing back against one pastor’s aggressive and incendiary witchcraft accusations (99–102). “I am not a witch,” she declares to his face and before all gathered worshippers, in response to which the pastor slaps her. Yet the young woman persists, refuses to back down, and repeats that she is not a witch or, in a variation of her defense, that if she is a witch, she is a witch for Jesus. The pastor eventually leaves her be, but not before hearing the next woman down the line likewise declare, “I am not a witch.” The first woman’s defiance Obadare reads as nothing less than a moment of political insurrection, of rebellion against the Pentecostal pastor’s misogyny and tyranny, but rebellion from within the structure rather than against it. It is far from a final blow, but it is a first act of resistance capable, as it did, of inspiring others. Such defiance may not transform much in the moment, but it may start a chain of events the end of which is a dismantling of the system. As such, Obadare notes, it exemplifies a “hidden transcript” (101), James Scott’s term for unofficial and often undetected acts and gestures by means of which subordinate groups stand up to the powerful.
Although clearly not an insider to the Pentecostal tradition, Obadare as a Nigerian intellectual is an insider to the larger story this book tells. Is Obadare’s book thus also a hidden transcript? It is not so hidden, of course, in that it is published, but it can also be seen as an early, subtle, and indirect act of rebellion on behalf of Nigeria’s intelligentsia. Regarding another woman, a Nigeria-born musical celebrity who filed a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a prominent pastor, Obadare writes: “The most important thing for me is that she put everything on the line in challenging someone who she clearly knew was in a far stronger position than she was and who could crush her if he so desired” (103).
In illustration of both the anti-intellectualism and the asymmetrical power of Nigeria’s Pentecostal pastors, Obadare’s book is likely to be ignored by them. In that, we can also speak of Pastoral Power, Clerical State as a hidden transcript. But it is highly likely to be read by those who may find in it inspiration to continue to resist and thus contribute to the cause of anti-anti-intellectualism. By continuing the chain begun by Pentecostal laywomen like those we learn of in this book—women Obadare presents as worthy of emulation by all of us—Obadare joins them in refusing to let pastors dominate unduly, in forging space for what is increasingly crowded out. In climates indifferent if not hostile to deep learning and credentialed expertise, scholarship of the type Obadare has produced may be (to use another of James Scott’s terms) a “weapon of the weak.” But it is a weapon we have to use in a fight we have to fight.
Devaka Premawardhana is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University. His first book, Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique, received the best book award from the Society for Pentecostal Studies and was a finalist for the best book award of the Journal of Africana Religions. It was also the subject of an earlier Contending Modernities book symposium.
Image of interlocking chains in a fence in the city of Hebron. Via Wikimedia Commons.
The followingstatement, originally published on Tikkun, has been signed by Professor Atalia Omer, Co-Director of the Contending Modernities Research Initiative. Below the statement is a summary report of a conversation that took place on Thursday, October 12 at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies among experts in peace studies and international law.
Solidarity with Israel/Palestine
This statement is written and signed by Palestinians, Jews, and others who are committed to holding complex truths and striving to overcome polarization. We feel the pain of our people, identify with their pain, and need to work together to uplift our shared humanity.
The unfolding horror in Israel and Gaza is an escalation of decades of state-sanctioned violence by Israel against Palestinians. We condemn the horrific actions of Hamas against Israeli civilians. We likewise condemn Israel’s unbridled bombing and cutting off access to all basic needs, including food, water, electricity, and medical care. Attacks on Palestinian and Israeli civilians are repugnant.
Israeli violence against Palestinians has been intentionally hidden, slow, and steady. Contrary to what the media is reporting, this attack was not unprovoked. The Israeli and American governments have worked together to suppress and deny the inhumane acts against Palestinians that have led to this moment. There are Palestinians and Jews who have been raising red flags and warning about this inevitable outcome for decades, only to be dismissed and ignored.
The world’s failure to challenge Israel’s ongoing occupation, apartheid, and unbridled violence by settlers and soldiers in the West Bank provides the context for what is happening now. The recent Israeli government’s escalation of violence, encroachment of Al Aqsa Mosque, and its 16-year siege of Gaza has led to the current explosion.
We repeat: the brutality of Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians is unjustified.
As we watch the violent attacks and rallying of xenophobia on both sides, we are brokenhearted. Although it feels like a time to stand with “our people,” we know this is a time to come together. This is a time of great suffering for all; a time of painful emotions. It is only by recognizing our shared fears and our shared tears that we will find our way through this nightmare. It is a struggle we need to undertake jointly.
When we fall back into our separate and distinct identities we risk becoming part of the problem, not the solution. Both peoples suffer from ongoing trauma. We are all on high alert. The fear is palpable. And it is easy for us to objectify the ‘other.’
We seek a third path that neither perpetuates a xenophobic response nor sustains an unjust status quo. This moment calls us to slow down, sit with the pain and complexity, and grapple with our discomfort. It is a moment for digging deep, seeing across differences, and remembering our deep yearning for peace and justice. It is only through compassion and empathy that we will find a different way.
We recognize and uplift the humanity of all peoples in Israel/Palestine.
We call for an immediate ceasefire from Hamas and Israel.
We demand that basic needs be provided to Gazans.
We demand that the United States provide only humanitarian support to Israel and Gaza.
We support the creation of a movement that recognizes and affirms the humanity, dignity, and desire of both peoples to live in peace through reconciliation and justice.
****
On Thursday October 12, The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies held a teach-in with faculty, staff, and students from around the University of Notre Dame community. The panel was moderated by CM Co-Director Ebrahim Moosa and panelists included Notre Dame doctoral candidate in Theology Daniel Bannoura, CM Co-Director Atalia Omer, and Notre Dame Professor of Law and Concurrent Professor of International Peace Studies Mary Ellen O’Connell. Given the mainstream English news media amnesia in covering this event, the aim of this conversation was to provide a broader context for the violence.
Following introductions of the speakers and a reading of the University of Notre Dame’s Land Acknowledgement, Kroc Institute Executive Director Erin Corcoran handed off the discussion to the panel.
Professor Ebrahim Moosa began by laying out the complex background of Israel/Palestine in light of the current events. He drew particular attention to the different ways that Israelis and Palestinians perceive the political context in which they find themselves. For Palestinians, he noted, the state of Israel is a settler colonial power. For Israelis, on the other hand, Israel is a home that represents an emancipation from centuries of experiencing oppression and violence in Europe and elsewhere.
In her opening remarks, Professor Atalia Omer outlined her personal connections to and scholarly focus on Israel and Palestine, as well as her own Israeli citizenship, roots, and Jewish identity. She urged recognizing the humanity of Palestinians and Israelis and that a failure to mourn victims of horrendous violence, whoever they are, is a failure of one’s humanity. She noted that she herself was hurting because of the loss of friends in Saturday’s atrocious attacks carried out by the Hamas movement. She argued that it is important to contextualize the violence so as to challenge binary and ahistorical narratives and the discourse of genocidal revenge and collective punishment that have been perpetuated in its wake. For her, this means contextualizing 100 years or more of the displacement of Palestinians and the international community’s complicit role in the Israeli occupation. The Gaza Strip, an integral part of the Palestinian landscape, has been fenced in since the Oslo “peace process” in the mid-1990s. During that time, Gaza was fragmented from the rest of Palestine. But Gaza has remained, despite this policy of fragmentation, at the heart of the struggle for Palestinian liberation. The war for Israeli independence in 1948 was the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” for Palestinians who have continued to experience for 75 years a variety of events and mechanisms of control, displacement, restrictions of movement, oppression, and destruction. This includes demolition, dispossession of land, and the denial of the history and experiences of Palestinians often through the weaponization of antisemitism. She noted that the leading human rights groups, including the Israeli B’tselem, have argued that Israel is perpetuating apartheid against the Palestinians through a principle of sovereignty B’tselem terms “Jewish supremacy.”
She described how she was horrified and in pain on Saturday, but, tragically, not surprised, noting that structural violence has been perpetuated in Palestinian territories for many years. She argued that the story of revenge is not one we should embrace. Redressing the underlying root causes of the escalating violence, Omer underscored, cannot be accomplished by the military through the commitment of war crimes and the violating humanitarian laws, but ought to be attained through diplomatic and political tools. Unfortunately, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that the US is going to have Israel’s back in its collective punishment of Gazans. But there is a need to recognize everyone’s humanity and pain. We need to understand the history of Palestinian displacement since 1948 (and before, going back to the momentous Balfour Declaration of 1917) and the continued discrepancy in power, which is exemplified in how Israel was able to cut off food, water, and electricity to Gaza. The majority of the residents of Gaza are refugees, uprooted during the Nakba.
