Fragile Wars: Anti-Ecumenism in a South African Church

Abstract

In South Africa, where ecumenism historically characterised popular Christianity, the post-apartheid entry of certain Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCCs) has introduced decidedly anti-ecumenical tendencies. This article focuses on one such church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), a PCC of Brazilian origin. Under the rubric of spiritual warfare and a politics of suspicion, UCKG preachers urged believers to take up both visible and invisible arms against ‘unbelievers’. These injunctions made for fraught interpersonal relationships, especially in socio-economic conditions where believers were fundamentally dependent on large social networks. For many believers, however, such visible strife did not mark a radical break in their social imaginary; ‘fighting’ bravely exposed a hitherto uncontrolled social reality, while the UCKG’s anti-catholic sentiments promised protection from, and control over, the fragility that marked adherents’ social and economic lives.

Keywords:

• ecumenism
• UCKG
• ekklesia
• global ecumene
• South African churches
• apartheid

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dick Werbner for inviting me to think about ecumenism in relation to my work when he asked me to contribute to the Botswana conference. That conversation continued at the special panel on the topic at ASAUK, Cambridge, where a travel grant from JSAS helped to offset some of the costs of attending this conference. I received very generous feedback on initial drafts of this manuscript at both Botswana and Cambridge conferences and would like to thank all participants for this. In the process of writing, I was also enormously lucky to have Dick Werbner and Tony Simpson as editors and acknowledge the productive feedback from anonymous reviewers. The shortcomings of this piece are my own.

Notes

¹ P. Walshe, ‘South Africa: Prophetic Christianity and the Liberation Movement’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 29, 1 (1991), pp. 27–60.

² D. Thomas, Christ Divided: Liberalism, Ecumenism and Race in South Africa (Pretoria, UNISA Press, 2002), p. 231.

³ R. Wilson, ‘Reconciliation and Revenge in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Rethinking Legal Pluralism and Human Rights’, Current Anthropology, 41, 1 (2000), pp. 75–98.

⁴ C.M. Robeck, ‘Ecumenism’, in A. Anderson, M. Bergunder, A.F. Droogers and C. van der Laan (eds), Studying Global Pentecostalism: Theories and Methods (Oakland, University of California Press, 2010), pp. 286–308.

⁵ See H. Englund, ‘Christian Independency and Global Membership: Pentecostal Extraversion in Malawi’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 33 (2003), pp. 83–111.

⁶ As one reviewer pointed out, first-wave Pentecostal churches, such as the Assemblies of God, ‘have long engaged in theologically staged ecumenical dialogues’.

⁷ Similar beliefs in Nigeria have fuelled extreme violence. See R. Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009).

⁸ A. Anderson, ‘New African Initiated Pentecostalism and Charismatics in South Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 35, 1 (2005), pp. 66–92.

⁹ Established in 2000, the GGN is largely confined to the Western Cape.

¹⁰ P. Freston, ‘The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God: A Brazilian Church Finds Success in South Africa’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 35, 1 (2005), pp. 53–4.

¹¹ Bishop Macedo, UCKG website South Africa, 16 March 2005, which was available at www.uckg.org.za, retrieved 10 March 2015. As one reviewer pointed out, the Bishop’s warnings ‘might remind some South Africans of the demonisation of the WCC by conservative Afrikaner Christians under apartheid’. See Research on Christianity in South Africa’s1997 report on the Faith Communities’ Hearings at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, http://www.religion.uct.ac.za/religion/institutes/ricsa_irhap/ricsa/archive/trc_submissionswww.religion.uct.ac.za, retrieved 11 June 2017.

¹² See M. Crivella, Mutis, Sangomas and Nyangas: Tradition or Witchcraft? (São Paulo, UCKG Publications, 1999), p. 24, cf. pp. 23–53.

¹³ I. van Wyk, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in South Africa: A Church of Strangers (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014).

¹⁴ ‘Precarity’ is a widely used term, usually as shorthand for a range of insecure economic conditions brought about by neo-liberalism, particularly job insecurity and lives that lack the predictability inherent (for some) in earlier forms of capitalism.

