African Initiated Christianity and the Decolonisation of Development

Front matter

AFRICAN INITIATED CHRISTIANITY AND THE DECOLONISATION OF

DEVELOPMENT

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN PENTECOSTAL AND INDEPENDENT CHURCHES

PART I Overarching perspectives

2 Spirit and empowerment: the African Initiated Church movement and development J. KWABENA ASAMOAH-GYADU

3 The challenge of environment and climate justice: imperatives of an eco-theological reformation of Christianity in African contexts DIETRICH WERNER

4 African Initiated Churches and development from below: subjecting a thesis to closer scrutiny IGNATIUS SWART

5 Distinguished church leader essay: Theology in African Initiated Churches — reflections from an East African perspective JOHN NJERU GICHIMU

XV vi Contents

PART II Nigerian perspectives

6 Distinguished church leader essay: Roles of women in African Independent and Pentecostal Churches in Nigeria ATINUKE ABDULSALAMI

7 ‘A starving man cannot shout halleluyah’: African Pentecostal Churches and the challenge of promoting sustainable development OLUFUNKE ADEBOYE

8 Approaches to transformation and development: the case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Nigeria BABATUNDE A. ADEDIBU

9 The role of Pentecostalism in sustainable development in Nigeria MOBOLAJI OYEBISI AJIBADE

10 Aladura Churches as agents of social transformation in South-West Nigeria AKINWUMI AKINDOLIE

11 Distinguished church leader essay: Aladura theology — the case of the Church of the Lord (Prayer Fellowship) Worldwide RUFUS OKIKIOLA OSITELU

PART III Ghanaian perspectives

12 Distinguished church leader essay: The Church of Pentecost and its role in Ghanaian society OPOKU ONYINAH

13 An evaluation of Pentecostal Churches as agents of sustainable development in Africa: the case of the Church of Pentecost EMMANUEL KWESI ANIM

Contents

14 Pentecostalism and sustainable development: the case of Perez Chapel International SYLVIA OWUSU-ANSAH AND PHILIP ADJEI-ACQUAH

15 Distinguished church leader essay: Healing a strained relationship between African Independent Churches and western Mission-founded Churches in Ghana (1967-2017) — the role of Good News Theological Seminary, Accra, Ghana THOMAS A. ODURO

PART IV Perspectives from Burkina Faso

16 Distinguished church leader essay: Partnerships for female education in Burkina Faso — perspectives from Evangelical Churches and FBOs PHILIPPE OUEDRAOGO

17 Centre International d’Evangélisation/Mission Intérieure Africaine’s contribution to sustainable development in Burkina Faso through transformational development INI DORCAS DAH

PART V Zimbabwean perspectives

18 Investing in the future generation: new Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe SIMBARASHE GUKURUME

19 Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity and the management of precarity in postcolonial Zimbabwe JOSIAH TARU

PART VI South African perspectives

20 Distinguished church leader essay: Cross-cultural development in South Africa — a perspective from below DANIE C. VAN ZYL vil viii Contents

21 Contested development(s)? The possible contribution of the African Independent Churches in decolonising development: a South African perspective 311 NADINE BOWERS-DU TOIT

Illustrations

Figures

1.1 Three waves of African Initiated Christianity 7 1.2 Membership of African Initiated Churches 11

Table

4.1 Overview of literature capturing the development-from-below thesis 76

Contributors

Atinuke Abdulsalami is ordained prophetic minister and pastor of Shepherd’s Court Christian Centre and Divine Salvation Bible Church in Lagos, Nigeria. She is the initiator and president of Women of Prayers in Nigeria Fellowship, which has over 2000 members all over Nigeria. She is a certified family, marriage and relationship counsellor of the Institute of Counselling, United Kingdom. Abdulsalami has received several awards and is presently the secretary of the board of trustees of the Fellowship of Christian Ministers of Nigeria. She is the first woman in that position.

Philip Adjei-Acquah is a researcher and adjunct lecturer in Pentecostal/Charismatic Theology and Missions at Central University and Perez University College, Ghana. He is also a minister with the International Central Gospel Church. He serves as a conference speaker and leadership mentor with the passion of empowering the youth. His graduate thesis was titled ‘An evaluative study of the mission strategy in ICGC in relation to its growth’ (2016) and Adjei-Acquah is author of the book How to develop the leader in you (2015).

