The Nation That Fears God Prospers: A Critique of Zambian Pentecostal Theopolitical Imaginations

By Chammah J. Kaunda

Through its strength in numbers and remarkable presence in politics, Pentecostalism has become a force to reckon with in twenty-first-century Zambian society. Yet, some fundamental questions in the study of Zambian Pentecostalism and politics remain largely unaddressed by African scholars. Situated within an interdisciplinary perspective, this unique volume explores the challenge of continuity in the Zambian Pentecostal understanding and practice of spiritual power in relation to political engagement. Chammah J. Kaunda argues that the challenge of Pentecostal political imagination is found in the inculturation of spiritual power with political praxis. The result of this inculturation is that Zambian Pentecostals sacralize the political authority of state power through the charisma of the national president and other major political personalities. It has also contributed to the construction of Zambian Pentecostal leadership that is deified rather than leadership that is formed through the struggles and experiences of the marginalized and powerless. Kaunda argues that the solution does not lie either in desacralization of powers or the separation between the church and the state, but rather in rethinking the Christ event as a paradigm for the recovery of Pentecostalism's sociopolitical prophetic dynamism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781506447070

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Body

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Introduction: The Legacy of African Religiopolitical Heritage: Pentecostalism as ‘Another Phase of the Quest for Power and Identity in Africa’

The [1] irreducible element we have designated as belief or faith is neither an essence nor a substance, nor a function, nor a form of thought that might be opposed to reason, truth, or knowledge, but rather a dimension of subjectivity whose form is affectively, desire, which finds its expression through the possibility of acting, or beginning anew. The original force of the Born-Again movement is located here, in the deliberate restaging of natality, the possibility of redeeming the past and beginning anew. [2]

Introduction

On December 29, 1991, Frederick J. T. Chiluba, the second President of the Republic of Zambia, issued a statement declaring Zambia to be a Christian nation (hereafter the Declaration).[3] This statement is foundational to Pentecostalism[4] and populist politics in contemporary Zambian society. In contemporary Zambian Christianity, it is no longer easy to determine who is Pentecostal and who is not. I thus use the term inclusively for those who give prominence both to spiritual gifts and to an experience of the Holy Spirit, as well as for those who give prominence only to an experience of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecostalism in Zambia is widely perceived as the chief architect and guardian of the Declaration, which appears to have played a significant role in the extraordinary demographic expansion of Zambian Christianity. Isabel Phiri, in President Frederick J. T. Chiluba of Zambia, acknowledges the increase in the growth of Pentecostalism social involvement from Chiluba’s tenure onwards.[5] The Pentecostal explosion is quite recent in Zambia, with less than 5 percent of the Christian population claiming a Pentecostal identity in the 1980s. This percentage started increasing only in the mid-1990s, exponentially and by 2010, 23.6 percent of Zambia’s 13.9 million people were Pentecostal. In that same year, the total number of Christians was 12.0 million, or 87.0 percent of the population.[6] According to Operation World, in 2010 charismatics/Pentecostals in Zambia numbered 3.414 million (25.8 percent of the total population), with Evangelicals slightly lower at 3.406 million (25.7 percent).[7] According to these figures, a significant segment of Zambia’s Christian population subscribes to a Pentecostal type of spirituality. In his article, Stretching out Hands to God, Allan Anderson stresses that:

what is not often appreciated in these statistics is that there is not only remarkable growth in Pentecostalism but also a change in the character and orientation of these Christians. African Christianity as a whole–Catholic, Anglican, Protestant and Independent–has moved considerably in a ‘Pentecostal’ or Charismatic direction, quite apart from enormous growth among Pentecostal churches themselves.[8]

The Pentecostal revolution that had begun in the late 1980s, with hundreds of thousands of young people adopting Pentecostal spirituality, was catalysed by the Declaration which gave Pentecostalism a boast in demographical growth and political visibility in the nation. Chiluba’s siding with Pentecostal spirituality appears to have signaled the pentecostalisation of Zambian Christianity, national life and traditional cultures.[9] The Declaration, however, appears to be a double-edged sword. Although it has facilitated Christian demographic growth, scholars argue that it is an elusive religiopolitical phenomenon. We are therefore faced with salient theological questions, primarily regarding the relationship between Pentecostal notions of power and African traditional notions of power, between Pentecostal political imagination and African politics, or how various Pentecostal communities have understood and attempted to conceptualise their political theologies.

Responding to these questions leads to further questions, including how the Declaration has both shaped and sanctioned Pentecostal political thinking. In what ways has the Declaration helped clarify the relationship between church and state in Zambia? If it is the case that there is a common spirituality between Pentecostalism and traditional African[10] spirituality, to what extent has Pentecostalism managed to reconfigure its prophetic mandate for neo-colonial Zambia? What can help the church maintain a constant, prophetic presence in society? What are some of the notable Zambian Pentecostal paradigms for political engagements? How should the relationship between Pentecostalism and the state be reconceptualised to make the movement more life-giving in its missio-political praxis? How can pneumatological realism assist in rethinking Zambian Pentecostal political theology? In short, is there something further that needs to be said about the Holy Spirit who is present and at work in the world in relation to the Zambian Pentecostal political imagination? How do Zambian Pentecostals understand and exercise power and authority?

