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Birth of Pentecostalism, its influence in Uganda
Namirembe Cathedral in the 1920s. Namirembe hill has been a site for Ugandan Anglicans since 1880s. PHOTO/ FILE
What you need to know:
- Religion has played an important role in Uganda’s public sphere in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial times. Joel Mukisa looks at the birth of Pentecostalism in Uganda and its influence.
From pre-colonial times, religion has been very central in the organisation of society in the geographic territory that was baptised Uganda.
The role of faith, for example, in Buganda has been documented by Neil Kodesh, a professor at the University of Winscosin, in his 2010 book titled Beyond the Royal Gaze; Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda.
Kodesh details a nexus between religion and politics in Buganda and critiques studies that look at Buganda through euro-centric lenses that read the church and state as binaries. He shows that faith in Buganda would not be divorced from the politics.
Genesis
In 1877, the first bunch of missionaries arrived in (B)Uganda. The evangelists from the Church Missionary Society (CMS) arrived on July 31, 1877, after Henry Stanley’s famous letter in the Daily Telegraph.
These were to be followed by other groups all under the ‘civilising mission’.
Even though Christianity emerged comparatively later in Uganda, it gained ground so fast as compared to other places in Africa.
This is captured by missionary CW Hattersley in his book The Baganda at Home where he describes a visit to the palace of Kabaka Daudi Chwa
He describes Chwa’s sitting room as: “Furnished with carpets, curtains, English lamps and pictures, conspicuous the latter being the handsome portraits of King Edward VII and our Queen.
The most heartening ornament of all for Hattersley was “the picture of our Lord as the ‘Light of the World” that hung adjacent to the pictures of the English queen.
The early Christians fought tooth and nail to see to it they had influence over the palace, and by extension politics. This may explain the outbreak of what have come to be known as the religious wars of 1888.
The colonial governments of the time awarded scholarships and civil service jobs based on religious affiliations. These were tactics meant to cajole citizens into buying the new moral dispensation.
Church and the State
During the decade before independence, political parties were formed along religious and ethnic lines, but largely along Catholic and Anglican lines.
Paul Gifford writes in his chapter ‘Pentecostalism in Museveni’s Uganda’ in A. Corten and A. Mary’s Imaginaries politiques et pentecostimes that this institutionalised the rivalry between Catholics and Anglicans.
Gifford writes that Milton Obote’s Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) became intrinsically linked to the Anglican Church of Uganda, and the Democratic Party (DP) to the Catholic Church. This established Anglicans as the first direct ally of the post-independence State.
And churches have continued to be influential even in President Museveni’s administration, 60 years after Uganda gained independence.
According to Kevin Ward in his article ‘Series on Church and State: Eating and Sharing: Church and State in Uganda’, published in the Journal of Anglican Studies, Mr Museveni must have realised that the church had penetrated the social fabric that it was foolhardy to keep it away from the politics as it would serve an important role in mediating in disputes between the State and society.
The HIV/ Aids scourge demonstrated that the church would play public roles towards a developmental and social agenda.
Birth of Pentecostalism
Some historical accounts associate the birth of Pentecostalism with the Eat African Revival Movement that began in Rwanda in the 1920s. The revivalists, or the Balokole (saved ones), proclaimed a message of salvation, hoping to revive the mission churches of colonial East Africa.
Frustrated by what they believed to be the tepid spiritual state of missionary Christianity, they preached that for one to be born again they must confess their sins publicly.
President Museveni (centre) meets pastors during a conference organised by Pentecostal churches at Lugogo Cricket Oval, Kampala, in September 2019. PHOTO/ FILE
This movement spread through Uganda to its eastern neighbour Kenya. Early Pentecostal churches began taking root in Uganda in the 1950s and 1960s, but slowed down in the 1970s during the Idi Amin reign.
However, the modern-day Pentecostalism we have in Uganda is closely linked to the one born in the United States, especially on university campuses. It spread through West Africa before it emerged in Uganda.
This variant spread at the tail end of the 1970s and gained traction in the 1980s. The interesting coincidence, however, is that at this very time the Structural Adjustment Programmes by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were being shoved down the throats of African states in what came to be marked as the neoliberal era.
The question that emerges, therefore, is whether it is possible to draw a link between capitalism and religious fundamentalism.
Max Weber would provocatively respond in the affirmative. In his 1905 treatise The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber made the link between religious ideology and capitalist development.
Today, Pentecostal Christianity, with its emphasis on the prosperity gospel, is the epitome of neoliberal capitalism on the continent.
As Birgit Meyer, a German professor of religious studies, put it: “They thrive especially in urban areas, and appeal to (aspiring) middle classes. Contrary to expectations generated in the framework of theories of modernisation and development which expect a decline of the public role of religion, the spread of these churches occurs together with the turn to so-called democratisation and a shift from African states trying to regulate national economies towards a deliberate embracement of global capital.”
Not only have Pentecostal churches embraced the logic of the market, they are active participants with entrepreneur pastors running mega for-profit churches. This is unlike the variant of Pentecostalism that emerged from the East African Revival Movement – whose message was centrally about the rupture or eschatology (the second coming of Jesus Christ).
This can be seen in the songs sang around the time such as “tuliyambala engule”, which literally promises faithful’s of a victory coming upon which a crown shall be won after a series of trials and tribulations.
Today, Pentecostalism seeks to perform miracles to solve economic questions. Little wonder that central to its doctrinal package, according Barbra Bompani in Dynamics of Neo-liberal Transformation is the message of hard work and taking individual responsibility to gain a more prosperous future.
The message frees the State of responsibility of the most prevalent issues such as urban poverty and instead problems such as unemployment, low wages and poverty are blamed on the individual as either not having enough skills, hard work and resilience or having been bewitched and needs to be exorcised of these ghosts at a ‘deliverance service’.
This in turn shields the State from accountability and may explain why Pentecostal churches have been blamed for their silence during controversial debates such as torture in safe houses and constitutional amendments like term and age limits.
Apart from amassing wealth under very minimal regulation, some Pentecostals have also had a chokehold on the media landscape, with the major churches having radio and TV stations.
The influence of Pentecostalism today has increased given their ability to easily adapt to the changing times.
