The Multi-Polarity of Angolan Pentecostalism: Connections and Belongings
Issued Date: 11 May 2018
Abstract
This article discusses the national framing of Angolan Pentecostalism from the perspective of connections. It analyses how Angola matters as a centre of inspiration for different Pentecostal churches and networks precisely by engaging different religious imaginaries, social memories and anticipations of the future that operate in a variety of ethnic, African and Lusophone spaces. In doing so, this contribution aims at overcoming both the understanding of global Pentecostalism through a national and diasporic lens as well as a universal lens, underscoring the multi-polarity of Angolan Pentecostalism. The connections that Angolan Pentecostalisms create between places and cultures involve different transnational circuits that cultivate diverse cultural, economic and political imaginations and belongings. The possibilities for bridging and bonding that different Pentecostal connections offer generate new relationships, imaginations, rituals and the circulation of ideas. We suggest that Angolan Pentecostalism might be seen as a multi-polar force of multi-directional connections, which dynamics and intensity oscillates, depending on the location and movement of a Pentecostal group in the global geography of power, in postcolonial territorial and social settings, and on modes of appropriating and making Lusophone heritages.
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DOI: 10.1558/ptcs.34876
References
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Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Ascenção, E. 2013. “A Barraca Pós-Colonial: Materialidade, Memória e Afeto na Aquitetura Informal”. In N. Domingues and E. Peralta (eds), Cidade é Imperio: Dinâmicas coloniais e reconfigurações pós-coloniais. Lisbon: Edições 70: 415–62.
Blanes, R. 2007. “Why Africans Do What They Do: Arguments, Discussions and religious Transmissions in Angolan Pentecostal churches in Lisbon”. In C. S. Carrasco (ed.), Religió, Cultura I Cognició: Perspectives des De L’antropologia, Quaderns de l’Institut Català d’Antropologia 23. Barcelona: UOC/ICA: 123–37.
Blanes, R. 2015a. “Politics of Sovereignty: Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity and Politics in Angola”. In S. Coleman and R. I. J. Hackett (eds), The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. New York: New York University Press: 197–213.
Blanes, R. 2015b. “Assessing State and Religious Institutions: A Comment from the Case of Angola”. In L. M. Herrington, A. McKay and J. Haynes (eds), Nations under God: The Geopolitics of Faith in the Twenty-First Century. Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing: 112–17.
Blanes, R., R. Sarró and F. Viegas. 2009. “Guerra na Paz. Etnicidade e Angolanidade na Igreja Kimbanguista em Luanda”. Religião e Estudos 2: 47–65.
Cahen, M. 2015. “Lusofonias/Lusotopias. Espaço Lusófono (1974/2014)”. In J. Oppenheimer et al. (eds), Trajetórias Polítitacas e Económicas – Textos. Lisbon: CEsA/CSG/Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão UL: 13–31.
Coleman, S. and R. I. J. Hackett (eds). 2015. The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. New York: New York University Press.
Corten, A. and, R. Marshall (eds). 2001. Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. London: C. Hurst.
Corten, A., J. P. Dozon and A. P. Oro (eds). 2003. Les Nouveaux Conquérants de la Foi: L’Église Universelle du Royaume de Dieu (Brésil). Paris: Karthala.
Csordas, T. J. (ed.). 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
De Bruijn, M. and R. van Dijk (eds). 2002. The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dietz, A. J., K. Havnevik, M. M. A. Kaag and T. Oestigaard. 2011. African Engagements: Africa Negotiating an Emerging Multipolar World. African-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 7. Leiden: Brill.
Fischer, M. 2011. Pfingstbewegung zwischen Fragilität und Empowerment: Beobachtungen zur Pfingstkirche “Nzambe Malamu” mit ihren transnationalen Verflechtungen. Frankfurt: VR Unipress. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783847098140
Freston, P. 2005. “The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God: A Brazilian Church Finds Success in Southern Africa”. Journal of Religion in Africa 35(1): 33–65. https://doi.org/10.1163/1570066052995816
Fumanti, M. 2010. “‘Virtuous Citizenship’: Ethnicity and Encapsulation among Akan-Speaking Ghanaian Methodists in London”. African Diaspora 3: 13–42. https://doi.org/10.1163/187254610X505655
Glick Schiller, N., A. Çağlar 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
Gorjão Henriques, J. 2016. Racismo em Português: O Lado Esquecido do Colonialismo. Lisbon: Tinta da China. Guyer, J. 1995. “Wealth in People, Wealth in Things”. Journal of African History 36: 83–90.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700026980
Henderson, L. W. 1990. A igreja em Angola: Um rio com várias correntes. Lisbon: Editorial Além Mar.
