African Pentecostal Churches and Racialized Xenophobia: International Migrants as Agents of Transformational Development?

Introduction

This article is written at a time of growing scholarly interest in the potential and actual role of Pentecostalism and its churches in development. It could be claimed that interest in Pentecostalism today occupies a prominent place in the broader debate on religion and development, especially in the context of sub-Saharan African societies (see e.g. Adogame, 2016; Benyah, 2019, 2021; Freeman, 2015; Myers, 2019). Furthermore, while the developmental role of African Pentecostal migrant ¹ communities – in their own right a significant segment of the present-day global Pentecostal presence – has so far not received the necessary attention, recent contributions suggest that this neglect is also starting to be addressed (Ademolu, 2020; Garbin, 2019).

Joining the conversation, this article explores the actual and potential contributions of two migrant-led African Pentecostal churches – one a parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) and the other affiliated with the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM of SA) – towards development in Johannesburg, South Africa. To provide a point of focus for the discussion, we define development in the light of the concept of transformational development (TD) as something that refers first and foremost to the restoration of broken relationships and the transformation of marred identities. Bringing our data into conversation with the TD framework, we address the under-researched role of African Pentecostal diaspora communities in development. We argue that these church communities may be regarded as agents of development that call for attention and closer scrutiny, even if they do not identify as developmental agents or engage in large-scale community or developmental work in their respective neighborhoods or society. Our analysis suggests that TD theory is a useful tool for qualitative researchers to arrive at an understanding of the workings and potential contributions of grassroots communities to development, even if the scholarly conversation on TD has to date focused more on theoretical and theological reflections.

It is also important to note that we discuss TD in particular as it relates to racialized xenophobia, a decision that further focuses our argument but at the same time limits its scope. Xenophobia is widespread in South Africa among ordinary citizens, from across racial groups, government departments, police and the media alike (see e.g. Tella, 2016), and Black Africans from beyond the borders of South Africa are most often at the receiving end of xenophobic attitudes and actions (Langa and Kiguwa, 2016). With the majority of the members in our two case study churches belonging to this group, we thus approach the conversation primarily from the perspective of the targets or victims of xenophobia. When it comes to violent expressions of xenophobia, it has been the inner cities and townships of urban centers, such as Johannesburg, that have been the key location of actions that people in and outside of South Africa have become acutely aware of since the deadly xenophobic violence of May 2008 (see e.g. Bekker, 2015). During our fieldwork in September 2019, another violent xenophobic episode in the country affected the life of the two churches where we were busy conducting fieldwork at the time (Human Rights Watch, 2019).

We begin by first unpacking the notion of TD as the conceptual framework for this article and then relate our exploration of TD to the scholarly conversation on development and African Pentecostalism. After outlining our methodological choices and introducing the two case study churches, we analyze and discuss our data from three perspectives, focusing on three important aspects of TD: personal transformation, the transformational impact of a caring church community on its members, and transformation of the relationships between these churches and the surrounding community and society.

Transformational Development as a Concept

In its most worked out form TD has been posited as an authentic “Christian understanding of development” (Myers, 2000: 64; also see Myers, 2011: 137–157; Sugden, 2003). According to this understanding, the problem of poverty is not in the first instance viewed in material terms, as is often the case in a secular understanding of development. By taking the Bible as its guiding source of understanding, TD theory views the problem of poverty first and foremost as a relational issue. The reality of broken relationships, caused by sin, by fallen human beings, is seen as the primary cause of poverty. This brokenness takes on several dimensions: broken, unjust relationships with God, with oneself, with others, with the community, and with Creation (the environment) (Myers, 2000: 64, 2011: 116-117; Offutt, 2012: 41-42). Ultimately, it is the various dimensions of brokenness that explain “the myriad expressions of human poverty in its material, social and spiritual forms”, which in more concrete terms translates into outcomes such as “[d]egraded land, ill-health, marginalization, unjust economic and political structures, ethnic wars and every other cause of poverty” (Myers, 2000: 64).

In the context of xenophobia in South Africa, the TD framework allows us to apply this holistic understanding of poverty to the relational brokenness manifested in racialized xenophobia, on the one hand, and the underlying causes of xenophobia, such as socio-economic inequality, on the other. Moreover, the relational emphasis resonates with the holistic understanding of poverty and the relational nature of human existence characteristic of African theological scholarship (e.g. Mveng, 1994; Oduyoye, 2001; Paris, 2009), suggesting that this conceptual lens has potential to make sense of ecclesial dynamics in South Africa. Indeed, TD was chosen as the conceptual lens for this article only after we analyzed our data, because it helped us make better sense of what we had encountered in the case study communities.