The Pentecostal notion of spiritual power provides an avenue by which the pneumatological realism method assists in engaging Zambian Pentecostal theo-political theology. This research is an interdisciplinary endeavor within African Theology. It seeks to investigate how African spirituality, transposed within Zambian Pentecostalism, helps or inhibits the movement from making an adequate contribution through its political engagements.

Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa

Pentecostalism at present constitutes a significant religious movement in Africa which has attracted scholars from various disciplines.[11] It makes up the greater part of what is now one of the largest practicing religious communities in Zambia. In Zambia specifically, several studies on Pentecostalism have highlighted how Pentecostal discourses and practices are intertwined with politics and citizenship at different levels of society.[12] However, unlike other parts of the continent, there is no adequate theological reflection on the phenomenon–especially by practitioners themselves. Many scholars who have attempted to study the movement have done so from religious studies, anthropological or sociological perspectives.[13] With the understanding that religion plays a key role in public life in African societies, and that religious ideas provide them with a means of becoming social and political actors,[14] some scholars such as Ruth Marshall are under the impression that the Born-Again program of conversion[15] is key to Pentecostal understanding of national redemption.[16] Several studies suggest that there has been an emergence of Pentecostal forms of political imaginations in African contexts. Notably, Paul Gifford, Paul Freston, Ruth Marshall and others believe that becoming Born-Again forms the basis for an individual’s moral regeneration, which they are expected to express through politics.

Much of this argument among some western social scientists has been shaped by an essentialist application of Birgit Meyer’s theory, which is to ‘make a Complete Break with the Past.[17] This theory has been religiously confirmed without definition, delimitation and (at times) without empirical evidence. All African Christian traditions promote breaking with the past in some form, for one to be converted to another religious group is essentially breaking with a specific past. The question is what past: sinful past or African religious past? The degree of breaking with the past must always be clarified. In fact, there is no such a thing as a complete or radical break with the past. It is specific aspects of the past that Pentecostals seek to break with. Coming back to the point, many scholars have reduced the participation of Pentecostalism in politics to individual ethics as a basis for political morality.[18] Some scholars go to the extent of arguing that the focus of Pentecostalism on personal morality obscures the ways in which it is more political behavior that is often at the root of people’s suffering.[19] However, the question of political morality is not only a Pentecostal preoccupation in Zambia; as Stephen Chan notes in Presidentialism and Vice Presidentialism in a Commonwealth Country, The language of Zambian politics is about the internal morality of the nation–which it is the role of the state to safeguard. So, the political rhetoric hinges around morality.[20] The question that is not often asked, is where the discourses of morality come from.

Other scholars such Naar M’fundisi[21] argue that far from being a moralist religiopolitical movement, Pentecostalism’s political engagements and strategies about issues of HIV/AIDS in Zambia demonstrate that Pentecostals promote issues of justice and advocacy. M’fundisi, who investigated the significance of the interface between Pentecostalism and the wider religious, political and social realities in Zambia, complains about the scantiness of literature that truly reflects the empirical reality of the political thinking of many so-called unpopular and grassroots Pentecostal churches in Zambia. The issue that remains a challenge and is not adequately addressed. M’fundisi also argues that although Pentecostal political theology that spiritualizes the social ills and injustices still exists, and will for some time, a gradual shift from this mind-set has continued to develop in Zambia, more so since the Chiluba era.[22] M’fundisi builds on the works of John Muntuda Lumbe, who in his Master’s dissertation traced the historical development of neo-Pentecostalism in Zambia. He argues for members of the movement to do introspection in their perception and involvement in socio-economic development and theological response to matters, which affect communities they serve.[23] Elisha Francis Phiri[24] and Andriano Chalwe[25] have also evaluated the history and missional engagement of Pentecostalism in Zambia. Chalwe stresses that the rise of various social ministries and notable political engagements have emerged from bapente (local term for born-again or Pentecostal Christians)[26] who now see the lack of socio-political involvement as disobedience to God.[27] Despite this, Phiri feels that while Pentecostals are engaged in social issues, the subject remains unappreciated due to the absence of a viable political theology. In a way, he agrees with Paul Gifford who, in his African Christianity, had earlier observed a lack of adequate political theology among Pentecostals. Gifford criticizes Zambian Pentecostals for the lack of an adequate political theology of good governance to challenge the status quo of the wealthy and powerful, and to redirect the government to promote the common good.[28]  His criticism is, however, also unfair, because he does not take into consideration the theological infancy of Zambian Pentecostalism of the early 1990s. Using a Roman Catholic frame to critique Pentecostalism is not just unfair but deeply, hazardously ignorant of the fact that the two systems have historically, ecclesiastically and theologically developed in fundamentally different directions. In fact, Zambian Pentecostals themselves acknowledge that the church did not know how to appropriate the spiritual reality that had happened into the physical.[29]