Daniel Bannoura began by sharing his story as a Palestinian who grew up near Bethlehem. The West Bank, he noted, is also a prison in which members of his family still live. So far 1,600 Palestinians, including 450 children and babies, have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli occupation forces [see updated numbers in the editorial introduction]. Half of those who have died are women and children. White phosphorus has been dumped on Gazans in contravention to international law. He noted that around 300 Christian families in Gaza lost their homes and are now without food and sheltering at a church. Rather than a prison, he sees Gaza as a concentration camp because a prison implies that those in it are guilty of committing a crime. The only crime of the people of the Gaza Strip is that they were born there.
He noted that so many are in attendance at the panel today, rather than at past panels, because we don’t think Palestinians are fully human. The difference this time is the number of Israelis who have died. He argued that it was necessary to condemn Hamas, but that it was also necessary to condemn the Israeli government’s actions, the latter of which US citizens are also complicit in because their tax dollars go to support Israel. In our media, he laid out, White supremacy leads us to paint Israelis as White and Palestinians as non-White. He argued that apartheid language is only the beginning of the conversation, and we need to focus on the ramifications and impact of settler colonialism, legal and military procedures, US foreign policy, and the role of religion in whitewashing injustice in the region.
Daniel also noted that we need to recognize the humanity of both peoples. White supremacist ideologies frame Israel and Palestine as well in terms of who is viewed as having humanity and who is not. All of us in the room, he noted, are inheritors of a violence of domination and colonization, whether historical colonization, antisemitism, or the denial of the Palestinian people of the right to exist. Daniel further observed the role of Western Christianity in maintaining the system of oppression against the Palestinians through theological formulations, whether through Protestant zionism or Catholic zionism, that justify the colonization of Palestine and continue to exclude and erase Palestinians from their analysis. He argued that we need to see that the Shoah is tied to the Nakba, that the suffering of innocents in the past is tied to the suffering of innocents now. He ended by noting that he hoped a just peace and human rights would inform how we move ahead from this tragedy.
Professor Ebrahim Moosa recognized that many in the audience were in pain after an interruption from an audience member. He noted that he was South African and that every South African cleric, civil rights activist, and politician who visited Israel/Palestine said that the oppression faced by the Palestinians was far worse than what Blacks faced in South Africa. He suggested that a carnage was about to happen in Gaza, and that because of this he wrote a letter to President Bident and to his Senator, and encouraged others to do the same.
Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell argued that this is a moment to speak with unity. We need to give heart to the amount of suffering. She spoke of a way forward if we use what past generations offered us to unite us and that is our common international law—a concept we around the world built together. She briefly addressed the three categories of law relevant to the crisis: (1) law on resort to armed force; (2) law on the conduct of armed conflict; and (3) human rights law. On initial resort to force she argued that any right of self-defense or to resist occupation that may exist for the Palestinian people (and that is a complicated issue), there is emphatically no justification for the violent measures undertaken by Hamas. Hamas had no hope of removing Israeli authorities from occupied territory by killing civilians. Hamas used violence with only one aim—to intimidate for political ends—that is the definition of terrorism. She explained that even a party with a right to resort to force is restricted from exercising that right where there is no reasonable chance of success.
Concerning law and conduct during armed conflict, she emphasized there is no right to intentionally target civilians or ever take hostages. She said that it is unclear to what extent Israel can lawfully respond to terrorism with war. It is clear that Israel has a duty to withdraw from territory it occupies. Israel’s use of force also violates the principle of necessity. Its interventions in the past have never accomplished a lawful military objective. Further, any resort to armed force must comply with four fundamental principles: distinction, necessity, proportionality, and humanity. Israel is violating all of these right now. Cutting off food, medicine, and water to a civilian population is never acceptable. Hamas must also release hostages and cease violent attacks on Israel. The US has a responsibility to restore international law and reverse its own actions in violation of the prohibition on the use of force. She advocated for the US to lead in international law to aid those suffering in all war-torn nations—Myanmar, in Ethiopia, and in Sudan.
Following these initial remarks, a Q&A period was opened up. One audience member suggested that it would be beneficial for the US and UN to invade Gaza and free the Palestinians from Hamas. Another attendee reflected on the fact that the Israeli occupation had prevented them from returning to their home. Still another wondered what role the UN security council might play in the dispute and what was being said by the Palestinian leadership about the conflict.
Kibbutz Kfar Aza with Gaza seen on the horizon. Image credit: Max Nathans. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED.
ProfessorMary Ellen O’Connell began the panelists’ responses by mentioning, as the other panelists had before their remarks, her own faith, Roman Catholicism, and her Irish heritage. She is the granddaughter of people who fled oppression and genocidal famine. She has devoted her life in line with the great teaching of the Catholic Church to Pacem in Terris. International law offers the most effective tool to work for the goal that she knows of. In response to the question about the UN invading and freeing people from Hamas she argued based on extensive experience and data that the attempt to use military force to create good governance will fail. Classical peacekeeping, which succeeded consistently in ending violence when all parties consented, had been abandoned with the end of the Cold War and the rise of a hegemonic US devoted to realist-militarist policy. The belief in military solutions bred by realism is at the root of conflict today. Yet, military force is no solution to terrorism and other social challenges.
In response to the question about the United Nations Security Council, she dismissed the Council’s relevance today, given the Permanent Members’ disregard for the UN Charter and international law generally. A dynamic UN Secretary General with real leadership potential can do more for peace now as can an immediate shift of US policy from defying international law to compliance—end targeted killing with drones, renounce unlawful military force like the invasion of Iraq 2003, and cease military support of Israel.
Daniel Bannoura noted that the Palestinian president committed himself to nonviolence and condemned the killing of innocent civilians. He also reiterated that we need Israelis to see that their security is connected to Palestinian security. Israel has built a fortress on the lands and bones of Palestinians, he argued. The suffering is connected when we see that a Palestinian cannot return home. Palestinians want a free Palestine from apartheid and oppression so that Hamas and other actors of violence lose their credibility. Hamas has only been around 30 years. Palestinians have been suffering since 1948.
ProfessorAtalia Omer argued that it is critical to think of the question of Israeli and Palestinian suffering together. Because of the binary framing, she noted, it is difficult both to mourn the people she lost [in Israel] and recognize the crimes committed against them while also recognizing the Palestinian story and the ongoing violent reality Palestinains have endured, albeit differently in 1948 territories or “Israel proper,” the West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip (and various diasporas and refugee camps in the region). This issue did not begin on Saturday, October 7 and it is important to bring the root cause to the foreground in order to de-escalate and redress politically the aspirations of Palestinians for freedom and historical justice. She suggested that the dehumanizing rhetoric from the US President and Secretary of State that claimed that Hamas’ sole purpose for existing is “to kill Jews” collapses the distinction between Israelis and Jews in an unhelpful way. It also abstracts and decontextualizes the realities of prolonged structural violence in Palestine/Israel and the ideology that sustains them as noted in the B’tselem report.
She ended her response by noting that she grew up in Israel, and the first time she heard about the Nakba was when she came to the US. What is at the center of this is the denial of history, the denial of narrative, and the denial of humanity.
In another round of questions, one audience member asked how they could support Palestinians without being accused of being antisemitic? They also asked how to communicate to the West that Hamas does not represent everyone? Another audience member spoke about their home and neighborhood in Gaza being destroyed, noting that their family is camped in a school and that there was no way out of the city. She argued that Israel is committing war crimes and no one is covering it. Hamas is the only form of resistance that Gazans have, she said. Another audience member asked what duty toward Palestine Jordanians, Iraqis, Lebanese and others have and how the Israelis might be brought to the negotiating table? They also pointedly asked: What do you do when non-violence does not work?
Daniel Bannoura responded to the question about antisemitism and support for Palestinians. The Palestinian struggle for freedom, he argued, is tied to the struggle against antisemitism. It is the same demand that the struggles are after. Because you are fighting against antisemitism you are fighting for Palestinians. Generally, Western discourse on the situation in Palestine and Israel consistently formulates the Palestinian cause as contingent or insignificant. He suggested that Palestinians are paying for the sins of Christians in Europe and their historic antisemitism. We have to understand that this is a messy conflict, and we have to move away from the colonial framing of it.
A two-state solution will not work, he said. The community’s history and culture are too intertwined. We need to think in new and creative ways that insure the security and freedom of both peoples.
ProfessorAtalia Omer noted that the two-state framework is based on homogeneous ethnoreligious conceptions of identity that inspire White nationalism in the US and that alternatives are needed. She stressed the need for a political imagination that goes beyond the current framework.
Professor Ebrahim Moosa concluded the panel by suggesting that each side in the conflict is now framing this moment as “a state of exception” from the normal rule of law and that this is an extremely dangerous moment. Indeed, the US claimed a state of exception after 9/11 and dire consequences followed, including years of violence and death in Afghanistan and in other places around the world where the “war on terror” was enacted.
Pastor Ayo ministering at the Warri Miracle Crusade in the Warri City Stadium, December 10, 2015. Via Wikimedia Commons.
In Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria, Ebenezer Obadare takes a second step in his bold and original discussion of the nature of Pentecostalism and its influence and role in Nigerian society and in relation to the Nigerian state. The first step was taken in Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power(2018) wherein he discussed the role of Pentecostalism and the Pentecostal elite in Nigeria’s fourth republic. In Pastoral Power, Clerical State, the focus is on the pastor as figure and on the power that pastors seek to access, hold, and perform. The work is not bound by conventionalism—disciplinary or other—as it takes the Pentecostal pastors’ spheres of influence to extend across the nation’s “political, sexual, and cultural topography.” This scope allows Obadare to grasp the ultramodern—the merging of entities that were bounded and distinct within a modern framework (religious / secular)—fusion of delusionary ideals of democracy and recourse to religious frames of identity and power. Obadare’s rendering underscores the paradox between spiritual and political power and an ethical ideal of liberal democracy, one that will have impacts on our understanding of these concepts beyond the example of Nigeria.
At the heart of this book lies a discussion of the factors that contribute to and help us explain the indisputable rise of pastoral power in Nigeria, as well as around the globe. Importantly, he does not operate within the traditional/modern dichotomy that we often see in such works (either explaining the rise of Pentecostalism as a way of going back and drawing on traditional forms of power or seeing Pentecostalism as a modern phenomenon and a reflection of a millennial condition). He wrestles with large and far-reaching processes of change in Nigerian society such as the decline of the salience of the “Man of Letters,” which implies a change in the status of the intellectual, and the ascension of the “Man of God.” This process indicates the replacement of one cognitive framework with another and Obadare is astutely interested in and aware of the consequences of this shift. The central questions of the book come to rest on where power lies, what power is, and who can access and exercise power.
Pastoral Power opens by turning the question “why are so many young people becoming pastors”? upside down. This question, which has been key in my own work on Pentecostal pastors in Ghana, then becomes: “Why are not all young men becoming pastors” (xix)? This rhetorical maneuver is indicative of what Obadare sees as the prominence of pastoral power in contemporary Nigeria and its consequences on the operations of the Nigerian state. Much of what Obadare describes and observes around the Pentecostal pastor—a calling, eminence, prayers, prophecies, wealth—resonates with my own work on Pentecostal pastors in Ghana. My work has focused on the continuities between how Pentecostal pastors and traditional holders of power, whose authority cut across political and spiritual domains (such as chiefs) achieve, tap into, and hold spiritual power. What fascinates me about Obadare’s work is that he observes very similar processes among Nigerian Pentecostal pastors as Ghanaian ones when it comes to pastoral authority and its mechanisms, but reaches different conclusions and sees the wider future consequences of this change. What Obadare seems to indicate is that these issues should prompt us to ask big questions, such as: What happens to a liberal democracy when the locus of power moves from the institutions of the state to the thrones of Pentecostal pastors? What makes pastors unique and why are they capable of holding the kind of uberauthority that we see?
Obadare traces a significant shift in the history of power in Nigeria from the Man of Letters to the Man of God. This shift involved the breakdown of “emancipatory ideologies” (referencing Mary Kaldor, 46). Here he describes Major General Vatsa as an example of someone possessing intellectual flair and style. He was a soldier-poet who was defended and liked by people because of his intellectualism. This figure reminded me of Lomba, the prisoner-poet in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel. Lomba is an aspiring intellectual and journalist who, under the military dictatorship of General Abacha, is living with the repercussions of his trade. After participating in an ‘anti-government’ demonstration, Lomba is imprisoned. While in prison, Lomba starts to write, first in secret, but is later discovered by a prison superintendent. After initial punishment, Lomba gets protection by writing ghost love poems for the prison superintendent who offers them to the woman he loves. The woman, it turns out, understands that the superintendent is not the true author of the poetry she has been given. Lomba, on his part, equally reflects upon the messages of the poems not being for her: “But how could I tell her that the message wasn’t really for her, or for anyone else? It was for myself, perhaps, written by me to my own soul, to every other soul, the collective soul of the universe” (28). Habila’s prisoner-poet masters the skills of the letter, but also the skills of performance and the words of love. He speaks to the existential soul of the universe. He is perhaps more than a Man of Letters.
The central questions of the book come to rest on where power lies, what power is, and who can access and exercise power.
From here we can move to the pastor-poet. What is the pastor doing with words? The Man of God is also a Man of Words, though perhaps not “of letters” in the sense Obadare describes it. But surely he is a man of words. There is an eroticism to pastoral performativity as Obadare shows, but there is also one of performing knowledge. There is poetry in preaching, in being on stage and addressing an audience, whether that audience is in a church or in the street. We could say that the production and performance of texts (oral or written) conveys a status that stems from the recognition of these skills in society. As Stephanie Newell has shown in her study of Ghanaian popular fiction, the proverb is a way for authors to show that they are able to “quote from ‘outside’ texts in order to generate further text of their own” (11). Is there a way in which we can grasp the power of the Pentecostal pastor through this appropriation and tapping into an intellectual history that might be eroding, yet still holds potential for recognition?
With this, I return to the question of power raised by Obadare. Naminata Diabate, in her recent work Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa,discusses naked female protesting across Africa and through a variety of texts. She highlights naked protesting as an act of resistance as well as a site that exposes women to shame, death, and vulnerability. Diabate asks similar yet distinctive questions about the relationship between state power and spirituality as Obadare; they are different because she writes about women who engage in defiant disrobing as being in positions of power and vulnerability simultaneously and thereby points to the ambiguity that lies in holding certain forms of power, yet, similar because Diabate is interested in the relationship between liberal democracies and spirituality. Instead of asking how spiritual causality might undermine the fundamental principles of a liberal democracy, she wonders how the liberal modern state can accommodate the religious practices and traditions of a country. This is fundamentally a question about the “separation of the secular from the religious, which remains an ideal in our world with its promise of secularism-cum-freedom” (144). But what is the liberal democracy of today and in different contexts? This is an open question rather than one whose answer we should take for granted. Liberal democracy is certainly a yardstick and an ideal, but it is entangled with other not-so-liberal forces which cause us to reflect on the contradictions and non-exclusionary co-existence between mystical forces and political power, be it within democratic or other institutions. By defying the boundaries of discipline and genre, Obadare’s book pushes readers to ask this often neglected question about the nature of power in ostensible secular societies in our world today.
Karen Lauterbach, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on Christianity and histories of social change in Africa. She has written about charismatic Christianity, wealth and power in Ghana as well as Christianity, displacement and moral practices of helping and hosting in Uganda. Her work has focused in particular on the role of pastors including their social status and legitimacy. She has published the monograph Christianity, Wealth and Spiritual Power in Ghana (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and co-edited Faith in African Lived Christianity: Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives(Brill 2019) as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.
1986 Nobel Prize winner in Literature Wole Soyinka during a lecture at Stockholm Public Library on October 4, 2018. Image via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0
The Nigerian writer and public intellectual Wole Soyinka, in his book-length essay Of Africa, refers to new religious movements in Christianity and Islam, including Pentecostalism, when writing that “religion, alas, on the African continent, has moved in recent times beyond the luxury or mere abstraction or academic exercise. It has leapt to the forefront of global concern … [and] it threatens the very fabric of a continent that, only a decade or so ago, considered herself immune from the lunacy of faiths” (131). One can safely assume that Soyinka, who is widely known for his “radical agnosticism” and religious skepticism (see Celucien Joseph’s recent book about Soyinka on religion), would consider the Pentecostal pastor, and the cult around him, as a primary embodiment of the religious fanaticism he is so concerned about. One can also safely assume that Soyinka would sympathize and probably agree with the critical analysis of this phenomenon offered by Ebenezer Obadare in Pastoral Power, Clerical State.
Soyinka himself is mentioned in Obadare’s book as a prominent member of the social class described as “Men of Letters,” which according to Obadare is of “yesterday” because the public status, authority, and influence this intellectual elite once enjoyed in postcolonial Nigeria has been taken over by, indeed, Pentecostal pastors as self-proclaimed “Men of God” (26–27). Although there is a significant element of truth in this account of a passage of authority of ‘“yesterday’s ‘Man of Letters’ to today’s ‘Man of God”’ (4), in the present contribution to the symposium about Pastoral Power, Clerical StateI want to complicate this narrative and ask whether Obadare might be writing off the Men of Letters too early. In doing so, I want to foreground the ongoing relevance and significance of literary writing as a site of creative critique and reimagination of Christianity, in particular Pentecostalism. A preliminary note is that although I can’t fully avoid using Obadare’s androcentric language, it’s important to acknowledge that women are an important part of the constituency of Pentecostal pastors as well as of literary writers.