To reiterate, in TD theory development is essentially understood as the restoration of relationships in all their different dimensions (see Figure 1 below). Myers (2000: 64) points to what he calls the “twin goals” of TD, namely changed people and changed relationships. At stake is that people – “the poor” and “non-poor”, and here we could add, the foreign national and citizen – will become whom God intend them to be: human beings made in the image of God and therefore human beings empowered with a new sense of vocation (Myers, 2000: 65, 2011: 140–142). This transformation should begin with “the poor”, who “suffer from a marred or diminished identity and a degraded understanding of their vocation” and who need to discover their identity as God's children and “their vocation as productive stewards” (Myers, 2011: 140). But the restoration also involves “the non-poor”, who “suffer from an inflated sense of identity and of vocation” (Myers, 2011: 140), and who are called “to relinquish their god complexes and to employ their gifts for the sake of all human beings rather than using their gifts as a source of power or control” (Myers, 2011: 140).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The relational dimensions of transformational development (Myers, 2000: 65; Myers, 2011: 142).

TD consequently focuses on restoring relationships as the means toward recovering identity and discovering vocation. This task of restoration begins with humanity's relationship with the Triune God. This is the central relationship in need of restoration, which demands accepting “God's invitation to faith in Jesus Christ” (Myers, 2011: 142). For Myers, accepting God's story constitutes “the transformational point of maximum leverage for change”, from which “many other good things will follow and become possible” and without which the possibilities of other kinds of transformation are far more limited (Myers, 2011: 142; see also Offutt, 2012: 41). The picture captured in Figure 1 sums up how the restoration of other relational dimensions constitutes the natural outflow of the restored relationship with God. It is from this premise that TD theory lays claim to a transformational dynamic leading to:

individual persons with a restored identity and a new sense of vocation;

It is important to make one final observation on how the local church has a special place in TD theory. This does not mean that the imperfect nature of the church is ignored, but rather that one of the obvious tasks of TD must be “to help the church to be what it is intended to be”, namely a living witness to “God's larger story” (Myers, 2000: 67) and consequently a primary vehicle of TD (Myers, 2011: 149-150; see also Sugden, 2003: 73). The church occupies this important place in TD because of its calling to love and serve the community and to provide it with encouragement (Myers, 2000: 65–67, 2011: 149-150).

Transformational Development and Pentecostalism

We acknowledge that there is room for being critical of TD as a theoretical constellation (Offutt, 2012: 43–45). Yet addressing such criticism lies outside the main scope of this article, which is to draw on particular tenets in TD theory to explore the potential and actual innovative contributions of our case study churches as agents of development as this relates to racialized xenophobia. More specifically, our use of TD theory in studying Pentecostalism could be questioned, since the theory originated in the mainline international evangelical movement and not in the workings of Pentecostalism itself. TD is indeed recognized as the “evangelical world's most rigorous and cohesive development paradigm” (Offutt, 2012: 43). Its origins lie in Article Five on “Christian Social Responsibility” in the Lausanne Covenant – the outcome of the congress of the world's evangelical leaders in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974 – that “became the platform for the construction of Transformational Development” in the years to follow (Offutt, 2012: 39; see also Samuel, 1996; Sugden, 2003). Yet we opt to follow the influential voice of Myers (2015; see also Myers, 2019), who calls for scholars to transcend the evangelical-Pentecostal divide – and thus become open to the ways in which Pentecostalism and its churches may open new vistas for TD.

As a closer study of the emerging literature on Pentecostalism and development suggests, Pentecostalism as a strand of contemporary Christianity – while diverse theologically and in relation to social impacts – seems to share several of the core concerns of TD, noticeably within its “progressive” representation (Myers, 2015: 119; also see Myers, 2019: 127-128). While scholarly interest in Pentecostalism and development is recent, the progressive dynamic can be argued to have already been evident towards the end of the twentieth century:

But something else was going on in the 1980s and 1990s in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the Global South, and it was good news for the poor. What some have called the third movement of the charismatic/Pentecostal movement, or Neo-Pentecostalism, emerged in poor urban slums in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. This was a self-generating expression of Pentecostalism that emerged from the grassroots, was deeply contextual, and was generally nondenominational or postdenominational … Part of this new Pentecostal movement has been called ‘Progressive Pentecostalism’. One of its characteristics is a deep commitment to social ministries organized around the congregation and its neighborhood or village (Myers, 2015: 115, original emphasis; see also Myers, 2019: 18-19)

Today many Pentecostal churches have proved to be particularly dynamic in the first two relational areas prioritized in TD theory, not least among the poor and marginalized of society, namely achievement of a restored relationship with the Triune God, and personal transformation and holiness (Benyah, 2019; Freeman, 2015; Kakwata, 2017; Myers, 2015, 2019). And yet, from these two areas a further dynamic is unfolding that holds huge potential for such churches’ contribution towards restored relationship of the self with others as well as restored relationships within the larger community.

