EDITORIAL AND INTRODUCTION

Editorial

Maria Frahm-Arp

mariafa@uj.ac.za

The Pentecostal movement has since its inception been a dynamic movement in which the theology, practice, and expressions of faith have shifted. This is primarily, but not solely, due to four central factors. First, it is a movement and not a centralized organization, meaning that there is no central authority that governs how it develops, when and how new congregations or churches are formed, and how these evolve. As a movement, it is a loose collection of churches and groups, some of which do not specifically self-identify as Pentecostal, but are categorized by academics as Pentecostal due to their theology and/or practices. The article by Podolecka and Cheyeka explores this reality in Zambia where some churches consider themselves Pentecostal while other Pentecostals do not recognize these churches as part of the movement. In a different vein, Aidoo examines the phenomena of cursing prayers in which pastors criticize each other and claim other pastors as not being Christians in their prayers. Second, there is no centralized canonical theology determined by a particular body or group with authority to establish and enforce rules or regulations, meaning that the groups and churches in the movement are free to development their own theologies. The article by Resane explores this idea as he examines the impact of the Shepherding Movement within Pentecostalism and how a group of five men in the USA established a model for how churches should be run, but the movement was problematic and fell apart in the 1990s.

The article shows how some ideas can have a major impact on Pentecostalism as their influence can be felt for a long time, yet no person or group of people have a lasting leadership or authority within the movement. Third, it is a movement in which the members, churches, and bodies all proclaim to following the movements of the Holy Spirit as they determine it to be. This often results in fluid changes in theology and practice within a church or the development of new church groups. The question of fluid theologies is engaged with by Nel and Sande in their articles which deal with prosperity theology and Covid-19 respectively, and the theologies that have emerged about these. Fourth, since its inception in the early 20^th century in different parts of the world, it has been a movement that responds to the social, economic, and political needs, pressures, and challenges faced by its adherents. In their article, Mhandu and Ojong explore this dimension as they examine the impact that Covid-19 has had on Pentecostal churches in South Africa. Dubarry examines the relationship between religion and economics which is a key feature of Neo-Pentecostalism and argues that this is a religion that has sacralized capitalism and is uniquely placed to flourish in the contemporary neo-liberal capitalist world. This special edition of the Journal for the Study of Religion examines changes and shifts within the Pentecostal movement in Africa during the second decade of the 21^st century.

This edition begins with an article by Marius Nel that critiques the prosperity theology held by many contemporary Neo-Pentecostal churches. In doing so, in his article, Changing the narrative language of prosperity in Africa: A Pentecostal hermeneutical challenge, Nel gives the reader a succinct overview of early Pentecostal theology which, unlike other forms of Christianity at the beginning of the 20^th century, did not hold the cessationist view that God has stopped being involved in humanity sometime towards the end of the 1^st century. Pentecostals held a Christocentric view in which the Spirit of Christ continues to provide revelations, healing, and a wholeness with God to all believers just as he had done with the earliest Christians. They read, and many Classical Pentecostals continue to read the Bible through a hermeneutic of life-transforming encounters with God. During the 1940s, fundamentalist readings of the Bible became popular and then the norm within the movement. In the 1970s, the prosperity gospel emerged in the USA and came to Africa, particularly to Nigeria. According to Nel, it was the most successful export from the USA to Africa.

In Nigeria, American prosperity theology was imbued with African traditions before spreading throughout Africa. This form of prosperity changed pastors into 'modern witchdoctors', offering deliverance from all the distressing situations and illnesses of life. Prosperity theology is much like Pentecostal theology, Nel argues, but the key difference is that prosperity pastors claim that success, wealth, and health are guaranteed to true believers. As fundamentalist hermeneutics have become the common within Neo-Pentecostalism, the prosperity gospel is read through a fundamentalist reading of scripture. Nel argues that, in the process the full meaning of the gospel has been lost. The life changing salvation and oneness with God offered through faith in Jesus Christ, is lost in prosperity theology as it focuses on a gospel of wealth, healing, success, and a life without difficulties or obstacles. Mistakenly, people are taught through the prosperity gospel that their life's meaning and purpose are in material and social success, and not the classical Pentecostal message that one's purpose is found in the charisma of the Spirit and the saving work of Christ.