Olufunke Adeboye is a professor of Social History at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She was a visiting research associate at the Harriet Tubman Institute, York University, Canada, and has held visiting research fellowships at University of Birmingham, University of Massachusetts, Amherst College and University of Cambridge. Her research interests include gender in Africa, African historiography, and Pentecostalism in West Africa. In 2013, her article ‘A Church in a Cinema Hall? Pentecostal Appropriation of Public Space in Nigeria’, Journal of Religion in Africa (2012) won the Gerti Hesseling Prize.

Babatunde A. Adedibu holds a PhD in Missiology from North West University, South Africa. He is the provost of the Redeemed Christian Bible College and an affiliate of University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Adedibu is also an associate professor with Redeemer’s University, Nigeria, and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Adedibu is the co-editor of the book The Changing Faces of African Pentecostalism (2018) and convener of the International Conference on African Pentecostalism.

Contributors xi

Mobolaji Oyebisi Ajibade teaches Sociology of Religion and Pedagogy at Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Ajibade holds a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, and a PhD in Religious Studies from Obafemi Awolowo University. She was the former assistant director of the Centre for Gender and Sustainable Development Studies, ACE, Obafemi Awolowo University. Ajibade’s current research focuses on education on HIV/AIDS using religious media — electronic and prints.

Akinwumi Akindolie is a doctoral student of Sociology of Religion at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He lectures at the Redeemed Christian Bible College, Main Campus, Redemption Camp. His publications include ‘The Church and Educational Investment in Nigeria: Prospects and Problems’, Journal of African Society for the Study of Sociology and Ethics of Religions (2018) and ‘Is Church God’s Business or Man’s? An Exegesis of Acts 20:28-31’, Akungba Journal of Religion & African Culture (jointly with Akintunde Felix, 2018).

Emmanuel Kwesi Anim is the principal of the Pentecost Theological Seminary, Ghana. He is a visiting lecturer to the All Nations Christian College, UK, where he teaches African Studies and Church Planting. Anim is also an adjunct lecturer at the Pentecost University College and the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana. Among his publications are Mission, Migration and World Christianity: An Evaluation of the Mission Strategy of The Church of Pentecost in the Diaspora (2016) and Pentecostal Theological Education — A Ghanaian Perspective (2013, with Opoku Onyinah).

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu is the president and Baéta-Grau Professor of Contemporary African Christianity and Pentecostal Theology of the Trinity Theological Seminary, Legon, Ghana. He has served as visiting scholar to Harvard University, Luther Seminary, Overseas Ministries Study Center, visiting professor to Asbury Theological Seminary, USA, and Yonsei International University, South Korea. Asamoah-Gyadu is a member of the Lausanne Theology Working Group and is author of Sighs and Signs of the Spirit (2015) as well as lead editor of Between Babel and Pentecost: Migrant Readings from Africa, Europe and Asia (2013).

Nadine Bowers-Du Toit is associate professor of Theology and Development at University of Stellenbosch and the director of the Unit for Religious and Development Research. Her research and publications have focused on the role of faith communities in addressing issues of social injustice and poverty, with a particular focus on local congregations and grassroots faith-based actors. She serves on the board of two non-governmental organisations and is the chairperson of the Society of Practical Theology in South Africa.

Ini Dorcas Dah is associate professor of I’Institut Pastoral Hébron, Côte d'Ivoire, and an adjunct research fellow at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana. She is founding president of l’Association Evangélique pour la Joie et le Développement de la Femme, xii Contributors

Burkina Faso. Dah has published Women Do More Work Than Men: Birifor Women as Change Agents in the Mission and Expansion of the Church in West Africa (2017) and various articles. Her research interests are Christian history, gospel and culture, and holistic mission and development.

Marie-Luise Frost is a researcher in the Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin and research associate at University of Pretoria. Besides freelance activities in the cultural field, she has taught several courses on religion and development. Her publications include the chapter ‘Avoiding “White Elephants” — Fruitful Development Cooperation from the Perspective of AICs in South Africa and Beyond’ (2018, with Philipp Ohlmann and Wilhelm Grab) and the article ‘African Initiated Churches’ potential as development actors’ (with Philipp Ohlmann and Wilhelm Grab), HTS Theological Studies (2016).

