Affiliation:
1. African Studies Centre, Leiden University Leiden The Netherlands
Abstract
Abstract
This contribution explores the significance of religious practices that put emphasis on encouraging people to hold their position when others question the ideological or dogmatic elements of their faith. Applying the term ‘religious insistence’, it investigates these practices with a view to the ways in which Pentecostals take a position vis-à-vis the challenges they confront in the sociopolitical domain. Contributing to the study of religious activism, we show that practices of insistence are neither fully resistant nor fully acquiescent with regard to the existing situation. We argue that these practices of holding one’s ground, which we subsume under the term ‘insistence’, represent a specific modality of formulating one’s identity in regard to others that is neither about provoking structural change, as a resistance perspective would emphasise, nor about condoning a structural situation as is and remaining fully acquiescent with it. While in Pentecostal contexts insistence does not take up-front political protest as its main focus, it can still be interpreted as a form of religious activism since it often entails some form of critical response toward a given sociopolitical order or process. By drawing attention to how religious insistence manifests itself in and through Pentecostalism, this contribution proposes to enrich the study of religious activism in Africa and opens up a perspective that addresses assertiveness as a register of expression that differs from resistance and acquiescence.
Reference97 articles.
1. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation);Althusser, Louis
2. “Born of Water and the Spirit”: Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity in Africa;Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena
3. On Postcolonial Futures: Transformations of a Colonial Culture;Ashcroft, Bill
4. SSSR Presidential Address Public Religions and the Postsecular: Critical Reflections;Beckford, James A.
5. Virtual Christianity in an Age of Nominalist Anthropology;Bialecki, Jon
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献