¹⁵ Wikipedia, ‘Universal Church of the Kingdom of God’ entry (UCKG), available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Church_of_the_Kingdom_of_God, retrieved 25 August 2016.

¹⁶ See E. Kramer, ‘Making Global Faith Universal: Media and a Brazilian Prosperity Movement’, Culture and Religion, 3, 1 (2002), pp. 21–47; R.S. Roca, ‘“Dinheiro vivo”: Money and Religion in Brazil’, Critique ofAnthropology, 27, 3 (2007), p. 330.

¹⁷ Ivar, ‘Ecumenical March in Rio Brands Christians as Fascists’, Agence France-Presse, 20 September 2011, available at https://ivarfjeld.com/2011/09/20/ecumenical-march-in-rio-brands-christians-as-fascists/, retrieved 23 August 2016.

¹⁸ Wikipedia, UCKG.

¹⁹ E.W. Kramer, ‘Possessing Faith: Commodification, Religious Subjectivity, and Collectivity in a Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal Church’ (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2001), pp. 1–6, 171–3; P. Birman and D. Lehmann, ‘Religion and the Media in a Battle for Ideological Hegemony: The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and TV Globo in Brazil’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 18, 2 (1999), pp. 145–64.

²⁰ J. Treviño, ‘Demons on Broadway, Miracles., Exorcism, Catholic-Bashing., Going for Broke in the Universal Church’, LA Weekly, Culver City, 5 July 2001.

²¹ J. Epstein, ‘Kicking of Icon Outrages Brazil Catholics’, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, 24 November 1995.

²² Anon, ‘Kicking of the Saint’, Revolvy website, available at http://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Kicking%20of%20the%20saint&item_type=topic, retrieved 27 August 2016.

²³ Kramer, Possessing Faith, pp. 3, 171–3.

²⁴ See also L. van de Kamp, Violent Conversion: Brazilian Pentecostalism and Urban Women in Mozambique (Woodbridge, James Currey, 2016).

²⁵ Marshall, Political Spiritualities.

²⁶ R.I.J. Hackett, ‘Discourses of Demonization in Africa and Beyond’, Diogenes, 50, 3 (2003), p. 69.

²⁷ J.N. Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana: The Story of the Botswana Christian Council (Gaborone, Pula Press, 2006); M. Engelke, ‘Text and Performance in an African Church: The Book, “Live and Direct”’, American Ethnologist, 31, 1 (2004), pp. 76–91; H. Englund, ‘The Quest for Missionaries: Transnationalism and Township Pentecostalism in Malawi’, in A. Corten and R. Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 235–55.

²⁸ U. Hannerz, ‘Notes on the Global Ecumene’, Public Culture, 1, 2 (1989), pp. 66–75; see Englund, ‘Christian Independency’, pp. 83–111; B. Meyer, ‘Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal–Charismatic churches’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33 (2004), pp. 460–69.

²⁹ A.L. Kroeber, Anthropology: Culture Patterns and Processes (New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1948), p. 423.

³⁰ A.L. Kroeber, ‘The Ancient Oikoumene as an Historic Culture Aggregate’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 75, 1/2 (1945), pp. 9–20.

³¹ See ibid.

³² Kroeber, Anthropology, p. 423.

³³ W.E. Moore, ‘Global Sociology: The World as a Singular System’, American Journal of Sociology, 71, 5 (1966), p. 475–82; E. Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1975); I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York, Academic Press, 1974).

³⁴ I. Kopytoff, The African Frontier (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 10.

³⁵ Hannerz, ‘Notes on the Global Ecumene’.

³⁶ U. Hannerz, ‘The Global Ecumene as a Network of Networks’, in A. Kuper (ed.), Conceptualizing Society (London and New York, Routledge, 1990), pp. 34–58.

³⁷ U. Hannerz, ‘Sophiatown: The View from Afar’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 20, 2 (1994), pp. 181–93.

³⁸ U. Hannerz, ‘The World in Creolisation’, Africa, 57, 4 (1987), pp. 546–59.