John Njeru Gichimu is an archdeacon in the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa. He joined the Organization of African Instituted Churches in 1995 as a facilitator for Theological Education by Extension and is currently the director of the Programme for Theology and Ministerial Formation. Gichimu studied theology at Kima Theological College in Kenya, at the Lutheran Theological College in Tanzania and holds a Master of Arts in Mission Studies from Birmingham University, UK.

Wilhelm Grab is head of the Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development and extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University. He is involved in several international research projects on the role of African Christianity in processes of social transformation. Recent publications include Vom Menschsein und der Religion. Eine praktische Kulturtheologie (2018) and The Impact of Religion on Social Cohesion, Social Capital Formation and Social Development in Different Cultural Contexts (2014, edited with Lars Charbonnier).

Simbarashe Gukurume is a researcher and lecturer at Great Zimbabwe University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Gukurume received his MSc degree in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the University of Zimbabwe. His research interests focus on youth, social movements and protests, student activism and livelihoods. Gukurume was a Matasa Network fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, a Harry Frank Guggenheim Young African Scholars fellow, and an Academy for African Urban Diversity fellow at Max Planck Institute, Germany.

Thomas A. Oduro is the president of Good News Theological Seminary in Accra, Ghana. He has been teaching, leading and coordinating seminars and workshops in many African countries. He is a member of the executive committee of the Organization of African Instituted Churches and pastor of Christ Holy Church International. Oduro holds a PhD in History of

Contributors xiii

Christianity. Among his publications are Leading People to Christ: Using events in Your Life to lead People to Christ (2017) and Church of the Lord (Brotherhood): History, Challenges and Growth (2016).

Philipp Ohlmann heads the Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin and is a research associate at University of Pretoria. Ohlmann’s research focuses on the effects of religion on economic performance as well as African Christianity and sustainable development. His publications include ‘Religiosity and household income in Sekhukhune’ (with Silke Hiittel), Development Southern Africa (2018) and ‘African Initiated Churches’ potential as development actors’ (with Marie-Luise Frost and Wilhelm Grab), HTS Theological Studies (2016).

Opoku Onyinah is the immediate past chairman of the Church of Pentecost, with its headquarters in Ghana and a former president of Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council. Currently he is a member of the Commission of Religious Freedom of the World Pentecostal Fellowship. One of his publications is Pentecostal Exorcism: Witchcraft and Demonology in Ghana (2012).

Rufus Okikiola Ositelu is the Metropolitan Archbishop and the Primate of The Church of the Lord (a.k.a Aladura). He was installed as the Pope of the Aladura Communion Worldwide in 2009 and is currently vice president of the Christian Council of Nigeria. Ositelu holds PhDs in Computer Science and Religious Studies. He is a prolific writer and author of African Instituted Churches: Diversities, Growth, Gifts, Spirituality and Ecumenical Understanding of African Initiated Churches (2002) and CHRISTIANITY: Inside Story from an African Perspective (2016).

Philippe Ouedraogo is the executive director of the Association Evangélique d’Appui au Développement, senior pastor of Boulmiougou Assemblies of God Church, Ouagadougou, and vice president of Assemblies of God Churches of Burkina Faso. He holds a PhD from the Oxford Centre of Mission Studies, UK, and an MPhil from New Covenant International University, Florida. He is currently working to advocate with families, churches/NGOs and the Government of Burkina Faso for a quality access to female education.

Sylvia Owusu-Ansah is a lecturer at Central University, Ghana, and the head pastor of Revival Temple, Perez Chapel International, Accra. Her research interests include missions-related studies, cross-cultural communication, gender studies, interreligious conflict mediation, and dialogue. Among her publications are the book chapters ‘The Role of Interreligious Collaboration in Conflict Prevention and Peaceful Multi-Religious Co-Existence: A Case Study of Northern Ghana’ (2018) and ‘Neo-Pentecostalism in Postcolonial Ghana’ (2018).