Adriaan van Klinken is another scholar who gives a critical perspective on Zambian Pentecostalism. Van Klinken’s work focuses on masculinities, homosexuality, politics and citizenship within Zambian Pentecostalism. His reading of Pentecostalism and politics is influenced by Marshall’s ‘political spirituality’, which means that he perceives the born-again motif as key not only to individual and domestic but also to collective and national redemption.[30] The question is: Is this the way Pentecostals themselves interpret their political reality or there is more to their political imaginations than meets the scholar’s eye? And is there a place for the power of the Holy Spirit in the political moral imaginations of Pentecostals? For many Pentecostals, being born-again without being empowered by the Holy Spirit is not enough to live a morally upright life. The interesting aspect of Van Klinken’s argument is the way he has utilized the case study of Northmead Assembly Church, a single local church situated in the metropolitan city of Lusaka, to generalize his findings to what is a variegated movement. On the question of homosexuality, Van Klinken highlights the problematics of Zambian Pentecostals’ notion of masculinity politics.[31] Naomi Haynes, in her doctoral thesis, Ambitious Obligations: Pentecostalism, Social Life, and Political Economy on the Zambian Copperbelt,[32] notes the characteristics of proliferation of small churches and the near constant circulation of their members among them and how these factors have contributed to a reconceptualization of the prosperity gospel in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province. She notes that the prosperity gospel has been retooled and framed within the urban culture of the Copperbelt and is used as a tool for integrating believers into the wider social world through networking relations that emphasize material inequality and extravagant displays of wealth. Some of these findings appear to be acutely ignorant of the cultural context of Zambian Pentecostalism. Much of what Haynes describes is not unique to Pentecostalism; rather, it is a general orientation of Zambian relational culture. My argument is that what might appear to be unique to an outsider might not be unique within the general cultural context.

In Evangelical and Politics in Africa and Asia,[33] Paul Freston presents an in-depth critique of political engagement of Pentecostals in Zambia during the tenure of two successive presidents in Zambia–Kenneth Kaunda and Frederick Chiluba. He notes that the church played a decisive role in removing Kaunda as president due to dissatisfaction with his government and facilitating the election of Chiluba. Freston argues that Zambian Pentecostals should have taken a share of the blame for Chiluba’s failure as president. He notes that Zambian Pentecostals abandoned Chiluba because of their perception that he had become corrupt. In his view, this approach was not helpful because the Pentecostal leaders had not made clear what would have made him a better president for Zambia, and not just for evangelical institutional interests.[34] Freston draws on Paul Gifford’s African Christianity[35] but his weakness, like that of Gifford, is his complete reliance on secondary literature. There is no empirical evidence of what the local people thought about the subject.

Isaac Phiri in his article, Why African Churches Preach Politics: The Case of Zambia, argues that Zambian churches feel they have a responsibility to respond to politics based on injustice and domination.[36] In this respect, many local scholars agree that, in Zambian society, religion and politics are inseparable. They are, however, also aware that the Zambian Pentecostal prophetic response to politics usually becomes sporadic (and, at worst unpredictable) due to ecclesiastical divisions. Scholars such as Austin Cheyeka and Bernhard Udelhoven argue that Pentecostal prophetic weakness is due to the ever-increasing mushrooming of churches which emphasise Charismatic leadership over institutionalized leadership and promote freedom of the Spirit as criteria for spirituality and expressions of the Holy Spirit.[37] This has implications for Pentecostal political engagements.

Remarkably, few of the scholars discussed thus far have paid any attention to the material legacies of Africa’s religiopolitical past, in respect of Pentecostal political spirituality, even though many studies have demonstrated that pentecostalism in Africa derived its coloring from the texture of the African soil and from the interior of its idiom, nurture, and growth; its fruits serve more adequately the challenges and problems of the African ecosystem than the earlier missionary fruits did.[38] Ogbu Kalu argues that [p]entecostalism has produced a culture of continuity by mining primal and world view, reproducing an identifiable character, and regaining a pneumatic and charismatic religiosity that existed in traditional society.[39] This means that whatever African Pentecostals are in essence, substance, function and political imaginations is largely informed by their African cultural innovations.

Scholars such as Kalu, Isabel Phiri, Elias Munshya wa Munshya, Jason Phiri and many others link Pentecostal political imaginations to the African religiopolitical worldview. For Munshya, the indivisibility of religion and politics in Zambia is in keeping with a traditional African worldview.[40] He believes the dualism between religion and politics which exists in Western societies is foreign to Zambian religiocultural heritage. In his view, for the church’s prophetic responsibility to provide moral as well as spiritual guidance, there is a need to affirm its African cultural context. Similarly, Jason Phiri’s African Pentecostal Spirituality engages Zambian Pentecostalism from an African spirituality perspective. He argues that if Zambian Pentecostalism is to develop an adequate liberation theology, there is a need to synthesise African spirituality and the Pentecostal spirituality of the abiding presence of God through the Holy Spirit.[41] The major weakness of Phiri’s so-called liberation theology is his heavy reliance on a western approach, which results in the uncritical proposition of a western scientific imagination as a basis for conceptualizing the notion of God from an African perspective.[42] In President Frederick J. T. Chiluba of Zambia, Phiri argues that Pentecostalism reintroduced African holism into Zambian politics, in which there is no separation between religion and politics. But religion was firmly embedded in Zambian politics at the time of independence: the first President of Zambia, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, had adopted African holism as frame of governance. The difference, perhaps, was a quest to govern the nation based on biblical principles which Kaunda and Chiluba failed to synchronize with a modern democratic ethos which demands that power be derived from the people, rather than from the spiritual realm.[43] Marja Hinfelaar believes that one important reason why Christianity never left the public sphere after Independence was the growing authoritarianism of the Zambian political system.[44] Similar to Ruth Marshall-Fratani’s argument, in Mediating the Global and Local in Nigerian Pentecostalism, the involvement of Pentecostalism in African politics  is due in part to the fact that African nation-states and nationalism no longer necessarily constitute the primary physical and ideological contexts in which identity and community are imagined and political allegiance expressed.[45] These views are debatable; what appears reasonable is an affirmation of the whole-istic[46] African religious heritage. John Mbiti argues that religion is part of the cultural heritage… It has dominated the thinking of African people to such an extent that it has shaped their cultures, their social life, their political organizations and economic activities.[47] In such a worldview, one cannot just wake up and expect to find religion has vanished and retract into an abyss of nothingness while denying that this is taking place! Religion and politics are intertwined, and their relationship is quite complicated.

