African Pentecostalism in a Changing Economic and Democratic Global Order

Abstract

Despite proliferating literature about the changing global order, scant attention has been paid to religion as source of transformation. Drawing on recent observations and literature of Ghanaian and Nigerian Pentecostalism, this chapter examines how African Pentecostalism alters the meaning and practice of two foundational principles of the global order: nation-state democracy and neoliberal economic development. Regarding the latter, African Pentecostals offer learning avenues for African governments on the mobilization of funds from their own populations through principles of reciprocity, accountability, and belonging. Regarding the former, African Pentecostal leaders who occupy state and civil society institutions tend to resist secularist assumptions of democratic governance and electoral process. Altogether, this chapter posits a religious domain of African agency in the changing global order, wherein Pentecostal religious actors tend to reconstruct and to renegotiate modernity’s dominant principles and institutions.