Ignatius Swart is professor in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape and Kjell Nordstokke Professor of xiv Contributors

International Diaconia at VID Specialized University, Norway. He has initiated and led several international team research projects since the early 2000s, which emanated in anthologies and other forms of academic publication. Examples include the anthology Religion and Social Development in Post- Apartheid South Africa: Perspectives for Critical Engagement (2010) and the special collection in HTS Theological Studies, Engaging Development: Contributions to a Critical Theological and Religious Debate (2016).

Josiah Taru is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Great Zimbabwe University. He is a fellow of the Human Economy Research Programme at University of Pretoria. His research interests are Pentecostalism’s engagement with postcolonial Zimbabwean state, Pentecostal- Charismatic Christianity, Consumption Patterns and Money. His publications include ‘Patterns of Consumption and Materialism among Zimbabwean Christians: A Tale of Two Indigenous Churches’, Journal for the Study of Religion (2015, with Federico Settler).

Dietrich Werner is senior theological advisor to Bread for the World, the German Protestant Churches’ agency for development cooperation. He is also honorary professor for Intercultural Theology, Ecumenism and Development Studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Hermannsburg, Germany. He previously worked as director of the Ecumenical Theological Education Programme of the World Council of Churches. Werner has published widely on ecumenical theology, development and education, e.g. Anthology of African Theology (2014) and Handbook of Theological Education in World Christianity (2010).

Danie C. van Zyl is research fellow of Department of Biblical Studies at University of Stellenbosch, has worked in cross-cultural Christian ministry his whole life. He first ministered in a rural Xhosa-speaking community, close to Nelson Mandela’s place of birth. For the major part of his ministry, he conducted an interdenominational pastors-training programme for lay leaders in Cape Town. The majority of these leaders were from African Initiated Churches. Through spiritual and personal development of people, he has sought to encourage and equip leaders for doing social and physical development themselves in their own contexts.

Acknowledgements

This volume emerged within the context of the research project ‘Potentials of Cooperation with African Initiated Churches for Sustainable Development’ conducted by the Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development at Humboldt-Universitaét zu Berlin under the leadership of Philipp Ohlmann and Wilhelm Grab. The project was highly collaborative, drawing on the expertise of numerous international academic experts on African Initiated Christianity, many of whom have contributed chapters to this book. The volume includes chapters presented at workshops in Kasoa (Ghana), Pretoria (South Africa), and Berlin (Germany) in 2017 and 2018. These workshops not only involved researchers, but also church leaders and representatives of African Initiated Churches. Moreover, in the framework of Lecture Series on African Independent and Pentecostal Approaches to Theology and Development at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin’s Faculty of Theology in 2017 and 2018, leaders of African Initiated Churches had the historic opportunity of giving keynote lectures at a major European theological faculty. We are delighted to be able to incorporate these keynote lectures as distinguished church leader essays in this volume.

Several notes of thanks are in order. First of all, we would like to sincerely thank the authors of the 20 chapters for contributing to this volume and for the willingness to revise their chapters in some cases multiple times in light of reviewers’ and editors’ remarks. Second, sincere thanks are due to our team at the Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development for their hard work on this book. Especially, Juliane Stork and Daniel Schumacher provided excellent editorial assistance exceeding any expectations. Ms Stork accompanied the volume from the very early stages on, working with us on the project for nearly two years. She excellently managed the communications with the authors from the first draft to the final manuscript and ensured swift and high-quality editing of all chapters. She was not merely an editorial assistant, but in many ways also an editorial advisor to us in providing valuable input on the entire volume. Mr Schumacher meticulously formatted and checked all chapters in the final stages of the editorial process. Third, we would like to express our appreciation for the constructive engagement of Routledge on this volume, particularly of their development studies editor, Helena Hurd, xvi Acknowledgements and her team. Fourth, we are indebted to two anonymous reviewers, who critically engaged with the proposal for this volume and provided constructive and helpful advice. Last, but not least, we gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the research project this volume emerged from by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Philipp Ohlmann, Wilhelm Grab, and Marie-Luise Frost