This dynamic, as an exploration of the literature suggests, may be found in the new moral-ethical foundations emerging from Pentecostal transformation, not only with respect to the narrower confines of marriage and family life, but also a broader human rights culture whereby “all people have value in God's sight” (Anderson, 2020: 130; see also Freeman, 2015: 120–123). Furthermore, a relational dynamic can also be discerned in a host of social services and related institutional initiatives (such as in the areas of education, health and business) offered by Pentecostal churches in many societies. In the particular context of sub-Saharan Africa, scholars have suggested that this collective dynamic is not only leading to people's basic needs being met, but also to new opportunities for human flourishing in community (see e.g. Anderson, 2020; Adedibu, 2020; Burgess, 2020; Öhlmann et al., 2020; Olowu, 2011).

Methodology

This article reports on research that was executed at the intersection of ecclesiology and ethnography; the study design was guided by the principle of integrating “local theological knowledge, traditional theological knowledge, and cultural critique of both” (Wigg-Stevenson, 2018: 426). During our ethnographic fieldwork in two Pentecostal churches in Johannesburg we listened to and observed the local theologies circulating and embodied within the practices of these churches. When analyzing our findings relating to social practices in the case study communities, we discovered that the scholarship on TD could act as a fruitful dialogue partner for the discussion of these findings.

From late 2018 to early 2020, after receiving ethical clearance, we embarked on an ethnographic journey to learn from two migrant-led Pentecostal congregations about whether, and how, experiences of xenophobia shaped religious innovation in these communities. ² These congregations were a branch of the Heirs of Promises Sanctuary (HPS) and a parish of RCCG, both in Johannesburg. Our primary set of data consists of the transcripts of semi-structured interviews with 34 individuals (and two additional persons whose interviews were not recorded and transcribed). The interviews focused on four topics, namely, the parish/branch itself, selected theological questions, migrant experiences and xenophobia. We wanted to understand the world “through the eyes” of the research participants (Bryman, 2012: 399), even if we obviously could not escape our perspectives and positionality when interpreting the data.

We interviewed both pastors and members of the congregations to obtain a range of outlooks on the life of these churches, and aimed purposefully to include a diverse group of people with regard to gender, age, nationality, cultural group and socio-economic status. As is obvious in the analysis below, we privileged the voices and experiences of foreign nationals, who occupy a marginal position in the matrix of social power in South Africa. This is not to imply, however, that it is the responsibility of the foreign national to resolve issues related to xenophobia in South Africa, or elsewhere in the world (Vähäkangas, 2015).

Additionally, we immersed ourselves in the activities of the churches. This entailed attending a dozen Sunday services at both churches, as well as a few other events such as weekday evening services, including spending time talking to people informally afterwards. Our observations while participating in the churches’ activities were recorded in field notes. This helped us to develop a better “feel” for the studied churches. We also voice-recorded a series of Sunday services and then summarized the sermons and coded them as part of the analysis process.

In our analysis we drew on aspects of grounded theory to construct “an image of reality” (Khan, 2014: 227) based on the collected data. One member of our research group (Hankela) had already done an initial round of open coding on all interviews and field notes, and for the purposes of this article, we re-coded the transcribed interviews and sermon summaries, focusing in particular on the social practices at the churches. This second, more focused round of coding was a mixture of open coding (coming up with new codes as we proceeded) and applying broad predetermined codes relating to the churches’ social practices, but following an inductive approach at all times.

Introducing the Case Study Churches

The case study churches we engaged with were chosen based on their fitting into the category of churches led and frequented by international migrants. The churches were somewhat – even if by no means identically – influenced by similar theological emphases; these included themes such as the centrality of the Word of God, the importance of living a Christ-like life, a strong call to evangelize and a form of prosperity theology (see Hankela, 2020; Swart et al., 2021). Yet it is important to note that the case study churches belong to two distinct Pentecostal denominations – with different backgrounds geographically, theologically and historically – and thus we briefly locate them within their respective traditions before introducing the local churches themselves.

HPS was founded by a Congolese pastor as a French church under the umbrella of AFM of SA in Johannesburg at the beginning of this millennium. AFM of SA is a classic Pentecostal church established in 1908 by American missionaries (Kgatle, 2017: 5). For our purposes it is important to know that assemblies of AFM of SA have over the years cared for the elderly and orphans through their welfare department as well as initiated locally-driven church programs in response to different crises (Kgatle, 2017: 5). RCCG, on the other hand, was established on the continent, and more specifically in Nigeria in 1952 by a Yoruba man (Olowu, 2011: 66). Recently, RCCG has extended its reach beyond its members to address the concerns of the wider society (Osamolu and Atuluku, 2016). Scholars indicate that RCCG is known for its commitment to the poor with the aim of improving life in Africa (Oguntoyinbo-Atere, 2009; Olowu, 2011) and that its public role and social relevance have widened to involve confronting barriers to development and promoting civic engagement (Adedibu, 2020; Adogame, 2016).

