‘Pillaging Jesus’: healing churches and the villagisation of Kinshasa

Abstract

In Kinshasa thousands of prophetical churches of the Holy Spirit, particularly those in the Koongo area, fill in the ethical gap left, according to the people, by the marginalisation of traditional authority in the city, as well as the failure of civilisationist ‘white’ models, such as the collapse of public health and education sectors, and the dissolution of the State party. Confronted with economic collapse and miserable conditions in urban areas, these charismatic healing churches deconstruct the colonial and missionary heritage that ‘invented Africa’ in a white mirror, and the evolutionist utopia relating to modern progress. The dogmatic use that they make of biblical texts, their immoderate liturgy, and above all their ostentatious healing rituals parody and ridicule people's experience of post-colonial state constraints, the dichotomisation of the society operated by Christian conversion, and postcolonial mirrors opposing modernity and reactionary tradition, Christian values and pagan life. Healing churches deconstruct the daily seduction of the town folk by hedonistic ideals of capitalist consumption and Northern television channels which control the world. The Holy Spirit, as a substitute for the ancestral spirit, expresses itself in an heterodox manner and with multiple voices in the shape of glossolalia, dreams, and trance. During these very intense celebrations these communities, through the spirit, remobilise and, in particular, reinforce interpersonal links woven through the care of the body and from the mother within the matrifocal community or the matri-centered villagisation operating in the city. Here, in the daily quest for survival, people reassert their sense of criticism and community in the face of the fragments of state and tribal structures as well as their desire for moral integrity and sharing. And, above all, in this process of villagisation, healing churches recycle as symbolic capital the so-called forces of western imperialism, and particularly those which come from written material and electronics: the Bible, money, television, and satellite communication.

Double-mouthed discourse: Interpreting, framing, and participant roles1

“…For others, including both pastors and congregants, it is inscribed in the process of migration to South Africa: the dichotomy sinner vs. believer is articulated along the spatiotemporal opposition there-before vs. here-now. The rise of Congolese Pentecostal congregations in South Africa also reflects recent dynamics in DRC, where new waves of charismatic churches have burgeoned in the wake of political independence in 1960 (see Devisch 1995Devisch , 1996 and in the 1990s with the increasing proletarization of the population (for an overview of Pentecostalism in DRC, see Burgess and Maas 2002). From a transnational perspective, the increase of Pentecostalism in DRC is part of what Dempster, Klaus and Petersen (1999) and Robbins (2004) have termed the 'globalization of Pentecostalism,' which started in the West and has expanded worldwide.…”

Mining, welfare and urbanisation: the wavering urban character of Zambia's Copperbelt

“…As residents adopted new forms of livelihoods, material landscapes were being reconfigured, infusing social relations with altered needs and meanings reminiscent of village life. This could be interpreted as going beyond Devisch's (1996) psycho-social notion of villagisation to encompass the material. To cite just a couple of concrete everyday examples, the tendency was manifested in more meals cooked on charcoal braziers and more water collected from wells or poached from neighbours.…”

La quête du : rumeurs, réussite et malheur en République démocratique du Congo1

“…Pour d'autres, il s'agit d'un phénomène extrêmement inquiétant, puisque les musiciens sont devenus des modèles pour toute une génération de jeunes Kinois et leur comportement est symptomatique du déclin moral de la société et de la spiritualité (Devisch, 1996). À Kinshasa, les rumeurs font partie d'une conversation publique qui produit le savoir au sujet des conditions et des coûts de la richesse dans une économie de pénurie.…”