THE SATURDAY ESSAY

On a continent whose growing population presents enormous opportunities for Christianity and Islam, both faiths are adapting to charismatic modes of worship and indigenous traditions.

Worshipers at an evangelical Christian service at MFM Prayer City, a megachurch near Lagos, Nigeria, 2021. ANDREW ESIEBO

By Francis X. RoccaFollow, Nicholas Bariyo

June 23, 2023

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On a recent Sunday morning in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, members of the faithful clutched their hymn books and chanted God’s praises as they danced to the beat of tambourines. A preacher led the congregation in praying for the health of their children and success at work.

The service resembled Pentecostal Christianity, a movement that originated in the U.S. and has swept Africa in the last few decades. But the participants weren’t Christians. They were Muslims, practicing an ecstatic style of worship that has developed in response to the challenge posed by Pentecostalism. Across sub-Saharan Africa, religion today is in ferment as different versions of Christianity and Islam vie for believers—a contest that is transforming both faiths and disrupting long-established terms of coexistence.

Owing to population growth and the intensity of their religiosity, Africans are now one of the more important constituencies of both Islam and Christianity worldwide, and sub-Saharan Africa is one of the world’s most active and contested religious markets. The region was 59% Christian and 30% Muslim in 2020, according to the World Religion Database. “There is a new scramble for Africa,” said Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome of Jamia Mosque in Nairobi, Kenya, drawing an analogy with the colonization of the continent in the late 19th century. “Christianity is growing, Islam is growing, and there is competition.”

On a continent where indigenous religions dominated just a century ago, Christian missionary efforts, associated with European colonization, have borne fruit in massive conversions. By 2020, there were 643 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, a quarter of the world total, up from 7.4 million in 1900. By 2050, it is projected that there will be 1.3 billion Christians in the region, or 38% of all the Christians in the world.

Islam, which first came to sub-Saharan Africa in the 7th century, long had a more substantial presence than Christianity. Today, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for an increasing share of global Islam, and by 2037 is expected to have more Muslims than Islam’s historical heartland of the Middle East and North Africa, according to the Pew Research Center.

Muslim women at prayer for the Eid al-Adha holiday, Zaria, Nigeria, July 2022. PHOTO: TAIWO AINA

The diverse and vibrant African religious market has fostered mutual influence among traditions, with Pentecostalism sparking change in other forms of Christianity as well as Islam, and many believers practicing indigenous religions alongside their monotheistic faiths.

In a scene increasingly common across sub-Saharan Africa, Muslim clerics and Pentecostal preachers recently held a debate in the eastern coffee-trading city of Mbale, Uganda. The question at hand was whether the God of the Christian Bible is the same as the God of the Quran.

“The God of Islam owns Mecca, he doesn’t just live in Mecca, he owns the entire city,” said Sheikh Muhammad Musa, clad in a caftan and rounded kufi cap, raising his hands to cheers and applause from hundreds of people listening in an open field.

“The God of the Bible is a father, and has a son, called Jesus,” responded the business-suited Pastor Stephen Waiswa of Bible Evangelism Ministries. “The God in the Quran is not a parent.”

The tone was almost sporting as the Christian and Muslim leaders sparred on stage, occasionally smiling at each other’s remarks and paging rapidly through their scriptures to quote pertinent passages.

Worshipers at an all-night Pentecostal service in Lagos, Nigeria, 2003. PHOTO: JACOB SILBERBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Such debates reflect the rise of Pentecostalism, whose tradition of polemical street preaching has inspired Muslims to adopt the practice in response. Some see public debates as a relatively safe and constructive outlet for interreligious tensions, says Muhammad Kiggundu Musoke, spokesman for the Supreme Mufti of Uganda. The country is majority Christian, but its population is 14% Muslim, according to the most recent census in 2014.

But Sheikh Abdullatif Abdulkarim of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque, drawing an analogy with business competition, laments what he says is a practice of denigration that has become more common among both Christians and Muslims in recent years, fueled in part by the use of social media. “When I’m selling my Toyota, I don’t have to speak ill of a GMC,” Abdulkarim said. “Just sell your product and talk about the good things…Then let the customer decide.”

Pentecostalism—whose worship stresses devotion to the Holy Spirit and features faith healing and “speaking in tongues” (expressing religious ecstasy in incomprehensible sounds)—has grown enormously in the region since the 1950s, along with charismatic communities inside traditional denominations that embrace Pentecostal-style worship.

