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ABSTRACT
Work on the sexual dimension of citizenship in Africa has privileged the way contemporary struggles over sexualities and sexual identities have opened up tensions over belonging and civic mattering. This article focuses on how political subjectivity is shaped and determined against the backdrop of the erotic economy between the pastor and his congregation. Mobilizing the idea of a Pentecostal erotic economy to evoke a debate around gender, patriarchy, affect, and social control, the article uses a relatively neglected aspect of contemporary Pentecostal praxes to introduce a different approach to the study of citizenship in Africa.
Acknowledgments
This paper draws on data from research supported by the Contending Modernities initiative housed in the Kroc International Institute, University of Notre Dame; and the Templeton Foundation-funded New Directions in the Study of Prayer (NDSP) project, hosted by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York. The original version was presented at the research workshop on Pentecostalism and Sexual Citizenship in Africa, organized by the Centre for Religion and Public Life, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, November 2016. I thank Adriaan van Klinken for the invitation to present a paper, and participants in the workshop for their comments and observations. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article for their valuable feedback.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The following, submitted by one Greg (most likely a pseudonym) to Dr. Wale Okediran in the ‘Ask the Doctor’ column of the Nigerian Tribune and titled ‘I don’t last in bed’ is typical: ‘Many of my friends boast of being able to go for about six rounds of sex each time they go to bed with their girlfriends. Unfortunately, I can hardly last two rounds. Kindly let me know what to do. I am a 20-year-old student.’ See Nigerian Tribune (Ibadan), 14 October 2017.
2. See also ‘Martin Ssempa, Anti-Gay Ugandan Pastor, Shows Church Gay Porn Videos’ available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/18/martin-ssempa-anti-gay-ug_n_467157.html accessed 22 October 2017.
3. See for instance ‘Stephanie Otobo battles Apostle Suleman, discloses account, payments details’ Vanguard (Lagos) 9 April 2017.
4. Pastor Odukoya’s South African wife, Nomthi Rosemary Simangele Odukoya, gave birth to their first child together seven months after their wedding, leading to speculations that her pregnancy predated their wedding, meaning the child was conceived out of wedlock.
5. Opeoluwani Ogunjimi, ‘Chris Okotie’s crashed marriage: Ex-wife opens up’, Vanguard, 6 July 2012.
6. See ‘Anita finalizes divorce from Pastor Chris Oyakhilome’ Vanguard, 19 February 2016.
7. Other studies confirm that this is not exclusive to Nigeria. For instance, Katrien Pype’s research on Kinshasa references the ‘excess of sexuality in the city’ and ‘the role of sexuality in Kinshasa’s public culture’ (Pype Citation2012, 262).
8. I am grateful to Tade Ipadeola for translation that hews to the meaning and lyricism of the original.
9. For more on this, see Ebenezer Obadare (Citation2016).
10. For a taste of the extensive literature on Structural Adjustment and its socio-economic and political consequences in Nigeria, see for example (Olukoshi Citation1998, Citation1992).
11. The pastor in question here is Revd. Pastor Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church, Nairobi, Kenya. See Radhika Sanghani, ‘Bra and Knickers? Sorry, not in my church’ The Telegraph (London) 4 March 2014. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10,675,818/Bra-and-knickers-Sorry-not-in-my-church.html accessed 26 January 2017.
12. Reference is to Bishop Daniel Kwadwo Obinim of the International God’s Way Church (IGWC), Accra, Ghana. See Ashitha Nagesh, ‘Bishop claims to make men’s penises larger by massaging them with his hands’ Metro (London) 6 December 2016. Available at: http://metro.co.uk/2016/12/06/bishop-claims-to-make-mens-penises-larger-by-massaging-them-with-his-hands-6,304,158/ accessed 12 March 2017 .
13. Needless to say, Pentecostal politics of masculinity is a complicated and contested subject, as evidenced by the tensions in a vast literature on African Pentecostalism and masculinities (see for instance Lindhardt Citation2015; Van Klinken Citation2016). While I do not completely reject the idea that Pentecostalism does advance a notion of ‘born-again masculinity’, I insist that a certain ‘containment’ of masculinity (feminization?) is often appurtenant to the process.
14. This may or may not include physical attractiveness, though the more ‘attractive’ the pastor, the more eroticized, we might reasonably surmise. For instance, I think the good looks and ‘sex symbol’ lifestyle of Senior Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo might be part of the ‘attraction’ (pun unintended) of the Commonwealth of God Assembly (COZA), Abuja, Nigeria, for the church’s predominantly young (and largely female) congregation. When, in August 2013, two female members of the church came out with allegations that the pastor had seduced them in hotels in London and Lagos respectively, they were promptly rebuked by other female members of the church who said they (the female accusers) should consider themselves lucky for having been ‘favored’ by such a handsome ‘Man of God’. In short, instead of hurting him, Pastor Fatoyinbo’s exposure, as with the modern celebrity, may in fact have boosted his social standing and celebrity status. See for example Nicholas Ibekwe, “COZA Abuja Senior Pastor in sex scandal’ Premium Times (Abuja), 25 August 2013. Available at: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/143,428-coza-abuja-senior-pastor-embroiled-in-sexual-scandal.html accessed 2 November 2017. That said, and in my view, a pastor’s physical attractiveness, however defined, is not necessarily directly correlated to his eroticization. In any case, I accept Daloz’s important insight that ‘societal determinants, such as living and working conditions, diet and access to care services and cosmetics, are likely to have strong effects on physical appearance’ (Daloz Citation2010, 88).
15. In the footsteps of Rudolf Gaudio’s striking brief on modern desires in urban Nigeria, the current hunger for deodorants, body fragrances and antiperspirants, and the concomitant repulsion towards body odor and smelly bodies; become fundamental to ‘discourses of cleanliness’ that ‘index the intimate aesthetics of embodied social interaction that may not be explicitly erotic, but that are… imbricated in the desired identifications that impel the construction of the city, migration to and from it, and its policing.’ See Rudolf Gaudio, ‘Modern Desires in Urban Nigeria’, Cultural Anthropology, 21 July 2015. Available at: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/707-modern-desires-in-urban-nigeria Accessed 24 November 2017.
16. In this link, for instance, an obviously self-satisfied Chris Okotie checks off the names of the designers of his jacket, trousers, shirt, and wristwatch respectively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieGjq0CMy1k Accessed 24 November 2017.
17. I have developed this argument elsewhere. See Obadare (Citation2018, forthcoming).
18. Whenever, as it frequently happens, such prophecies do not come true, they can leave individual ‘prophets’ scrambling for explanations. For instance, in 2016, Pastor Temitope Joshua of the Lagos-based The Synagogue, Church of All Nations (SCOAN) was left with egg on his face when his prophecy that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 American Presidential election did not come true. See Conor Gaffey, ‘Nigeria’s T.B. Joshua explains unfulfilled US election prophecy’, Newsweek, 14 November 2016. Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/nigerias-tb-joshua-explains-unfulfilled-us-election-prophecy-520,711 accessed 4 November 2017.