³⁹ Hannerz, ‘Sophiatown’.

⁴⁰ Englund, ‘The Quest for Missionaries’; A. Corten and R. Marshall-Fratani, ‘Introduction’, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost, pp.1–21.

⁴¹ R. Marshall, ‘“God Is Not a Democrat”: Pentecostalism and Democratisation in Nigeria’, in P. Gifford (ed.), The Christian Churches and the Democratisation of Africa (Leiden, Brill, 1995), pp. 239–60; Hackett, ‘Discourses of Demonization’; D.J. Maxwell, ‘The Durawall of Faith: Pentecostal Spirituality in Neo-Liberal Zimbabwe’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 35, 1 (2005), pp. 4–32; R. van Dijk, ‘The Pentecostal Gift: Ghanaian Charismatic Churches and the Moral Innocence of the Global Economy’, in R. Fardon, W. van Binsbergen and R. van Dijk (eds), Modernity on a Shoestring: Dimensions of Globalisation, Consumption and Development in Africa and Beyond (London, Anthony Rowe, 1999), pp. 71–90; Birman and Lehmann, ‘Religion and the Media in a Battle’, pp. 148–54; Freston, ‘The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God’, p. 40; P. Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (London, Hurst, 1998).

⁴² H. Englund, ‘Witchcraft and the Limits of Mass Mediation in Malawi’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13, 2 (2007), pp. 295–311; B. Meyer, ‘“Make a Complete Break with the Past”: Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 28, 3 (1998), pp. 316–49.

⁴³ For instance, Englund, ‘Christian Independency’; R. van Dijk, ‘Time and Transcultural Technologies of the Self in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora’, in Corten and Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost, pp. 216–34; Gifford, African Christianity, p. 37.

⁴⁴ See H. Englund, Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor (Oakland, University of California Press, 2006).

⁴⁵ Englund, ‘Witchcraft’.

⁴⁶ Marshall, ‘“God Is Not a Democrat”’; Hackett, ‘Discourses of Demonization’.

⁴⁷ J. Robbins, ‘The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33 (2004), p. 136.

⁴⁸ B. Harvey, Another City: An Ecclesiological Primer for a Post-Christian World (Harrisburg, Trinity Press International, 1999).

⁴⁹ Thomas, Christ Divided, pp. 12–17; A. Yong, ‘Pentecostalism and Ecumenism: Past, Present and Future’, Pneuma Review, 4, 4 (2001), pp. 50–51.

⁵⁰ H.C. Kee, J.W. Frost, E. Albu, C. Lindberg and D.L. Robert, Christianity: A Social and Cultural History, second edition (New York, Pearson, 1998), pp. 379–81; A.S. Thompson, ‘The Languages of Loyalism in Southern Africa, c.1870–1939’, paper presented at the International History Conference on the British Empire and the Creation of British Identities in the 19th and 20th Centuries, held at the University of Cape Town, 9–11 January 2002, pp. 12–18 (paper available from the African Studies collection, UCT, 2002); Yong, ‘Pentecostalism and Ecumenism’, pp. 50–51.

⁵¹ Thomas, Christ Divided, pp. 25–9, 212–16.

⁵² The influence of the WCC, SACC and CI has waned, but for political and financial reasons rather than strictly ideological ones. See I. van Wyk, ‘All Answers: On the Phenomenal Success of a Brazilian Pentecostal Charismatic Church in South Africa’, in M. Lindhardt (ed), Pentecostalism in Africa: Presence and Impact of Pneumatic Christianity in Postcolonial Societies (Brill, Leiden, 2015), pp.136–8.

⁵³ Amanze, Ecumenism in Botswana.

⁵⁴ D. Maxwell, ‘“Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty?”: Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Modernity in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 28, 3 (1998), pp. 350–73; Van Dijk, ‘Time and Transcultural Technologies’.

⁵⁵ T.G. Kirsch, ‘Restaging the Will to Believe: Religious Pluralism, Antisyncretism, and the Problem of Belief’, American Anthropologist, 106, 4 (2004), pp. 699–709; Marshall, ‘“God Is Not a Democrat”’; Hackett, ‘Discourses of Demonization’.

