Modes of legitimation by female Pentecostal-Charismatic preachers in East Africa: a comparative study in Kenya and Tanzania

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the rise of female Pentecostal-Charismatic (PC) church leaders and how they legitimize themselves in a male dominated religious field in Kenya and Tanzania. It explores, in a qualitative way, four women leaders’ modes of attaining legitimacy in African PC milieus and contributes empirically based knowledge from four cases which include Eleonorah Wambui of Prosperity Gospel Ministries and Jesca Njuguna of Prophetic Word Ministry in Kenya, as well as Neema Mwambembela of Holy Ghost Power Assemblies and Irene John of Miracle Prayer Ministry in Tanzania. We make reference to Boulding’s delineation of sources of legitimacy ([1967] ‘The Legitimacy of Economics.’ Economic Inquiry 5 (4): 299–307). We found that the four East African female preachers that we examined share certain common practices, but that differences are manifest among them owing to differences in their personal preferences and to the contextual flavour of each ministry.

KEYWORDS:

• Pentecostalism
• female church leaders
• sources of legitimacy
• Kenya
• Tanzania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Nandera Ernest Mhando lectures Sociology and Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She has explored development and cultural transformation relating to gender, health, religion, marriage, women violence, and livelihood. Her most recent ethnographic works are on: Pentecostal-charismatic women church leaders and their impact in contemporary Tanzania; female and traditional male circumcision; and intricate marital partnerships. She can be contacted at: [email protected]

Loreen Maseno is a Senior Lecturer at Maseno University, Kenya and recently a Humboldt Fellow, University of Bayreuth. She is also a Research Fellow at the Department of Biblical and Ancient studies, University of South Africa. She can be contacted at: [email protected]

Kupakwashe Mtata is is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, Bayreuth, Germany. He has done research on religion and nature conservation in Western Zimbabwe. His academic interests lie in theory of religion, religion and nature, religion and human well-being in contemporary Africa and on-going encounters between ontological designs of Western and African autochthonous worlds in African contexts. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Mathew Senga is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. His research interests include natural resource governance, religion, health and rural livelihoods. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

Notes

1 Since some of the female church leaders referred to in this article could not be accessed, it was resolved that all reference to them and their ministries be changed to pseudonyms.

2 The conditions were first suggested by one of us as conditions of colonial conquest (Mtata 2017).

3 The idea of ‘modes of self-legitimation’ employed here is derived by us from Max Weber’s ‘types of legitimate authority’ (1962, 75–80), Kenneth Boulding’s ‘sources of legitimacy’ (1967) and Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘modes of domination’ (1990, 122–134).

4 The Legitimacy of Economics (Boulding 1967).

5 Given that the space available for this paper is limited, we will not highlight this difference.

6 The term ‘ministry’ is used in Pentecostal circles to refer to a Pentecostal church, some aspect of the church or some service given by a Pentecostal believer. In this case it refers to JN’s church.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by John Templeton Foundation; Calvin College, Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity [grant number 2016-SS270].