The Heart as a Compass: Preaching Self-worth and Success to Single Young Women in a Nigerian Pentecostal Church

Abstract

The quiet city of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria is famed for its burgeoning church scene offering various spiritual services. In this religious marketplace, The Brook Church stands out due to its beautiful building, well-dressed congregation, clever branding, and its ‘unique’ preaching. Focusing on young women’s engagement with The Brook Church, this article builds on recent analyses seeking to understand the attraction of Pentecostalism for this often marginalised and disenfranchised social group. Examining The Brook Church’s life-affirming doctrine of Zoe, in which individual aspirations are realised through careful and timely management of the religious self, the article explores how religious action and rhetoric mould new subjectivities aimed for success. Illustrating how Pentecostal practice gives young women a newfound sense of self-worth and confidence, the article’s emphasis on the individual project suggests we should broaden debates that solely equate young women’s engagement with Pentecostalism with sexuality and marriage opportunities.

Miraculous healing in rural Malawi: between ‘grace’ and ‘work’

“…Pentecostal churches have provided opportunities for women, as well as young poorly educated men, to accrue the kind of status and influence over older men that they could not command in the past. This change is similar to that which has been described as taking place in other African countries (Gilbert 2015; Parsitau 2011; Lauterbach 2010; Soothill 2007).…”

Religious Multiplicity: An Inquiry into the Psychological Use/Abuse of the Social Media in Evangelism

“…Many cases abound where the spiritual essence is neglected and materialism becomes evident in religious worship (Gilbert, 2015;King, 2011). This is in the wake of many religious denominations whether virtual or physical becoming a marketplace with an assurance of God's providence a bet over all human suffering if one sowed a seed or parts with his/her finances, a falsehood bought by many (Chiluwa, 2013).…”

“…There are several cases of impersonation of the religious leaders and/or clergy men to defraud unsuspecting worshippers. Many cases also abound of real and fake clergymen and women who have obtained in false pretence, others such as; advanced fee fraud for prayers and religious sacrifices, money for prayers and monetized rituals in the church speaks volumes of religious abuse (Gilbert, 2015). In the wake of these challenges, scholars interests has grown regarding various forms of abuse using religious nomenclature and how this affects the spiritual lives of the unsuspecting worshippers.…”

“…Regrettably, the gains of the internet and social media have been lost in the disillusionment caused by the brazen abuse by both the clergy and impostors who have deployed the privacy of the platform for commercialization of religious worship (Resane, 2017;Gilbert, 2015;Chiluwa, 2012;2013). Chiluwa's (2012) study on online religion in Nigeria: the internet church and cyber miracles revealed that the positive characteristics of the Internet platform have been exploited to mislead unsuspecting worshippers for commercial gains.…”

‘Things should be better’ – Immobility, labour and the negotiation of hope amongst young Ghanaian craftsmen

“…Looking primarily at GD's story, this article pays critical attention to what the demand that 'things should be better' means in the lives of young Ghanaian weavers, opening up an ethnographic window onto the tense and productive relationship between immobility, labour, craftwork and hope amongst young men in African contexts. Implicated in young men's stalled transition to adulthood, the complex intersection between work, labour, hope and mobility was highly gendered, young women facing their own set of challenges when it came to attaining social maturity (see Gilbert, 2015). Particular focus is given here to the assemblages of material and discursive fragments which gave rise to a complex and often contradictory sense of hope that was grounded both in the attainment of skilled work and in the everyday labours of getting by.…”