Pentecostalism and Enchanted Universe

In his chapter, "Theology, the Enchanted Universe, and Development: Reflections around a Zambian case study in the light of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age," Tony Balcomb[48] analyses Taylor’s[49] argument in the light of empirical research into Elizabeth Parsons’ work. Parson, in Provoking the Rocks: A Study of Reality and Meaning on the Zambian Copperbelt, interrogates the entrenchment of a spiritualized worldview among workers in Zambian mines.[50] Balcomb finds commonalities in Taylor’s and Parson’s works, as both argue that disenchantment is necessary for modern notions of development to be realized. Several scholars, including Gifford, Parsons, Taylor and Balcomb, hold that disenchantment is necessary for the actualization of human security in modern societies. They perceive a spiritualized worldview (which scholars argue has been transposed in most African Pentecostal churches) as having the potential to stifle the movement’s ability to make an adequate contribution to political spheres, which requires modern rationality. For most of these scholars, if Zambian Pentecostalism continues to promote a spiritualized worldview, it will keep constraining the scientific rationality which is essential for effective functioning in modern times. Interestingly, both African and Western scholars continue to struggle to understand the functionality of spiritualized religious imaginations in helping African Christianity contribute to political democratization within the context of modernity.[51] While certain scholars argue that African Pentecostalism is heir to the strands of Protestant ethics which Max Weber understood as the avant-garde of disenchantment, Gifford contends that African Pentecostalism is opposed to the spirit of capitalism and Protestant ethics, for it does not intentionally promote hard work among the members as the only means for development.[52] These scholars question whether and how the role African Christianity (informed by African spirituality) plays, can help African people join modernity.[53] Gifford asserts that the idea of synthesizing functional rationality and an African primal worldview is inappropriate, for the two mind-sets are not just different, but alternative.[54] For him, the enchanted worldview cannot function and has no place in modernity. Gifford also contests that the idea of multiple modernities as not very helpful in Africa.[55] Could it be that this argument is informed by secularization theory, which assumes that there is a necessary link between Western modernization and the disenchantment of Christianity, based on hasty conclusions? In The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Peter Berger renounces his former position, namely that the rise of modern pluralistic worldview would force religion out of the public square.  Conceding that the relation between religion and modernity is rather complicated, Berger sees the world as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.[56] As things stand, religion in Africa (Zambia in particular) constitutes a sociopolitical reality of the nation.[57] Since the challenge of African politics can only be understood adequately within a religious framework,[58] the solution is to understand how the enchanted worldview functioned in the traditional past and to find ways of reinterpreting it in a changed world.

Some scholars perceive African Pentecostalism as positioned between opposing poles of realities. They argue that the African Pentecostal thought system exists in a tension emphasizing the external versus the indigenous, expressing continuities and discontinuities within African spirituality. They claim the global, while remaining localized and are sectarian while striving for respectability. They are both authoritarian and democratic, rejecting the world and embracing it. They assert both freedom and control, promoting hard work while calling for a total dependence on miracles.[59] Kalu argues that these views, expressed by the likes of Gifford, Balcomb and others, might be a result of methodological approaches, biases, and the ideological orientation of field researchers, but also could be a result of inherent contradictions, diversity, and tensions within the movement.[60] While on the one hand, some Western and African scholars are indifferent to African spirituality as dysfunctional in modern society, on the hand, some argue that Africa’s struggle for life-giving political leadership is a result of cultural estrangement, termed anthropological poverty by Engelbert Mveng.[61] Others believe while western expressions of Christianity have resulted in disenchantment, the sacralization of political order and ethics in primal society informs political culture in modern public space.[62] The political elite seek to draw on such religious resources in their competitions for modern space.[63]