The “Man of God” as a “Man of Letters”
One complication of Obadare’s framing is that contemporary Pentecostal pastors appear to be rather eager to embody the personae of a “(Wo)man of letters” themselves. As much as Obadare mentions university professors in Nigeria who adopt the title “pastor” in order to regain some of their lost social status, the reverse is also true: many a pastor proudly carries the academic title of Doctor or Professor (honorary or not) in combination with their religious title, indicating that at least the pretension of academic credential and intellectual caliber is vital to their performance as religious, social, and political entrepreneurs. Moreover, pastors frequently cast themselves as Men of Letters in a literal sense, as they boost their public profile with a prolific output of books, usually published by their church-linked publishing houses. To cite only one example, David Oyedepo, the founding pastor and presiding bishop of Living Faith Church International (also known as Winners Chapel), prides himself on having “published over 90 impactful titles most of which have been translated to major languages of the world such as French, Chinese, Spanish etc. with over twenty million copies in circulation.” Most if not all of these titles were published through his own publishing house, Dominion, the mission of which states that “knowledge, which is a product of learning, is a key factor in the liberation of man.” Whatever one thinks of the quality of the writings by Oyedepo and the likes (and I admit to having some reservations about this), one could well argue that Pentecostal pastors have been more successful in promoting a reading culture in Nigeria (and beyond) than the whole class of intellectual Men of Letters before them. The phenomenon of (Wo)men of God casting themselves as (Wo)men of letters raises questions about the boundaries between these two categories, which obviously are blurred unless one adopts an elitist view of what the real (Wo)men of letters are about.
The Continued Relevance of “Men of Letters”
However, my focus in this contribution to the symposium about Obadare’s book is a different one. Drawing attention to the ways in which Pentecostal pastors have recently been featured in contemporary Nigerian literary texts, I complicate the suggestion that the Men of Letters belong to the past. Instead, I want to highlight their ongoing role in the public critique of Pentecostalism, in particular the figure of the pastor. For the purpose of this discussion, I understand Men of Letters here as referring to literary writers (male or female) who, as Wale Adebanwi has argued, play a vital role as “social thinkers” about contemporary African realities. Obadare, in the introduction to his book, makes brief mention of the writer in their role as social thinkers in relation to Pentecostalism when he quotes the novelist Elnathan John who, in his satirical book Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide, observes that “Being a pastor is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a Nigerian.” Needless to say, the rewards of be(com)ing a pastor are well-spelled out in Pastoral Power, Clerical State.
John has offered a more expanded satirical critique of the figure of the Pentecostal pastor in his graphic novel On Ajayi Crowther Street(illustrated by Àlàbá Ònájìn). Published by the Abuja-based press Cassava Republic, this novel has been described as a “gossipy, Lagos-set morality tale.” It centers around the lives of Pastor Akpoborie and his family, with the pastor being unfavorably depicted as a moral hypocrite and religious charlatan. In the novel, Akpoborie harasses and rapes the housemaid while subjecting his own son to an aggressive deliverance ritual to cast out the “demon of homosexuality”; he also stages a “night of divine demolition” that promises deliverance and healing, while paying a couple of criminals to help stage the “miracles” in order to deceive the tithing congregation. Building on recent arguments for taking African cartoons seriously for their critical role in public and political culture, I suggest that the cartoons by Àlàbá Ònájìn and the accompanying text by Elnathan John in this graphic novel are an important example of the way in which Pentecostalism, and in particular the figure of the seemingly powerful pastor, is made the subject of satirical criticism.
One could well argue that Pentecostal pastors have been more successful in promoting a reading culture in Nigeria (and beyond) than the whole class of intellectual Men of Letters before them.
Another key example of a critical literary representation of Pentecostalism is Okey Ndibe’s novel Foreign Gods, Inc. This book can be seen as a contemporary follow-up to Wole Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero, which offers a mocking depiction of an earlier generation of Nigerian charismatic prophets. What Soyinka’s character of Brother Jero and Ndibe’s character of Pastor Uka have in common is that they have no ethical values, manipulate and delude their followers, and consider pastoring as a business. Pastor Uka is a typical preacher of the neo-Pentecostal prosperity gospel, and the narrative depiction of him in Foreign Gods, Inc. almost neatly mirrors Obadare’s discussion in chapter 3 of the pastor as a “sexual object” and even a “charismatic porn-star.” See, for instance, this paragraph about Uka entering his church:
The congregation shook with excitement. They stampeded to meet the pastor at the entrance. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ they sang, young and old alike. They massed around the man, enveloped him. They bawled, hands upraised, like fans at a soccer game.… Had God descended through the clouds and into the shaggy church, the frenzy could scarcely have been more delirious. (Ndibe, 146)
This scene illustrates what Obadare describes as the “Pentecostal erotic economy,” with the pastor at the center and using individual aesthetics and charismatic styles to create a “state of arousal” and emerge as an “ecclesiastical stud” (83, 91). Yet, through other characters, Ndibe voices his skepticism about this erotic economy. Faced with Uka’s fashionable appearance, Ike (the novel’s protagonist) silently names him “peacock pastor” (147). Where his mother believes that Uka is “anointed, a real man of God,” Ike refers to him as “an anointed liar” and “a shameless exploiter of people” (134). Uncle Osuakwu, a traditionalist and priest in the local ancestral shrine, too, sees through Pastor Uka, describing him as “a madman” (194) and as an efulefu, that is, a man “blown about by the wind,” without moral principles (205). Thus, Foreign Gods, Inc. depicts Pastor Uka not just as a charismatic performer of religio-erotic spectacle, but as an embodiment of morally corrupt religious leadership.
Both texts discussed above are literary examples of the tradition of “popular tales of pastors, luxury, frauds and corruption” that abound in Nigeria and beyond. They associate Pentecostalism, and especially the figure of the Pentecostal pastor, with an (im)moral economy of corruption in contemporary Africa.
I don’t have the illusion that writers such as John and Ndibe, or even the giant figure of Soyinka, have an authority in contemporary Nigeria that even comes close to the popularity and influence enjoyed by Pentecostal pastors, so eloquently analyzed by Obadare. In that sense, Obadare is right when he speaks of a “passage of authority” from Men of Letters to Men of God. However, it might be too early to declare the Men of Letters as belonging to yesterday.
Literary Critique of Pentecostalism
Much scholarly attention is being paid to Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity as a highly public religion, and as a key driver of socio-cultural change in Africa. However, what is often overlooked is how Pentecostalism itself is also made a subject of critique by a range of socio-cultural actors who are concerned about the impact that this form of religion has on society. Literary writing has recently emerged as a major site of critical engagement, with several writers making Pentecostal beliefs and practices a central concern in their texts. Doing so, they stand in, and invigorate, a well-established tradition of critiques of Christianity in African literature.
Although Soyinka’s critique is informed by a fundamental skepticism about religion, this is not necessarily the case with a younger generation of writers. Ndibe, for instance, has confessed to have a “profound respect for Christianity and religious faith.” His concern with Pentecostal pastors such as Uka is that they distort “the true meaning of faith.” And to cite another example, of a Woman of Letters this time, the Nigerian writer Chinelo Okparanta, in her novel Under the Udala Trees, explicitly engages in biblical and theological reflection on the question of sexual diversity. She not merely criticizes Pentecostalism for its tendency to “deliver” the queer body from supposedly “demonic” spirits, but creatively reimagines religious thought, with the conclusion of the novel being that “God, who created you, must have known what He did” (these are the words of an initially homophobic mother to her same-sex loving daughter). As much as Okparanta is critical of the colonial, patriarchal, and queer-phobic nature of Christianity in Nigeria, she states to have made “a conscious decision to continue as a Christian.” The same applies to the internationally renowned writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who considers herself a “liberal Catholic.” Thus, what we encounter here is a generation of writers who grew up in the postcolonial era, at a time when Christianity had become very much part of the social milieu, and who combine their criticism of the church with a creative imagination of alternative possibilities of being simultaneously African and Christian. These writers present, not so much a (post)secular critique of religion, but a postcolonial African critical and creative negotiation of religion.
Obadare concludes his book by suggesting that Pentecostal pastors’ rule by prodigy “is not impregnable” (122). Contemporary men and women of letters may not put the nail in the coffins of today’s men (and women) of God. Yet as long as the latter remain popular and powerful, the former are likely to be a thorn in their side and cause some nuisance.
Adriaan van Klinken is Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds. He serves as Director of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies and the Centre for Religion and Public Life. He also is Extraordinary Professor in the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from Utrecht University, the Netherlands (2011).
A street preacher in Nigeria with musical accompaniment. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Ebenezer Obadare’s Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria vigorously pushes the boundary of the political-theological predicament—the problem of how to figure out and configure the relationship between ecclesia and imperium, or the secular and the sacred—that troubles most societies grappling with the resurgence of the religious and its complicated relationship with the political. The new book, the second installment in a promised trilogy that started with the Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (2018), opens up large theoretical vistas in the relationship between Pentecostalism, secularity, and postsecularism in postcolonial Nigeria. It presses Pentecostal studies into deeper reflection on the role God is supposed to play in world-making, and how that could shape the political future of the postcolonial Nigerian state.
