■ Abstract Taking as a point of departure Fernandez's survey (1978), this review seeks to show how research on African Independent Churches (AICs) has been reconfigured by new approaches to the anthropology of Christianity in Africa, in general, and the recent salient popularity of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in particular. If the adjectives "African" and "Independent" were once employed as markers of authentic, indigenous interpretations of Christianity, these terms proved to be increasingly problematic to capture the rise, spread, and phenomenal appeal of PCCs in Africa. Identifying three discursive frames-Christianity and "traditional religion," Africa and "the wider world," religion and politics-which organize(d) research on AICs and PCCs in the course of the past 25 years, this chapter critically reviews discussions about "Africanization," globalization and modernity, and the role of religion in the public sphere in postcolonial African societies.
One of the key features of Pentecostal/charismatic churches is their sensational appeal. Taking as a point of departure the experience of the Holy Spirit as a “portable,” embodied power source, this essay seeks to contribute to developing alternative concepts that expand our view of Pentecostalism as it emerges through a “Protestant lens.” First, I critically discuss the severance of aesthetics and Protestantism, and the concomitant dismissal of “form” in the work of Max Weber. I argue for the need to recapture an understanding of religion as aesthetics, albeit taken in the broad sense of aisthesis, advocated by Aristotle. Calling for the reappreciation of form as absolutely essential to religious experience, I then introduce the notion of the sensational form, which allows us to grasp how the Holy Spirit operates according to Pentecostal understanding and experience. Presenting the term aesthetics of persuasion, I address the question of how aesthetics is relevant to broader modalities of binding and politics of belonging—paying attention to Jacques Rancière's “distribution of the sensible.” Taking Pentecostalism as a prominent representative of global Christianity, I seek not only to enhance our understanding of its particular sensational religiosity but also to outline new directions in the broader study of Protestantism and Christianity in general.
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In this article I examine the elective affinity between Pentecostalism and the vibrant video‐film industry that has flourished in the wake of Ghana's adoption of a democratic constitution. I argue that, as a result of the liberalization and commercialization of the media, a new public sphere has emerged that can no longer be fully controlled by the state but that is increasingly indebted to Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism and video‐films come together and articulate alternative, Christian imaginations of modernity. Seeking to grasp the blurring of boundaries between religion and entertainment, I examine the pentecostalite cultural style on which these alternative visions thrive. My main concern is to investigate the specific mode through which Pentecostal expressive forms go public, thereby transforming the public sphere.
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