Pentecostalism and African Concept of Power

African Pentecostalism is grounded in the notion of the power of the Holy Spirit, an accentuation which differentiates them from the mainline churches, but aligns them with their African religious heritage. Scholars have demonstrated that the notion of power is central not only in African religious heritage and African Pentecostalism, but also that it is one of the key pillars holding together these religious imaginations.[64] In fact, power appears to function much in the same way. The main difference is the source–in the African spiritual heritage, the emphasis is on the place of the power of the ancestors, whereas in African Pentecostalism it is the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the African spiritual world as the locus of inexorable power that the peoples believe can be harnessed for diverse purposes[65] has remained intact in Pentecostal imaginations–what has changed are the configurations of the forces of power. In Mediating Spiritual Power, Kwebena Asamoah-Gyadu notes:

The idea that items coming from a charismatic person or that have touched his body in some way possess sacred power was very strong in the older African independent church movement … In modern times that worldview has been sustained in the relationship between African Pentecostal/charismatic leaders and their followers.[66]

This argument reinforces his earlier observation in an article, Encountering Jesus in African Christianity, in which he states that African initiated Christianity … and the Pentecostal emphasis on the power of the Spirit are usually not mutually exclusive.[67] In his classical book, Moya: The Holy Spirit in an African Context, Allan Anderson criticizes African Pentecostalism for not only overemphasizing the power of the Holy Spirit, but for uncritically adapting African religious notions power.[68] He observes that some scholars think conceptualizing the ‘power’ of the Holy Spirit in this way makes the notion being tangibly perceived and manipulable, and that some people may have more of it than others.[69] He adds that the Holy Spirit is associated with power–whether physical, moral, or spiritual–the all-embracing, pervading power of God.[70] However, he highlights that African Pentecostals do not see the Holy Spirit as an impersonal manipulable force, and the Bible furnishes abundant evidence of tangible manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s power. He believes that negative evaluations sometimes stem from an overemphasis on theological theory (as seen by westerners), and a disparaging of African experience.[71] Nevertheless, the ‘power’ made available to Christian believers through the Spirit may be closer to the African concept of ‘vital force’[72] … than westerners might admit.[73] Anderson also responds to G. C. Oosthuizen’s charge that the most difficult theological problem in Africa [is] the confusion that exists with regard to the ancestral spirits and the Holy Spirit.[74] Oosthuizen sees the continuation of the African traditional worldview in experiences of the Holy Spirit as distorting believers’ understanding of the work and nature of the Holy Spirit.[75] However, such charges are not sustainable as far as African Pentecostals are concerned. They do not believe they are possessed by the power of the ancestors, who are perceived as demonic possessions which must be cast out in order to leave room to be filled with the Holy Spirit.[76] The power of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the spiritual dimensions of life; rather it also has to do with dignity, authority, and power over all forms of misfortune.[77]

The question of continuity and discontinuity between Pentecostalism and African religious heritage, has led to arguments that there is both continuation and discontinuation in varying degrees.[78] In Worlds of Power, Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar move beyond an analysis of the relationship between religion and politics to demonstrate that most Africans believe power has its ultimate origin in the spirit world.[79] Ter Haar, in How God Became African, observes how African politicians (including heads of state) seek to manipulate mystical powers to increase their political power.[80] She believes the spiritual realm affords one of the most accessible and strategic forms of power for many African leaders. The source of power for most Pentecostals is the spirit world. For instance, Asonzeh Ukah, in the article Obeying Caesar to Obey God, observes that Charismatic authentication or the legitimation of Pentecostal authority is central to understanding the organisational behaviour of Pentecostal associations in Africa, as well as their relation with the State.[81] Ukah concludes (in keeping with an African understanding of the ultimate source of power and authority) that the source of Pentecostal authority is, therefore, anchored on a non-human, suprahuman, suprastate entity.[82] Thus, Kalu, in African Pentecostalism, accentuates that African Pentecostalism is an important dimension of Africans’ attraction to pneumatic expressions of the gospel that resonates with the power theme in indigenous religions, the power that sustained the cosmos, the socioeconomic and political structures, the power that gave meaning to life’s journey from birth through death, and the sojourn in the ancestral world reincarnated and return to the world.[83] So pervasive was the socialisation of life’s journey that religion and identity of persons and communities were ineluctably bound.[84] Kalu adds that contemporary Pentecostalism, rooted in older religious revivals, is another phase of the quest for power and identity in Africa.[85] Perhaps this is what scholars such as Birgit Meyer tries to demonstrate in several of her works as Africanization from below, referring to the inculturation practices of grassroots Pentecostalism.[86] However, for African Pentecostalism the main point of convergence with the African religious heritage is not the devil, as Meyer argues, but rather spiritual power. The question that remains is whether [Zambian] Pentecostal churches conceive of the Holy Spirit’s power in a biblical sense, thus, transforming traditional power concepts, or whether continuity is maintained by giving traditional power concepts a ‘Christian’ guise."[87]

African Pentecostal beliefs in supernatural sources of power have implications for their political engagements. It can be argued that the legacy of African religious heritage–which now explains the Pentecostal obsession with the spiritual source and legitimatization of authority and power–constitute, perhaps, the most important frame for understanding African Pentecostal political consciousness. In other words, Pentecostal beliefs in the existence of a supernatural power is critical for analyzing the intersectionality of religion, morality and politics.