Sub-Saharan Africa was home to 229 million Pentecostals and charismatics, or 35.6% of the world total, in 2020, according to the World Religion Database. Those numbers are projected to rise to 450 million and 43.6% in 2050.

Pentecostalism appeals to a continent where poverty is widespread and healthcare inadequate with promises of divine healing, spiritual gifts and—in the version known as the Prosperity Gospel—material success.

On a recent evening, the self-styled prophet Elvis Mbonye appeared before thousands of followers at an outdoor venue along an expressway near the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The parking lot was full of SUVs and other late-model cars, reflecting the middle-class status of most of his flock.

Mbonye drew applause as he exhorted his congregants not to lose hope in their own success and cheers when he alluded to his own wealth. Envelopes for contributions lay on every seat. “We are living in God’s presence all the time here,” said Patricia Aber, a Kampala shopkeeper who was raised as a Catholic but now attends Mbonye’s services every Tuesday. “My husband was once facing various court cases. I came here and prayed,” Aber said. “To my surprise, he was acquitted the next day.”

Pentecostal minister Elvis Mbonye leads a primarily middle-class Christian congregation in Kampala, Uganda. PHOTO: COURTESY PROPHET ELVIS MBONYE

Alexander Isiko, an expert in religious studies at Kyambogo University in Kampala, sees continuities between Africans’ embrace of such preachers and their traditional beliefs. “African Pentecostalism is very unique…It is a blend of African and Christian,” Isiko said. “Africans fear demons so much, and African Pentecostalism has so much dwelt on its ability to drive away demons,” including those of poverty and disease.

Almost 90% of sub-Saharan Africans today espouse one of the world’s two dominant monotheistic faiths. Yet many Africans continue to practice older indigenous traditions alongside them, underscoring the distinctiveness and complexity of the continent’s religious landscape.

“The majority of the people in Uganda who are either Christians or Muslims also believe in traditional religion. It’s our life,” said Sophia Namutebi, head of Uganda’s traditional healers’ association. “You can’t get wealth and hold on to it if you don’t believe in traditional religion.”

Pentecostal churches also meet a desire for community among new arrivals to Africa’s big cities, where people find themselves separated from the kinship networks so important in the region. “It’s easy to get lost in a traditional church. Here we are like a family,” said Esther Kiragu, 28, who was raised as an Anglican in provincial Kenya before moving to the capital of Nairobi.

During a Sunday service in Nairobi, Kiragu and around 50 other people, mostly women, sat at small tables in front of a stage, a temporary set-up at a school for deaf children. Women play a prominent role in the church, said the pastor, Grace Ndege, but only with the permission of their husbands. “Men are the leaders of the family. We don’t change what God has decided,” she said.

Ndege’s nearly two-hour sermon, on keeping faith in adversity, drew on examples from the Bible but also business history, noting that Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, found success only in his 60s.

In contrast with the intimacy of that gathering, Nigeria’s Redeemed Christian Church of God, known as the RCCG, holds its largest gatherings in a covered space a kilometer long and half a kilometer wide at its headquarters near Lagos. Church leaders say it can hold a million people, and they are building an even larger structure intended to hold three million.

Worshipers arrive at Kristo Bien Nakwarena church in Matany, Uganda on Christmas Day, 2022. PHOTO: BADRU KATUMBA

On a recent Friday morning, cars streamed to the church for the monthly Holy Ghost service. The seven-hour event included testimonies of blessings received by members of the congregation. A woman who identified herself as Foluke Areola recounted how her plane was spared from crashing during a storm after she prayed with a handkerchief blessed by Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the church’s leader, known as “Daddy G.O.” for his title of General Overseer.

“This handkerchief, I waved it and God saved my life,” Areola said, kneeling, to applause from the faithful.

More established denominations have responded to the Pentecostal challenge with their own versions of the newer churches’ most appealing offerings.

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At the Mount Sion Prayer Centre, in a rural area outside Kampala, Catholic priests under the leadership of Msgr. Expedito Magembe officiate at healing ceremonies designed to wipe away the inherited burden of one’s ancestors’ sins, such as drunkenness or cannibalism. Many in attendance offer emotional testimonies of their troubles and blessings received.

Some Catholic leaders say that the church should have embraced the charismatic movement even earlier and with more enthusiasm to meet the Pentecostal challenge. “We dropped the ball,” said Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, Nigeria, adding that charismatic Catholicism “would have been a fantastic bulwark against the movement of so many who left the Catholic Church.”

