Winning Guinea-Bissau for Jesus
The Guinean Evangelical Minority, from the Origins to the Present
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/ptcs.34875Keywords:
Guinea-Bissau, Evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal Christianity, modernity, mobilityAbstract
This article analyses the historical course of the Evangelical minority in Guinea-Bissau, its transformations, its recent expansion and its current engagement with the public sphere. First, I trace the trajectory of the Guinean Evangelical movement from the 1940s to the present, against the background of the process of decolonization and the post-Independence history of the country. Second, I examine the recent impact of Pentecostal and Charismatic forms of Christianity on local Evangelical churches, following the transnational circulation of believers and missionaries, on the one hand, and the arrival of new international churches, mostly from Brazil and other African countries, on the other. Third, I place the current flowering of Evangelical and Pentecostal denominations in the broader context of a general shift to universal religions throughout the country. Within this framework, I argue, this success can be read as expression of a widespread craving for modernity and mobility, both in rural and urban Guinea-Bissau.
References
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Appadurai, A. 2013. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso Books.
Barros, M. J. de. 2012. “A Sociedade Civil Face ao Processo de Democratização e o Desenvolvimento na Guiné-Bissau (1991–2011)”. Africana Studia 18: 37–47.
Billman, H. 1951. “Primeiro Relatório Anual dos Trabalhos da Missão Evangélica no Tratamento da Lepra na Província da Guiné Portuguesa”. Boletim Cultural da Guine Portuguesa 6(23): 697–702.
Bordonaro, L. 2009a. “Sai Fora: Youth, Disconnectedness and Aspiration to Mobility in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau)”. Etnografica 13(1): 125–44. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.1253
Bordonaro, L. 2009b. “Culture Stops Development: Bijagó Youth and the Appropriation of Developmentalist Discourse in Guinea-Bissau”. African Studies Review 52(2): 69–92. https://doi.org/10.1353/arw.0.0195
Bordonaro, L. 2010. “Modernity as Marginality: The Making and the Experience of Peripherality in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau)”. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 117–37. https://doi.org/10.4000/cea.103
Bordonaro, L. and C. Carvalho. 2010. “Introduction”. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 9–18.
Brooks, G. E. 1993. Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Brooks, G. E. 2003. Eurafricans in Western Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Woodbridge: James Currey Publishers.
Chabal, P. and T. Green (eds). 2016. Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to “Narco-State”. London: Hurst & Company.
Coleman, S. 2000. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488221
Corten, A. and R. Marshall-Fratani. 2001. Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Costa Dias, E. 1999. “Protestantismo e Proselitismo na Guiné-Bissau: Reflexões Sobre o Insucesso do Proselitismo no Oio e na Província Leste”. Lusotopie 1999: 309 18.
Davies, E. 2012. Whatever Happened to CT Studd’s Mission? Lessons from the History of WEC International. Bulstrode: WEC Publications.
Ferguson, J. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Ferguson, J. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822387640
Fernandes, R. M. 1993. “Partido Único e Poderes Tradicionais”. Soronda 16: 39–50.
Formenti, A. 2017. “Rumo a uma Fé Global: História do Movimento Evangélico na Guiné- Bissau”. Etnografica 21(2): 293–318. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.4912
Gable, E. 1995. “The Decolonization of Consciousness: Local Skeptics and the ‘will to Be Modern’ in a West African Village”. American Ethnologist 22(2): 242–57. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.2.02a00020
Gaillard, G. 2002. “Islam et Vie Politique en Guiné-Bissau Contemporaine”. In C. Coulon (ed.), L’Afrique Politique. Paris: Kartala et Cean: 191–209.
Gonçalves, J. J. 1960. Protestantismo em Africa: Contribuicao para o Estudo do Protestantismo na Africa Portuguesa. Lisbon: Junta de Investigações de Ultramar. INE. 2009. Terceiro Recenseamento Geral da Populacao e Habitacao: Caracteristicas Socioculturais. Bissau: INE
Guine?-Bissau Knauft, B. M. (ed.). 2002. Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Knibbe, K. 2009. “‘We Did Not Come Here as Tenants, but as Landlords’: Nigerian Pentecostals and the Power of Maps”. African Diaspora 2(2): 133–58. https://doi.org/10.1163/187254509X12477244375058
Knörr, J. and W. Trajano Filho (eds). 2010. The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict Along the Upper Guinea Coast. Leiden: Brill.
Koudawo, F. 2001. Cabo Verde e Guine-Bissau: da Democracia Revolucionaria a Democracia Liberal. Colecção Kacu Martel 14. Bissau: Instituto Nacional de Estudo e Pesquisa.
Lima, E. 2007. O Evangelho de Cristo na Guine-Bissau: Dos Primordios aos Nossos Dias. Lisbon: Publidisa.
Machado, F. L. 2002. Contrastes e Continuidades: Migracao, Etnicidade e Integracao dos Guineenses em Portugal. Oeiras: Celta Editora.