The Context: Zambia as a Christian Nation

Chiluba’s Declaration continues to be a source of public and social media contentions among various scholars reflecting on Pentecostalism in Zambia.[88] Some fear that Pentecostal proponents of the Declaration want to make Zambia emblematic of a Pentecostalism nationalism. They argue that the Declaration was utilized as a political tool by Pentecostals to gain an upper hand, politically speaking.[89] Others believe that the Declaration had no political implications.[90] For instance, Paul Freston in Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America, argues that the Declaration was politically empty, since it did not introduce new substantive laws nor establish any church. It seems to be purely symbolic, in keeping with prosperity theology based on miraculous economic success.[91] Austin Cheyeka equally maintains that it was merely a political rhetoric, detached from reality since it did not promote justice by struggling against greed, corruption and social injustice.[92] This means that President Chiluba used the Declaration as political rhetoric and discourse to legitimize his power, or assert the divine sanction of his presidency.[93] This confirms the stance that some scholars fear the Declaration could be utilized to legitimize political power and thereby hijack the democratic power of the masses. For instance, Philip Jenkins argues that such declarations have potential to easily turn into willful refusal to acknowledge the flaws of the regime, and to connive at official corruption.[94] Lloyd Salimboshi had earlier cautioned Christians to become more vigilant against such declarations, fearing that they might unwittingly be used to keep a ‘sick’ government in power.[95] Writing on Homosexuality, Politics and Pentecostal Nationalism in Zambia, Adriaan van Klinken notes that the Declaration is interpreted with monolithic fixity in the Christian faith, which tends to ignored that, from a global perspective, there are strands within Christianity that adopt different interpretations of the Bible and that, even in the Zambian context, there are dissident voices.[96] He criticizes monolithic fixity and frozen interpretation, which are used normatively to define the social and political character of Zambia as a Christian nation,[97] as having the potential to abuse the rights of minority groups.

However, certain academics have reservations about classifying the Declaration as mere political rhetoric. They base their argument on Chiluba’s claim to have given his life to Jesus (born again) in the early 1980s. Kalu for instance, affirms that President Chiluba, who declared Zambia a Christian nation, was not engaging in political gymnastics; he was born again before his ascension into power.[98] It is also claimed that Chiluba spoke in tongues[99] at Reinhard Bonkke’s[100] crusade in Malawi in the late 1980s–long before he became president of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). While not affirming the authenticity of Chiluba’s born-again experience, there is evidence that he had a strong orientation towards Pentecostal spirituality.[101] Could this explain why he heeded the advice[102] not to enter State House after winning the elections, until prayers of deliverance and spiritual warfare had been done for his consecration?[103] Isabel Phiri highlights the act of fortifying and consecrating State House as being in keeping with the African religiopolitical heritage, where both kings and the palace were fortified against witchcraft and sacralized through consecration.[104]

Some Pentecostals argue that the Declaration had nothing to do with secular politics but was a means to enter into a covenant with God, much like Israel did in the Old Testament.[105] In her article, Zambia Shall be Saved, Naomi Haynes’ research points to this perspective. She notes that the political implications of the Declaration are rooted in the Pentecostal notion of a covenant with God, entered into in the frame of the prosperity theological principle.[106] In Invisible Powers, David Gordon believes the prosperity theology which undergirds the Declaration to be profoundly disempowering in the sense that it advocates a rather naive faith in faith alone as the path to prosperity, but the new Christianity also does not necessarily involve a reformulation of civil society, personal morality, and consciousness (even while it claims to do so).[107] Some scholars believe the Declaration was framed with distinctly Pentecostal theopolitical imaginations, as Van Klinken argues, it subjects the nation as a whole to the discourse of being ‘born again in Christ’ and to the project of combating the influence of Satan in the life of the nation.[108] He further argues that this theopolitical imagination fits well in the general Pentecostal political praxis scholars have observed in different contexts in Africa.[109]

One viewpoint is that the Declaration has confused and distorted the distinction between religious and secular.[110] For instance, Henry Kyambalesa argues that the Declaration was made without consideration of the dangers of dragging religion into politics.[111] He contends that the Declaration is an imposition of religion on a secular state which recognizes and safeguards religious freedom. This is perceived as a misconception by, amongst others, Elias Munshya, who believes that, in practice, in Zambia the distinction between religion and politics has never existed. He stresses that the Declaration cannot be considered an imposition of religion on Zambian consciousness, as the people are religious by nature.[112] Munshya stresses that the dualism between religion and politics which exists in western societies is foreign not only to Zambia but to most who ascribe to an African cultural heritage. While there is no state-endorsed religion in Zambia, the nation cannot be qualified as secular in a western understanding of a separation between church and state, that would mean imposing a foreign worldview on Zambians.[113] Munshya appeals to the worldview that many Africans are familiar with, namely the interconnectivity of the different spheres of life, generally believed to be saturated with vital power; between the spiritual and the material, where there was no separation between the religious and the secular as it has been understood since European Enlightenment period.[114] Munshya believes a secular worldview is no guarantee of freedom of religion, justice and equal liberties. For him, the nation neither becomes just, fair or democratic by merely upholding a secular outlook, nor unjust, unfair or undemocratic by claiming to be Christian.[115] To claim that a secular state promotes neutrality is a deception, as secularization has its own hidden metaphysical commitments.[116] Godfrey Msiska, who seeks to promote the paradigm of a religious state, argues that the Declaration–at least in the way Pentecostals conceptualize it –does not promote democratic principles and the togetherness of all humanity. Rather, it polarizes and fragments the people by presenting one religion as superior.[117] For many Zambian Pentecostals, a secular worldview is not an option since it is a disguised religious worldview which, like humanism, seeks to put human beings at the centre as the measure of all things.