The second article also examines some of the important historical roots that have shaped African Pentecostalism. In The influence and the legacy of the Shepherding Movement on the current Neo-Pentecostal movement in South Africa, Kelebogile Resane focuses on the Shepherding Movement started by five white middle-class American pastors in Fort Lauderdale. This movement, championed by Charles Simpson, Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Don Basham, and Ern Baxter deeply influenced practices in the Neo-Pentecostal movement throughout the world, including Africa. The Shepherding Movement advocated cell groups or house churches as a central pillar of every church and in these smaller faith groups, people should grow in spiritual maturity. Resane shows how some concepts that were central to the Shepherding Movement have continued to impact and shape Neo-Pentecostals, particularly in South Africa. He argues that the current submissions to male leadership and authority, which are unquestioned by followers, even if these leaders behave in immoral ways, are rooted in the far-reaching teaching of the Shepherding Movement that held male leadership and submission to authority as central tenets of the faith. One of the central roles of these male leaders was to show followers how to manage their time, money, and talents which, according to Resane, has led to the acceptance of abusive and manipulative behavior of many contemporary Pentecostal leaders. Pastors also use their authority to call on their followers to give significant portions of their income to the church. In the 1980s, the movement went into decline and some of the leaders began to distance themselves from the movement. In 1990, Mumford offered a formal apology to the universal Christian community. Resane argues that many of the authoritarian teachings of these five middle-class white men, which were not based on sound theological or biblical teaching, but their own ideas inspired by the Spirit, still influence many Neo-Pentecostal churches in South Africa today. These, he argues, should be challenged and replaced with church policies, structures, and leadership that is inclusive and based on orthodox theology and biblical scholarship.

As Pentecostalism has flourished in Africa, there have been many studies exploring the relation between African cultures and the various forms of Pentecostalism that emerged. The third article in this edition 'If this is of God': Choosing to curse in Ghanaian Charismatic Christianity by Mark Aidoo, examines the popular contemporary phenomena of cursing in which Pentecostal pastors curse each other, particularly in prayers. Aidoo examines this phenomenon in two churches in Ghana. These cursing prayers, performed by pastors, are often against pastors who have left the church or are rivals of the church and call for, among other things that the wives of pastors should be barren, the pastors and their followers should become sick, or that the disease - poverty - should befall the rival pastors and their families for several generations. These curses are regarded as a form of spiritual warfare and taken very seriously in the two churches that Aidoo has studied in Ghana. Curses are actioned or brought into being through speech and have a long history in the Ghanian culture and religions. In this study, Aidoo found that both pastors in his study understood cursing as part of their prophetic mandate. When their curses were analyzed, using African cultural hermeneutics and biblical ethics, Aidoo argues that they were found to be a misuse of both African cultural beliefs and biblical ethics, as they dehumanized people and devalued them. Aidoo argues that Christians should speak out against harmful teaching and manipulation of believers, as this is not harming the 'anointed of God'. Yet, when criticizing leaders for their teaching or behavior, other Christians should not be devaluing or dehumanizing people through negative and harmful cursing. While the paucity of cursing makes it easy for Christians who criticize other Christians to engage in this behavior, they should rather, according to Aidoo, follow ethical norms laid down in the Bible and in African cultural practices when critiquing one another.

The fourth article, Fluid theologies: Shifts and changes of African Pentecostalism by Nomatter Sande, uses Covid-19 in Zimbabwe as a case study and argues that Pentecostal churches develop fluid theologies that are often reactions to particular situations and not grounded in systematic interpretations of theology and scripture. In this paper, Sande argues that pastors in Zimbabwe have not been able to speak coherently about Covid-19, primarily because they base their theologies on the fluid and shifting 'moves of the Spirit' and not in an analysis of the situation at hand. In other words, pastors listen to the Holy Spirit and what it says to them about a situation and how to deal with a particular medical, political, social, economic, or religious situation, rather than critically analyzing it or basing their understanding of a situation on evidence that has been rationally examined and/or explained. The article gives a qualitative analysis of social media, newspaper articles, TV interviews, and other media sites where Pentecostal leaders speak about the pandemic. In his analysis, Sande shows how Pentecostal leaders spoke about Covid in terms of spiritual warfare, as an eschatological moment, as a plot by the West to destroy Africans, as the divinely promised curse for sins committed, and as something that could be cured through prayer. By being 'led by the Spirit', Sande argues that Pentecostal leaders in Zimbabwe have developed weak fluid theologies that do not enable Pentecostal leaders and their followers to engage with critical reason or scientific facts to find medical solutions to end or manage the pandemic.

The fifth article, Covid-19 and the South African Pentecostal landscape: Historic shift from offline liturgical practice to online platforms by John Mhandu and Vivian Ojong examines the changes from offline to online church services brought about by the Covid pandemic. The authors telephonically interviewed 20 pastors and leaders of Pentecostal type churches in the eThekwini region of Durban, South Africa to determine how the change from offline to online services has affected their experiences and practices of worship. To understand the social structural changes, they used the Giddens theory of structuration, finding that in online services the important rituals of solidarity were no longer possible, but that the churches were able to adapt and develop new online modes of worship, sharing of information, and providing spiritual encounters for followers. Using the work of Helland (2005) and Ganiel (2021), the authors make an important distinction between online religion and religion online. They clarify that online religion 'refers to all online activities that are related to religious practices. Online religion is highly interactive in cyberspace, and it is often not controlled by officials from formal institutions'. On the other hand, religion online primarily implies broadcasting offline or in person religious practices and performances to others outside the physical space via technology.