Apart from its deep exploration of the political-theological predicament (which I will explore in this piece), Obadare plunges into the highly sensitive realm of the erotic and eroticism in the relationship between the Pentecostal pastor and gender dynamics. The relationship between religion and gender has remained an ever-contentious one, especially given the patriarchal orientation of pastoral power that defines Pentecostalism. However, projecting the pastor as “a masculine object of erotic fascination able to generate sexual frisson in his female congregants” (xix) not only opens up a dimension of the Pentecostalism-gender discourse that goes beyond the usual masculinist and sexual readings of Pentecostal pastors, it will also outline a discourse that will reel in African feminists and womanists.
Obadare’s book presses Pentecostal studies into deeper reflection on the role God is supposed to play in world-making, and how that could shape the political future of the postcolonial Nigerian state.
Specifically, Pastor Power, Clerical State makes a bold statement that interjects in the powerful contributions to Pentecostal studies, especially by the duo of Ruth Marshall and Nimi Wariboko. Yet Obadare differs from these two in his ability to take the political-theological predicament of the Nigerian state seriously; he combines personal observation, ethnography, and incisive analysis of the political significance, charismatic power, and social relevance of the Pentecostal pastor within Nigeria’s postcolonial milieu. Between them, Marshall and Wariboko expounded on specific issues and how they impinge on Pentecostal political dynamics. Wariboko’s Nigerian Pentecostalism (2014) takes seriously the ideas of epistemology, spirituality, and community as means of political engagement within the Nigerian state. Pentecostal spirituality, for him, is founded on the conviction that spiritual information can be mined to aid the search for meaning by the Pentecostal believers. And it is that epistemological quest that conditions the relationship between the Pentecostals and the Nigerian state. In Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (2009), Marshall also articulates Pentecostalism as a project of rebirth that positions itself in oppositional engagement with the corrupt Nigerian state against which a new mode of government must emerge.
My own research into African Pentecostal political philosophy attempts to excavate the specific African inflection of the politico-theological predicament, especially within the context of postcoloniality. In my reading of Marshall and Wariboko, and in reaction to their arguments, I make the case for what I call the “theology of complicity” that implicates both the Pentecostal ecclesiastical order and the political class in the socioeconomic conditions and predicaments of the postcolonial Nigerian state. I argue specifically that “African Pentecostalism can only be understood as a practice mediated by its leadership and by pastoral power. The leadership’s mediation of political exchanges requires a theology of complicity and duplicity, deriving from the state–society relationship, which determines the Pentecostals’ mode of reacting to political events and dynamics” (224). And this, I further contend, is a justifiable reason for why the vision of a Pentecostal political order—arising from Pentecostalism’s this-worldly political program that seeks to displace the corrupt postcolonial state—is unrealizable. At best, Pentecostalism is possible as politeia; only a certain way of reacting in the political space (237).
Pastoral Power, Clerical State deepens this argument, especially in reading the Pentecostal pastor as a “political entrepreneur”—“someone who reinforces his authority within the religious domain by projecting the same within the political domain—and vice versa” (61). However, it is more bullish in its articulation of the relationship between religion and the state in Nigeria. But while my arguments, as well as Marshall’s, Wariboko’s, and those of many other scholars already participate in Pentecostalism’s inflection of the politico-theological predicament of the Nigerian state, Obadare’s Pastoral Power, Clerical State bluntly overrides my hesitation in conceiving the possibility of a Pentecostal political order. He makes a distinct and provocative contribution to the unraveling of the politico-theological predicament by dubbing Nigeria a “clerical state”—specifically, a Pentecostal republic.
This, all by itself, raises red flags and queries around Nigeria’s hazy secularity. It is hazy because the Nigerian Constitution does not clearly position the Nigerian state as a secular one in ways that distinctly make the secularity discourse, and Pentecostalism’s interjection, clear-cut. And yet, Obadare overrides that haziness by declaring the Nigerian state a clerical one: that argument pushes the Pentecostal-politics conversation in Nigeria along a path that provokes deeper reflections around the depth of Pentecostalism’s influence in shaping postcolonial Nigerian society. In this regard, Obadare forces on Pentecostal studies the question of whether Nigeria is a postsecular state, or Pentecostalism is instigating an awareness of the urgency of secularism. More precisely: can Nigeria be postsecular before it is secular, given Pentecostalism’s attempt at enforcing a postcolonial City of God?
Obadare makes a distinct and provocative contribution to the unraveling of the politico-theological predicament by dubbing Nigeria a ‘clerical state’—specifically, a Pentecostal republic.
The argument for positioning Nigeria as a clerical state is quite brilliant in its simplicity: Pentecostal pastors have stepped into the breach created by the abdication of social responsibility to the Nigerian state by her intellectual class. In his words: “The contemporary Pentecostal pastor is the ultimate beneficiary of the epistemic chasm created by the ideological bereavement of the Nigerian intelligentsia, paralleling the way in which religious forces (Pentecostalism in the Nigerian case) have profited from the collapse of what Mary Kaldor refers to as ‘emancipatory ideologies’” (46).
The argument has two related dimensions—the intelligentsia’s loss of prestige and authority, and the Pentecostal pastor’s emergence as a spiritual and political entrepreneur, with an erotic masculinity to boot! The words that Obadare uses in pushing this position—“surrender,” “delegitimizing,” “transfer of prestige and authority,” “evacuation,” etc.—are too charged and presumptive and thus overlook the continued presence and relevance of the intelligentsia on the Nigerian sociopolitical and cultural scenes. One gets the sense that Obadare overstates not only his arguments about the influence of the Pentecostal pastors but also the vitiation of the intellectual class. He writes, for instance, that given the ascendancy of the pastors, the professor desires to become a pastor “to overcome his comparative social anonymity” (xvii)! The pastoral profession has become so glamorous and fundamental that it has become the number one choice for the unemployed. These are very difficult claims to justify. This is essentially because pastoral power is facing a massive challenge facilitated by a value reorientation, mostly fueled by the celebrity- and crime-induced belief that one can make worldly progress by just being smart (in a negative sense) and artistically creative, rather than being spiritual or hard working. It is thus difficult to see how such an increasingly abnormative context reinscribes pastoral power. Abnormativity pushes the logic of amorality consistently in the negative and immoral direction. If this is correct, then it turns on its head the argument that “it is when this desire for a ‘Me’ does not find an outlet in pastoring that we see the desperation to be ‘worth something’ spill over into an assortment of pyramidal ventures: ‘419,’ ‘Yahoo Yahoo,’ ‘MMM,’ and other get-rich-quick schemes” (53). Nigerians dabble in dubious endeavors for so many reasons. I wonder how the failure to become a pastor leads straight to crime! In essence, the devitalization of the Nigerian intelligentsia does not translate into its decapitation.
The issue gets yet more complicated. This is because Obadare’s “impatient anti-clericalism” (5, emphasis added) situates pastoral authority within the “popular economy” in a way that smoothes over its cogent relevance. For him, the waning of the intelligentsia and the weakening of the public space accentuates the “generalized metaphysical bafflement that is the foundation of clerical authority” (47–48). To read Pentecostalism solely in terms of a metaphysical bafflement misses its significance as a cogent re-enchantment of the world; a reading critical to postsecularism. With Pentecostalism, the sacred, to quote Jean Comaroff, “defies the telos of disenchantment” beloved not only by modernization theorists but also all anticlerical scholars (61). Postsecularism reintroduces God back into the process of world-making as a fundamental critique of the modernist project, and this is even more fundamental within the context of the postcolonial societies and their myriad predicaments. Essentially, the existential meaninglessness that lies at the core of postcolonial subjectivity cannot be answered by the modernist project, in the same way, according to Jurgen Habermas, that the internal solidarity of liberal societies cannot be sustained solely on postmetaphysical and nonreligious foundations. Obadare’s impatient anticlericalism prevents a nuanced understanding of how the secular and the sacred implicate each other in the Nigerian postcolony. The postsecular is a critical challenge to secularism’s self-understanding arising from its internal contradictions. The secularist understanding of the world and of religion fails significantly to mediate between the perfectibility and pervertibility of religion; Obadare focuses solely on the latter in a state that is barely secular.