African Initiated Christianity and sustainable development

Philipp Ohlmann, Wilhelm Grab, and Marie-Luise Frost

Approaching the field: religion and development

The past 20 years have witnessed a ‘religious turn’ (Kaag and Saint-Lary 2011, 1) in international development theory, policy, and practice. A growing corpus of literature has begun to explore the manifold relationships and interactions of religion and development (Jones and Petersen 2011; Swart and Nell 2016) — in themselves two vast fields of research. Religion and development is of crossdisciplinary interest, with research spanning from religious studies and theology (e.g. Gifford 2015; Heuser 2013, 2015) to anthropology (e.g. Bornstein 2005; Freeman 2012b), sociology (e.g. Berger 2010), politics (e.g. Bompani 2010; Clarke and Jennings 2008), development studies (e.g. Deneulin and Bano 2009), and economics (e.g. Barro and McCleary 2003; Beck and Gundersen 2016; Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales 2003). A new interdisciplinary and dynamic research field on religion and development has emerged (Bompani 2019; Ter Haar 2011; Tomalin 2015).

At the same time, development policymakers and practitioners have recognised religion as a relevant factor (Tomalin 2015). Leading examples are the initiatives by the World Bank, the British Department for International Development, and, more recently, the initiative by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, inter alia leading to the foundation of the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development (Belshaw, Calderisi, and Sugden 2001; BMZ 2016; Deneulin and Rakodi 2011; Ter Haar 2011). The recent interest in the relationship of development and religion is not limited to governmental and multilateral institutions, but extends to religious communities and institutions as illustrated by a volume published by the Lutheran World Federation in 2013 (Mtata 2013) and the special issue on religion and development of the Ecumenical Review published by the World Council of Churches in 2016.

However, the current religion and development discourse has largely been taking place within the secular frameworks of the western-dominated development discourses. Where religious communities come into view, the perspective is mainly functional: it asks whether religion is conducive to development or hinders it (e.g. Basedau, Gobien, and Prediger 2018). The focus of the attention is on the contribution of religious communities to secular development agendas (Deneulin and Bano 2009; Jones and Petersen 2011). As we have pointed out elsewhere

[t]he development agenda and imagination, as framed in (inter-) governmental strategies such as the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development ... remains a secular one. Nowhere in the United Nations resolution on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is religion or are religious communities mentioned explicitly.

(Ohlmann et al. 2018, 4)

This secular framework of the development discourse is not only challenged by the decolonial and postcolonial debate (e.g. Mawere 2014; Bowers-Du Toit, Chapter 21, this volume), but also by the perspective of religious actors themselves. For many religious communities ‘development is part of religion’, i.e. professional and academic experts’ notions of development represent only one dimension in a more comprehensive human and social transformation (Ohlmann, Frost, and Grab 2016, 10) that is informed by and interrelated with religious, situated and indigenous knowledge. In this it is vital to also recognise that ‘[flor most people in the developing world, religion is part of a vision of the “good life” ... [RJeligion is part of the social fabric, integrated with other dimensions of life’ (Ter Haar 2011, 5—6). Van Wensveen (2011) introduced a twofold typology of the contributions of religious communities to sustainable development, differentiating between an ‘additive pattern’ and an ‘integral pattern’. Development concepts and practices that follow secular western development policies can be characterised as making an ‘instrumental addition of religion to the pre-set, mechanistic sustainable development production process’ (van Wensveen 2011, 85). In difference to this ‘additive pattern’, she identifies an opposite model, in which religion does not function as an instrument for secular development goals, but in which religious communities set the agenda bringing to the table their own religious-inspired concepts and practices of sustainable development. ‘[D]evelopment as part of religion’ (Ohlmann, Frost, and Gräb 2016, 10) encapsulates precisely this ‘integral pattern’ brought forward by van Wensveen (2011).

While in the functional approach religious communities are viewed as actors of ‘mainstream development policies and programmes’ (van Wensveen 2011, 82), their own aims go beyond the specific concepts of sustainable development outlined e.g. in the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (United Nations 2015). This can imply a fundamental critique of dominant concepts of (sustainable) development. They (re)shape the very notions of development based on their religious worldviews and their situated knowledge due to the embeddedness in local contexts and cultures (see Bowers-Du Toit, Chapter 21, this volume). This is what we refer to as a process of decolonisation of development in the title of this volume.