Today HPS has several branches in South Africa. We engaged with a branch located in a working-class neighborhood east of the Johannesburg Central Business District (CBD). In this branch the congregants were predominantly Congolese, although many other African countries were also represented, including South Africa. For that reason, the main service was conducted in French but translated into English. Pastor David, ³ one of our interviewees, estimated the membership of this French congregation to be around 500 people, with about 300 attending the service on any given Sunday. A smaller English service had also been introduced to cater in particular to younger members, many of them the children of those who attended the French service. Similar to the congregants, most pastors of this branch were Congolese, except for one Zimbabwean pastor-in-training. The RCCG parish we engaged with was located between a working-class, migrant-dominated neighborhood and a middle-class suburb, not far from the Johannesburg CBD. The majority of the members were Nigerian, with a significant minority from other African countries, including South Africa. The RCCG parish was a smaller community than the HPS branch; Pastor Andrew estimated the usual attendance on a Sunday to be around 190 people, while noting that the official membership was less than that, as the children were not counted. We engaged with a “model parish”, a term that in the RCCG context refers to parishes that are more world accommodating than the more pietistic “classical parishes”. Model parishes are also said to be more attractive to educated and upwardly mobile people than their classical counterparts (Adedibu, 2016: 84).

Discussing the Findings in Light of Transformational Development

While TD did not inform our research design or the fieldwork phase, after analyzing the data we identified it as a concept that could give structure and precision to our argument. In the next three sections we discuss the findings making use of TD as a conceptual framework. First, the TD framework calls for attention to the relationship with God and the implication of that for personal identity and vocation, and this is what the first section focuses on. The second section, again guided by TD theory, examines relationships between people within the church community, here particularly from the perspective of social practices in the case study churches. Third, we focus on the relationships between our two case study churches and the neighborhood, thus extending our use of TD to a third and final level. The aspect of the natural environment (Myers, 2011) did not emerge in our data.

Conclusion

The TD framework has allowed us to portray the relational dynamics within two migrant-led African Pentecostal churches in Johannesburg as important to the discourse and practice of development. The dynamics we discuss – namely, the churches as spaces nurturing a proactive identity and vocation among individuals in a foreign country, providing a safety net for migrants, and embodying a sense of responsibility in relation to the host society and nation – are familiar from the scholarship on religion and migration. Our bringing them into conversation with the concept of TD, which centers on the restoration of identity and relationships as a necessary foundation for life-affirming development, provides a new perspective to thinking about churches led and frequented by African migrants as agents of development.

Neither one of the case study churches spoke of themselves as a developmental agent and both rather focused on living out the gospel. However, it is this living out of the gospel that – when read through a TD lens – translates into social dynamics that are relevant for development overall, albeit here operating at a communal micro level. We have shown how the two churches studied contribute towards restoring relationships: with God, with self, with others in the church community, and between the church community and the immediate neighborhood. Yet the impact or importance of this developmental potential should not be overstated. At the same time, it does deserve the attention of those interested in development and is easily missed if simply applying a secular Enlightenment gaze to the potential (and actual) contribution of the two studied churches to development. In our study this potential becomes evident through the application of a theologically informed framework of development. This attests to the utility of the TD framework in the context of empirical research, something that has not been widely applied so far.

Our findings also speak back to TD theory, drawing attention to ways in which the relational energy within the church community is, or is not, translated into a broader societal impact. Our data, while not speaking the language of development, underscore the relevance of the TD framework and its different dimensions, on the one hand, and in relation to this, the connection between the communal or micro level and societal level of development, on the other. However, we also brought to the fore the critical self-reflections of some of the research participants that relate to an urge to do more in the surrounding society than what is the case at present. The empirical data thus pose a question to TD theory regarding the relationship between the relational foundation of development and the possibility of broader societal transformation, calling for this relationship to be spelled out in still more concrete and perhaps more critical terms.

Lastly, our argument is consciously constructed in the context of racialized xenophobia. To this end, TD provides a logical avenue for relating xenophobia and development through the notion of restoring relationships with God, self, others and community, thereby attesting to a holistic understanding of development in the twenty-first century. That this insight is examined through a nuanced portrayal of African Pentecostal churches is important here, as it counters the global politics of race that often relegates African and international migrants of color to the periphery. African Pentecostal migrant communities, while not organized as developmental actors, clearly have a role to play in the advancement of transformational development at the grassroots or micro level of society, not only in South Africa but also elsewhere.