Pentecostalism in Africa: Perspectives, Practice, and Prospects

Graduate / Professional

African Pentecostals represent one of the fastest growing religious movements in the world. After decades of dismissal as a marginal phenomenon, religious scholarship has only recently begun to conduct in depth research of it. This course uses a World Christianity studies lens to critically engage with elements of the African Pentecostal experience. Students explore the ways in which this diverse religious expression interacts with hope in the midst of the rapid change occurring in the continent. The class probes multidimensional perspectives of the pathologies that ail sections of African Pentecostalism. The course draws from examples in East, West and South Africa to illuminate a broad range of elements. The course considers conversion, pathologies and pathways to hope, storytelling and epistemology, the miraculous as spiritual power dynamics, sermons and prayer as dialectics of hope, the paradox of spontaneity and tradition in oral worship, the mediation of identity through aesthetics, the pragmatism of public engagement, communality and leadership, and the Pentecostal vision within African religion. Area III. Th 9:20am-11:10am