Hence, one desideratum in the research field is to juxtapose the notions of development dominant in (western and international) development policy with those of religious communities and to illuminate their respective ideological presuppositions. Alternative notions of development informed by contextual religious and cultural worldviews, such as holistic development (Owuso-Ansah and Adjei-Acquah, Chapter 14, this volume), integral development (Cochrane 2011), transformation or transformational development (Dah, Chapter 17, this volume; Masondo 2013; Myers 2011); human flourishing (Asamoah-Gyadu, Chapter 2, this volume; Marais 2015 ), Ubuntu (Bowers-Du Toit, Chapter 21, this volume; Gichimu, Chapter 5, this volume; Metz 2011; Padwick and Lubaale 2011); good life (Acosta 2016, Taru, Chapter 19, this volume); and prosperity (Asamoah- Gyadu, Chapter 2, this volume; Ajibade, Chapter 9, this volume; Gukurume, Chapter 18, this volume; Taru, Chapter 19, this volume; Togarasei 2016), need to be taken into account and their relationship to dominant secular notions of development and modernity needs to be investigated.

This volume situates itself within the dynamic research field of religion and development by elucidating the role of African Initiated Christianity for sustainable development. While mission-initiated Christianity in Africa, in the shape of the Catholic and historic Protestant Churches of European and North American provenience, have long been recognised as development actors both in the academic literature and in the international development policy discourse (see, e.g. Belshaw, Calderisi, and Sugden 2001; BMZ 2016; Gifford 2015; Ilo 2014), African Initiated Christianity in the shape of African Independent and Pentecostal Churches lack such recognition. Thus far, there are only a limited number of studies investigating African Independent and Pentecostal Churches’ contribution to development. Notable works in this area include, for example, the comprehensive overview by Turner (1980), the contributions by Oosthuizen and his collaborators (Cross, Oosthuizen, and Clark 1993; Oosthuizen 1997, 2002) or more recent contributions by Garner (2004), Bompani (2008, 2010), Freeman (2012a), and Ohlmann, Frost, and Grab (2016). These studies indicate that there is a substantial and growing dynamic in the contribution made by African Independent and Pentecostal Churches to sustainable development in its manifold forms. Acknowledging the role of these religious movements as actors of sustainable development requires acknowledging their understanding of sustainable development as well as the wider notions and ideas that undergird and guide their actions. As decolonial and postcolonial religious movement, African Initiated Churches seem to be ideally positioned to contribute to decolonising concepts of sustainable development. Moving beyond a functional approach assessing contributions of religious communities to a secular development agenda, this volume furthermore seeks to elucidate how African Initiated Christianity contributes to reshaping notions of sustainable development.

The study of the relationship of African Initiated Christianity and sustainable development, hence, constitutes an important strand within the religion and development research field. Taking this as a point of departure, it is the aim of this book to substantially broaden the scope of the existing literature through contributions on African Independent and Pentecostal Churches and the

4 Philipp Ohlmamn et al.

different dimensions and forms of development in Africa from different thematic and disciplinary perspectives. Since much of the existing literature deals with South Africa (inter alia Bompani 2008, 2010; Cross, Oosthuizen, and Clark 1993; Ohlmann, Frost, and Gräb 2016; Masondo 2014; Oosthuizen 1997; Schlemmer 2008), this volume puts the West African context into the centre of attention (including case studies on Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso). To foster overarching and comparative perspectives, it also includes contributions with a pan- African scope and contributions on the Southern African context (Zimbabwe and South Africa). The perspective presented here is necessarily partial. Hence, the volume provides an important first step in a more comprehensive investigation of African Initiated Christianity and sustainable development. It intends to open up a subfield focused on African Initiated Christianity within the religion and development discourse, while at the same time acknowledging the need for further case studies in other African countries and regions and focusing on additional notions and subthemes of sustainable development.

Approaching African Initiated Christianity: towards a definition of African Initiated Churches

African Christianity fundamentally changed in the past 100 years. In what Allan Anderson (2001) termed African Reformation, new African expressions of Christianity emerged: the African Initiated Churches. While at the beginning of the twentieth century African Christianity was predominantly marked by the historic Protestant, Catholic (and, in the North East of the continent, Orthodox) Churches, today about one-third of Africa’s Christians can be estimated to be members of African Initiated Churches.