By so doing, his impatient anticlericalism impudently overlooks the possibility of what Nimi Wariboko calls the Pentecostal principle as a framework of new and enchanting beginnings that enable the rethinking of the human future. Pentecostalism represents, for Wariboko, “the capacity of social existence to begin something new” (viii). This understanding of Pentecostalism—as a playful theological framework—opens an alternate interpretation that Obadare’s instrumentalized or zero-sum analysis in Pastoral Power, Clerical State precludes. As a postsecular source of new beginnings, Pentecostalism presents significant potential within the context of reconstructing Nigerian society as (post)secular; a critical attempt to rethink Nigeria with God at the core of postcolonial world-making. What does it imply to rethink he Nigerian society within the rubric of a postsecularity that takes God and the perfectibility of Pentecostalism seriously? Pastoral Power, Clerical State dismisses such a possibility too soon.
Obadare’s impatient anticlericalism prevents a nuanced understanding of how the secular and the sacred implicate each other in the Nigerian postcolony.
The simple lesson here for research in Pentecostalism and Pentecostal studies is not to take Pentecostalism as an undifferentiated monolith, nor to take the heterogeneity of pastoral power for granted. There are so many dimensions to Pentecostalism and even the spiritual influence of the Pentecostal pastor, that defy a one-off negative summation. Pentecostal spirituality can help orient a (post)secular if the perfectibility of religion is factored into the reconstruction of the postcolonial society. But then, the pastors must be properly situated within the Nigerian political and socioeconomic context. Within what we can designate as the space of influence in Nigeria, I doubt that even the pastors achieve the same level of significance that celebrities and criminals now command. Burna Boy, the Afro-pop celebrity, has as much capacity to generate sociocultural and political influence as Pastor Enoch Adeboye. I would populate that space with celebrities, pastors, and the intelligentsia, without inflating the ascendancy of the pastors.
A candid shot of Pastor Jerry Eze during a live service. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Nigeria’s acclaimed novelist Chinua Achebe once asserted that the trouble with Nigeria was leadership and nothing more. Over the years, his definitive thesis on the Nigerian condition has been recalled multiple times to understand the challenges that impede social progress. Achebe focused on the political class and perhaps did not fully envisage how the crisis of leadership he described forty years ago would severely indict the intelligentsia he himself represented. The modern Nigerian state he diagnosed has since gone through several phases and wrestled with leadership failure at every point. Having thus been serially let down, its beleaguered citizens have learned to look everywhere else for meaningful administration that will guarantee moral renewal and eventual social transformations. Their wild search for leadership that will combine moral legitimacy with both intelligence and managerial perspicacity would settle on the unlikely figure of the contemporary Pentecostal pastor.
This clergy figure, as sociologist Ebenezer Obadare describes in his latest book Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality, is probably the most dynamic in contemporary Nigeria. Typically male, he is a combination of a rock star, social (media) influencer, political analyst and lobbyist, artiste, motivational speaker, sex therapist, counselor, entrepreneur, social critic, and of course, clergyman. This composite functionality allows him to perform the roles that society traditionally ascribes to its thought leaders. At first glance, the clergymen-as-intellectual type does not appear to be a historically unique phenomenon. Western history is replete with examples of clergymen who advanced social and political transformations through the power of ideas (think Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement). The Pentecostal clergy cannot be said to fulfill similar progressive roles as King or other previous clergy leaders but is still no less influential. The social significance of the Pentecostal pastor lies in his ability to astutely translate the mythical components of religion into idioms and practices that not only divine the condition of the Nigerian person but also suggest redress and reforms.
The Pentecostal pastor is closest to what contemporary Nigeria has in place of an intellectual—that quintessential man of learning who generates the idea that transforms society. Yet, that usurpation fails to translate into human flourishing within the clerical state. Written in the delightful prose Obadare is well-known for, Pastoral Power, Clerical State masterfully dissects the historical and political shuffles that have enabled the pastor to slide into the position previously occupied by the intellectual. In Obadare’s chronicle of the fall from grace of the Nigerian intellectual class, he perceptively locates the moments where their stars began to dim in the socio-political firmament. He does not blame any party but describes how the military government that ruled Nigeria at several junctures slyly coopted the intelligentsia and corrupted them with money and power. Having exposed these elites as self-serving and even opportunistic, the military state proceeded to discard them. Their use and abuse culminated in the ongoing crisis of the academy in today’s Nigeria; neither the intellectuals nor the ivory towers they metonymize have recovered.
The social significance of the Pentecostal pastor lies in his ability to astutely translate the mythical components of religion into idioms and practices that not only divine the condition of the Nigerian person but also suggest redress and reforms.
Pentecostal pastors did not cheaply step into the vacuum created by the diminished intelligentsia. Some of them, especially the most influential, had university training, professional degrees, and even obtained the highest academic degree. Thus, their concurrent identities as pastors and thought leaders, “Men of God” and “Men of Letters,” confers them with charismatic and “rational” authority. This means that when the intellectuals within and surrounding the university system became impotent, the pastors could not only logically supplant them, but they also added an air of religious mystique to their positions. Attaining such status was not merely given; it was also contrived to accrue through various means: pastors’ claims to a divine calling and endorsement by transcendental authority, their drawing on an immanent source of power, manipulative uses of prophecies and prayer, theatrical skills and spectacular displays, and the right dosages of sexual appeal. All of these allowed them to dominate the socio-political sphere.
This clerical authority, Obadare also shows, exists as an alternative that threatens to override the political sphere and its actors. While its existence sparks some tension with the state, both sides also work in tandem. Much of what results between the church and the state is a calibrated balance of mutual benefits. The pastor grants the politician spiritual enablement and moral legitimacy by generating ideas that pacify a restless society. The politician reciprocatively boosts the pastor by using the instruments of political power to give his spiritual power the necessary political efficacy. Despite all the influence Obadare ascribes to Pentecostal clergy, pastors do not—because they cannot—claim commensurability with political agents at the highest echelons of power. They rely—perhaps overly—on the political instruments extended in their direction by the secular authority for them to execute formidable spiritual power. This contingency means that their power lies more in the realm of influence. It is the close relationship with those who wield the actual instruments of political power that enables them to manifest their claims to spiritual power. This puts the pastors in competition with other social and political actors similarly struggling for a more potent power that outpaces the fragility of their existing ones.
Since the book is thus an account of one of the many in the series of constant reshuffle and power “takeovers” in Nigeria, one also sees the fragility of the clerical authority of the Pentecostal pastor. The near miraculous rise of the clergymen’s fortunes also precipitates their eventual fall. Obadare’s study is situated within broader studies that have noted an ongoing global crisis of authority and diminishment of the expert. While his focus in the book is mainly on the diminishment of those who embody rational and scientific knowledge, how long before the global phenomenon of “common” people standing up to expert authority reaches the pastoral figure who claims spiritual expertise? In these cycles of boom and bust of political fortunes in Nigeria, what would the fall of clerical power look like and what else would come after it?
Obadare’s portrayal of clerical power as so immense, and merely short-circuited on a few occasions by women who allege various sexual infractions against the pastors, runs against other realities of late modernity. Neoliberalism and its enticing promises of rewards through digital capitalism have further democratized both charisma and religious authority. With the various devices of media communication at their behest, otherwise ordinary folks now feign charisma using the same tactics as these powerful pastors too once did in order to challenge their authority. Social (media) influencers and entrepreneurs of opinions who either have genuine concerns about these pastors’ conduct or are mere clout seekers routinely stimulate public conversations against the pastoral class. Largely unable to control these public discourses, the average Nigerian pastor remains haunted by the newfound and heady power wielded by the disaffected and disenfranchised mob that uses social media as its pulpit, and whose “speaking truth to power” chips away at their legitimacy. A notable example is the case of Ifedayo Olarinde, the radio host who started a campaign against tithes in churches on social media and rattled the Pentecostal establishment.
Pastoral Power, Clerical State is the second in a series of works where Obadare has tracked Nigeria’s political and social culture. The earlier book, Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria, similarly gave shape to the Pentecostal specter that haunts the country’s 4th republic. His analysis was so insightful that Pentecostal Republic became the oracle that sociologists, political scientists, and media analysts consult to understand the intricate ways religion unsettles Nigerian politics. Obadare’s insightful analysis outlines how new rulerships emerge in Africa’s yet unstable democracies while highlighting the nature of politics, power, legitimacy, and the evolution of democracy. Pentecostal pastors’ amassment of influence (which sometimes transcends national boundaries) has also allowed them to overtake traditional civic space actors. The ensuing crisis Obadare describes also sheds some light on other factors in the polity—the bitter disappointments of democratic governance for people who fought for civil rule, their further search for power and transformative knowledge, and how Pentecostalism came to fulfill the yearning for moral renewal in the aftermath of an autocratic order.
Abimbola A. Adelakun, Assistant Professor in the Department of African/African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, researches spirituality and performance in Africa. She obtained a PhD from the department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, along with a doctoral portfolio and Master’s degree from African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her academic articles have been published with The Drama Review and Journal of World Christianity. She is the author of Performing Power in Nigeria: Politics, Identity, and Pentecostalism(Cambridge, 2021) and Powerful Devices: The Politics and Praxis of Spiritual Warfare(Rutgers, 2022). She writes a weekly column for PUNCH Newspapers, Nigeria’s most widely-read newspaper.
In Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria, Ebenezer Obadare asks a seemingly simple question: “How is it that in contemporary Nigeria (and indeed in many other African countries where Pentecostal Christianity exercises an outsize influence) the pastor has come to occupy such a central place in the social imaginary, to such an extent that medical and other forms of professional judgment must defer to him?” (3). What this ostensibly straightforward question opens up, however, is a complex socio-historical phenomenon that reveals much about the changing nature of authority and power in post-colonial Nigeria and in other similar contexts where Pentecostalism is on the rise.
In the early days of post-independence Nigeria, Obadare contends, authority was more often wielded by intellectuals, whom Obadare refers to as the “Man of Letters” (as opposed to the Pentecostal “Man of God”). The gendering of the intellectual and pastor in this case is intentional, as in the Nigerian context the shift from one form of authority in social and political space to another is merely a shifting of patriarchal power to a different realm. Obadare’s contention is that the shift in authority is explained by the vacuum opened up by the failures of the state (and the intellectuals who supported it) to manage economic turmoil and everyday government functionality. This failure, due in no small part to problems inherited from colonial rule, has made space into which the Pentecostal pastor, with his charismatic authority, has been able to enter. This pastor does not “run” the state, as Obadare makes clear, but in his social, political, and erotic power he is able to wield authority and influence the people and by extension the government.
Obadare is also unabashed in his criticism of this model of authority. While he understands the historical and political conditions that have given rise to it, he worries about the undemocratic ends to which such power can be put. Pentecostal pastors practice a “rule by prodigy” wherein they claim to have special access to truths from the divine concerning social, political, and economic matters. Such rule by prodigy short circuits the need for democratic debate and reform and opens up the path to authoritarianism.
The contributors to this symposium take up both the normative and descriptive claims that make up Obadare’s text. Abimola A. Adelakun asks to what degree the pastor’s authority is now under threat from the forces of the digital age. Pundits, social media influences, and others have begun to question the authority of the Pentecostal pastor, thus raising the question of whether the “Man of God” might go the same way of the “Man of Letters” in the recent past that Obadare documents. Adeshina Afolayan also wonders if Obadare has overstated the influence of the Pentecostal pastor. In conversation with other scholars of Pentecostalism in Africa like Ruth Marshall and Nimi Wariboko, she argues that Obadare’s anti-clericalism leads him to this overstatement and also leads him to ignore the potential positive impact that Pentecostalism might have on Nigerian society. By ignoring such potentialities, Afolayan argues that Obadare’s book betrays a secular bias that underestimates the potential constructive aspects of religion.
Where Adelakun and Afolayan worry that the pastor’s influence has been overstated, Adriaan Van Klinken conversely worries that the continued relevance of the intelligentsia has been understated in Obadare’s portrait. Drawing on literary critiques of the pastor in Nigerian culture, Van Klinken contends that there are deep roots in African literature for critiquing the role of Christianity in politics and society. While not contending that literary figures are likely to overtake the pastor anytime soon in terms of popularity, Van Klinken reminds us that they continue to act as a “thorn in the side” of the pastor and wider movement that he represents. Karen Lauterbach also wonders to what degree we find remnants of the intellectual still present in African societies today. But rather than see the “Man of Letters” as a form distinct from the “Man of God,” she sees them as partaking in similar literary techniques and drawing on similar traditions, albeit towards different ends. For her, this raises wider questions about how spiritual and earthly authorities interact with seemingly secular liberal democratic structures.
What Obadare’s book and the contributors to this symposium encourage us to reflect on is how authority is maintained, challenged, and revoked in the modern world, and especially in postcolonial settings.
Finally, Devaka Premawardhana poses two concerns for Obadare: first, he asks if the fall from prominence of the “Man of Letters” can be causally linked to the rise of the Pentecostal pastor, and second, he wonders if Obadare places too much of the blame on Pentecostal pastors for the socio-political issues facing Nigerians today. Still, Premawardhana finds in Obadare’s work a potential spark that might ignite resistance among those who find the dogmatism linked to the “Man of God” to be problematic. In his response to all the contributors, Obadare takes up the theme of anti-anti-intellectualism as the normative impulse behind the book.
What Obadare’s book and the contributors to this symposium encourage us to reflect on is how authority is maintained, challenged, and revoked in the modern world, and especially in postcolonial settings. This has been a key question of the authority, community, and identity (ACI) research group of Contending Modernities, of which Obadare is a member, and of which this book is a product. This requires that we attend to those who wield both political and spiritual power and that we continue to challenge the idea that such forms of authority have been separated in the era of the liberal nation-state. Indeed, as Obadare demonstrates, regardless of whether we believe the pastor’s claim that his prophetic power is divinely bestowed, the effects of this claim on the socio-political realm will be real, and we ignore them at our own peril.
Joshua S. Lupo is the Assistant Director of the Contending Modernities research initiative. In this role, he serves as the editor and writer for the Contending Modernities Blog and the classroom coordinator for the Madrasa Discourses program. He has published articles and reviews in Sophia, Soundings, Critical Muslim, Reading Religion, and Religious Studies Review. With CM Co-Director Atalia Omer, he is the co-editor of Broken Solidarities: Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism (Notre Dame Press, 2022) and Religion, Populism, and Modernity: Confronting White Christian Nationalism and Racism (Notre Dame Press, 2023). His current book project is titled After Essentialism: A Critical Phenomenology for the Study of Religion.
This Carmelite sisterhood facility was built around the discovery of an old tablet bearing the traditional ‘Pater Noster’ (‘Our Father’) prayer, in the vicinity of a tomb of a woman ascribed to various Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy women. Here is a display of translations of the prayer in Latin, Arabic, and Armenian forms. Via Wikimedia Commons.
I would like to start by thanking all the contributors for their important essays, valuable insights, and scholarly feedback. In this response, I will focus on three areas: claiming agency, exploring colonial tools, and understanding transnational communities, that were picked up bymyfourcolleagues.
Claiming agency
This book is part of several edited volumes of mine which focus on the Christians of the Middle East. All of these volumes tackle numerous aspects of the history, life, and witness of the Christians in our region. Over half of the contributors to them are Middle Eastern scholars of religion, theology, history, and sociology. The main goal of these publications is to raise awareness of the situation of the Christians in the Middle East to a North American and European audience and to provide a platform for Indigenous Christians to tell their stories in their own words. For too long, North American and European scholars have been telling the story of the Christians of the Middle East. Many of them have produced genuine and valuable research that is important. Others, however, have instrumentalized Middle Eastern Christians for their own political ends or conservative religious agendas.
Over the course of the last two centuries, several tools have been developed by European and American scholars that have allowed them to use Middle Eastern Christians to further their colonial interests. One of these is the tool of sectarianianism, which looks at the Middle Eastern region as a conglomerate of religious sects. A topical, historical example of this is the British conceptualization of Jerusalem as a city of four sectarian quarters: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian. This conceptualization took place even though each quarter was housing Palestinians with diverse faiths. The French similarly divided Syrian territory along sectarian lines between Sunni, Alawite, and Druze.
Another tool that was developed in the aftermath of World War I was the concept of minorities in the region. The influence of Christians and other prominent communities was minimized, giving colonial powers an excuse to interfere in the internal policies of the newly “independent” Middle Eastern states.
The latest tool is known as FoRB, “Freedom of Religion or Belief,” a mandate and special focus of the UN. There is genuine concern among many Christians in the Middle East that FoRB will be weaponized as a platform for populism, religious nationalism and colonial interventions, resulting in more violent religious conflicts. Many evangelical organizations are using FoRB as a tool to pressure Muslim countries to allow for Christian missions under Muslims. The more Christian martyrs there are, the better it is for their fundraising efforts in conservative circles. Although FoRB is an important and legitimate right, the narrative ignores many of the region’s other hard-fought victories for human rights. It is imperative to see freedom from within a holistic perspective. It is also crucial to recognize that there have been long struggles for freedom in the Middle East, which include confronting colonialism, occupation, socio-economic marginalization, authoritarianism, and patriarchy.
Understanding Transnational Communities
For the last hundred years, the Middle East has been suffering under European colonialism, Israeli settler colonialism, regional conflicts, militarization, and exploitation. Such difficulties have resulted in civil wars, underdevelopment, and displacement in the region. In this context, many Middle Eastern Christians—especially Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi—have chosen to emigrate, establishing diasporic and transnational communities. Drawing on identity politics rhetoric (Assyrian, Egyptian, Phoenicians versus Arab Muslim), some of those diasporic Christian communities of Iraqi, Egyptian, and Lebanese origin have utilized the discourse of religious persecution in defense of their religious siblings at home. Though their advocacy for their native communities is understandable, it has often proved to be counterproductive as it borrows a sectarian framework. This narrative widens the gap between the Muslims and Christians in the region and subtly calls for foreign political intervention.