The question is, what are some of ways in which an African religiopolitical heritage assists or militates against the Zambian Pentecostal capacity to offer a distinctive contribution to national politics? Arising from this question is a further question: To what extent the indigenous religious worldview (which most colonial anthropologists interpret as being in decline and disappearing through the modernizing colonial impact) continues to influence Zambia’s Pentecostal political imaginations.

Pentecostalism is Politics: The Central Argument

The central argument of this study is that the challenge of Pentecostal political imagination is found in the inculturation of spiritual power within political praxis. The result of this (negative) form of inculturation is that Zambian Pentecostals conceive of power like traditional forms of power within Zambian society. In turn, it sacralizes the political authority of state power through the national president, and other major political personalities. This has contributed to the construction of a Zambian Pentecostal theo-political imagination that is deified and lords over others, rather than a leadership that is formed by, and accountable through, the struggles and experiences of the marginalised and powerless who seek to counter-demonic spirituality (spirituality of demons) in politics that denies the fullness of life.

The argument is advanced in four parts. The first chapter, on the rough grounds, gives the orientation of the study. The second chapter develops a methodology which is sensitive to Pentecostal imaginations and could preserve the spiritual structural integrity of a movement. The methodology was developed to help Zambian Pentecostalism revisit and rethink its political theology, and perhaps make a viable contribution in its missio-political engagement in the Zambian political context. In other words, the phenomenological pneumatological realist turn was perceived as a suitable model within Pentecostalism, informed by an African religio-cultural ethos.

If we are dealing with politics, then we are expected to theorise how Zambian Pentecostalism understands the concept of ‘the nation’. To understand Pentecostal notions of nationality, we must turn to the religio-cultural heritage that formed their nationality imaginaries, namely that of African religious heritage. The aim is to obtain clues from how they have integrated African religio-cultural traditions, to appreciate the cultural psychology at work in Zambian Pentecostal political engagements. Chapter 3 focuses on Pentecostal theo-nationality and the legacy of the African religiopolitical past. I argue that the early Zambian Pentecostal resistance and hostility towards an African traditional religious heritage means the moment cannot engage in respectful and constructive dialogue with an African religiocultural past, and the result is classified as unconscious dialogue – negative inculturation, at least in terms of political engagements. In short, Zambian Pentecostalism has unconsciously appropriated ancestro-political imaginations which have, in some ways, distorted the mission-political work of the Holy Spirit. Negative inculturation has meant that Pentecostal notions of power and authority not have transcended ancestro-pneumato-political theology to manifest the moral image of Christ.

The second part analyses what Zambian Pentecostals classify as the spiritual historical foundations of the nation. It investigates the history of the Declaration, focusing on the four key figures whom most Pentecostals have used to construct and legitimize the Declaration. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Radio Christian Voice (which is Pentecostal in orientation) constantly played a special script focusing on legitimizing Edgar Lungu’s presidency, by capturing the historical trajectory Pentecostals have taken on the Declaration. The script starts with David Livingstone, Kenneth Kaunda and Frederick Chiluba, and then demonstrates how the Declaration is used as legitimating factor in Zambian politics. The script concludes with the scriptural injunction in the mouth of three witnesses the matter is established.[118] Since most Pentecostals interpret the Bible literally, they take this biblical verse seriously and use it as basis for legitimization the Declaration. Thus, chapter 4 begins the analysis with David Livingstone as founding the spiritual foundations of the Christian nation, while Chapter 5 focuses on Kenneth Kaunda as the ‘Judas Iscariot’ who betrayed the Christian foundations of the nation which Livingstone laid by introducing occultism and humanism. Chapter 6, devoted to Frederick Chiluba’s Declaration of Zambia as a Christian nation rebuilt the national altar. The three chapters are foundational to understanding how Zambia’s Pentecostal idea of the nation has evolved.

Chapter 7 focuses on understanding how the Declaration has become an irresistible locus for a political power struggle during presidential campaigns. The argument is made that the re-emergence of born-again nationalism is a result of President Edgar Lungu’s recognition of the power of the Declaration, which he invoked to reinforce his political authority. Further, it is argued that the Declaration is foundational to understanding the general cultural modernization of a Zambian national identity. In other words, it is at the core of the politico-cultural transformation being expressed in contemporary Zambia. The Declaration has become a religio-cultural framework through which Pentecostals construe meaning and purpose in their lives.