During Covid-19, the churches in this study practiced religion online and found that it had both negative and positive consequences. For most of the churches in this study, Covid-19 had several negative impacts. Churches lost members and weekly income. Several churches were not able to reopen once Covid-19 restrictions were lifted. Many of the pastors did not agree with the Covid-19 regulations. Yet, for other pastors, holding church services online, offered some benefits. They stated that they were able to connect with more people from all around the world. The emojis and the chat box functions were the way in which members could express their feelings, needs, and ideas, thus enabling people to remain connected to each other in the virtual space. By performing online liturgical practices, they found that 'church' moved from a public space into the domestic households, which have become sacred spaces of worship. All the churches used the digital platform to continue to spread a message of hope and faith to their members. These churches all invested a lot of resources into online communication and thus in many ways the digital divide which had emerged in the Pentecostal movement, where some churches successfully engaged in religion online while others had no online presence, is beginning to narrow.

During the pandemic, Pentecostal churches through their religious presence in the online space have offered members hope and encouragement and given them a sense of continued community. In his article, Pentecostal churches and capitalism in a South African township: Towards a communism of the market?, Thibaut Dubarry suggests that Pentecostalism does more than this. Through a rich engagement with theory, he argues that Pentecostalism is a religion for the secular age in which religion functions in ways that defy the categories of religion. In other words, in the Pentecostal world, the distinction between profane and sacred has, for example faded away as things previously thought of as profane such as businesses and financial wealth, are reimaged as sacred, as symbols of divine blessing. Dubarry argues that while capitalism is based on individualism and the increasing wealth of the individual at the expense of their connectedness to the community, Pentecostalism offers a way to gain economic capital, while at the same time maintaining community filiations and connections. From his research in two churches in a township in Stellenbosch in South Africa, he argues that Pentecostalism, however paradoxical, is simultaneously a religion of disenchantment and consecration of capitalism. He goes on to explain that Pentecostal churches in a township can be regarded as similar to small-scale communist organizations, except that paradoxically in this Marxist-type structure, the base structure dramatically shapes the superstructure, as the base structure dramatically shapes the materialistic ethos of the superstructure. In this modern religious re-ordering of faith, salvation is found in the material success expressed through a compulsive consumerism. Conversely, hell is also experienced in this world on the margins of capitalist consumption, in the grinding poverty found beyond the reaches of entrepreneurship and business praxis.

Picking up on a form of consumption alluded to but not fully addressed in Dubarry's article, is the consumption of healing medicines, objects, rituals, and specialists found in most African communities. The final article by Agnieszka Podolecka and Austin M. Cheyeka, Ng'angas - Zambian healers-diviners and their relationship with Pentecostal Christianity: The intermingling of pre-Christian beliefs and Christianity engages with the theme of the relationship between healers-diviners within African religious traditions and Pentecostal Christianity. In this study, several of the Pentecostal pastors from five different towns in Zambia that were interviewed, stated that Christianity and healers-diviners have nothing in common. In other words, the two systems cannot work together. On the other hand, all healers-diviners reported that African religious practices and Christianity did meet, and they considered Jesus as one of the ancestors and the Holy Spirit as one of the many spirits with which they engaged in their work.

Most of the healers-diviners who were interviewed, professed to be Christians themselves. Some of the Pentecostal leaders sold various herbs, anointed oil, and other items like pens and tea which followers could buy. These people were referred to as prophitas, who claimed to be Pentecostal Christians, but were often rejected by Pentecostal pastors who did not engage in these practices. Their study also found that in contemporary forms of Pentecostalism in Zambia, most of the members of various forms of Pentecostal churches which they studied, engaged with both healers-diviners and Pentecostal pastors when they needed healing from illness. Lay Pentecostal members were not about to abandon their faith in and use of healers-diviners when seeking healing from the many forms of illness they experienced in life. This study highlights the wide variety of Pentecostal theologies and practices and how, within the movement not all people agree that those who claim to be Pentecostal, should be classified and accepted as Pentecostal Christians.

The seven articles in this edition offer readers a rich range of engagements, exploring how African Pentecostalism at the beginning of the 21^st century is shifting and changing in multiple ways as the movement continues to dynamically respond to the needs of followers seeking the blessings of the Holy Spirit in their contemporary lived experiences.