For the purposes of this volume and the research initiative it emerged from, we define African Initiated Churches as all those Christian religious communities that have their origins in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa (Anderson 2000, 2001). We draw on the original typology by Turner (1967, 17) to refer to churches that are ‘founded in Africa, by Africans, and primarily for Africans’ without ‘missionary Godfathers’ as Pobee and Ositelu (1998, 55) pointedly added. Their key feature is that they were founded by Africans and did not directly emerge from the European and North American mission initiatives of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.’ This closely relates to the definition used by the Organization of African Instituted Churches (OAIC), which understands an AIC to be a church that acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord, and which has separated by seceding from a mission church or an existing African independent church, or has been founded as an independent entity under African initiative and leadership.

To emphasise this overarching common characteristic of being initiated in Africa by Africans, we deliberately use the term African Initiated Churches instead of other commonly used interpretations of the T in AIC such as Independent, Indigenous, and International (see Venter 2004a for an overview). We argue that there are enough common characteristics to necessitate the use of this umbrella term. In the literature, the acronym AIC is often used to refer exclusively to churches originating in the first and second waves of African Initiated Christianity (see below). In this volume, we adopt the following systematisation to accommodate the different approaches in the literature: the term African Initiated Churches denotes all churches originating in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa, including African Pentecostal and Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches. The term African Independent Churches will be used to denote all churches that can be counted as part of the first and second waves of African Initiated Christianity, i.e. Independent/African/Separatist/Nationalist/Apostolic/Zionist/ Roho/Aladura/Spiritual/Indigenous Churches. This is coherent with the earlier literature (Oosthuizen 1987; Turner 1980, 1967). The terms African Pentecostal and Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches will be used to describe the Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal strands of African Initiated Christianity. Coherent with the volume’s emphasis on case studies from the West African context, many of the contributions deal with African Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal Churches, which have been developing in a highly dynamic way in the past decades and constitute the major part of African Initiated Christianity in the region (Asamoah-Gyadu 2005; Meyer 2004).

African Initiated Churches do not form a clearly delimited denominational family (Hollenweger 1998). Rather, they are a heterogeneous movement (Pauw 1995) of probably more than 10,000 churches of different expressions, whose primary commonality is their formation in colonial and postcolonial Africa of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The smallest of them have just a handful of members, while the largest, such as the Zion Christian Church in South Africa or the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria, claim membership in the millions. We acknowledge that an idiotypical African initiated church does not exist and that various different subcategorisations are important analytical tools dependent on the questions of interest. To understand the movement of African Initiated Churches and the categorisation employed here, it is helpful to look at the history and development of these churches. The following categorisation and terminology follow Gichimu (2016) and Padwick and Lubaale (2011). Three waves of African Initiated Christianity can be highlighted, which produced different subcategories of African Initiated Churches (cf. Figure 1.1).

The first churches falling under the categorisation of African Initiated Churches employed here, emerged as secessions from Mission Churches (Sundkler 1961). In an anti-colonial move in the churches, African Christians split from the churches founded and supervised by European and North American missionaries and founded churches under their own leadership. In many cases, notably in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Southern Africa as well as twentieth-century pre-independence East Africa, cross-fertilisation existed between political independence movements and independence movements in

6 Philipp Ohlmamn et al.

the churches. In their theology and structure, the newly independent churches were often similar to the churches from which they seceded (Sundkler 1961; Venter 2004a). Because of the focus on independence from foreign leadership, these churches were termed Independent, Separatist, or Nationalist. In the different African regions, different self-designations exist: African Churches in West Africa, Ethiopian Churches’ in Southern Africa, Independent Churches or Nationalist Churches in East Africa (Gichimu 2016; Sundkler 1961). Some of these first-generation African Independent Churches still exist, such as the Lutheran Bapedi Church in South Africa, which seceded from the Berlin Mission Church in the late-nineteenth century. Nonetheless, nowadays the first-generation African Independent Churches in their original form play a marginal role (with the exception of East Africa, particularly Kenya). Many of them have either since disappeared or have incorporated elements of African traditional religious or Pentecostal elements of belief, so that they can be considered as African Initiated Churches of the second or third generations.