Marshall, R. 2009. Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226507149.001.0001
Meyer, B. 1998. “‘Make a complete break with the past’: Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse”. Journal of Religion in Africa 28(3): 316–49.
Meyer, B. 2004. “Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal Charismatic Churches”. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 447–74. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143835
Miller, D. 1994. Modernity, an Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Piot, C. 2010. Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226669663.001.0001
Robbins, J. 2004. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”.Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093421
Rodney, W. 1970. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1541–1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Roque, S., F. Mane, T. Silá, A. Djau and L. Peti. 2011. Um retrato da Violencia Contra Mulheres na Guine-Bissau. Bissau: Government of the Republic of Guinea Bissau and United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau.
Sarró, R. and M. de Barros. 2016. “History, Mixture, Modernity: Religious Pluralism in Guinea-Bissau Today”. In P. Chabal and T. Green (eds), Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to “Narco-State”. London: Hurst Publishers: 105–23.
Schiller, N. G., A. Çaglar and T. C. Guldbrandsen. 2006. “Beyond the Ethnic Lens: Locality, Globality, and Born-Again Incorporation”. American Ethnologist 33(4): 612–33. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2006.33.4.612
Silva, A. E. D. 2010. Invencao e construcao da Guine-Bissau: Administracao Colonial/ Nacionalismo/Constitucionalismo. Coimbra: Edições Almedina.
Temudo, M. and M. Abrantes. 2015. “The Pen and the Plough: Balanta Young Men in Guinea-Bissau”. Development and Change 46(3): 464–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12166
Ter Haar, G. 1998. Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press.
Trajano Filho, W. 2010. “The Creole Idea of Nation and Its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau”. In J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho (eds), The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinean Coast. Leiden: Brill: 157–84. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004190009.i-375.59
Van de Kamp, L. and R. van Dijk. 2010. “Pentecostals Moving South–South: Brazilian and Ghanaian Transnationalism in Southern Africa”. In A. Adogame and J. Spickard (eds), Religion Crossing Boundaries. Leiden: Brill: 123–42. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004187306.i-280.42
Van Dijk, R. 1997, “From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses of Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora”. Journal of Religion in Africa 27: 135–59.https://doi.org/10.1163/157006697X00090
Van Dijk, R. 2001. “Contesting Silence: The Ban on Drumming and the Musical Politics of Pentecostalism in Ghana”. Ghana Studies 4: 31–64.
Vigh, H. 2010. “Youth Mobilisation as Social Navigation: Reflections on the Concept of Dubriagem”. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 140–64. https://doi.org/10.4000/cea.110
Wallis, H. 1996. Luz numia na sukuru: Storia di Igreza Ivangeliku di Gine-Bissau, 1949–1974. Bubaque: Missão Evangélica.
Appadurai, A. 2013. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London: Verso Books.
Barros, M. J. de. 2012. “A Sociedade Civil Face ao Processo de Democratização e o Desenvolvimento na Guiné-Bissau (1991–2011)”. Africana Studia 18: 37–47.
Billman, H. 1951. “Primeiro Relatório Anual dos Trabalhos da Missão Evangélica no Tratamento da Lepra na Província da Guiné Portuguesa”. Boletim Cultural da Guine Portuguesa 6(23): 697–702.
Bordonaro, L. 2009a. “Sai Fora: Youth, Disconnectedness and Aspiration to Mobility in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau)”. Etnografica 13(1): 125–44. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.1253
Bordonaro, L. 2009b. “Culture Stops Development: Bijagó Youth and the Appropriation of Developmentalist Discourse in Guinea-Bissau”. African Studies Review 52(2): 69–92. https://doi.org/10.1353/arw.0.0195
Bordonaro, L. 2010. “Modernity as Marginality: The Making and the Experience of Peripherality in the Bijagó Islands (Guinea-Bissau)”. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 117–37. https://doi.org/10.4000/cea.103
Bordonaro, L. and C. Carvalho. 2010. “Introduction”. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 9–18.
Brooks, G. E. 1993. Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Brooks, G. E. 2003. Eurafricans in Western Africa: Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Woodbridge: James Currey Publishers.
Chabal, P. and T. Green (eds). 2016. Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to “Narco-State”. London: Hurst & Company.
Coleman, S. 2000. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488221
Corten, A. and R. Marshall-Fratani. 2001. Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Costa Dias, E. 1999. “Protestantismo e Proselitismo na Guiné-Bissau: Reflexões Sobre o Insucesso do Proselitismo no Oio e na Província Leste”. Lusotopie 1999: 309 18.
Davies, E. 2012. Whatever Happened to CT Studd’s Mission? Lessons from the History of WEC International. Bulstrode: WEC Publications.
Ferguson, J. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Ferguson, J. 2006. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822387640
Fernandes, R. M. 1993. “Partido Único e Poderes Tradicionais”. Soronda 16: 39–50.
