PENTECOSTALISM AND AFRICAN WORLDVIEW: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the relationship between Pentecostalism and African worldview in respect to how African Traditional Religion has influenced the Pentecostal outlook. Africans are people entangled with their culture. Irrespective of the Christian values, Africans “Nicodemusly” embrace the traditional religion. This Pentecostalism observes that it incorporates the African ideas into the religious system because whatever happens to the African man, he terms such attributional to the spiritual realm as Opaku (1978,p.1) in Jarrison (2015,para11) rightly puts it that, “Africans are engaged in religion in whatever they do – whether it be farming, fishing or hunting; or simply eating, drinking or traveling, Religion gives meaning and significance to their lives, both in this world and the next”. No disease, misfortune or even death occurs without spiritual interpretation. Therefore, Pentecostalism moves forward to explain these catastrophes in spiritual terms as the African believes that whatever happens in the physical realm has already been foreordained in the spiritual realm, that is, the physical realm works in paripassu with the spiritual realm. Indeed, in many cultures of the world, and especially in Africa, a major attraction for Pentecostalism has been its emphasis on healing. In these cultures, the religious specialist or 'person of God' has power to heal the sick and ward off evil spirits and sorcery. This holistic function, which does not separate the 'physical' from the 'spiritual', is restored in Pentecostalism, and indigenous peoples see it as a 'powerful' religion to meet human needs (Anderson, 2000, para 6). As religion is polymethodical (more than one method), three methods were employed namely historical, whereby the genesis of Pentecostalism was traced, Sociological which explains how Pentecostalism interacts with the African man and his culture, and phenomenological which discusses how Pentecostalism interacts with African religious worldview.