Krause, K. 2011. “Cosmopolitan Charismatics? Transnational Ways of Belonging and Cosmopolitan Moments in the Religious Practice of New Mission Churches”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34(3): 419–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.537355
Krause, K. and R. van Dijk. 2016. “Hodological Care among Ghanaian Pentecostals: De-diasporization and Belonging in Transnational Religious Networks”. Diaspora 19(1): 97–115. https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.19.1.06
MacAlister, E. 2005. “Globalization and the Religious Production of Space”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44(1–3): 249–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00283.x
MacGaffey, W. 1983. Modern Kongo Prophets: Religion in a Plural Society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Mafra, C. 2007. “Casa dos homens, casa de Deus”. Análise Social 42(182): 145–61.
Massey, D. 1993. “Power Geometries and Progressive Sense of Place”. In J. Bird et al. (eds), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. New York: Routledge: 59–69.
Mbembe, A. 2013. Sair da Grande Noite. Ensaio sobre a África Descolonizada. Luanda: Edições Pedago, Edições Mulemba.
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
Meyer, B. 2010. “Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational Forms”. South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4): 749–50. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2010-015
Morier-Génoud, E. and M. Cahen (eds). 2012. Imperial Migrations: Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Naro, N. P. et al. (eds). 2007. Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230606982
Øien, C. 2007. “The Angolan Diaspora in Lisbon: An Introduction”. Economia Global e Gestão 12(3): 23–33.
Pearce, J. 2017. A Guerra Civil em Angola 1975–2002. Lisbon: Tinta da China.
Pereira, L. 2008. Os Bakongo de Angola: Religião, política e parentesco num bairro de Luanda. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo.
Sarró, R. and R. L. Blanes. 2008. “O Atlântico Cristão: Apontamentos Etnográficos Sobre o Encontro Religioso em Lisboa”. In V. Manuel et al. (eds), Itinerários: A Investigação nos 25 Anos do ICS. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais: 839–54.
Sarró, R. and A. Mélice. 2010. “Kongo and Lisbon: The Dialectics of Centre and Periphery in the Kimbanguist Church”. In S. Fancello and A. Mary (eds), Chrétiens Africains en Europe: Prophétismes, pentecôtismes & politique des nations. Paris: Éditions Karthala: 43–67.
Schubert, J. 2015. “2002, Year Zero: History as Anti-Politics in the ‘New Angola’”. Journal of Southern African Studies 41(4): 835–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2015.1055548
Smit, R. 2012. “More than Conquerors: Space, Time and Power in Two Lusophone Pentecostal Migrant Churches in Rotterdam”. PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Tsing, A. 2000. “The Global Situation”. Cultural Anthropology 15(3): 327–60. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2000.15.3.327
Van de Kamp, L. 2016a. Violent Conversion: Brazilian Pentecostalism and Urban Women in Mozambique. Religion in Transforming Africa Series. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Van de Kamp, L. 2016b. “Introduction: Religious Circulation in Transatlantic Africa”. African Diaspora 9(1–2): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-00901006
Van de Kamp, L. 2017. “The Transnational Infrastructures of Luso-Pentecostal Mega-Cities”. New Diversities 19: 2.
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: Transnational Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diasporic Religions. Leiden: Brill: 123–42. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004187306.i-280.42
Van Dijk, R. 2012. “Pentecostalism and Post-development: Exploring Religion as a Developmental Ideology in Ghanaian Migrant Communities”. In D. Freeman (ed.), Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 835–52. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137017253_4
Van Wijk, J. 2010. “Luanda – Holanda: Irregular Migration from Angola to the Netherlands”. International Migration 48(2): 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00485.x
Vásquez, M. A. 2009. “The Global Portability of Pneumatic Christianity: Comparing African and Latin American Pentecostalisms”. African Studies 68(2): 273–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180903109664
Viegas, F. 2007. Panorâmica das Religiões em Angola Independente (1975–2007). Luanda: Ministério da Cultura, Instituto Nacional para os Assuntos Religiosos.
Viegas. F. and J. Varanda. 2015. “Saberes e práticas de cura nas igrejas neotradicionais em Luanda: carismas, participação e trajetórias das mulheres”. Etnográfica 19(1): 188–224. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.3957
Wolff Swatowiski, C. 2015 “Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus em Luanda”. In I. Silva et al. (eds), Ciências Sociais cruzadas entre o Brasil e Portugal: trajetos e investigações no ICS. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais: 361–374.