Formenti, A. 2017. “Rumo a uma Fé Global: História do Movimento Evangélico na Guiné- Bissau”. Etnografica 21(2): 293–318. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.4912
Gable, E. 1995. “The Decolonization of Consciousness: Local Skeptics and the ‘will to Be Modern’ in a West African Village”. American Ethnologist 22(2): 242–57. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.2.02a00020
Gaillard, G. 2002. “Islam et Vie Politique en Guiné-Bissau Contemporaine”. In C. Coulon (ed.), L’Afrique Politique. Paris: Kartala et Cean: 191–209.
Gonçalves, J. J. 1960. Protestantismo em Africa: Contribuicao para o Estudo do Protestantismo na Africa Portuguesa. Lisbon: Junta de Investigações de Ultramar. INE. 2009. Terceiro Recenseamento Geral da Populacao e Habitacao: Caracteristicas Socioculturais. Bissau: INE
Guine?-Bissau Knauft, B. M. (ed.). 2002. Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Knibbe, K. 2009. “‘We Did Not Come Here as Tenants, but as Landlords’: Nigerian Pentecostals and the Power of Maps”. African Diaspora 2(2): 133–58. https://doi.org/10.1163/187254509X12477244375058
Knörr, J. and W. Trajano Filho (eds). 2010. The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict Along the Upper Guinea Coast. Leiden: Brill.
Koudawo, F. 2001. Cabo Verde e Guine-Bissau: da Democracia Revolucionaria a Democracia Liberal. Colecção Kacu Martel 14. Bissau: Instituto Nacional de Estudo e Pesquisa.
Lima, E. 2007. O Evangelho de Cristo na Guine-Bissau: Dos Primordios aos Nossos Dias. Lisbon: Publidisa.
Machado, F. L. 2002. Contrastes e Continuidades: Migracao, Etnicidade e Integracao dos Guineenses em Portugal. Oeiras: Celta Editora.
Marshall, R. 2009. Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226507149.001.0001
Meyer, B. 1998. “‘Make a complete break with the past’: Memory and Post-Colonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse”. Journal of Religion in Africa 28(3): 316–49.
Meyer, B. 2004. “Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal Charismatic Churches”. Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 447–74. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143835
Miller, D. 1994. Modernity, an Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Piot, C. 2010. Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226669663.001.0001
Robbins, J. 2004. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”.Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117–43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093421
Rodney, W. 1970. A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1541–1800. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Roque, S., F. Mane, T. Silá, A. Djau and L. Peti. 2011. Um retrato da Violencia Contra Mulheres na Guine-Bissau. Bissau: Government of the Republic of Guinea Bissau and United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Guinea-Bissau.
Sarró, R. and M. de Barros. 2016. “History, Mixture, Modernity: Religious Pluralism in Guinea-Bissau Today”. In P. Chabal and T. Green (eds), Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to “Narco-State”. London: Hurst Publishers: 105–23.
Schiller, N. G., A. Çaglar and T. C. Guldbrandsen. 2006. “Beyond the Ethnic Lens: Locality, Globality, and Born-Again Incorporation”. American Ethnologist 33(4): 612–33. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2006.33.4.612
Silva, A. E. D. 2010. Invencao e construcao da Guine-Bissau: Administracao Colonial/ Nacionalismo/Constitucionalismo. Coimbra: Edições Almedina.
Temudo, M. and M. Abrantes. 2015. “The Pen and the Plough: Balanta Young Men in Guinea-Bissau”. Development and Change 46(3): 464–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12166
Ter Haar, G. 1998. Halfway to Paradise: African Christians in Europe. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press.
Trajano Filho, W. 2010. “The Creole Idea of Nation and Its Predicaments: The Case of Guinea-Bissau”. In J. Knörr and W. Trajano Filho (eds), The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinean Coast. Leiden: Brill: 157–84. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004190009.i-375.59
Van de Kamp, L. and R. van Dijk. 2010. “Pentecostals Moving South–South: Brazilian and Ghanaian Transnationalism in Southern Africa”. In A. Adogame and J. Spickard (eds), Religion Crossing Boundaries. Leiden: Brill: 123–42. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004187306.i-280.42
Van Dijk, R. 1997, “From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses of Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora”. Journal of Religion in Africa 27: 135–59.https://doi.org/10.1163/157006697X00090
Van Dijk, R. 2001. “Contesting Silence: The Ban on Drumming and the Musical Politics of Pentecostalism in Ghana”. Ghana Studies 4: 31–64.
Vigh, H. 2010. “Youth Mobilisation as Social Navigation: Reflections on the Concept of Dubriagem”. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 140–64. https://doi.org/10.4000/cea.110
Wallis, H. 1996. Luz numia na sukuru: Storia di Igreza Ivangeliku di Gine-Bissau, 1949–1974. Bubaque: Missão Evangélica.
Published
2018-05-11
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Section
Articles
How to Cite
Formenti, A. (2018). Winning Guinea-Bissau for Jesus: The Guinean Evangelical Minority, from the Origins to the Present. PentecoStudies, 17(1), 54-76. https://doi.org/10.1558/ptcs.34875