There is genuine concern among many Christians in the Middle East that “Freedom of Religious Belief” will be weaponized as a platform for populism, religious nationalism, and colonial interventions, resulting in more violent religious conflicts.
The only hope for Christians in the Middle East is genuine engagement with their communities to build a society that places less emphasis on religion and more emphasis on creating civic space; making diversity an intrinsic value in the region; and reimagining interfaith relations and de-emphasizing identity politics. The region is in dire need for justice, peace, and stability. Without such a political framework, all segments of the Middle Eastern societies, including the Christians, will continue to suffer, migrate, and lose heart. Yet, in all these contexts, the Christians of the Middle East have proved over and over again to be resilient. They “are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair… struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4: 8-9).
Founder and President of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem. Dr. Raheb is a co-founder of Bright Stars of Bethlehem, a not-for-profit 501c3 in the USA. The most widely published Palestinian theologian to date, Dr. Raheb is the author and editor of 40 books including: The Politics of Persecution: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire(Baylor, 2021) The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine (w/Suzanne Watts Henderson, Orbis, 2017); Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes; I am a Palestinian Christian(Orbis, 2014); Bethlehem Besieged (Broadleaf, 2004) . His books and numerous articles have been translated so far into eleven languages. Rev. Raheb served as the senior pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem from June 1987 to May 2017 and as the President of the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land from 2011–2016. Dr. Raheb was elected in 2018 to the Palestinian National Council and to the Palestinian Central Council. A social entrepreneur, Rev. Raheb has founded several NGO‟s including the Christian Academic Forum for Citizenship in the Arab World (CAFCAW). He is a founding and board member of the National Library of Palestine and a founding member and author of Kairos Palestine.
Walking up to the large crucifix over alQosh, Iraq. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, narratives of Christian persecution have exerted a gravitational pull on western writings on Middle Eastern Christianity. Whether in the vulgar idiom of the commonplace ahistorical narratives of the persecution of a beleaguered Christian minority at the hands of an undifferentiated Muslim majority, or in more subtle renditions, western narrations of Middle Eastern Christianity often invoke persecution as a quasi-defining category. Departing from this implied orthodoxy, Mitri Raheb’s The Politics of Persecution: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire promises and delivers “an alternative interpretation of the history of Middle Eastern Christianity” (3).
Central to Raheb’s erudite study is his demonstration that this persecution discourse is “a Western construct that says more about the West than about the Christians of the Middle East” (143). As the author explains, “Intra-European national rivalries and competition in religious mission… planted the seeds for sectarian identities that were not previously known in such a form or intensity” (31). The ensuing “culture of sectarianism” precipitated the disintegration of the very social fabric of the Middle East and in turn, served as the hotbed for the successive catastrophic events that beset Middle Eastern Christians—which the author discusses in detail throughout the book. As Raheb concludes,
Over and over again, Middle Eastern Christians were sacrificed at the altar of Western national interests. This was the case with Britain and the Assyrians in Iraq; with Germany in the Armenian Genocide; with Britain in Palestine; and with the United States in Iraq and Syria. In most cases, the West was part of the problem for Middle Eastern Christianity and not part of the solution (150).
Not only does the persecution discourse lack the tools necessary to scrutinize the roots of the problem—the very subject it sets out to elucidate—but it also doggedly effaces western complicity in the Middle Eastern Christian predicament.
Raheb, however, does more than offer a careful anatomy of the sectarian ails of Middle Eastern society and their origins. It is said, in theological parlance, that naming the sin is a theological achievement—one, as Stanley Hauerwas indicates, that is “made possible by being part of a people who are pledged to love one another even if it requires telling one another the truth.” By reorienting our vision from facile, ill-founded, and misleading Muslim-Christian “battling to the end” narratives, the author invites his audience to name the sin necessary to metanoia, the fundamental transformation necessary for intra- and inter-communal reconciliation. At its heart, The Politics of Persecution is a book about hope—the hope for reconciling the brokenness of the Middle Eastern bodies torn apart by the violent culture of sectarianism, which as Raheb demonstrates, is planted and cultivated by imperial interests, and cloaked by the persecution discourse.
In his highly acclaimed Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi conjures up the unspeakable horrors of war-torn Iraq in the figure of Frankenstein’s monster, who is “made up of body parts of people from diverse backgrounds—ethnicities, tribes, races, and social classes” (152). Set on a relentless quest to avenge the deaths and mutilations of his former body parts’ owners, the monster personifies the desperate cry for justice amid ineffable injustice. Saadawi’s macabre and brutal surreal presentation of the broken bodies sewn together to produce this avenging monstrous mishmash is an apt manifestation of a dismembered body politic that was plagued with senseless violence. Refusing to succumb to the foredoomed fate of this Baghdadi monster, Raheb’s alternative prophetic interruption is a call for repentance and reconciliation.
In many ways, Raheb’s discernible offering of hope evokes that of Emmanuel Katongole in his Mirror to the Church, in which the author reflects on the theological implications of the Rwandan genocide:
I want to suggest that the crisis of Western Christianity is reflected back to the church in the broken bodies of Rwanda. Western Christians cannot look into this mirror without coming face-to-face with betrayal, idolatry, and death. Indeed, I want to say the only hope for our world after Rwanda’s genocide is a new kind of Christian identity for the global body of Christ. (13)
Throughout the different chapters of his study, Raheb similarly suggests that the crisis of Western and Eastern Christianity is reflected back to the church in the broken bodies of Middle Eastern Christians. Like Mirror to the Church, The Politics of Persecution supplants the stories that perpetuate brokenness and ultimately genocide with healing ones. Interrogating and destabilizing the persecution discourse is an indispensable step in this process.
Two young Assyrians sit next to the fence of a huge statue of the Holy Virgin Mary. They fled with their families from Islamic State-held Mosul to Koysinjaq, Iraqi Kurdistan. Via Flikr User Christiaan Triebert.
Raheb’s reconciliatory and hopeful vision permeates even the darkest episodes in the book. Indeed, the different chapters lead the reader on a journey that explores different historic events through the eyes of a motley crew of Middle Eastern Christian actors, from Asʿad Shidyaq, one of the first Arabic-speaking converts to Protestantism and the first Arab Protestant martyr (25-27), to agents of Arab and ecclesiastical revival such as Yacoub Sarrouf, Jurji Zeidan (50), Negib Azoury (66), and Bishop George Khodr (80)—all the way to the contemporary Christian Academic Forum for Citizenship in the Arab World (Chapter 12). The author’s presentation of Butrus al-Bustani (1819–1883), the towering Arab Christian intellectual, and the first Middle Eastern Christian voice encountered in the study, is a powerful case in point. Hailing from present-day Lebanon, Bustani was an ardent proponent of the Arab Renaissance (al-Nahda) and played a key role in translating the Bible into Arabic (the very translation that many Arabic-speaking Christians still use to this day). In response to the massacre of Christians on Mount Lebanon, Bustani founded al-Madrasa al-Wataniya (the National School) “where in an ecumenical spirit, Christians, Druze, and Muslims could study together”—an experiment that, as Raheb notes, “must be understood as a critique of the many missionary schools that Bustani came to know and sometimes teach in” (45). Bustani’s experiment thus serves “as an antidote to confessional fanaticism, and thus to sectarianism” (44): the very sectarianism that fueled the massacre. Interwoven throughout the study, the different testimonies of these diverse Arab Christian figures converge on their unremitting attempt to achieve peaceful and harmonious living with their compatriots, regardless of their communal belonging.
The stark contradiction can hardly be missed: whereas colonial interests and narratives continue to fuel sectarianism and to perpetuate the discourse of Christian persecution, the stories of Middle Eastern Christian resistance and resilience offer powerful counternarratives of healing and reconciliation. By centering Middle Eastern Christian voices throughout the study, Raheb potently deploys a decolonial reframing and re-envisioning of interfaith relations in the region. Narrated through their eyes, the story of Middle Eastern Christians is not so much one of persecution but of “struggle, resistance, social involvement, and resilience” (156).
Not only does The Politics of Persecution present a much-needed decolonial interruption, but it also affirms the necessity of repentance and reconciliation in ensuring a peaceful and just future: it is an offering of hope grounded in the lived experience of Middle Eastern Christians. After all, as Raheb establishes throughout his investigation, the story of Middle Eastern Christians is the story of the Middle East.
Mourad Takawi (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. He has published works on Qurʾānic interpretation, early Christian Arabic literature, Coptic Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century, and Christian-Muslim relations. Currently, he is co-editing the second volume of Medieval Encounters: Arabic-Speaking Christians and Islam. His current book project is titled The Qurʾān as a Classic: The Interreligious Context of Qurʾān Interpretation.
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