Zawiejska, N. 2016. “Angolscy chrześcijanie w Portugalii: Procesy konstrukcji tożsamości wspólnot ewangelikalnych w warunkach migracji”. PhD thesis, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Cracow.
Zawiejska, N. 2017 “O Templo Cenral da Igreja do Bom Deus”. In R. Blanes and R. Sarró (eds), Paisagens e Memórias Religiosas em Angola: Um Itinerário, Volume 1. Lisbon: Currents of Faith, Places of History: 50–56.
Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Ascenção, E. 2013. “A Barraca Pós-Colonial: Materialidade, Memória e Afeto na Aquitetura Informal”. In N. Domingues and E. Peralta (eds), Cidade é Imperio: Dinâmicas coloniais e reconfigurações pós-coloniais. Lisbon: Edições 70: 415–62.
Blanes, R. 2007. “Why Africans Do What They Do: Arguments, Discussions and religious Transmissions in Angolan Pentecostal churches in Lisbon”. In C. S. Carrasco (ed.), Religió, Cultura I Cognició: Perspectives des De L’antropologia, Quaderns de l’Institut Català d’Antropologia 23. Barcelona: UOC/ICA: 123–37.
Blanes, R. 2015a. “Politics of Sovereignty: Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity and Politics in Angola”. In S. Coleman and R. I. J. Hackett (eds), The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. New York: New York University Press: 197–213.
Blanes, R. 2015b. “Assessing State and Religious Institutions: A Comment from the Case of Angola”. In L. M. Herrington, A. McKay and J. Haynes (eds), Nations under God: The Geopolitics of Faith in the Twenty-First Century. Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing: 112–17.
Blanes, R., R. Sarró and F. Viegas. 2009. “Guerra na Paz. Etnicidade e Angolanidade na Igreja Kimbanguista em Luanda”. Religião e Estudos 2: 47–65.
Cahen, M. 2015. “Lusofonias/Lusotopias. Espaço Lusófono (1974/2014)”. In J. Oppenheimer et al. (eds), Trajetórias Polítitacas e Económicas – Textos. Lisbon: CEsA/CSG/Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão UL: 13–31.
Coleman, S. and R. I. J. Hackett (eds). 2015. The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism. New York: New York University Press.
Corten, A. and, R. Marshall (eds). 2001. Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. London: C. Hurst.
Corten, A., J. P. Dozon and A. P. Oro (eds). 2003. Les Nouveaux Conquérants de la Foi: L’Église Universelle du Royaume de Dieu (Brésil). Paris: Karthala.
Csordas, T. J. (ed.). 2009. Transnational Transcendence: Essays on Religion and Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
De Bruijn, M. and R. van Dijk (eds). 2002. The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dietz, A. J., K. Havnevik, M. M. A. Kaag and T. Oestigaard. 2011. African Engagements: Africa Negotiating an Emerging Multipolar World. African-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 7. Leiden: Brill.
Fischer, M. 2011. Pfingstbewegung zwischen Fragilität und Empowerment: Beobachtungen zur Pfingstkirche “Nzambe Malamu” mit ihren transnationalen Verflechtungen. Frankfurt: VR Unipress. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783847098140
Freston, P. 2005. “The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God: A Brazilian Church Finds Success in Southern Africa”. Journal of Religion in Africa 35(1): 33–65. https://doi.org/10.1163/1570066052995816
Fumanti, M. 2010. “‘Virtuous Citizenship’: Ethnicity and Encapsulation among Akan-Speaking Ghanaian Methodists in London”. African Diaspora 3: 13–42. https://doi.org/10.1163/187254610X505655
Glick Schiller, N., A. Çağlar 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
Gorjão Henriques, J. 2016. Racismo em Português: O Lado Esquecido do Colonialismo. Lisbon: Tinta da China. Guyer, J. 1995. “Wealth in People, Wealth in Things”. Journal of African History 36: 83–90.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700026980
Henderson, L. W. 1990. A igreja em Angola: Um rio com várias correntes. Lisbon: Editorial Além Mar.
Krause, K. 2011. “Cosmopolitan Charismatics? Transnational Ways of Belonging and Cosmopolitan Moments in the Religious Practice of New Mission Churches”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34(3): 419–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.537355
Krause, K. and R. van Dijk. 2016. “Hodological Care among Ghanaian Pentecostals: De-diasporization and Belonging in Transnational Religious Networks”. Diaspora 19(1): 97–115. https://doi.org/10.3138/diaspora.19.1.06
MacAlister, E. 2005. “Globalization and the Religious Production of Space”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44(1–3): 249–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00283.x
MacGaffey, W. 1983. Modern Kongo Prophets: Religion in a Plural Society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Mafra, C. 2007. “Casa dos homens, casa de Deus”. Análise Social 42(182): 145–61.