The bishop believes that Pentecostal competition has been healthy for Catholicism, which remains the largest Christian denomination in sub-Saharan Africa. “We needed Pentecostalism, you know, like a bit of a jab,” Kukah said. “One benefit of what I see in the relationship is that more and more Catholics are beginning to take the Bible seriously.”

A Catholic Good Friday procession in Nairobi, Kenya, April 2023. PHOTO: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Some Muslims have responded to this competition with what sociologist Ebenezer Obadare, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has dubbed “Charismatic Islam.” It includes such characteristically Pentecostal practices as long and fervent prayer sessions, sometimes lasting all night; an emphasis on demons and miracles; services that feature prayer requests and testimonies; and worship on Sunday.

The most prominent Islamic movement of this sort is the Nasrul-Lahi-L-Fatih Society of Nigeria, which has established a prayer center on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, alongside major Pentecostal megachurches like the RCCG.

At a recent Sunday service, the group’s bank and PayPal account information were prominently displayed to facilitate electronic donations. A preacher urged married couples to spare each other harmful words. Then the congregation prayed for specific needs: success with an immigration application to Canada, with a job interview, with an upcoming court case.

African Muslim leaders must contend not only with Pentecostals but often with fellow Muslims. At the Uganda National Mosque in Kampala, clerics have quarreled over such questions as whether to break the fast during the holy month of Ramadan with dates or other foods, whether it is permissible to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed and whether Muslim men should shave.

Ashraf Muvawala, spokesman for Uganda’s Muslim Supreme Council, says that such differences reflect a variety of foreign influences. In recent decades, the internet has drawn aspiring clerics from Uganda to study in countries across the Muslim world. “When [a cleric] comes here, he’s going to automatically teach what he’s learned [abroad]. And that’s why sometimes we have a lot of conflicts,” Muvawala said.

Muslim countries outside the region have sought to support and shape Islam in sub-Saharan Africa as a projection of soft power. Turkey has built mosques in a neo-Ottoman style in several African countries, in some cases alongside Turkish-financed highways. Morocco has promoted its form of moderate Islam in West Africa and the Sahel, financing the building of mosques and the education of imams.

Muslims attend Friday prayer at the Massalikul Jinaan Mosque in Dakar, Senegal, May 2020. PHOTO: ALAATTIN DOGRU/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

But the most prominent outside influences on Islam in sub-Saharan Africa are the rival Muslim superpowers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, said Abdoulaye Sounaye, an expert on African religion at Berlin’s Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient.

Iran supports Africa’s Shiite communities through the sponsorship of mosques and the training of clerics. Iran also produces Hausa-language radio and satellite television broadcasts that reach Nigeria and other West African countries, said Murtala Ibrahim, a researcher in religious studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Likewise, Ibrahim said, through the training of imams and satellite television broadcasts in local languages, Saudi Arabia has promoted Salafism, a movement stressing adherence to Islam’s earliest traditions. One strand of Salafism is militant jihadism, including that of the violent Boko Haram movement in Nigeria, which with other Islamist militant groups has killed over 80,000 Christians and Muslims in the country since 2009. Saudi Arabia’s supreme religious authority, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, has called Boko Haram “misguided.”

In Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, where Boko Haram was founded, and in other parts of the country’s Muslim-dominated north, local government authorities have set up boards to vet the sermons of Muslim preachers to ensure the absence of extremist content. Others stake their hopes on preaching the common values of the monotheistic faiths.

“The Muslims go to the mosque to worship Allah, while the Christians also go to their churches to worship their God,” said imam Idowu Muritadah Toliat Olaide, who leads Pentecostal-style worship every Sunday at Kajola Central Mosque Ketu in Lagos. He said that on Eid-El Maulud, the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, he has twice invited Christian pastors to his mosque to preach on peaceful coexistence. “Both Muslims and Christians should practice their religion to the best of their ability,” he said. “We shall all be judged by Allah someday.”

Francis X. Rocca covers the Vatican and global religion for The Wall Street Journal. Nicholas Bariyo is a reporter for The Journal’s Africa bureau. Gbenga Akingbule is The Journal’s Nigeria correspondent.

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Appeared in the June 24, 2023, print edition as ‘The Competition for Believers In Africa’s Religion Market Christianity and Islam in Africa’.

source https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-competition-for-believers-in-africas-religion-market-66e5255d

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