⁵⁶ Kirsch, ‘Restaging the Will to Believe’, pp. 703–7.

⁵⁷ On 4 November 2010, Bishop Macedo again warned his followers against the dangers of ecumenism in a blog titled ‘Ecumenism in Disguise’, available from https://blogs.universal.org/bispomacedo/en/2010/11/04/ecumenism-in-disguise%e2%80%a8%e2%80%a8%e2%80%a8/, retrieved 29 November 2017.

⁵⁸ On his blog, Bishop Macedo repeatedly warns against the dangers of Islam (39 posts), Hinduism (6 posts), the Catholic church (48 posts), Baha’i (18 posts), Candomblé (4 posts) and spiritists (4 posts), among other religions and churches. See http://blogs.universal.org/bispomacedo/en/, retrieved 11 June 2017.

⁵⁹ Bishop Macedo, UCKG website South Africa, 16 March 2005, which was available from www.uckg.org.za, retrieved 10 March 2015.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ See, for example, Crivella, Mutis, Sangomas and Nyangas.

⁶² I. van Wyk, ‘Believing Practically and Trusting Socially in Africa: The Contrary Case of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Durban, South Africa’, in H. Englund (ed.), Christianity and Public Culture in Africa (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2011), pp. 189–203.

⁶³ See van de Kamp, Violent Conversion.

⁶⁴ Van Wyk, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in South Africa, pp. 116–40, 202–32.

⁶⁵ P.C.W. Gutkind, ‘Social Organisation of the Unemployed in Lagos and Nairobi’, in P.C.W. Gutkind and P. Waterman (eds), African Social Studies: A Radical Reader (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1977), pp. 251–62; P. Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanisation in a South African City, Cape Town (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1971); B.A. Pauw, The Second Generation: A Study of the Family among Urbanised Bantu in East London (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1972).

⁶⁶ Van Wyk, The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in South Africa; Van Wyk, ‘Believing Practically and Trusting Socially’.

⁶⁷ See Crivella, Mutis, Sangomas and Nyangas.

⁶⁸ Since 2005, church services have not changed much, and Pastor John’s service could be delivered in any UCKG branch today. See, for instance, van de Kamp, Violent Conversion.

⁶⁹ Englund, ‘Witchcraft and the Limits of Mass Mediation in Malawi’, p. 480; Marshall, ‘“God Is Not a Democrat”’.

⁷⁰ See also Kirsch, ‘Restaging the Will to Believe’.

⁷¹ Gutkind, ‘Social Organisation of the Unemployed’; J. Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987); Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen; F.B. Nyamnjoh, ‘Reconciling the “Rhetoric of Rights” with Competing Notions of Personhood and Agency in Botswana’, in H. Englund and F.B. Nyamnoh (eds), Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa (London, Zed Books, 2004), pp. 34–5; D. Parkin, The Cultural Definition of Political Response: Lineal Destiny among the Luo (London and New York, Academic Press, 1978); Pauw, The Second Generation.

⁷² D. Ciekawy and P. Geschière, ‘Containing Witchcraft: Conflicting Scenarios in Postcolonial Africa’, African Studies Review, 41, 3 (1998), pp. 1–14; P. Geschière, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1997); P. Geschière, ‘Witchcraft as the Dark Side of Kinship: Dilemmas of Social Security in New Contexts’, Etnofoor, 16, 1 (2003), pp. 43–61.

⁷³ Meyer, ‘“Make a Complete Break with the Past”’; Engelke, ‘Text and Performance’; Maxwell, ‘Delivered from the Spirit of Poverty?’; Van Dijk, ‘Time and Transcultural Technologies’.

⁷⁴ Meyer, ‘“Make a Complete Break with the Past”’; Nyamnjoh, ‘Reconciling the “Rhetoric of Rights”’; Englund, ‘Witchcraft and the Limits of Mass Mediation in Malawi’.

⁷⁵ Maxwell, ‘The Durawall of Faith’.

⁷⁶ M. Trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (New York, Palgrave, 2003).