Massey, D. 1993. “Power Geometries and Progressive Sense of Place”. In J. Bird et al. (eds), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. New York: Routledge: 59–69.
Mbembe, A. 2013. Sair da Grande Noite. Ensaio sobre a África Descolonizada. Luanda: Edições Pedago, Edições Mulemba.
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
Meyer, B. 2010. “Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational Forms”. South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4): 749–50. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2010-015
Morier-Génoud, E. and M. Cahen (eds). 2012. Imperial Migrations: Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Naro, N. P. et al. (eds). 2007. Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230606982
Øien, C. 2007. “The Angolan Diaspora in Lisbon: An Introduction”. Economia Global e Gestão 12(3): 23–33.
Pearce, J. 2017. A Guerra Civil em Angola 1975–2002. Lisbon: Tinta da China.
Pereira, L. 2008. Os Bakongo de Angola: Religião, política e parentesco num bairro de Luanda. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo.
Sarró, R. and R. L. Blanes. 2008. “O Atlântico Cristão: Apontamentos Etnográficos Sobre o Encontro Religioso em Lisboa”. In V. Manuel et al. (eds), Itinerários: A Investigação nos 25 Anos do ICS. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais: 839–54.
Sarró, R. and A. Mélice. 2010. “Kongo and Lisbon: The Dialectics of Centre and Periphery in the Kimbanguist Church”. In S. Fancello and A. Mary (eds), Chrétiens Africains en Europe: Prophétismes, pentecôtismes & politique des nations. Paris: Éditions Karthala: 43–67.
Schubert, J. 2015. “2002, Year Zero: History as Anti-Politics in the ‘New Angola’”. Journal of Southern African Studies 41(4): 835–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2015.1055548
Smit, R. 2012. “More than Conquerors: Space, Time and Power in Two Lusophone Pentecostal Migrant Churches in Rotterdam”. PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Tsing, A. 2000. “The Global Situation”. Cultural Anthropology 15(3): 327–60. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.2000.15.3.327
Van de Kamp, L. 2016a. Violent Conversion: Brazilian Pentecostalism and Urban Women in Mozambique. Religion in Transforming Africa Series. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Van de Kamp, L. 2016b. “Introduction: Religious Circulation in Transatlantic Africa”. African Diaspora 9(1–2): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-00901006
Van de Kamp, L. 2017. “The Transnational Infrastructures of Luso-Pentecostal Mega-Cities”. New Diversities 19: 2.
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: Transnational Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diasporic Religions. Leiden: Brill: 123–42. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004187306.i-280.42
Van Dijk, R. 2012. “Pentecostalism and Post-development: Exploring Religion as a Developmental Ideology in Ghanaian Migrant Communities”. In D. Freeman (ed.), Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 835–52. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137017253_4
Van Wijk, J. 2010. “Luanda – Holanda: Irregular Migration from Angola to the Netherlands”. International Migration 48(2): 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00485.x
Vásquez, M. A. 2009. “The Global Portability of Pneumatic Christianity: Comparing African and Latin American Pentecostalisms”. African Studies 68(2): 273–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180903109664
Viegas, F. 2007. Panorâmica das Religiões em Angola Independente (1975–2007). Luanda: Ministério da Cultura, Instituto Nacional para os Assuntos Religiosos.
Viegas. F. and J. Varanda. 2015. “Saberes e práticas de cura nas igrejas neotradicionais em Luanda: carismas, participação e trajetórias das mulheres”. Etnográfica 19(1): 188–224. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.3957
Wolff Swatowiski, C. 2015 “Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus em Luanda”. In I. Silva et al. (eds), Ciências Sociais cruzadas entre o Brasil e Portugal: trajetos e investigações no ICS. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais: 361–374.
Zawiejska, N. 2016. “Angolscy chrześcijanie w Portugalii: Procesy konstrukcji tożsamości wspólnot ewangelikalnych w warunkach migracji”. PhD thesis, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Cracow.
Zawiejska, N. 2017 “O Templo Cenral da Igreja do Bom Deus”. In R. Blanes and R. Sarró (eds), Paisagens e Memórias Religiosas em Angola: Um Itinerário, Volume 1. Lisbon: Currents of Faith, Places of History: 50–56.
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