The third part, transforming politics, explores various Pentecostals’ theo-political paradigms with their models, to understand how Pentecostals in Zambia think and approach national politics. Chapter 8 examines the demonologist critique of a secular view of politics–an approach which emphasizes the spiritual aspect of national politics. Demonologists believe nations are controlled by supernatural forces which defy God’s purpose and are resistant to the reign of Christ. These forces are believed to be the real governing authority, which makes politics a type of spiritual warfare, a space of confrontation between spiritual-political powers seeking to determine the destiny of a nation and its citizenry. Chapter 9 focuses on the notion of diplomatic political theology which seeks to position certain clergy as moral vehicles who are the conscience of the political soul of Zambia. Diplomatists perceive themselves as custodians of a Christian nation’s political morality, which counters immoral imagination from above before it reaches the masses below. They seek to legislate against passing what is termed ‘immoral policies’ relating to homosexuality and abortion as well as various political issues, especially concerned with human rights. Some believe all kinds of evil are camouflaged under the guise of human rights. Chapter 10 deals with Pentecostal politics, focusing on a spirit-filled moral example of political theology. Adherents believe you cannot change politics from the outside but should do so from the inside. They argue that the problem with Zambia is the moral impotence of politicians, which has made politics a space for a ravenous power struggle for the control of public resources. They believe that unless Zambia is informed by spirit-filled moral leadership, the nation will never recover from its sociomaterial struggles. For them, the struggle for moral leadership is more important than the struggle for any social issue. Chapter 11 deals with theological views that reflect the struggles of the people on margins. The argument is made that religious individuals should be critical contributors to the creation of a viable Pentecostal political theology which can critique structural injustice and seek to promote alternative political imaginations. Adherents seek to maintain a balance between the church and state, without falling into dualism. They feel that elitists’ misconception of politics profoundly distorts the mission of the church in the political sphere. These voices are calling Pentecostals to re-conceptualize their missional praxis and political imaginations.

The fourth part, toward a new Pentecostal political vision, is a final chapter about rethinking the Pentecostal theopolitical vision. It argues that the challenge of Pentecostals’ political engagement is linked to their understanding and exercise of power and authority. It proposes a Christ-event–hypostatic union paradigm as a more Pentecostal-friendly premise for interpreting relations between the church and the state. This is an argument against a total separation between church and state, and rather a proposal for maintaining harmony between the spiritual and political dimensions. This approach promotes an interconnection between Christology and the Pentecostal public ecclesiology of the margins as a basis for understanding how the church should engage in politics – as present-ness of Christ.

The focus now shifts to outlining certain methodological guidelines utilized in this book, which flow in principle from Nalika Gajaweera and Andrew Johnson’s observation:

Religion is a fundamental part of human experience and is deeply concerned with questions of making sense and meaning of our world and our existence. It constitutes the symbols, historical narratives and cosmologies that make the meaning of life or the cosmos intelligible. Religion is not only personal, but also social. It plays a crucial role in contemporary society and politics. The domain of the sacred interacts in diverse ways with institutions of power, gender norms, historical change, the economy and other aspects of society.[119]

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Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), 4. ↵

Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago, 2009), 50. ↵

The statement that President Chiluba made to formalize Zambia as a Christian nation, is often refered to by popular Zambians as the Declaration. ↵

The notion of a Christian nation (hereafter the Declaration) is foundational to pentecostalism and populist politics in contemporary Zambian society. In contemporary Zambian Christianity, it is no longer easy to deduce who is pentecostal and who is not. Thus, I refer to the term inclusively for those who give prominence to both spiritual gifts and an experience of the Holy Spirit, and those who only give prominence to an experience of the Holy Spirit. The lowercase ‘pentecostal(s)’ and ‘pentecostalism’ refer to the wider and various movements that identify with Pentecostalism – the classical, the neo, the Charismatics (in mainline churches). Conversely, Pentecostal or Pentecostalism is used in reference to a particular movement such as Capital Christian Ministries International (CCMI), and the uppercase is retained in direct quotations. ↵

Isabel A. Phiri, President Frederick J.T. Chiluba of Zambia: The Christian Nation and Democracy, Journal of Religion in Africa 33, no. 4 (2003): 401–28. ↵

Todd M. Johnson and Gina A. Zurlo, eds. World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016). ↵

Jason Mandryk, Operation World, 7th ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: Biblica Publishing, 2010), 892–93. ↵

Allan H. Anderson, Stretching out Hands to God: Origins and Development of Pentecostalism in Africa, in Pentecostalism in Africa: Presence and Impact of Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies edited by Martin Lindhardt (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 54–74. For the specific case of Zambia, see L. Soko and H.J. Hendriks, Pentecostalism and Schisms in the Reformed Church in Zambia (1996–2001): Listening to the People, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 67, no. 3 (2011) Art. #1016, 8, 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v67i3.1016, (accessed Aug. 25, 2017); Jonathan Kangwa, Pentecostalisation of Mainline Churches in Africa: The Case of the United Church of Zambia, The Expository Times (2016): 1–12. ↵

Elsewhere I have written on the history of pentecostalism in Zambia and demonstrated the contribution of the declaration on pentecostal growth and pentecostalisation of Zambia. See Chammah J. Kaunda, The Making of Pentecostal Zambia: A Brief History of Pneumatic Spirituality, Oral History Journal of South Africa 4 no.1